The Bleeding Edge (26 page)

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Authors: William W. Johnstone

BOOK: The Bleeding Edge
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C
HAPTER
F
IFTY-ONE
Reuben rose up enough to glance through the bullet-shattered front and back windows of Keith's car and saw that his friend was right. Three of the gunmen were charging while the fourth hung back and sprayed the car with shots to keep the police officers pinned down.
It wouldn't do any good to sit there and wait for death to come to them. Clutching the baseball bat, Reuben rolled out from behind the car. A bullet kicked up dirt close beside him. Footsteps slapped the ground. He twisted and rammed the bat up into the groin of the dark figure looming over him. The man screamed and the gun in his hand roared, but he had already started to clutch at himself and the bullet went almost straight down, smashing through his right foot and making him howl even louder.
Reuben came up swinging the bat. It slammed into the man's head with an resounding
clang!
As the man went down, Reuben scooped up the gun he'd dropped. The letter of the law didn't mean a damned thing when it was stacked up against survival. Reuben came up and fired through the car's open windows at one of the menacing shapes on the other side. The man grunted and went down.
More shots had been blasting while that was going on. Keith and the third gunman were trading bullets. Reuben dived for cover again as the fourth man, the one who had stayed back, sent a slug whipping past his ear.
“This one's down!” Keith called. A surge of relief went through Reuben at the sound of his friend's voice. “The guy behind the other car is the only one left!”
The fourth gunman knew that, too. He broke from cover and dashed toward the open field at the side of the highway, firing as he ran. Clearly, he intended to flee on foot.
Reuben threw the bat. It spun through the air and struck the running man's calves, getting tangled up between them. With a startled cry, the man lost his balance and pitched off his feet to go sprawling facedown in the dirt. Reuben charged toward him, grabbed up the bat again, and brought it down on the man's wrist as he reached for the gun he'd dropped when he fell. Bone broke with a sharp crack.
Tires squealed as Luiz Garcia reached the scene. He jumped out of his car, revolver in hand, and ran to join Keith. Together they covered the gunmen while Reuben kicked the men's weapons well out of reach. Three of them were either unconscious or dead, and the fourth lay on the ground cradling his broken wrist and whimpering.
Breathing slightly hard, Reuben asked Keith, “Do you have any idea what this battle was about?”
“Not a clue,” Keith replied, “but like you said, Chief, I bet if we look in that car we'll find something they didn't want us to see.”
The “something” turned out to be a trunk full of cocaine, more than a million dollars' worth. Reuben waited until he had a properly executed search warrant to open the trunk. He didn't want any sort of procedural glitch to taint this bust.
All four of the men who'd been in the car were illegals. Two had been killed in the shootout, and the other two were in the hospital in Devil's Pass under police guard. An examination of the car turned up more than just the cocaine and some assorted weapons. It also found a busted water pump, which explained what had happened. The car had broken down. Reuben figured the frantic mules had called their bosses for instructions and been told to wait there until somebody could come to pick them up along with the drugs. Unfortunately for them, Keith had come along first and they had panicked and opened fire.
The story made headlines all across the state. A million-dollar cocaine bust might have anyway, but its location, in the notorious town of Shady Hills, made it even more newsworthy.
“You were lucky,” Stark told Reuben the next day after Reuben finished filling him in on all the details. “You and Keith were outnumbered and outgunned. That ruckus could have ended very badly.”
“I know,” Reuben admitted. “Maybe I was a little reckless going out there that way.”
“No, I'd say it was a lot reckless, since you were unarmed. It's a good thing Keith was able to shoot those two fellas himself.”
The look Stark gave Reuben made it clear that he had a pretty good idea what had really happened. The official report didn't say anything about Reuben using a gun, though, and that was just fine with Stark.
“From now on, it might be a good idea if you didn't get mixed up in things like that,” Stark went on. “Since you can't be armed and all.”
“I swing a mean bat,” Reuben said with a faint smile.
“That you do, but most of the time a bat's not gonna do any good against a gun.”
