Texas Tango: A Flint Rock Novel (20 page)

Flint cut the cords that tied Mary and Ava.
 
They told him that Murphy was in the kitchen awaiting execution.
 
Fred was in the living room, lying where he had been shot.
 

Ava moved quickly to the kitchen and released Murphy, took duct tape off of his mouth.
 
Flint helped Murphy to an overstuffed recliner.
 
Mary went to Fred, found him alive, beginning to moan and hold his head where a bullet had grazed him, leaving a raw line above his temple and ear.
 
Mary helped him to a sofa.

Flint found Laura.
 
“Hey, girl,” he said.
 
“You’ll do to ride the river with.”

“Oh?” Laura responded.

“It’s a Texas expression that originated with cowboys working along the Rio Grande.
 
Sometimes a downpour upstream would cause a wall of water to roar down the almost dry riverbed sweeping horse and rider to certain death—unless another rider plunged his horse and himself into the roiling torrent to attempt rescue.
 
Often the rescue effort failed and both riders died.
 
That’s how the ultimate Texas compliment is telling someone that they will do to ride the river with.”

“Thanks,” Laura said.
 
“You’ll do to ride the river with yourself.”

Flint smiled.
 
“Where did you get handy with an assault rifle?” he asked.

“ROTC in college,” she replied.
 
“I did the first two years thinking about a career in the army but talked myself out of it.”

“That was impressive shooting,” Flint said.

“Hope Gina is not upset with me.
 
I put a bunch of holes in her wall.
 
I switched the Kalashnikov to single fire, but changed back to automatic because I wasn’t sure what we would face when you opened the door.”

Gina plugged her cell phone in to recharge, used the house’s land line to call two numbers.
 
The second one was the police.
 
The first one was Zeta’s cell.
 
Gina told her about the two men she had killed at the restaurant, and she gave her the names on the identify papers carried by each of the four Bahaar people subdued at Gina’s house.

The police arrived, took the Greek soldier at the gate into custody, sent the woman and two men Laura had shot to an emergency room.
 
The police interviewed Gina and Laura separately in Italian.
 
Flint and Mary got interrogated together by the only police official on the scene who spoke English.
 
 
The police allowed Ava to administer medical treatment to Fred and Murphy.
 
By 2:00
A.M.
the police had left.
 

Everyone was ready for sleep.
 
Flint lay down on a couch in the library.
 
Laura volunteered to stand guard.
 
Gina made sure that the others found beds.

Chapter
17

Murphy accepted Flint’s help Wednesday morning to get a partial shower and change his clothes.
 
Flint showered and dressed, gave Laura his sofa, and she went sound asleep.
 
The cook made coffee to accompany the croissants and cheese and jelly she brought to Murphy who was texting on his smart phone with someone in the CIA.
 
Gina hung up from talking on her cell phone.

“Flint,” she said.
 
“Monsignor Ron sends you greetings.
 
He says that the bodies of Bahaar and Jafe were found a few hours ago.
 
It’s ruled as murder-suicide.”

Before Flint could respond, Murphy spoke.
 
“Guess what else?
 
One of our agents has discovered a video of Jafe implicating Bahaar in a plot to kill several people.
 
I have the links to Davi Ruiz’s web site and to YouTube.
 
It is posted both places.”

Ava walked in looking surprisingly fresh given the events of the night before.
 
She wished Gina, Murphy, and Flint good morning, accepted a cup of tea from the cook.
 
She had overheard Gina’s and Murphy’s reports and wondered if it was safe to go back to Austin and resume life as usual.

Gina looked at Flint.
 
Before deciding, he wanted to know more about Hilda Ferguson.
 
Murphy said that he had put her name into the mix with his people the previous day after Harry’s comment to Ava.
 
Now Murphy dialed his phone, asked someone about Hilary or Hilda and Karbouski, listened for several minutes, hung up, said what he had just heard.

“Seems that Hilary lived with Karbouski in Europe and came with him to the United States.
 
She supposedly married a man named Ferguson, but divorced him and kept the name.
 
That was her cover story after some government agency—not the one I work for—gave her a new identity as Hilda Ferguson.
 
There is one more tidbit.
 
Hilda is paid routinely by an account that Zeta has traced to the angel trumpet group here in Naples.

“So,” Gina thought out loud, “Zeta was right that it is all connected?”

“Yes,” Murphy replied.
 
“The way it looks, Bahaar used the angel trumpet society to get Ava out of Austin to Italy.
 
Hilda recruited Stevenson Karbouski to run Ava off the road to scare her.
 
He meant to kill Flint as a convincer for Ava, but Flint’s little Miata was safer in a crash that Karbouski counted on.”

“Makes sense,” Flint said.
 
“The explosion at the House of the Vetti was meant for Ava to feel she had a really close call.
 
And Karbouski intended to shoot me as a further convincer and to get me out of the way.
 
He had not counted on Mary taking Ava’s place.
 
And he especially didn’t know she was a crack shot with a pistol.”

“What you have said is what the Central Intelligence Agency’s analysts think,” Murphy noted “and so do I.”

Ava interjected, “Bahaar ended up having to improvise because Flint kept getting in the way.
 
