Strong to the Bone--A Caitlin Strong Novel

by Jon Land

  Caitlin half-expected Young Roger to plead ignorance on the subject, the other half figuring at least he’d think on the question for a moment. Instead, he responded instantly.

  “How much do you know about three-D printers, Ranger?”

  “I know they print in three-D. Besides that, not much.”

  “Okay, what would you say if I told you that a noted surgeon is currently employing a three-D printer to output a fully transplantable kidney using living cells?”

  “I’d say that bars must be paying your band’s fees in booze.”

  “Which would amount to one beer, based on how much we get paid. But what I just told you is true, still in the experimental stage and showing incredible promise as a core component in a field that’s called regenerative medicine.”

  Caitlin felt herself shaking her head. “How do you know all this stuff, Young Roger?”

  “You ever see me shoot a gun?”

  “Was that an answer?”

  “No, a point. Anyway, this part of regenerative medicine is called bioprinting, for obvious reasons, and it’s already been used for the generation and transplantation of several tissues, including multilayered skin, bone, vascular grafts, tracheal splints, heart tissue, and cartilaginous structures.”

  Caitlin ran that through her head a bit before responding. “You’re not pulling my leg, are you, Rog?”

  “Not at all, Ranger. The fact remains that we may not be much more than five to ten years away from organ donations being rendered obsolete, replaced by three-D printers capable of replicating human organs, and even limbs, to precise specifications.”

  “So what’s the catch?”

  “The body would still view the transplanted organs as foreign organisms and activate white cells to destroy them. So the real catch is that recipients of the three-D printed organs would still need anti-rejection meds, as much as patients who received traditionally donated organs.”

  “I believe I get where this is going,” Caitlin said, starting to see what David Skoll was up in an entirely different light.

  “Every year, only ten percent of patients in need of a transplant find a proper donor and the organ they need. That leaves millions and millions on a waiting list that keeps growing by leaps and bounds. Many of them will die before they ever receive an organ. Others will reject their transplanted organ, in spite of taking traditional anti-rejection drugs, and only a few of these will ever get another chance. So, while the value of a new anti-rejection drug coming to market today would be significant, even substantial, the value of that kind of drug in an era of three-D transplantable organs could reach ten to twelve billion dollars per year.”

  “Did you say billion?”

  “Which isn’t nearly as farfetched as it sounds, Ranger. Lipitor has made annual profits as high as thirteen billion dollars, Plavix and Nexium both over seven billion. So you want to know why David Skoll would overpay for a pharmaceutical company in the testing phase of a new anti-rejection drug? The answer lies in those nine zeroes.”

  “And if the drug in question turns out to be shit?”

  “Then Skoll would be shit out of luck, but, from a business standpoint, these are the kind of opportunities that investors die for.”

  “Poor choice of words in this case, Rog,” Caitlin told him, starting on again toward Waco. “And, speaking of Skoll, there’s one more thing I need you to look into.…”

  94

  ELK GROVE, TEXAS

  Guillermo Paz led the way through the extension of the Natural Bridge Caverns, covering the last stretch to reach Elk Grove with Cort Wesley and a dozen of his best men fifty feet underground. The groundwork for entering this topographical anomaly, located apart from the Texas hill country known for supporting such systems, had been laid by a dig team disguised as a utility crew. That team had dug a vertical trench to access the majestic rock formations that rose from hundreds of feet below, rendering them virtually inaccessible in contrast to comparable caverns located farther to the north.

  Fortunately, thermal imaging ground studies, requisitioned by Jones, had revealed the narrow path across an ancient ledge that would connect with a massive underground storage chamber Armand Fisker had erected beneath Elk Grove, providing the access they needed. This unusual landscape feature was one of the reasons why so few oil reserves had been found near the town, accounting in some respects for Elk Grove’s demise decades before.

