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  Look for these heart pounding thrillers

  by William W. Johnstone,

  writing with J. A. Johnstone,

  available wherever books are sold.

  BLACK FRIDAY

  TYRANNY

  STAND YOUR GROUND

  SUICIDE MISSION

  THE BLEEDING EDGE

  THE BLOOD OF PATRIOTS

  HOME INVASION

  JACKKNIFE

  REMEMBER THE ALAMO

  INVASION USA

  INVASION USA: BORDER WAR

  VENGEANCE IS MINE

  PHOENIX RISING

  PHOENIX RISING: FIREBASE FREEDOM

  PHOENIX RISING: DAY OF JUDGMENT

  KNOCKDOWN

  A RIG WARRIOR NOVEL

  WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE AND J. A. JOHNSTONE

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  CHAPTER 66

  CHAPTER 67

  CHAPTER 68

  PINNACLE BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2020 J. A. Johnstone

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  Following the death of William W. Johnstone, the Johnstone family is working with a carefully selected writer to organize and complete Mr. Johnstone’s outlines and many unfinished manuscripts to create additional novels in all of his series like The Last Gunfighter, Mountain Man, and Eagles, among others. This novel was inspired by Mr. Johnstone’s superb storytelling.

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  PINNACLE BOOKS, the Pinnacle logo, and the WWJ steer head logo are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-0-7860-4428-3

  Electronic edition:

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4429-0 (e-book)

  ISBN-10: 0-7860-44429-2 (e-book)

  CHAPTER 1

  The fat man ran the keen edge of the blade across the ball of his thumb, studied the bead of dark red blood that was the result, and then licked it off.

  “You see, my machete is very sharp, gringo. You will barely feel a thing when I cut your head off with it.”

  “Yeah, well, I guarantee you’ll feel it when I shove that pigsticker up your culo and start twisting it, Pancho.”

  The man sitting at the table in the corner of the little cantina slurred his words. The mostly empty bottle of tequila in front of him explained why. The fiery liquor he had guzzled down also explained the boldness of his response.

  The fat man scowled and stepped closer to the table.

  The three men who had been at the bar with him started in that direction as well, as if they sensed that the situation had just become more serious. They couldn’t have actually heard the words—not with Tejano music blaring in the cantina, mixing with the breathless drone of the announcer calling the soccer game on the TV mounted above the bar and trying to make it more exciting than it really was. No, it was far too loud.

  Maybe they smelled the blood.

  A big man sitting at the bar turned his head to watch the three amigos headed for the table in the corner. He swiveled on the chair and stood up. He towered over everybody else in here, and his shoulders were as wide as an axe handle. Thick slabs of muscle on his arms and shoulders bulged in the fabric of his black T-shirt.

  “Señor,” the bartender said behind him. The big man looked around. The bartender shook his head worriedly and went on in English, “You should not interfere, señor. Those men, they are . . . Zaragosa.”

  The big man frowned.

  The bartender lowered his voice even more. The big man could barely hear him as he half-whispered, “Cartel. Comprende? Look around.”

  The big man looked and got what the bartender was talking about. Everybody else in the cantina was doing their best not to even glance in the direction of the looming confrontation in the corner. Nobody wanted to get involved and risk offending the cartel.

  “That guy’s an American,” the big man said. “I’m not gonna just stand by and let him get hurt.”

  An eloquent shrug from the bartender. He had tried to prevent trouble. No one could blame him now for what might happen.

  Over in the corner, the fat man with the machete said, “What did you call me?”

  “Are you deaf as well as stupid, Pancho?”

  The man at the table reached for the bottle. He had lean, weathered features under close-cropped gray hair. It was difficult to tell how old he was. Anywhere from fifty to seventy would be a good guess.

  His hand trembled a little as it closed around the neck of the bottle. Whether the tremor was from age, a neurological condition, or too much to drink was also impossible to say.

  The fat man spat a few curses in Spanish, lifted the machete, and slammed it down on the table in front of the gringo. The blade bit deeply into the old, scarred wood. The fat man’s lips drew back from his teeth in a snarl as he leaned forward.

