The Bleeding Edge

by William W. Johnstone

  One of the men from Shady Hills spoke up, saying, “Before I left the park, I heard some senator on TV talking about how he was going to launch an investigation . . . of Shady Hills. He was blaming John Howard and the rest of us for what happened to those kids. Said we ‘provoked’ the cartel into doing what they did. Why is it that any time somebody attacks us, some people always act like it’s our fault?”

  “Can’t answer that, Jimmy,” Stark said. “All I can do is say that we all know that’s not true, or else we wouldn’t be here about to do what we’re gonna do. And that’s go in there, get those kids to safety . . . and kill any son of a bitch who tries to stop us.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  For the rest of the day, the rescue force checked their weapons, went over the satellite intel Reuben had gotten from his Border Patrol contacts, and made some rough strategic plans, although in an operation such as this, most strategy had to be improvised on the fly because you never knew what the situation would be until your boots were on the ground. But they could work out some basic things, like who would go where when they hit the cartel’s headquarters.

  They had no way of knowing where the prisoners were being held, but Stark figured they were either in the main house or in a barn set behind the house. There were a number of other outbuildings, but from the looks of them in the satellite photos, they weren’t being used. They had estimated the number of people at the ranch based on the number of vehicles that were visible, but Stark knew that figure could be off by a considerable margin.

  One thing they could be sure of was that they would be outnumbered. But as Ben LaPorte commented, “That’s nothing new for you, is it, Mr. Stark? I read about you and those fellas who holed up in the Alamo with you. I wished at the time I could’ve been there to give you a hand.”

  “We’d have been glad to have you, Ben,” Stark told him. “And most folks call me John or John Howard. All my friends do.”

  “I’m honored to be counted among ’em, John Howard.”

  The sun was just beginning to set when they moved out, leaving the mesa in a convoy now, pulling onto the highway and heading north. A mile later they turned left onto a county road that ran all the way to the Rio Grande, eight miles away, coming down from the northwest to flow all the way to the Gulf. They drove past the even smaller road that turned off to the north and led to the ranch taken over by the cartel.

  The plan was to drive to the river, leave the vehicles there, and circle around on foot to come in from the north, where there really wasn’t much of anything. Stark hoped the cartel wouldn’t be expecting any trouble from that direction. The enemy would be alert for trouble in any direction, of course; after all, they were holding eight American teenagers prisoner and had to know someone might come after them. But they would expect any rescue attempt to be more likely to come from the south, up that narrow road.

  It was a stroke of luck that the county road was paved. No dust cloud rose to mark their passing. When they reached the Rio Grande, the ground rose slightly to low bluffs on either side of the river that overlooked the slow-moving water. The river was down; in the fading light sandbars were visible poking through the surface here and there. A tall chain-link fence topped by barbed wire ran along the bank on the American side, but it wouldn’t stop anybody who really wanted over it. In fact, it had been cut in places and only poorly repaired, if at all.

  Reuben’s mouth quirked in disgust as he got out of Stark’s pickup and looked at the fence.

  “If the government would build a good fence and man it properly, we could actually control this border,” he said. “Instead Washington just talks about enforcement, and in reality they’ve swung the gates wide open.”

  “They don’t even talk much about enforcement anymore,” Dave Forbes put in as he joined Stark and Reuben. “The more illegals who come across the border, get phony Social Security cards, and register to vote, the more there are to keep voting them into office.”

  “That’s a problem for another day,” Stark said.

  “Yeah,” Forbes agreed. “But that day’s gonna come, Mr. Stark. And then a lot of people are gonna wish they had paid more attention to what this country’s becoming.”

  Stark had a feeling Forbes was right. It was almost enough to make a man despair. But Stark wasn’t the despairing type, and right now, he had a job to do.

  Earlier, while they were still close enough to Devil’s Pass to connect to the Internet, they had used their phones to study terrain maps of the area and laid out a course that would take them to the ranch. With that course in their minds, they set out at an easy trot. The sun was down now, but just barely, and the western sky was still bright red with reflected light.

