Strong Light of Day

by Jon Land

  She finally pulled out of the parking lot to head back to Ranger Company F headquarters, located a few miles from the Alamo, picking up the 410 just down the road from the heliport. She checked her phone yet again to see if an e-mail, text, or voice mail had come from Doc Whatley about what she’d asked him to check at the grazing fields of both Christoph Ilg and Karl Dakota.

  She’d driven maybe two miles down the 410, from the Department of Public Safety heliport when she saw the construction worker standing in the middle of the road, brandishing a handheld stop sign. Looked like a dump truck had lost its load of gravel smack-dab in the middle of the roadbed, requiring a front loader or shovel to clear. A few cars ahead of her were threading their way through a narrow passage that took them to the very rim of the shoulder, beyond which lay a drainage culvert that had swallowed more vehicles than any auto salvage junkyard in the county.

  Caitlin angled her SUV to follow them, the residue of her meeting with Calum Dane clinging to her like the stench of an oil fire from a blown-out rig. She’d been on the scene of several of those when sabotage was suspected, enough to know that no amount of hot water and soap could wash it off. It wasn’t so much a smell as a residue that clung to the skin like stubborn beach sand.

  Something about Calum Dane made Caitlin want to scrub herself clean. She’d gone up against more than her share of cold-blooded murderers, assassins, serial killers, and predators of all sorts. Dane was none of these but somehow worse than any of them. She felt in him a capacity to do virtually anything, under a complex and correct assumption that he could get away with it. That’s what made him so dangerous and left her skin feeling coated by the grime of what he brought to the world. One thing all the monsters she’d confronted had in common was, deep down, they knew their days were numbered, that their time was borrowed and not owned. Calum Dane, on the other hand, was a portrait in vain self-assurance that apparently morally immunized him for taking a belt to his own son.

  She’d been trying to think what bothered her so much about the brief glimpse she’d caught inside his office on the way to his personal gymnasium. The walls were utterly bare; no pictures, memorabilia, hangings—nothing at all. Caitlin took that as a symbol of him being a man who wasn’t about to give anything away about himself, his true nature insulated by his great wealth, which left him capable of doing anything he felt his entitlement allowed. No compromise or quarter given. The kind of man who gives a million bucks to charities supporting the people whose lives he chews through and spits out.

  It was finally her turn to slide onto the shoulder to move past the gravel pile and the traffic snarl it had caused. Caitlin was still thinking of Calum Dane when she eased her SUV forward, noticing in the side-view mirror the crew member holding the portable stop sign lowering it suddenly, attention focused on her instead of the cars stacked behind her.

  That gave her the extra instant she needed to go for her pistol and drop down beneath the dashboard in the last moment before the gunfire started.

  65

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  The shoulder harness held fast to her, and Caitlin barely managed to get it unclasped as shards of glass from the punctured windshield rained down upon her. The gunfire seemed to be coming from three sides at once, all but the rear, the echoes of it mixing with the pings and pocks of the glass breaking apart, the pieces clacking against each other as they flew. She heard the clang of metal dinging and the blare of horns sounded by the hands of stalled drivers desperate to escape.

  She thought she might have been screaming herself, but she wasn’t sure. She maintained the presence of mind not to fire off her drawn SIG blindly or to drop down out of the SUV, where the multiple fusillades would find her before she could do any worthwhile damage.

  Rat-tat-tat … Rat-tat-tat …

  Automatic fire now—or maybe it had been there from the start. She had a twelve-gauge stowed in the SUV’s cargo bed. Reaching it meant climbing over the seat with bullets still burning the air in all directions, but Caitlin couldn’t see winning this fight against five, maybe six shooters with only a pistol.

  So she pushed herself up and over the center console, into the back seat, through the fury of fire that pushed air through her ears and left her actually feeling the heat buzz of the gunshots whizzing past her. The sound was deafening, banging off the SUV’s interior in all directions at once now, the hot, sulfury smell burning her nostrils, a few of the bullets coming so close they seemed to singe her shirt. It was just as her father and grandfather had always said about how senses got “supersized” in a gunfight. That was her grandfather’s term, even though she could never remember him eating at McDonald’s.

