by Jon Land
“I’m guessing you received a call from Calum Dane, Congressman.”
“I did indeed. You mind explaining your rationale for pissing him off no end? He just threatened to move a whole bunch of business out of the state, including the spaceport.”
“Well, I imagine that would piss off plenty willing to pay a hundred grand in the hopes of meeting a Martian up there.”
As she spoke, Caitlin noted assistant number one, the woman, jotting down notes feverishly, while assistant number two, the man, extended his tablet forward on an angle.
“Are you recording this, Congressman?” Caitlin wondered.
Fraley ignored her. “You mind explaining the purpose of your visit to Calum Dane to me?”
“I do, sir, on account of it’s part of an ongoing investigation.”
“Into Dane?” Fraley asked her, disbelief lacing his voice.
“He’s a person of interest. That’s all I can say on the matter.”
“Dane said considerably more.”
“I’m not surprised. Did he include the reason for my visit?”
“You mean, beyond harassment and intimidation?”
“I believed his life may be in danger.”
“As part of this ongoing investigation?”
“That’s right, sir.”
Fraley mopped his brow with a balled-up handkerchief. He was wearing a darker suit today, which rode his plump lines like a shower curtain. His tie was the same orange-red color as the combed-over hair, which had been sprayed in all directions by the rotor wash.
“Mr. Dane reported that you came up just short of accusing him of complicity,” Fraley told her, his final words partially lost to a sudden gust of wind that blew his comb-over backwards instead of forward.
“In what?”
“He wasn’t specific.”
“He couldn’t be, because I never did, not directly anyway.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It’s called police work, Congressman. I have reason to believe that Dane caused the fire at his own petrochemical plant to eliminate evidence.”
“Evidence of what?”
“Being party to his pesticides making a whole lot of people across this state sick. Got any constituents who are recent cancer victims, Congressman, maybe part of a cluster of them?”
“So you accused one of the richest and most important men in Texas, in the whole goddamn United States, of giving people cancer. Have I got that right, Ranger?”
“Like I said, it’s part of an ongoing investigation.”
“You’ve got Calum Dane all wrong.”
“Really? Maybe you should talk to the New York City police about that. Turns out a young man named Brandon McCabe, who lost a leg to cancer, was a part of a class action suit against Dane Corp for the same pesticides that were destroyed in that manufacturing plant fire in West Texas. McCabe shot his mouth off at the annual shareholders meeting at the Waldorf and hasn’t been seen since.”
Fraley pretended to be bored. “I imagine there’s a point to that somewhere.”
“There is, sir. I left out the part about security camera footage capturing McCabe entering his hotel. He disappeared that night. Just fell off the face of the earth.”
“And does the NYPD share your concern?”
“There’s a record of him checking out the next morning, so their interest is lukewarm, even though no clerk can verify the record. A detective I spoke with described his room as ‘sanitized.’”
Fraley ran his tongue over his lips, then wet his fingers and tried to smooth his hair back into place. “Maybe they should talk to housekeeping.”
“They did, Congressman. The maid insists she found the room in that condition, and McCabe hasn’t been seen since. The ruckus he caused is up on YouTube.”
Fraley’s jaws moved as if he were chewing gum, uneasy with being informed of something he wasn’t aware of. “Ruckus,” he repeated. “Is that a law enforcement term?”
“Based on the current performance of Congress, I’d say it was a political one.”
“Why don’t you run for office, Ranger? With your popularity, you’d be a shoo-in. And if you grew unhappy with any of your colleagues, you could just shoot them.”
“Maybe I should start now,” Caitlin said, unable to help herself.
Fraley’s eyes widened as his expression spread out into a grin. “You get all that?” he said to the aide taping their conversation on his iPad.
Before that aide could respond, a third one Caitlin hadn’t noticed before rushed up to Asa Fraley, red faced and out of breath. He got close to the congressman’s ear and said something too softly for Caitlin to hear. Whatever it was, though, must have pissed off Fraley mightily, because he shook his head, sneering.
“Goddammit!” he hissed, swinging back toward Caitlin. “Someone sliced all four tires of my SUV. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you, Ranger?”
“I didn’t even know you were going to be here when I landed, Congressman. Maybe it was one of your constituents who’s sick with cancer.”
Fraley scowled and ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth as if trying to excise something bitter. “You’re so far over the line there’s no going back, Ranger. I’m going to have you served with a subpoena to testify before my committee in Washington about your methods and practices, so I can reveal the truth about Caitlin Strong to the country, even if that doesn’t include shredding tires.”
Caitlin fought back a smile, the truth dawning on her. “I thought you said they’d been slashed.”
“They were. Before somebody tore the goddamn rubber off the rims.”
PART SEVEN
One of my favorite quotes of all time is, “One riot, one Ranger,” summing up that Texas Rangers don’t come in big numbers, but when they show up, trouble is usually settled. I got to witness the Texas Rangers up close and personal this summer when I attended the annual Ranger Reunion, sponsored by the Texas Ranger Foundation. You talk about feeling secure. Being around both retired and active Rangers makes you feel no one in his or her right mind would offer a challenge. These guys are hard-bodied, steel-willed guys who are soft-spoken and courteous, but you know could blow up in someone’s face if the predicament got dangerous.
