The Bleeding Edge (10 page)

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Authors: William W. Johnstone

BOOK: The Bleeding Edge
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C
HAPTER
N
INETEEN
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 men 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.
“Stay where you are!” the other deputy called.
“Wasn't planning on going anywhere,” Stark said.
“Who are you?”
“John Howard Stark. Sheriff Lozano knows me.”
“What happened here? We had reports of shots fired and some sort of explosion.”
“That about sums it up,” Stark drawled. “A gang of thugs came in, shot the place up, and threw a couple of Molotov cocktails.”
“The volunteer fire department is on the way.”
“That's good,” Stark said, “but the fire will probably be out by the time they get here.”
The deputy at the spotlight angled it down as two more cruisers pulled up behind the first one.
“Come over here, Mr. Stark,” he said. “Are you some sort of spokesman for the residents of the park?”
“No, I just thought somebody ought to meet you fellas and let you know what was going on.”
“Are you people at war out here?” the second deputy said in a disgruntled voice. “Human heads, gunshots, explosions . . . I thought retirement was supposed to be peaceful!”
“I reckon we all make mistakes, Deputy,” Stark said.
By midnight, deputies were still canvassing the residents of the park, but the details had become relatively clear, Sheriff George Lozano explained to Stark.
“They drove in, came straight here, and then started raising hell,” Lozano said. “They kept it up all the way out of the park. So it's pretty obvious that their anger was directed at you, Mr. Stark, and at you and your wife, Mr. Gomez.”
Lozano looked over at Fred as he added that part.
“It's because of last night, when they tried to rob me,” Fred said.
“Possibly,” Lozano said, but he didn't sound convinced. “They brought an awful lot of firepower with them to get even for a simple home invasion gone wrong, though.”
“Those fellas don't like to do things halfway,” Stark said.
Lozano just grunted. The three of them were standing outside Fred's mobile home. Burned spots in the grass were visible in the glow of the headlights from Lozano's sheriff's department SUV.
“Are you sure you've told me everything you know about this?” the sheriff asked.
“We're as baffled as you are, Sheriff,” Stark said.
That wasn't exactly true, but Stark
was
puzzled at the sudden escalation of violence. If the thugs had shown up and made an attempt to get Antonio out of Fred's house, that wouldn't have surprised him. From the looks of things, though, he wasn't sure they even cared about Antonio anymore.
“Well, if you think of anything else, you be sure to let me know,” Lozano went on.
“Here's something else, Sheriff,” Fred said. “What are you going to do about this?”
“I'm doing everything I can. My men are getting descriptions of the suspects' vehicles. We'll try to track them down.”
“What about protecting us from something like this happening again?”
“And how am I going to do that, Mr. Gomez? This is a big county, and I'm like everybody else in the world. I've had to deal with budget cuts. I don't have the resources I once did.”
“If the government would just quit wasting money on a bunch of politically correct crap, there'd be plenty left over to pay for law enforcement,” Fred snapped.
“You're talking to the wrong man. Tell it to the politicians.”
“Sheriff's an elected office,” Stark pointed out. “You are a politician.”
“Not like the ones who dole out the funding and don't have a clue what they're—” Lozano stopped short and took a deep breath. “You didn't hear me say that.”
Stark shrugged.
“You've got problems. So do we. What do we do if that bunch comes back?”
“Call 911,” Lozano said curtly. He turned and walked toward his SUV.
Fred stood beside Stark and asked as the sheriff drove away, “What
are
we going to do if they come back, John Howard?”
Stark's mouth was a tight, grim line as he gave Fred the only answer that was left.
“The same thing that folks have been doing for a long time when the wolves start howling in the night,” he said. “We stand up for ourselves. We fight back.”
C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
“Miraculously, no one was seriously hurt in the incident. We spoke with Sheriff George Lozano about it.”
A close-up of Lozano's weary face appeared on the screen as he said, “At this point we have a pretty good idea who's responsible for this outrage and expect to make several arrests shortly.”
A couple of guttural grunts came from Gabir Patel. After a moment, Tomás Beredo realized that the Lebanese man was laughing. The two men sat in the dining room of Beredo's ranch house enjoying a leisurely breakfast and watching the news on a flat-screen TV hung on the wall.
“You hear that?” Patel said. “He says they're going to make several arrests.”
Beredo waved an impeccably manicured hand.
“We have nothing to fear from Sheriff Lozano.”
“In your pocket, eh?”
