Strong Cold Dead

by Jon Land

  Rawls leaned back against the heavy bag, crossing his arms against his chest. “Did I do or say something to offend you, Ranger?”

  “When you first saw me coming over, you looked at me like you knew you’d been caught. Like you’d done something that made you figure me or somebody else was coming, and that maybe you were glad, at least resigned. I’ve seen that look before, plenty often, and it always makes me wonder what a person’s hiding. Because if they’re hiding one thing, it’s a pretty safe bet they’re hiding something more.”

  Rawls grinned, his brilliantly white teeth glistening in the spill of overhead gym lights. “Did you rehearse that? I mean, it sounds like a speech you’ve given before.”

  “I’m not one for giving speeches, sir, but I got roped into speaking at a high school graduation, come spring, at that Houston prep school I mentioned to you.”

  “Lucky kids.”

  “We’ll see. Anyway, one of them got kidnapped the other day, right out of a McDonald’s, if you can believe that.”

  “Well, this is a pretty dangerous state, Ranger.”

  Caitlin slapped her hat against her side and then fitted it back in place over her hair. “I was just about to say the same thing to you, sir.”

  54

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  Bobby Roy’s Used Cars and Bail Bond Service was located just down South Frio Street from the Bexar County magistrate’s building, in a beat-up lot bleeding macadam amid a patchwork pattern of what looked like gravel instead of tar. Cort Wesley parked his truck next to a construction site in the shadow of a John Deere front loader, waiting to make sure the men identified by Miguel Asuna were inside.

  The John Deere kept him hidden from sight while not shielding him much from the sun, and Cort Wesley was fine with that. Fine with it roasting him, to further fuel the fury he felt every time he considered a couple of two-bit thugs rousting his son to make their bullying points.

  And two-bit thugs, according to Miguel Asuna, was exactly what they were.

  * * *

  “Body shop right here in the city did the work,” he had told Cort Wesley, forty minutes after their initial meeting. “The Escalade’s registered to Bobby Roy, guy who rips people off on his used cars as much as his bond work. My guess is your boy was worked over by a couple of ex-cons who sell jalopies off his lot, when they’re not chasing down bail jumpers for him.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  Asuna raised his hand theatrically. “God’s honest truth, amigo. They’re brothers, Terry and K-Bar Boyd.”

  “K-Bar?”

  “What can I say?” Asuna shrugged. “Man fancies himself good with a knife. Word is he gave himself the nickname after shanking a couple guys in prison. God’s honest truth, too.”

  “Tough guy, eh?” Cort Wesley said, thinking of what Luke had told him about a guy with a knife, sticking the tip in Luke’s crotch, explaining how he’d had his way with boys before.

  “If doing them in the back makes him tough, sure. And I’ll tell you something else that’s true: I do much better work than the clowns Bobby Roy took that Escalade to. Tell him that, if you see him.”

  “Oh, I’ll see him.”

  * * *

  The black Escalade pulled into the lot and slid into a space directly in front of before the entrance, two hours into Cort Wesley’s superheated vigil. Luke hadn’t been very specific in his descriptions of the Boyd brothers, Terry and K-Bar, but he’d still provided enough for Cort Wesley to recognize them climbing down out of the Escalade. Both wore leather gloves with the fingers cut back, as if they’d bought their toughness on sale at Walmart. Living, breathing caricatures who were plenty good enough to track down desperate bail skips and scare high school kids, which wasn’t very good at all. But they were probably armed, and Cort Wesley wanted to find out fast, without making a mess, who’d sent them after Luke.

  Unless making that mess better served his cause, Cort Wesley reasoned, his eyes falling on the John Deere front loader again.

  * * *

  The driver from the nearby work crew had been kind enough to leave the key in the starter of the Deere, which handled like a big, angry SUV.

  “Hey!” Cort Wesley thought he heard someone yell, as he turned the Deere wheel all the way to the left and swung out into traffic. “Hey!”

  He thumped across the eastbound traffic lane and moved into the westbound lane, accompanied by screeching brakes slammed by drivers doing a collective double take at the sight of the massive vehicle ranging across their path like some iron dinosaur.

