Vengeance Is Mine

by William W. Johnstone

  It was time now for action.

  Silencio Ryan watched Stark from the back of the crowd. He wore a Stetson and sunglasses, and no one paid any attention to him. All eyes were on Stark at the moment. Ryan could have gotten him then, even though lining up the shot in this crowd might have been difficult, but he probably wouldn’t have been able to escape and he wasn’t ready to spend the rest of his life in jail. Unfortunately there wasn’t a good spot to set up with a sniper rifle and take care of Stark from long range.

  Anyway, Ramirez had changed the orders. Stark’s death was no longer the top priority for the volatile Colombian. He had gone back to wanting to inflict as much pain as possible on Stark before finally killing him. Ramirez flip-flopped as much as a Democratic presidential candidate.

  So for now, Ryan watched and waited and planned, and tried to ignore the fierce little flame of rage that burned in the back of his brain. Stark should have been dead by now, and the fact that he wasn’t gnawed on Ryan’s guts. He had always prided himself on his lack of emotion, but somehow Stark had gotten under his skin.

  He would follow orders and let Stark live for now, let him live so that he could suffer even more, but Ramirez had better not wait too long, Ryan thought as he slipped away from the crowd. The killing urge could be denied for only so long.

  “Damn, it’s good to be home,” Stark said.

  Elaine squeezed his hand. “It’s good to have you home.”

  Sam, Devery, Hubie, W.R., and Everett were all gathered in the living room of the Diamond S ranch house. Stark had changed to comfortable clothes, and now he leaned forward on the sofa where he sat, clasped his hands together between his knees, and said, “Fill me in on what’s goin’ on.”

  Devery grinned. “You mean you ain’t heard of Stark’s Army?”

  Stark grimaced. “Good Lord. Who came up with that?”

  “The media, of course,” W.R. said. “Can’t fight Stark’s War without Stark’s Army.”

  Stark shook his head. “This ain’t right. I’ve been sittin’ in the hospital for the past week. Anything that’s gotten done, you boys have done it, not me.”

  “Nobody would’ve ever done anything without you startin’ it, though, John Howard,” Devery said. “And it’s not just around here, either.”

  Hubie said, “Show him the video.”

  Elaine picked up the TV and VCR remote. “The boys taped these stories off the news, John Howard.” She turned on the machines and started a tape playing.

  Stark sat there and watched as the stories unfolded. All along the border, the word had gotten out that some decent Americans were taking a stand and making a difference, and between Del Rio and El Paso—and even beyond into New Mexico and Arizona—the good citizens were rising up to repel the invaders and criminals. They had formed a loose alliance, the organization referred to as “Stark’s Army.”

  Elaine paused the tape, and Devery said, “That’s what the news folks call it, but the people who are actually doin’ the work don’t bother with such things. They’re just out to stop the bad things that’ve been goin’ on.”

  Stark nodded in understanding, and Elaine started the tape again. Several news stories played out before Stark’s astonished eyes:

  In Eagle Pass, Texas, another border town farther down the Rio Grande, a band of heavily armed robbers from below the border attempted to rob a supermarket, only to be thwarted by the shoppers in the store at the time, including a good number of elderly citizens and housewives. A couple of the bandits were knocked out by a hail of canned goods and then disarmed, and the citizens had used those weapons to get the drop on the other would-be thieves. The gang had been herded into a large walk-in freezer and locked up before the police were called, and when authorities finally arrived, the key to the freezer was mysteriously missing for a good while before it turned up. The bandits were half-frozen and nearly suffocated before they were let out and taken into police custody.

  Over in Arizona, in the small town of Palominas, three illegal aliens tried to carjack a woman taking her daughter to school. The Border Patrol and the local cops were nowhere to be found, but several bystanders took action, rushed to the screaming woman’s aid, and had beaten the carjackers severely by the time the police finally arrived.

