The Bleeding Edge Read online

  “Don’t be silly,” his wife told him. “You don’t have to do that while I’m standing guard with a shotgun.”

  Fred smiled sadly.

  “Did you think we’d ever be saying such things? Our retirement here was supposed to be so nice and peaceful.”

  “Life has a way of throwing curveballs,” Stark said.

  Hallie headed for her office after promising to call them later. Stark went back to his mobile home. He didn’t have anywhere he had to be today, so he spent his time cleaning his guns and reading.

  And keeping an eye on the street outside.

  He didn’t hear anything from Hallie until the middle of the afternoon, when she called his cell phone.

  “I just got through talking to Fred,” she told him. “My friend in Washington said there was nothing he could do for Antonio, but he kicked it on upstairs. Since the three men who killed those young people were acting on behalf of an organization, there’s a chance they might be able to open a RICO file on the case.”

  “That’s organized crime, right?” Stark asked.

  “Right. It won’t be easy, though. The climate in Washington isn’t very favorable right now to anything that could be construed as biased toward Hispanic Americans.”

  “You mean the political climate.”

  “That’s the only kind that matters in Washington.”

  Stark didn’t doubt that. He said, “Those cartel bosses, those hombres Antonio was talking about, they’re not any sort of American. They’re all Colombian and Mexican.”

  “I know that. But a lot of the people who work for them are American. Ignacio and Carlos Montez—Nacho and Chuckie—are legitimate American citizens, born in the United States.”

  “Were their parents here legally?” Stark asked.

  “That doesn’t matter,” Hallie said, and Stark had the answer to his question. “They were born here.”

  Then they were natural-born American assholes, Stark thought as he remembered how those human heads had looked nestled among Dorothy Hewitt’s cabbage plants. Country of origin didn’t matter all that much to him. Evil was evil, no matter where it came from. Looking at it from that angle, Hallie was right, no doubt about that.

  “So nobody wants to do anything about the cartel because it might annoy the Mexican government,” he said bleakly.

  “I didn’t say that,” Hallie responded. “There are factions in the Mexican government that have been fighting against the cartel for years. It’s just that they’re outnumbered by the ones who either don’t want to rock the boat or have been bought off or threatened into submission by the drug smugglers. So they act outraged by anything that can be perceived as prejudice, no matter by what twisted logic, and the Hispanic lobbying groups in this country are the same way.”

  Stark sighed. It wasn’t in his nature to get discouraged, even after all the tragedy he had suffered in his life, but sometimes it was hard to feel any other way when you took a good look at the way the world really operated these days. Logic and decency no longer mattered. Power, spin, and the big lie were the only things that counted.

  Hallie went on, “Hispanics are going to be the majority in this country before too many more years, John Howard. No one can get elected on a national basis without the Hispanic vote. It helps that they don’t all march in lockstep and that there are some real conservatives among them, but still . . .”

  “You don’t have to say anything else,” Stark told her. “What it amounts to is that folks will promise to try to help Antonio and then conveniently never get around to doing anything.”

  “I’m afraid so. I tried to get Fred and Aurelia to understand that without being quite so blunt about it.”

  “So it’s still left up to us to protect him.”

  “For right now. I’ll keep working on it, though.”

  “Thanks, Hallie,” Stark said. “I appreciate the effort.”

  “Maybe you could show your appreciation by taking me out for a nice dinner some night.”

  Stark wanted to chuckle, but he suppressed the impulse. Hallie was about ten years younger than he was, but there were enough generational similarities between them for him to know that she probably thought she was being too forward by practically asking him out.

  Yet she had done it anyway, and he was touched by the gesture. He was tempted to accept—hell, a part of him wanted to accept without hesitation, he thought—but it probably wasn’t a good idea. He would have enjoyed having Hallie around even more, having someone as nice as her to share his life, but it just wouldn’t work out.

  He didn’t want to offend her, though, so he said, “One of these days we’ll do that.”

  She laughed.

  “I’m going to consider that a promise, John Howard, no matter how hard you try to tap-dance around the question.”

  They said their good-byes. Stark went next door to talk to Fred and Aurelia.

  “Hallie called me,” Stark said when Fred opened the door to his knock.

  “She said she was going to,” Fred replied with a nod. “She wasn’t very encouraging, John Howard.”

  “No, this is a bad situation,” Stark acknowledged bluntly. “We’ll just have to make the best of it.”

  “Maybe . . . maybe it’ll all blow over after a while.”

  Stark heard the desperate hope in his friend’s voice and wished he could agree with the sentiment Fred had just expressed. He knew that was pretty unlikely, though.

  He had a hunch that when night fell, trouble would come calling again at the Shady Hills Retirement Park.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The climate here in southwest Texas could be described generally as arid. People who lived here for very long figured out that it was best to plant trees and bushes that could get by on very little rain.

  From time to time, though, thunderstorms moved in, and they were real gully washers. Stark thought that might be what was going to happen tonight. Not long after darkness settled over the landscape, the breeze picked up, and it had the faint, ionized scent of rain in it. In the distance to the west, long fingers of lightning clawed through the night sky at the gathering clouds.

