Lone Star Winter

by Diana Palmer

  Harley swallowed. He was getting the idea, and an odd sickness welled up in his stomach. He could hardly talk, because his mouth was so dry. “How will we know the bad guys from the good guys?”

  “The DEA boys will have that imprinted on the back of their jackets in big letters. Palmer and Barrett from the police department and the deputies from the sheriff’s department will all be in uniform. The bad guys will be trying to protect their product. This is important,” he added intently. “If you should be captured, make damned sure that you’re on the ground when we come in. Because if that happens, if we have to storm the house, the first thing we’ll do is to take out everybody standing. Have you got that?”

  “I’ve got it,” Harley said. “But I’m not going to get myself captured.”

  The others synchronized watches, and piled out of the Bronco. With Eb in the lead, they made their way so stealthily that Harley felt like an elephant bringing up the rear. He realized at once that his so-called training session was nothing but a waste of money. And that his inexperience could prove deadly to his comrades.

  Eb deployed Micah and Cy at the edge of the woods behind the barn. One of the feds motioned to them, and to the five sheriff’s deputies. As he waved, four other men in DEA jackets split and went around both sides. Everybody hesitated.

  Harley crouched with his heart beating him half to death. He’d been in the United States for his entire tour of duty with the Rangers, except for a brief stint in Bosnia, where he hadn’t managed to get out of headquarters. He’d seen people who’d been in combat and he’d heard about it. But he had no practical experience, and now he felt like a high school freshman getting ready to give a book report in front of the whole class—on a book he hadn’t read. His knees felt like rubber under him.

  Time seemed to lengthen as the seconds ticked by. Then, quite suddenly, one of the government agents raised his arm high and brought it down.

  “Move out!” Eb called to his team.

  It was pandemonium. Lopez’s men were in civilian clothing, not the black gear that Cy and the others were wearing. The sheriff’s deputies and the police officers were in uniform, and the DEA boys had visible identification on their jackets. Everybody seemed to be firing at once.

  Harley hesitated at the sharp firecracker pop of guns going off, the sound so ominous and deadly in real life, so unlike the enhanced gunfire used in movies and television. He got a grip on his nerve, clutched his pistol in both hands and moved out a few seconds in the general direction where Cy and Eb had just vanished. He started to run, but he wasn’t quick enough to get to cover. He ran right into the path of a submachine gun, and it wasn’t held by one of his team. He stopped, his breath catching in his throat as he looked certain death in the face for the first time in his young life.

  The small, dark man in jeans and checked shirt facing him ordered him in perfect English to drop his pistol. The leveled automatic weapon he was holding looked very professional. Harley’s pride took a hard blow. He’d walked right into that by being careless and he steeled himself for what was coming. He knew that the man wouldn’t hesitate to fire on him. With a muffled curse, he dropped his automatic to the ground.

  “One less to worry about,” the foreign man said with a vicious smile. “Adios, señor…!”

  Harley heard the loud report as a shot was fired and he tensed, eyes closed, waiting for the pain to start. But the weapon spilled out of the other man’s hands an instant before he crumpled and fell forward.

  “Get the hell out of there, Harley!” Cy raged.

  Harley’s eyes opened to find his opponent lying very still on the ground, and Cy standing behind him. Cy picked up Harley’s .45 and threw it to him.

  “Get around in front of the barn. Hurry!” Cy told him.

  Harley felt shaky, but he caught the pistol and walked rapidly past the downed man. He glanced at him and had to fight the rise of bile in his throat. He’d never seen any one like that…!

  His heart was racing crazily, his mouth felt as if it had been filled with cotton. As he cleared the side of the building, he saw firefights. Some of the drug dealer’s men were undercover, firing from behind the big transfer trucks. Others were in the barn. They were cornered, desperate, fighting for their lives if not their freedom.

  The DEA guys moved in, motioning to their backup, their own weapons singing as they brought down man after man. Most of the wounds were nonlethal, but the noise from the men as they fell made Harley sick. Groans, screams…it wasn’t like that in the movies. He watched the police officers, Palmer and Barrett, walk right into the gunfire and drop their opposition neatly and without killing them. He envied them their cool demeanor and courage. He reminded himself never to tick them off once this was all over!