  In Eunice, New Mexico, some of the locals flushed out—literally—a band of drug runners (which included a high-ranking official in the Mexican military) by pumping raw sewage through the drainage pipe the men were using to enter the country. Stark couldn’t help but laugh at the sight of the bedraggled, stinking, sewage-covered drug runners being rounded up at rifle point by the citizens and then turned over to the authorities.

  He wasn’t laughing, though, when in each case some of the participants in the vigilante actions brought up his name and explained that they had been inspired to take action by “that fella down in Texas who’s started fightin’ the drug smugglers.”

  “Somebody’s liable to get hurt,” he said when Elaine had stopped the tape and turned off the TV. “Sure, it makes folks feel good when a bunch of old ladies throwing cans of baked beans knock the stuffing out of some robbers, but they could just as easily have gotten themselves killed. That could’ve turned into a bloodbath.”

  “Yeah, it could have,” Devery said, “because one of those bandits admitted after they were captured that they planned to take everybody in the store, march them into that same freezer, and mow ’em down.”

  Stark stared at him in disbelief for a moment before saying, “You mean they would have killed everybody?”

  “No witnesses,” Devery said. “That was the plan. But it didn’t come about, John Howard, because those folks have heard about you and they decided to stand up for themselves. If they hadn’t, they’d likely all be dead now.”

  Elaine perched on the arm of the sofa next to Stark and put a hand on his shoulder. “You see, John Howard,” she said, “you’ve already made a big difference. You’ve saved lives . . . just by being the big stubborn galoot that you are.”

  Stark laughed. “Thanks . . . I think.”

  There was a moment of silence, then Hubie said, “Well . . . what do we do now?”

  Stark looked around at the circle of his friends. “You go on with what you’ve been doing,” he said, “only I’m part of it now. I’ll get my guns cleaned and loaded and be ready to go with you tonight.” He glanced at Elaine. “You planning to argue with me about it?”

  “No,” she said. “I know better. I want you to be careful, John Howard . . . but you go get ’em.”

  Despite their self-deprecating natures, Devery and the others had done quite a job of organizing. Drawing on the ranchers up and down the river and from the townspeople as well, they had put together a force of at least sixty men who were willing to fight to protect this area of Texas from the onslaught of the drug runners and gang lords. Not everyone in the group went out on patrol, though. The homes of the men involved were always protected. The Diamond S, especially, was well guarded, since it was the home of the man who had started the opposition to Ramirez.

  Stark was tireless as the days passed. July turned into August, that hottest month when the sun was always a brassy red ball in a washed-out sky the color of beaten silver. Temperatures topped one hundred degrees every day, often reaching as high as 110 or 112. One scorcher even got up to 117. But at night, the dry air cooled quickly, and even ninety-five degrees felt fairly pleasant in the low humidity.

  The night was when Stark’s Army operated, because that was when the enemy was active.

  Stark still didn’t care for the whole “Stark’s Army” business. The way he saw it, his efforts weren’t any more important than those of his friends and neighbors. The country didn’t see it that way, though. The nine days’ wonder had turned out to last considerably longer. There were still newspaper and TV stories nearly every day, and the coverage intensified every time there was a battle between the Texans and the drug runners. Several times each week, Stark and his friends found
themselves battling it out with the Vulture’s men, Winchesters and deer rifles and old army pistols against automatic weapons and Saturday night specials. The defenders were usually outgunned, but they were better shots and fought with the zeal of men protecting their homeland. As W.R. put it, “Hell, most o’ them punks learned how to shoot by watchin’ TV and movies. They’re so busy holdin’ their guns sideways and tryin’ to look cool, they can’t hit a damned thing! Meanwhile, us fellas who grew up plinkin’ at jackrabbits and coyotes can do more damage with a handful o’ bullets than they do with a whole blamed magazine!”

  The patrols cruised up and down the river roads, on the lookout for couriers crossing the river. Using his military experience, Stark had set up a staggered schedule so that the smugglers could never tell when one of the patrols might come along. Usually, the smugglers turned back under heavy fire and escaped back across the river. On occasion, though, they abandoned their convoys, in which case Stark and the others burned the heroin and cocaine shipments.

