Burn that bridge when you come to it, Stark told himself. Right now, he wanted to know what the hell that helicopter was up to.
The chopper had slowed and was hovering over the ruins of the ranch house. As Stark looked up at it, something came out of the helicopter. Stark couldn’t see that well in the darkness, but he would have sworn that some sort of bundle had just been tossed out. A second later, as it landed with a heavy thud between the burned-out ranch house and the devastated bunkhouse, Stark knew he’d been right. Something had been thrown from the chopper.
In that heartbeat when whatever it was had been plummeting toward the ground, Stark had wondered if it could be a bomb. Had Ramirez sent his men back to finish the job of destroying the Diamond S? When it hit would the whole ranch be transformed into a gigantic crater? Stark wouldn’t put it past Ramirez to have himself a pocket nuke.
That was a crazy thought, of course, and the thing hadn’t exploded when it hit the ground. Now, as the chopper swung around and started back south, Finnegan said, “What the hell was that?”
“We’d better find out,” Stark said.
He started forward, followed by the other men. Macon came up beside him, carrying the shotgun. “Better let me go first, John Howard,” he said. “Just in case whatever’s up there needs a load of buckshot.”
Stark nodded. “All right. But the rest of you be ready for trouble.”
Macon moved out in front, taking the point. He kept the shotgun trained on the long, shapeless bundle that lay motionless on the ground. Circling it, he called to the other men, “It looks like something wrapped in canvas. You think we can risk a light?”
Sheffield slipped a small flashlight out of the pocket of his black jeans, also purchased at the sporting goods store that afternoon. “John Howard?” he asked.
“Go ahead,” Stark told him.
Sheffield thumbed the switch, and a narrow beam of illumination sprang out from the flashlight. He played it over the object, which was indeed something wrapped in canvas, just as Macon had said. Rope had been tied around the thing in several places.
Stark’s guts knotted as he saw the dark stains on the canvas. Something had soaked through it, and every instinct in his body told him it was something bad.
“Open it up,” he said in a voice as hollow as if it had come from inside a grave.
Finnegan took hold of Stark’s arm. “John Howard, maybe we’d better go back to the car for a minute—”
“Open it up,” Stark commanded again. “Nat, I never knew you not to have a knife on you. Cut those ropes and unwrap that canvas.”
Nat looked around at the others. Nobody moved.
“Do it!” Stark roared.
Finnegan shrugged and nodded to Nat. “Go ahead.”
With a sigh, Nat took a folding knife from his pocket and moved toward the canvas-shrouded bundle. He knelt beside it, opened the knife, and began sawing on the ropes.
Stark stood there, sick and numb, feeling almost as if he had been displaced from his own body and was just observing this developing horror from somewhere else. But in the back of his mind a panic-stricken voice had begun to gibber, and each beat of his heart sent a desperate “No!” of denial through his brain. His chest was tight and painful, as if a giant belt had been drawn around it, and he wondered fleetingly if he was having a heart attack.
The ropes parted under the keen edge of Nat’s knife. When all of them were cut, he folded back the canvas....
The lifeless face of Elaine Stark, her features bloody and twisted in agony, was sharply limned by the beam from Will Sheffield’s flashlight. Sheffield cried out in horror and jerked the light away.
But it was too late. What John Howard Stark had just seen had been burned indelibly into his brain, a nightmare image that would be with him for the rest of his life.
He threw back his head and howled in agony like a wild animal.
Finnegan grabbed at him but missed as Stark lunged forward. “Stop him!” Finnegan yelled. “John Howard, no!”
Macon tried to get in Stark’s way, but he was bowled over as if he weren’t there, despite being taller and heavier than Stark. Shouldering Nat aside effortlessly, Stark dropped to his knees beside his wife’s body and cried out again in incoherent pain as he took her face in his shaking hands. “Elaine!” he choked out as he leaned over her, tears falling from his eyes to land on her face and wash away a little of the blood. “Elaine . . . no, God, no, please, God, no . . . Elaine . . . I’m so sorry . . . so sorry . . .”