  “I will not cut off your head,” he said. “The next tim
e, my blade will cleave your skull down to your shoulders, viejo!”

  “Ain’t gonna be no next time. You really are stupid. Your little knife’s stuck, gordo!”

  At the same time, the big man moved up behind the fat man’s three compadres and said in a loud voice, “Hey! What’re you doing to that old geezer?”

  The fat man wrenched at the machete. The old man was right. The blade had embedded itself so deeply in the tabletop that it was stuck.

  The old man came up out of his chair like a rattlesnake uncoiling and swung the tequila bottle he held by the neck.

  The fat man tried to jerk back out of the way. The old man was too fast. The bottle smacked hard against the side of the fat man’s head but didn’t break. The impact made the fat man take a quick step to his right, but he caught himself and grinned.

  “I’m gonna mess you up, viejo.”

  The old man said, “Oh, crap.”

  The fat man’s three buddies turned toward the big hombre who had challenged them. He didn’t give them a chance to set themselves. Throwing his arms out wide, he charged them, grabbing the two on the flanks and bulling his shoulder right into the one in the middle. That bull rush swept them all backward into the fat man, who was trying to wrench the machete loose from the table.

  It was like a tidal wave of flesh washing over the fat man and knocking him forward into the table. The old man hopped out of the way with a nimbleness that belied his age.

  The weight of all four men came down on the table. Its spindly legs snapped, and the whole thing crashed to the floor. The fat man and his amigos sprawled on the wreckage. One of the men howled in pain as he got pushed against the edge of the machete and the blade sliced into his leg.

  With an athletic grace uncommon in a man of his size, the big hombre had caught his balance before he could fall on top of the others. He took a step back and looked at the old man. “We’d better get out of here.”

  “Not yet,” the old man said with a gleam in his eyes. “Pancho and me still got to settle up.”

  CHAPTER 2

  The big man rolled his eyes and then swung around to face the rest of the customers in the dim, smoke-hazed cantina. They were watching with a mixture of keen interest and trepidation, but none of them seemed eager to mix in.

  According to the bartender, the fat man and his friends worked for the Zaragosa drug cartel, and nobody wanted to mess in cartel business.

  The old man leaned over, caught hold of the fat man’s dirty shirtfront with his left hand, pulled him up a little, and used his right hand to slap him hard, back and forth. Before that, the fat man had appeared a little stunned from being knocked down, but the sharp blows knocked his wits back into him.

  He roared in anger and used a foot to hook one of the old man’s legs out from under him. The two of them grappled together and rolled across the filthy floor.

  Two of the other three tried to get up and rejoin the fight. The third man was still yelling as he clamped both hands around his leg, which was bleeding heavily from the machete wound. It looked like he might have nicked an artery.

  As the two cartel members scrambled to their feet, the big hombre caught them by the neck from behind. The muscles in his arms and shoulders bunched as he slammed the two men together. Their heads clunked loudly. Both men came unhinged at the knees and crumpled to the floor again.

  The big man gestured toward the bleeder and addressed the room at large in decent Spanish: “Somebody better help him before he bleeds to death.”

  When he turned his head, he saw that the old man somehow was getting the best of his overweight opponent. The wiry old codger knelt on the fat man’s chest and punched him in the face again and again. Blood blurred the fat man’s features. The big hombre stepped up behind the old man and hooked his hands under his arms.

  “Come on,” he said. “He’s out of it. And we need to be out of here.”

  The old man was breathing hard. He glared down at the fat man. But after a few seconds, he said, “Yeah, you’re right.” He shook free of the big man’s grip. “Let’s go.”

  With the four cartel members out of action, no one else in the cantina made a move to stop the two gringos as they headed for the door. They stepped out into the hot night air. Gravel crunched under their feet as they crossed the parking lot.

  The door of the squalid cinder-block building slammed open behind them. The big hombre looked back and muttered, “Oh, crap.”

  The fat man stumbled out of the cantina and waved his hand, which was holding a pistol. It spurted flame and thundered in the night. The big man sprinted toward the pickup he had driven across the international bridge from Texas earlier in the evening. The old man followed him.

  “Where’s your car?” the big hombre flung over his shoulder.