  Sheriff Norval Lee Hammond sat in his office and seethed. He sent men out to the scene of every shoot-out as soon as he heard about it, to recover the bodies of the smugglers who had been killed, if nothing else. He made no arrests, even though he knew good and well who was responsible for this carnage. Hell, the entire country knew! It was in the papers, on the TV, and on the radio. The lines of every conservative talk-radio show were jammed with people calling in to voice their support for Stark and his friends. The network news anchors reported the battles with stern faces and solemn voices that conveyed their disapproval, but Stark’s War meant ratings, so they couldn’t ignore it. In the halls of Congress, northeastern politicians bloated from decadent lifestyles and decades of holding office stood up and bellowed empty rhetoric about the dangers of vigilantism, while their conservative counterparts just shrugged and got on with the business of running the country. The leading contender for the Democratic nomination in next year’s presidential election, a female senator from California, shrilly denounced John Howard Stark as un-American and a dangerous demagogue.

  Stark just shook his head in wonder when he read that comment. He hadn’t given any interviews or allowed any news stories to be taped about him since leaving the hospital. With all the yapping going on in the country, he was one of the quietest souls around. As for the un-American part, he didn’t see anything the least bit un-American about defending his country. And that was all he was doing. It all seemed so simple to him.

  When he said as much to Elaine, she just told him, “You’re too dumb, John Howard. You’re hopelessly behind the times. You still believe in right and wrong. To those people, there’s no place in the world for that. There is no right and wrong to them; it’s only a question of what you can get away with.”

  “I couldn’t live like that,” Stark said.

  “Neither could I, and if you look around, you’ll see there’s a whole lot of people in this country who agree with you.”

  But not the New York Times. The very next day, that bastion of the liberal press ran a boxed editorial on the front page agreeing with Madame Senator from California and denouncing Stark as an unstable vigilante, no doubt traumatized by his service as a marine in that evil, immoral war in Vietnam. The editorial called for Stark’s arrest, demanded that the Justice Department move in and restore order along the border, and suggested that there should be a congressional investigation of the whole matter.

  “Yeah, a bunch of congressmen holding a hearing . . . that’ll stop the drug smuggling,” Stark said when he read the editorial in a copy of the paper Devery had brought out from Del Rio.

  “They don’t want to stop the smugglin’,” Devery said. “They just don’t want you stoppin’ it.”

  Stark was inclined to agree with him. Smuggling in tons of drugs that would drain the economy and kill tens of thousands of citizens was less of a crime in the eyes of the federal government than a bunch of honest Americans standing up for their rights. Stark wadded the paper into a ball and tossed it into the cold fireplace. By the time winter came around and he wanted a nice fire, the paper would be dried out enough to make really good kindling. He didn’t have a cat, or he would have put it in the bottom of the litter box.

  That evening, Stark patrolled along the river with Everett Hatcher and Hubie Cornheiser. They were in Hubie’s pickup, and he was behind the wheel. They were supposed to rendezvous in fifteen minutes with Devery, W.R., and another rancher named Hopkins.

  Stark heard the sound of a loud engine approaching, but there was nothing ahead of them and no headlights behind. He had just started to say, “Do you boys hear that?” when a jeep roared up out of the night and raced past them.

  Flame lanced from the muzzle of the machine gun mounted on the back of the jeep. Heavy slugs smashed into the front of the pickup, piercing the radiator and sending a cloud of steam hissing out from under the hood, which sprang its catches and popped up. Tires exploded under the lead onslaught, even as Hubie spun the wheel and sent the vehicle careening toward the edge of the road. With a spray of gravel and a cloud of dust, the disabled pickup came to a halt, its engine dying. The three men inside it were shaken, but none of them were hurt.

  “What the hell!” Hubie exploded into the silence.

  The jeep, still running without headlights, zoomed on up the road and disappeared into the darkness.

  “We been ambushed!” Everett said unnecessarily. All three of them knew what had happened.