“You're right, Mayor, but I'm not going to leave one of my officers hanging out to dry, either.”
For a moment Stark didn't say anything. Then he chuckled and said, “Between you and me, son, I probably would have done exactly the same thing. And I mean everything.”
Reuben nodded, understanding what Stark meant. He said, “You realize that much cocaine meant this was a major run. It had to belong to the cartel.”
“I agree,” Stark said. “And they won't be happy that they lost it, either.”
 
 
“You send that much cocaine north in a car that's going to break down?”
Nacho Montez managed not to wince as Señor Espantoso's angry words lashed at him.
“There was no way to know in advance that the car was going to break down, señor,” he said, hoping that it wouldn't sound too much like he was making an excuse. “It seemed to be in good working order.”
That was the truth, but clearly the señor didn't seem to care. He stalked back and forth across the expensively tiled floor in the living room of the ranch house he had taken over as his headquarters and said, “Those gringo police never should have even been there. The sheriff 's department never patrolled that stretch of the highway that closely. This was the doing of those old dogs in Shady Hills!”
Nacho nodded.
“Sí. But the police they have hired are not old. My sources tell me that several of them are former Border Patrol agents. They know what they're doing, señor.”
“So do I,” Espantoso snapped. “I am being frustrated at every turn! That town should not exist! Those old people should have fled! Now they are more entrenched than ever. We'll never get them out of there!”
Jalisco had been hanging back, letting Nacho do the talking, but now the lean, pockmarked man from south of the border stepped up and said, “There is a way, señor.”
Espantoso glanced at the Arab, who was sitting off to the side watching, watching like a hawk as he always did. Nacho could tell that the señor hated the Arab and felt like he'd been saddled unfairly with this outside interference. Espantoso couldn't afford to displease the Arab too much, though.
“Tell me,” the señor snapped at Jalisco.
In a surprisingly strong, assertive tone, Jalisco said, “You have waited for the gringos to defeat themselves, to weaken themselves and tear themselves apart because of their politics the way they always do. This time it has not worked, señor, so you must go back to the old ways. You must strike fear in their hearts, such fear that they will never dare to defy you again.”
“Do not presume to lecture me,” Espantoso snapped. “You are a mere soldier in this cartel, while I am one of its leaders.”
A true leader would not be afraid of some camel-humping Arab, Nacho thought . . . but of course he was too wise to ever say such a thing.
“Still, a true leader cannot be unwilling to listen to the counsel of those below him,” Espantoso went on, unwittingly echoing part of the thought that had just gone through Nacho's head. “What is it you think we should do, Jalisco?”
The smile that curved Jalisco's thin lips was enough to make even Nacho shudder a little inside.
“Strike at them through their weakest link, señor,” Jalisco said. “Strike at them through their children.”
 
 
Someone once said there are really only two sports in Texas: football . . . and spring football. Texans' devotion to the gridiron wasn't quite that fervent, but it was certainly true that they took their football seriously. So the home stands of the stadium were packed with students, faculty, and some visitors during the late afternoon pep rally before Joseph P. Gonzalez High played its opening district game of the year against Cibolo High School.
The marching band was in the stands, playing the school fight song. Cheerleaders in short skirts did high kicks and backflips along the track that ran around the field. The members of the football team stood along the sideline wearing jeans and their uniform jerseys, waving at the crowd. In a minute, when the fight song was over, the head coach would step to the microphone that was set up at the edge of the field and give a rousing speech about how they were going to beat Cibolo that night, a victory that would be the first in a string of district wins carrying them all the way to the play-offs.
Before the band could finish, before the coach could utter one inspiring word, before the football players could do more than get started good on their lecherous fantasies involving the cheerleaders, shots rang out and people began to scream.
Figures with dark ski masks pulled down over their heads charged up the ramps into the stands, whirled to face the crowd, and sprayed automatic weapons fire above their heads. Shrieking in terror, students and teachers alike dived for cover, cowering between the long benches and trying to make themselves as small as possible. More gunmen rushed through gates in the chain-link fence around the field and surrounded the football team and cheerleaders, menacing them with guns.
