Stand Your Ground

PINNACLE BOOKS

Kensington Publishing Corp.

www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.

—D
ANIEL
W
EBSTER

“Our top story tonight . . . the Supreme Court, in a closely divided five-to-four opinion, has ruled that the 150 alleged Islamic terrorists still in the custody of the United States military must be turned over to civilian authorities and transferred out of the military prisons, where they have been held, into a civilian facility. They will no longer be subject to military tribunals but rather will be tried in civilian courts. The deciding vote in the case was cast by newly appointed Chief Justice Sofia Hernandez Mkwame, who wrote in the majority opinion: ‘The rights enjoyed by citizens of this country must be extended to those who have come to our shore as guests, or else this isn't America anymore.'

“In response to this opinion, the Senate Minority Leader, Senator Carl Alvarez, R-Texas, had this to say:

“‘I hate to say it, but Chief Justice Mkwame is right about one thing—this sure as hell isn't America anymore.'”

Fuego, Texas

 

The bright lights on the tall metal standards around the stadium lit up the night for hundreds of yards around. The cheers of the people in the stands filled the air. An autumn Friday night in Texas meant only one thing.

Fuego had gone to war.

And the enemy was the McElhaney Panthers.

The undefeated Panthers were ranked number six in the state in the 3-A classification and had come in here tonight expecting to crush the lowly Fuego Mules, who currently owned an unimpressive record of two wins and four losses.

Yet here it was, middle of the third quarter, and Fuego held a slender 14–10 lead on the visiting Panthers.

The people in the home grandstands were going nuts. They were on their feet with almost every play as they cheered for the local high school team. The band played the fight song at high volume.

Across the field in the smaller stands where visitors sat, Panther fans who had made the ninety-mile drive from McElhaney were fit to be tied. Their shouts were edged with disbelief as they implored their boys to hold the line. Their dreams of an undefeated season were fading. The Mules had the ball and were driving for a score that would pad their lead.

At the big concession stand on the home side, operated by the Fuego Booster Club, Lucas Kincaid leaned forward and said over the racket, “I'll have two chili dogs and a Coke, please.”

The booster club mom who was tired and harried from the press of hungry and thirsty customers blew a strand of blond hair out of her eyes and said, “Sure, hon. You want onions and jalapeños on those dogs?”

Kincaid shook his head and said, “No thanks. Just chili and cheese.”

“You got it.”

He saw her casting glances at him as she fixed the chili dogs. Probably wondering if he had a kid playing in the game or maybe in the band. He was fairly youthful in appearance but had touches of gray in his close-cropped dark hair, which made him old enough to have a child in high school. She didn't know him, though, and even in this day and age, everybody knew 'most everybody else in a small town like Fuego.

But not Kincaid. He didn't have any relatives around here, didn't have a kid who was a football player or a cheerleader or a trombonist or anything else.

That didn't stop him from attending the games. He wanted to fit in, because the more he fit in, the lower a profile he could keep. Everybody in Fuego went to the games, so he did, too. He didn't want to get a reputation as a reclusive loner. People remembered reclusive loners.

Kincaid didn't want to be remembered. He didn't want to be noticed.

That way if his enemies came looking for him, they'd be less likely to find him.

Make that
when
his enemies came looking for him, not
if
, he thought. It was only a matter of time.

The blond woman set the chili dogs in their paper boats and the canned Coke dripping from the ice chest on the counter in front of him and said, “That'll be five dollars.”

“Thanks,” Kincaid said as he laid a bill on the counter beside the food.

“Can you handle that okay?” she asked as he started to pick up the food.

Kincaid smiled and said, “Yeah, I think so.” His hands were pretty big. He had no trouble holding the two hot dogs in one hand and the Coke in the other. He opened the can before he picked it up and took a long swallow of the cold, sweet liquid.

“Thanks,” the woman said. Kincaid could tell that she wouldn't mind if he stayed and talked to her some more, even though more customers waited in line behind him. He had seen the appreciation in her eyes when she cast those hooded glances at him. He was a good-looking stranger, and she probably didn't have much excitement in her life.

