"Mr. Leo Mukahey," Alex said. "Any relation?"
"I'm Jerry's big brother," said Leo Mulcahey, with a gentle smile.
"Must feel pretty special to have a little brother who could break your back like a twig."
Mulcahey twitched. Not a big reaction, but a definite startled twitch. "Is Jerry here? May I speak to Jerry?"
"Sorry to tell you that Jerry's out of camp, he's off doing storm pursuit."
"It was my understanding that Jerry always coordinated the pursuits. That he stayed in camp as the group's... I forget the term."
"Nowcaster. Yeah, that's the usual, all right, but right now Jerry's off chasing spikes somewhere in Oklahoma, so under the circumstances I'm afraid I can't allow you into the camp."
"I see," said Leo.
"What the hick you talkin' about?" said Smithers suddenly. "Kid, we were just in your camp three weeks ago and I been lookin' forward to more o' that jerky."
"No problema," Alex said. "Give me some positioning coords and I'll route you all the jerky you want. Today. No charge."
"Is there someone else we can talk to?" Leo said.
"No," Alex said. Brasseur would temporize. Buzzard would knuckle under. Sam Moncrieff would do whatever seemed best. "No, there isn't."
"Kid, don't be this way," said Smithers. "I'm the heat!"
"You're the heat when you're running with Rangers. You're not the heat when you're running with this guy. If you're cops, show me some ID and a warrant."
"I'm not a police officer, for heaven's sake," Leo said, chidingly. "I happen to be a developmental, economist."
Smithers, surprised, looked at Leo in frank disbelief, then back at Alex again. "Kid, you got some cojones pullin' that city-boy crap out here. Where's your goddamn ID?"
Alex began to sweat. The fear only made him angry. "Look, Smithers, or whatever the hell your real name is, I thought you were a heavier guy than this. How come you're shaking me down for this fucking narc? This guy's not even a cop! How much is he paying you?"
"That's my name!" objected Smithers, wounded. "Nathan R. Smithers."
"I don't understand why this has become so unpleasant," said Leo, reasonably.
"Maybe you ought to give some thought to the way you treated your good friend the general de polida, back in Sinaloa." It was a shot in the dark, a blindly launched harpoon, but it landed hard. Leo reacted with such a start that even Smithers seemed alarmed.
"Sinaloa," Leo mused, recovering himself. He stared down hard at Alex. He was very tall, and though he didn't have the weightlifter beef of his brother Jerry, he looked, in his own smooth way, like a bad man to cross. "Of course," he concluded suddenly. "You must be Alex. Little Alejandro Unger. My goodness."
"I think you'd better leave," said Alex. "You and your kind aren't wanted here."
"You've been here less than a month, Alejandro! And akeady you're carrying on like Jerry's guard dog! It's amazing the loyalty that man inspires."
"Have it your way, Leo," Alex said. "I'll let you in the camp when Jerry says you can come in, how about that?" He suddenly sensed weakness, and pounced. "How about you wait here while I call Jerry up? I can contact Jerry out in the field, easy enough. Let's see what Jerry says about you.
"I have a counterproposal," Leo said. "Why don't I assume that you have no authority whatever? That you're simply inventing all this on the fly, through some silly grudge all your own. That you're an unbalanced, sick, spoiled little rich-boy punk, who's in way over his head, and that we can simply walk right past you."
"You'll have to knock me down first."
"That doesn't look difficult, Alex. You're still emaciated from that black-market shooting parlor in Nuevo Laredo. You look quite ill."
"You're gonna look quite dead, Leo, when the guy who put that laser dot on your forehead pulls the trigger and your brains fly Out."
Leo turned slowly to Smithers. "Mr. Smithers. Do tell. Do i in fact have a laser rifle sighted on my person?"
Smithers shook his head. "Not that I can see. Kid, it is really fuckin' stupid to say something like that to a guy like me."
Alex took his sunglasses off, and then his hat. "Look at me," he told Smithers. "Do I look afraid of you? You think I'm impressed ?~" He turned to Leo. "How about you, Leo? Do I look like I care whether we get in a fistfight right now, and you end up shot? You really wanna hit me, and risk catching a very real bullet, just so you can swan around in some empty paper tents and pull a fast one on your brother when he comes back-probably with all his friends?"
"No," said Leo, decisively. "There's no need at all for any of this foolishness. We don't want Juanita upset, do we? Janey?"
"You stay the hell away from Jane," Alex said, in throttled fury. "Letting that one slip was a real blunder! Get away from me and my sister, and stay away from us, you spook narc son of a bitch. Get out of here now, before you lose it and try something even stupider than showing up here in the first place."
"This is completely pointless," Leo said. "I don't see what you think you've accomplished with this ridiculous junkie's bravado. We can simply return at some later time, when there are some sane people here."
Alex nodded and crossed his arms. "Okay. Yeah. It's pointless. Come back next Christmas, big brother. In the meantime, go away. Now."
Leo and Smithers exchanged glances. Leo shrugged eloquently, his shoulders rising beneath the padding of his spanking-new safari jacket.
Without haste, the two men climbed into the truck. Smithers started the machine, and it turned and left. As it vanished Alex saw Leo lifting a videocam to his face, methodically scanning the camp.
Alex walked slowly back to the command yurt. Buzzard was waiting at the door flap. Sam was still in his nowcaster helmet. There was no sign at all of Joe Brasseur.
"Who were those guys?" Buzzard said.
Alex shrugged. "No problem. I took care of 'em. A coupla wannabes."
CHAPTER 8
The unbroken malignant high had been sitting, for six long weeks, over Colorado. It seemed to be anchored there. The high hadn't moved, but it had expanded steadily. A great dome of dry, superheated air had spread from Colorado to northeastern New Mexico and the Panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas. Beneath it was the evil reign of drought.
Jane was rather fond of Oklahoma. The roads were generally in worse condition than Texas, but the state was more thoroughly settled. There was good civil order, and the people were friendly, and even way outside the giant modern megalopolis of Oklahoma City, there were living little rural towns where you could still get real breakfast and a decent cup of coffee. The sky was a subtler blue in Oklahoma, and the wildflowers were of a gentler palette than the harshly vivid flowers of a Texas spring.The soil was richer, and deeper, and iron red, and quite a lot of it was cultivated. The sun never climbed quite as punishingly high in the zenith, and it rained mote often.
But there was no rain now. Not under the slow swell of the continental monster. Rushing storm fronts had scourged Missouri and Iowa and Kansas and Illinois, but the high at the foot of the Rockies had passed from a feature, to a nuisance, to a regional affliction.