Now he had a chance to help an old friend and to put some serious hurt on a bad guy who really deserved it. That excited Finnegan. He leaned forward a little and asked, “Anybody know where we can get some guns? A bunch of guns?”
Stark ate his supper after all, even though he had thought earlier that he wouldn’t. Now that there was a chance he might be able to do something to help Elaine, he knew he had to keep his strength up.
Lights out was at nine o’clock. Even though Stark didn’t expect anything to happen until after that, the time dragging by so slowly still gnawed at his nerves. Questions haunted him. Where was Elaine now? What was happening to her?
Was she even still alive?
The bare bulb in the cell’s ceiling finally went out. Some light still came in through the window in the door. Stark sat on the bunk, knowing there was no point in lying down. He wasn’t going to sleep.
Some time later, he heard sirens, a lot of them. They had to be pretty loud for the noise to penetrate into the windowless cell. The fire department was close by, and there were also emergency sirens mounted on poles throughout the town. From the sound of it, all of them were going off at the same time. Stark frowned, wondering what could be going on. The emergency sirens were activated in the event of threatening weather. Was a tornado bearing down on Del Rio? Such storms were rare in this area, but not unheard of. Stark stood up and began to pace tensely as the sirens continued to howl.
Jack Finnegan had implied that he and Sheffield and Macon were going to try to break him out of here so they could go after Elaine. Could this commotion have something to do with that? Stark asked himself. He couldn’t think of anything that his old friends could have done to cause such an uproar.
Footsteps approached the door. Stark swung toward it, his muscles taut, waiting to see what, if anything, was going to happen.
A key rattled in the lock. Stark clenched his hands into fists. If one of the deputies was there, Stark was going to jump him and take his chances. He had to get out of here, and he couldn’t wait any longer.
The door opened, letting light from the corridor into the cell. Stark squinted at the man dressed all in black who stood there.
“Come on out, John Howard,” Jack Finnegan said. “We just paid your bail.”
“What?” Stark said, glad to see Finnegan but confused by what his friend had just said.
“Well, metaphorically speaking, anyway,” Finnegan continued. “We didn’t come up with twenty million bucks, but we did figure out a way to make sure nobody cares what’s going on here at the jail.”
Stark stepped out of the cell. “What did you do?” he asked warily.
Finnegan grinned. “A tanker truck full of toxic waste just overturned on the highway at the edge of town. The stuff’s spilling all over the place.”
Stark’s eyebrows went up in surprise. “What! This is my hometown, Jack. You can’t just—”
“Relax, John Howard,” Finnegan said as he led Stark toward the front of the building. “It’s not really toxic waste. In fact, it’s mostly pancake syrup. But the fire department and every cop in town don’t know that. They scrambled out there to try to contain the spill and keep a panic from breaking out. There were only two guys left here.”
They had reached the front of the jail. Stark saw a couple of deputies slumped over the desks there. He said worriedly, “You didn’t—”
“Of course not, they’re fine. Henry and I just knocked them out. They’ll have headaches when they wake up, but that’s the extent of the damage.”
Stark nodded. He didn’t want the blood of innocent men on his hands.
Henry Macon waited at the door, also dressed all in black like Finnegan. He had a shotgun in his hands. He nodded curtly to Stark and Finnegan and said, “Will’s waiting in the car. Let’s go.”
The three men hustled outside. The rental car was at the curb. They piled in and Sheffield hit the gas.
Stark and Finnegan were in the backseat. As the car pulled away from the jail, Stark said, “How in hell did you get hold of a tanker truck filled with syrup and make it look like it was hauling toxic waste?”
Finnegan grinned and rubbed his fingers together. “Money talks, John Howard. If you’re willing to put out enough dough, you can get almost anything done, and it doesn’t take much time, either. Plus I have an attorney who has a lot of connections all across the country, some of them a little on the shady side of the law.”
“How much have you spent so far?”
Macon looked back at them from the front seat. “You might not want to ask that, John Howard,” he advised.
