Free Remember The Alamo by William W. Johnstone;J.A. Johnstone Page A

the animals
on the other side of the border. The battle to take down the
leader of the drug smugglers had been a bloody, epic conflict, but in the end Stark had emerged victorious, although
several of his comrades in arms had sacrificed their lives in
the fighting.

    Of course, in the eyes of the current lily-livered American
government, Stark's efforts had all been highly illegal. The
politicians and their toadies had done their best to discourage
Stark from fighting back against the monsters, and then they
had tried to punish his success.
    But for once the usually brainwashed populace had stood up
for the good guys, and public opinion had decreed that Stark
was a hero and ought to be left alone. Reluctantly, the government had abandoned its efforts to make him a sacrificial lamb
on the alter of political correctness and multilateralism.
    Dave had seen the guy being interviewed on TV several
times, and he had always gotten the feeling that Stark was extremely uncomfortable being regarded as any sort of hero. He
was just a man who had lost his wife and been pushed into a
corner where he had no choice but to fight back. And when it
was all over, what he really wanted to do was go back to his
ranch and live as normal a life as he could. Dave supposed that
in the end, that was what Stark had done, because he hadn't
heard anything about him for more than a year.
    "You think you could get John Howard Stark to take part in
our plan?" Dave asked Phil.
    "Hell, everybody's heard of Stark," Belko muttered.
    Phil nodded. "That would give us instant credibility, to have
a man like Stark on our side. And the news media would have
to pay attention to us, too. Stark's been holed up on his ranch for a long time, but like Belko says, he's still got plenty of
name recognition."

    "Sounds good to me," Dave said. "Do you have a way of
getting in touch with him?"
    "His son Pete gave me his e-mail address"
    "I'd say go for it, then" Dieter and Belko nodded in agreement with Dave's statement.
    The four men chatted together for a few minutes longer,
their excitement growing. Before they were through, the world
would know exactly how they felt about the idea of turning
over a sacred shrine of liberty to a bunch of corrupt, powermad politicians in the hopes of bribing a gang of vicious terrorists to leave the country alone. You couldn't fight terror and
lawlessness with appeasement. It just didn't work. It hadn't
worked with Hitler, or with the Communist empire, or with
the Islamic fanatics. The only way to combat evil in the long
run was with the necessary force. People ought to know that.
    But learning that lesson would have required actually studying history, and that just didn't interest a citizenry where too
many people had attention spans of five minutes or less.
    The watcher across the street from the pancake house
looked through the window at the four men seated in the
booth. One of them had mentioned John Howard Stark. More
trouble shaping up, most definitely.
    It was time to make his report. Let the higher-ups decide
what to do about this problem.

     

    In Silvio Cruz's line of work, not being noticed very often
was a good thing. A very good thing indeed. For the next few
days after the night he had driven Paco, Berto, and Caballo
around Matamoros on their killing errands, Silvio listened
carefully as he worked around the garage, and he began to
piece together the puzzle of what was going to happen in San
Antonio on March 6th.
    It was common knowledge that the ties between the massive cartel run by Hector Garcia-Lopez and the Mexican military were so close as to be almost incestuous. There were
some honest officers, of course, but they were few and far between. Most commanders were tucked away securely in
Garcia-Lopez's pocket, kept there by bribes, blackmail, intimidation, or some combination of the three. That was why any
time the government tried to use the army against the drug
dealers and