One of the teachers, a former Marine, grabbed an invader and tried to wrestle the gun away from him. Another of the masked figures stepped up and fired a short burst into the teacher's head at almost point-blank range, blowing it apart like a watermelon.
Out on the field, a couple of coaches tried to fight back as well and were gunned down for their trouble. Several of the football players started to make a run for it, only to have their legs cut out from under them by bullets.
An engine roared and a dark-colored, nondescript van plowed through the fence, making its own gate. Two more similar vans followed behind it as it cut across the track and onto the football field. More men, also wearing ski masks, piled out of the vehicles as they came to a stop. They grabbed football players and cheerleaders, seemingly at random, dragged them kicking and screaming to the vans, and threw them in.
Then, without a word ever being spoken, the attackers fled with their prisoners, leaving behind several bloody corpses and a stadium filled with terror.
All in broad daylight.
C
HAPTER
F
IFTY-TWO
It was one of those terrible things that stuck in the mind. You never forgot where you were when you heard about it.
In Stark's case, he was in the community center, talking to Jack Kasek about how they were going to pay for the city's expenses until they determined a tax rate and sent out notices.
“You can't keep paying for so many things out of your own pocket, John Howard,” Jack said. “I know good and well you couldn't have gotten top dollar for your ranch when you sold it. Property values within a hundred miles of the border are way down and have been since the cartels moved in. That's true all the way up and down the Rio Grande.”
“Maybe, but I got enough to keep myself comfortable for the rest of my life with quite a bit left over,” Stark insisted. “I'd just as soon that extra go to help out Shady Hills. I've enjoyed living here and getting to know everybody. This is sort of paying that back.”
“And we're probably lucky there are enough people in the park who feel the same way you do and have some extra financial resources,” Jack admitted. “That way the city can keep going for a while—”
A car door slammed outside. Stark and Jack looked around as Fred Gomez practically ran into the building.
Fred and Aurelia had been keeping mostly to themselves since Antonio's murder. Stark saw them occasionally, but he didn't push himself on them, figuring it was better to let them deal with their grief in their own way.
He could tell that Fred was upset about something now. His friend's face was set in shocked, horrified lines. Stark jumped to his feet and hurried to meet him.
“Fred, what is it?” Stark asked. “Aurelia—”
“No, no, something's happened,” Fred said. “Down at the high school—”
“Gonzalez High?”
“Yeah. There was a shooting.”
“Oh, no,” Jack said. “One of the kids went on a rampage?”
Fred shook his head.
“They were having a pep rally. . . . Some masked men came up. . . . They shot some people . . . and took a dozen of the kids!”
The words spilled out of Fred in bunches, and as Stark grasped what he was saying, a chill went through him. It seemed unbelievable, but he knew Fred wouldn't make up a terrible story like that.
“Maybe you heard it wrong,” Stark said, grasping at that hope.
Fred shook his head again and said, “It's on all the TV channels.”
“Come on,” Jack said. “We'll go to my house and check it out.”
Jack and Mindy's house was next door to the community center, so it took the three men only a moment to get there. When they came into the living room, Mindy was sitting on the edge of the sofa, staring at the television with tears rolling down her cheeks. She looked at the men and said in a choked voice, “It's awful, it's just awful. . . .”
The TV showed a long shot of the school's football field with the flashing lights of emergency vehicles all over it. Stark knew when he saw them that Fred hadn't gotten confused about what he'd heard. The terrible tragedy really had taken place.
They sat down and watched, listening to the breathless newscaster describe what had happened, as best it could be pieced together from the fragmentary reports that had come in. Six people were dead, three teachers and three students, and a number of others had suffered minor wounds and injuries during the violent incident, which had occurred while the school was holding a pep rally for that night's football game.
