The Bleeding Edge

by William W. Johnstone

  With all the yelling going on, along with the thud of fists against flesh and bone, Stark didn’t hear the rush of footsteps behind him, but some instinct warned him anyway and he wheeled around just in time to duck under a roundhouse punch thrown at his head. He grabbed the man’s T-shirt and pulled hard. As he was already off-balance, the man’s momentum carried him forward, and Stark was able to flip him in the air with a neat judo throw he had learned in basic training, which seemed to him like a thousand years ago. The man slammed down on his back, knocking all the breath from his lungs and stunning him.

  “John Howard, look out!”

  The warning cry came from Hallie. Stark wasn’t surprised that she hadn’t stayed in the truck like he told her. He glanced over his shoulder and saw one of the intruders swinging a protest sign at him. He didn’t have time to duck or twist out of the way. All he could do was throw his left arm up to block the blow.

  The piece of lumber to which the sign was attached struck Stark’s arm and made it go numb all the way to the shoulder. His right arm still worked just fine, but before he could throw a punch Hallie appeared behind the man and jabbed the prongs of a stun gun against the side of his neck. The man’s body jerked and he arched his back as the shock hit him. His eyes widened, and then his knees came unhinged. He fell to the ground with all the fight shocked out of him.

  Stark took hold of Hallie and pushed her toward the pickup.

  “You don’t need to be in the middle of this ruckus!” he told her.

  “If I hadn’t been, that guy might have busted your head open with that sign!”

  Stark couldn’t argue with that, but he still didn’t want Hallie staying in harm’s way.

  Before he could do anything else, two more of the Black Panthers rushed him. He whirled to meet their charge and traded punches with them. Both men were young and muscular, and if they felt any qualms about attacking a man old enough to be their father, they sure didn’t show it. Stark was also at a disadvantage because his left arm was still partially numb and didn’t want to work right. He had to give ground, with Hallie retreating right behind him.

  “Wah-hoooo!”

  The battle cry came from a young Hispanic man Stark didn’t recognize. He leaped into the fracas and tackled one of the men, driving him off his feet. That left Stark facing just one man. Stark managed to parry a couple of punches, then stepped in and drove a hard, straight right to his opponent’s jaw. That blow staggered the man. Stark swept his leg around and knocked the man’s feet out from under him. As the man fell, Stark caught him with an uppercut to the chin that stretched him out on the ground, momentarily senseless.

  There was no respite from the violence. Someone grabbed Stark from behind and put a choke hold on him. Stark tried to break free but failed. He drove an elbow back into the man’s stomach, but that didn’t do any good, either. It was like ramming his elbow into a wall. Stark couldn’t get any air, and bright-colored sparks seemed to be exploding in his brain.

  The terrible pressure on his throat went away suddenly. He stumbled forward and gasped for air. A strong hand closed around his arm. The young Hispanic man who had helped him earlier appeared beside him and asked, “Are you all right, sir?”

  “Yeah, thanks to you, son,” Stark said, his voice hoarse from the near-strangulation. He looked down at the unconscious man on the ground at his feet. “I reckon it was you who cleaned this fella’s clock?”

  The young man grinned.

  “You looked like you could use a hand,” he said. He was about to say something else when Stark suddenly shoved him aside and threw a punch at the Black Panther who’d been about to bring a protest sign crashing down on his rescuer’s head. The blow landed solidly and sent the protester reeling off his feet.

  “Thanks,” the young man said. “Looks like we’re even.”

  “Getting there,” Stark said. “Look out! Here come some more of ’em!”

  Stark and his newfound friend wound up standing back-to-back, slugging it out with several of the intruders. Stark’s rawhide-tough form absorbed the punishment, although he knew he would ache like the devil the next day.

  The banshee wail of sirens tore through the Texas air but didn’t stop the fighting. That took a dozen sheriff’s deputies wading into the riot, tackling the combatants, and slapping plastic restraints on them. Park residents and intruders alike were taken down. Anger surged through Stark when he saw his friends being manhandled, but he supposed the deputies were just trying to bring the battle to an end as quickly as they could, before anybody else got hurt.