Mo lured me to Athens.
 
He had Flint abducted at the hotel to clear the way for me to hypnotize Pagana.
 
If Flint had not captured them, his men at the Parthenon probably would have called me on Bahaar’s phone with a threat to kill Flint if I did not do as Bahaar wanted.
 
Instead, Bahaar left the hotel where he had me hypnotizing Pagana because one of his guys called to tell him they had lost control of Flint.”

“What Mo also didn’t count on,” Flint added, looking at Ava, “was your hypnotizing Pagana to
not
have sex with the Latin American geologists.
 
Getting her to say that she had was brilliant.
 
If Mo had known she had not, he’d still be alive—and we would not be.”

Gina’s landline phone rang.
 
Everyone refreshed their beverages while she took the call which was brief.

“An angel trumpet member has phoned,” she said, “to tell me that Hilda Ferguson has assassinated the head of the angel trumpet society.
 
Seems she arrived from the States last night and shot him at his home this morning.
 
The Naples police have arrested her.”

Murphy looked at Ava.
 
“Does that implicate Fred for talking you into accepting Hilda as a patient?”

Ava replied without hesitation.
 
“No, I think not.
 
Hilda told me in our first conversation that she had heard about me from Fred and from her retiring psychiatrist.
 
I asked Fred about her when I saw him at his next appointment.
 
He said he had met her but did not know anything about her.
 
I didn’t have the impression that he was advocating for my taking her on.
 
My decision to work with her was based on my colleague’s recommendation.”

At that moment, Gina’s cell phone sounded.
 
She spoke in Italian briefly.

“This is Father Ron Shannon,” she told everyone.
 
“He wants Flint to know that the Holy Father is grateful for the, how do you say in English, heads up.
 
Oh—also, Flint, he wants to know if you have heard a singer named Stephanie Saxon?
 
She performs in Austin and sometimes in South America with a super guitar player named Nelson Norwood.”

Flint was near Gina so he simply raised his voice and replied directly.
 
“Yes, Father Ron, I know Stephanie and Nelson. Stephanie sings Texas two-step music in places where I go in Austin.
 
I’ll bet Stephanie and Nelson will be onstage at Austin City Limits this year.
 
And by the way, thanks so much for your help yesterday.
 
Give me a call next time you are back home in Texas.”

Laura and Fred got dressed and breakfasted while Ava had one more session with Pagana—to be sure there were no post traumatic stress symptoms or other unwanted after affects.
 
Flint and Mary said goodbye to Murphy and Gina, headed to the airport to preflight the Sabreliner.
 
At 1:00
P.M.
, Mary was in the left seat, Flint in the right.
 
Fred’s seat back was reclined, his eyes closed.
 
Ava and Laura sat facing each other talking.
 
Mary asked Flint to navigate and talk to air traffic control.

They had a headwind, landed for fuel twice— at Tenerife and at Santo Domingo.
 
From the Canary Islands on, at Mary’s request, she and Flint traded jobs—she took the radio and Flint did the flying.
 
She was repairing nicely, but holding the control yoke continuously tired her because the muscles in her left arm were still healing.

At 8:13
P.M.
Mary told Austin tower that Sabreliner Four Six Texas Tango was at the outer marker inbound.
 
At 8:15 Flint turned off the active runway to taxi.
 
Tower directed Four Six Tango to “contact ground one two one point niner.”
 
The ATC voice added, “welcome home, ma’am.”
 
Ten minutes later Flint shut the engines down in front of the hanger where Mary housed her plane.

Flint, Fred, and Mary had autos at the airport.
 
Laura drove Fred’s car to his apartment, checked his food supply and programmed her number into his phone.
 
Ava drove Mary’s car to Mary’s apartment and made sure her refrigerator had enough food and water.
 
Flint picked Laura up at Fred’s place, then stopped for Ava at Mary’s.
 
He drove each to her respective residence.
 

On the way, Laura tuned the car radio to FM 98.1, “tryin’ ta keep Austin weird,” the DJ said.
 
It was the same station Flint had listened to hanging upside down five days earlier.
 
Johnny Lee and Lane Brody were singing
The Yellow Rose of Texas
.

“Do y’all know the story of this song?” Laura asked.

“As a Son of the Knights of the Yellow Rose of Texas, I do know the history,” Flint said.
 
“It dates from not long after the battle of San Jacinto in April 1836 and originally celebrated Emily Morgan for helping Sam Houston win Texas independence.”

“Emily was a woman of color,’ Laura added, “who distracted the Mexican general while the Texans attacked and won.”

“What do the Sons of the Knights of the Yellow Rose of Texas do?” Ava asked.

“On April 21, we wear a small yellow rose on our lapels,” Flint replied.

Thursday found Flint Rock checking on Fred and talking to him a long time.
 
Fred showed him his collection of gold coins and of ceramic figures, including a photo of the item he had delivered to Athens on his way to Naples.
 
Then Flint chatted with Mary for two hours.
 
She showed him photographs of three recent oil wells on which she had done the geology work.
 
Then he spoke to Laura when she called him from work in the afternoon.