The Bleeding Edge (13 page)

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Authors: William W. Johnstone

BOOK: The Bleeding Edge
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C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-FIVE
The fifth morning after the raid, a sheriff's department SUV pulled up in front of Stark's mobile home. Sheriff George Lozano got out and came toward the porch.
Stark saw him through the window and met him on the porch with a pleasant nod, asking, “What brings you out here this morning, Sheriff?”
“Rumors, Mr. Stark,” Lozano said.
“What sort of rumors?” Stark asked, even though he figured he already knew the answer.
“That you've turned this park into an armed camp. I see by the guards at the gate the rumors are true.”
“A couple of fellas standing around chewing the fat doesn't make this an armed camp,” Stark said.
Lozano snorted.
“It does if one of them is holding a deer rifle and the other one has a shotgun,” he said.
“Both perfectly legal weapons,” Stark pointed out.
“Are you saying that if I searched this place, I wouldn't find any assault rifles?”
“I don't have any idea what you'd find, Sheriff,” Stark said. “I've only been in a few of the houses. I know you'd need a mighty broad search warrant to search the whole park, though. Not sure a judge would give you that much leeway.”
As a matter of fact, Stark was relatively sure there
weren't
any assault rifles in the park. The residents who owned guns had their hunting rifles and shotguns, along with handguns they had bought after Texas began issuing concealed carry permits. Maybe there were a few weapons that had been modified illegally, but not many, Stark thought, because the people who lived at Shady Hills were law-abiding citizens.
And as usual these days, there was a good chance they would get penalized for that.
“Why did you come to see me, anyway?” Stark went on. “Jack Kasek and his wife own the park.”
“Because I knew you'd be the ringleader of any militia that was forming out here,” Lozano replied. His voice was hard and blunt.
“Militia's a buzzword, Sheriff. It conjures up images of wild-eyed domestic terrorists, which is exactly what the people who throw it around want it to do.”
“Are you denying it?”
“Damn straight I'm denying it,” Stark said. “We don't have any militia out here. Maybe we're being a little more watchful these days, but after what happened, can you blame us?”
Lozano didn't answer that. Instead he looked at Stark for a long moment and then asked, “How many people have moved out of here in the last five days?”
Stark's mouth tightened. That was a troubling aspect of the whole situation. There had been close to two hundred mobile homes in the park on the night of the raid. But since then, starting the very next day, trucks and work crews had shown up to move some of them out. Only about a dozen so far, but the owners had given up their leases, found other places to live, and moved out, lock, stock, and barrel. If trouble erupted again, Stark felt sure that more of the residents would leave. If the trouble was bad enough, it might cause a mass exodus.
“What's your point, Sheriff?” he asked.
“My point is that the people who have left did so because they were afraid. They know something's coming, and they don't want to be here when it happens.”
“If that's the way you feel, then I'd think you'd be trying to give us more protection out here.”
“I'm giving you all the protection I can,” Lozano said. He took off his Stetson and ran his fingers through his thick dark hair. “Look, Mr. Stark, I hate those drug smugglers as much as you do.”
“I sort of doubt that,” Stark said quietly.
Lozano ignored him and went on, “I'd like to put a stop to all their activities in this area, I swear I would. But I have limited resources, and not only that, I have lawyers watching my department with eagle eyes, just waiting for us to violate some poor criminal's civil rights. I work for the county commissioners, and they've made it clear. If I or my deputies do anything to open the county up to a federal lawsuit, they'll take it out on my ass.”
“So we're supposed to pack up and get out and let the cartel have this land so the county won't get sued?” Stark didn't bother trying to keep the disbelief and scorn out of his voice as he asked the question.
“That's not what I said, damn it! But arming yourselves. . . turning any little thing into a bloodbath . . . that's not gonna help anything, Stark.”
“If there's a bloodbath, it won't be us who causes it,” Stark said grimly.
“But some of your people will die,” Lozano shot back at him. “Have you thought about that?”
Of course he had. He had lost sleep over it, in fact, lying awake and thinking of the violent end that some of the residents would likely come to if there was another confrontation with the drug smugglers. The very idea sickened Stark.
