Remember The Alamo (14 page)

As it was, he was able to open the rear door and sprawl out
onto the pavement just as the grenade hit. The explosion lifted
the car several inches off the ground and threw it backward.
Heat and concussion struck Dave and drove him hard against
the pavement, stunning him. But he was still alive and was
shocked into motionlessness only for a second. He rolled away
from the now-blazing car as it settled down again.

The other cars on the freeway saw the explosion and fire
and swerved wildly to get as far away from the trouble as they
could. Tires squealed and brakes screeched and metal ground
against metal as a mass fender-bender began to develop.

Dave lifted his head, shook it to clear away some of the cobwebs, and saw Phil on one knee, still firing at the Cadillac.
Phil must have rolled away from the car just as the grenade
struck it, too.

But with the car on fire like that, it was only a matter of
time before the gas tank blew, which would result in an even
larger fireball. Dave and Phil were both still too close to the
burning vehicle. If the gas tank exploded now, both of them
would be engulfed in the flames.

"Phil, get away from there!" Dave bellowed as he scrambled
to his feet. "It's gonna blow!"

How many times had he heard that same line in movies?
Crazy the sort of thoughts that went through your head in moments of extreme stress. But it was true. The flames were
spreading rapidly toward the car's gas tank. And they didn't
even have to reach that point. All they had to do was ignite the
fuel line in the engine compartment....

There was too much noise to hear anything other than the
roar of gunfire and the crackle of flames, so Dave sensed the
buzz of the bullet past his ear rather than hearing it. The guys
in the Cadillac had thrown open the big car's doors and were
using them for cover as they blazed away at Dave and Phil
with handguns. Phil stubbornly returned their fire, concentrating his shots on the pavement under the Caddy's rear end.

As Dave lurched toward Phil, flame suddenly blossomed
underneath the Cadillac. A deafening blast lifted the car
straight up and send the three men crouched next to it tumbling away with fire cloaking their bodies.

Dave didn't see anything else. He grabbed Phil under the
arms from behind and hauled him up and away from the burning car beside them. He worried about a passing car knocking
them down and running over them, but no vehicles seemed to
be moving on this stretch of freeway anymore. The chain-reaction accident had already piled them up for a hundred yards
back along the Interstate.

The gas tank in Phil's car finally exploded. The two men
were still close enough to it to be knocked off their feet, and
the heat blistered the back of their necks. Before they could get up, the armored car exploded again as the fire reached
the ammo inside. But finally they were able to stagger upright
and scramble on over to a couple of cars that had skidded to a
halt next to the concrete wall dividing the eastbound lanes of
the freeway from the westbound lanes. One of the cars had
rear-ended the other, and their bumpers were locked together.

A woman sat behind the wheel of the car in back, sobbing
and shaking in fear and shock, but the driver of the other car
was a man who seemed to have his wits about him. He got out
and hurried around to meet Dave and Phil, exclaiming, "My
God, are you guys all right?"

In utter weariness, they leaned against the front fender of
the guy's car and turned to look back at the shoulder of the
road, where both the Cadillac and Phil's car burned. The fierce
blazes caused by the gas tank explosions were going to consume both vehicles, Dave knew. He had seen cars with their
gas tanks blown before. There usually wasn't much left. The
fire was even hot enough to melt a lot of the metal. And the
killers' vehicle had grenades in it to explode, too

Two charred corpses lay facedown on the asphalt not far
from the blazing Cadillac. Dave knew there had to be another
body on the other side of the Caddy. The would-be killers had
been too close. Their chances of survival were zero.

Dave looked at Phil and said, "How ... how did you .. "'

Breathless and singed around the edges, Phil said, "I figured since the back window was bulletproof... the doors were
probably armor-plated, too. But the guys who ... fix up cars
like that ... sometimes forget to reinforce the gas tank, too. I
tried to ricochet some slugs up into it from the pavement ...
set it off that way...

"You succeeded, bro," said the guy whose car had been
rear-ended. "I never saw fireworks like that before"

Since the shooting had stopped, Dave could hear sirens now. It sounded like every emergency vehicle in the city was converging on this spot.

As well they should, he thought. There was plenty of work
here for the cops, the fire department, and a whole slew of ambulances carrying emergency medical personnel.

And for the coroner, too, he added to himself as he looked
at the still-smoldering corpses lying on the pavement. Wisps
of smoke rose from the bodies and drifted away, lost in the
black clouds boiling up from the burning cars.

"Damn it, I want answers!"

To emphasize his anger, which was evident from his brickred face, Detective Jaime Obrador slammed the palm of his
hand on the table in the interrogation room. He glared across
at Phil and Dave, who were seated in chairs that were bolted
to the floor, as was the table itself.

"We already gave you the answers," Phil said. He reached
out and pushed the jump drive that was lying on the table
closer to Obrador. "They're all right there"

"The file from that drive is being analyzed," Obrador said.
"But you two can tell me more than it can"

"We already did," Dave said. He was exhausted. They had
been sitting in police headquarters for several hours. Night had
fallen, and Dave's stomach reminded him every few minutes
that it had been a long time since he had eaten anything.

But maybe if they told Obrador the truth often enough, the
detective would finally believe it. Dave supposed it was worth
another try.

"Those men in the Cadillac were the ones who killed my
cousin and abducted his wife from the Mercado this afternoon," he said. "They must have followed me and decided to get rid of me on the chance that Silvio passed along some
information to me before he died."

"How do you know any of that?" Obrador challenged.

