Authors: William W. Johnstone

The Bleeding Edge (16 page)

BOOK: The Bleeding Edge

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C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-ONE

“You don't have to tell me,” the president said as the chief of staff came into the Oval Office. “I saw it on the news for myself. That bastard Stark's raising hell in Texas again.”

“What I came to tell you, sir, is that the attorney general wants to see you.”

“When?”

The chief of staff hesitated, then said, “He's outside now.”

The president sighed.

“All right. Bring him in. And you're sitting in on the meeting, too.”

“Of course, sir.”

A minute later the three of them were alone in the Oval Office, two grim-faced men in front of the desk and another behind it. The president clasped his hands together and asked, “Do you think we need to bring federal charges for civil rights violations against Stark?”

“I don't see how we can avoid it,” the chief of staff said. “He masterminded this whole thing. Not only that, but the secretary of state has asked for a meeting with you as well. We've got the Mexican government raising hell because half a dozen of those dead men were Mexican nationals.”

“In Texas illegally, I might add,” the attorney general said.

The president waved that off and said, “What does that matter? For all intents and purposes, the border's open anyway, and it'll stay that way as long as the wetbacks are so good at getting phony Social Security cards, registering to vote, and voting for us.”

Both of his subordinates winced.

“You, uh, can't use that word, sir,” the chief of staff said.

“And you can't condone voter fraud,” the AG added.

The president snorted in disgust.

“Are either of you secretly taping this meeting?” he asked.

Both aides reacted with vehement denials.

“Then don't worry about my choice of words,” the president went on. “I know what I can say in public and what I can't. As for the other, half the shining lights in our party never would've gotten elected in the first place without a little judicious ballot box stuffing, so let's not be hypocrites among ourselves.” He looked at the attorney general. “I suppose you should launch a full-scale investigation right awayâ”

“No, sir.”

The president looked shocked that the attorney general had not only interrupted him but had disagreed with him as well.

“Did you say no?”

“We're still hurting over that nerve gas business. Half the country hates us to start with, and the other half was pretty shaken when that news broke. Sure, we were able to spin it as one inexperienced politician breaking under the strain of the job, and there are quite a few people who have convinced themselves that it never even happened, that the right-wing extremists made up the whole thing. But Stark is still widely regarded as a hero. Back when he first came to Washington's attention with that raid on the drug cartel in Mexico, there was an attempt to use the IRS to bring pressure on him. It had to be dropped because public opinion ran so high against it. All federal charges against him were dropped, in fact. I think we might be wise not to even bring it up this time.”

“But for God's sake, if he's some rabble-rousing, right-wing racist, we have to do something!”

The chief of staff said, “You know, I saw something on the Internet about how the Nazis surrendered the day after Stark was born and there had to be a connection.”

“That's a joke, for God's sake!” the president burst out. “Anyway, that's Chuck Norris. Stark wasn't even born yet when World War II ended.”

“That doesn't change anything, sir,” the attorney general said. “There's a certain folklore growing up around Stark. We'd be risking a big drop in the polls if we went after him.”

Those words, “a big drop in the polls,” got through the president's annoyance and shook him.

“You think so?”

“Definitely,” the chief of staff said.

“What are the numbers this morning?”

“Forty-five percent approval rating, sir.”

“Well . . . it could be worse.” The president sighed. “All right. No federal charges against Stark.”

“And it would probably be good if the local district attorney dropped any state charges against him, too,” the AG said.

“Can you make that happen?”

“Of course.”

“So he gets off scot-free,” the president said bitterly. “He goes around acting like
we're
the bad guys, and he gets away with it.”

“For now.” The attorney general smiled. “But things always catch up to that sort in the end, sir.”

“I suppose.” The president looked at the chief of staff and went on, “Tell the secretary of state to schmooze those damn Mexicans and get them to calm down. Promise them a few billion dollars more of aid or something. Whatever it takes.”

