C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-THREE
The community center, a large, metal-walled building, stood near the front of the park next to the brick home that Jack and Mindy Kasek, the owners, had built when they first bought the property to develop. There was a small parking area in front, but most of the residents walked there that evening for the meeting. Stark didn't know who had arranged the assembly, but it was a good idea. The people who lived here needed to talk about what was going to happen next.
From the looks of the crowd sitting on folding metal chairs, just about everyone from Shady Hills was here, Stark thought as he looked around. Jack Kasek, a silver-haired man with a certain gawkiness that made him look like what he was, a retired engineer, stood at the front of the big room talking to several people. He caught Stark's eye and motioned for him to come join them.
“Hello, John,” he said as Stark walked up. “Glad you could make it. You know these fellas? Nick Medford, Henry Torres, Doug Jacobs, Grant Reeves.”
Stark nodded to them. He was acquainted with all four of the men, although they lived in different areas of the park and he didn't know them well.
“I was thinking we could divide the park up into different sections and have somebody be responsible for taking care of each section, sort of like a captain,” Jack went on. “I'll take one area, these guys have each agreed to take one, and we'd like you to be our sixth captain, John.”
“That sounds like a good idea, and I'd be honored to help out,” Stark said. “I didn't know you were a military man, Jack.”
Jack smiled and shook his head.
“I'm not. I never served. I'm just trying to approach the situation logically, and with some common sense. One man can't be everywhere at once.”
Stark nodded and said, “Here's something that occurred to me. If everybody's here tonight, then nobody's watching for trouble.”
Jack's eyes widened, and the other four men looked shocked, too. Henry Torres said, “Good Lord! You're right, John. We need to get some guards posted.”
“You really think those savages will come back tonight?” Nick Medford asked.
“They've been here three nights in a row,” Stark said. “I wouldn't rule it out.”
“You're absolutely right,” Jack said. “We need some volunteers.” He turned toward the crowd, lifted his hands, and raised his voice. “Everybody, could I have your attention? Could I have your attention, please?”
The hubbub of conversation died down in the room as everybody looked at Jack and waited for him to go on.
“You know why we're here tonight,” he addressed them. “We have to talk about the threat that seems to be facing us and what we're going to do about it. But before we do that, I'd like several of you men to step up here and volunteer to stand guard at the entrance to the park while the meeting's going on.”
A man in the front row of folding chairs said, “Whoever does that will miss out on what's being decided.”
“I know that,” Jack said. “That's why I'm asking for volunteers. I know you all want to have a voice in the discussion, but if those troublemakers come back, we'll need some warning.”
No one could dispute that logic. Slowly, several hands rose. Jack nodded in satisfaction and motioned for the men to stand up.
“Are you guys armed?” he asked.
Two of the men were carrying pistols. The other three were unarmed.
Jack looked at Stark and asked, “What do you think?”
“We want them to stand watch and warn us if trouble's coming,” Stark said. “Nobody expects them to fight off an army. I think it'll be all right.”
Jack nodded and said to the volunteers, “All right, fellas, thank you. Head out to the front gate and keep your eyes open. Maybe spread out along the fence a little.”
The men left to carry out those orders, and the meeting moved on to its main agenda.
“We all know what happened last nightâ” Jack began.
“Yeah, Kasek, we know,” one of the men interrupted him. “And we want to know what you're gonna do about it.”
A chorus of agreement came from the crowd.
Jack motioned for quiet and said, “I've spoken at length to Sheriff Lozano, and he's promised to increase patrols in this areaâ”
“That's not going to do any good!” another man protested. “A cop car driving by every hour or two won't stop those punks. They'll just wait until the deputies aren't around.”
Stark knew that in all likelihood, that was true. The sheriff would have to station several deputies at the park full-time in order to deter another attack, and George Lozano lacked the resources to do that.
Anyway, those drug smugglers were so brazen, even the presence of law enforcement personnel at the park might not be enough to stop them. The cartel members were in the habit of thumbing their noses at authority.
“Why don't you call in the Texas Rangers?” someone suggested.
“The assistance of the Rangers has to be requested by local law enforcement agencies,” Jack explained. “I already covered that with the sheriff.”
“Did he agree to ask for help from them?”
“Not at this point,” Jack said with obvious reluctance.
“Then how about the Border Patrol?” another man asked.
“We're not on the border.”
“It's less than thirty miles away!” a woman exclaimed. “Why doesn't the government
do
something? It's supposed to protect us!”
Jack was running this meeting, so Stark didn't say anything, but he wanted to tell the woman that the government had very little interest in protecting its citizens these days. The government's real interest was in collecting taxes from the people who were still willing to work, so that the politicians could turn around and “redistribute” that money to the people who couldn't, or more often wouldn't, work, the ones who kept voting those politicians into office. It was blatant graft on a national level, and there wasn't much average citizens could do to stop it. They could vote, but it was hard to prevail against rampant election fraud covertly sponsored by one segment of the political system, and they could make their voices heard by protesting, but then they were shouted down by the puppet media forces of that same segment. It was damned frustrating, especially for people like Stark who genuinely, passionately believed in democracy, people who had risked their lives again and again to protect the system, only to see it twisted and distorted into something its founders had never intended for it to be.
