Remember The Alamo (31 page)

There was no good place to sleep inside the chapel, so the
men who weren't standing guard just made themselves as
comfortable as they could here and there, catching short catnaps while they had the chance.

Phil was in the office, sitting behind the desk with his head
pillowed on his arms as he hunched over the desktop. There
was a leather love seat on the other side of the room, and
Evelyn was curled up on it. In the light of the single candle
that illuminated the room, Phil had watched her sleeping for a
few minutes before dozing off himself.

Slumber had eased some of the lines of strain on her face,
leaving her more beautiful than ever. She had taken good care
of him, comforting him while Doc Stone worked to patch up
the wound in his back, and she was good company, no doubt
about that.

Still, Phil wished she wasn't here. He wished that Evelyn
and the other handful of women from the Daughters of the Republic of Texas who had remained inside the Alamo would just
walk out there into the plaza now, before things got worse.
They wouldn't get into any trouble. They could always claim
they were just innocent hostages, and nobody would doubt them. None of the defenders of the Alamo would dispute the
story, either.

But Phil had a feeling he would be wasting his time to even
suggest such a thing to Evelyn. Even worse, she would be offended by the idea that she ought to surrender. She was a
strong, tough, determined woman, the type of woman who had
plenty of pioneer stock in her. The type of woman who had
helped to settle Texas in the first place, despite the air of
modern sophistication that she also possessed.

As sleep claimed him, he found himself wishing that he had
met her sooner, a long time before all this mess with the
Alamo started....

Phil didn't know how long he had been asleep when he was
awakened by Dave touching him on the shoulder. It didn't
seem possible that he could have slept for more than a few
minutes, though.

"What is it?" he asked in a groggy voice as he sat up in the
chair. Across the room, Evelyn was yawning as she swung her
legs off the love seat.

"The Mexican army is here," Dave said.

Phil blinked in surprise. "So soon?"

"It's nearly morning."

That surprised Phil, too. He had slept for several hours.

He pushed himself to his feet and picked up the pistol and
rifle he had placed on the desk within easy reach before he
dozed off. "Are they getting ready to attack?" he asked.

"I don't know. Right now they're just sitting out there. I
think they're talking it over."

Phil and Evelyn followed Dave out of the office and into the
main room of the old mission. The oil lamps had been turned
off and most of the candles had been blown out, so that anybody outside wouldn't be able to get a good look at what was
going on inside. Everybody was awake now, and most of the
defenders were grouped near the front doors, trying to see out the narrow, barred windows on either side of them. The men
parted to make a path for Dave and Phil, who joined Stark and
Mahone at one of the windows.

"Bring me up to speed," Phil said.

"They started showing up about half an hour ago," Dave
told him. "Just a couple of jeeps first, then some trucks behind
them. Unless I miss my guess, those are U.S. Army trucks, too,
but those weren't American GIs who climbed out of them"

Mahone said, "The president mentioned that the American
military would provide assistance to the Mexicans if they
wanted it. They probably airlifted the troops in, then commandeered the trucks from Fort Sam Houston to bring them
downtown"

"Got to be eatin' at some of those old boys," Stark said,
"having to help out with something like this."

Phil peered across the plaza. The transport trucks were
parked along the opposite side of the street, forming a barrier
behind which the Mexican troops could take shelter if any
shooting broke out. The soldiers themselves wore camo fatigues and didn't look that much different from American dogfaces, but it was easier to pick out the officers because their
uniforms were gaudier, with more ribbons and braid and brass
than their American counterparts would have worn.

The San Antonio police appeared to have withdrawn completely, probably because of orders from the U.S. Army. Phil
recalled that the president had placed the city under martial
law and established a curfew to make it easier for the military
to operate.

"What's going on in the rest of the world?" Phil asked. "Has
the word gotten out about that video showing what really
happened?"

"The word got out, all right," Dave said. "So did the video
itself, for a while. We've been monitoring the situation through
the Internet hookup on Billy's phone. The blogs and Web sites that posted the video started to disappear after a while, and we
figure the government was forcing their ISPs to pull the plug
on them. Most of the talk-radio shows were shut down, too,
but there was nothing about that on the cable or network
news"

Phil grunted. "No surprise there"

"Yeah. Then, an hour or so ago, some of the Web sites came
back up. The links to the video were still there"

"Now, that does surprise me"

"It shouldn't," Mahone said. "Somebody got to the president and talked some sense into her. I'd be willing to bet the
farm that earlier in the night she panicked and tried to shut
down every source of dissent she could find. But that would
have backfired on her if she'd kept it up. The press would have
turned on her. They may love her and her policies, but they still
won't stand for being muzzled. So now it's full speed ahead
with the spin. The administration is claiming that the video is
a phony, that it was planted by the evil right-wing conspiracy
to make us look innocent when we're really a bunch of murdering, racist terrorists."

"Who the hell is going to believe that?" Phil burst out.
"People can see what happened with their own eyes"

Stark said, "When the government shouts something from
the rooftops loud enough and long enough, a lot of folks in
this country start to believe it even though they'd know better
if they just stopped and thought about it."

"Stopping and thinking about it isn't a liberal's strong suit,"
Dave said. "They'd rather have the government tell them what
to believe."

Phil knew that his friend was right about that. Since the administration couldn't stop people from watching the video
without alienating their accomplices in the press, they would
just do their damnedest to keep anybody from believing it
was true.

What a world this had become. What a damned crazy world.

"They claim the tape has been examined by both the FBI
and the CIA," Dave went on, "and they have proof it was
doctored"

Mahone said, "Sooner or later, long after this is all over,
there'll probably be an independent investigation of the whole
affair, and whoever's in charge of that will prove that the tape
was real."

"But that'll be too late to help us," Phil said.

