Strong Cold Dead

by Jon Land

  “This was taken by a local Austin policeman manning a checkpoint a few blocks from Hoover’s Cooking. He did nothing more than rap on their window to ask them to move their vehicle. That’s it. But his body camera caught what you’re seeing now, and our software pinged on their faces.”

  Which implies that Homeland has access to every security, police, and maybe even traffic camera in the country, Caitlin thought, picturing a computer the size of the Company F building sorting through the billions and billions of bits of data in search of pings like the one displayed on the wide-screen before her.

  “The fact that the two of them are pictured in the vicinity of the attack,” Jones was saying now, “along with who they’re pictured with, there in the backseat, has us operating at DEFCON one in a figurative sense.” Jones used the remote to zoom in on Daniel Cross’s face, turning it even grainier. “This beauty here used the Deep Web to make overtures to ISIS commanders overseas. From what we’ve been able to glean, he claimed to have knowledge of a weapon that could help ISIS ‘kick the shit out of America.’ That’s an exact quote, people. We’ve had eyes on Cross, but until today had never linked him to the likes of Saflin and Zurif. Confession time, folks: two days ago we decided to move in on Cross in preemptive fashion, but my team missed him, by a few hours probably. And now we’re left with the conclusion that whatever he promised to provide ISIS has gone operational, which brings us to the particulars as we know them at the moment.”

  Jones looked toward Doc Whatley.

  “Doctor, would you please update us on what you and the consulting experts have managed to determine about the victims in Hoover’s Cooking, so far?”

  Whatley frowned, looking more tired and worn than usual. The source of his clear displeasure likely lay with those “consulting experts” Jones had mentioned.

  “We are proceeding on the assumption that we’re dealing with a new and never before identified neurotoxin here,” Whatley said finally. “I say ‘neurotoxin’ based on all indications found on the scene and my initial examination of the victims.” He frowned again. “Those bodies have all been removed to an undisclosed location to await further examination by officials from the CDC. But my preliminary findings indicate that all their vital systems shut down at once: respiratory, circulation, digestion, motor reflex, and brain function. They all stopped on a dime, leading to the unavoidable conclusion that a neurotoxin released inside that restaurant is to blame.”

  “Released how?” a disembodied voice asked, and only then did Caitlin realize that the four faces had returned to their individual quadrants on the wide-screen.

  “Well, something ingested by the victims would be the most likely means of delivery,” Whatley answered. “But the tests performed so far have shown no trace whatsoever of any toxin or contaminant in any of the food recovered from the scene.”

  “Leaving us with what?” one of the faces projected on the wide-screen asked.

  “I may have an idea on that front,” interjected Young Roger.

  61

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  “One that explains all the variables and variants in play here,” Young Roger continued.

  “Who’s speaking, please?” asked another of the disembodied faces.

  As Young Roger stated his name, credentials, and position with the Texas Rangers, Caitlin focused on what she knew about him from her own experience. Until this moment, she hadn’t even known his last name. Young Roger was in his early thirties but didn’t look much older than Dylan. Though he was a Ranger, the title was mostly honorary, provided in recognition of the technological expertise he brought to the table. He had helped the Rangers solve a number of Internet-based crimes, ranging from identity theft to credit card fraud to the busting of a major pedophile and kiddie porn ring. He worked out of all six Ranger company offices on a rotating basis.

  Young Roger wore his hair too long and was never happier than when he was playing guitar with his band, the Rats, whose independent record label had just released its first CD. Their alternative brand of music wasn’t the kind she preferred, but Dylan told her it was pretty good. She still figured Dylan had a crush on a gal bass guitarist named Patty and had dragged Caitlin to a Rats performance when he was home over Christmas, just to show her off to the blue-haired bass player.

  “Explain your thinking, please,” Jones instructed, once Young Roger’s introduction was complete.

  “If you assume ingestion as the means of the delivery of the toxin to the victims,” he began, “we need to consider the anomaly of the waitstaff and cooks being infected. Even more, there’s the apparent speed of the spread.”