  Small, rolling, treeless hills broke the flatness of the chaparral-covered terrain. Like the Apaches who had once roamed this land, Stark and his group avoided the crests of those hills, not wanting to be silhouetted against the sky. Because of that, their path weaved back and forth, and it took longer for them to reach their destination than if they had been able to follow a straight line. But that was all right, because Stark wanted the shadows to be nice and thick before they moved in on the ranch.

  Finally, spotting lights in the distance, Stark motioned for everyone to get down. He and Reuben crawled to the top of one of those little ridges. From there, they could see the ranch headquarters.

  The ranch house, stucco with a Spanish-style red tile roof, sprawled among several cottonwood trees that probably required a lot of irrigation. The barn and the other outbuildings were as Stark had studied them on the satellite photos. Off to the east was a paved strip long enough for private jets to land and take off. At the back of the house was a swimming pool and a tennis court. Stark wondered idly if the cartel boss who lived here ever played tennis. He couldn’t imagine it.

  “What sort of security do you think they have down there?” Reuben asked. “Infrared? Motion detectors? Lasers? Tripwires?”

  Stark frowned and said, “I don’t think they have any of those gizmos, Reuben. They’re thugs. They’ve got a bunch of guns. They sit around with those guns and they think that everybody and his dog is so damned scared of ’em that nobody would dare come right up to their place and bust in. And ninety-nine times out of a hundred, they’re right.”

  “And we’re the hundredth time,” Reuben said.

  “You damned well betcha we are.”

  “So how do we play it?”

  Stark turned his head to look back over his shoulder at his allies.

  “You and I go for the house,” he said. “I want Ben with us, and your buddy Forbes, and that Miranda gal.”

  “You want to take Miranda right inside?”

  “Four of those kids are girls. There’s no telling what’s happened to them so far, but it’s bound to be pretty bad. Once we get to them, they’ll need to pay attention to what we’re saying and do as they’re told. They might be more likely to listen and more willing to cooperate if we’ve got a woman with us. Otherwise we’re just more scary men with guns.”

  Reuben nodded and said, “That makes sense.”

  “Everybody else will spread out, clear those outbuildings, and then converge on the house. That way, if we’re pinned down, they can come to our rescue.”

  “All right. I’ll go over the plan with them.”

  “I’ll stay here and keep an eye on the place,” Stark said.

  Reuben slid back down the ridge to talk to the others. Stark watched the ranch. After a few minutes, Reuben returned, bringing Ben LaPorte, Dave Forbes, and Miranda Livingston with him, and said, “Everybody understands their assignment. We’re ready to move out if you think it’s dark enough, John Howard.”

  “Yeah,” Stark said, then added, “Wait a minute.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  Stark didn’t answer right away. He raised himself a little higher on his elbows and looked around, scanning the rugged, dusk-shrouded countryside around them. He didn’t see anything out of place, no sign o
f any danger.

  “I don’t know,” Stark said. “For a second there, I just had a funny feeling. Almost like I was being watched. But there’s nobody out here but us.”

  “You don’t think they know we’re here?”

  Stark glanced toward the ranch house.

  “I don’t think they’ve got a clue. They’re too arrogant for that.”

  “I hope you’re right. Are we ready to go?”

  Stark nodded and said, “Yeah, we’re ready.” The feeling he had experienced a moment earlier was gone. He knew they were doing the right thing. The only thing they could do.

  But even as he retreated down the slope and pushed himself to his feet, he realized that he’d had a similar sensation come over him several times during the past few weeks. Never for long, only a second or two at a time, and any time he’d glanced around, no one was there. The feelings were so slight, so fleeting, that he’d paid no attention to them and forgotten them almost as soon as they happened. Only tonight, in the hypersensitive state that came before battle even in the most icy-nerved of men, had that tiny nagging feeling assumed any importance.