“Of course, sir.”

The two men got to up to leave, but the president said to the attorney general, “Oh, by the way, I heard that one of your staffers passed away. My condolences.”

“Thank you, sir. It was quite unexpected. Heart attack, you know.” The attorney general shook his head. “A real shame.”

Stark could tell that Hallie had been crying as soon as he answered her knock on his front door that afternoon. Her eyes were red and puffy. But she managed to put a smile on her face as she said, “I've got some good news, John Howard.”

“You don't look much like it's good news, whatever it is,” Stark told her. “Come in.”

She wiped at her eyes as he closed the door behind her.

“I know,” she said. “But this is because of something else. I'll get to that. First, I wanted you to know right away that all the charges against you have been dropped.”

Stark drew in a deep breath. He couldn't have been more surprised.

“Dropped?” he said.

“Yes. The district attorney himself called to tell me. Also, he's not going to pursue those more serious charges against you like he said this morning that he was.”

“What in the world changed his mind?”

“I don't know,” Hallie said, “unless it's the fact that there's been an outpouring of support all across the country for you and the residents of Shady Hills.”

“Yeah, I had to quit answering the phone because so many newspeople wanted to interview me. But that's not all that's going on,” Stark said. “Half the country may think we did the right thing by standing up to those cartel thugs, but the other half thinks
we're
the thugs.”

“Oh, John Howard. You've been reading the blogs again, haven't you?”

“I like to see what people are saying about me and my friends. Or at least I thought I did. I swear, you'd think that we went out last night and clubbed a bunch of baby seals instead of defending ourselves from bloodthirsty criminals.”

“I know. It's crazy, isn't it?” Hallie smiled again. “Anyway, that's the good news.”

“But that's not all the news, is it?” Stark guessed.

“No. Some of the people here in the park will be facing weapons charges. They didn't have permits for their guns, or they'd let the paperwork lapse. They'll be fined and have their weapons confiscated. The district attorney wouldn't budge on that. I think he felt like he had to have
something
to show for all this.”

“That's a shame. I guess I should've checked with everybody and made sure their guns were legal.”

“You couldn't think of everything, John Howard. And it wasn't your responsibility to do that.”

Stark nodded. He and the other residents could pitch in to see to it that anybody who needed help with their legal problems got it.

He said, “That's still not all of it, Hallie. Those weapons charges might make you mad, but they wouldn't make you cry. There's something else going on.”

She swallowed hard and nodded.

“I got a call from a woman named Jennifer Wesley. She's Josh Mumford's sister.”

Stark didn't know who that was; then something jogged in his memory.

“Your friend in Washington is named Josh. The one who works for the Justice Department. Did something happen to him?”

“He . . . passed away last night. A heart attack.”

“Aw, hell,” Stark said quietly. He moved closer to Hallie and rested his hands on her shoulders. “I'm sorry. He was somebody more important than just an old study buddy, wasn't he?”

“Well . . . there was a time that he was. I hadn't seen him in years, but . . . we were pretty close, back in those days.”

Stark drew her against him and put his arms around her. They stood there like that for a long moment with him comforting her as best he could.

Something was nagging at his brain, though, and finally he said, “Hallie, you told me something a few days ago about this fella Josh hacking into some Justice Department computers . . . ?”

She moved back a little and lifted her head so she could look up at him.

“The same thought occurred to me. But you don't think there could be any connection between that and . . .”

“How sure was your friend's sister that he died of a heart attack?”

“I don't think there was any doubt. When he didn't show up for work this morning his office called him but didn't get any answer. One of his coworkers went to check on him and found him sitting at his desk, in front of his computer. The computer was still on. It looked like he . . . like he was sitting there when the attack hit him and died before he could get up.”

Stark nodded. “That's probably just what happened. For a second there I just wondered, that's all.”

“I don't blame you,” Hallie said. “I thought the same thing. But we don't want to go looking for conspiracies where there aren't any.”

