Texas Showdown Read Online Free PDF

motorized camera. Intervals of only a second separated some photos. A pause of seconds separated other photos.
    He divided the photos into four groups. Each group represented bursts of exposures. The agent had simply focused on the moving subjects and held down the trigger-button. The sequences allowed Navarro to observe the interaction of the four men, as if he watched four film clips.
    Though two of the men could possibly be Central or South American, they did not exhibit any distinctive mannerisms: they did not have the expressive hand gestures of Mexicans or South Americans, nor did they wear the scowling features of ex-military officers. The other two looked North American: light hair, fair skin, quick smiles. Navarro did not believe they were European — they did not show English reserve, French gestures, German mannerisms — but he knew he could be wrong.
    One thing puzzled Navarro: though three of the men often turned to the fourth as if he were their leader, they did not defer to him. They did not surround him like bodyguards. They did not walk close to him, as junior associates would. And he was not their prisoner. They joked with him, questioned him. One of the photos showed the blond man pointing a finger at the apparent leader as if the North American was threatening him. But in the next exposure, approximately two seconds later, the four men laughed.
    Without knowing the identities and roles of the four men, Navarro could not interpret their actions in that scene. He selected several of the photos for blow-up.
    Today, he would ask El Negro for authorization to post agents outside the Drug Enforcement Agency offices. Those agents would watch for the four men in the photos.
    There was another way to gain the identities of the four men. Navarro knew an expatriate American who recruited guards and soldiers for exiled conservative politicians and retired military officers. The Yankee boasted that he knew "every American mercenary south of the Rio Grande."
    Navarro would test the Yankee.
    * * *
    Neon flashed behind longhorn skulls. Wagon wheels, frayed leather horse collars, Mexican blankets, weathered ranch tools hung on the mirrored walls.
    Strips of red, white, and green bunting — the colors of the Texas flag — trimmed the black plastic bar and the chrome of the stage. Jamaica, too, was weird.
    European tourists in designer jeans and Hawaiian shirts hustled the black waitresses. A Jamaican woman in an Annie Oakley buckskin dress shrieked, fired a six-gun cap pistol.
    Three young Jamaican men in black slacks and white shirts and ties watched the tourists and resplendent Jamaican cowboys and cowgirls. The red blazers hanging on the backs of their chairs identified the young men as workers from a nearby hotel. An immaculate black cowboy passed the three hotel workers, the cowboy's high-heeled lizardskin boots and tailored jeans giving him the mincing steps of a debutante. The workers looked to one another and laughed. Soon they paid for their beers and left.
    Craig Pardee came through the backstage door. He came to the table where Blancanales — a.k.a. Pete Marchardo — waited. Pardee signaled for two beers before he sat down.
    "My girl's got the stage jitters," he told Blancanales. "She don't usually sing country, but it's the only work she can get. They hired her 'cause she's got a Texas accent. This country-and-western fad, you know. Told her I'd take care of her, give her the high life while I did my business, but she says she's got to work. Got to advance her career. What a career, breaking her heart for tourists and niggers! She ought to go to Hollywood."
    Blancanales took in the crowd around them.
    "What's a Western saloon doing in Jamaica anyway?"
    "It's a conspiracy. Prairie fairies of the world."
    They laughed. Pardee raised his beer mug. "To you, Marchardo. And me. And all the soldiers like us. Right or wrong, we're real."
    "There it is."
    Pardee grinned. "And the marines!"
    "What outfit were you