  Paz and Cort Wesley crept along that ledge toward a flashing red dot on the GPS devices attached to their wrists that would glow solid when they reached Fisker’s underground storage chamber. At that point, some well-placed explosives would chew through the rock and open the door to Elk Grove from fifty feet belowground.

  It would take only a few charges to blast through the rock. But ten of Paz’s men carried backpacks stuffed with shaped charges designed with a secondary purpose in mind. It was cool down here, only a smattering of natural light emanating from what looked like patches of phosphorus that had collected on some of the jagged walls and towering rock formations a few hundred feet beneath them. Besides that, the dome lights of the hard hats Cort Wesley, Paz, and his men all wore, in addition to the flashlights the heartiest among them dared squander a hand on, provided the sole additional illumination.

  “Feels like we’ve entered hell, doesn’t it, Colonel?” Cort Wesley said, as they drew closer to the flashing red signal on their GPS devices.

  “Hell is hotter, outlaw.”

  “How can we really be sure of that?”

  Another hundred or so yards passed before the red icon began flashing faster, then went solid.

  “Stand back, outlaw,” Paz said, fitting four charges into place at the access point to the underground chamber Armand Fisker had dug beneath Elk Grove.

  They were fortunate the area’s geology had cooperated, given that Cort Wesley knew Armand Fisker would have the one road leading into the town closed off or mightily defended. The valley in which Elk Grove rested, amid a nest of rolling mesas forged out of the dead ground, made an unobstructed approach over land impossible even at nighttime, Fisker certain to have guards and snipers stationed strategically as well. Cort Wesley was beginning to wonder how much its natural defenses played into Fisker’s choosing to settle here, wondered if he was even aware of his underground chamber’s proximity to the sprawl of caverns not present on any tourist map.

  Cort Wesley and the rest of Paz’s men backed up along the ledge until they were behind the cover of a curve, the colonel joining them moments later with metallic detonator in hand, thumb ready over its plunger.

  “Cover your ears, outlaw,” Paz said, and pressed his thumb downward.

  95

  ELK GROVE, TEXAS

  Armand Fisker thought he felt the floor quiver ever so slightly, as he moved his gaze among the six men seated before him, identified in his mind by the placards that listed the countries from which they’d traveled to get here. He chased the distraction from his mind and refocused his thoughts.

  “Oh yeah, this is a rare opportunity, all right,” he said, the darkness beyond the town hall windows broken only by the well-placed floodlights that cast the town’s central square in Day-Glo brightness. “One thing you know about me, I deliver on what I promise. I do what I say I’m gonna do,” Fisker continued, running his eyes from England to France to Germany, then to Spain, Austria, and Italy. “I helped you build your networks by undercutting the street prices of your rivals, putting them either out of business or in the ground.”

  They were, to a man, unremarkable in appearance in every sense but their eyes, which held a steely sense of purpose and assurance. Eyes that dominated their beings, the lighting in the chamber making all of them look black, showing no whites at all. An illusion, Fisker knew, but one he welcomed, as if he were addressing a different species of being here, unburdened by the expectations and conventions almost all men took to their graves.

  “I prefer in the ground. You all know about my father’s role in
all this. Difference between then and now is that he could never have envisioned the kind of thinking that led to the Aryan Brotherhood going mainstream. Because we’re not just businessmen anymore, making sure a certain kind of supply meets a certain kind of demand; we’re politicians, with the power to affect the way our respective countries go about their business.”

  Fisker stopped and looked toward England. “Your backing was crucial to Brex-shit, as I call it.” France now. “You’re backing a political party that thinks a lot like we do about the world, and when they win they’ll have your money to thank for it.” Austria next. “Your man came this close to winning the last election and will probably win the next, just like in Germany. Nobody labels these movements ‘Nazi’ anymore. They call them nationalistic, because that’s what we are. Our time has arrived, our era has dawned, because the people have finally come around to our way of thinking. You wanna think of yourself as a drug dealer, you’re in the wrong room. You wanna think we can run the whole goddamn world, you’ve come to the right goddamn place.”