“A little over a million and a half,” Finnegan said proudly. “Had to pay a premium, you know, for speed.”
“A million and a half?” Stark repeated.
“Money well spent,” Finnegan assured him. The grin disappeared from the banker’s face. “If it helps us get Elaine back safe and sound, it’ll be worth every penny, John Howard. Don’t you worry about that.”
Stark sat back and rode in silence for a few minutes. When he spoke again, he said, “Y’all are liable to get in a lot of trouble over this. You know that, don’t you?”
“We know,” Sheffield said.
“Now ask us if we care,” Macon said.
“You’ve got families, jobs, good lives that you’ve made for yourselves. You’re risking all that just to help a friend?”
“Hell of a thing, ain’t it?” Finnegan said.
Stark nodded slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “A hell of a thing. No matter how this turns out, I owe you, all of you. Any time I can ever help you, just let me know.”
Finnegan chuckled and said, “You’re assuming we won’t all spend the rest of our lives in jail.”
Stark didn’t know what to say to that. They were in this too deep to back out now. They had to go ahead, play out the hand, and see what happened.
He realized they were on their way to the ranch. He said, “The Diamond S is the first place the authorities will look for me.”
“They’re going to be too busy with that toxic spill to look for you for a while, remember?” Finnegan said. “Anyway, that’s not where we’re going. We scouted out a place not far from there that looks like it’s been deserted for twenty years.”
Stark nodded. “The old McCarthy place. It looks like that because it has been deserted for twenty years. The old man who owned it died without any heirs. He also hadn’t paid his property taxes for several years, so the county took it over. They’ve been trying to sell it all this time, but it’s such a hardscrabble spread that nobody wants it.”
The McCarthy Ranch was actually a pretty good hiding place, Stark thought. It was reasonably close to his ranch, it had an old house on it and a tumbledown barn where they could hide the car, and most people had forgotten it even existed. They could hide out there until they were ready to move against Ramirez and have a reasonable expectation of not being found.
It would have to be pretty soon, though, because they couldn’t count on more than a few days’ grace. Then Hammond or someone else was bound to remember the old ranch and come out there to have a look around.
The turnoff to the Diamond S was approaching. Stark leaned forward and said to Sheffield, “I want to have a look at my ranch.”
“That’s not a good idea, John Howard,” Finnegan said. “When we checked the place this afternoon, there were still a couple of deputies out there.”
“They’ve probably been called in to help deal with that overturned truck,” Stark pointed out. “Wasn’t that the idea, to get all the law enforcement in the county concentrated there?”
“Yeah, but we can’t be sure there’s nobody at the Diamond S.”
“We won’t stay long,” Stark said grimly. “But I have to see what Ramirez did to my home.”
Finnegan sighed. “It’s a dumb move, but I suppose I know how you feel. Take the ranch road, Will.”
Sheffield nodded and wheeled the car into the turn.
Fin
negan was right, Stark thought. He was risking his freedom, and theirs, just to see the destruction with his own eyes. He felt compelled to do so, however.
The moon was bright enough so that Sheffield was able to cut off the headlights and drive without them as he approached the ranch headquarters. There was no point in announcing their presence any more than they had to. As they came within sight of the blackened ruins that marked the locations of the main house, the bunkhouse, the barns, and the other outbuildings, Sheffield put the car in neutral, turned the engine off, and let it coast to a silent stop so he didn’t have to use the brakes. He had already taken the bulb out of the dome light, so the car remained dark as the four men opened the doors and stepped out.
Stark stood there beside the vehicle and looked around, and as the extent of the terrible destruction soaked in on him, he felt his heart hardening even more with anger and hatred. Ramirez was responsible for this. Ramirez had destroyed everything Stark had worked for decades to build. And when he took Elaine, he had ripped out what remained of Stark’s heart and soul. Getting her back was his only chance to regain his humanity, Stark thought.
“Don’t move,” a voice snapped from behind them. “You’re covered.”