"Without a doubt," Mahone agreed. "Because it won't
happen until a new administration is in office. The current one
won't allow anything like that to take place. It's likely nothing
will get done until the power is back on the other side of the
aisle in Congress, whether this president is still in office or
not"

"You think that'll ever happen?"

"Of course it will," Mahone answered without hesitation.
"It always does. Politics is a pendulum. Power never stays in
the same place for too long. That's one of the great things
about this country." He grinned. "Even though it seems to us
like there are times when the wrong people are running things.
America never steers a straight course. We've been zigzagging
for more than two hundred years. But we keep going in the
right general direction, even when we veer off on a different
tack for a while."

"I wish I could be as optimistic are you seem to be," Phil
muttered. "With those people in control in Washington now,
I'm not sure we'll ever get back on the right track"

"Politics later," Dave said, his voice sharp as he looked
across the plaza. "Here come the Mexicans."

Colonel John Cumberland tightened his jaw and reined in
his temper. He didn't like General Augusto Salgado, and it had
nothing to do with the fact that Salgado was a Mexican.
During his twenty-two years in the army Cumberland had
worked with soldiers of every race, creed, and color and never
had a problem with any of them because of it. The only soldiers he had trouble with were the ones who were criminals or
psychopaths.

He had a feeling that General Augusto Lopez Montemayor
de Salgado qualified on both counts.

Salgado was smooth enough, full of praise for the way the
American military had carried out the promise made by its
commander in chief. The Americans had delivered on the aid
that Salgado had requested. Now, more than six hundred crack
troops from the Mexican army were poised along the streets
leading to the plaza in front of the Alamo, ready to take back
the old mission.

"If you would order your men to withdraw, Colonel," Salgado was saying, "we shall proceed with the operation."

"We've been in control of this scene for more than twelve hours now, General," Cumberland replied. "My men won't
take kindly to the notion of cutting and running."

Salgado smiled, but the expression didn't reach his eyes. In
the reflected glow of the floodlights illuminating Alamo Plaza
and the Alamo itself, Salgado's eyes were a cold, flat black.
They held not a single trace of normal human feeling, Cumberland thought.

"Please, Colonel," Salgado said. "Your president has issued
orders that you are to cooperate with our wishes. While we appreciate everything you have done so far, the rest of this job
belongs to my men. We will take it from here, as you Americans say."

A civilian in a suit came up to the two officers. Cumberland
recognized him. He was a State Department weasel named
Harrington who had been assigned to see that everything went
smoothly between the two military forces.

"Is there a problem here?" Harrington asked.

"Certainly not," Salgado answered without giving Cumberland a chance to speak. "I was just discussing the next step
with the colonel here"

"He wants me and my men to withdraw," Cumberland said,
tight-lipped.

"Well, then, withdraw as General Salgado requests," the
balding, pudgy Harrington said without hesitation. "We're just
here to assist the Mexicans, Colonel. This is an internal problem for them involving their sovereign territory."

Cumberland had given up smoking five years earlier, but
right now he wished he had a cigar clamped between his teeth
again. He felt like chewing on something. The idea that the
Alamo and the adjacent plaza were now part of Mexico just
seemed wrong to him. They were in the middle of downtown
in an American city, for God's sake! How could anything
around here belong to Mexico?

He was aware that foreign embassies in America were con sidered to belong to the other country, and he supposed that
made sense, although as a career military man he had his
doubts about the diplomatic world overall. But the Alamo
wasn't a foreign embassy. It was the frickin' Alamo, for Chrissake! Cumberland was from Minnesota, not Texas, but he'd
been stationed here for a while and he knew how crazy the
idea was.

Nobody had asked him, though, before deciding to put on
their dog and pony show. He followed orders, he didn't make
policy.

"Well, Colonel?" Harrington snapped.

It wouldn't do to punch out the little pissant, so Cumberland
jerked his head in a nod and turned to one of his aides.

"We're going to pull back .. ." He glanced at Salgado.
"Three blocks. That good enough for you, General?"

Salgado nodded. "That will be fine, Colonel. And I would
ask that you maintain your position there unless I request
otherwise."

"Noted," Cumberland said. He turned away and made a curt
gesture to his aide, indicating that the man should get the withdrawal started.

He never would have dreamed it would ever come to this,
taking orders from a tin-plated, comic-opera general like
Salgado.

Better take him seriously, though, he warned himself. Despite the gaudy uniform, Salgado was as ruthless as a snake,
Cumberland's instincts told him.

He couldn't help but wonder if those poor bastards in the
Alamo knew who they were about to be dealing with.

Salgado felt his heart swell with both pride and hatred as he
stepped forward into the light, holding a bullhorn. Pride that
he had orchestrated the return of the Alamo to Mexico by planting accomplices throughout the Mexican government
and diplomatic corps. Hatred for the Americans who had held
the mission unjustly for more than a century and a half, along
with the massive sweep of territory from Texas all the way to
California.

Reclaiming all that stolen land was impossible, of course,
at least for now. The United States could be coerced into
making small, symbolic gestures he had proven that by what
he had accomplished here-but even the gringos' pathetic
excuse for a spine would stiffen if they were asked to give up
four whole states, including two as important to their economy
as Texas and California were.

No, there was still much work to do, but the Alamo was a
start. An important start, because it did symbolize so much.

And because of that significance, it was imperative that
those fleas currently holding it be squashed, so that the whole
world could see the newfound strength and resolve of the
Mexican people.

The thought that he was making himself a target by stepping out into the glare of the floodlights never crossed his
mind. The Americans would never shoot him down in cold
blood. They considered themselves too honorable to do something like that. To Salgado, such an attitude was nothing but a
weakness, but it was one he was more than happy to take advantage of.