Read Invasion USA for Free Online Page B

the seat.
    He walked with long strides toward the paloverde trees and the dry wash beyond them. His pulse raced. He had seen his share of action in Vietnam, but that was a long time in the past. He was in good shape, always kept active, did plenty of hunting and fishing, and when his kids were young he had hiked with them all over this part of the country. He thought he could handle himself all right in case of trouble. But it had been a lot of years since he’d had any proof of that.
    He worried about what he was going to find when he got to the wash. Carla May could have been kidnapped and brought out here by somebody who intended to rape and murder her. Brannon hated to think that such a thing could happen in this generally peaceful area he had always called home, but he wasn’t wearing rose-colored glasses. This was an era in which bad things happened all the time, in just about any place you could think of. Why, just a few days earlier, members of that M-15 gang had killed two of Brannon’s friends and customers. Louly had even witnessed one of the killings, just as she was about to open up the auto parts store. She had seen Burt Minnow gunned down in front of his printing shop.
    There was just no telling what might happen these days.
    Brannon stiffened as he neared the trees and heard sobbing. His hand tightened on the tire iron.
    Moving quickly but silently, he glided into the trees, a big, fair-haired man, light on his feet for his size, maybe a little thicker through the middle than he had once been. He wore jeans and a faded blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He was about as common-looking a man as you could find. Stick him in a crowd and nobody would notice him.
    There was no crowd out here now. Just Tom Brannon. Just one man.
    He crouched near the edge of the wash and looked past the trunk of a paloverde. The wash was about six feet deep, with a relatively flat, sandy bottom. Carla May was sprawled down there with a man on top of her, his bare ass bobbing up and down as he pumped away between her thighs. A gun lay on the ground beside them. Brannon recognized it as a high-powered machine pistol, though he couldn’t have said who the manufacturer was.
    Another man stood over them, watching avidly. He had the same sort of gun in his hands. More than likely, he was supposed to be keeping a lookout, but he was too interested in what his friend was doing to Carla May. He didn’t even glance toward Brannon.
    Carla May still wore a short-sleeved blouse, but her captors had ripped the rest of her clothes off of her. She lay there stiffly, sobbing, as her attacker finished up. He pushed himself off of her and got to his feet a little shakily, leaving his gun lying on the ground. As he reached down to pull his jeans up, he said something in Spanish to the other one. Brannon was fluent in the language, and his jaw tightened in anger as the two men laughed at the vile comment. The second one set his gun down and reached for his belt, eager to undo his trousers and take his turn with their helpless victim.
    This was the time, Brannon knew. Neither of them was holding a gun, but that wouldn’t last very long. He had to move .
    Coming up out of his crouch, he lifted the tire iron over his head in both hands and sprang out into the wash. He didn’t yell or anything but rather attacked in silence. He drove the heel of his right boot into the small of one man’s back and swung the tire iron at the other man’s head.
    That one turned and managed to fling an arm up to block the blow. The tire iron struck it solidly with most of Brannon’s two hundred pounds behind the blow. The man’s forearm snapped like a stick, breaking with a sharp crack. He screamed and staggered back.
    Brannon landed awkwardly on the floor of the wash, stumbling a couple of steps before he caught his balance. He twisted around and saw that his kick had knocked the first man onto his hands and knees. Brannon lunged