  “Don’t have one! I walked across the bridge!”

  That could actually be smarter than driving in Mexico, but wandering around a border town at night wasn’t a very bright thing to do these days. Such places had always been hotbeds of crime, but now, with the so-called authorities virtually powerless when compared to the cartels, norteamericanos risked their lives being anywhere near the border, let alone across it.

  At the moment, however, the big hombre was glad he had transportation out of here. The fat man was shooting wild, but there was no telling when he might get the range.

  “Come with me!” the big man yelled to his newfound companion. He hoped nobody had stolen or slashed his tires while he was in the cantina, or damaged the engine in some way.

  The big man unlocked both doors of the pickup with the remote key as they ran toward it. The old man yanked the passenger door open and piled in while the big hombre threw himself behind the wheel.

  Gravel kicked up not far from the pickup as the bullets came closer. The engine cranked, caught. The big man slammed the truck into gear and peeled out, spraying gravel behind him. A wild turn onto the potholed highway, and he was speeding toward the cluster of high-intensity lights that marked the international bridge a quarter of a mile away.

  The big man watched the rearview mirror. No headlights popped into view. That was good. Even if the bridge wasn’t busy, crossing would take long enough that the fat man and his friends could catch up if they wanted to. Maybe they were back there attending to the guy who’d sliced his leg open.

  “Well, that was a mite exciting,” the old man said. He didn’t sound drunk anymore.

  The big man just glanced over at him and didn’t say anything. At the bridge, he guided the pickup into the Ready Lane line behind two other vehicles. The American border guards passed those through fairly quickly. Still no headlights coming up behind the pickup. The old man handed the big hombre his driver’s license. He put it with his own and handed them to the guard as he pulled up to the now-lowered barrier.

  The guard scanned the RFID chips on the licenses and then nodded at the results that came up on his scanner. He asked the usual customs questions about regulated goods they might have with them.

  The big man said, “Nope, not a thing.”

  The guard handed the licenses back, then nodded at his cohort in the control booth, who pushed buttons and started the barrier lifting. The big man waited for it to clear and drove through at an unhurried pace, back onto Texas soil.

  He drove through the border city, a garish oasis of lights in the vast darkness of the border country, and pulled into the parking lot of a nondescript motel on the north side of town, away from the border.

  He brought the pickup to a stop beside an eighteen-wheeler parked at the edge of the lot, a Kenworth long-hood conventional with an extra-large sleeper behind the cab.

  The big hombre killed the lights and engine, then sat there in the darkness for a long moment before he turned to the old man and said, “All right, Barry, what the hell was all that about?”

  CHAPTER 3

  “Take it easy, Jake. It was all under control.”

  “It didn’t look under control to me,” Jake Rivers
said. “Especially when blood started spurting out of that guy’s leg. He may have bled out by now.”

  Barry Rivers shrugged. “That wasn’t supposed to happen. Just bad luck the guy fell on the machete and cut himself. But I imagine Pancho got the bleeding stopped in time. If he didn’t . . . well, that’s one more Zaragosa foot soldier the good guys won’t have to worry about in the future.”

  He paused, then added dryly, “Anyway, what happens on the other side of the river isn’t your worry. You were a little outside of your jurisdiction, after all.”

  Jake leaned back against the pickup seat and sighed. “So were you.”

  “Nope, not really.” Barry shook his head. “I don’t have any jurisdiction. I just go where I need to go and do what needs to be done.”

  Jake might have argued with him out of habit, but deep down, he knew his uncle was right. Sometimes the good guys had to bend the rules a little.

  The trick was to not bend them so much that you became one of the bad guys.

  Unfortunately, that distinction was a pretty murky one sometimes.

  He pushed that thought aside and said, “What I want to know is what we were doing there in the first place. Why’d you ask me to meet you there? And why, in the name of all that’s holy, would you pretend to be drunk and pick a fight with a bunch of cartel enforcers?”

  “How do you know I wasn’t really drunk?”

  Jake made a skeptical noise. “You wouldn’t have sobered up this fast if you were. Anyway, in the five years I’ve known you, I’ve never seen you drunk. I doubt if you’d start now.”