Remember The Alamo (3 page)

He couldn't afford to be otherwise, because by then he'd
had a daughter, and he knew that if he wanted to see her on
any sort of regular basis, he couldn't make a bitter enemy out
of his ex-wife.

He opened the car door and got in. Even though it was February, the sun had heated up the inside of the car until it was
uncomfortably warm. Here in San Antonio, winter was just
about over.

Phil drove past the Alamo as he left downtown, heading for
Interstate 10 so that he could go back out to the northwest
part of town where his office was located. He glanced across
the plaza at the old mission, which always looked smaller
than most people expected when they saw it in person for the
first time. Surrounded by downtown as it was, you could
almost miss it if you didn't know it was there. And if not for
the flock of tourists that was always around it.

The car radio was tuned to a talk-radio station, and the host
was discussing the massacre of those eight Border Patrolmen
a few days earlier.

"-time we realized that we have to devote more money
and more manpower to securing our borders. We were about
to get off to a good start on that a few years ago, but then the
current administration undercut everything that had been
done. Folks, we simply cannot allow unchecked illegal immigration to continue. It's a matter of national security.

"Oh, I know that some people say our economy depends on
undocumented workers, but that's bull-you-know-what.
Those jobs should go to either American citizens or aliens
who are here legally. What we need to do is crack down on
employers who hire illegals because they know they can get
away with paying lower wages to them, and we should build
that fence to crack down on illegal immigration. Because we
don't know who's coming across the border. It's not just
honest, hardworking people who want to make a better living for their families anymore. It's drug smugglers and thieves
and criminals. It's vicious thugs like the ones who killed those
Border Patrolmen. The people we put out there to protect our
borders are outnumbered and outgunned now, folks. They're
in a fight for their lives, and Washington won't give them
the tools, or the leeway, to do their job properly. When we
hamstring our efforts to secure our borders, we're putting all
of us, every man, woman, and child in this country, in a little
more danger every day."

That made sense to Phil. He had nothing against Hispanics. Having grown up in South Texas, he spoke Spanish like
a native and had many friends in the Hispanic community. A
lot of his employees were Hispanic. Most of them came from
families that had been in Texas as long as or longer than Phil's
family had been.

What he couldn't understand were the people who considered themselves Mexican even though they were American
citizens. The ones who waved the Mexican flag during
protests or wanted to fly it at schools and public buildings
right along with the American flag and the Texas flag. The
ones who wanted everything from school to business to the
government to be bilingual, so people who didn't speak English would never have any reason to learn how to do so. That
was crazy, in Phil's opinion. This was America. People who
wanted to live here ought to be able to speak English. What
could be simpler than that?

But he wasn't going to be able to solve the problems of the
world, he thought with a sigh as he pushed a preset button on
the radio and changed the station to classic rock. It was all he
could do to live his own life.

Because in the big scheme of things, one little guy didn't
matter.

The ground behind the VFW hall sloped down to a pretty,
cottonwood-lined creek, which made it a perfect spot for a
picnic. Tables and benches had been carried down there and
set up; then the tables were piled high with food and kegs of
beer. Although the official start of spring was more than a
month off, here in South Texas winter was already dead and
gone. The sunshine that washed over the landscape this Saturday was warm, as were the breezes from the south.

Given the circumstances good food, good fellowship,
good weather-the atmosphere should have been happier. Instead, a pall hung over the gathering. Maybe they should have
canceled the picnic, Dieter Schmidt thought, after the bloodbath on the border.

That was what people had started calling the brutal slaying
of the eight Border Patrolmen a few days earlier. They had
been out on a routine patrol, looking for illegals crossing the
border, when someone had come along and massacred them.
Nobody knew exactly what had happened. A piece of a garbled radio transmission from one of the patrolmen had gotten
through, but it didn't provide any answers.

Just gunshots, screams-and a voice shouting, "Reconquistar!"

"To reconquer" was the word's literal meaning, but what the
hell did that mean? Dieter didn't know. All he knew was that
the talk around the picnic tables was quieter than it should
have been, and there wasn't as much laughter, and even though
the kids ran and played, their folks kept a closer eye on them
than usual.

They weren't that far from the border here. Less than thirty
miles, in fact.

Mike Belkowicz came over and sat down next to Dieter.
With his campaign cap, medal-decorated vest, and beer gut,
Belkowicz looked like a walking cliche of a VFW member. He
had been in Vietnam, and his father had fought in the Italian
campaign and then left a leg on Utah Beach on June 6, 1944.

Belko-"Not Bilko, damn it, I hated that show" had taken
a while to warm up to Dieter. At first he had wondered if it might
have been Dieter's grandfather manning the machine gun that
ripped away the elder Belkowicz's leg on D-day. He didn't like
the idea of a Kraut being in the VFW, even though Dieter had
done a tour of duty in Baghdad and Fallujah.

Dieter had explained to him, though, that his grandfather
Alfred Schmidt had been a house painter in Chicago during
World War II and hadn't been anywhere near Utah Beach. He
had moved his family to Texas after the war, and Dieter had
been born in Waxahachie, where he had grown up, played high
school football, climbed the local water tower, and gotten a
shy, studious girl named Beth knocked up just as if his name
had been John Smith or Jimmy Williams.

Once Belko had understood all that, he had accepted Dieter
as an American, although he had warned him, "I'm a Polack,
and I ain't ever gonna be too fond o' Krauts ""

Now Belko popped the top on a can of beer he'd gotten from one of the coolers and said, "That wouldn't'a happened
if they'd built the damn fence like they were supposed to ""

"You mean what happened to those Border Patrolmen?"
Dieter asked.

