Houston Attack (11 page)

If the shrapnel doesn't get you, the fire will.

The grenades work on a four-second delay system, so Hawker counted to a nervy “one-thousand-three” and then hurled them overhanded in quick succession.

There was an almost simultaneous double explosion followed by a blinding white light.

Hawker knew what was coming, so he turned away. Even so, his peripheral vision caught the shocking brightness of the light and saw the handful of men wither beneath its heat.

Caught within that fiery white hell, their screams were short-lived.

Hawker punched a fresh clip into the Colt Commando, adjusted the knapsack over his shoulder, and continued uninterrupted to the back adobe wall.

Hawker knew that by climbing the wall he might pinpoint his position for Williams's men. The electronic security system was certainly sophisticated enough. But he couldn't worry about that now. He unbelted the grappling hook, tossed it over the wall, then climbed hand over hand to the top.

What he saw on the other side surprised him. He expected to see Ranch #3, and he did. But what surprised him was that Ranch #3 looked nothing like the other ranches. Since it was supposed to be an experimental farm, he expected to see barns and outbuildings.

There were none of these things.

Instead he saw what looked like a single large factory complex surrounded by miles and miles of greenhouses. The greenhouses weren't the glass structures he had seen in the Chicago area. These were shielded by translucent nets, under which heat lights blazed beneath sprinkler systems. Through the nets Hawker could see long rows of what looked to be sapling trees.

What in the hell was Williams growing? he wondered. It wasn't marijuana. And it sure as hell wasn't poppies. But what else would explain the conversation he had heard between the two guards about a “shipment” leaving tonight?

For the moment Hawker didn't have time to give it much thought. As he dropped from the wall he heard a muffled voice call out, “There he is!”

Immediately shots exploded from the heavy mesquite brush that covered the field between Hawker and the distant greenhouses. Hawker jumped to his feet, ran a zigzag course, then dove into the cover of the wiry mesquite.

Sighting through the Star-Tron scope, Hawker surveyed the field before him.

Had the situation not been so dangerous, Hawker would have smiled at how Williams's soldiers stood out in the owlish vision of the Star-Tron.

He could see all six of them very plainly. They knelt or lay in what they thought to be the protective shadows of the mesquite. In the eerie red glow of the Star-Tron Hawker watched what he assumed was the team leader signal for two of his men to move forward.

As they moved Hawker prepared to change positions quickly before calling out to the men, “Hey! Freeze right where you are and listen, because I'm only going to say this once. I'm going to give you assholes one chance to drop your weapons and let me pass, because if you don't—”

They never allowed him to finish. Heavy weapons fire ripped wildly through the cover, seeking his voice.

Hawker dived, rolled, and dived again before coming up on one knee, the assault rifle at ready.

He had given them their chance to get the hell out alive. And they had refused.

Hawker brought the 135mm Star-Tron to bear on the chest of the leader. Because the Colt Commando is a shortened version of the M-16, its accuracy is not quite as good. It was built for tough in-fighting and tight situations. But Williams's soldiers were only about fifty yards away, so Hawkker didn't require pinpoint accuracy. He brought the cross hairs to bear on the team leader's chest, squeezed off two careful shots, and the team leader dropped as if he had been magically deboned.

Hawker waited to see if the others had figured out what was going to happen to them.

The heavy return of fire told him they hadn't.…

Shooting sitting ducks wasn't Hawker's idea of sport. But this wasn't sport. It was war.

One by one, Hawker brought the Star-Tron scope vectoring on each man in the squad, and the 5.56mm slugs smacked through their flesh traveling at eight hundred eighty meters per second, more than twice the speed of sound.

When the dirty work was done, Hawker got to his feet and jogged through the thick mesquite toward the factorylike building in the distance.

From every direction, it seemed, came the haunting wail of sirens. A thin smile touched Hawker's sweat-streaked face. Skate Williams had had his big dinner, and he had planned on a night of fun with the pretty litte Indio girl from south of the border. A night of recreation spiced with the perverted allure of rape.