But he had a hunch that if the people of Shady Hill didn't try to defend themselves, things would be even worse. It wasn't beyond the realm of possibility that those cartel gunnies would storm in here and try to wipe out the whole park.
Talk about your bloodbath.
“Sheriff, I don't know what to tell you,” Stark said. “There's no militia, we don't have any assault rifles—or bazookas or tanks, either, although under certain circumstances I wouldn't mind—and we're not going to start any trouble. We'll fight if we're forced to in order to defend our loved ones and protect our homes, but probably ninety-five percent of the people in the state of Texas, outside the city limits of Austin, would tell you the same thing.”
Lozano clapped his hat back on his head and snapped, “Fine. Consider yourself warned. Step outside the bounds of the law and you'll be treated like any other criminal.”
“You mean the media will talk about how I'm just a misunderstood victim of a heartless American society and a bunch of Hollywood actors will come and wave protest signs about how I should be released because I'm a political prisoner?”
The sheriff just made a frustrated noise deep in his throat and turned to stalk back to his SUV. Stark had to chuckle as he watched Lozano walk off.
Then his expression grew more serious. Every instinct in Stark's body warned him that a storm was brewing and that it would break soon with all the ferocity of a cyclone. But that might not be the worst of it. Those who survived could face an even greater ordeal when it was over, if what Lozano was saying was true.
Having a Mexican drug cartel gunning for you was bad enough.
Stark had good reason to know that having the federal government on your ass was even worse.
C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-SIX
The residents of Shady Hills preparing themselves for an armed invasion probably would have drawn more attention from the media if not for another story that broke that week, the unexpected (by some) revelation that the former president who had ordered the nerve gas attack on American citizens opposed to his policies had had extensive ties in his youth to an Islamic terrorist group in the Far East. Evidence had surfaced to indicate that he had taken part in the planning of a bombing attack on an American embassy, an attack that had never taken place because the CIA had discovered it in time to stop it. The network pundits and news anchors were having a field day ganging up on the former chief executive, no doubt in the hope that that would make everyone forget they had been his biggest cheerleaders for years and years and were largely responsible for getting him elected to high office in the first place.
Rats, sinking ship, etc., etc.
, Stark thought as he watched the near-hysterical coverage day after day. But at least it kept attention focused somewhere else other than the Shady Hills Retirement Park.
As dusk settled in on the day Sheriff Lozano had paid his visit to the park, Stark drove his pickup out to the gate to check with the guards there. Four men were on duty. He didn't recall their names, although he remembered talking to them at the organizational meeting. They introduced themselves to him again and shook hands.
“Something wrong, Mr. Stark?” one of them asked. “You don't normally come out here in the evening, do you?”
“No, I'm just feeling a little antsy today,” Stark replied.
“You think something's going to happen?”
Stark shook his head and said, “I don't know. Maybe I'm just feeling my age. But I've got a hunch you fellas need to keep your eyes and ears open extra wide tonight.”
“We'd be doing that anyway,” another of the men said. “Hey, I heard that the sheriff came out to talk to you today, Mr. Stark. What did he want?”
“He was warning us not to do anything illegal,” Stark replied dryly. “And telling us again that we're on our own.”
“Those things seem rather self-contradictory.” The man who made the comment had been a philosophy professor in college before he retired, Stark recalled. “Of course, if you subscribe to an existentialist belief system—”
“What Phil means,” one of the other guards interrupted with a grin, “is that we're screwed either way.”
That brought laughter all around.
The gate guards were connected to the roaming patrol and to all six of the captains by walkie-talkies. While Stark was there they ran a comm check on the units, all of which were working perfectly. Stark said good night to the men.
“And good luck,” Phil the philosophy professor added. “That's what you mean, isn't it?
“We can always use good luck,” Stark said.
He drove back to his house and found Hallie Duncan sitting on the porch steps. He had seen her car parked at her dad's earlier, so he'd known she was in the park, but he hadn't expected her to pay him a visit.
“Good to see you, Hallie,” he said. “What brings you here tonight?”
She patted the step beside her and said, “Sit down, John Howard.”
“Uh-oh. Something about that doesn't sound good.”
“What, me asking you to sit with me?”