  Cort Wesley hopped the curb into Bobby Roy’s used car lot, managing to steer clear of the twin rows of vehicles, which were covered more by dust than by paint. He headed straight for what passed for a showroom.

  55

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  Cort Wesley barely felt the impact as the big Deere’s raised shovel crashed through the showroom glass and plowed T-Bird and Caprice classic convertibles from its path like they were Matchbox cars. A guy he thought he recognized as Bobby Roy flew out of a desk chair, in front of which sat a couple with whom he’d been in the process of closing a deal.

  Terry and K-Bar Boyd stumbled out of the back office, struggling to free nine-millimeter pistols from fancy holsters tucked under their sport jackets. But Cort Wesley was out of the cab by then, boots crunching over shattered glass, kicking aside a back bumper that had separated from one of the convertibles on impact. He reached the Boyds just as they finally found purchase on pistols, and he tore the weapons from their grasps in a motion so fluid that both brothers were left absurdly aiming their empty hands at him.

  “What the fuck?” one of them managed, before Cort Wesley slammed him in the nose with a ridged palm.

  He watched the potential buyers flee through a side door, closely followed by Bobby Roy himself, as Cort Wesley stuck a leg out to trip the second Boyd brother. Then he hoisted both of them up onto a big rectangular planter, which looked decorative compared to the rest of the showroom. He smelled spilled coffee somewhere as he smacked the Boyd brothers’ heads together to further make his point. The impact sounded like a golf club thwacking a ball off the tee.

  “You K-Bar?” he said to one, producing a dazed headshake. “Then nice to meet you, Terry,” he greeted him. “You too, K-Bar,” he said to the other. “I’m the guy whose son you pulled out of that McDonald’s the other day, in Houston. Sound familiar? You were trying to scare me off. Thought I’d give you boys the opportunity to do it in person.”

  “Fuck you!” Terry managed in nasally fashion. He was pinching his nose closed in a futile attempt to stanch the blood that Cort Wesley’s blow had unleashed.

  Cort Wesley let them see him grin, ignoring Terry Boyd’s failed show of bravado. “You boys crossed a line here, and the only reason you’re not under the big wheels of that John Deere now is I need to know who put you up to it.”

  The Boyd brothers heard the screech of police sirens picking up cadence in the distance, their expressions flashing hope that their assailant would surely flee. Clearly, they were uneducated on the damage a man like Cort Wesley could do to them in his remaining minute or so.

  “You give me a name and you get a pass. Call it your Get Out of Hell for Free card.” Cort Wesley glanced at the blood running from Terry’s nose, between his fingers, and the lump the size of a baseball that had already formed on K-Bar’s skull. “Well, not quite for free, but close enough as things go.”

  “We ain’t gonna give you nothing!” K-Bar ranted, his words stringing into each other. “You wanna kill us, go right ahead.”

  His bravado, inspired by the increasingly loud police sirens, was ignored by Cort Wesley, who snatched up a pristine fan belt, once displayed on a partition wall that now had fallen to the Deere. The sign had said something about the belt coming from the Mustang the great Steve McQueen had driven in Bullitt, but Cort Wesley had his doubts.

  “Okay,” he said, wrapping the fan belt around K-Bar’s neck and tighten
ing it until K-Bar’s breath choked off and his face began to purple.

  “What the fuck, man?” Terry Boyd ranted, his voice whiny. “What the fuck?”

  Terry’s brother was starting to gurgle now, his cheeks so pumped with air they looked as if they were ready to explode.

  “A name, Terry. Give me a name.”

  56

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  “What’s that pounding sound?” Sam Bob Jackson asked Cray Rawls. “I can hardly hear you.”

  “That pounding is me smacking a heavy bag, because if I stop now, I might drive back there and pound you instead, you fucking moron.”

  “Cray, I didn’t catch what you just—”

  Rawls stopped his punching long enough to adjust the Bluetooth device riding his ear. “Never mind. Nice talk I just had with that cunt of a Texas Ranger you sent my way.”

  “She wasn’t taking no for an answer.”

  “Your job, while you still have one, is to run interference. That means keep the attention off me.”

  “She’s a determined gal, with a reputation like an Old West gunfighter’s.”