  He hoped there hadn’t been any serious injuries. People could get trampled to death in chaos like this.

  The fighting came to an end before Stark and his new ally were taken into custody. They were able to step back, gathering with the park residents who were still free on one side of the entrance while the deputies herded the Black Panthers and other protesters who hadn’t been arrested to the other side of the road. Although Stark had issues with the way Sheriff Lozano had handled things, he didn’t envy those deputies being stuck between two hostile forces like that.

  Lozano himself was on hand, shouting through a bullhorn, “Settle down! Back off, damn it! Everybody stop fighting, or you’re going to jail!”

  Jack Kasek stepped forward and pointed at the park residents who were lying on the ground with their hands fastened behind their backs.

  “You can’t arrest our people!” Jack yelled. “We were just defending ourselves!”

  Lozano lowered the bullhorn and said, “That’s always your story, isn’t it, Kasek? You’re just defending yourselves.”

  Jack started to protest, but Lozano overrode him.

  “Nobody’s under arrest yet,” the sheriff said. “The only reason anybody is restrained is to put an end to this riot.”

  “A riot that those people started!” Jack said, pointing to the Black Panthers.

  “Those people?” one of the black-clad intruders repeated in an indignant shout. “You racist motherf—”

  Lozano brought the bullhorn to his mouth again and boomed out, “All right, that’s enough!” He lowered the bullhorn and instructed his deputies, “Escort these visitors out of the retirement park.”

  It was Jack Kasek’s turn to be indignant. He said, “You call them visitors? They attacked our security people, forced their way in here, and then attacked more of our residents.”

  “We were exercising our right to free speech!” the spokesman for the Black Panthers shot back. Some of the others took up the chant. “Free speech! Free speech!”

  “Get ’em out of here,” Lozano snarled at his men. He turned to the Shady Hills residents and went on, “Get your friends on their feet and back off. Go on about your business. Looks like you’ve got some cuts and bruises that need attention.”

  “You’re not going to arrest any of them?” Jack demanded incredulously.

  “Not right now, and I’m not going to arrest any of you, either. Nobody’s getting arrested until my department has conducted a full investigation of this incident.”

  Stark had a hunch that so-called investigation wouldn’t be very thorough, no matter what Lozano said. Clearly, the sheriff wanted to just sweep everything under the rug.

  “By the time you get around to doing anything, they’ll all have gone back to Dallas or Houston or wherever they came from,” Jack said.

  Lozano ignored him and turned away as the deputies herded the Black Panthers out of the park. Some of the other protesters were mixed in with them. They had avoided any real trouble so far, but in their liberal zeal they had gotten caught up in the heat of the moment and rushed in to join the battle. Like their sixties counterparts, who they admired so much, they believed in peace and love . . . and they’d kill you if you didn’t agree with their version of those things.

  Lozano turned and called, “Stark!” He motioned for Stark to join him.

  “What do you want, Sheriff?” Stark asked as he and Hallie came up to Lozano.r />
  The lawman looked at Hallie and said, “I didn’t ask to talk to you, counselor.”

  “I represent Mr. Stark,” she snapped.

  “It’s true,” he said with a smile. “I think she’s on permanent retainer. What can I do for you, Sheriff?”

  “You seem to be the most level-headed of this bunch.” Lozano inclined his head toward the residents of the park. “Tell them that I’m going to have a car here at the gate twenty-four/seven until that damned election of yours is over.”

  “I thought you didn’t have the man power for that.”

  “I don’t have the man power to put down any more riots like this, either,” Lozano said. “It’s only a few days. I’ll manage somehow.”

  Stark nodded and said, “Well, Sheriff, we appreciate that.” He could have said something about the gesture being too little, too late, but he didn’t see any point in that.