  She dropped a hand over the backseat, into the hatch. Caitlin managed to free the shotgun and draw it up and over the seat, rising just enough to steady it, with her gaze cast briefly out of the rear window pockmarked by shots pouring in through the windshield. Enough of the glass was still whole that she could spot a shape growing before her, seeming to fly over the twisted and tangled snarl of traffic like some dark-clad Peter Pan. Superimposed directly over the SUV’s rear windshield wiper, which had somehow frozen straight up, at a ninety-degree angle, over the now-webbed glass.

  Guillermo Paz held an assault rifle in either hand, balanced perfectly in his twin grasp as he leaped from one car roof or hood to another, the steel crinkling from his vast bulk. He was zigzagging as he opened fire, muzzle flashes flaring from both bores, though Caitlin couldn’t hear his twin barrages above the constant din of bullets continuing to pound her SUV.

  She burst upward when the sudden onslaught of his assault forced the enemy fire to abate just enough to tell her Paz’s presence had been duly noted. Her first shot blew out the sunroof, deafening her as she crashed through the remnants of the glass.

  Caitlin barely heard her next blast, or the two that followed. She’d vanished into the gunfighter’s haze, which was brightened only by targets lit up like Christmas trees, cutting through the outskirts of her vision against an empty backdrop. She was conscious of the deafening crescendos of her shots, in contrast to Paz’s staccato assault fire. Her skin felt clammy, her shirt moistened by sweat, not blood. Paz was firing from almost directly behind her now, the heat of his bullets whisking past her almost as close as the ones that had blazed through the vehicle.

  The gunman who’d been wielding the stop sign was wheeling her way, running for cover, when Caitlin blew half his head off with the twelve-gauge. Her SUV rattled under the fire of two remaining gunmen, who must’ve escaped Paz’s fire, thanks to whatever cover they’d taken.

  Screw this!

  Caitlin dropped back down through the sunroof, snaring her shirt on a jagged shard of glass, behind the wheel again with a big chunk of fabric torn away behind her. The SUV’s engine was still on, racing as if in panicked protest of the fate being suffered by the vehicle.

  Ducking low again beneath the dashboard, Caitlin jammed the SUV into gear and floored the accelerator, tires first screeching and then finding purchase over the debris-strewn roadbed. Angling away from the shoulder, she felt a jarring impact against the vehicle behind which the last two gunmen were covered, forcing them into the open.

  Then the cacophony of Paz’s dual fire, one seeming to echo the other.

  A few final shots from the area of spilled gravel before her.

  Then, nothing at all.

  66

  MANHATTAN, KANSAS

  Jack Jerry—PhD, according to his title—wasn’t the only member of the bioterrorism unit housed in Pat Roberts Hall to survive, just the only one with the kind of security clearance indicative of someone involved in the most high-level projects, deemed to involve a threat to the homeland—in this case an agroterrorist threat, specifically.

  Jones explained that was his specialty. “But according to security logs, he hasn’t been to his lab in a week.”

  “Why?”

  “Everybody who knows the answer to that is buried under maybe ten thousand
tons of rubble,” Jones said, as they stepped out of the sedan that had been waiting for him at the airport when they landed.

  “You see him as a potential accomplice?” Cort Wesley wondered.

  “I did initially,” Jones said, leaving it there.

  Jack Jerry lived alone in a University Heights cul-de-sac just off, or on the outskirts of, the Kansas State campus. The grass was so green and uniformly trimmed that it looked painted onto the ground. The house was easy to spot, due to the bevy of vehicles parked on the street before it and in the driveway—officials from local, state, and now federal agencies, here to keep Dr. Jack Jerry either safe or under guard. Cort Wesley couldn’t ascertain which yet.