  There was no time to do anything about it now, and it probably didn’t mean anything anyway, he told himself.

  With his shotgun in his hand, the .45 holstered on his right hip, and a combat knife sheathed on his left, he moved along the ridge until it dwindled away and he could turn and start toward the ranch house. The four people he had picked to come with him were right behind him. The others split up and took their own paths, moving in low, crouching runs through the mesquite bushes and chaparral that dotted the landscape.

  Stark didn’t doubt that the cartel had guards posted around the house. But there were jackrabbits, roadrunners, and coyotes—the four-legged kind—all over this part of the country. The guards were probably used to seeing occasional movements out here. He took advantage of all the cover he could find along the approach to the house, then finally, when he came closer, he dropped to his belly and motioned for the others with him to follow suit.

  From there it was a crawl of perhaps three hundred yards to reach the area at the back of the main house where a tiled patio and the pool it surrounded were located. That was where Stark intended to make his entrance.

  The shadows were thick now, just as he’d planned. An evening breeze had sprung up. As Stark neared the house, that breeze carried the unmistakable smell of marijuana to him. One of the guards must have fired one up. That made sense; the members of the cartel thought they were invulnerable here.

  They were about to find out how wrong they were.

  Stark used the marijuana smell as a guide. His eyes, still keen despite his age, spotted the guard sitting on a stool at the edge of the patio surrounding the pool. Stark crawled closer, using some palm trees growing in big ceramic pots to cover his approach. The guard had some sort of automatic weapon—Stark thought it might be an AK-47, but he wasn’t sure—leaning against his leg. He couldn’t afford to let the man get off a burst with that gun, or even a yell.

  When he struck, it would have to be fast and lethal.

  He left the shotgun lying in the grass at the edge of the patio and drew his knife from its sheath. As he surged to his feet he came at the guard from an angle, so that the man saw him from the corner of his eye. The guard grabbed the rifle and started to jump up, but Stark was on him too quickly. The knife’s razor-sharp blade swiped across the man’s throat, opening it up deeply.

  Blood fountained from the wound, black in the fading light. The guard let out a soft, hideous gurgle. That was the only sound he could make with his throat laid open almost from ear to ear. The rifle fell to the patio tiles with a clatter. The guard dropped to his knees, then pitched forward on his face. Blood pooled darkly around his head.

  Stark sheathed the knife, picked up his shotgun, and silently motioned for the others to follow him as he started toward the glass doors that opened into the house. Reuben picked up the AK-47 as he moved past it. The automatic weapon might come in handy inside.

  Stark was still several yards from the doors when he saw movement through the glass. Suddenly, lights switched on around the pool, illuminating it brightly, and the doors slid open. The sound of female voices chattering in Spanish drifted out into the night air. As Stark froze, three young women—girls, really, probably not out of their teens—stepped onto the patio wearing only flip-flops and carrying towels.

  They stopped short at the sight of the five menacing, heavily armed figures and started to scream.

  So much for going in quiet, Stark thought.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  He lunged forward. The girls seemed rooted to the spot by terror, just outside the doors. Stark grabbed the arm of the nearest one and heaved her past him, into the deep end of the pool, where she landed with a huge splash.

  That broke the spell holding the other two girls motionless in fear. They turned and ran, still screaming, but at least they weren’t blocking the door any longer.

  A large den, or sitting room, or whatever you wanted to call it, was on the other side of the glass doors. As Stark entered it, a man carrying an automatic rifle charged through a door to his left. Stark pivoted that direction and fired the shotgun before the man could bring his weapon to bear. The buckshot slammed into the man’s chest, shredding it into a bloody mess as it flung him backward. Stark pumped the shotgun as two more guards burst into the room from the right.

  Before he could swing around to deal with them, the AK-47 in Reuben’s hands spewed bullets at them. The two cartel soldiers twitched in a brief, jittering dance of death as lead punched into them. They collapsed like bloody rag dolls.

