Siege of Station 19 Read online

  SIEGE ON STATION 19

  Raegan Butcher

  Smashwords Edition

  NECRO PUBLICATIONS

  — 2014 —

  — | — | —

  SIEGE OF STATION 19 © 2014 by Raegan Butcher

  Cover art © 2014 by Travis Anthony Soumis

  This edition © 2014 Necro Publications

  Assistant Editors:

  Amanda Baird

  ISBN-13: 978-1-939065-55-1

  Book design & typesetting:

  David G. Barnett

  Fat Cat Graphic Design

  www.fatcatgraphicdesign.com

  a Necro Publication

  www.necropublications.com

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  — | — | —

  July 4th 1987

  El Paso, Texas

  2:45 P.M.

  When Lieutenant Devalerie Love walked out of his house and climbed into his patrol car after kissing his wife and two young daughters goodbye, he had no idea that by the end of the day he would be involved in a desperate fight for not only his life, but the lives of a half-dozen other people, including one of the most notorious criminals in the state.

  It all began normally enough.

  It was the Fourth of July, always a tense time for law enforcement, what with fireworks—very hard to distinguish between the sound of firecrackers and gunfire—and everyday simpletons, yahoos, and hooligans running wild, their inhibitions smothered by alcohol. Forcible rape went up; assaults went up; car accidents increased almost exponentially. Crime in general enjoyed a brief renaissance. Love gave silent thanks that he no longer lived and worked in Detroit, where crazies lit half the city on fire in honor of every major holiday.

  Devalerie Love was a large man, well over six feet, carrying one hundred and ninety-four pounds on his athletic frame—most of it still muscle—though he was getting a bit of a paunch around the middle. He was only thirty-four years old, but looked more mature, with close cropped hair going prematurely gray at the temples, and smooth, dark skin. His wife teased him that he was an irresistible blend of Bill Cosby and Muhammad Ali: proud, polite, handsome, well-educated, and dependable.

  Born in Detroit in 1955, he had been the captain of the track and field team in his high school, but his full schedule of playing football, basketball, and running track made it hard for him to keep up his grades. In addition, Love worked before and after school, selling produce and stocking shelves at a supermarket to help out his family. He tried hard but failed his junior year. Instead of repeating, he got a job as an apprentice at a refrigerator repair shop, which he liked, but could not see himself doing the rest of his life. Subsequently, he joined the Navy, serving at the Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, and at the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland.

  In the Navy, working as a Hospital Corpsman for four years, Love worked in physical therapy with some seriously injured Vietnam War casualties, which helped him discover what was important to him. He straight away realized the need for an education, and finished his equivalency diploma via correspondence courses. He then won a track and field scholarship to Wayne State University in 1979–80, and studied criminal justice while running track and playing fullback on the football team.

  After graduation, he enrolled in the police academy. Then he spent two years as a rookie patrolman on the mean streets of Detroit. The Motor City was just beginning to tumble into serious economic decline in the mid-80s and the rising crime rate—thanks to the crack cocaine explosion—kept Love busy. When the opportunity to move south presented itself, he jumped at the chance. He’d been in Texas with his family for six months now and so far, he liked it. Anything was better than Detroit.

  El Paso was as dry as a buzzard’s ass, owing to a sizzling heat wave that had been plaguing the entire southwest since late spring. Today was no different. The mercury hovered near 102 degrees. The sun was blazing like a ball of white phosphorous in the empty blue sky when Lieutenant Love clicked on his civilian radio for a bit of news before he called in for his daily assignment.

  He was greeted by a raucous wailing sound that grew into an exaggerated animal howl. Lieutenant Love smiled as a distinctive, raspy voice began to rap through the radio, “Hey, hey out there, this is Coyote Bob, your desert friend, coming at you loud and clear from XERF radio, the original border blaster! Tell your friends you heard it on the X!”

  After a short pitch about “energy supplements” in which Coyote Bob prodded his listeners to try the product and, “Put a little zing in your ling-nuts,” the disc jockey introduced his guest for the day.

  “Now, I am sure all of you listeners out there have been watchin’ this amazing meteor shower that’s been dazzling the night skies around our little corner of the world for the past week. A lot of people been callin’ the po-leece and the emergency lines, thinkin’ it’s the wrath of god or the Russians startin’ a nuclear war or something. I got a dude right here in the studio with me today, Dr Maynard Minaberry, Astrophysicist and senior research scientist at the Carl Sagan Center for the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, who is gonna put your minds at ease, amigos. He is an expert on meteor showers.” A dramatic pause, then Coyote Bob said, “Welcome to the show, Professor.”

  A thin, reedy voice sounded from the tinny depths of Love’s radio, “Good morning, Bob. It is a great pleasure to be here today to talk with you about one of the most incredible astronomical displays we’ve seen in twenty years.”

  “So, this kind of extreme meteor shower has happened before?” Coyote Bob asked as Love wheeled his car to the on-ramp and entered the freeway traffic.

  “Oh, yes,” the doctor gushed. “There have been recorded observations of these meteors going back to 900AD. They were thought to portend all sorts of dire things.”

  “What causes them?” Coyote Bob prompted.

