Remember The Alamo Read Free Page A

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