Strong Cold Dead

by Jon Land

  Al-Aziz sat alone on one side of the shaded picnic table, amid the smells of grilled hamburgers, falafel, and various Mexican-style offerings. Saflin, Zurif, and Daniel Cross sat across from him, with a clear view of the botanical garden and the section of the park devoted to children’s activities, which today had been usurped by a pair of bounce houses, where lines had begun to form. The carnival was just starting to fill up, locals streaming in to loiter away a few hours during spring break for Texas schools. A local radio station was doing a live remote, and both the Nancy Collins Fisher and Muse Family Performance pavilions offered live performances featuring clowns, mimes, and jugglers.

  Cross looked around at the rapidly growing crowd of happy people who had no clue about the fate that ultimately awaited them. Thanks to him.

  “I just want to see the world burn,” Cross said, to no one in particular. “I want to be the one lighting the match.”

  Cross glanced back at al-Aziz, who was lowering a cell phone from his ear, grinning anew above his trimmed beard. “This place will be our second target. Houston will be the first.”

  “Houston?” Cross asked, feeling something quiver in his stomach.

  “Inshallah,” al-Aziz said, bowing his head slightly.

  88

  BALCONES CANYONLANDS, TEXAS

  Dylan recognized the Lost Boys immediately, the same ones who’d tied him to a tree and left him for dead the night before. He counted seven of them. Their blood was everywhere, whether from bullet or knife wounds, he couldn’t be sure.

  He tried to make sense of what he was seeing, to put everything together.

  Our greatest secret …

  That greatest secret of the Comanche had been stockpiled down here atop trays sealed in airtight plastic wrapping. Hundreds of pounds of the mold, fungus, or whatever it was, divided into six stacks, squeezed tightly against the walls. Hidden in this secret chamber for who knew how long to do who knew what. Dylan whipped the phone out of his pocket to call his father and started to back out of the chamber.

  He turned to find Ela Nocona standing before him, and she collapsed in his arms.

  Dylan crumpled under her weight, cushioning Ela the whole way.

  “Take it easy,” he tried to sooth her.

  He was cradling her waist and her head at the same time, the hand nearer her torso feeling warm, wet, and sticky.

  With blood.

  “They thought I was dead,” she managed to say, after swallowing hard.

  “Who?”

  She shook her head, eyes gaping in fear at the rekindled memory. “I don’t know. They spoke…”

  “What?”

  Ela swallowed hard again. “Arabic, I think. I’m sorry…”

  “Sh-h-h.”

  “For what I did.”

  “You didn’t do anything.”

  “I set you up. Left your medal out near the body of that construction worker, so you’d get hauled in. Get the blame. Turning you into a patsy, following my grandfather’s plan.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does, because I stopped it. I stopped Houston, wouldn’t let them go through with it, any more than I could let them hurt you.”

  Dylan looked into Ela’s eyes, grasped her terror.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be this way,” she said.

  “Sh-h-h,” Dylan soothed her again. “I already texted my dad. He’s coming. He’ll know what to do.”

  She shook her head. “It’s too late. They’ve got them—the backpacks I took from my cousins. Wired and ready to blow. To make our mark, our point.” Ela tried to smile, but failed. “Be badasses.”

  Dylan looked around the chamber again at those hundreds of pounds of mold, fungus, or whatever—but some must be missing now. Loaded into the backpacks Ela had just mentioned, now in the killers’ possession.

  Our greatest secret …

  “You have to go after them,” Ela said, her voice strong in that moment, her grip digging into his arm.

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Another swallow. “I’ll be okay.”

  “For sure.”

  Her eyes faded, then came back to life. “My pocket. It’s there.”

  Dylan felt about her jeans, which were darkened by blood, until he found a folded piece of paper, similarly stained around the edges.

  “What is this?” he asked, unfolding it to find a schematic of some kind, with a bunch of red Xs at what looked like equidistant points.

  “Houston. Our plan. The one I stopped.”

  “What plan?”

  Her eyes faded again, fluttered, closed.

  “Ela, what plan?”

  She was trying to hold her eyes open, leaving Dylan to picture a bunch of killers who spoke Arabic carrying backpacks filled with some weapon the Comanche had been safeguarding for generations.

  “What do the Xs mean?” he asked, regarding the schematic again.

  Ela’s breathing came in fits and starts, but her eyes suddenly sprang to life. “Targets,” was all she said, before her eyes closed again.

  Dylan eased her head into his lap, cradling it with one hand while the other hand felt for his cheap flip phone to text his dad again.

  PART NINE

  A lot of the old-time Rangers were not happy when they had to start reading Miranda warnings to suspects. They thought the world had ended. They couldn’t figure out why on earth you would spend months investigating a case and hunting down a suspect, and then once you’ve got him, the first thing you have to say is “You have the right not to talk to me.”