  “These meteors are associated with the comet Pemberton-Rabin-Jones,” answered the astronomer.

  “When you say ‘associated,’ what do you mean?” Coyote Bob interrupted. “Are they buddies? Do they hang out?”

  The doctor chortled good-naturedly. “It means that the Earth is moving through a stream of meteoroid particles left in the wake of a passing comet. That’s what we have been seeing in the sky for the last few days, those streaking fireballs at night.”

  “Some people were calling the show and saying it was an alien invasion,” Coyote Bob crowed, vastly amused. “Others said it was the good lord callin’ them home.”

  “That is a very common assumption, believe it or not,” the doctor said smoothly. “In 1833 a massive storm of truly biblical proportions caused an enormous amount of panic in the United States. In that shower over 200,000 meteors fell over North America in one hour.”

  “Holy Guacamole!” Coyote Bob howled. “That’s a lotta falling stars!”

  The doctor’s voice faded out in a hiss of static before returning, “…the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, noted in his journal that this event was a literal fulfillment of the word of God and a sure sign that the coming of Christ was close at hand.”

  Love chuckled to himself, thinking of Joseph Smith watching the skies and crapping his pants in shock and awe, waiting for Jesus to show up and make it all right. He had a long wait, seeing as how the Carpenter from Nazareth never made an appearance during Smith’s lifetime. Folks were stil
l waiting.

  As he reached to turn off the program and switch to his police radio, he heard the doctor remark, “The current display is fairly localized in the American Southwest and parts of Mexico.”

  The Lieutenant flicked the radio off and turned to the police band. “One-Adam-Twelve,” he said into the microphone. “This is Lt. Love in unmarked vehicle requesting assignment. Is Control-sixteen there?”

  The voice of Carol Wear, the dispatcher, answered, “One-Adam-Twelve, This is Control-sixteen. I think I can find something for you to do tonight. One moment please.”

  Static fuzzed over the speaker, snapping and popping, before her voice crackled through. “One-Adam-Twelve, I’ve got a little temporary reassignment for you tonight. A favor to Metro division.”

  Love frowned. Metro? That was on the other side of the city, in the notorious area known as Devil’s Triangle, a haven for drugs and gangs.

  “Proceed to station nineteen, precinct twelve,” Carol chirped. “You’ll take over from Captain Johnson. A little supervisory job.”

  Love’s frown deepened. He’d heard of station nineteen. It was smack dab in the middle of the worst part of town. His fellow officers called it “the Alamo.” Just his luck to be sent to the ghetto for Independence Day.

  “Isn’t station nineteen shutting down?” He immediately regretted the plaintive tone in his voice. He was a team player. He didn’t question orders.

  “Yes,” she said gaily. “It should be an easy night for you, Lieutenant. All you have to do is answer the telephone and send anyone who needs help to the new station on Chaparral Boulevard.”

  “Roger that,” he replied quickly. “One-Adam-Twelve proceeding to station nineteen.”

  Smithville Prison

  120 miles west of El Paso

  3:30 P.M.

  Edwin “Rattlesnake” Torres lay on the bunk and stared at the walls. They were painted dull green, and etched with years of graffiti that resembled primitive hieroglyphics. He stared at the green walls and tried to ignore the pain lancing through his side where he’d been stabbed.

  The peephole in the door slid open with a bang. Torres kept his eyes averted, ignoring the whispered voice that asked incredulously, “That’s Rattlesnake Torres?” and the gravelly voice that answered, “Yeah. What did you expect?”

  “I dunno. He’s older than I expected. And I thought he’d be bigger.”

  “If he was any bigger he wouldn’t have fit in all those tunnels in Vietnam.”

  “So…that’s true, huh?”

  “Yep. He used to be a war hero. Three purple hearts, a Silver Star, two Bronzes!” The gruff voice was packed with contempt. “But that was twenty years ago. Now he’s a piece of shit.”

  A sharp clanging echoed through the holding cell as the guard rapped on the iron door. Torres still didn’t react. He kept his eyes focused on the green walls. There was mystery in the hieroglyphics, a secret to be unlocked.

  “You were one of the best and bravest this country ever had, Torres. Why did you go to work for the cartels?”

  Torres remained silent. Keys rattled, the lock popped, the door swung open on groaning hinges. The gruff voice commanded, “Stand up, turn around, and face the wall with your hands in the air. Make any sudden moves and I’ll mace you in the face.”

  As Torres climbed stiffly to his feet and began to comply, he heard the gruff voice whisper, “You gotta keep your distance from this guy. He’s fast. Very fast. That’s why they call him rattlesnake.”

  It was true. Torres had picked up the nickname “Rattlesnake” in the war. He’d been the best tunnel rat the 22nd Infantry ever had, and he was deadly with a knife or a gun. Plenty of men were killers but it took a special kind of man to be able crawl in total darkness, very often through shit, mud, blood, booby-traps and a hundred other kinds of death, to come upon the enemy and grapple with him in close, confined space. It was like fighting inside your own coffin. Tough men, some of the toughest in the country, Rangers, Special Forces, couldn’t take the claustrophobia of the tunnels.

