A minute on from the pub Dalby took a sharp turn just before the old power station and motored down a long driveway past a row of very obviously empty sheds and a large, quiet fenced-off area in which shipping containers were stacked three and four on top of each other. The Thames, gray and wind-flecked, flowed past a hundred meters away, where two men were unloading heavy boxes from a small boat tied up at the end of an old pier. They waved to Dalby as he pulled up and climbed out of the Merc, then went back to their work. The assassin and her handler took their luggage from the backseat and walked through a muddy parking lot in which sat more rusting shipping containers, piles of car tires, at least a dozen rotting wooden boats, and a few mounds of gravel covered in once-green tarpaulins that had been bleached nearly white by exposure to the elements. After a short passage through this junkyard, turning left and right as they threaded through the piles of rubbish, they came to an eight-foot-high electrified fence topped by more razor wire. A blockhouse where a young, well-built man in civilian clothes sat drinking from a paper cup guarded the entrance.
He greeted Dalby by name but insisted on seeing their papers anyway.
The hair on Caitlin's neck stood up as she sensed herself in someone's sights, but she didn't react to the uncomfortable feeling. She knew that snipers covered everyone who came to the Cage through the front door. As long as you had business there, you were fine. It was only those who came through the delivery entrance who had reason to be worried.
The guard thanked them for their time and apologized for the inconvenience of the painstaking accreditation check. The gate slid open smoothly, and they stepped through into Echelon's London op center.
26
Texas Administrative Division "These are definitely no banditos," Miguel said quietly. "They are road agents."
He passed the night vision goggles to Aronson. They were an excellent tool, he thought, well worth stopping in the next large town they might pass to salvage a pair for himself from a hunting supply store or army surplus outlet. He could easily make out a wealth of detail around the Hy Top Club, a slumping structure of old wooden slats with a broken-back roofline and a half-collapsed awning dropping down over a front veranda.
Aronson also spoke quietly, although without whispering. "Is there a difference?"
Miguel took back the goggles and resumed his surveillance of the old nightclub, or dive bar, or whatever it had been. The small town may have been a mausoleum haunted by the seven thousand souls of those who had Disappeared there, but one would not have known that if all one could see of Crockett, Texas, was the Hy Top Club of South Cottonwood Street. The agents who had attacked the Mormon party, stolen the better part of their longhorn herd, and ridden off with half a dozen of the women were doing their best to push back the darkness. The club roared with life-rude, vicious, drunken, and barbarous, but life nonetheless. The uproar had made it all too easy for Miguel and the Mormons to locate their quarry after cautiously approaching the ghost town from the southwest. Two days it had taken. Two days of nerve-racking stealth and caution, rewarded now by the road agents' total ignorance of the danger that had come upon them.
Miguel estimated the agents' fighting company at twenty strong, give or take, and in addition to the six Mormon women they had taken, there appeared to be another seven or eight camp followers with them. All of them were female, but some of them were not really old enough to be called women. About the age of his own daughter, Sofia, he thought with a glare that was hidden by the absolute darkness of the night.
His blood burned with the need to reach out and hurt someone, even though these men were not the ones who had attacked his farm and family.
Well, they would do for now.
"The banditos are all from the south," he explained to Aronson. "They raid into Texas, but they do not base here. Some say they are sent by my old friend Roberto Morales. I once knew him, you know. Before he became so famous."
The frank disbelief on Aronson's face was discernible even by starlight. Morales, the president for life of the South American Federation, was quite a name for a homeless Mexican cattleman to be dropping. But Miguel did know him, even if only in passing. They had worked together
"I joke, of course," Miguel continued. "He was not my friend at all. But I did know him for a short while, long before he knifed Chavez in the back. Whatever the case, the banditos they come and they go, taking what they can and doing their best to avoid Blackstone's troopers. If caught, they are hung… what is the word… summary?"
"Summarily," Aronson corrected him. The man's face writhed with warring emotions-anxiety, fear, impacted fury-all of them barely contained by the need to remain hidden from the men who had taken everything from him. Screams intermittently reached them in their hiding spot, a thicket of loblolly pine and pecan trees a block west of the club. The women's cries unsettled Miguel, too, reminding him of his family's last moments. It was all he could to restrain himself from storming in there right now. He wondered if Aronson was able to recognize any of the ragged, terrorized voices and prayed that he could not. It would be too much for any man to bear. Certainly if his own daughter were being held and abused by such human filth, Miguel doubted he would be able to remain detached.
He calmed himself with the thought that Sofia, at least, was safe for the moment. Hidden well outside town with the rest of the Mormons, she would not be exposed to the ugliness of what was going to happen there this night.
"For banditos, Blackstone's Texas is a hard country," he explained patiently. "Deadly if they are caught. For these men, however, not so much."
He jerked his chin in the direction of the Hy Top, which was illuminated by fires burning in oil drums. Rock music thumped and howled from inside. White man's music. Crunching guitars and pounding drums to drown out all but the loudest wailing of the female prisoners. He stilled his sense of outrage, which was considerable, and regarded the scene with a heart crusted in salt and black ice. The camp followers were easy to distinguish from the Mormon women. Although just as likely to be struck or kicked or even dragged into the darkness by the agents, they did enjoy a noticeable freedom of movement not granted to the newest captives. They also enjoyed the privilege of kicking down on the other women. As he watched through the NVGs, two of the camp whores delighted a small number of agents by tripping one of the captives after she had delivered a tray of beers outside. They fell on her, pinning her struggling form to the ground, and then one sat on her face and shook her ass, laughing and yelling something that Miguel couldn't make out but that he was certain could only be a cruel taunt. It reduced the audience of road agents to helpless laughter.
Hot waves of fury washed through his head, making him dizzy.
Lying on the thick carpet of pine needles, he felt Aronson go tense and start to move. Miguel reached over and grabbed the man's upper arm, digging into the flesh with fingers as hard as rail spikes.
"No," he said firmly but quietly. "Now is not the time."
"But… they're… that's Jenny over there, Willem's betrothed."
Miguel drilled the tip of his thumb into a nerve bundle beneath Aronson's bicep. The Mormon was not a soft man, but the pain was excruciating and overwhelmed any other considerations. When Miguel was certain he was subdued again, he let go.
"I am sorry, Aronson, but if you move against them now, you will die and she will die. Possibly all of your women will be killed. And not quickly. The agents will make sport of it. We must wait. The others will not move until we report back, and we need all of them."