“No,” Stark said, “we don't want to do that.”

But despite his words, he wasn't completely convinced. As soon as got the chance, he told himself, he was going to do some searching on the Internet himself and see what he could find out about the death of Josh Mumford.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-TWO

“It's vigilante justice, that's what it is, plain and simple, and it's illegal!”

“You mean people don't have a right to defend themselves in this country anymore?”

“The people in that trailer park weren't defending themselves. They ambushed those poor men.”

“Some of those poor men, as you call them, actually
were
committing a crime. They were in this country illegally.”

“Now you're just splitting hairs. This country was built on immigration. Since when is wanting to better yourself and provide for your family a crime?”

“Well, when you do it by entering a country illegally and smuggling drugsâ”

“There's no proof of that.”

“Every member of the cartel gang who was killed at Shady Hills had a record as long as your arm filled with violent charges against them. Some of them were suspected of multiple murders.”

“Suspected, that's the key word. In this country you're innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.”

“You're
considered
innocent. That doesn't mean you really are. And that doesn't hold true for conservatives, does it? You consider them guilty just because of their political beliefs. You accuse them of being vigilantes, and yet you're ready to lynch them for their so-called crimes.”

“I never said anything about lynching anybody! Don't you, of all people, put racist words in my mouth!”

“Of all people? What does that mean? Oh, never mind, I understand. That's your way of accusing
me
of being racist just because I stand up for people's right to defend themselves against evil.”

“It's funny how this so-called evil seems to have brown skin in your eyes.”

“Let me read you a list of names: Gomez. Rodriguez. Torres. Hernandezâ”

“If you're reading off a list of the victims, you're just proving my point for me.”

“I'm reading a list of some of the residents of the Shady Hills Retirement Park. I can go on if you want. There are more than thirty names on this list. And since you brought up racism, how about these names: Medford. Wilson. Parker. Stanton. Bell.”

“White people's names.”

“No. They're all African-American. What about Trinh? Nguyen? Chang? Mujabar? All residents of Shady Hills Retirement Park.”

“So it's a freakin' U.N. out there! What does that matter? They have guns!”

“Which the Second Amendment gives them every right to possess. An amendment which has been under constant attack by you and your cohorts for decades now, but somehow you haven't been able to get rid of it yet.”

“They acted outside the law!”

“Evidently not. The local district attorney has dropped all the charges against the residents except some weapons-related offenses having to do mostly with paperwork, and the Justice Department has declined to open an investigation of so-called civil rights violations.”

“Just because certain people in Washington are scared to do what's right and are basing their decisions on public opinion polls doesn't mean those decisions are correct.”

“Don't you trust the opinion of the public?”

“If we did that, we'd have anarchy!”

“Instead of being ruled by a bunch of elitists who think they know better about everything from what you can give your kid to eat to how and when you should die.”

“Well, what if the government really does know best?”

“If you actually believe that, I'm not sure there's any point in continuing this conversation.”

There was no point in continuing to watch it, Stark thought as he pushed a button on the TV remote and banished the two talking heads.

Several days had passed since the Battle of Shady Hills, as some were starting to call it, but people all across the country were still talking about it. Arguing about it, rather, because there seemed to be no middle ground on the issue. Either the residents of the park were courageous American heroes, or they were bloodthirsty racist vigilantes, depending on the political outlook of whoever was offering an opinion.

And opinions, Stark had reminded himself more than once, were like a certain portion of the anatomy: everybody had one.

He didn't fool himself into thinking that just because he and his friends had repelled one attack, the danger was over. He knew the cartel wouldn't accept such a stinging defeat. Sooner or later they would be back, and because Stark knew that, he had pressed the residents to continue guarding the park just as they had done before. Everyone went along with that without complaint.

Except the ones who had moved out. Six more mobile homes had been packed up, the skirting taken down, water and electricity connections taken loose, and trucks brought in to haul them away to some other location. Stark couldn't really blame those people for wanting to leave the danger behind and go somewhere safer, but he didn't really understand it, either.