  But Torres had a taste for it. His small, wiry frame, five foot six and a hundred fifty pounds, as tautly muscled as a tri-athlete, was ideal for close quarters combat. Within a year, he had the highest body count of any tunnel rat in Vietnam. He developed an edge to him that made even the other members of his team give him a wide berth. His eyes, flat and cold, told the whole story. He’d found his calling—and it was killing.

  When the war ended, he stayed in the service. But things had changed. When he got back to the states, the whole country was having collective amnesia on the subject of Vietnam. No one ever called him baby killer and no one spit on him, but that had more to do with his dead-eyed, stone-faced demeanor than anything else.

  He spent years simply going through the motions. Army life was dull and routine. Without a war, he was lost. His life seemed to have backed up on him. He was listless, depressed, and angry. He would get close to normalcy, feel like a regular human being for a few brief shining moments, and then something would spin him into rage and despair again.

  He met a girl, fell in love, and got married. Then it tumbled into screaming ruin. She left him without even bothering to file for divorce. At least there were no children.

  His nightmares became unrelenting. He’d lay awake in the dark, listening for movement in the brush, then remember he wasn’t in Vietnam. He began drinking heavily and contemplated eating his gun on more than one occasion. He would wake up in the basement of his house, a knife clutched in one fist, his .45 in the other, back in the tunnels, in the dark—waiting.

  Then one day a hot shot Company man visited and made him an offer. Keep doing what he did best—only this time in Central and South America. The mid-70s was an uncertain time: Somoza was losing his grip in Nicaragua; the communists were making noise in El Salvador and Guatemala. The Argentineans were involved in a ‘Dirty War’ against their leftist enemies, real and imagined. A man with Torres’ special skills was suddenly in great demand once again.

  But they tried to make Torres into something he was not: a teacher. They sent him to the School of the Americas to be an instructor in “anti-communist counter-insurgency tactics.”

  It was the wrong move. Killing people in the heat of combat was something that was in his DNA. Some people had a head for figures or could paint beautiful pictures or compose music. Torres had a talent for killing. It wasn’t something he could teach other people. It wasn’t something that he wanted to teach other people.

  His time in the SOA gradually soured him on anti-communism, counterinsurgency, and counter-revolution. Too much time spent killing civilians. Torturing homeless bums and leftist college kids for instructional purposes so the police forces in a dozen banana republics could go home and do the same with an unfettered hand was not his idea of the way to go about spreading freedom and democracy.

  He knew they’d never let him resign. So he went rogue, became a ghost, offered his services to the highest bidders in the Latin American drug trade. They had plenty of assassins, men who could pull a trigger or plant a bomb, but a man like Torres, who could sneak into an enemy’s bedroom and leave a dagger hilt-deep in a pillow without waking the sleeper…now that was something else, something special. Something worth paying top dollar for.

  Torres winced when the gruff-voiced man, U.S. Marshal Phillip Martell, ran a chain around his waist. Martell smirked as he snapped handcuffs on Torres and hooked his hands to the belly-chain.

  “Aw, does baby’s little boo boo hurt?”

  Martell poked at the bandage covering Torres’ left side, below his liver. It was spotted with blood, leaking through the orange prison jumpsuit.

  “Did you cut yourself shaving?” guffawed the fat marshal.

  The Aryan Brotherhood assassin who’d tried to shank the Rattlesnake and collect the bounty which had been offered by his former employer had been a rank amateur. He had missed Torres’ liver by a good three inches. Torres had killed him with his bare hands
, crushing the man’s larynx like a beer can with his strong fingers before the man could make a further stabbing lunge. Torres remembered the man’s face, pop-eyed and furious, as he died beneath his iron grip. Another murder charge pending. It would join a list of seventeen others. And those were only the ones they thought they could prove.

  Martell stopped prodding and looked Torres in the face. He had to stoop to do it, because he was a big man, six foot three, weighing two ten, most of it in his belly. He was near the same age as Torres, late side of his forties, but the soft life had reduced him to flab, whereas Torres was whipcord strong.

  “Mind your manners and we’ll get you to the hospital unit in El Paso in time for supper.” Martell came closer and changed his tone, going for hard ass. “Twitch a finger, move a muscle, blink your eyes in a manner I don’t approve of and I’ve got two of my boys, Deputy Marshal Jones and Deputy Marshal Smith, and they’ll cut you in half with twelve gauge buckshot. You read me, killer?”

  Torres was unimpressed. He read Martell as a bully. Bullies didn’t like to fight, they liked to beat people up. He looked Martell in the eye and let him get what he could out of a wry smile.

  Martell grumbled and led him out into the hall, where a pair of armed deputies waited. Smith and Jones. They might as well have been named Mutt and Jeff. Jones was tall, dark, and thin, with a pinch-eyed, squinting deputy dawg face. Smith was blonde with a buzz cut square head atop a bulky college wrestler’s body. They both looked too young to shave.

  “You just be cool,” said Martell, some of the bravado leaking from his voice. “Don’t make any sudden moves.”

  Torres smiled to himself and said nothing. Even chained like this, they were afraid of him. They led him outside into the sun. His eyes narrowed into tiny slits at the harsh glare.