  Fisker waited for any of the men seated up on the platform before their placards to respond, continued when, again, none did.

  “Some of you know I lost my son the other day. I’m tired of losing people close to me to guns, rivals, or jail. It’s bad for business. You’re here today because I got ahold of something that could be really good for business—both as it stands today and will stand tomorrow.” Fisker stopped there, prepared to describe for them the virtual weapon of mass destruction Redfern Pharmaceuticals had inadvertently created, without saying too much or too little. “When we started this venture, it was all about eliminating the competition. What I’m prepared to provide is all about eliminating a different kind of competition, defined by whoever gets the fuck in the way of our business, which means in our way period. This is the means for us to create the kind of chaos and panic movements like ours thrive on. This is our golden ticket to the top of the food chain, a weapon of terror as well as action. Bottom line, friends, is that our time has come and I want to make sure we can shape the world in a mold of our own making.

  “My daddy started an international movement out of a prison cell,” Fisker continued. “But you know what? The real prisoners today are the governments that cower in fear over what we represent and the fact we don’t answer to them or anyone else. Look at England, look at goddamn America. Gentlemen, I give you the future, dished out on a silver spoon, where we might not be the kings, but we sure as hell will be the power sitting behind the thrones.”

  Fisker knew he had them, knew it wouldn’t be necessary to go into much more detail, short of providing reports on the actual effects of Redfern Pharmaceuticals’ death-dealing drug that David Skoll would be mass producing for him in Waco in whatever form Fisker desired.

  Thank you, Ryan, Fisker said in his own mind, realizing he owed all this to his boy getting gunned down, since it had forced a radical change in his thinking. Goddamn kid had finally done something worthwhile.

  Then Fisker smelled something, something like kindling burning to start a log fire, familiar in a way he couldn’t quite recognize. His first thought was that one of the men before him had lit up one of those fancy European cigarettes. But all of them sat empty-handed, hanging on his next word, because he was speaking in terms they understood all too well. Giving them a means to turn their hate for the status quo into action.

  The smell strengthened, coarsening the air, in the last moment before smoke began to drift up through the floorboards.

  96

  WACO, TEXAS

  “I thought I made it clear our business was done, Ranger,” David Skoll said to Caitlin, when she appeared unannounced on the floor of his automated manufacturing plant. “You’re not authorized to be here.”

  “I brought you something, Mr. Skoll,” Caitlin told him, stopping short of plucking the arrest warrant from her pocket. “Something that needed to be delivered in person.”

  Even up close, Skoll could have passed for ten or even fifteen years younger. He wore jeans more fit for someone Dylan’s age and a cheap T-shirt with a logo she hadn’t bothered reading. She regarded him in the haze of ambient lighting down here on the plant’s floor, picturing a drugged-out Kelly Ann Beasley waking up briefly to a face that did indeed look vaguely feminine.

  She looked around her at the machines rolling this way and that. Forklifts toted huge pallets of medications ready to be boxed for shipment. Finished boxes rolled along conveyor belts at this part of the line, while rolling, eight-foot-tall robots that looked like something out of Star Wars negotiated the tight confines agilely, scooping up anything that may have strayed from the loaders and conveyors. Elsewhere, farther along the line, all manner of cutting, wrapping, molding, shrink-wrapping, and foiling stations labored without pause in a perpetual process utterly devoid of human hands.

  Caitlin wondered how many jobs this plant had once produced, before machines had replaced men. How many families had relied on Redfern Pharmaceuticals to put food on the table, before the likes of David Skoll had taken over? She met his gaze, but kept herself from holding his stare, afraid of what the rage she felt simmering inside her might provoke.

  Caitlin didn’t need a DNA test to tell her this was the man who assaulted her eighteen years ago. Even though she had no memory of him from that night, his residue clung to her psyche like an itch she couldn’t reach. And there was something else, something lurking at the edge of her consciousness.