Stark tensed, ready to throw himself to the ground in case any shooting started. On the other side of the car, Macon started to turn, the shotgun in his hands. Stark expected to hear the blast of gunfire shattering the nocturnal peace.
Instead, another voice called sharply, “Rich! No! Put the gun down!”
Stark had thought there was something familiar about the first voice, though he hadn’t heard it in years. The second one he definitely recognized. “Nat!” he exclaimed. “Nat, is that you?”
A short, slender shape came out of the darkness. “John Howard!” Nat Van Linh said. He reached out to grasp Stark’s hand and pump it. “Lord, it’s good to see you!” Nat turned his head and added, “Rich, put the gun down and come over here.”
“You sure about that, Nat?” rumbled the hoarse voice that had first challenged them from the darkness.
Quietly, Nat said, “These are our friends, Rich, like I told you. They’re John Howard, Will, and Jack.”
A figure stepped out from the shade of a cottonwood tree. In the moonlight, Stark saw that he wore ragged blue jeans and a dark T-shirt. His hair was long and a little tangled, and he had a close-cropped beard. He carried a long-barreled pistol in his right hand. The silvery moonlight reflected off the glasses he wore.
Stark hadn’t seen him for twenty years or more. He suspected that in daylight, there might be a lot of gray in that sandy hair. But other than that, Rich Threadgill didn’t appear to have changed much.
“Rich,” he said. “It’s good to see you again.”
Threadgill came closer. “John Howard? Is that really you?”
Stark held out a hand and said, “It’s really me.”
Threadgill ignored the hand and threw his arms around Stark in a bear hug. Stark gasped a little, both from the strength of the embrace and the fact that Threadgill evidently hadn’t bathed or changed clothes in a while. That came as no surprise; cleanliness wasn’t a big concern for someone who lived on the streets. The surprise was that Threadgill was still alive after all these years. Stark had assumed that his old friend’s lifestyle would have claimed him a long time ago. Drugs, alcohol, violence . . . all were part and parcel of a life lived on the streets.
It hadn’t had to be that way. Threadgill had relatives who would have taken him in and given him a place to live. Stark had talked to some of them in the past. They had tried to help Threadgill when he came back from Vietnam, but any time he moved in with one of them, he never stayed very long. He was too restless. Nor had he been able to hold a job for more than a few weeks before he got in a fight, mouthed off to a supervisor, or simply stopped showing up for work. He drank some, but booze wasn’t his problem. He could control that. What he couldn’t control were the inner demons that never gave him any peace.
It would have been easy, of course, to blame Vietnam for what had happened to Rich Threadgill, but Stark knew that wasn’t really the case. Threadgill had been . . . eccentric . . . before he ever joined the marines and was sent to Southeast Asia. His parents had died while he was in high school and he had learned to take care of himself then. He had managed to graduate, but he knew that further education wasn’t for him. He didn’t want to be tied down anywhere. So he’d enlisted and found himself in that steaming, dangerous jungle along with Stark, Finnegan, Sheffield, and Macon. That was where he’d really come into his own. Going back stateside to a life of peace . . . well, that just hadn’t worked out.
Stark slapped Threadgill on the back several times as the man hugged him. He heard sobs and realized that Threadgill was crying. “It’s all right, Rich,” he said. “I’m glad to see you, too.” Looking over Threadgill’s shoulder at Nat Van Linh, he asked, “Where did you find him?”
“In Dallas,” Nat replied. “I’d gotten a postcard from him about a year ago, mailed from a halfway house up there. He wasn’t staying there anymore, but the people running the place had an idea where I might find him. He was there, living under an overpass. That’s why it took me longer to get down here. We came to the ranch expecting to find Elaine.”
“She called you, too?”
“That’s right.” Nat looked around at the devastation. “What happened here? Where is she, John Howard?”
Finnegan took Nat’s arm. “Come on, buddy, we’ll fill you in. You may not know it yet, but you just stepped into a world of trouble.”
Stark finally disengaged himself from the sobbing Threadgill and gently but firmly got the homeless man to sit down on the trunk of the rental car. Threadgill dragged the back of his hand across his eyes and said, “Nat told me you were in trouble, John Howard. I want to help you.”