  His whole body seemed to vibrate as he followed his boss. What had he been thinking when he enrolled in that mercenary training school? It was all just a lot of baloney, which had made him overconfident and could have gotten him killed tonight. The comparison between himself and these professionals was embarrassing.

  Cy went into the barn alone, but now Harley didn’t hesitate. He took a sharp breath, ground his teeth together and went right in behind him, ready to back him up if he was needed. He fought the fear he felt and conquered it, shaky legs, shaky hands and all. He’d made a fool of himself once. He wasn’t about to do it twice. He wasn’t going to let Cy and the others down just be cause he had butterflies in his stomach. His lean jaw tautened with new resolve.

  There was a man in an expensive suit with an automatic weapon firing from behind several bales of odd-looking hay in the barn. Harley noted that he was the man who’d come to Cy’s ranch in the pickup truck to “introduce himself.”

  Cy’s instincts were still honed to perfection. He pushed Harley to one side and stepped right into the foreign man’s line of fire and raised his own weapon, taking careful aim. Not even the head of the other man was visible now as he crouched behind the bales.

  “Drop the gun or I’ll drop you, right through your damned product,” Cy warned.

  The foreign man hesitated, but Cy didn’t. He fired. The bullet went right through the hay and into the man, who cried out, clutching his shoulder as his weapon fell.

  “Same arm I got with the knife, wasn’t it?” Cy asked coldly as he approached the man and dragged him to his feet. He pushed him back against one of the wooden posts that supported the hayloft and held his pistol right to the base of the man’s neck. “Where’s Lopez?”

  The drug dealer swallowed. He saw his own death in Cy’s masked face, in those terrible glittering green eyes.

  Harley felt that familiar cold sickness in the pit of his stomach as the muzzle of Cy’s .45 automatic pressed harder into the adversary’s neck just for a few seconds. It wasn’t a training exercise. The gun was real. So was the threat. He looked at his boss, at the man he thought he knew, and realized at once that Cy wasn’t bluffing.

  “Where’s Lopez?” Cy repeated, and he pulled back the trigger deliberately.

  “Please,” the foreigner gasped, shivering. “Please! He is in Cancún!”

  Cy stared at him for just an instant longer before he jerked the man around and sent him spinning away from the protection of the bales.

  “Hey, Kennedy!” he called.

  One of the DEA men came forward.

  “Here’s the site boss,” Cy told him, pushing the injured man ahead. “I think you’ll find him more than willing to talk. And if he isn’t, just call me back,” he added, watching the drug lord’s man go even paler.

  “I’ll do that. Thanks,” Kennedy said. “The sheriff’s deputies and those police officers have most of them cuffed and ready to transport. We’re going into the house. At least three of them managed to hole up in there. And there’s a fourth man still missing. Watch your back.”

  “You do the same,” Cy said. He glanced at Harley. “Let’s check out the perimeter of the barn.”

  “Sure thing, boss,” Harley drawled, but he was
pale and somber and all traces of his former cockiness were gone. He held his pistol professionally and followed his boss out the door without a trace of hesitation. For the first time, Cy was really proud of him.

  They trailed around back, watching as shadows merged with other shadows. There was a sudden crack of twigs and Harley spun around with his .45 leveled as another man carrying an automatic weapon stepped suddenly from behind one of the big trucks. His lean face was unmasked, and he was definitely foreign.

  Harley fired, but Cy’s hand shot out and knocked the barrel straight up.

  “Good reflexes, Harley,” Cy said, smiling, “but this guy’s on our side. Hi, Rodrigo,” he called to the unmasked newcomer. “Long time no see.”

  “Muchas gracias for the timely intervention,” Rodrigo replied on a husky chuckle. He moved forward, his white teeth showing even in the darkness. “It would be a pity to have come this far and be shot by a comrade.”

  “No danger of that,” Cy said with a smile as he clapped the other man on the shoulder. “We were afraid they’d killed you. How are you?”