—Bill Hartman, The Madisonville Meteor, October 9, 2007
62
WACO, TEXAS
Calum Dane walked the now-barren grounds of his former petrochemical plant. He’d arrived early for his planned meeting with representatives of the insurance company that was still refusing to pay out his claim, due to the fact that the fire remained the subject of an ongoing investigation. Dane had made himself remain patient throughout the process, doing the right thing by paying all the medical bills of the injured out of Dane Corp’s coffers, figuring he’d be compensated in due time.
But now due time had extended beyond two years, almost three.
Not far away, maybe twenty miles, the Branch Davidian compound, under the fanatical leadership of David Koresh, had burned to the ground too, in a fire sparked literally by the FBI. So Dane couldn’t help but wonder if there was some curse or anomaly associated with the land. Kind of like a miniature version of the Bermuda Triangle.
If you asked him, Dane would’ve said the FBI had been too patient and waited too long to move on the Branch Davidian compound. He hadn’t made the same mistake here, when the toxic effects of Dane Corp’s latest pesticide began to show up in people like the late Brandon McCabe, assigning to Pulsipher a job that should have come with relatively few complications. The fire should’ve been the end of it. The ammonium nitrate that had triggered the ensuing explosion wasn’t even supposed to be on-site. Then, in the flash of an instant, five workers were dead, followed soon after by seven volunteer firefighters who were caught in a series of secondary explosions that pockmarked the sprawling plant. All because he needed to wipe out all trace of the pesticide’s existence.
Walking the grounds of his former plant felt like
traipsing through a graveyard, only with lots of places where an enemy could conceal himself. That made him glad he’d let Pulsipher bring along a full security team—four well-armed men, in addition to Pulsipher himself, posted about the grounds, all within Dane’s sight, which meant, of course, that he was within theirs.
People like Brandon McCabe made him feel like an itinerant kid again. Worthless, smelling like shit, and no more than a face you pass by when driving on the road.
He could have sworn that a corrosive, chemical stench clung to the air around the former plant even now. It would’ve been easy to pass it off as rising out of the ground, or from the refuse of the fire, or from the wood, roofing, and clapboard of the remaining, now-abandoned buildings. But, truth be told, Dane actually believed the air itself was stained with scent no wind, rain, season, or time lapse could weaken. As if the explosion and fire had left something embedded there forever.
Dane shivered and wrapped his arms around himself, checking his men just to make sure they were still there. He walked through the ash clumps and piles, skirting the most dangerous husks of debris. The site’s status as a crime scene prevented him from ordering a full-scale cleanup to give the land back to nature, but he didn’t understand why the ash hadn’t blown away or dissipated. Instead, there seemed to be more of it every time he came here, as if it were feeding off itself, a constant reminder of the site’s squandered potential and profits that should have been expanded across a vast acreage instead of burned to the ground.
What had been produced here, after all, could’ve been far more valuable than oil or even gold. Food was the future—a commodity, soon to be a resource, to be valued like any other. It used to be that he who controlled the oil controlled the world. Just ask OPEC. But soon, he who controlled the food would control the world. And that should have been him, thanks to a concoction originally conceived, in principle, by his father and developed by Dane Corp’s scientists. Fifty million dollars later and thanks to the latest in DNA and RNA technology, along with a whole bunch of other stuff Dane couldn’t comprehend in the least.
He took a deep breath and spun his eyes around, suddenly realizing that his men were nowhere in sight. Even Pulsipher was gone from his post riding Dane’s shadow, never more than fifty feet back. They were all gone, swept away in the brush of dust, dirt, and ash whipping along on the wind. He wanted to call for Pulsipher, wished he’d taken the walkie-talkie the head of his security detail had tried to give him. Dane hated the constant squawk and chatter, found it disrespectful to carry in a place he considered hallowed ground, no matter how soured by greed and death.
Then he spotted a huge shape walking toward him from the position Pulsipher should have been occupying. Walking with the sun at his back, forcing Dane to shield his eyes with a hand cupped to his brow to follow his approach. His height and width of his shoulders made him the biggest man Dane had ever seen up close, and that included a bevy of professional athletes from football and basketball. They were big, sure, but something about this man made them seem, well, small by comparison.
He realized the big man was holding a hand tucked behind his back. When he came close enough into view, Dane also noted his peaked cheekbones and protruding forehead and figured him for Slavic in origin, Russian maybe. He had crystal-blue eyes that seemed not to blink and ash-colored hair trimmed close to his anvil-shaped head.
“The insurance company isn’t coming, Mr. Dane,” he greeted, in an accent that was only vaguely Russian, his hand still tucked behind his back. “You’ll be doing business with me, instead.”
Dane reflexively swept his gaze about again.
“Don’t bother,” the big man told him.
With that, the man brought his hand around from behind him and tossed what he’d been holding onto the ground directly in front of Dane. It bounced once and then stopped, rocking slightly, with a pair of bulging eyes peering straight at him.