  “A cunt gunfighter?”

  “Pistols don’t come in genders, Cray.”

  “And you’re scared shitless of her.”

  “This is the Texas Rangers we’re talking about.”

  Rawls started hitting the bag again. “I’m glad you made that point for me, you fat tub of lard. I did some checking into Cort Wesley Masters. Remember him? The man you tried to scare off after he made that scene at the reservation?”

  “I told you—”

  “I know what you told me. Now let me tell you something. Before Masters did a stretch in Huntsville, before he worked as an enforcer for the Branca crime family, he was Army Special Forces.”

  “What?”

  Through the Bluetooth device, which had loosened up again, Rawls could almost hear the air going out of the fat shit. “That’s right, Sam Bob. You picked a fight with a genuine Green Beret. And that’s not all, not even close. Would you care to hazard a guess who his girlfriend is?”

  “Oh, shit…”

  “Match made in heaven, wouldn’t you say? So your dumb ass has gotten us two for the price of one. You better hope the boatload of cash I had to dump to get those damn Indians to drop their protest alleviates things, because my next step is to drop you down an abandoned oil well. It’s sure to be nice and slimy down there, so you’ll feel right at home. By the way, that money I had to leave on the table at that reservation? It’s coming out of your end.”

  Rawls heard Sam Bob Jackson gulp down some air. “What does the Ranger know?”

  “She’s getting close, lard-ass.”

  “But what we’re doing, it’s not a crime. Mineral rights we purchased plainly state ‘oil and gas reserves, along with anything else of monetary value discovered along the way.’”

  “Oh, really? And does that absolve you from kidnapping charges, too, or how about from being an embarrassment to your mother’s loins?”

  “This coming from the son of a prostitute.”

  Rawls started hitting the heavy bag so hard his hands throbbed inside his gloves. “I’m going to do you a favor and forget you said that, Sam Bob. What I’m not going to forget is, thanks to you, I’ve got a Texas Ranger and a Green Beret crawling up my ass. I don’t know why I let you fly back here with me on the company Gulfstream. Given it to do all over again, I’d rather you hitchhiked, maybe shed a few pounds on the way.”

  “Nothing’s changed,” Jackson said, his words ringing hollowly in Rawls’s ears, between smacks to the bag. “You said so yourself.”

  “You know the biggest yacht in the world’s longer than a football field and cost a quarter billion dollars? That’s the kind of money I’m talking about. Enough to make your Texas oilmen kiss my ass, as long as you don’t cause me any more problems.”

  Through his earpiece, Rawls heard the tinny click tone of an incoming e-mail or text message on Jackson’s end, followed by the return of Jackson’s loud breathing.

  “What’s wrong now, Sam Bob?” Rawls asked.

  “Er, we may have another one.”

  * * *

  “Masters did what?” Rawls asked, pounding the bag so hard he could barely hear Sam Bob Jackson on the other end of his Bluetooth device.

  “I just got the call. He busted up a used car showroom, nearly killed the guys who were supposed to put a scare into him.”

  “These being the ones who kidnapped his son.”

  “They’re headed for the hills as we speak. That’s not the problem.”

  “What is?”

  “They told Masters I was the one who hired them to do the deed.”

  Rawls let his gloves drop to his waist and leaned against the heavy bag to catch his breath. “I guess you can expect a visit too, then. Maybe Masters will take your whole building down this time.”

  “I thought you should know, Cray, in case this leads back to you.”

  “Only way that can happen is if you spill the beans. You wouldn’t do that, would you, Sam Bob?”

  “Of course not. But…”

  “But what?”

  “The Texas Rangers are involved too. Do the math.”

  Rawls began tapping at the heavy bag. “Why don’t you do it for me?”

  “Adds up to us both being fucked here. Time to do some damage control, what you do best, Cray.”

  Rawls started hitting the bag harder again. “The only damage of concern here was done by you, without my permission or knowledge. I’d say it’s not time for me to do anything.”

  Dead air filled the line. Rawls heard nothing but Sam Bob Jackson’s heavy breathing, which fell into an awkward cadence that mirrored his own.

  “Like you said, I’m the only one who can link you to all this, Cray.”

