Home Invasion - J. A. Johnstone [99]
“Son of a bitch!“ Rowdy said. “That was close!” Jack lifted his left hand and looked at it for a second, watching it shake. “Yeah.”
They were on a side street now, but they weren’t out of trouble. Armed men were still running after them, firing automatic weapons. Rowdy cut to the right.
“I’ll come up to the back of the police station,” he said.
“There’s no point in it,” Jack told him. “You saw how many of them there were back there. They’ve already taken it over.”
Jimmy was still bent over so his head was below the level of the dashboard. He looked up past his shoulder at Jack and asked, “What about Eloise?”
“I don’t know, Jimmy. I hope she’s all right, but I just don’t know.”
“Those men are bad!”
“Yeah. Yeah, they sure are.”
Jack was trying to figure out who the invaders were. He had gotten a pretty good look at quite a few of them, and every one he’d seen was Hispanic. Was the U.S. at war with Mexico? Was this just the first step in an actual invasion of the entire country?
Jack didn’t believe he was a bigot, no matter what those eastern politicians and reporters said about Texans. Like most kids in this part of the state, he had grown up bilingual and was just about as fluent in Spanish as he was in English. He’d had Hispanic friends for as far back as he could remember. He just flat didn’t care what color somebody’s skin was, only how they acted.
But it was just a fact that the situation in Mexico was bad now. The drug cartels ran everything, and for everybody else, poverty was rampant. Jack knew enough history to know that circumstances like that were breeding grounds for resentment and jealousy, and corrupt leaders could play on that to get people to do whatever they wanted. That was the classic way a lot of America’s own politicians gained power in the first place and then hung on to it once they had it.
So, yeah, an actual invasion from Mexico was a possibility, Jack thought. Home, Texas, might be ground zero in a new war.
Or it might just be something as simple as some of those drug smugglers flexing their muscle. Everybody knew they were better armed than the Mexican army. They would have what it took to shoot down a helicopter and take over a town.
“Stay on the back roads and head for the high school,” Jack told Rowdy.
“The school? Why?”
“It’s Sunday. Nobody will be there. Maybe those guys know that and won’t pay much attention to it. We can get in and hide out there while we figure out what to do.”
“Hide out?” Rowdy frowned. “I don’t much like the sound of that. I want to fight these guys!”
“We tried that, and it’s pure luck we didn’t get ourselves shot to pieces. We’ve got to lie low for a little while, maybe find away to get some reinforcements.”
“Well … all right. But I want another shot at those guys before this is over.”
“I’m sure you’ll get it,” Jack said.
Alex sank down on the roof and put her back against the low wall that ran around it. Even this early in the day, the black asphalt that coated the roof was hot under her butt. She wouldn’t stay here long, but she had to get her nerves back under control.
She was on top of Wendell Post’s hardware store, closed down since Wendell had been taken into federal custody a few days earlier. She had been sneaking along behind the building when she spotted a ladder lying on the ground along the base of the rear wall. That was when it had occurred to her the roof might be a good vantage point for her to have a look around. She had propped the ladder against the wall and climbed up, swinging quickly over the lip and staying low so no one down below would be able to spot her as she crawled to the front of the building.
She had just gotten into position when a pickup she recognized as belonging to Rowdy Donovan roared down Main Street. At least two people were inside the truck, trading shots with the invaders, and Alex had no doubt the second person was Jack.
The crazy kids! … Crazy, valiant kids …
She had done what she could to help them, all the while gripped by utter terror that she was about to watch her son die right in