Stand Your Ground Read online

  “I’m glad I’ve been able to give you that, Mercedes,” he murmured. “I’m glad you’ve been able to know true pleasure at least a few times in your life.”

  A slight frown creased her forehead. She said, “That sounds sort of . . . I don’t know . . . final. You’re not . . . ending this, are you?”

  “I have to leave Washington for a time. My presence is required elsewhere.”

  “Oh.” She sounded relieved. “I understand about having to travel. I mean, I have to travel quite a bit because of my Senate duties, too.” She smiled. “A politician’s work is never done, you know.”

  “I know,” Hamil said as he stroked her face and slid his hands down to her neck. She seemed not to think anything of it as they began to tighten. “But yours is, my dear.”

  He would hang the Do Not Disturb sign on the door when he left. He had paid for the room for four days. It might not be that long before her body was found, but he would still have plenty of time to get to Texas.

  Under normal circumstances the murder of a United States senator would be big news. With what was coming, it would just be a footnote.

  But her usefulness to him was at an end, and her continued existence was an affront to him.

  When she finally realized something was wrong, her eyes barely had time to widen in terror before he broke her neck with a quick, clean snap.

  CHAPTER 4

  “Remember,” Bert Frazier said to the members of the guard detail assembled in front of him, “everything is by the book. All of you know the drill, or at least you’d damned well better. If we do anything to get the press on the old man’s back, he won’t be happy about it. And he can make life hard for all of us.”

  “You mean we’re gonna have to hold the hands of those camel-humpers and tell ’em everything’s gonna be fine, Bert?” Ed Remington chuckled in amusement at his own comment.

  Bert’s face flushed. He felt his hands clenching into fists. He didn’t like the balding, hatchet-faced Remington, and never had. But he controlled his temper and said, “You see, that’s just what I’m talking about, Ed. You say something like that, and somebody records it on their phone and leaks it to the media, and before you know it there’s a big stink.”

  “Nobody in here has got a phone,” Remington pointed out. “They’re not allowed.”

  “Yeah, plenty of people have thought before that there was no way they could be recorded, and they wound up neck deep in crap because of it. Just don’t take any chances, okay? Keep your words, your actions, and your attitude professional at all times. Got it?”

  “Got it, Mr. Frazier,” Mitch Cambridge said.

  Of course he’d be the one to speak up, Bert thought. Cambridge was a brown-noser, an ambitious kid. But even though he sometimes rubbed Bert the wrong way, he was smart, he followed orders, and he had done a good enough job that he had been picked to help guard the new prisoners.

  Bert stifled a yawn and said, “All right. Shift change in five minutes. You got any business to take care of, do it now.”

  They split up to hit the can or grab a last-minute snack. Bert went over to the table in the corner of the assembly room and poured himself a cup of coffee.

  He was tired because he hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before. It had been after midnight before he was able to convince Lois that it would be okay to go home. Andy was fine. The fracture was clean, the doctors hadn’t had any trouble setting it, and other than having to wear a cast and use crutches for the next couple of months, once Andy got out of the hospital he could go on about his everyday life.

  Well, he couldn’t play quarterback anymore, Bert amended, and screwing that cute little cheerleader he’d been dating probably would be more difficult, but Bert had confidence in the ingenuity of horny youth. They’d find a way.

  Bert swallowed the last of the bitter coffee from the foam cup and belched. He already felt the heartburn it was giving him. But that was all right. The heartburn would help keep him awake and alert.

  A short time later, the ten uniformed guards moved into the wing of the prison where the terrorists were housed. Six at a time, the prisoners were taken from their cells and escorted to a small exercise yard separate from the much larger one used by the general population.

  The orders from the Attorney General’s office were quite clear: the alleged terrorists, foreign nationals for the most part, would never mix with Gen Pop. They were to be kept totally segregated.