Well, Hawker was going to give him a night of recreation. But the only thing going to be raped was Williams's confused little army.

From the woods, now behind him, Hawker could hear the alto hacking of dogs. He knew that the men at Ranch #3 would be on full alert: Stop unknown attacker or attackers from exiting the compound. Those would be the logical orders. But those orders, in reality, were to his advantage.

Hawker thought about it as he ran. The security force from the main ranch would be coming after him in a wave through the woods. But the soldiers from Ranch #3 would probably be spread out around the fence that no doubt enclosed the area. If he could draw all their fire toward the center of the compound, he might be able to find a way to slip out unseen while they traded shots with each other.…

It sounded good.

But, as always, he would have to play it by ear.

As Hawker ran he realized, oddly, how much more …
alive
… he felt in these situations of life and death. His concentration was total. His objective was always perfectly clear. There were no half-truths; no dingy grays of reality. There was only the clarity of his mission: to succeed completely or fail totally. And everything depended on his physical strength, his endurance, and his intellect.

There were no time-outs in this game. No rules; no disputed calls; no second chances.

In such a conflict every moment seemed distilled. Every minute seemed pure. He enjoyed perfect communication between body and mind.

Sometimes Hawker told himself he had become a vigilante because there were great wrongs in the country that needed to be righted. Even to himself he sometimes played the role of the middle-American knight in slightly tarnished armor, the beer-drinking patron of the week, the terrorized, and the leaderless. And while it was true that there were great wrongs being committed, and some of them could only be righted by a vigilante, Hawker couldn't pretend those were the only reasons.

It was in the rare moments that he understood it best; the singular moments of honesty and clarity, such as this one, when he admitted to himself why he really did what he did. He did it because it was what he did best.

And he loved it.

Ahead was the first line of greenhouses. Hawker slowed by the first one and looked in. The covering was made of a common black screen that reduced the harshness of the sun. Inside were about a dozen rows of thin trees, twenty to a row. The trees were about twelve to fifteen feet tall with shiny, thick stems and short, pale green leaves. Spaced above every row of trees were bare light bulbs and a sprinkler system made of PVC pipe. The trees were planted in black plastic buckets and there were plastic tubes looping into each bucket: a hydroponic feeding system.

A nursery?

For a moment Hawker couldn't believe it. This is what the mysterious Ranch #3 was—a nursery? He rubbed his chin. It didn't make any sense. Why the heavy security? Certainly there had to be more at stake than the weird story he had heard of Skate Williams's preparation for the coming world collapse.

But what?

Hawker stripped a couple of leaves off one tree and held them to his nose. They smelled good—like fresh tea leaves. He bit a small piece of one leaf, chewed it, then spat. The leaf was bitter, and it immediately numbed his tongue.

There was, something here that touched one of Hawker's memory electrodes. Some past bit of information; some subject he had once done a good bit of reading on.

And suddenly he remembered.

Suddenly he realized what it was all about.

It finally made sense: the slave laborers, the factory, the army, the ingenious franchise system—everything. When illuminated by the knowledge of Skate Williams's greed, everything fell neatly into place.

Hawker's one problem was that he had underestimated the man's greed. And his ruthlessness. And his cleverness.

But now it all made sense.

Williams
did
have it all: oil, water, produce, and beef. Especially beef—if Hawker was right. But what else explained the conversation he had heard between the two guards? Something about tonight's shipment going straight to the streets? What else answered the implied question: Where did it go when it
didn't
go straight to the streets?

Williams had indeed developed a practical method to take control of a massive cross section of the American public.

As nauseating as his method was, Williams had found the final solution to the question of total control.

And that was his goal, as Hawker now knew—total control. Skate Williams didn't just want to be a big man in Texas; he wanted to be the biggest man in the country.

And he had discovered a way to insure he would be just that.