  In the moment of silence that fell after the shooting stopped, Reuben said, “After seeing what they did to Antonio, that felt good.”

  They didn’t have time for revenge, no matter how satisfying it might be, Stark thought. He snapped, “Spread out. We need to find those kids.”

  More shots were coming from outside as the rest of the rescue force engaged cartel thugs. Stark headed for the corridor to his left, saying, “Ben, with me,” while Reuben, Dave Forbes, and Miranda Livingston took the hallway on the right.

  A fierce, ear-shattering firefight broke out almost immediately from that direction. Stark heard the chatter of automatic weapons fire punctuated by the boom of shotguns and the whipcrack of rifles. Obviously, Reuben, Dave, and Miranda had run right into trouble, but Stark knew he and Ben had to keep going. The most important thing right now was finding those kidnapped teenagers.

  A door crashed open ahead of them. Stark dropped to the floor, saying, “Ben! Down!” Slugs racketed through the air as three men with pistols charged through that door. Stark fired the shotgun again. The charge swept the legs out from under one of the men. He fell screaming to the floor. A second later his head jerked as a bullet from Ben LaPorte’s deer rifle shattered his skull and bored through his brain.

  Stark drew his .45 and fired up at an angle from the floor as the remaining two gunmen tried to lower their aim. They were too late. The heavy bullets ripped through their bodies and erupted from their backs in sprays of blood. Both men went down, cluttering the corridor along with their companion, who Ben had killed.

  “Stop!” The voice came from the room on the other side of the open door. “Stop or we will kill these children!”

  Stark came to his feet, still holding the .45. He trained it on the doorway as he pressed himself to the wall on that side of the corridor. Ben moved over to the other wall, still holding his rifle ready to fire. Stark motioned for him to wait.

  “How do we know those kids are even in there?” Stark called.

  A terrified voice said, “We’re here, mister! Please! They’re gonna—”

  The boy’s voice broke off in a cry of pain. The grim lines on Stark’s face settled in even deeper.

  “Take it easy,” he said. “There’s no need for anybody else to get hurt. We just want those kids. Send ’em out, and we’ll leave.”<
br />
  The man who had spoken before laughed.

  “You expect me to believe that? This is war. There is no surrender, no quarter.”

  “Next thing you’ll be playing the Deguello,” Stark said.

  Mentioning the song Santa Anna’s musicians had played at the Alamo on that fateful morning back in 1836 might have been a mistake, he realized a second later when the man exclaimed, “Stark! Is it you?”

  “That’s right. John Howard Stark.”

  A laugh came from inside.

  “I told you to come, and you came. Very cooperative of you, Señor Stark. My name is Tomás Beredo, but I am called Señor Espantoso.”

  The Dreadful One, Stark thought. A name applied to a ghost, to an angel of death. This fella Beredo fit the description, all right. Stark knew he was talking to the man who bossed the cartel operations in these parts.

  “Let the kids go, Beredo,” he said. “I don’t give a damn about you.”

  “Ah, but I give a damn about you, Señor Stark. Step into the doorway with your hands empty, and then perhaps I will consider freeing these children.”

  Another man’s voice growled, “No, you fool. Kill them! Kill them all now! And if you won’t—”

  A shot blasted inside the room.

  Stark didn’t wait. He dropped the shotgun and launched himself in a long dive that carried him into the doorway. He saw a burly man with thinning hair and a thick mustache pointing a pistol at several bound, cowering figures. One boy was already dead, lying there with a red-rimmed bullet hole in his forehead, his wide eyes staring sightlessly.

  The .45 in Stark’s hand boomed deafeningly as he blew holes in the son of a bitch, firing again and again.

  Ben’s rifle cracked above him. The man from Dry Wash was in the doorway, too. His shot was directed at a dark-haired, sleekly handsome man in casual clothes. Ben had scored with his first shot. Blood showed bright red on the man’s shirt. But he had a gun in his hand, too, and it spouted flame as he fired. Ben grunted and twisted backward from the impact of the slug.