  “Wait,” said one of the faces on the wide-screen, “are you suggesting contagion here?”

  “Not at all. That’s the point. The analyses I’ve seen all indicate all victims struck down, without visible symptoms, within between twenty and twenty-five seconds. Based on the photographs of the scene I’ve examined, six of the victims—two tables—hadn’t been served any food, or even water, yet. Then there’s the additional anomaly of the bodies found closest to the door.”

  Young Roger waited, as if for a photo displaying just that to appear on the screen, then continued when it didn’t.

  “They fell facing the inside, not the outside, likely toward the end of that twenty-to twenty-five-second time frame of effect.”

  “So, what are you suggesting?” asked the same face that had posed the last question.

  “Nothing yet,” answered Young Roger, sounding less committal. “At least, nothing for sure. I need to run some more tests, do some more research. Right now, I’m focusing on why the perpetrators plugged up the exterior venting on the kitchen exhaust fan. What was it they didn’t want getting out?”

  “You’re giving Daniel Cross a whole lot of credit, kid,” Jones said, jogging the screen back to the hazy, zoomed-in shot of Daniel Cross from the Austin cop’s body cam.

  “With good reason. Cross has degrees in chemical engineering, organic chemistry, and applied physics. A poster child for just the kind of technical expertise involved in what we’re facing here.”

  “You do know,” Jones started, “that the only job he’s ever held for longer than six months was as a candy mixer for Susie’s Candies during the holidays a few years back, when he was living in Odessa. He profiles as a disaffected loser who tried to find himself on social media, not a mad scientist. Only, this time, he found the helping hand he’d always wanted.”

  “If I had my way,” groused Captain Tepper from the darkened end of the table, sounding as if he were speaking mostly to himself, “I’d take a hammer and a blowtorch to the whole goddamn Internet until we were back in time maybe a generation or two.”

  “Given that’s not quite a realistic possibility,” Jones picked up, “FBI and Homeland already have three hundred agents dedicated to nothing other than finding Daniel Cross, along with Saflin and Zurif. Since they showed no aggression toward the patrolman who asked them to move, and complied immediately, we can assume they don’t know they’ve been identified. That gives us an advantage we intend to exploit to its absolute, goddamn fullest,” he finished, his eyes back on Caitlin.

  * * *

  “I notice you left out mention of the Comanche Indian reservation from your status report, Jones,” Caitlin said to him, off to the side of the room. The wide-screen television had gone dark.

  “You think I don’t know where the two of you were headed when your captain made the call?”

  “You got eyeballs on us?”

  “Electronically—you’re damn right, Ranger. This country might be under the gravest threat it has ever faced, so I like to know where my people are.”

  “Your people?”

  “Anyone worthy of their spit I can count on to save a few million lives,” Jones told her. “I imagine that includes you.”

  “Daniel Cross was at that reservation for a reason,” Caitlin told him, checking Cort Wesley’s expression for a reaction. “But I’ll be dam
ned if I can figure out a connection between what happened in Austin and drilling for oil, or something else, on Comanche tribal land.”

  Jones aimed his next remarks at Cort Wesley. “We’ve got security camera footage of a man resembling you driving a stolen front loader through a used car dealership showroom. Maybe there’s some connection there. By the way, the footage has mysteriously disappeared.”

  “There might be a connection to the bigger picture here,” Caitlin said, before Cort Wesley could speak at all. “We’re looking into it.”

  “We?”

  “You got bigger fish to fry than worrying about what we’re following up on our end.”

  “What were you doing in Houston earlier today, while your boyfriend was laying waste to car dealerships?”

  “Interviewing a person of interest.”

  “In what?”

  “I haven’t decided yet, Jones. What do you know about Cray Rawls?”

  “Absolutely nothing.”

  “Could you give your files on him a look and see if there’s anything worth noting?”

  “Still your old subtle self, aren’t you?” Jones asked her.