  —Ranger Doyle Holdridge, in Tracking the Texas Rangers: The Twentieth Century, edited by Bruce A. Glasrud and Harold J. Weiss, Jr. (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2013)

  89

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  “Footage off a traffic camera shows all three of our targets entering Klyde Warren Park in Dallas less than an hour ago,” Tepper explained to Caitlin and Jones, after Cray Rawls had been escorted from the room.

  “They wouldn’t be there unless it was to meet someone,” said Caitlin.

  Jones started for the door. “I’m going to move every drone we’ve got up to the area over that park, see if we can figure out who exactly that is.”

  “How many drones we talking about exactly?” Caitlin asked him.

  “Hopefully enough to avert an ISIS attack on the homeland, Ranger,” Jones told her. “Is that good enough for you?”

  Jones left the room to work the retasking and make the arrangements to get the team to Dallas. In the meantime, if Zurif, Saflin, and Daniel Cross left Klyde Warren Park before they arrived, the drones would pick them up again immediately.

  “I ever tell you I once played the rodeo circuit?” Captain Tepper asked Caitlin, the two of them now alone in the office, which still held the smell of Cray Rawls’s cologne.

  “No, D.W., definitely not.”

  “Well, I did. Your dad and granddad got a real hoot out of it, especially old Earl. Once, when I was riding some country festival, he shot his gun into the air just as they were lifting the gate. Turned that bucking bronco into a goddamn stegosaurus, I swear, snorting so hard I could feel his breath. Anyway, I lasted seven point three seconds. Made it my last ride ever. I mention that ’cause that’s what all this resembles. Like we’re on the back of a bucking bronc, hanging on for dear life.”

  “But it’s happened before, hasn’t it? Back when Jack Strong went up against John D. Rockefeller.”

  “You comparing Standard Oil to ISIS, Ranger?” Tepper asked, a note of sarcasm clear in his voice.

  “How was it Standard Oil never made inroads in Texas until years later, D.W.? Something happened back then, on the same Indian reservation we’re dealing with now, that scared off one of the most powerful men in American history.”

  Tepper’s eyes widened. “Old Earl never told you that part of the story?”

  “Not that I recall. Then again, he often left out the real bloody parts from his bedtime tales.”r />
  “Well, Ranger, that certainly qualifies here…”

  90

  BALCONES CANYONLANDS, TEXAS; 1874

  “What’d you do to those men?” Jack Strong asked Isa-tai.

  “You mean the dead ones in the hotel?”

  “I never said nothing about dead men in a hotel.”

  “Word travels fast, Ranger.”

  “So does the smell of shit, Chief.”

  “I’ve told you, I’m not our chief.”

  “No, but you’re running the show all the same, sure as I’m standing here and sure as you having something to do with some of Rockefeller’s men getting torn apart.”

  “Nature takes care of its own.”

  “You said that before, Chief.”

  “Because it’s true. Then, now, forever.”

  “I believe you’ve told me that, too. So let me tell you something. Whatever you’re up to may have chased off other men, but this Rockefeller ain’t one of them. He won’t stop until he’s staked his full claim to the oil on this land, and he’ll call up as many men as he needs to do the job.”

  “Let him.”

  The same bevy of young braves enclosed Isa-tai, their faces painted up to make them look like crisscrossing checkerboards. Steeldust Jack knew a war party when he saw one, knew that he was looking at an all-out clash between the Comanche and the forces of John D. Rockefeller, which would put to shame the ongoing battles being fought by the Frontier Battalion today.

  “How many guns you got on hand?” he asked the young leader, whose coppery skin looked shiny in the sunlight.

  “We won’t need guns.”

  “Don’t talk that nature dung to me again, son. Wasn’t nature that killed those men in the hotel. I don’t know what it was, but I know it walked on two legs and came from this here reservation.”

  Isa-tai backed off, the added distance between them slight but seeming much greater. “Get off our land, Ranger. When our enemies come, the land will deal with them.”

  * * *

  Two days later, Steeldust Jack was watching from a nearby cattle pen, leaning up against one of the fence posts, when the train carrying Rockefeller’s reinforcements arrived. The Houston and Texas Central had resumed construction on its lines after the Civil War, in 1867. The company built steadily northward, reaching Corsicana in 1871, Dallas in 1872, and the Red River in 1873. At the same time, the company began work on a spur that reached Austin on Christmas Day in 1871, creating boom times for the fledgling state capital.

  The gunmen who emerged from that train seemed to form an endless wave, some still dressed in their Confederate uniforms, as if to remind passersby of their lineage and loyalty. They were met by Curly Bill Brocius, along with Rockefeller’s personal bodyguards, culled from Pinkerton’s agency of cutthroats and killers. Steeldust Jack wondered whether the country recognized this offshoot of violence spawned by the war’s aftermath—how a side effect of all that blood, bitterness, and fighting had been to create a dark underbelly of law-averse gunfighters who were used to killing with impunity and not needing to justify their actions, beyond the uniforms that they’d worn. Maybe that’s why a whole bunch still wore those uniforms, as if it gave them license to pursue the same violent predilections that had been spawned by their service and spurred further by the alienation that followed the defeat of the South.