“That’s right, Rich. I’ve had a lot of trouble the past couple of months. And now a drug lord across the border has kidnapped my wife.”
“Elaine? I remember you showin’ us her picture when we were over there in ’Nam. She was really pretty.” Threadgill obviously didn’t remember it, but he had met Elaine a couple of times since they’d all come back from the war.
“She still is,” Stark said, and he hoped fervently that that statement was true.
The other four men gathered around the car. Finnegan had explained the situation to Nat Van Linh by now, and Nat asked, “What do we do now, John Howard?”
“Head on over to the McCarthy place, I guess,” Stark said. “Then we can start trying to figure out how to arm ourselves and how we’ll attack Ramirez’s compound.”
“I’ll leave the strategy to you, John Howard,” Finnegan said. “You were always better at that than any of us. But as for the weapons, I’ve got that taken care of. They ought to be here tomorrow.”
Stark frowned at him. “What are you talking about, Jack?”
“I told you, my lawyer’s got all sorts of contacts, including people who know how to put their hands on guns that can’t be traced. They’ll be delivered to that other ranch tomorrow.”
Stark grunted. “More of that million and a half you’ve spent?”
“Well, actually most of the cost will be over and above that.”
“I can’t ever pay you back. You know that.”
“You got me out of that damned jungle alive,” Finnegan said. The other men all nodded. “Chances are none of us would have survived without your help, John Howard. We’re the ones who can’t ever pay you back.”
Stark looked at each of them in turn, saw the trust and affection on their faces, and finally nodded. He said, “Let’s get out of here.”
But before they could move, the distinctive throbbing sound of a helicopter’s engine came beating through the night.
Thirty-four
The helicopter didn’t necessarily have to have anything to do with them, Stark thought, but it didn’t pay to take any chances. “Get under the trees,” he barked, instinctive
ly falling back into the habit of giving orders when he and his companions were in a potentially dangerous situation.
“What about the car?” Macon asked as the six men hurried over into the thick shadows underneath the cottonwoods.
“Nothing we can do about it now,” Stark replied. He wished they were better armed. They had the shotgun, which Finnegan had bought in a Del Rio sporting goods store that afternoon, and Threadgill’s long-barreled old pistol. He’d had the gun for decades, and Stark didn’t know if it would even fire.
The sound of the chopper’s engine grew louder. Looking up through the branches of the trees, Stark caught sight of its running lights. He had hoped that the helicopter just happened to be flying over the ranch on its way elsewhere, but judging from the way the lights were moving, it looked like the Diamond S might actually be the chopper’s destination.
“Who could that be?” Sheffield asked quietly.
“The black helicopters, man,” Threadgill said. “Haven’t you heard of the black helicopters? They’re comin’ for us!”
He started out from under the trees, brandishing the pistol as if he intended to shoot down the chopper with it. Stark grabbed his arm and stopped him before he could go more than a couple of steps. “Wait a minute, Rich,” he said. “Maybe that chopper doesn’t have anything to do with us.”
Threadgill gave a shake of his head, as if something annoying was buzzing in his ear. “Medivac,” he said. “Gotta be medivac, comin’ to get the guys who were hit and take ’em back to base.”
“No, Rich, we’re not in-country,” Stark told him, speaking quietly but insistently in an effort to get through his friend’s muddled memories. “Just take it easy.”
Threadgill still seemed confused, but he lowered the pistol and said, “I’m okay, John Howard. Really, I’m okay.”
Stark doubted that, but maybe Threadgill would be able to keep it together until after the helicopter was gone. Maybe it hadn’t been a good idea for Nat to bring Threadgill with him, he thought. If Threadgill was able to reach back into the past and regain the combat prowess that had made him one of the best fighting men in the unit, he would be an asset in the raid on Ramirez’s compound. But if he went nuts in the middle of a firefight and could no longer distinguish friend from foe . . .
Vengeance Is Mine Page 35