  “I’m just getting started, Jones. And while you’re at it, see if you can scrounge up the personnel records of a minerals brokerage company called Jackson Whole Mineral.”

  “Got a whiff of something, Ranger?”

  “Just playing a hunch,” Caitlin told him.

  Jones looked at her, then at Cort Wesley. “Let me tell you one place I don’t want you playing: the Comanche Indian reservation.”

  “You mind repeating that?” Caitlin asked him, her gaze narrowing. “I don’t think I heard you right.”

  “Yes, you did. The two of you are to steer clear of that land. And this is one time you’re going to toe the line, Ranger. See, I’m assembling a strike team to go in there like it’s the goddamn Little Bighorn, when the time is right.”

  “That’s your plan?”

  Jones smirked. “Live with it.”

  “You’ll never find what you’re looking for that way.”

  “The presence of ISIS in-country just took all other options off the table.”

  Caitlin stood before him, spine stiffening. “Still got one, Jones.”

  “No, we don’t. You’re sitting this one out so the big boys can play.”

  Caitlin shook her head, stopping just short of a smile. “You have someone write lines like that for you, or do you just make it up as you go along?”

  Jones jammed a phone toward his ear. “I need to take this, if you don’t mind,” he said.

  Caitlin watched Jones walk away, unsure whether a call had really come in or not, as Cort Wesley drew even with her.

  “So what’s next, Ranger?”

  Caitlin continued watching Jones, who seemed to have forgotten she was even in the room. “My great-great-granddad faced off against John D. Rockefeller on that rez, Cort Wesley.”

  “How’d that turn out?”

  “Not very good for Mr. Rockefeller, as I recall.” She finally turned toward him. “So what do you say we finish that drive north and see if we can make history repeat itself?”

  62

  BALCONES CANYONLANDS, TEXAS

  “Say it, Ranger.”

  Cort Wesley’s words seemed aimed straight ahead, at the windshield, as he threaded his truck along the final stretch to the Comanche reservation. The night was the color of pitch; whatever moon there might have been was hidden behind clouds carrying a storm. Lightning flashed at irregular intervals in the distance, shining a spotlight through the dark. Thunder had begun to rumble as well, too far off to worry about for now.

  “Say what?”

  “What you’re thinking.”

  “Same thing you are, I suspect: that whatever killed those people in that diner somehow involves the rez.”

  “Through Daniel Cross. As long as you’re not blaming yourself for that, too.”

  She ignored his comment. “Something about all this doesn’t wash, starting with what you noticed about the drilling equipment.”

  “You didn’t buy Rawls’s story to that effect?”

  “Not for a minute. The man’s a powder keg ready to explode, with a history that leaves him considerably short of a man-of-the-year nomination. He’s been in court almost constantly, dealing with environmental lawsuits over his coal and chemical plants. From what I’ve read, he could well be the biggest polluter in the country, responsible for poisoning the water, both above and below ground, through much of the Eastern seaboard.”

  “Lofty accomplishment.”

  “The man’s a sociopath. In other words, he doesn’t give a shit.”

  “And if he found something besides oil on that land?”

  “Doesn’t make for a connection with Daniel Cross, at least not yet.”

  Cort Wesley’s eyes narrowed to the point where the whites seemed to vanish. “Why don’t you let me have a go at him?”

  “You mean, the way you had a go at Bobby Roy? Fixing to drive another front loader through a building, Cort Wesley?”

  “Actually, Ranger, this time I was thinking about a tank.”

  Caitlin found no humor in his remark. “You know what happened is going to get back to Sam Bob Jackson.”

  “That was the point.”

  “So is the fact that there’s something plenty bigger going on here.”

  “That your way of warning me off paying Jackson a visit?”

  “Were you or weren’t you just in the same meeting as me, where we learned Daniel Cross is ready to give ISIS a weapon of mass destruction?”

  “Yes, ma’am. But it was Sam Bob Jackson who involved my son in all this.”