  That was just fine with Bert. It was easier to keep up with them that way. There were some really hard-nosed cons in here—it was a maximum security facility, after all—and many of them would have liked nothing better than to get their hands on a bunch of Arabs who’d been plotting to destroy the country.

  They might be criminals . . . but that didn’t mean they weren’t patriots.

  The new prisoners were cooperative. Not polite, really. There always seemed to be sneers lurking on their faces and hate gleaming in their eyes.

  But they went along and did what they were told and hadn’t caused any trouble in the time they had been here. Admittedly, that had only been a few days. If they kept that up, Bert supposed he could tolerate them.

  But there was something about them . . . something about the way they looked at their captors . . . that worried Bert.

  They looked like they knew their victory was inevitable.

  Like it was only a matter of time until all their enemies were destroyed.

  “What do you think, Albert?”

  “What do I think?” Albert Carbona said. “I think these orange jumpsuits look like hell. They got no style at all. You know, I once paid ten grand for a suit, Billy. Ten grand just to look snazzy. And then they stick us in these pieces of crap.” Carbona sighed. “It’s cruel and inhumane, I tell you. Cruel and inhumane.”

  “You’re right, boss,” Billy Gardner said. “If they’re gonna make us stay in here for life, at least they could let us dress nice. But that’s, uh, not what I was talkin’ about.”

  “Well, then, what were you talkin’ about?”

  “The new prisoners.” Billy lowered his voice. “The Arabs.”

  Carbona said, “Phhhtt! All they wanna do is kill, kill, kill. They got no style at all.”

  “That’s what you just said about these jumpsuits.”

  Carbona glared at the big guy who had once been one of his right-hand men, and demanded, “It’s still true, ain’t it?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Billy said quickly. Carbona was half his size but that didn’t matter. He was still the boss.

  Carbona hunched forward on the bench bolted to the floor next to the table, which was also bolted to the floor, and frowned at the cards in his hand. He and Billy were playing hearts, as they did most days to pass the time, but right now Carbona wasn’t really seeing the cards.

  “We never wanted to destroy the country,” he went on. “We just wanted our piece of the action. Those guys, they’re crazy. Can you imagine what it’d be like if they took over, with all the rules they got? And if you break one of those rules, they don’t just send you to jail. No, they stone you, or chop your hand off, or even your freakin’ head, just like it was still the Middle Ages instead of the twenty-first century.” He revolved his index finger next to his temple. “Crazy.”

  “Yeah, guys like us would be in real trouble, wouldn’t we?” Billy asked.

  Carbona narrowed his eyes and said, “We’re sitting in a damn max security prison for the rest of our lives, you big dumb ox. Ain’t we already in trouble?”

  “Well, yeah. That’s not what I meant.”

  Carbona snorted. He had a lot of affection for the big ox, who had taken a bullet for him more than once, but sometimes the guy just didn’t have any sense.

  Of course, the same was true of him, Carbona told himself. They were both throwbacks, men out of their time. And that had been true even before the Feds convicted them on a few dozen counts of murder, racketeering, and income tax evasion and threw them into Hell’s G
ate for the rest of their lives.

  The fifties and sixties, that had been the golden time for guys like him and Billy, Carbona mused. He had been just a kid then, but he remembered those days well, remembered his father Giovanni and his uncles Sal and Bruno and Petey. Snappy dressers. Men who got things done. Nobody in the outfit crossed them. Nobody. Albert had wanted nothing more than to grow up and be just like them.

  Even when his father and Bruno had been killed in a hit and Sal and Petey were crippled for the rest of their lives by the same hail of bullets, they were still role models to Albert.

  Except he would be tougher, more ruthless. Nobody would ever take him out like that. He would crush his enemies before they ever got the chance.

  Unfortunately, by the time Albert grew up and started rising in the ranks of the family business, most of the old bosses were gone. And the guys who took their place were freakin’ accountants. Guys with MBAs. It was an era when greed was good—hell, greed had always been good, as far as Albert was concerned, but now everybody believed that—but the way of going about it was changing. There was more money to be made on Wall Street and in corporate boardrooms than in back alleys.