So people like Stark and his friends tried to live their lives as best they could and make small differences here and there, in the hope that someday those efforts would snowball into something larger and the country would regain its reason. Their struggle was probably doomed to failure . . . but they were not the sort of people who found it easy to give up.
“Listen, I'm going to be in touch with everybody, with every agency, that might be able to give us some help,” Jack was saying. “But in the meantime, we might as well face it. Right now we have to be responsible for protecting ourselves.”
“How are we going to do that?”
Jack smiled and said, “I'm glad you asked that question.” He turned to Stark. “I'm going to let someone who's better qualified than I am answer it. You all know John Howard Stark.”
Somebody in the crowd started to clap. The applause quickly spread, causing embarrassment to well up inside Stark. He was a modest man by nature, without a shred of pretense about him. But he had been a celebrity of sortsâeven though some of the bleeding-heart crowd probably considered him a villainâand in America, once a celebrity, always a celebrity.
As most of the people in the room continued to clap, Jack Kasek turned to Stark and said, “John, will you take over?”
Stark nodded. He had no great fondness for being in charge of anything except his own life, but somebody had to do it and he supposed Jack was right about him being better qualified.
He raised his arms and motioned for quiet. After a moment he got it.
“Jack says we have to be responsible for protecting ourselves,” he told the crowd. “He's right about that. In order to do that, though, we need a couple of things. How many people here own guns?”
He was glad to see that hands shot up all over the room.
“Some of you probably brought those guns with you tonightâno, I don't need a show of hands for thatâand the rest of you have them at home. I'm not saying that you need to be armed twenty-four/seven, but if you have weapons they ought to be handy. Nothing's more useless than a gun you can't get to when you need it. But there's something else we need that's even more important than guns.”
He paused to let that sink in, and when the room was quiet and everyone was looking at him, he asked, “How many of you are willing to fight?”
Again, hands went up all over the room. Stark figured that everyone who had answered his gun question in the affirmative was declaring their willingness to use those weapons.
The problem was, it was easy to do that in a crowd.
“What I mean,” Stark said, “is how many of you are willing to pull the trigger knowing that you're probably going to kill somebody? Can you do that? Can you end a human life? Are you absolutely sure?”
Some of the hands went down, and a murmur of confusion went through the room.”
“John, what are you doing?” Jack Kasek asked quietly.
“Making certain,” Stark said. He waited.
A man stood up. He had a white crew cut and thick glasses. Stark didn't know him. He said, “If somebody's threatening me or my wife, if he's trying to take away everything I hold dear, then damn right I can pull the trigger.”
Several other men called out, “Yeah!” and another said, “Count me in!”
Stark nodded.
“Good. Because if it comes down to a real fight against those drug smugglers, that's what it's gonna take. Each and every one of you will have to decide what's worth fighting for, and if you're willing to fight for it. And if you are . . .” Stark drew in a deep breath. “If you are, then Shady Hills belongs to us, and by God, they're not gonna take it away from us!”
C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-FOUR
The meeting continued for another hour, and during that time Stark settled, however uncomfortably, into the role of general of this elderly army.
His “troops,” despite being past retirement age, weren't ready for the rocking chair or the rest home. In fact, most of them were still pretty spry, keeping fit with gardening, yard work, handyman chores, and regular workouts. A number of them still worked part-time, many at the MegaMart in Devil's Pass. Not surprisingly, there was also a high percentage of veterans, some of whom had seen combat in Vietnam or Korea. One of the men, Bert Loomis, had even gone into Berlin with Patton at the end of World War II and declared that he was still ready, willing, and able to live up to the legacy of Old Blood and Guts. Stark took one look at Bert and wasn't just about to deny him that chance.
Nor was it just the men who volunteered to patrol the park and protect it if trouble loomed. A couple of dozen women, who said they had experience with guns, volunteered as well. Despite the chivalry bred into him, Stark didn't turn away the women, either. Shady Hills needed all the help it could get.
The volunteers were split up among the six captains, depending on where in the park they lived. Jack Kasek had drawn up a map clearly marked off into sections, and it was spread out on a table at the front of the room. The volunteers gathered with their captains, and then Stark addressed the entire group.
He did a quick head count before he started talking. There were seventy-two volunteers, but they weren't spread out equally among the captains. Some had fewer people to work with. Stark decided that he would speak with each captain individually and urge that they talk to their friends and try to come up with more volunteers. It was best to delegate that job, though, since they knew their neighbors better than he did.
“This is a mighty fine start,” Stark told them. “Each group will provide a couple of volunteers every night to guard the front gate in shifts. There'll also be two-person patrols moving around each section of the park from dusk to dawn. The captains and I will get together and work out schedules, and they'll pass along your assignments to you.”
“We'll be armed?” one of the men asked.