  “Disappointed,” came the reply. “I had hoped to apprehend Lopez, but he remained in Cancún and refused to participate. Someone is feeding him information about the movement of the government agents. He knew you were coming tonight.”

  “Damn!” Cy burst out.

  Eb Scott and Micah Steele, the taller man who’d accompanied them, came forward. “Rodrigo!” he greeted, shaking the other man’s hand. “We thought you’d been killed when we didn’t hear from you.”

  “Lopez was suspicious of me,” he said simply. “I couldn’t afford to do anything that might tip my hand.” He waved his hand toward the barn. “As it is, he was warned in time to divert the cocaine shipment and substitute this for it,” he added, indicating the neat bales. “This has a significant street value, of course, but it is hardly the haul we hoped for.”

  Harley was inspecting the “hay.” He frowned as he sniffed a twig of it. “Hey! This is marijuana!”

  “Bales of it,” Cy agreed. “I noticed when we came in that the barn had a padlock on it.”

  “Now that’s what I call keeping a low profile,” Harley murmured dryly. “Locking a barn full of hay.”

  “It would have been coca paste, if Lopez hadn’t been warned,” Rodrigo told Cy. “What he’d set up behind your ranch was a small processing plant that would have turned coca paste into crack cocaine. If I’d had just another week…!”

  Cy smiled. “We’d rather have you alive, Rodrigo. We aren’t through yet.”

  “No, we aren’t,” Micah Steele said coldly. “I have a contact in Cancún who knows Lopez. He can get some one in the house.”

  “An inspired idea,” Rodrigo said. “Just don’t share it with your friends over there,” he added bitterly. “They don’t have much of a track record with infiltration. Someone else infiltrated Lopez’s home once before and died for it.”

  “Excuse me?” Micah asked.

  “They lost an agent who worked for Lopez as a housekeeper,” Rodrigo said. “He pushed her off his yacht.” His face tightened. “Then he took a fancy to my sister, who was singing in a night club. He assaulted her, and she committed suicide at his house by throwing herself…onto the rocks below.”

  Eb’s eyes narrowed. He was remembering some of the crazy things Rodrigo had done before he took this assignment, behavior that had marked him as a madman. Now they made sense. “I’m sorry,” Eb said simply.

  “So was I.” Rodrigo glanced at the government agents rounding up the stragglers. “I’d better get out of here before that guy with Kennedy recognizes me.”

  “Who, Cobb?” Eb asked, frowning.

  Rodrigo nodded. “It was his office I ransacked,” he murmured. “They say he’ll follow you to hell if you cross him. I’m inclined to believe it.”

  Rodrigo murmured, “Well, whether or not Cobb recognizes me, I don’t want to risk being apprehended while Lopez is still loose. I can’t do any good in prison.”

  “You were never here,” Eb replied, tongue-in-cheek.

  “Absolutely,” Cy agreed. “I haven’t seen you in years.”

  Micah Steele lifted one huge hand to his eyes. “Forgot my glasses,” he murmured. “I couldn’t recognize my own brother without them.”

  “You don’t wear glasses, and you don’t have a brother,” Cy reminded him.

  Micah shrugged. “No wonder I couldn’t recognize him.” He grinned.

  Harley listened to the byplay, wondering how these men could seem so calm and unconcerned after what they’d all been through. He was sick to his stomach and shaking inside. He was putting on a good enough front to fool everyone else apparently, though. That was some small compensation.

  “Get going,” Eb motioned to Rodrigo. “Kennedy’s heading this way.”

  Rodrigo nodded. “I’ll be around if you need me again.”

  “We’ll remember,” Cy said. “But it won’t be infiltrating Lopez’s gang next time.”

  “No, it damned sure won’t,” Micah Steele said with ice in his deep voice. “Next time, we’ll go at him head-on, and he won’t walk away.”

  “I will count the days.” Rodrigo melted back into the darkness before Kennedy came around the barn and paused beside the small group.