  So there wasn’t much room for somebody like Albert Carbona who wanted to do things the old way. Oh, he’d been able to claw out some territory of his own. He had attracted guys like him who had grown up in the waning days of the previous era and still thought that was the way to run this thing of theirs. It had been a lot of work and trouble, but he was on his way to putting together an old-fashioned empire.

  So what had the damn suits done? Betrayed him. Set him up. And the Feds had swooped in and gathered up him and his inner circle, of whom Billy was the only one left. They had been split up, and all the others had been shanked, victims of payoffs from the new bosses who wanted anybody who represented the old days gone for good.

  He and Billy had stayed alive, though, because Billy was a monster. Not even those Aryan Brotherhood nutjobs would mess with him.

  So here they sat, two guys who weren’t young anymore, playing hearts and living out their days behind the walls. It was pretty crappy, Carbona thought.

  But at least it couldn’t get any worse.

  Kincaid tapped at the keyboard and looked at the results that came up on the monitor in front of him. The high school football team’s upset win over McElhaney was plastered all over the front page of the Fuego Star’s online edition, but there was nothing he could find about a fight in the parking lot after the game.

  If it wasn’t important enough to rate a mention in the local paper, that was good. That meant giving in to impulse and getting involved in something that was none of his business hadn’t done any harm.

  This time.

  Next time he would have to be more careful, whether he liked it or not.

  A man wearing an orange jumpsuit and sitting at a desk in the corner muttered a curse. Kincaid shut down his monitor and swiveled his chair behind the counter in the prison library.

  “What’s wrong, Simon?” he asked.

  Simon Winslow, whose carrot-colored hair didn’t go well with the jumpsuit at all, waved a hand at the typewriter in front of him and said, “How did anybody ever write anything on these? Those keys just wear out your fingers and when you make a mistake it just sits there mocking you. Even after you x it out.” A wheedling tone came into Simon’s voice as he went on, “It would be so much easier if I could work on a computer, Mr. Kincaid.”

  “You know you can’t get anywhere near a computer, Simon,” Kincaid said. “You hack into people’s bank accounts and steal millions of dollars, then leak a bunch of government secrets, you can’t expect to be allowed online ever again.”

  “Ever?” Simon looked aghast as he said it.

  Kincaid shrugged and said, “As long as you’re here, I guess. What is it? Forty years?”

  “I’ll be an old, old man,” Simon said with a sigh.

  “Sorry,” Kincaid said, and he really was. He wouldn’t want to be locked up for most of the rest of his life, either.

  That was one reason he had gone on the run after what happened at Warraz al-Sidar.

  So in order to avoid prison, what had he done after making it back to the States with a lot of back-channel help from spooks he’d done some favors for?

  He had gone to work in a prison, running the library. It made sense in a perverse way. Who would think to look for a deserter and fugitive in a place like this?

  “So I take it the novel’s not going well?” Kincaid asked as he leaned back in his chair.

  “I keep getting sidetracked by the characters. I know the readers don’t really care about all that backstory. They just want the survivors in the moon colony to blow away the zombies that were infected by the alien virus. I’ve got to get that out of the way so the girl can go ahead and fall in love with the guy who’s a vampire.”

  “You’re making all this up,” Kincaid said. “That’s not what the story is really about.”

  “Authors shouldn’t talk about their work in progress. It ruins the spontaneity.”

  Kincaid chuckled and shook his head.

  “Sorry, but you’re gonna have to get back to it later. There are books that need to be shelved.”

  Simon sighed and said, “All right. I guess my muse will just have to wait.” He stood up and came over to the counter to pick up a stack of books that had been turned back in. “I’ll bet your backstory is pretty interesting, Mr. Kincaid.”

