Stranger In The Night. Catherine Palmer

I figured out he wasn’t right for me, I got out pretty easily. You’re tangled up all over again, Molly.”

      “And you can’t stop thinking about Sergeant Joshua Duff. We’re the same.” She tossed the refugee update on Liz’s desk. “Let’s hurry up and pray, because I need to get some time on my treadmill before Joel comes over.”

      “All right, all right. I’ll start.”

      The women had been friends for a couple of years. Liz had talked Molly into going to church not long after they’d met at the refugee agency. Now they prayed together at the end of every workday.

      But Molly’s life didn’t change. She kept plunging from one mistake into another. As Liz took her friend’s hands and bowed her head, she had to wonder how different they really were.

      “Gangs.” Sam Hawke tossed Joshua a white T-shirt from a stack on the desk in the front office. “Get used to it. This is the Haven uniform. We don’t allow gang colors in here.”

      Joshua unfolded the cheap cotton garment. He had spent most of the afternoon under an oak tree in Forest Park, using his laptop to search out jobs and apartments for the Rudi family. It was high time to complete this assignment and move on to the next, he had decided.

      The Marines had kept Joshua busy and in the thick of action for nearly a decade. Reflection and contemplation didn’t sit well with him—especially when his own thoughts were so troubling. The pitiful condition of the Somali family he and Liz Wallace had met at the airport disturbed him. Liz disturbed him more.

      But Sam’s mention of gang activity piqued his interest. Maybe his military skills could be useful in St. Louis.

      “Which gangs are causing you problems?” he asked, recalling the two he knew. “Crips and Bloods?”

      “Around here, Crips are usually called Locs. Bloods are Dogs. We’ve got Murder Mob, Sets, Your Hood, Homies, Peoples, Cousins, Kinfolks, Dogs. Girls’ gangs are called Sole Survivers and Hood Rats. The Disciples and the 51 MOB are unique to St. Louis. Hispanics have ’em, too—mainly the Latin Kings, but Florencia 13 is making inroads.”

      Joshua frowned. The St. Louis gangs sounded as complex as the factions he had encountered in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those sects had been founded on religious differences, but their current enmity went far beyond matters of faith.

      “What’s the gangs’ focus?” he asked. “Territory? Violence?”

      “Those are part of it. Arms and drugs play a big role. Just like everywhere, gangbangers worship the idols of the modern world—money, power and sex.”

      Sam leaned against the edge of Terell’s old steel desk and studied the youngsters playing basketball on the large court just beyond the office window. “Our black gangs deal in crack and powder cocaine, marijuana, black tar heroin, powder heroin and heroin capsules. The Hispanics used to handle mostly commercial-grade marijuana. When Missouri clamped down on local methamphetamine producers, Mexican ice exploded. We’re doing all we can to keep tabs on what’s moving through the city.”

      “Who’s we? ”

      “Haven. But there are others.” He held up a hand and began ticking off the groups. “The St. Louis County Gang Task Force. The Metropolitan Police Department Gang/Drug Division’s gang unit. GREAT, the Gang Resistance Education and Training program set up by the mayor, works in elementary and middle schools. REJIS is an agency that notifies parents of a child’s gang affiliation. Cease Fire is a coalition of law enforcement, school and government officials, clergy and crime prevention specialists. We’ve got citizens’ groups, too—INTERACT, African-American Churches in Dialogue, the St. Louis Gang Outreach Program, you name it. But no one’s winning this war.”

      Leaning one shoulder against a post, Joshua unfolded the T-shirt. “African-Americans, Latinos—sounds like the gangs run along racial lines.”

      “Typically. A new gang showed up this summer, though. Hypes. They’re unusual—racially mixed.”

      “So what binds them?”

      “As near as we can figure, it’s their leader. Fellow goes by the name Mo Ded.”

      “Sounds more like the definition of a cult to me—a group focused around a single charismatic person.”

      “Maybe, but they operate like a gang. Nothing religious about them. We’re guessing Mo Ded is a newcomer to St. Louis. He was smart enough to pull together all the ‘losers’—the gang rejects. You don’t find anyone more loyal than the disenfranchised.”

      “Exactly how cults get started.”

      “Cult, gang, whatever. Mo Ded has been recruiting, organizing and training people all summer, carving out his turf and building his weapons cache.”

      “What race is this guy?”

      Sam shrugged. “Anyone’s guess. He’s not black or white. But he’s not Hispanic, either. Some say he’s got Oriental eyes, but I hear they’re a weird green color. Definitely not Asian.”

      “You haven’t met him?” Joshua’s recon experience had fine-tuned his ability to sniff out bad guys, and he knew Sam had similar training. “Don’t you want to know who’s sharing your territory?”

      “Nobody shares turf, Duff. This block, including our building, belonged to the 51 MOB. Terell and I knew that when we bought it. We had to push them out and set up defenses.”

      “Like when we took streets in Baghdad or Mosul.”

      “This is war, man. Same thing—only without the manpower or arms on our side. Haven has a dog, a metal detector and Raydell and his crew to guard the door.”

      “You sure Raydell is clean?”

      “When I first met the kid, he had a baby Uzi tucked in his pants and a juvie record that would have put an older man inside the walls—exactly where Raydell’s father is right now. But our boy is working on his GED and planning to join the police force.”

      “Big change.”

      “One of Haven’s few success stories. If a kid wants to spend time here, he’s got to pull up his britches, leave his do-rag and grill at home, cover his gang tattoos, go through the metal detector and let Duke give him a sniff. The police keep a close watch on our place. We even have a few snitches. Terell and I realized we could let Haven become a staging area—a place where gangs congregate for retaliation and violence. Or we could essentially become gang leaders ourselves and make Haven our turf.”

      “Haven’s homeboys. Does your woman know about this?”

      “Ana knows and worries. But I remind her I’ve got unseen forces on my side. You may have noticed that sign in my office—If God is for us, who can be against us? God is really the leader of Haven. No one stronger than Him. The gangs know our focus on faith, and that helps some. But they’ve learned we’ll do whatever it takes to protect our kids. We had to earn their respect, and we did.”

      Joshua was impressed. On first sight, the old building didn’t look like much. Now he understood it was hard-won property.

      “How about the 51 MOB?” he asked as he stripped off the shirt he had worn all day. “Did they ever surrender Haven?”

      “Yeah, but it took a while. Haven used to get marked with graffiti all the time. I would paint over it, knowing that targeted me for death. You don’t strip gang signs without getting killed. They’d spray my name on a wall and X it out. Essentially, that meant I was dead. They came after me a few times, but we worked it out.”

      “What about Terell?”

      “He’s an ex-offender. That gives him a lot of street cred. They know he can take care of himself. He uses his past to relate to the kids, but he doesn’t want to get mixed up in the gang thing. I’ve got the military training, so I mostly handle it.”

      “Do the Hypes respect