  “The four of you had better do a quick vanishing act,” Kennedy told them. “Cobb’s over there asking a lot of questions about you guys, and he won’t overlook a breach of departmental procedure. Since he outranks me, that wouldn’t be good. As far as I’m concerned, officially, you were special agents undercover and I don’t know who you are for your own protection. You infiltrated Lopez’s gang and took a powder the minute the firefight was over. Since I never knew your names, I couldn’t confirm your involvement.” He gave them a big grin. “Unofficially, thanks for your help. At least we’ve managed to shut down one of Lopez’s little enterprises.” His eyes narrowed. “The man you dropped in the barn,” Kennedy added, talking to Cy, “was the one who popped a cap on Walt Monroe. We’ve been hoping to happen onto him. Cobb says he’ll go down for murder one, and I guarantee he’ll make it stick. Monroe was one of his new recruits. He doesn’t like many people. He liked Walt.”

  “I’ll pass that along to his widow,” Cy said. “She’ll be glad.”

  He nodded. “Walt was a good man.” He looked around. “I only wish we’d had something really nasty to pin on these guys. Distribution of cocaine would have suited me better than distribution of marijuana.”

  “Yes,” Cy agreed, “but even if this was small pickings, it will hurt Lopez to have a hefty portion of his transportation force out of action, not to mention the lab he set up next to his beehives on my back property line. He’s lost a big investment here tonight, in manpower, material and unrecoverable goods. He’ll really be out for blood now. None of us will be safe until we get Lopez himself.”

  “Dream on,” Kennedy said quietly. “He’s more slippery than a greased python.”

  “Even pythons can be captured.” Micah Steele’s eyes glittered through his mask. “I’ve got a few friends in Nassau. We’ll see what we can do about Lopez.”

  “I didn’t hear you say that,” Kennedy replied.

  “Just as well,” Micah chuckled. “Since I was never here.”

  “There’s a lot of that going around,” Kennedy murmured. “Get going before Cobb gets a good look at you. I’ll take it from here.”

  Eb nodded and the others joined him for a quick jaunt back to the Johnson place where they’d left the truck.

  Harley hadn’t said a single word. Eb and Cy and Micah talked about Lopez and discussed options for getting to him. Harley sat and looked out the window.

  It wasn’t until Eb dropped the two men off at Cy Parks’s ranch, several hundred yards from the house, that Cy was able to get a good look at his foreman.

  Harley had the expression now, the one any combat veteran would recognize immediately. The experience tonight had taken the edge off his you
th, his impulsive nature, his bravado. He’d matured in one night, and he’d never be the same again.

  “Now,” Cy told him quietly, “look in a mirror. You’ll see what was missing when you were talking about your ‘exploits’ on the mercenary training expedition. This is the real thing, Harley. Men don’t fall and then get back up again. The blood is real. The screams are real. What you saw tonight is the face of war, and no amount of money or fame is worth what you have to pay for it in emotional capital.”

  Harley’s head turned. He looked at his boss with new eyes. “You were one of them,” he said. “That’s what you did before you came here and started ranching.”

  “That’s right,” Cy said evenly. “I’ve killed men. I’ve watched men die. I’ve watched children die, fighting in wars not of their making. I did it for fame and glory and money. But nothing I have now is worth the price I paid for it.” He hesitated. “Nothing,” he added, “except that woman in my house right now. She’s worth dying for.”

  Harley managed a wan smile. “I could have gotten you all killed tonight, because I didn’t know what I was doing.”

  “But you didn’t get us killed,” Cy returned. “And when the chips were down, you conquered your fear and kept going. That’s the real definition of courage.” He put a big, heavy hand on the other man’s shoulder. “You have a way with ranch management, Harley. Believe me, it’s a better path than hiring yourself out to what ever army needs foreign help. At the very least, you ac cumulate fewer bullet wounds.”

  Harley nodded. “So I saw. Good night, boss.”

  “Harley.”

  The younger man turned.

  “I’ve never been prouder of you than I was tonight,” Cy said quietly.

  Harley tried to speak, couldn’t, and settled for a jerky smile and a nod before he walked away.

  Cy walked on toward the house, smiling faintly as he contemplated the movement of the curtains in the living-room window.

  Before he even reached the porch, Lisa was out the front door and flying toward him. He caught her easily as she propelled herself from the second step. He folded her close, whirled her around and kissed her with his whole heart.