  “You’d lose,” Kincaid said. “My life is boring as hell.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Stark had made arrangements with George Baldwin to visit Hell’s Gate on Sunday afternoon, so that meant he had Saturday to himself. He’d never been that fond of fast-food breakfasts, but there was a café within walking distance of the motel, so he strolled over there to get an actual breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and pancakes that wasn’t mass-produced, washed down with plenty of coffee. His appetite had come back as his health improved, and he was glad of that. He had always liked good food.

  When he got back to the motel, he went into the office and found the owner’s wife behind the counter.

  “Hello, Mrs. Patel,” Stark said. “I was wondering what there is to do around here.”

  The woman gave him a weak smile and said, “Nothing, I’m afraid, Mr. Stark. There is nothing in Fuego to interest a tourist.”

  “Looks like I’m going to be here until Monday. Any suggestions how to pass the time?”

  “We have satellite TV.”

  “Thanks. Maybe I’ll just walk around town for a while.”

  “All right. Do you need anything for your room? Some . . . some ice, maybe?”

  “No, thanks. I’m good.”

  As a matter of fact, Stark had filled up a bucket with ice as soon as he checked in, but he hadn’t used any of it. It was probably melted by now. But he could always get some more later.

  Stark left the motel and started walking up Main Street. In boots, jeans, a long-sleeved khaki shirt, and straw Stetson, he looked right at home here in Fuego. Other than being tall, with an impressive spread of shoulders, there wasn’t much to make anybody look twice at him.

  That was the way he liked it. He’d had his share of being famous. More than his share. First that war with the cartel that had taken Elaine’s life, then that crazy business at the Alamo, and finally, when he’d tried to retire and actually live a quiet life, more trouble had cropped up at Shady Hills, the mobile home community where he had moved after selling his ranch.

  He’d had his face plastered all over the TV news and the Internet, and he didn’t like it. Luckily, enough time had passed so that he didn’t get recognized all that much anymore. Maybe there would come a day when nobody except his friends knew who he was, and that would be just fine with John Howard Stark.

  But it wasn’t going to be today. He was standing in front of a hardware store looking at some riding lawn mowers parked there on the sidewalk when a police car pulled up at th
e curb.

  The man who got out wore brown uniform trousers about the same shade as his skin and a lighter brown shirt. He didn’t have much hair left, and what there was of it was gray.

  “Mr. Stark,” he said as he crossed the sidewalk and extended his hand. “Charles Cobb. I’m the chief of police here in Fuego.”

  “Chief,” Stark said as he shook hands. “Glad to meet you.” He paused, then asked, “Am I in some sort of trouble?”

  “Should you be?” Cobb asked with a smile.

  “Sometimes it seems like it finds me, whether I’m looking for it or not.”

  Cobb looked more solemn as he nodded and said, “I can see how you’d feel that way, given your history. But no, you’re not in any trouble, Mr. Stark, not as far as I’m concerned. I just wanted to welcome you to Fuego. We don’t get many celebrities here.”

  Stark winced slightly.

  “I never have been very fond of the idea of being a celebrity,” he said.

  “Well, you’ll have to get used to it. Not many people have done the things you have.”

  “Only did what I had to,” Stark said.

  “I understand. What brings you to Fuego?”

  Cobb asked the question like he was just casually curious, but Stark knew better. A question like that from a cop was always serious.

  “I came to visit an old friend of mine. George Baldwin.”

  “The warden out at the prison?”

  “That’s right. We served together in Vietnam. A lifetime ago.”

  “No, Desert Storm was a lifetime ago. Vietnam was two lifetimes.”

  “That was your war?”

  Cobb nodded and said, “Yeah. A lot quicker and cleaner than yours. Neither of them really got the job done, though, did they?”

  “Ancient history,” Stark said.

  “It certainly is. Well, you enjoy your stay in our town, Mr. Stark.” Cobb started to turn back to the police car, then paused. Stark thought the move was genuine, not some sort of take-the-suspect-off-guard trick. “You were at the game last night, weren’t you? I heard that you were.”