His whole world had been ripped from under him, turned inside out, transformed into a wrenching nightmare of grief and loss. He shook and shuddered as the tears flowed. Leaning over, he pressed his cheek to hers, shaking even more as he felt the coldness of her flesh. She had been dead for quite a while. All during the afternoon and evening, while he had dared to hope again, it had already been too late to save her.
Ramirez . . . the Vulture . . . what else had he done to her?
The others were standing back, allowing him to be alone with her, so they weren’t close enough to stop him as he began pulling away the rest of the canvas, uncovering her body. Stark cried out again as he saw the blood, dark in the moonlight, the mutilation, the indignities that had been heaped upon her. He hoped wildly that she had been dead before those terrible things were done to her, but in his heart he knew that probably wasn’t the case.
Finnegan came up and took hold of his arm. “John Howard, come on,” he said softly. “There’s nothing you can do—”
Stark backhanded him, sending him flying. Finnegan landed with an “Ooof!” and rolled over a couple of times.
Sheffield, Macon, and Nat looked at each other, not knowing what to do. Stark was no longer even aware of them. At this moment, he was mindless, totally consumed by his grief.
So he never saw Rich Threadgill step up behind him, wasn’t aware of Threadgill’s arm rising and falling or the butt of the heavy old pistol thudding against his head. Stark pitched forward into the darkness that had already engulfed his soul and now claimed his physical being as well.
He wasn’t out long, only a couple of minutes. Threadgill might not have any idea how to cope with normal, everyday life, but he could hit a man with a gun butt just hard enough to stun him without doing any real damage. In that couple of minutes, Stark’s friends had used their belts to tie him hand and foot. He came out of his stupor roaring with rage. He looked around wildly, tossing his head back and forth, and saw that they had carried him underneath the trees.
Threadgill came over and knelt beside him, putting a hand on Stark’s shoulder. “Take it easy, John Howard,” he said, and the strength in his arm pressed Stark to the ground with ease.
“Elaine!” Stark gasped.
“The others are takin’ care of her. Don’t you worry. We’ll see to it that she’s laid to rest proper.”
Stark closed his eyes and groaned. The feeling of loss was still sharp and agonizing inside him, and yet a certain numbness had crept into his consciousness, dulling the pain, if only infinitesimally. The human organism could only endure so much agony—physical, mental, or spiritual—before it began taking steps to protect itself. Stark’s grief had already reached that threshold.
“Remember that night at the camp near Duc Pho?” Threadgill asked quietly. “I tried to teach you how to play the harmonica, and all you could do was make it squawk like a cat with its tail bein’ stepped on. And then Will told us all about the book he was gonna write, and Jack said when he got back home he was gonna take over the bank from his daddy and make a lot of money, and I reckon he did, sure enough, and ol’ Henry didn’t say much, but then ol’ Henry never said much, did he? and neither did Nat.”
Threadgill kept talking, reminiscing quietly, his brain seeming clearer now. He knew the memories he brought up were in the past and wasn’t confusing them with the present. The words calmed Stark, and gradually his breathing and his pulse slowed, approaching normal levels again. The pain was still the
re, like a persistent toothache, only a million times worse, but a part of him realized that he was going to have to learn to live with it. The only alternative was to surrender, to give himself over to madness, and that way lay only death. That was unacceptable. He had to cling to sanity so that he could cling to life. No matter how much he might wish it were otherwise, he had to continue living.
He had things to do.
Finally, he broke into Threadgill’s monologue by asking, “What are they doing, Rich?”
Threadgill hesitated. “Well, they’re, uh, gettin’ Elaine ready . . . cleanin’ her up . . . I mean . . . Henry found a shovel that wasn’t burned up too bad in the barn, and he said he could dig . . . aw, hell, John Howard . . .”
“It’s all right,” Stark told his old friend. “I know what you’re trying to say, Rich. You think you could untie my hands and feet?”