“Strictly speaking, no. But he fears us. He fears for his family's safety if he becomes too zealous in his actions toward us.”
“He would fear you even more if you took his son or daughter and cut off a finger,” Patel suggested.
“If it becomes necessary,” Beredo agreed blandly.
The camera had cut back to the host of the local morning news show, a Hispanic male almost as handsome as Beredo himself. He was saying, “We have a crew out at the Shady Hills Retirement Park this morning, and our own Tiffany de la Garza spoke to some of the residents.”
A live shot of an impossibly beautiful field reporter appeared on screen. She was holding a microphone as she said redundantly, “We're here at the Shady Hills Retirement Park, the scene of some shocking violence last night.” She turned to one of the people standing near her. “How did you feel when the shooting started?”
The elderly man seemed a little overwhelmed by having the microphone thrust into his face, but he recovered and said, “Well, I was scared. It sounded like a war. I was in Vietnam, you know, and it sounded like the Tet Offensive all over again. Not quite that bad, of course, but you get the idea.”
The reporter, who hadn't been born until long after the Tet Offensive was over, just gave him a blank smile and said, “What about you, ma'am? Were you frightened?”
The woman she had spoken to said, “You bet I was. Guns were goin' off everywhere, and then there was this explosion. Why, I was so scared I almost—”
“Thank you,” the field reporter cut in before the woman could go into detail about how she had almost reacted to the raid. The reporter turned away and the cameraman swung to follow her as she spoke to another man standing nearby. “How about you, sir? What do you think about what happened her last night?”
The park resident, a tall, powerful-looking man with thick, gray-shot dark hair and a mustache, said, “What do I think? I think it's a shame such things can even happen in this country. There was a time when a bunch of lawless thugs wouldn't dare attack innocent folks like this because they knew if they did they'd be met with hot lead. Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea if that was the case again.”
“Sir, are you advocating vigilante justice?” the reporter asked breathlessly, as if sensing controversy and higher ratings.
“I'm advocating something that goes way back in this country, the idea that people have a right to protect themselves, especially when the government can't—or won't—do it. That's not vigilante justice, that's just justice . . . and common sense.”
“So you're saying the residents of the park should fight back if they're attacked again?”
“Some of us already did,” the man said. “Next time there'll be more of us standing up to those punks.”
The field reporter was starting to look a little uneasy. This interview was straying into a politically incorrect area that could be dangerous.
“You almost sound like you're daring them to come back,” she said.
The man shook his head.
“No. I hope they don't ever show their faces around here again. We're peace-loving folks here at Shady Hills and just want to be left alone. But we won't be bullied, and if we're hit, we're gonna hit back . . . hard.”
“Would you mind telling me your name, sir?”
“Not at all.” The man looked directly into the camera with eyes that were as hard as flint. “It's John Howard Stark.”
The answer didn't surprise Beredo. He had thought that the man looked familiar, and now he realized that he recognized Stark from newspaper pictures dating back to Stark's previous clash with the cartel. He had known that Stark lived at Shady Hills, of course; Jalisco had told him that much. And now he had seen Stark, the man filled with arrogant defiance, for himself.
“Stark,” Patel said. “The one you were talking about a couple of nights ago.”
“Yes,” Beredo said with a nod.
“I don't like him. Like the girl said, he dares you to act.”
“He will regret that,” Beredo vowed. “He will die screaming, but only after he knows that he is responsible for the deaths of everyone he holds dear.”
“Yes,” Patel said. “Like all the other Americans, he must be taught that he cannot defy our glorious cause.”
Beredo didn't give a damn about any “cause” other than his own ambitions, but he didn't see any point in saying that to Patel. If Hezbollah and the cartel were to come to an arrangement, it would be because the deal was beneficial to both sides, not because either side really cared about the other.
Beredo took out his phone and called one of his lieutenants.
“I want to see Ignacio Montez,” he snapped. “Right away.”
This John Howard Stark could not be allowed to live. If Montez wanted to protect his own place in the scheme of things, let alone move up in the cartel, he would see to it that Stark was dealt with, and that the problem of Shady Hills Retirement Park was taken care of.
Otherwise heads would roll, and none of them would belong to Tomás Beredo.

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