  Lozano studied Stark with narrowed eyes and went on, “Yeah, you’re the most level-headed . . . but I wonder if that makes you the most dangerous of the bunch, too.”

  “I’m a peaceable man, Sheriff,” Stark said.

  Lozano just grunted and turned away again.

  Stark and Hallie returned to the other residents. Stark passed along the sheriff’s message. Jack Kasek said caustically, “Now he does something, after we’ve got more people hurt.”

  “Any serious injuries?” Stark asked.

  “There don’t seem to be. Just cuts and scrapes and bruises. We’re too old for all that rough-and-tumble, though. There’ll be some sore muscles in the morning.”

  Stark laughed and said, “Darned right there will be.” He turned to the young man who had pitched in to help him during the fight. The stranger was standing with Henry Torres. Stark held out his hand and said, “Much obliged to you for your help, amigo. I’m John Howard Stark.”

  “I know who you are, sir,” the man said as he shook hands.

  Henry spoke up, saying, “This is my boy Reuben, John Howard.”

  “I’m mighty glad to meet you, Reuben. You visiting your dad?”

  Henry said, “Actually, he’s staying with me for a while until he finds a place of his own.”

  “That’s right,” Reuben Torres said. “You see, I just got out of jail.”

  Stark’s eyebrows went up a little in surprise. Reuben Torres was about as clean-cut a young man as he had seen in a while, and he sure didn’t look like the type who would have run afoul of the law.

  Stark said, “I’ve got a hunch there’s a story that goes with that. Why don’t we go in the community center, get some Cokes out of the icebox, and you can tell us about it if you want to.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  “I was a Border Patrol agent for five years,” Reuben Torres said as he sat at a table in the community center with his father, Stark, Hallie, Jack Kasek, Nick Medford, and several other Shady Hills residents. “I was hired right out of college.”

  “It was all he ever wanted to do,” Henry said with a note of pride in his voice. “He was smart enough he could have done anything, but he wanted to do something that would help the country.”

  “I thought about joining the military,” Reuben said, “but it seemed to me that we have plenty of enemies closer at hand. Right in our backyard, so to speak. Like anybody else who lives near the border, I’ve seen the way crime has risen in these parts over the past twenty years. Once I was in the Border Patrol, I started to understand why that’s happened. There are certain elements in Washington that want us to fail. They keep the Border Patrol around for show, so they can pretend that they’re doing something about the drug smuggling and the illegal immigration, but they keep cutting our budget and tying our hands so that we can’t succeed. Too many good agents get fed up and quit because they’re so frustrated.”

  Stark nodded and said, “If I was them, I’d probably feel the same way.”

  “I doubt that, John Howard,” Hallie said. “You’re too blasted stubborn to quit on anything once you’ve made your mind up about it.”

  “That describes most of the agents who are left, ma’am,” Reuben said. “Too blasted stubborn to know when they don’t have a chance. So they keep on trying to make a difference.”

  Henry said, “You did everything you could. None of it was your fault. It was all Washington.”

  Reuben shrugged.

  “Maybe so. That didn’t change anything, though.”

  “What happened?” Hallie asked.

  “I was out with three other agents, making a sweep along a section of the border where the smuggling traffic had been particularly heavy lately. It was night, so we were using infrared to locate suspects. We came across a group of eight illegals . . . two grown men, and six boys ranging in age from ten to fourteen. All of them were carrying such heavy packs full of drugs that they were just staggering along.”

  “They were using children to carry drugs?” Jack asked.

  “That’s right, sir.”

  “Those animals!”

  Reuben smiled faintly and said, “I won’t disagree with you about that.” He paused, then went on, “We closed in on them and told them to halt. They scattered, of course. We took the two adult suspects into custody first, secured them, and then pursued the kids. Since we were tracking them by infrared, it didn’t take long to round them up. They were all pretty scared, so I don’t think they were that upset about being caught. There wasn’t any trouble until we got to the last one. We pinned him up in a little wash, and he said he wanted to surrender. One of the other agents, Luiz Garcia, and I went in there to get him. The kid had put his pack on the ground. Luiz reached down to get it while I held my flashlight on the boy. That was when he reached behind his back and came out with an Uzi.”