He supposed the Good Lord just hadn't included any backup in his nature.

Along with the continued vigilance among the residents of the park, the other matter occupying Stark's attention these days was the death of Hallie's friend Josh Mumford. He had kept up with the stories about it in the online editions of the Washington newspapers, and he had spent hours searching the Internet for everything he could find about Mumford. The man had had his law degree but was a career bureaucrat, having worked for the Justice Department for more than twenty years. He was divorced, with a couple of grown children, and seemed about as bland and non-threatening as he could possibly be. There was nothing to suggest that his death was anything other than what it appeared to be, the natural result of a life spent drinking too much and working too hard.

Except for the fact that he'd been helping Hallie and had found that mysterious computer file named “Silence.”

Every time Stark thought about that, something prodded his brain, some elusive memory that told him the name should mean something to him. But it didn't, and he had given up thinking about it in the hope that whatever it was would pop into his brain. So far he hadn't had any luck with that.

He was about to start pondering what to fix himself for supper when he heard footsteps on the porch stairs. A moment later someone knocked on the door.

Stark picked up the .45 automatic from the little table beside his recliner as he stood up. These days he didn't go to the door or much of anywhere else without at least one gun handy. He tucked the automatic behind the waistband of his jeans at the small of his back.

The gun wasn't necessary, he saw as he opened the door. Hallie stood there, along with her dad, Fred and Antonio Gomez, and Jack Kasek.

“Looks like somebody sent me a delegation,” Stark said. “What for?”

“Why, John Howard, aren't you glad to see us?” Hallie asked with a smile.

“Sure.” Stark stepped back. “Come on in. Can I get you folks something to drink?”

“This isn't a social call, John Howard,” Alton Duncan said as the group walked into the mobile home. “We're here because Hallie's had an idea.”

“I'm sure it's a good one. Sit down and tell me about it.” Stark nodded to Antonio. “How are you doing, son? Haven't seen much of you.”

“I know, and I'm tired of hiding, Mr. Stark,” Antonio said. “There's no need for it anymore. Nacho and the others know I'm here. They've known ever since that first night they showed up. I don't think they're interested in me anymore.”

“Probably not,” Stark agreed. “Oh, they'd come after you fast enough if they got the chance, but this has all gotten a lot bigger now than you witnessing what you did and running out on them.”

Antonio grimaced.

“Don't remind me. I never should have run.”

“Then you would have died with those other two young people,” Fred said. “We've talked about this before, Antonio. You shouldn't feel guilty.”

“Maybe not, but I always will. That's why I want to do whatever I can to help everybody here. It'll be a start on making up for what I did.”

Alton said, “We've gotten off the track here. Hallie, tell John Howard your idea.”

“It's pretty simple, really,” Hallie said. “What's the main complaint that certain people have with what happened here? What have they been calling us ever since that night?”

“Vigilantes,” Stark said. “I'm getting pretty tired of it, too.”

“We all are,” Alton said. “That's why Hallie's idea is such a good one.”

She went on, “They say we didn't have any authority to do what we did, and technically, I suppose they're right. Although we were able to justify our actions as self-defense, we weren't really legally empowered to do that.”

Stark frowned in thought and slowly nodded his head. He said, “I think I see what you're getting at.”

Hallie smiled.

“I thought you would, John Howard. What we need to do is incorporate Shady Hills as a town, and once we've done that you can have your own police force with the legal authority to defend the citizens. That way no one can accuse you of being vigilantes anymore.”

“It's a fine idea,” Stark agreed. “I'm not sure why you came to see me about it, though. I can't really help much with the effort. I'm not a lawyer.”

“But you
are
a hero,” Jack Kasek blurted out, “and that's why, once Shady Hills is an actual town, we want you to be its mayor!”

BOOK: The Bleeding Edge

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