  “You are one stubborn son of a bitch, Cort Wesley.”

  He lapsed into silence, the moments dragging. “I realized something, when I was waiting to see the principal of Luke’s school the other day.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Red-tailed hawks supposedly returned to Texas with a flourish, after being endangered for a long stretch of time. But I haven’t seen a single one in years, and I don’t know anybody who has.”

  “What’s your point?”

  Cort Wesley looked over at her, across the wide seat. “That I’ve learned to only believe what I see, and right now I see Sam Bob Jackson and Cray Rawls party to something that’s going to get a whole lot of people killed, unless we find out what’s really happening on that Indian reservation.”

  He eased his truck off the road to where it would be concealed by brush while they checked out the caves overlooking the stretch of land White Eagle had claimed for himself. His lights flashed over a huge figure standing by a truck that looked almost as big as the front loader Cort Wesley had driven through Bobby Ray’s showroom.

  “Is that…?”

  “You bet, Cort Wesley.”

  “Guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

  * * *

  “I miss you mentioning that you called him?” Cort Wesley asked, as the two of them approached Guillermo Paz.

  “Hello, Colonel,” Caitlin greeted him, instead of answering Cort Wesley’s question.

  “There’s something wrong here, Ranger,” Paz told her, standing so still in the night air that he didn’t even seem to be breathing. “I can feel it rising off the land. Much blood has been spilled. More is about to be.”

  “As long as it’s not ours,” said Cort Wesley.

  63

  BALCONES CANYONLANDS, TEXAS

  Dylan slinked through the woods, looping around through the darkest reaches, where the bramble bushes grew so thick that the edges caught on his jeans and nearly ripped through his shirt.

  He had waited until he was sure Ela was asleep before easing her off of him. She had drunk the peyote-laced tea again, after Dylan had dumped his out. She had kissed him once with some of it still in her mouth, Dylan letting that small amount dribble down his throat. Enough to throw his mind for a loop, but nothing like the last time.

  S
till, the sex they’d had earlier could best be described as an amusement park ride, a roller coaster traveling upside down. It seemed as if air was swirling about, catching them in a harsh wind as they rotated positions in a prism of lights flashing everywhere, turning the single kerosene lantern into a spotlight.

  The effects of the peyote wore off when Ela was still squeezing him so tight he thought his ribs might crack. She seemed trapped in some kind of nightmare and kept muttering something in Comanche while clinging to him. Only when she quieted and her breathing returned to normal did Dylan slip out from beneath her and pull his jeans and boots back on.

  Even the small bit of peyote he’d ingested had been enough to steal his intentions from him while they made love, but those intentions returned full bore as he eased himself up out of the root cellar into the still air of the humid night. Something was going on here that felt all wrong. Dylan had forced himself to look the other way, until the matter of his Miraculous Medal showing up as evidence in a murder case, covered in blood, made his perspective do a one-eighty. He wanted to believe Ela had nothing to do with setting him up. Even more, he wanted to believe that nothing had happened, during those dark hours of lost time, that really did connect him to the killing.

  He had hoped his mind might clear a bit by now, but everything from that night remained shrouded in fog. If anything, his memory had turned to even more of a muddle. All Dylan could find in his grasp was a leftover nightmare of rushing through a field someplace, being chased by vast winged creatures that swooped down on their prey like osprey in the Gulf. Except they were human, at least humanoid, and the wings were attached to their backs with hammocks of tight, dried-out-looking flesh. They had claws for feet, teeth that protruded over their lower lips, and tawny flesh that looked like a combination of burlap and leather.

  Dylan half expected the creatures to swoop down on him between the trees as he made his way to White Eagle’s land. Ever since Ela had taken him to meet her grandfather, Dylan hadn’t been able to get out of his mind the sounds he was sure he had heard coming from inside that shack. He’d taken it for an old-fashioned outhouse at first, but its size and design were more consistent with a storage shed of some kind, built without windows and constructed of logs heavy and thick enough to withstand a hurricane.