The Governor's Wife (40 page)

"
Daddy!
"

The plate glass window above them exploded. Bode lunged for Becca and covered her under the table as glass and bullets sprayed the restaurant. Diners in the lower section screamed and cried out and dove under their tables and booths. Waiters dropped serving trays and scrambled out of the line of fire; dishes and glasses crashed to the floor. It sounded like a war movie. But Bode knew it was real. Because Hank lay next to them, blood streaming from bullet holes in his face and chest. He was gone. But the gunfire was not. Bullets bit into the walls and sliced through light fixtures and cut wood support posts into splinters. Jim Bob was unhurt and under his table, punching 911 on his phone. But the police wouldn't arrive in time.

"Stay down!"

Bode reached over and yanked Hank's weapon out of his holster. It was a nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol with a fifteen-round clip. He grabbed Hank's spare clip then clicked the safety off and chambered a round and waited for a pause in the shooting, when the men had run through their clips and had to reload. The gunfire lasted less than fifteen seconds, but it seemed like an hour. Then it stopped.

They were reloading.

Bode knelt up and saw two men standing in the middle of the street holding assault weapons. They were no more than twenty feet outside the restaurant. They had ejected spent clips and were inserting new ones. He stood and aimed the pistol center mass and fired. He hit both men in the chest three times each, dropping them.

"Don't move, Becca!"

He climbed through the blown-out window and walked to the men; broken glass crunched under his boots. One moved; Bode shot him again. Twice. Bode approached a black SUV angled across Guadalupe Street; a dark figure moved in the driver's seat. He aimed and fired through the windshield. Five times. He ejected the spent clip and snapped in the spare just as a man fell out of the vehicle with an AK-47; Bode shot him six times before he could fire his weapon. He heard sirens in the distance. He checked that the SUV was empty then walked back through air thick with gunpowder. He looked through the open window at Becca.

"Are you hurt?"

She shook her head, but she wasn't looking at Bode. She was staring at Darcy, who lay motionless on the floor with her eyes open and a bullet hole in her forehead.

Ángel Salinas was a charter member of Mayor Gutiérrez's Mexican Mafia. He had driven the two hundred thirty-five miles from Austin to Laredo just to interview Jesse Rincón.

"Doctor," Salinas said, "you could beat the governor—"

His cell phone rang. He checked the number.

"It's my office." He punched the button and answered. "Ángel …
What?
…
When?
…
Shit!
… I'm leaving now."

He disconnected but stared at his phone a moment. Then he looked up at Jesse.

"They killed the governor. His daughter, too."

He ran off. Jesse turned in a circle searching for the governor's wife.

"They missed. We're both okay."

Lindsay Bonner breathed a sigh of relief.

"Thank God."

She had called Bode's cell phone. Her husband and her daughter had survived an assassination attempt. But Bode did not speak. There was more.

"What is it?"

He exhaled into the phone.

"They killed Hank and Darcy."

She felt her legs start to give way.

"Oh, God. No."

"I'm sending the jet to Laredo. You're coming home, Lindsay."

"
Sicarios
," DEA Agent Rey Gonzales said to the governor of Texas. "Hit men."

Austin police, Texas Rangers, state troopers, and FBI and DEA agents now swarmed Guadalupe Street outside the restaurant called Kerbey's. The street was blocked off from traffic, and police barricades and cruisers cordoned off the crime scene from the reporters and cameras. People shouted, emergency lights flashed, and blood stained the governor's clothes.

"Hit men?"

Rey nodded. "Each cartel has a
sicario
unit. In-house assassins. Ex-military and law enforcement, hired out to the cartels."

"And they're here in America?"

"FBI's got an entire task force devoted just to Mexican
sicarios
working in the U.S. They just killed a stockbroker up in New York named Ronald Richey."

"He was into drugs?"

"Investment banking. Enrique de la Garza—we tagged him 'El Diablo'—he's the head of
Los Muertos
, he invested a billion with Richey, blamed him for losing half in subprime mortgages."

"So he killed the guy?"

"Bullet through his brain." Rey gestured at the dead Mexicans sprawled across Guadalupe Street. "Standard payment for a U.S. assassination is fifty grand cash plus two kilos of cocaine, worth three hundred grand on the street. We found two hundred grand cash and ten kilos of coke in their vehicle. El Diablo, he put a premium on your head. He wants you dead, Governor."

"Because we found his marijuana?"

"Because you killed his son."

"
His son?
"

"One of those Mexicans you killed on the ranch, he was El Diablo's first-born son. Jesús de la Garza, nineteen years old."

Rumors had been percolating on the border that El Diablo had sent a team of
sicarios
into Texas. Rey knew the target had to be the governor. So he had taken it upon himself to come to Austin and warn the governor. He had arrived in town that morning, too late to save the Ranger and the girl. The governor and his daughter were just lucky.

"Who does this guy think he is, the godfather?"

"Governor, El Diablo makes the godfather look like a middle-school bully. The broker, that was business. This is personal."

The governor turned to the bodies of the Texas Ranger and the college girl and his daughter sobbing in Mr. Burnet's arms. Then he turned back to Rey.

"You goddamn right it's personal."

The governor of Texas stood in front of a cluster of microphones set up in the parking lot. He faced a dozen television cameras but pointed at the crime scene.

"This is what happens when a sovereign nation can't control its own borders. When it won't control its own borders because of politics. People die."