  “People I spoke with hinted that Jerry may have mental problems, some sort of disorder,” Jones explained, after they’d flashed their Homeland Security badges to those manning the first line of defense and proceeded up to the next pair, stationed before the front door. “There’s some issue with his medication. Know what he does to relax? Plays a rodeo clown on the Chisholm Trail circuit here in Kansas.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Let’s find out,” Jones said, flashing his ID to both uniformed officers standing on either side of Jack Jerry’s front door. “You haven’t asked what his specialty is.”

  “I figured you’d tell me when you were ready.”

  “He’s an entomologist.”

  “I don’t even know what that is.”

  “Insects, cowboy,” Jones said, and knocked on the door. “The man’s an expert in all things insects.”

  * * *

  Dr. Jack Jerry answered wearing the greasepaint, colored face, wig, and clothes of his rodeo clown persona.

  “Howdy, partners!” he greeted, smiling buoyantly behind eyes both glazed and glassy.

  Cort Wesley couldn’t tell if he was under- or overmedicated, but figured he must be suffering from bipolar disorder.

  “Come on in! The show’s about to start!”

  67

  MANHATTAN, KANSAS

  The inside of Jack Jerry’s house was freezing, the soft hum of the air conditioner creating background noise that reminded Cort Wesley of the sea heard from a distance. But it was the walls that claimed his attention. They were dominated everywhere by framed portraits and pictures of famous rodeo clowns, starting with Flint Rasmussen, who was a seven-time winner of the Man in the Can award.

  “I prefer Johnny Tatum,” Jerry told Cort Wesley, his eyes somewhere between him and Jones, as if unable to settle on which to focus on. “And this here’s Quail Dobbs,” he continued, pointing to a framed photograph blown up so much as to look grainy and out of focus. Then he moved to another. “But my all-time favorite is the great Slim Pickens here. Folks know him better as an actor, of course, but he made his bones, and broke plenty of them, as one of the best clown broncobusters ever. I heard he could entertain the crowd by hanging on upside down. Now folks look at him and all they think of is old Slim riding an A-bomb all the way to its Russian target in Dr. Strangelove, like it was bucking bronc.”

  Cort Wesley was having trouble focusing on the words coming through a pair of lips painted bright orange on a man smeared with greasepaint. It turned out Jerry wasn’t wearing a wig, but his overly long, unkempt hair seemed to extend in all directions at once, more likely a result of poor grooming than a part of his costume. Whatever illness Jack Jerry, PhD, was afflicted with, he was definitely off his meds. Cort Wesley had heard stress could be a contributor there, too, and that was certainly the case here, making him wonder all the more what exactly Jerry had been working on at the lab that had been reduced to rubble the preceding night.

  “I’d love to come watch you in action,” Cort Wesley told him. “Bring my boys, too.”

  “Leave me your number. I’ll call you when I book my next show.”

  “You been on the circuit lately, Dr. Jerry?”

  “No, sir. Not lately. Been too busy. Lots going on, too much, lots of studies, projections, and scenarios I had to work up.” Jerry narrowed his eyes, crinkling the greasepaint around them and cracking the portions that had dried too tight. “I’m allowed to talk to you, right? Being that you’re from Homeland Security.”

  “Most definitely,” Jones told him. “You should feel free to tell us anything. About these studies, projections, and scenarios you just mentioned.”

  “Which one most interests you?”

  “Tell me about the most recent one,” Jones said, trying so hard to sound comforting and reasonable that it seemed to actually hurt him.

  “I can’t.” Jerry leaned forward, voice reduced to a whisper. “Top secret.”

  “We’re Homeland Security, remember?”

  “Oh, that’s right.”

  “So you can tell us.”

  “Better to show than tell.”

  “Show us what?” Jones said, stealing a sidelong glance toward Cort Wesley.

  “Follow me,” Jerry said, moving down the hall. “Right this way.”

  68

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  “Well, Hurricane,” D. W. Tepper said, taking the seat next to her in the backseat of his truck, “it appears as if you’ve broken your own record. Over two hundred rounds fired, and still counting.”

