C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN
Stark and Hallie walked over to the Gomezes', where Hallie spent an hour talking to a visibly nervous Antonio. She had already called her office and told her secretary she would be running late again this morning. She didn't have any court appearances scheduled today, she told Stark, so her secretary was able to rearrange her appointments.
Antonio didn't have much money in his pockets, so Fred had given him a hundred dollars to hand to Hallie as an attorney. That made their conversation privileged. She'd chased Fred, Aurelia, and Stark out of the room so that they couldn't be forced to testify to anything Antonio told her.
Of course, all three of them had already heard Antonio's story, but that constituted hearsay, she explained, and it was likely that she could get any such testimony suppressed if things ever came down to a trial.
Just hearing mention of a trial made Antonio look more nervous, Stark thought. As well it should. He had been loco to get mixed up with a bunch like that. Kids did loco things sometimes, though.
As did adults, Stark added to himself with a wry smile as he thought about some of the things he had gotten himself into. Holing up in the Alamo and fighting the dang Mexican army . . . nobody could call that sane.
But he'd had to do it anyway.
When Hallie finally came out of the house, she joined Stark, Fred, and Aurelia in lawn chairs on the porch.
“Can you do anything for him, Hallie?” Aurelia asked anxiously.
“I don't know, but I can certainly try. When I get to the office I'll call a friend of mine in Washington.”
“Washington,” Fred repeated with a note of scorn in his voice. “Do you really think any of those people are interested in helping anybody but themselves?”
“Some are,” Hallie insisted. “Unfortunately, they're greatly outnumbered. But all we can do is try.”
“And stay alert for trouble,” Stark said.
“Do you think those men will be back?” Aurelia asked.
“I think there's a darned good chance of it.”
Fred reached across his belly to tap the butt of the pistol that was snugged into a cross-draw holster at his waist, under his shirt.
“That's why I'm going to be armed from now on,” he said. “I'm thinking about taking this .45 of mine into the shower with me.”
“Don't be silly,” his wife told him. “You don't have to do that while I'm standing guard with a shotgun.”
Fred smiled sadly.
“Did you think we'd ever be saying such things? Our retirement here was supposed to be so nice and peaceful.”
“Life has a way of throwing curveballs,” Stark said.
Hallie headed for her office after promising to call them later. Stark went back to his mobile home. He didn't have anywhere he had to be today, so he spent his time cleaning his guns and reading.
And keeping an eye on the street outside.
He didn't hear anything from Hallie until the middle of the afternoon, when she called his cell phone.
“I just got through talking to Fred,” she told him. “My friend in Washington said there was nothing he could do for Antonio, but he kicked it on upstairs. Since the three men who killed those young people were acting on behalf of an organization, there's a chance they might be able to open a RICO file on the case.”
“That's organized crime, right?” Stark asked.
“Right. It won't be easy, though. The climate in Washington isn't very favorable right now to anything that could be construed as biased toward Hispanic Americans.”
“You mean the political climate.”
“That's the only kind that matters in Washington.”
Stark didn't doubt that. He said, “Those cartel bosses, those hombres Antonio was talking about, they're not any sort of American. They're all Colombian and Mexican.”
“I know that. But a lot of the people who work for them are American. Ignacio and Carlos MontezâNacho and Chuckieâare legitimate American citizens, born in the United States.”
“Were their parents here legally?” Stark asked.
“That doesn't matter,” Hallie said, and Stark had the answer to his question. “They were born here.”
Then they were natural-born American assholes, Stark thought as he remembered how those human heads had looked nestled among Dorothy Hewitt's cabbage plants. Country of origin didn't matter all that much to him. Evil was evil, no matter where it came from. Looking at it from that angle, Hallie was right, no doubt about that.
“So nobody wants to do anything about the cartel because it might annoy the Mexican government,” he said bleakly.
“I didn't say that,” Hallie responded. “There are factions in the Mexican government that have been fighting against the cartel for years. It's just that they're outnumbered by the ones who either don't want to rock the boat or have been bought off or threatened into submission by the drug smugglers. So they act outraged by anything that can be perceived as prejudice, no matter by what twisted logic, and the Hispanic lobbying groups in this country are the same way.”
Stark sighed. It wasn't in his nature to get discouraged, even after all the tragedy he had suffered in his life, but sometimes it was hard to feel any other way when you took a good look at the way the world really operated these days. Logic and decency no longer mattered. Power, spin, and the big lie were the only things that counted.