Lucky woman, he thought as he turned away.

In his experience, he'd found that excitement was
way
overrated.

 

 

Andy Frazier's nerves were jumping around all over the place. He struggled to bring them under control as he leaned forward to address the other players in the huddle. He had to make them think he was calm so they would stay calm. He was their quarterback, after all. Their leader.

“Red fire right on two,” he said, relaying the play that one of the offensive tackles had brought in from the sideline. “Break!”

The team broke and went up to the line. As they took their stances, Andy looked over at the sidelines. He saw Jill Hamilton leading cheers, her long, dark brown ponytail bouncing as she jumped around and waved blue-and-white pompoms.

She must have felt his eyes on her, because she paused and turned, and the connection between them over the green turf was electric. They'd been dating for six weeks and Andy knew she'd be riding him in the front seat of his pickup before the night was over, but it would be even better if they could beat those asshats from McElhaney first.

Andy bent over center and barked, “Hut, hut!” and Charlie Lollar snapped the ball to him. Andy turned, faked to Brent Sanger charging past him from the running back spot, and slid along the line with the ball on his right hip as he waited for Spence Parker to make his cut and come open on his pass route.

But then one of the linemen—Ernie Gibbs, big but slow and stupid—lost his block and suddenly a McElhaney linebacker was right in Andy's face.
Gibby, you son of a bitch!
Andy screamed mentally as he twisted away from the rush.

There was no pocket—the play was designed to look like a rush, so the linemen had fired out rather than dropping back—and as Andy curled back across the field he saw a sea of McElhaney red and silver coming at him. He dodged this way and that and looked downfield to see if anybody was open, or at least close enough to open that he could heave the ball ten yards over his head and get away with it. They were almost in field goal range for Pete Garcia, but an intentional grounding penalty, with its loss of both yardage and down, would push them back too far.

Then Andy caught a glimpse of a seam in all that red and silver and cut into it without stopping to think. Hands grabbed at him, but he shook loose. Bodies banged into him, but he bounced off and kept his feet. He pulled the ball close to his body to keep it from getting swatted loose in all the traffic.

He was just trying to reach the first-down marker, but suddenly he came free and saw nothing but open field in front of him. The line of scrimmage had been the McElhaney 35, and he was past that now so there was no point anymore in looking for a receiver. Andy put his head down and ran as frenzied shouts went up from the stands on both sides of the field.

He passed the 30, the 25, and cut to his right as he sensed more than saw one of the McElhaney safeties coming in from his left. The diving tackle fell short, but the safety had forced Andy back toward the pursuit. He angled left at the 20 and saw the flag at the front corner of the end zone.

Now it was a race, and a hope that nobody behind him held him or threw an illegal block.

By the time Andy reached the 10, he didn't hear anything except his own pulse pounding in his ears. No, that wasn't his pulse, he realized, it was a couple of McElhaney players closing in on him from behind. He crossed the 5, left his feet at the 3-yard line just as they hit him. Momentum carried all three of them forward, and when Andy came crashing to the ground with nearly 400 pounds of McElhaney on top of him, the ball tucked under his arm was a good eight inches beyond the goal line.

Andy saw that, realized he had scored, and felt a moment of pure elation before he started screaming from the pain of his newly broken leg.

 

 

Up in the stands, George Baldwin turned to his friend John Howard Stark and said, “That's a sign of true greatness, being able to make something out of nothing. You know good and well that was a busted play, John Howard, and it wound up being a touchdown.”

“Yeah, but it looks like the kid paid a price for it,” Stark drawled. “He's still down.”

Baldwin, a burly, bear-like, middle-aged man with close-cropped grizzled hair, frowned worriedly toward the group of players, coaches, and trainers clustered around the fallen player.

“Damn it, I hope he's all right. That's Andy Frazier. His dad Bert works for me out at the prison.”

“I hope he's all right, too,” Stark said. He was taller than his old friend but weighed about the same. Stark had lost a little weight over the past couple of years, but to all appearances he was still a vital, healthy man despite being on the upward slope of sixty.