“Jack said to keep you—”
“That’s when I was out of my head,” Stark broke in. “I’m all right now.”
That was a lie, of course. He would never be all right again. No matter what happened, he would always be incomplete. But he was functional again. The old instincts had come back to him. His brain was working, and he knew what had to be done.
“Well, all right,” Threadgill said. “But if Jack bitches at me, it ain’t my fault.”
He unlashed the belts from Stark’s hands and feet. Stark hadn’t been tied up so long that his extremities had gone numb. He was able to climb to his feet without much trouble. He saw the others about twenty yards away, under the cottonwoods, gathered around something.
He knew what it was, what it had to be. When he and Threadgill walked up and the other four men drew back, Stark saw that they had taken Elaine’s body from the bloodstained canvas and wrapped it carefully in a thick blanket.
“I found that blanket in the house, John Howard,” Nat said. “It was partially burned, but there was enough left . . .”
Stark nodded. Enough left for a burial shroud, that was what Nat meant.
“We could call the authorities, give them an anonymous tip,” Finnegan said. “That way it could all be done legally and, well, properly. . . .”
Stark shook his head. “There wouldn’t be anything proper about turning her over to Hammond,” he said harshly. “This was her home. She’ll be laid to rest here, by people who loved her, and nobody will ever know the place except us. And my boys, if I live to show them.”
The other men nodded in agreement. Macon, who stood there holding a shovel with a charred handle, said, “You just tell us where, John Howard.”
Stark turned to gaze toward a small hill that overlooked the ranch headquarters. “Up there,” he said.
Then he turned back to Elaine and knelt beside her, pulling back the blanket to reveal her face. As Threadgill had said, the men had cleaned her up, washing the blood from her face and combing her hair. Stark looked at her for a long moment. He didn’t lean down to kiss her lips. To his way of thinking, that would have been a hollow gesture. Elaine—her soul, her essence, her spirit, whatever you wanted to call it—was already gone. Stark touched her hair, her cheek, rested a fingertip on her lips for a moment. The lines of pain had been smoothed out somehow. Stark didn’t know how his friends had accomplished that, but he was grateful to them for it.
Stark leaned his head back and looked up at the heavens, seeing the stars through gaps in the cottonwood branches. If what he believed was right—and he believed, so it must be—she was already up there somewhere, gazing down at him. If he knew her, and after more than thirty years he damned well ought to, she was hurting for him, not for herself. She would wish she could reach down somehow and take his pain away from him, ease the burden of grief that still threatened to consume him. And she would want something else . . .
Vengeance.
A vagrant night breeze rustled through the cottonwoods. Stark heard the words being carried on that breeze . . . I love you, John Howard. I will always love you. And when the time comes, I’ll see you again. But until then . . .
The breeze became a wind and whipped harder through the leaves.
Go get ’em, John Howard. Get the bastards.
Vengeance is mine; I will repay, sayeth the Lord. Stark knew the Scripture and believed in that part of it, too.
But he figured that the good Lord could spare some vengeance for Elaine Stark, and he was just the one to deliver it.
Thirty-five
She was laid to rest atop the hill, with a lonely mesquite tree for a marker. The ranch was spread out before her, and in the distance, across the river in Mexico, rugged mountains loomed darkly. The wind still blew. It nearly always blew on top of this hill, Stark knew. Clouds drifted across the moon as he and his friends stood there by the grave. They had worked a long time on it, trading off with the shovel. The grave was deep. Once it was partially filled in, they had placed a layer of rocks inside it, wedging them in securely so that nothing could get to the body. Then the rest of the dirt was shoveled in, and gravel was spread over it to hide it. The law would probably be out here the next morning, if not earlier, searching for any sign of Stark, and he didn’t want them finding the grave. He didn’t want them disturbing her.