“Not that, just your tone of voice,” Stark said as he settled onto the step beside her. “You've got some bad news.”
“I got a call today from my friend who works at the Justice Department.”
Stark drew in a deep breath.
“Go ahead,” he told her.
“He discovered that your name is flagged in Justice's computers. They monitor just about everything—TV, radio, the Internet—and every mention of you on any news outlet anywhere generates a report that goes straight to the office of the attorney general.”
“So they're keeping an eye on me,” Stark said with a shrug. “That doesn't surprise me.”
“No, what they're doing is waiting for an opportunity to pounce on you, John Howard. They want to come down on you with both feet as hard as they can, and they'll do it if you give them the least excuse.”
“I don't doubt it. But that doesn't change anything, does it? The folks here are still in danger. They have to be able to protect themselves, and I'm willing to help 'em.”
“There's more, but I don't really understand it. Josh is a pretty good hacker. He's really risking his neck poking around in computers where he's not supposed to be, but he found a link from your name to a file called ‘Silence.' He couldn't get in there. The encryption was too good. Do you have any idea what that might be about, John Howard?”
Stark shook his head.
“Nope. Not a clue.”
“I think they've got your name on a list of people to be silenced.”
“You mean killed?” Stark asked in surprise.
“It's certainly a possibility.”
Stark frowned in thought for a moment, then said, “I don't know, Hallie, that seems pretty unlikely to me. Sure, there are folks in Washington who wouldn't mind making my life a living hell, but they're more likely to set the IRS on me again, or file some civil rights suit against me and try to bankrupt me, or just generally harass me. Seems hard to believe that the attorney general would have his own private assassin working for him, rubbing out anybody who disagrees with the administration.”
“Is it really that hard to believe, John Howard? Is it really? Think about the things they've pulled over the past ten years.”
“Different president now,” Stark pointed out.
“Does that matter? He's just as self-deluded and power-hungry as the rest of them. He and his allies know better than you do when it comes to your money, your health care, your religion, and everything else about you. They want to control everything you do from the moment you're born until you're lowered into the ground. But it's all for your own good, of course, so that justifies any means they want to use to grab more power.”
Hallie had a bitter edge in her voice as she spoke. A raw, bleeding edge, Stark thought. The whole country was being drained dry by the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, and none of them cared how badly the average Americans were hurting.
“I didn't know you were so political, Hallie,” Stark commented. “You've never said much about things like that.”
“I work in the justice system,” she said with a shrug. “It's full of people who firmly believe in the things the other side is doing, even though the evidence that it doesn't work is right in front of their eyes every day, over and over again. But I still have to work with them and get along with them, so mostly I just keep my mouth shut.”
“Just like people who work at universities.”
“Yeah. Those bastions of diversity and tolerance . . . as long as you agree with them one hundred percent.”
“None of which means that the attorney general is planning to have me killed.”
“No, but you'd better be careful anyway.”
“I always am,” Stark said, smiling.
“No, I mean it.” She reached over and took hold of his hand, squeezing it warmly. “I don't want anything to happen to you, John Howard.”
She didn't let go of his hand. After a moment Stark said quietly, “Hallie . . .”
She leaned over and rested her head against his shoulder.
“Damn it, John Howard,” she said in a voice little more than a whisper, “I know you've got it in your head that the two of us have to stay just friends, but there's no reason it has to be that way.”
“Yeah, there is,” Stark said. He tried not to sound harsh as the words came out, but he was afraid he did anyway.
“Why? Because you were married? I never knew your wife, John Howard, but if she loved you, and I'm sure she did, she would have wanted you to move on and have some warmth, some happiness, in your life.”
“I reckon that's true,” Stark said, remembering what he'd had with Elaine. What Hallie had just said was right, there was no doubt about that.
“Then why are you being so blasted stubborn? Tell me one good reason why the two of us shouldn't go inside your mobile home right now and give each other some happiness.”
Stark could tell her one good reason, all right, and he was about to when the walkie-talkie clipped to his belt crackled into life. A voice he recognized as Phil the professor's said urgently, “Mr. Stark! Everybody! Come in, come in! Vehicles headed for the gate, and they're coming fast!”

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