  “Is that a threat, Sam Bob?”

  “Call it an accommodation.”

  Rawls started slamming the bag anew with his gloves. “I call it a load of shit. A Texas Ranger who thinks she’s Wyatt Earp and an ex-Green Beret with a hair across his ass—they’re your problems.”

  “I messed up the Masters thing, for sure. But you should remember it was the Balcones land deal that poked Caitlin Strong like a stick. And, last time I checked, you were front and center on that one.”

  “So what would you suggest?”

  “Damage control, like I already said. Maybe I didn’t go far enough. Maybe you need to go farther.”

  “Against a Texas Ranger and Rambo? Others who’ve gone up against these two haven’t fared so well, from what I’ve been told.”

  “Don’t believe everything you hear, Cray.”

  “I’m glad you said that, Sam Bob, because it gives me call to do what I should’ve done five minutes ago.”

  “What’s that?”

  “This,” Rawls said, and clicked off the call on his Bluetooth device.

  57

  OVER THE ATLANTIC OCEAN

  “Hey, mister, you wanna play?”

  Hatim Abd al-Aziz turned in his window seat in the big plane’s rear section to look at the young boy sitting next to him. The boy had set up an old-fashioned checkers game on his tray table. His parents and older siblings were sleeping abreast of one another, across the aisle in the plane’s center seating section.

  “I’m not very good,” he told the boy.

  “How can you be bad at checkers? And don’t let me win, either,” the boy said, making the first move. “Your turn, mister.”

  Hatim Abd al-Aziz forced a smile, and then a move. That wasn’t his real name, and he’d done his best to strike from his mind and memory the one given him at birth, since that person no longer existed. He’d taken the name Hatim because it meant “determined and decisive,” while Abd al-Aziz meant “servant of the powerful.” Especially appropriate, because he lived to serve Allah and nothing else. He did as Allah willed, and always had, ever since the time, as a boy, when he’d loosened the lug nuts on the wheels of his soccer team�
��s bus and hid behind a tree to watch what came next. He’d been thrown off the team for fighting and figured that if he didn’t get to play, then neither should anyone else. The bus had spun across the road at fifty kilometers per hour, knocking vehicles from its path like the flippers on an old-fashioned pinball machine. Several of his teammates were hurt, but none had been killed.

  Which disappointed the young man destined to become Hatim Abd al-Aziz.

  “You really are bad,” the boy was saying now. “I don’t think you’re paying attention.”

  “I have a lot on my mind.”

  “Work?”

  “I love what I do.”

  The boy cocked his gaze across the aisle, toward the sleeping form of his parents, who were resting against each other under a single blanket. “My dad hates his job.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “He makes a lot of money, but he hates it. I hear him talking to my mom sometimes.”

  “Probably because he doesn’t believe in what he does.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  Al-Aziz began paying more attention to the game of checkers. He found himself losing badly. “A man must believe. It’s where the love of one’s work, one’s duty, comes from.”

  He began studying the board, seeking a strategy to seize the advantage from the boy, who’d already jumped five of his pieces and was marching unchecked across al-Aziz’s side.

  “I don’t know what that means, either.”

  Al-Aziz’s first kill had been when he was just a bit older, a few years after he sabotaged the bus. It was a young woman his own age who refused to wear a veil, calling herself secular. Totally acceptable, as was her promiscuousness, in Western-leaning Turkey, but not to him. So, one night he pretended to give in to her overtures, leaving her in the woods to die after he bashed her skull in with a rock. At that point, it was the greatest moment of al-Aziz’s life.

  He’d been fifteen at the time, twenty years ago now, when no one had dared to contemplate the existence of the Islamic State to which he’d dedicated his life—first as a soldier, then quickly rising through the ranks as the group formed its hierarchy and system of succession on the fly. His fluency in several languages made him a great asset, and his penchant for violence fueled his even faster rise. Today, many believed that what the world knew as ISIS was on the run, both its numbers and its influence declining. But members of the cadre, like al-Aziz, knew the group was just biding its time, picking its spots, lying in wait for the right moment to make its impact felt in a way that would secure its legacy and service to Allah forever.