Belko took a swig of beer. "What the hell could I be talkin'
about? They should've built the damn fence"

A law had been passed several years earlier authorizing
the construction of a fence along sections of the border between the United States and Mexico. Quite a bit of it would
have been here in Texas.

But although a few short sections of fence had been erected,
the rest of the project was stalled out at the moment because
of economic and political considerations. In other words, there
wasn't enough money to pay for it, and not as many politicians
in Washington thought it was a good idea anymore.

"Even with the fence, illegals would still cross the border,"
Dieter said. "The Border Patrol would still be out there"

"You don't know that. They put up a big enough, long
enough fence, and line it with cameras, that'll keep the illegals
out" Belko took another drink. "A few land mines wouldn't
hurt anything, either."

"You don't mean that. You're just upset because those men
were killed."

"Yeah, well, this country could use a few more people
gettin' upset about all the crap that goes on. I heard the other
day that a rancher in Arizona shot a wetback who was tryin' to
break into his house and rob him. Didn't kill the son of a bitch,
though, so what happens after that?"

"I'm sure you'll tell me," Dieter said.

"Damn right I will. The illegal bastard sues the rancher!
And some damn judge sides with him! Takes the rancher's
place away from him and gives it to the illegal. You ever hear
anything to beat that, Dieter?"

"Judges do outrageous things all the time," Dieter said with a shrug. "That doesn't mean the system is broken, just that its
administration is flawed"

"That's where you're wrong, my friend. The system in this
country is broken. It's busted all to pieces. More than fifty
years of liberal judges and politicians and reporters have seen
to that"

Dieter wanted to believe that Belko was wrong, but he
couldn't bring himself to argue about it anymore.

Besides, the rumble of truck engines had caught his attention. He looked up the hill toward the VFW hall and saw several vehicles pulling into the gravel parking lot in front of the
building. They looked like UPS or FedEx trucks, but without
the markings.

"Who the hell's that?" Belko said.

Dieter didn't know, but he pushed himself to his feet and
said, "I'll go see" He started walking up the hill, a tall young
man with dark, curly hair under his campaign cap. He waved
to his wife and six-year-old daughter as he passed them. Beth
looked good in jeans and a man's shirt with the tails tied up so
that a little of her stomach was revealed. She was nibbling on
a chicken leg. Amber had a plate full of fried chicken and
potato salad in front of her and was digging into the salad with
a fork.

Dieter was halfway to the VFW hall when the back doors of
the trucks opened and men began piling out. He frowned in
surprise as he saw that they wore some sort of oldfashioned military uniform that included boots, white leggings, and blue jackets. Dieter thought for a second that they
looked French or maybe Prussian, but that wasn't right.

Then he saw the guns in their hands and didn't care anymore what sort of uniforms those were. He whirled around
and shouted, "Run! Everyone run!"

The picnickers under the trees just looked at him, startled
and confused, unsure what was going on. Dieter ran toward them, waving his arms over his head. "Run!" He saw his wife
and daughter. "Beth, run!"

A volley of automatic weapons fire ripped out behind him.
A white-hot poker jabbed into his side and tumbled him off his
feet. As he rolled over, the roar of gunfire grew louder, but not
loud enough to drown out all the screams.

Or the proud, angry shouts of "Reconquistar! Reconquistar!"

"Damn it, Mr. Mahone, don't tell me you don't have any
idea what's going on," the president of the United States said.
"You're the head of the FBI. It's your job to know what's going
on, everywhere, all the time."

Edward Mahone refrained from pointing out that doing the
job the president was talking about would be a hell of a lot
easier if she and her cohorts in Congress hadn't gutted not only
the Bureau, but just about every other law-enforcement and intelligence-gathering agency in the country. It took a considerable amount of tongue-biting on his part to do so.

"Yes, ma'am," he said, his deep, powerful rumble of a voice
sounding reassuring, whether it really was or not.

But that was all that was required to succeed in government
these days, he thought. You had to sound like you knew what
you were doing, even if in truth you were the biggest foul-up
to ever come down the pike.

The president was sitting in a makeup chair in a small room
off the Oval Office. In a few minutes she would be addressing
the country, breaking into network programming to do so.
Thank goodness it wasn't playoff season in any major sport, or that might have caused a problem. A couple more weeks
and March Madness would be under way.

"Just tell me what you do know, Mr. Mahone," the president
said.

"We have survivors this time, thank God. Fourteen people
lived through the attack at the VFW picnic this afternoon. A
couple of them might not make it, but most of them are
expected to recover."

"And how many died?"

Mahone tried not to wince. "Ninety-four."

"So nearly a hundred Americans are dead tonight, massacred by ... who?"

Mahone didn't have to look down at the printouts he
clutched, transcripts of the interviews that had been conducted
by local authorities after the shooting. "As far as we can tell ...
the Mexican army."

"An invasion-"

"Not the current Mexican army," Mahone interrupted, forgetting for a moment who he was talking to. "The army of
General Santa Anna"

"Is he some sort of warlord or the head of a drug cartel?"

And she'd gone to an Ivy League university, as well as law
school, Mahone thought. He had learned about Santa Anna in
junior high in Luling, Texas, and again in college at Grambling, where he had gone on a football scholarship. He remembered, briefly, a former presidential candidate from the
current president's party seeing a bust of Thomas Jefferson
and failing to recognize the famous statesman. It was amazing
the gaps of knowledge some people had.