An apprehensive quiet settled over the stands during this break in the action. The crowd became even more hushed when a gurney was brought out from the ambulance that had pulled up on the cinder track surrounding the field. Everybody on both sides stood up and applauded when Andy Frazier was loaded onto the gurney and taken to the ambulance. His right leg was immobilized and probably broken, but he was awake and talking and holding the hand of a pretty brunette cheerleader.

The kid would be all right, Stark thought. Even with the way things were today, he had everything in the world to live for.

As the teams lined up to kick the extra point, Baldwin said, “You never have told me why you showed up out of the blue to pay me a visit, John Howard.”

“Can't a guy stop by to see an old army buddy?” Stark asked with a smile.

“Sure, but you've never been what I'd call the sentimental type. Anything you ever did, you had a good reason for it.” Baldwin frowned again. “I heard about your health problems. Hell, everybody heard about them. There was the trial, and all that crap with that drug gang—”

Stark winced and said, “I could do without all the notoriety. I'm just glad things have settled down and I can go places again without being recognized. I've been traveling around, seeing some of the old outfit I haven't seen in years.”

“You're not going around and, well, saying good-bye, are you, John Howard?”

Stark laughed and shook his head.

“No, this isn't a farewell tour, George. Fact is, I'm in remission and feel better than I have in a year or more. But none of us are getting any younger.”

“Boy, that's the truth,” Baldwin said. He clapped as the Fuego kicker drilled the extra point and made the score 21–10. “I've got a hunch I'm about to get a lot older, too.”

“The terrorists,” Stark said.

“Yeah.” Baldwin sighed. “All the places they could have put them, and instead of spreading them out they've sent all hundred and fifty of the bastards to Hell's Gate.”

Stark knew exactly what his friend was talking about. The official name of the place was the Baldwin Correctional Facility—a privately run penitentiary with a contract with the United States government to house federal prisoners—but nearly everyone knew it as Hell's Gate because of a geographical feature just west of the prison.

A long line of cliffs ran north and south there, and the red sandstone of which they were formed made them as crimson as blood when the morning sun hit them. Then, in the afternoon, the setting sun lined up perfectly with a gap in the cliff, and anyone looking through that opening at the blazing orb would think that Hell itself lay just on the other side . . . hence the name “Hell's Gate.”

The prison had been an economic boon to this isolated county in West Texas, which was larger than many northeastern states but had more jackrabbits and rattlesnakes than people, making it a good location for a maximum security facility. Hell's Gate was actually the largest employer in the county these days.

Because of the seemingly permanent economic downturn that had gripped the country for the past ten years, ever since the Democrats had learned how to buy national election victories by passing out benefits to low-information voters and how to steal the elections they couldn't buy, for a time it had seemed that Fuego was going to dry up and blow away.

Hell's Gate had changed all that, providing jobs for many of the town's citizens. Guards, administrators, service personnel, all benefited from the prison's being there. If the trade-off was having hundreds of violent offenders housed just a few miles west of town . . . well, so be it. Prices had to be paid.

But now, with the recent closure of Guantanamo and other off-the-books military prisons, finally fulfilling the promise of the president who had started the nation's precipitous slide into mediocrity, the population of Hell's Gate had swelled dramatically, and nobody wanted the newest prisoners: hard-core Islamic fundamentalists who had nothing in their hearts but hate for America and a burning desire to harm the country. Stark had run up against their kind before and knew how dangerous they were.

The Supreme Court had ruled that they had to be held in a civilian prison, though, and tried in civilian courts. It was a farce, an invitation to catastrophe, but age had picked off enough of the Justices so that the gate was wide open for anything the so-called progressives wanted to do, without any way to rein them in.

And
that
, John Howard Stark thought as he watched a football game on a Friday night in Texas, was the true gate to Hell for a once-great nation.

“Well . . . maybe it'll work out all right,” he said to Baldwin, although he didn't believe that for a second.

“Maybe,” Baldwin said, not sounding convinced, either. “Hey, you want to come out to the prison, have a look around?” He grinned. “I'll buy you lunch in the cafeteria. The food is actually pretty good.”

Stark nodded and said, “I'll just take you up on that, George.”