  Stark had moved one of his lawn chairs into the shadows between his mobile home and that of the Gomezes. He sat there now, completely enclosed by darkness, with his shotgun across his knees.

  Thinking that it was unlikely anything would happen during the day, Stark had taken a nice long nap that afternoon and fortified himself with several cups of coffee. He had a thermos of the stuff propped up beside him in the chair in case he needed more during the night. He planned to stay right where he was until dawn, if need be.

  If he was expecting any sort of stealth attack, he wouldn’t have brought the coffee out here. The aroma might drift to somebody sneaking around and warn them that a guard was on duty.

  These enemies didn’t seem that sophisticated. They were more likely to come in with all guns blazing, using shock and awe tactics on the elderly residents of the park.

  Here was one old geezer, Stark thought, who wouldn’t be shocked and damned sure wouldn’t be awed by whatever those punks tried to pull. He was going to be ready for them.

  He wasn’t the only one. Fred and Aurelia Gomez planned to take turns staying awake tonight. Alton Duncan was probably asleep by now, but he’d told Stark that he would be prepared in case of trouble, with a rifle by his bed. Not the .22 he’d brought out the night before, either, but a more high-powered deer rifle that ought to prove equally effective against drug smugglers.

  Once a fella learned to sit quiet and motionless and wait—a lesson that Vietnam had taught Stark, and one that had saved his life more than once—he never forgot it. The ability came back to him, as it did with Stark now. His breathing was shallow and even, and every sense was on alert.

  Of course, in the end it didn’t much matter. A blind and deaf man could have seen and heard the convoy of low-riders and pickups that came roaring into the retirement park. Stark heard them on the hig
hway before they ever got there, and his instincts had him on his feet and ready by the time they tore through the entrance with squealing tires and booming stereos.

  That racket allowed Stark to track the intruders’ progress through the grid of streets in the park. He thumbed his cell phone and sent the text messages he’d had ready to send to Fred and Alton, warning that trouble was on the way. Then he slipped the phone back into his pocket and raised the shotgun to his shoulder, holding it ready to fire.

  He listened for shots but hadn’t heard any so far, just the bellowing engines and blasting noise that passed for music. With tires still screaming, the big pickup that was leading the invasion slid around the corner and immediately accelerated along the street. Four cars came behind it, followed by another pickup bringing up the rear.

  Nacho Montez and his friends had brought reinforcements this time.

  Stark didn’t care how many of them there were, he wasn’t going to be intimidated. He stayed in the shadows, ready to open fire if they stopped and charged out of their vehicles.

  Instead, the first pickup slowed down as it reached the Gomez house. A light flared, flame from the rag stuffed into the neck of a bottle that flew from the truck bed.

  Someone crouched back there had just thrown a Molotov cocktail at the mobile home where Fred and Aurelia lived.

  Stark’s shotgun was already at his shoulder. He let his instincts and muscle memory take over. He’d done plenty of skeet shooting in his time, and this was similar. He squeezed the trigger and the shotgun kicked heavily against his shoulder as buckshot blasted from its muzzle.

  The bottle filled with gasoline burst apart in midair as the charge struck it. The volatile stuff ignited as it sprayed around the still burning rag. Some of it fell on the lawn, but some was blown backward into the first low-rider. The speeding pickup where the Molotov cocktail had originated was already past the Gomez house.

  The car’s windows were down. Someone inside yelled as the burning gasoline splattered them. Stark pumped the shotgun and fired another round, tracking the car and aiming low. Tongues of flame licked through the darkness as the invaders returned the fire with handguns and automatic weapons.

  Stark dived behind the shelter of some concrete blocks he had stacked up earlier in the day. He thrust the shotgun over the makeshift barricade and let fly again at the other vehicles whipping past in the street. They had slowed down slightly, but they didn’t stop. In fact, they began to speed up again.

  Stark heard the whump! of another Molotov cocktail going off somewhere else in the park. That surprised him a little. He had thought that the invaders would confine their attack to the Gomez place, and maybe to his mobile home as well.

  Guns chattered in the distance. Stark went cold inside at the sound. The smugglers had started their assault here, but now they were continuing it elsewhere in the park, targeting innocent people who had nothing to do with Antonio Gomez or the incident the night before. Stark hadn’t anticipated hostilities escalating this far, this fast.

  The pickup in the rear of the convoy wheeled around a corner, its taillights vanishing. Stark felt frustration boiling inside him. Why didn’t they come back here and fight? Why attack the other residents of the retirement park?

  Terror.

  The word sprang into Stark’s mind, and he knew he had the answer to his questions. Antonio Gomez’s defiance of the cartel, even at such a low level, might have started this trouble, but it had turned into something else. The invaders hadn’t come here to grab Antonio or to strike back at John Howard Stark for humiliating them, although they would have gladly taken either of those outcomes.

  No, this was a terrorist attack.

  Stark didn’t fully understand the motivation, but clearly this raid was designed to strike fear into the hearts of the park’s residents. He could only hope that too many people hadn’t been hurt in that barrage of gunfire and the Molotov cocktail’s explosion.

  The front door of the Gomez mobile home slammed as Fred burst out onto the porch, brandishing his .45.