“Yeah, like I said earlier, you'll need your weapons with you. But even though I told you that you had to be prepared to fight, you'll need to guard against getting trigger-happy, too. The last thing you want to do is shoot one of your friends and neighbors. That's why nobody stands guard alone or patrols alone. There'll be at least two people working together at all times. That way you'll be less likely to panic and start shooting when you don't need to.”
The other residents who had come to the meeting had stood up and gathered in smaller groups to talk. Many of them had begun to drift toward the door.
“Hold on, folks!” Stark called to them. “We're not done here.”
A man said, “But you've got your volunteers, Mr. Stark. What do you need us for?”
“We all need each other,” Stark said firmly. “You're all old enough to have heard that saying about hanging together or hanging separately. It's true. These men and women up here may be on the front lines, but they need support from all of you. You can provide coffee and sandwiches for the gate guards and the patrols. You can make sure we've got plenty of ammunition. And you can write and call and email your representatives in Congress and tell them exactly what's going on here. They may not be willing to do anything to help, but we don't want them to be able to claim they didn't know anything about it, either. Get on the Internet and use all the social media you can to get the word out about what we're facing. Public opinion is mighty important these days.”
“I don't know anything about that stuff,” one man said.
“Better learn,” Stark told him. “The people who don't want us to be able to stand up for ourselves are mighty good at it. They can twist the truth or tell an outright lie and spread it all over the world just by tapping a few keys. It's up to us to get the facts out there and keep on doing it until people start to see the truth again.”
Most of the residents still looked dubious about that, but several of them nodded. It was a start, Stark thought. And things had to start somewhere.
When the meeting broke up, Hallie and Alton Duncan came up to Stark, along with Fred Gomez.
“You were just about the youngest person here tonight,” Stark told Hallie with a smile.
“Yeah,” she said wryly. “Do you know how long it's been since I was the kid of the bunch?”
“You're always the kid as far as I'm concerned,” Alton said.
“Where's Aurelia?” Stark asked Fred.
“She stayed home. She said I didn't need her along, and that she knew I wouldn't do anything foolish. And she didn't want to leave Antonio there by himself.”
“How's he doing?”
Fred shrugged. “He still feels like this is all his fault. He's the one who brought Shady Hills to the attention of the cartel.”
“Maybe so,” Stark said, “but this has turned into something a lot bigger than that. I don't think they're really interested in Antonio anymore.”
“Then what do they want?” Hallie asked.
“The whole place. They want to run us off, probably so they can transport their dope through here.” Stark paused. “That's just an excuse, though. The real reason they've got it in for us is because we stood up to 'em. They're able to run things because so many people are scared to death of them. If folks see that they can fight back against the cartel and win, that weakens the cartel's grip on everything.”
“People who fight back against the cartel usually wind up dead,” Fred said.
“Usually. But that's not gonna be the case here, and that's going to make a difference.”
“Do you really think you can win?” Hallie asked.
“I do,” Stark said. “That bunch is arrogant. They're gonna think that we're just a bunch of helpless old farts, and they're going to underestimate us. That's half of winning the battle right there.”
“For your sakeâand the sake of everybody else in Shady HillsâI hope you're right, John Howard.”
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Nothing had happened to interrupt the meeting, and the night continued to pass quietly. Guard and patrol schedules hadn't been drawn up yet, but some of the men offered to take their turns right away, so the park wouldn't go unprotected.
Stark didn't know all the guards, but since he was going to have to trust them sooner or later, he figured he might as well start now.
He went home and got a good night's sleep.
The next day he and the other five captains met at Jack's house to work out their schedules and plans, then spread out through the park to talk to each of the volunteers individually and make sure they understood their responsibilities. It went well, and Stark picked up a few more volunteers who had thought it over after the meeting and decided to get more actively involved. That was good, because even though there wouldn't be any roaming patrols during the day, Stark and the other captains thought it would be a good idea if at least a couple of guards were on duty at the gate around the clock.
“I could get one of those security gates put in,” Jack had said when they got together that morning. “You know, the kind where you have to punch in a code to get it to open.”
“No offense, Jack,” Stark had said, “but those are designed to keep out salesmen and discourage amateur burglars. They won't stop anybody who really wants to get in. Neither will the wooden fence along the front or the chain-link around the rest of the property. You'd have to build a stone wall, top it with barbed wire, install bunkers at the gate, and lay mines around the outer perimeter if you want to stop anybody who's really determined to get in.”
Jack had grinned and replied, “Well, maybe that's just what I'll do,” but Stark knew it wasn't. Jack didn't have that kind of money. If everybody in the park pooled their funds, it might not add up to what would be needed for measures like that.
Besides, even with the local authorities on their sideâsomething Stark wasn't convinced ofâthey would probably balk at the idea of a minefield.
Of course, there were some measures that residents of the park
could
take that wouldn't be quite so extreme. . . .
Several days passed in preparation, but when nothing happened, Stark sensed the atmosphere of urgency that had gripped the park following the raid was beginning to weaken. People were starting to hope that the trouble had blown over and that everything would be all right now.
Stark knew better than to believe that. He was convinced the drug smugglers were just biding their time.
Either that, or they were busy getting ready, too.
And that was the most worrisome prospect of all.