JR took out his cell phone and called his cousin the governor. Nothing. No ringtone on the thing. He looked at how many bars he had. Two. Well, that should be enough. But the cell didn’t work. He went inside and tried the landline. No luck there either.
He was exhausted and needed sleep. Yet Manuel Tejada would be along in a little while to find out what had happened to his deputy and all the drugs he was supposed to pick up. He wouldn’t phrase it quite that way, but that would be what he wanted. Mainly, however, he would want the drugs. If Tejada could show the syndicate the drugs he might get out of this with a whole skin. If he couldn’t, he was going to be in trouble, although how much JR didn’t know. Maybe he could dig Tejada’s pit deeper.
JR placed the guns in the floor of the backseat of his pickup and drove down to the arroyo, as close as he could get. He retrieved the gear from the hide, including the periscope and parabolic antenna, stored all this stuff in the tool chest in the bed of the truck. Went to the bodies of the mules and removed the backpacks. Two were so torn up the white powder spilled all over the ground. JR thought each backpack had contained twenty-five pounds or so of the stuff.
The syndicate was going to be pissed.
JR put the six reasonably intact backpacks in the chest, locked it, and drove off. When he got to the main gate, he stopped and opened the gate, then got back in the truck.
Had the sheriff been in on it? Apparently. But JR wanted to be sure. He pulled out his cell phone and let it log on the network. Two bars. He called 911, got the sheriff’s office number, then dialed it.
“Sheriff Tejada.”
“JR Hays, Sheriff, out here at the Hays ranch.”
A pause, then, “What can I do for you, JR?”
“Hell of a shootout last night here at the ranch, Sheriff, a little after three. Woke me up. A real firefight. Kinda scared me. I went down this morning for a look, and bodies are lying all over the place. Looks like a drug gang ambush. The dead men had about two hundred pounds of some kind of drug on them.”
He paused, but the sheriff said nothing.
“It’s pretty bloody, Sheriff. Goddamn mess is exactly what it is. Might have been some of the bastards who killed my dad.”
“The drugs are still there?”
“Yeah.”
“Huh! What kind of drugs?”
“Damn if I know. It isn’t marijuana, that’s for sure. Some kind of white powder. Anyway, I’m going to call the staties and DEA, but I wanted to give you a courtesy heads-up first.”
“Appreciate that, JR. Much obliged. But before you call those other agencies, let me run out there for a look. I’ll bring the county coroner and we’ll see about the bodies.”
“When can you get here?”
“Couple of hours.”
“I’m pretty worried. God only knows what all that powder shit is worth. I kinda suspect somebody might come back to get it.’’
“This is my county, JR.” Like the slob owned it.
“Yes. Yes, it is.” He paused as if he hated to wait. “Okay, Sheriff, you come out and look around and call them. These guys aren’t going anywhere. Gonna get hot again today and they’ll get real ripe fast. Better bring some body bags.”
“Two hours. I’m on my way.”
“Sure.”
He broke the connection. The sheriff hadn’t even asked how many dead men there were.
He pulled the truck through the gate, got out, and shut it carefully. As he walked back to the truck a buzzard in the cloudless sky caught his eye, circling over the old trail. Two of them; no, three. Little dots up there riding the thermals. There would be more buzzards soon.
He remembered the bumper stickers. Got one out of the truck, peeled the paper off the back, and stuck it on the gate. Stood back and admired it. FUCK SOETORO. He liked it so much he put the other one on the truck’s rear bumper.
JR got into his pickup and headed southeast toward Del Rio. He decided he owed himself a treat, so he reached across to the glove box and pulled out a pack of unfiltered Camels. Opened it and lit one.
The raw smoke tasted delicious. JR adjusted the bill of his ball cap to keep the rising sun out of his eyes and smoked in silence.
The television clip of Colonel Bean reading the Texas Declaration of Independence on the steps of the capitol in Austin, and the shots of the delirious crowd, went to television stations nationwide. Networks worldwide rebroadcast the scenes over and over. In the United States, many station managers had qualms, and at some stations federal officers demanded that the feed not be aired. Some stations caved, but most didn’t. Managers argued that other stations would show it, and while they were arguing with federal censors, many staffs flipped switches and put it on the air. The scenes ran over and over again. Usually the scenes were aired without comment because the people in the stations were leery of the gun-toting bureaucratic squads who occasionally walked their halls, but the scenes spoke for themselves.
The spectacular act of defiance by the Texas legislature had immediate consequences. Here and there groups of armed citizens waylaid federal officers hauling away political prisoners, disarmed them, and released the prisoners. Several of these federal officers chose to fight it out and were shot dead. Others were taken to a county jail.
The armed federal police forces from bureaucracies nationwide became nervous. The mood of the public was turning ugly. Some of the agents stayed home and locked their doors.
Barry Soetoro nationalized the National Guard nationwide. Less than half the guardsmen reported to their armories to be inducted into federal service. Officers resigned on the spot. In two cities, small groups of guardsmen called local television stations, which sent crews to watch the guardsmen take off their uniforms in public, put them in a pile, and burn them.
In Oklahoma City a half-dozen armed officers from the FAA trying to arrest a local newspaper columnist, a conservative, panicked and opened fire on a crowd of vociferous unarmed citizens. Four people were killed and seven wounded, four of them severely. The payback came within an hour. A mob of armed civilians arrived at the FAA’s basement office where the armed enforcers hung out and put it under siege. When the officers came out four hours later with their hands up, the crowd opened fire. The last one ran a block and took refuge in someone’s basement; he was dragged out and executed with a shot in the head. No one knew if the four murdered officers were the ones who shot the unarmed civilians, nor did anyone really care. Civil wars are messy.
Up and down the plains, in the Rockies and the Midwest, people gathered in spontaneous groups to cheer Texas and wave homemade Texas flags.
In Austin, Jack Hays saw snatches of this activity on television before he, Charlie Swim, Luwanda Harris, and Colonel Tenney of the Department of Public Safety boarded a helicopter for a flight to Houston. They were met by the National Guard commander there, Brigadier General James Conrad, the mayor of Houston, and the chief of police.
Unfortunately they were downwind of some tire fires, and stinking, heavy smoke was almost overpowering.
“Have you got the riot area surrounded?” Hays asked.
“Yes, sir,” Conrad said. The senior law officers nodded.
“Where’s that FEMA dude,” Jack Hays asked, “the one I wanted at the pointy end of this expedition?”
“He got cold feet and split.”
Hays frowned.
“Would have had to handcuff him and put a gun in his back, Governor, to walk him into that riot.”
“Obviously he didn’t think his liberal credentials would protect him,” Charlie Swim said, and Hays chuckled.
Hays explained to the politicians, “We want to capture the rioters and not let them rampage through the rest of the city.” Luwanda Harris and Charlie Swim looked grim.