Pulsipher’s eyes.
Attached to Pulsipher’s severed head, which was shedding blood and gore in a pool around where it had come to a rest.
“You have something the people I work for want,” the big man told him.
63
MANHATTAN, KANSAS
“You still haven’t told me what we’re doing here, Jones,” Cort Wesley said, after a flash of Jones’s ID got them through the crime scene barrier erected of tape, sawhorses, and concrete blocks around the rubble that had been Pat Roberts Hall the night before. “What this has to do with Anton Kasputin, aka Alexi Gribanov, and whatever it was my dad and Jim Strong were working back in eighty-three?”
Jones stopped just short of the rubble that had spilled out from the building’s sprawling footprint. “Tell me what you make of what you see.”
“Whoever did this has done it before,” Cort Wesley told him.
“Brilliant. If I wasn’t already on my feet, I’d give you a standing ovation,” Jones sneered. “Now tell me something you think I might not know.”
“You plan on answering my question?”
“That’s what I’m doing. Now, what else does what you see tell you?”
Cort Wesley gave the rubble a longer look. “The bomber placed the explosives, shaped charges probably, in the basement. Six to eight of them would be my guess, planted at key structural points to achieve what you’re looking at right now. How much of this building was taken up by that bioterrorism facility?”
“An entire floor, give or take. So security should’ve been tight. Metal detectors and bag searches, if I’m remembering correctly, which makes me wonder how he got those charges through.”
Cort Wesley gave that some thought. “If it were me?”
“If it were you.”
“I’d come disguised in the uniform of a campus or, better yet, local policeman. Maybe even highway patrol, something like that. Someone security guards wouldn’t necessarily know but would respect, thanks to his badge.”
“Makes sense.”
“Any video feed to help us in that regard?”
Jones shrugged. “Just the cameras mounted outside, and we’re checking them. Feeds from the interior cameras weren’t backed up and were lost in the blast. And try this out for size: a female security guard was found dead in her vehicle outside a diner in town last night.”
“Our guy, obviously.”
“Sure as shit, unless she happened to swipe her ID to access what used to be this building maybe after an hour after her death.”
Cort Wesley figured that would be a stretch even for Leroy Epps and turned his gaze back on the rubble. The multitude of other authorities on scene, in addition to the rescue crews still desperately checking for survivors amid the rubble, gave him and Jones a wide berth, thanks to the Homeland Security IDs dangling from their necks.
“Whoever did this would know about the cameras,” he told Jones. “He’d know about everything.”
“Ever heard the word agroterrorism before, cowboy?”
“Not until you brought it up.”
Jones joined him in surveying the rubble again. “Well, this place housed our best experts in the field. You are looking at the remains of the nation’s biggest storehouse of brains and information on potential attacks on our food supply. They’d run the simulations, the scenarios. This was the NORAD of America’s heartland, and losing the personnel and the knowledge based here is devastating to the cause.”
“What about redundancy?”
“Cloud backup can’t help you with interpretation or reactive strategizing. Assume what was happening in Texas had already registered on this facility’s radar. We’ll be able to dig up whatever findings they did share, but not their latest thinking on the subject or the kind of hypotheticals they were running. NORAD, just like I said. If you’re going to launch an attack by air, you take out Cheyenne Mountain. If you’re going to launch an attack on the land, you take out this.”
“Suggests an expedited timetable…”
“Yes, it does.”
“But still not
what we’re doing here.”
“There was a survivor, cowboy, and he’s waiting to talk to us.”
64
SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS
Caitlin sat in her SUV for a time, letting the cabin cool before driving off. She ran the blower on high, still overheating inside from her exchange with Congressman Asa Fraley. She wasn’t confused for one moment about how his tires had ended up scattered across the parking lot, and she couldn’t resist staying until a flatbed arrived to truck his damaged vehicle away. A big, black SUV. Caitlin pictured him riding in the back, deluded by his own self-importance. When he finally left, it was in the back of a taxi, crammed inside with his aides. Their eyes met briefly when the cab pulled away and Caitlin couldn’t resist casting him a wave.
Nice work, Colonel, she thought.
But the current lightness of her mood couldn’t lessen the serious nature of being called to testify before a congressional committee chaired by someone who despised her. Fraley would have all the power in that scenario, committed to doing his utmost to destroy her. The Department of Public Safety and Austin in general publicly saluted her prowess and heroism, while privately bemoaning the spate of lawsuits against the state that she left in her wake. Gunfights caused damage, and parties were lined up three deep in state court with claims aimed at making Texas pay up for the losses incurred. There was even a hundred-million-dollar lawsuit currently stalled in the courts, brought by the stockholders of the former MacArthur-Rain company, who blamed Caitlin for its demise in the wake of the implosion of its corporate headquarters, which had also claimed the life of its CEO, Harmon Delladonne.
Sooner or later the cumulative effect of all that was bound to catch up to her. Asa Fraley knew that as well as Caitlin did, and confronting her with all the assembled facts and innuendo collectively might well be enough to move the State of Texas to finally take action.
Maybe she’d ignore the subpoena, let them come and arrest her instead.