  “That’s a nice smell, Mr. Skoll,” she complimented. “Be perfect for my boyfriend.”

  “It’s sandalwood, Ranger,” Skoll told her, seeming to enjoy the distraction, “courtesy of Taylor of Old Bond Street.”

  “Sounds English. Been around a while, have they?”

  “As long as I can remember.”

  “Because I remember it from eighteen years ago, the night we first met.”

  Skoll froze, his face seeming to slide out of his skin. It could have been an effect of the lighting, but the color seemed to wash out of his features, like somebody had taken a scrub brush to it.

  “I’m sure you remember that night, sir, or have there been so many others that they just run together? How many other women have you raped, Mr. Skoll, how many between Kelly Ann Beasley and me?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Skoll said, finding his tongue.

  “Really? I believe I can likely track down dozens of women who’ll testify otherwise. See, I had a Ranger tech whiz do a real detailed web search on you, focusing on the nooks and crannies most folks don’t even know are there. You ever hear of a company called Efficient Pickup?”

  “Can’t say that I have, Ranger.”

  “No? How about the Manosphere?”

  This time, Skoll just shook his head.

  “Strange, since that tech whiz found a whole bunch of posts you left in the dark about your exploits in their secret chat rooms. Manosphere isn’t a place, or even a site, so much as a collection of corners where perverts and rapists gather to swap stories and even exchange strategies for how they facilitate their crimes. They like to call themselves pickup artists. But what they’re really adept at is sexual assault and they seem to love sharing their techniques. I’m guessing the user name FUCKMESILLY isn’t familiar to you.”

  Skoll stiffened ever so slightly. “Not at all.”

  “I find that strange, Mr. Skoll, given that our tech whiz traced his posts on the Manosphere, boasting of his exploits, to an IP address registered to one of your computers.”

  “That doesn’t mean shit, and you know it.”

  “That remains to be seen, sir, but I’ll tell you something that does: I’ll bet Kelly Ann Beasley remembers your sandalwood aftershave as clearly as I do. She has a special situation that prevents me from charging you with raping her downstairs at Stubb’s Barbecue during that college graduation party.” With that, Caitlin finally eased the trifolded document from the pocket of the jacket that dangled just below her w
aist. “So this warrant is for your arrest on sexual assault charges from eighteen years ago, sir, the night you raped me.”

  97

  ELK GROVE, TEXAS

  Paz had triggered the explosives to explode inward, blowing a hole in the rock face of the cavern, creating a charred, jagged entrance to the storage chamber that thermal satellite imaging had revealed. But that imaging had said nothing about its scope or sprawl.

  Or its contents.

  Cort Wesley felt as if he’d just stepped into a high-end warehouse, with floor-to-ceiling shelving for as far as the eye could see. The first thing that grabbed his attention was a large cache of weapons that included heavy machine guns, rocket launchers, and even a neatly parked array of decommissioned armored military vehicles that had been sold as surplus to arms brokers.

  He also noted clear plastic, vacuum-sealed tubs that looked like giant Tupperware containers, holding stores of white, aspirin-like pills. He couldn’t even begin to hazard a guess as to how many prescription narcotics the tubs contained, the number too vast to even contemplate. Nor did Cort Wesley bother to fathom how Armand Fisker had managed to obtain pills with a street value that stretched into the tens, if not hundreds of millions. But he heard the voice of Leroy Epps in his head, as loud and clear as in Leroy’s regular visits.

  David Skoll …

  Could the pharmaceutical tycoon, who Caitlin was convinced had raped her eighteen years ago, be somehow in league with Armand Fisker?

  You bet your britches, bubba.…

  Still, it was something else stored in pallets on the most shelves of all that made Cort Wesley’s eyes bulge the widest and chased Leroy’s voice from his head. He actually had to move closer to make sure he wasn’t seeing things.