"What other explanation makes the least bit of sense?" Phil
said. "Those guys followed Dave's cousin up here from Matamoros, hit him, grabbed his wife, then tried to hit Dave. They
were trying to cover up something important." Phil tapped the
jump drive again. "Like a plot to hang on to the Alamo instead
of giving it back once the weekend is over."

Obrador shook his head. "That's the craziest thing I've ever
heard"

"Crazy things happen all the time," Dave said. "Like the
mayor and the City Council deciding to give the Alamo to
Mexico in the first place."

Obrador sneered. "Hey, your last name is Rodriguez. You
ought to be happy about that, hermano"

"Don't paint me with the same brush as those Reconquistar
lunatics. I was born here, not south of the border."

The door of the interrogation room opened as Dave was
talking, and a new voice said, "Don't you have any pride in
your heritage, Mr. Rodriguez? Are you ashamed of being a
Mexican-American?"

Dave and Phil turned to see who had spoken, and Dave felt
surprise go through him as he recognized the mayor of San Antonio. Joaquin Alvarez's handsome face was well known to
everyone in the city, because he managed to get it on television
nearly every day, sometimes multiple times a day. The man
with him was almost as familiar, because he was always there
in the background whenever Alvarez made a public appearance. He was the mayor's top advisor, George Menendez.

Dave looked squarely at Alvarez and said, "Is it politically
correct this week to use the term Mexican-American? I can't
keep up anymore" Without giving the mayor a chance to respond, Dave went on. "Anyway, the key word is American, Mr. Mayor. I'm an American before I'm anything else. All those
hyphens have damn near ruined this country."

"America is a big, generous land, amigo, with plenty of
room for diversity," Alvarez said, still smiling but with a hard
glitter in his eyes now. He didn't like being challenged.

"Diversity's fine," Dave shot back, his weariness making
him bold. "My wife and I both speak fluent Spanish. We can
get along just fine in Mexico. But when I go to renew my
driver's license or register my car in this country, damn it, I
don't need somebody to translate for me, and I sure don't need
all the paperwork printed in both languages."

"Perhaps you're lucky," Alvarez said, his phony smile slipping
a little. "What about the people who don't speak English?"

"Let 'em learn. A whole bunch of people from Asia managed just fine. There are all kinds of programs, public and private, that will teach immigrants to speak English."

"What if they're not immigrants?" Alvarez argued. "What if
they were born and raised here, as you seem to be proud of?"

In a flat voice, Dave said, "Then they ought to be ashamed
of themselves for not learning before now, and their parents
or grandparents or whoever came here first ought to be
ashamed, too"

Alvarez's nostrils flared with anger. Dave wondered if he
practiced that in front of a mirror. "That's all well and good,
but what about the children? You'd deny children-"

Dave came to his feet, his anger no longer letting him stay
seated. "You and all the misguided liberal fools like you are the
ones who are denying the children!" he said. "You're denying
them the chance to live a full and productive life in this country. Hell, they can go all the way from kindergarten through
high school now without ever having to learn how to speak and
read English! Bilingual education was supposed to make it
easier for them to become part of American society. Now it's not bilingual at all. It's just a crutch to allow them to keep
speaking Spanish the rest of their lives."

Alvarez's lip curled in an outright sneer. "That's awfully
high-flown rhetoric coming from a mechanic."

Dave looked at him for a second, then laughed.

"What's so damned funny?" Alvarez snapped.

"You," Dave said. "You hombres never disappoint. You call
yourselves the champions of the little guy, the common man,
and yet there you stand in your six-hundred-dollar suit and
three-hundred-dollar shoes and sneer at me because I make
an honest living working with my hands. You think a guy like
me can't possibly know anything or have an opinion that matters. So, because you're so smart and so good, you'll take care
of me. You'll take most of my money in taxes and spend it for
me, because I'm too dumb to know how to spend it right. You'll
legislate this and that and the other until I don't have to make
any choices in my life, because you're smarter than me and
should make those decisions for me" Dave shook his head in
despair. "You and your ilk-see, I know some fancy wordshave the upper hand right now because the news media plays
along with you and scares people into voting for you, but know
this. Me and a lot of other Americans don't agree with you. We
still believe in ourselves. We still believe in this country. And
you make us fuckin' sick."

Alvarez was furious now. He said, "I'll have you know this
suit cost eight hundred-"

"That's enough," George Menendez said as he stepped forward to keep his boss from saying anything else. "Detective
Obrador, do you have anything to report about the terrible incident on I-10 today? The mayor is taking a personal interest
in this tragedy that cost three men their lives."

"Three killers," Phil said.

Menendez ignored him and looked at Obrador. The detective cleared his throat and said, "We're conducting a thorough investigation, Mayor Alvarez, and we hope to have a better idea
of what happened shortly."

"See that a copy of all reports are sent directly to the
mayor's office immediately," Menendez said.

Obrador nodded. "Of course"

"I have every confidence in you and the other members of
our police department, Detective," Alvarez said. "I'm going to
issue a statement affirming that confidence."

"Thank you, sir."

Alvarez turned to leave the interrogation room, but he
looked back at Dave and added, "I'm sorry you feel the way
you do, Mr. Rodriguez. But be assured that I'm still your
mayor, regardless of how you feel about me, and I'll always be
working in your best interests."

"I'm from the government and I'm here to help you," Dave
muttered without looking up from the table.

Alvarez and Menendez left the room. Obrador leaned forward, resting his hands on the table, and said to Dave, "What
the hell were you thinking, making a speech like that?"