Unless Hawker found a way to stop him.

Hawker stepped from beneath the screen, his resolve newly fired. If Skate Williams was doing what he suspected, he
had
to be stopped. Stopped now before it was too late—if it wasn't too late already.

Hawker surveyed the area. How many greenhouses were there? The acreage beyond the factory was filled with row after row of them. In the Texas night they glowed like a small city.

Thousands of them. Hundreds of thousands of trees. All growing right here in the land of good ol' boys and middle-class morality.

Who would have ever suspected?

Which is probably why Williams thought of it.

Hawker quickly took a couple more leaves and shoved them in his pocket, then hurried on toward the factory.

The sound of the dogs was getting closer. Ahead of him, where he hoped the fence would be, Hawker could see flashlight beams waving through a high dark cloud of oaks. Far off to his right he could hear the mechanical thump of a helicopter starting up.

Williams wasn't holding anything back. He wanted the intruder and he wanted him badly. Hawker wouldn't have been the least bit surprised to see a tank come busting through the trees, turret swinging.

It meant he had to get out, and get out just as quickly as he could. Because the sooner he got out, the sooner he could return, free Cristoba, and, with help, destroy what in time would no doubt become a symbol of hell to a nation of unsuspecting people.

Hawker hurried on.

The factory was the size of two barns, built of corrugated steel. The smoke that drifted out of the stacks blurred the pale moon. The smoke had an odd smell. Like burned toast.

A high chain-link fence topped with barbed wire surrounded the factory.

Hawker found the wire cutters in the knapsack and snipped the barbed wire away so he could climb over.

He wondered if there were any guards left on station to hear the alarms go off.

There were.

And finding out almost cost Hawker his life.…

thirteen

He had hoped to break into the factory and confirm his suspicions that the building was really more than just a processing plant.

But he never got the chance.

As he reached to turn the knob the main door flew open. Hawker's foot caught most of the impact, but the metal door still cracked him in the face hard enough to send him stumbling sideways. As he did, a heavy-caliber revolver poked out through the opening and exploded right by his cheek.

Hawker's ears rang; his head buzzed—but he still managed to grab the guard's arm and twist as he fell, snapping the gun from his hand.

The guard was immediately on top of him, flailing away with his fists. Hawker pulled the guard tight against him, so the man's punches couldn't build much momentum.

“You're a dead man, you son of a bitch,” the guard hissed as he smacked Hawker a glancing blow on the forehead. “I guarantee it: You're a fucking corpse.”

Hawker grabbed the man by the shirt, shoved as if to push him away, then used the man's own resistance to roll him over his head. Hawker back-somersaulted with him so that their positions were immediately reversed.

As he rolled he drew the Walther automatic in one smooth motion. When the guard's lips opened in an involuntary expression of fear, Hawker shoved the short barrel into his mouth. “Your guarantees aren't worth much, friend,” Hawker said. His voice was cold, unemotional.

The man gurgled an unintelligible reply.

“Was that some kind of apology, sport?”

The man's eyes were wide with terror. He shook his head up and down quickly and gurgled some more.

“Fine,” said Hawker. “I think we're finally starting to communicate.” He pulled the Walther from the guard's mouth. “I'm going to tell you exactly what I want from you. Ready?”

“Sure,” the guard said. “Anything. Hey, look, I wasn't really going to bump you off. I was just trying to scare you a little before I took you in—”

“Knock off the bullshit,” Hawker snapped. “I've spent the evening getting to know how Williams's mercenaries try to scare people. Now get to your feet and make it quick. Your buddies are going to be showing up soon, and at my parties, the first to arrive is usually the first to check out. And you were the first to arrive, friend.”

The guard held his hands over his head even though Hawker had not yet ordered him to do so. It was a submissive gesture. Hawker stood eye to eye with him: a big man with abrupt, unattractive features and a lot of wiry black hair. “Anything, pal. Anything you want. Just don't shoot me, for God's sake.”