  Then Stark heard the rumble of an engine and the grinding of gears. He twisted his head and looked out the back window. In the moonlight, he saw a large truck come around a bend in the road behind them. He recognized the type from his days in the military. It was a deuce-and-a-half with a canvas-covered back, the sort of truck that several dozen troops would climb into to be transported from one place to another.

  “Boys,” Stark said, “I think we’re about to have company. A lot of company.”

  Twenty-four

  As Stark barked orders, the three men piled out of the pickup, carrying their rifles. The Rio Grande was to their left, about a quarter of a mile away, with nothing but open ground between the river and the road. The other way, the landscape was more rugged and broken, covered by mesquite trees and scrub brush and cut by gullies.

  “Come on,” Stark snapped as he started in that direction. “We’ve got to get off the road.”

  Searchlights on the approaching truck blazed into life and washed over the three men as they ran into the brush. The truck’s brakes squealed as the driver brought it to a skidding halt. Stark heard orders being shouted in Spanish as men tumbled out of the covered back, doubtless well armed and ready to hunt down the three gringos. Rifles cracked and bullets zipped through the air as the men began to fire at the Texans. Stark, Hubie, and Everett ducked lower and ran deeper into the brush. Branches clawed at them, tore their clothes and skin, but they bulled past the obstacles. Getting scratched up was a whole heap better than getting shot.

  The ground suddenly went out from under Stark’s feet and he tumbled down a slope, landing with a jarring thud at the bottom of a gully. The fall wasn’t far, only about ten feet, but the impact was enough to knock the wind out of him and make his right shoulder ache where he had been shot. He heard noises close by, including some muffled curses, and realized that Hubie and Everett had taken the same tumble.

  Stark crawled toward them and hissed their names. “John Howard?” Hubie said.

  “You boys all right?” Stark whispered. The shooting continued, but none of the bullets whipped through the brush near them. The men from the truck must be firing blindly into the night.

  “My knee’s a mite wrenched,” Everett replied, “but other than that I think I’m okay.”

  “Just shook-up a little,” Hubie said. “What do we do, John Howard?”

  The wheels of Stark’s brain turned rapidly. His sense of direction was always reliable, and he could tell the gully ran north and south. To the south it prob
ably ran through a culvert under the road and then continued all the way to the river. There was no telling how far north it went. North, though, would take them farther away from the men who were out to kill them, and that struck Stark as a good thing.

  He had managed to hang on to his rifle as he fell, and so had Hubie and Everett. As soon as Stark had confirmed that fact, he said, “Follow me. Stay low and make as little noise as you can.”

  The gunmen were still firing their weapons, so Stark didn’t think it was very likely they would be able to track the three men by ear. They were making too much racket for that. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to be careful. Mustering as much stealth as he could, he came up in a crouch and started along the bottom of the gully. It was a mixture of sand and gravel, and he knew that during the occasional cloudbursts the area had, the gully would run full of floodwater making its way down to the Rio Grande. They didn’t have to worry about flash floods tonight; the sky was clear and dotted thickly with stars overhead.

  After a few minutes, the shooting stopped. Stark paused and whispered, “Whoever’s in charge finally got them to settle down. They were all keyed up and trigger-happy.”

  “Who do you think they are, John Howard?” Everett asked.

  “The jeep and the truck are both military issue. Could be Ramirez’s men stole them from the Mexican army.” After a moment he added, “Or those could be Mexican soldiers down there. From what I hear, a lot of their commanders have close ties with the drug cartels.”

  “Hot damn!” Hubie exclaimed. “You mean Mexico’s invadin’ us again?”

  “Well, sort of. I reckon what they’re really after is shutting down our patrols.”

  “How’d they know who we are?” Everett asked.

  “With the contacts Ramirez has, he probably wouldn’t have any trouble finding out the license numbers of all our vehicles. They could have been hidden somewhere off the road, waiting for us to drive by, checking all the plates through night-vision glasses.”