Eleven students, six boys and five girls, were missing. According to eyewitness accounts, they had been kidnapped, thrown into the vans that had crashed through the fence onto the football field. So far the authorities had not been able to locate any sign of the vehicles.
“It's Reuben,” Jack exclaimed as their young chief of police appeared on the screen. A graphic at the bottom of the screen identified him.
“Because this case involves kidnapping, we've already requested assistance from the Texas Rangers and from the FBI, and Sheriff George Lozano and Devil's Pass Chief of Police Dennis Feasco have pledged any help they can give us,” Reuben was saying. “We're going to find the people who did this and bring them to justice, and more importantly, we're going to find those kids and bring them home safely.”
Reuben had a slightly shell-shocked look in his eyes, but his voice was strong and firm as he made that promise. Stark knew that he meant it.
“I've got to get down there,” Stark said.
“What can you do, John Howard?” Jack asked.
“I don't know, but I'm the mayor of Shady Hills and the school is part of our town. I need to be there.”
Without waiting for anybody to try to talk him out of it, he left the Kasek house, got into his pickup, which was parked at the community center, and headed south on the highway toward the high school.
As he drove, his hands tightened on the steering wheel until it felt like they might tear it off the column. Nobody in a position of authority was saying anything about it yet, but they knew who was responsible for this.
They all knew.
 
 
The Texas Rangers were already on the scene when Stark got there. One of them stopped him when he tried to get close enough to the football field to find Reuben.
“Damn it, I'm the mayor of Shady Hills,” Stark said. “I've got a right to talk to my police chief. You can ask Sheriff Lozano or Chief Feasco about me, too. They'll vouch for me.”
“All right, hang on, amigo,” the Ranger said. He stepped a few feet away and talked to someone quietly on a handheld radio, then came back to Stark and said, “Come with me.”
The Ranger was either arresting him or taking him where he wanted to go, Stark thought, and either way that was better than standing around out here unable to do anything.
Reuben was standing beside the gaping hole in the fence where the kidnappers' vans had burst through the chain link, talking to several uniformed men. When he saw Stark, he finished the conversation and hurried over.
“Mayor Stark,” he said after he nodded to the Ranger accompanying Stark that it was all right for him to be there. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to help,” Stark said simply. “These folks down here are citizens of Shady Hills.”
Reuben sighed.
“There's nothing you can do,” he said. “I'm not sure there's anything any of us can do, despite those big promises I made on TV.”
“You don't have any idea where they went after they left here with those kids?”
“Anybody who might know is too scared of the cartel to talk,” Reuben said grimly.
“So there's no doubt that the cartel's behind this?”
“Was there ever any doubt about that?” Reuben looked disgusted. “Nobody will come out and admit it, least of all the sheriff and the chief of police, but everybody knows the cartel is behind this outrage.”
Stark had thought the same thing. It was nice to know they all agreed with him, he supposed, but that didn't really accomplish anything.
“We've got to find them and go after them,” he said quietly.
Reuben frowned and said, “What are you talking about, Mr. Stark?”
“Somebody's got to know where the cartel headquarters are. Some of your old contacts in the Border Patrol, maybe, or the DEA.”
Reuben thought about it for a second, then said, “They'd be risking their jobs to help an ex-con.”
“You're not just an ex-con. You're a police chief, remember?”
“I'm not sure that would make any difference. But I suppose I can give it a try. The problem is, you'll never get the authorities to cross the border into Mexico. The feds will insist on appealing to the Mexican government for help, and the Mexicans will insist that they be the ones to deal with the situation. But they won't. Half the government down there either works for the cartel or is too afraid to rock the boat. They'll say they're going after those kids, but they won't do it.”
“I know,” Stark said. “That's why we've got to start thinking about something . . . unofficial.”
Reuben looked intently at him for a long moment, then said, “I didn't hear you just say that, Mr. Stark.”
Stark smiled.
“I didn't figure you did, son. But that doesn't really change things. If those kids have any chance in hell, it's probably gonna come down to somebody who doesn't give a damn about breaking the rules.”

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