Hallie went on, “Hispanics are going to be the majority in this country before too many more years, John Howard. No one can get elected on a national basis without the Hispanic vote. It helps that they don't all march in lockstep and that there are some real conservatives among them, but still . . .”
“You don't have to say anything else,” Stark told her. “What it amounts to is that folks will promise to try to help Antonio and then conveniently never get around to doing anything.”
“I'm afraid so. I tried to get Fred and Aurelia to understand that without being quite so blunt about it.”
“So it's still left up to us to protect him.”
“For right now. I'll keep working on it, though.”
“Thanks, Hallie,” Stark said. “I appreciate the effort.”
“Maybe you could show your appreciation by taking me out for a nice dinner some night.”
Stark wanted to chuckle, but he suppressed the impulse. Hallie was about ten years younger than he was, but there were enough generational similarities between them for him to know that she probably thought she was being too forward by practically asking him out.
Yet she had done it anyway, and he was touched by the gesture. He was tempted to acceptâhell, a part of him wanted to accept without hesitation, he thoughtâbut it probably wasn't a good idea. He would have enjoyed having Hallie around even more, having someone as nice as her to share his life, but it just wouldn't work out.
He didn't want to offend her, though, so he said, “One of these days we'll do that.”
She laughed.
“I'm going to consider that a promise, John Howard, no matter how hard you try to tap-dance around the question.”
They said their good-byes. Stark went next door to talk to Fred and Aurelia.
“Hallie called me,” Stark said when Fred opened the door to his knock.
“She said she was going to,” Fred replied with a nod. “She wasn't very encouraging, John Howard.”
“No, this is a bad situation,” Stark acknowledged bluntly. “We'll just have to make the best of it.”
“Maybe . . . maybe it'll all blow over after a while.”
Stark heard the desperate hope in his friend's voice and wished he could agree with the sentiment Fred had just expressed. He knew that was pretty unlikely, though.
He had a hunch that when night fell, trouble would come calling again at the Shady Hills Retirement Park.
C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN
The climate here in southwest Texas could be described generally as arid. People who lived here for very long figured out that it was best to plant trees and bushes that could get by on very little rain.
From time to time, though, thunderstorms moved in, and they were real gully washers. Stark thought that might be what was going to happen tonight. Not long after darkness settled over the landscape, the breeze picked up, and it had the faint, ionized scent of rain in it. In the distance to the west, long fingers of lightning clawed through the night sky at the gathering clouds.
Stark had moved one of his lawn chairs into the shadows between his mobile home and that of the Gomezes. He sat there now, completely enclosed by darkness, with his shotgun across his knees.
Thinking that it was unlikely anything would happen during the day, Stark had taken a nice long nap that afternoon and fortified himself with several cups of coffee. He had a thermos of the stuff propped up beside him in the chair in case he needed more during the night. He planned to stay right where he was until dawn, if need be.
If he was expecting any sort of stealth attack, he wouldn't have brought the coffee out here. The aroma might drift to somebody sneaking around and warn them that a guard was on duty.
These enemies didn't seem that sophisticated. They were more likely to come in with all guns blazing, using shock and awe tactics on the elderly residents of the park.
Here was one old geezer, Stark thought, who wouldn't be shocked and damned sure wouldn't be awed by whatever those punks tried to pull. He was going to be ready for them.
He wasn't the only one. Fred and Aurelia Gomez planned to take turns staying awake tonight. Alton Duncan was probably asleep by now, but he'd told Stark that he would be prepared in case of trouble, with a rifle by his bed. Not the .22 he'd brought out the night before, either, but a more high-powered deer rifle that ought to prove equally effective against drug smugglers.
Once a fella learned to sit quiet and motionless and waitâa lesson that Vietnam had taught Stark, and one that had saved his life more than onceâhe never forgot it. The ability came back to him, as it did with Stark now. His breathing was shallow and even, and every sense was on alert.
Of course, in the end it didn't much matter. A blind and deaf man could have seen and heard the convoy of low-riders and pickups that came roaring into the retirement park. Stark heard them on the highway before they ever got there, and his instincts had him on his feet and ready by the time they tore through the entrance with squealing tires and booming stereos.