  Caitlin didn’t bother asking him if that included both sides. Tepper had left both doors of his truck open to keep air flowing through the cab and help her cool off, but so far she still felt like she was fighting off a fever.

  “Here’s a big surprise for you,” he continued. “None of the gunmen were carrying IDs. You want to tell me who’s got it in for you this time?”

  “Calum Dane would be the most obvious choice, Captain, but this isn’t his style.”

  “An ambush and gunfight on a major interstate, Ranger? Just whose style would that be?”

  “My guess is their pictures and prints will come back Russian.”

  “How you figure that exactly?”

  “Because it’s the only thing that fits, where all this seems to be leading.”

  “Oh boy, those category ten winds are blowing this into an international incident now. Wasn’t taking on China enough, or do you have to mix it up with every superpower on the planet?”

  Caitlin had stripped off her shredded shirt to find streaks of color and threads missing, from bullet trails drawn that close over her frame. She’d slipped on a T-shirt over her sports bra, from a change bag Tepper always kept with him—maybe for a decade, judging by its dry mustiness. She gazed out of the open truck to find Guillermo Paz still standing on the other side of the roadbed, leaning against the wheel well of his massive truck, big enough to basically block the four-foot-high blackwall tire. Both his arms and feet were crossed casually, as if he were resting up for the next battle.

  “Did you know he was riding your shadow?” Tepper asked her.

  “Not until he shredded the tires on Asa Fraley’s Suburban, back at the heliport.”

  “Yeah, I heard about that,” Tepper said, massaging his scalp. “Report said something about down to the rims.”

  “Accurate, from what I saw.”

  Tepper slid back out of the truck, slammed the door behind him, and took a few steps back. Then he popped a Marlboro into his mouth and turned away from the wind to fire it up.

  “You want one?” he offered, pressing the Lock button on his car remote to seal the door, in case she tried to throw it open.

  “I’d rather let something worthwhile kill me, Captain,” Caitlin said through the open window.

  “I imagine that’s what Congressman Fraley would like to do, but he’ll probably settle for hauling your ass before that committee of his.”

  “The son of a bitch is in the NRA’s pocket and he wants to embarrass me for excessive violence?”

  “Something like that. But there’s a long line ahead of him right now.”

  “How’s that?”

  Tepper gazed back toward where the bodies of seven gunmen had been staked off. Crime scene techs were bu
sy scrutinizing every inch of road and vehicle, including the pile of gravel dropped in the road to set the ambush. Trace its origins and they’d be that much closer to the route taken by the gunmen to get here.

  “Only seven bodies, by my count, Hurricane. I believe that leaves several hundred million more Russians for you to fix in your sights.”

  Caitlin got the door unlocked and stepped out. “How about you tell me more about the time my dad came up against them back in eighty-three?”

  Tepper backed off, turning to the side to protect his cigarette from her. “What makes you think I know any more?”

  “Because I’m figuring you must’ve been there, D.W.”

  69

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS; 1983

  “Who else knows about this?” D. W. Tepper asked Jim Strong.

  “You’re looking at him.”

  “So you’ve decided to fight the Cold War all by yourself.”

  “Somebody’s gotta do it, D.W., and who better than the Texas Rangers?” Jim said, forcing a smile. “Hell, all these Indian marauders and Mexican bandits we’ve handled over the years—what’s a few Russians?”

  “That’s not your call.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t, but it is now. My man’s the one inside, and I don’t think he’d take kindly to working with anybody else.”

  “This being Boone Masters.”

  “The very same.”

  “You check his sheet before you decided to deputize him?”

  “I didn’t deputize him.”

  “Might as well have, Ranger. And what did you have to promise him to get him to cooperate?”

  “To keep his son out of jail for being an accessory to his crimes.”

  “You got evidence that would stick?”

  “Not even close. But Masters doesn’t know that.”

  Tepper fired up a cigarette and offered up another from his pack, which Jim declined. “Those’ll be death of you, D.W.”