  “John Howard!” he called. “Where are you, John?”

  “Here!” Stark shouted back. “They’re gone, Fred. Stand down.”

  Fred hurried down his front steps.

  “That was an awful lot of shooting,” he said worriedly. “What were they doing? I thought they were just after Antonio.”

  “It may have started out that way,” Stark said as he stomped out the few places on the front lawn that were still smoldering from the burning gasoline, “but I’ve got a feeling that things have changed somehow.” And not for the better, he thought.

  “Hey, fellas!” Alton Duncan sang out as he trotted toward them, which was smart because as keyed-up as Fred was, he might have taken a shot at anybody who surprised him, Stark thought. “Anybody hurt?”

  “Not here,” Stark said. “But we don’t know about the rest of the park.”

  “Maybe we’d better go check,” Fred suggested.

  Stark nodded grimly and said, “Good idea. But Alton and I will go, Fred. You stay here in case this was just a feint of some sort to draw us off.”

  “You really think they’re that tricky?” Fred asked.

  “I don’t know what to think anymore,” Stark said, “except that this shows signs of being even worse than any of us expected.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The shooting had stopped by now, and the roar of engines had dwindled and disappeared. People were emerging from their homes, calling questions to each other in confused, frightened voices. Some of them carried guns, baseball bats, axes, hoes, and anything else they had on hand that could be used as a weapon.

  Porch lights had been turned on all up and down the streets, so Stark and Alton were visible as they strode determinedly toward the front of the park. They drew quite a bit of attention, and men came out to ask then what was going on and then fell in step with them. Some of the women came along, too. By the time Stark reached the first signs of real damage, he had a force about two dozen strong with him.

  Flames leaped from one end of a mobile home, the unmistakable result of the Molotov cocktail. People were gathered around it using portable fire extinguishers to put out the blaze. Residents in this part of the county had to rely on a volunteer fire department that took at least twenty minutes to respond to a call, so they had learned how to battle fires themselves.

  Stark was glad to see that the situation wasn’t any worse. Instead of striking the middle of the mobile home, the bottle of gasoline must have landed right at the end, and alert residents had been able to contain the fire and appeared to be keeping it from spreading to the rest of the home.

  Stark’s momentary relief gave way to horror when a woman suddenly screamed, “My babies! My babies are still in there!”

  She pulled away from the man trying to comfort her and charged up the smoldering steps. The man hurried after her, yelling, “Vicky! Vicky, wait! You can’t go in there!”

  It was too late to stop her. The door banged behind her as she disappeared into the mobile home.

  Tense moments stretched by, punctuated by the spurting hiss of the fire extinguishers as they continued to pour chemical foam on the fire. Flames were still visible inside.

  Stark was about to hand his shotgun to Alton and go in there himself when the woman and her husband emerged, each of them carrying a small dog. The woman was sobbing in relief as she stumbled down the porch steps to the ground.

  “They were all right, thank God!” she said as her friends closed in around her to make sure that she hadn’t been hurt.

  Stark looked around at the crowd and asked in a booming voice, “Everybody all right here?”

  He got a volley of questions in response as people wanted to know what was going on and who the invaders had been. Stark didn’t have the time or patience to lay out all the details, so he just said, “That was a drug gang,” and the residents of the park gathered around him nodded knowingly.

  Several more armed me
n joined the group as Stark and Alton moved on toward the entrance. Stark saw some shot windows, but most of the bullet holes seemed to be high up on the mobile homes, as if the gunmen had aimed that way on purpose. He began to have some hope that no one had been killed.

  A white wooden fence ran along the highway for a quarter of a mile, marking the front of the retirement park. In the middle of that fence were a couple of brick pillars flanking the entrance. An arched sign giving the name of the place was above the opening in the fence. Stark looked at it and realized there had been nothing to stop the pickups and low-riders from driving right in.

  That problem might have to be addressed in the future.

  Stark looked toward the town of Devil’s Pass and saw flashing lights in the distance, speeding closer. For the third time in the past thirty-six hours, the sheriff’s department was responding to emergency calls from Shady Hills.

  The deputies might not like it if they found a group of armed people waiting for them at the entrance. That sort of thing made law officers assume that they had run into a mob. Stark said, “You should all go on back to your homes. There won’t be any more trouble tonight.”

  “How can you be sure of that?” a man asked.

  “They made their point already,” Stark replied.

  Whatever that point was, he added to himself.

  The crowd broke up as the flashing lights continued drawing closer. Stark handed his shotgun to Alton and said, “Head back to your place and check on Fred, will you? Let him and Aurelia know that the law’s on the way.”

  “If they’re outside, they can probably hear the sirens,” Alton said. “What are you going to do, John Howard?”

  “I’ll wait here and meet the cops, let them know what happened.”

  Alton nodded and trotted off. Stark stood beside one of the brick columns at the entrance and waited.

  He didn’t have to wait for long. A sheriff’s cruiser skidded to a halt on the side of the road near him, and both deputies had their weapons drawn tonight as they popped out of the vehicle. One of them shined the cruiser’s spotlight on Stark, who held his empty hands up in plain sight as he squinted against the glare.