That racket allowed Stark to track the intruders' progress through the grid of streets in the park. He thumbed his cell phone and sent the text messages he'd had ready to send to Fred and Alton, warning that trouble was on the way. Then he slipped the phone back into his pocket and raised the shotgun to his shoulder, holding it ready to fire.
He listened for shots but hadn't heard any so far, just the bellowing engines and blasting noise that passed for music. With tires still screaming, the big pickup that was leading the invasion slid around the corner and immediately accelerated along the street. Four cars came behind it, followed by another pickup bringing up the rear.
Nacho Montez and his friends had brought reinforcements this time.
Stark didn't care how many of them there were, he wasn't going to be intimidated. He stayed in the shadows, ready to open fire if they stopped and charged out of their vehicles.
Instead, the first pickup slowed down as it reached the Gomez house. A light flared, flame from the rag stuffed into the neck of a bottle that flew from the truck bed.
Someone crouched back there had just thrown a Molotov cocktail at the mobile home where Fred and Aurelia lived.
Stark's shotgun was already at his shoulder. He let his instincts and muscle memory take over. He'd done plenty of skeet shooting in his time, and this was similar. He squeezed the trigger and the shotgun kicked heavily against his shoulder as buckshot blasted from its muzzle.
The bottle filled with gasoline burst apart in midair as the charge struck it. The volatile stuff ignited as it sprayed around the still burning rag. Some of it fell on the lawn, but some was blown backward into the first low-rider. The speeding pickup where the Molotov cocktail had originated was already past the Gomez house.
The car's windows were down. Someone inside yelled as the burning gasoline splattered them. Stark pumped the shotgun and fired another round, tracking the car and aiming low. Tongues of flame licked through the darkness as the invaders returned the fire with handguns and automatic weapons.
Stark dived behind the shelter of some concrete blocks he had stacked up earlier in the day. He thrust the shotgun over the makeshift barricade and let fly again at the other vehicles whipping past in the street. They had slowed down slightly, but they didn't stop. In fact, they began to speed up again.
Stark heard the
whump!
of another Molotov cocktail going off somewhere else in the park. That surprised him a little. He had thought that the invaders would confine their attack to the Gomez place, and maybe to his mobile home as well.
Guns chattered in the distance. Stark went cold inside at the sound. The smugglers had started their assault here, but now they were continuing it elsewhere in the park, targeting innocent people who had nothing to do with Antonio Gomez or the incident the night before. Stark hadn't anticipated hostilities escalating this far, this fast.
The pickup in the rear of the convoy wheeled around a corner, its taillights vanishing. Stark felt frustration boiling inside him. Why didn't they come back here and fight? Why attack the other residents of the retirement park?
Terror.
The word sprang into Stark's mind, and he knew he had the answer to his questions. Antonio Gomez's defiance of the cartel, even at such a low level, might have started this trouble, but it had turned into something else. The invaders hadn't come here to grab Antonio or to strike back at John Howard Stark for humiliating them, although they would have gladly taken either of those outcomes.
No, this was a terrorist attack.
Stark didn't fully understand the motivation, but clearly this raid was designed to strike fear into the hearts of the park's residents. He could only hope that too many people hadn't been hurt in that barrage of gunfire and the Molotov cocktail's explosion.
The front door of the Gomez mobile home slammed as Fred burst out onto the porch, brandishing his .45.
“John Howard!” he called. “Where are you, John?”
“Here!” Stark shouted back. “They're gone, Fred. Stand down.”
Fred hurried down his front steps.
“That was an awful lot of shooting,” he said worriedly. “What were they doing? I thought they were just after Antonio.”
“It may have started out that way,” Stark said as he stomped out the few places on the front lawn that were still smoldering from the burning gasoline, “but I've got a feeling that things have changed somehow.”
And not for the better
, he thought.
“Hey, fellas!” Alton Duncan sang out as he trotted toward them, which was smart because as keyed-up as Fred was, he might have taken a shot at anybody who surprised him, Stark thought. “Anybody hurt?”
“Not here,” Stark said. “But we don't know about the rest of the park.”
“Maybe we'd better go check,” Fred suggested.
Stark nodded grimly and said, “Good idea. But Alton and I will go, Fred. You stay here in case this was just a feint of some sort to draw us off.”
“You really think they're that tricky?” Fred asked.
“I don't know what to think anymore,” Stark said, “except that this shows signs of being even worse than any of us expected.”