When they were finished, Will Sheffield said a prayer. Henry Macon said one as well. The others were silent, including Stark. Anything he had to say would be said in private. Later, maybe, when this was all over, he would come back out here and make his peace with what had happened. But that was too far in the future to even think about.
“We’d better get out of here,” Stark said. “We’re lucky Hammond hasn’t come lookin’ for us already.”
Nat had a rental car hidden on the other side of a stand of trees a few hundred yards from the remains of the house. He had driven it up there earlier when he and Threadgill heard the other car coming, since they didn’t know whom the vehicle belonged to. Threadgill had been left to get the drop on the newcomers. Now Nat fetched the other car and fell in behind the one Sheffield was driving. They had found the deserted McCarthy Ranch while it was still light, and Sheffield wasn’t sure they would be able to now that it was dark. Stark was able to tell him where to drive, though, and within half an hour, they pulled up in front of the abandoned ranch house. The others got out, and Sheffield and Nat drove the cars into the old barn with its leaning walls and sagging roof. With luck, the barn wouldn’t fall down while the cars were parked in it.
The six of them gathered in the house. Sheffield shined the light around to make sure no rattlers had crawled into the place. The furniture was all gone, but they sat down on the floor to wait for morning.
“Tell me about the guns,” Stark said.
“They should be delivered out here by sometime tomorrow afternoon,” Finnegan said. “Heckler and Koch MP Five machine guns, L Eighty-five assault rifles, and the latest fashions from Glock, Smith and Wesson, and Colt. Prime stuff, John Howard. But we’re not just talking guns here. We’ve got body armor and forty-millimeter grenade launchers coming, too.”
Stark grunted. “Sounds like enough to fight a war.”
“A small war, maybe,” Finnegan said, pride in his voice. “We’re going to be outnumbered, right?”
“Probably ten to one.”
“Well, all that gear will help knock down the odds.”
“And you were able to get all this because you know a lawyer?” Stark sounded dubious.
“A lawyer who sometimes handles high-profile cases, like that of a certain alleged arms dealer.” Finnegan nodded. “Oh yeah, I had to call in plenty of favors for this one. But it’s gonna be worth it.” He laughed. “Free trade . . . ain’t it grand? Just call it one of the blessings of democracy.”
They had stopped at a grocery store, too, as well as the sporting goods store, and the trunk of the rental car was full of bottled water and prepackaged food. It wouldn’t make for a very nutritious diet, but they wouldn’t have to live on it for long. Macon passed around bottles of water and a box of grano
la bars. Nat opened a container of beef jerky and handed out the strips of tough, dried beef. Just like earlier, when his supper had been brought to him in the jail, Stark had no appetite but ate anyway.
“What time is it?” Threadgill asked.
Finnegan pressed a button on his watch, lighting up the digital display for a second. “Twelve forty-seven,” he said.
“Is that all?” Stark asked. A little after midnight? It seemed as if a lot more time had passed since his friends had snatched him out of the Val Verde County Jail. It seemed like a shift in geologic eras, in fact, when he compared life before he had seen what was wrapped up in that canvas, and after....
“How did they know we were there?” he asked aloud.
No one seemed to want to answer. Finally, Sheffield said, “You mean, back there at your ranch . . . ?”
“They didn’t know,” Finnegan said. “That’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Nat said, “But then why would they . . . I mean . . .”
“Why did they bring Elaine back?” Stark said heavily. “Jack’s right. They didn’t know we were there. It was just coincidence that we were. Ramirez probably didn’t even know you boys broke me out of jail tonight. He had Elaine’s body brought back and left somewhere it was bound to be found. In fact, he probably intends to tip off Hammond about it. That way Hammond could tell me all about it.”
“He’s doing all this to punish you,” Macon said.
Stark nodded. “That’s right. He wants to hurt me as bad as he possibly can.” Stark took a long drink of water from one of the bottles and then wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “What he doesn’t realize is that he’s accomplished his goal. He’s hurt me as bad as he possibly can . . . but I’m still here. And now I’m loose, where I can go after him.”
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