"Governor," a reporter said, "The FBI says these men were professional killers. They staked you out, knew your daily routine. They knew where to find you. Aren't you afraid El Diablo will make another attempt on your life?"

Bode Bonner stared into the cameras.

"I'm not afraid of the devil himself."

"Oh, you should be, Governor. You should be very afraid."

Enrique de la Garza once loved the game of
béisbol
more than life itself. He loved the smell of the grass and his leather glove and the feel of the wood bat in his hands. He had the glove and the arm but not the bat to play in the American majors. So his playing days had ended but not his love for the game. On the shelf in his office, he maintained a costly collection of baseballs autographed by the legends of the game. He often imagined autographing baseballs for fans before games in Boston; he went to many Red Sox games while at Harvard and often dreamed of playing shortstop at Fenway Park. He now picked up the Ted Williams ball and threw it as hard as he could at the image on the television of the Anglo he now hated more than any man before. He turned to Hector Garcia but pointed a finger at the shattered screen.

"I want that man dead. I want his head on my desk."

He took a deep breath to get his blood pressure under control. He calmed and assessed the damage.

"Ask Julio to go online and order another television."

Hank Williams was buried two days later, and Darcy Daniels three. Governor Bode Bonner stood between his wife and daughter as Darcy's casket was lowered into the ground. Becca buried her face in his chest and cried until his shirt was wet. Roped-off barricades manned by Texas Rangers and state troopers kept the crowd back. Security was tight, but television cameras captured every moment. Lindsay Bonner wore a black dress, a black hat, and a black veil.

Enrique de la Garza watched the funeral on the television. Even in the veil, something about the governor's wife seemed vaguely familiar, as if he had seen her before. But like a dream he could not fully recall, he could not place her. He turned back to his
abogado
but pointed at the screen.

"They bury their people. I want to bury my son."

"Enrique," his lawyer said, "during the last month I have exhausted every possible avenue—diplomatic channels through the American consulate, every political connection I have here and in the U.S., the church … I even called the local sheriff in Fort Davis and offered compensation. But he refused. The Americans, they will not release his body. And they probably have moved the body by now, to El Paso or perhaps Austin." He gestured at the television. "And trying to kill the governor, that did not help matters."

Felix Montemayor had once served as attorney general of
México
. Born into an aristocratic family in Guadalajara, he had attended college at Stanford and law school at Yale. He had pursued a political career long enough to become connected and then a lucrative career in private law; he now enjoyed a more lucrative career as Enrique's personal lawyer. The press had dubbed him
el abogado del Diablo
. The devil's advocate. Enrique slid the satellite phone across the desk to his lawyer.

"Get him on the phone."

"The governor?"

"The sheriff."

Felix found the number in his briefcase then dialed. He put the phone to his ear. After a moment, he said, "Sheriff Roscoe Lee, please. Felix Montemayor calling."

Enrique gestured for the phone. He took it and waited for the sheriff to answer. A slow Texas drawl came across the line from four hundred miles away.

"This here's Sheriff Lee. Mr. Montemayor—"

"No, Sheriff. This is Enrique de la Garza."

The phone went silent, but he could hear breathing.

"You know who I am, Sheriff?"

"I do."

"And you know what I want?"

"I reckon so."

"One million dollars, Sheriff. Cash. For my son's body. I can wire the money anywhere in the world you would like."

"But I live here. In Fort Davis, Texas."

"Then I will give you the money there."

There was a long pause and then a heavy sigh.

"Well, I don't know what the hell I'd do with a million dollars anyway, Mr. de la Garza. Guess I'll pass."

"Sheriff, are you a father?"

"I am."

"Then you must understand my desire to bury my son in a proper Catholic service?"

"I do. But I can't let go of the body without the state boys and the Feds giving their okay, and that just ain't gonna happen, 'specially after you just tried to kill the governor. Some folks take offense at that sort of thing. So your boy is just gonna have to sit in my freezer a while longer."

Enrique ended the call and looked at his lawyer.

"His body is still there."

"This one of those unforeseen, unexpected, unpleasant moments?"

Jim Bob turned to the insurance policy named Eddie Jones and nodded.

"But not the kind I figured on."

"You want me to bodyguard the boss from now on?"

Jim Bob shook his head. "From what I hear, you're a little quick on the trigger."

"Maybe. But I never lost a client."

"We brought in more Rangers, SWAT guys carrying more than pistols."

"Good. 'Cause they'll be back."

"Bode killed them."

"There'll be more."

"I knew that was his son," Lindsay said. "Now he wants revenge."

"Which is why you can't go back to the border. It's not safe, Lindsay. He might come after you."

"No one down there knows who I am. In the
colonias
, I'm just a nurse."

"What about Becca? This hit her hard."

"I'll stay until she's ready to go back to school. She needs a bodyguard."

The Governor's Mansion looked like a scene out of
The Godfather
after the war between the Mafia families had begun; armed guards patrolled the perimeter and spotters with rifles stood on the roof. Ranger Roy loitered thirty feet away. He apparently had decided not to let the governor's wife out of his sight this time, and he hadn't since she had returned to Austin. She had been gone a month, the longest she had ever been apart from her husband. She had embraced Bode when she had first returned to the Mansion, but not since. She still slept on the day bed. Even nearly getting killed couldn't bring his wife back to their bed. Even though he had banished Mandy to the governor's office in the State Capitol. They now sat outside on the bench facing the south lawn. They had returned from the funeral but had not gone inside the Mansion. They sat close, but he knew better than to touch her.