  “An Uzi?” Jack repeated. “Like, one of those machine guns?”

  “That’s right,” Reuben said. “He was swinging it up toward Luiz. I had my gun in my other hand. I could have shot him. Maybe I should have. But he was fourteen years old. I didn’t want to kill him.”

  “What did you do?” Hallie asked.

  “I threw my flashlight at him. They’re pretty heavy, you understand. They’re made that way so you can use them as a weapon if you have to. It smacked him across the face and knocked him down. Broke his nose. Luiz took the Uzi away from him.” Reuben drew in a deep breath. “As it turned out, the gun wasn’t operational. He couldn’t have fired it.”

  “But you didn’t know that at the time,” Stark said.

  “No, I didn’t. I acted to save the life of a fellow agent, and I’d do it again in a second. But as soon as we brought the kids in, some lawyer who works for the cartel showed up and started yelling about how we’d beaten them and violated their civil rights. The kid I’d walloped was actually the only one who was hurt, but he had that broken nose and a couple of black eyes and looked really pathetic when he was photographed. It didn’t take long for the Mexican government to lodge a formal complaint of brutality with our Justice Department.”

  “And they actually prosecuted you for that?” Hallie asked in amazement.

  “Not at first. My supervisors investigated the incident and issued a report clearing me of any wrongdoing. Homeland Security looked into it, too, and decided that I hadn’t done anything wrong. I.C.E. said the same thing. The attorney general himself, though, decided that the complaint had merit and took it to a federal grand jury. They indicted me for assault and civil rights violations, and then a jury convicted me. I was sentenced to three years in prison.”

  A stunned silence hung over the table for a long moment after Reuben stopped talking. Finally, Jack Kasek said, “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard!”

  “We were devastated,” Henry said. “His mother and I didn’t believe Reuben had done anything wrong. We still don’t. But he went to prison anyway.”

  “I served eight months before I was paroled,” Reuben said. “It was pretty bad, but I made it through. Now I’m an ex-convict, though, with a felony convict
ion hanging over my head. It won’t be easy finding a job.”

  “We’ll just see about that,” Jack said. “I can make some calls.”

  Reuben smiled and said, “I appreciate that, Mr. Kasek, but I don’t know anything about aerospace engineering. All I know how to do is be a cop, basically.”

  “Don’t worry, son,” Stark told him. “Something will come along. In the meantime, I suspect you’re welcome to stay here at Shady Hills as long as you want. As long as your folks go along with that.”

  “We’re thrilled to have him home,” Henry said. “As far as we’re concerned, this is Reuben’s home, too.”

  Everyone around the table nodded in agreement.

  “Of course,” Stark said, “if you want to take a turn at guard duty . . .”

  “Yes, sir,” Reuben said with an eager smile. “I’d be glad to do that.”

  Hallie said, “I still can’t believe you were prosecuted and convicted.”

  “Well . . . the Justice Department gave the kid immunity from the drug-smuggling charges and for crossing the border illegally. That way they could bring him in to testify against me. By the time of the trial they’d fixed his nose and his bruises had gone away, and when they brought him into the courtroom he looked like a sweet little altar boy. Then they showed these huge close-up photos of his face after that flashlight hit him, and you could just see the jury sympathizing with him. It didn’t help that the gun he had wouldn’t work, although there was no way in the world for us to know that at the time.”

  “The government got what it wanted,” Stark said. “A sacrificial lamb to shut up the complaints from Mexico, and a case they could point to as evidence of how sensitive they are to the plight of minorities.”

  “Hey, what about me?” Reuben said. “I’m a minority.”

  “You sure are, son. You’re an honest, hardworking citizen who was doing your best to fight the evil that’s trying to take over this country. These days, that’s the only minority our government just doesn’t give a damn about.”