  He spotted Rockefeller standing a ways back in the company of more of his Pinkerton’s men, checking a pocket watch he’d pulled from his vest. Steeldust Jack approached right down the center of the day’s light, making no effort to appear either threatening or menacing.

  “What can I do for you, Ranger?” Rockefeller asked, under the protective cover of his hired gunmen, as soon as he spotted Steeldust Jack.

  “I was hoping you could hold off your men for a while, sir. Give me time to see if we can bring all this to a peaceful conclusion.”

  “Broker a deal, in other words. What do you have in mind, given that time is of the essence?”

  “I don’t have much right now, but I’m working up a couple of things,” Jack Strong lied, hoping to buy whatever time he could.

  “You’ll have to be more specific than that.”

  “Mr. Rockefeller, I’m just trying to avoid any more bloodshed here.”

  “I appreciate your concern, Ranger, given that the only blood spilled so far belongs to men in my employ.”

  “Maybe you’re forgetting those Indian boys who got dragged to death.”

  Rockefeller’s features tightened, his head canting slightly to the side. “I hope you’re not suggesting, again, that was the work of anyone working for me. If you have any evidence or witnesses to the contrary, then let’s hear it.”

  Steeldust Jack regarded the surly smirks cast by the Pinkerton’s men. “That reservation has plenty of women and children living on it, sir.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Truly.”

  The Ranger looked back toward the widening mass of gunmen still spilling off the just-arrived train. “I’m going back to that reservation to have one more go at this, peacefully.”

  “I’ll give you the day, Ranger. We move come tomorrow.”

  * * *

  But Jack Strong found the Comanche reservation abandoned when he got there, not a soul in sight. Riding through that land felt like exploring a graveyard. There were no signs of life at all, including livestock. He’d ridden through ghost towns before, and had been witness to the aftermath of massacres at the hands of marauding Indians or Mexican bandits, where the bodies had been buried and the survivors had fled. This felt like neither of those. There was no residue, sense, or smell of death. No hopelessness to be found in tumbleweeds blowing about the abandoned settlement of buildings. The Comanche reservation was just … well …

  Empty. Like the residents had picked up and left. On closer inspection, he saw that even their meager belongings were gone, right down to the wooden utensils and iron pots with which they cooked and ate, the animal hides they used for blankets.

  Steeldust Jack inspected the grounds thoroughly, chewing tobacco even though he hated the taste of it and the feeling against his lips, because it kept his mind off whatever had happened here. He wasn’t sure whether to suspect foul play, wasn’t sure whether to expect anything other than the involvement, somehow, of none other than John D. Rockefeller, who’d lied right to his face, back at the train station, about giving him the rest of the day to continue working toward a peaceful solution.

  Just after noon, Jack Strong saw the man himself approaching, riding high in his saddle at the front of an endless procession of wagons bearing his workmen, equipment, and army of hired guns. Steeldust Jack had just become aware of a smell caking the air like a fine mist, an odor that was sweet and acrid at the same time. Overpowering in some of the spots he rode through, barely noticeable in others. He stopped paying the scent any heed at all as he approached Rockefeller.

  “Why, howdy there, Ranger,” Rockefeller greeted him, doing his best impersonation of a Texas drawl.

  “What happened here, Mr. Rockefeller?”

  “Why are you asking me?”

  “Because I believe you had something to do with this.”

  “With what?”

  “Look around. Tell me what you see.”

  John D. Rockefeller obliged, in melodramatic fashion. “Nothing at all, my good man.”

  Steeldust Jack cast his gaze beyond Rockefeller. For as far as he could see, the path was lined with wagons and with men, wielding both Winchesters and shotguns, guarding those wagons. “You and your gunmen have something to do with that?”

  Rockefeller almost laughed. “You give me too much credit, Ranger.”

  “The Comanche turned tail and fled. You expect me to believe they did that on their own?”

  “I expect you to believe they must’ve smartened up. I expect you to believe I had nothing to do with their timely departure, because I didn’t. I’m sure you told them what was coming.”

  Jack Strong l
et his gaze drift beyond Rockefeller to all his hired guns, a number of which were gathering in a tight mass, weapons showcased in a show of intimidation.

  “And now it’s here,” he said.

  “Like I said, Ranger, they must’ve smartened up. This was inevitable, anyway; both of us know that. If the Comanche refused to stand down and adhere to both Governor Coke and the U.S. Congress’s orders, they would’ve been forcibly removed.”

  “From their own land, you mean.”

  John D. Rockefeller gazed around at the emptiness, the desolation of the abandoned Comanche reservation. Nothing in the air but the sweet and sour smell.

  “Smell that, Ranger? It’s the smell of oil bubbling to the surface. So much of it I’ll use the proceeds to buy this whole goddamn state of yours.”

  “Texas ain’t for sale, Mr. Rockefeller, and neither are the Texas Rangers.”

  “Don’t worry.” Rockefeller grinned. “I wasn’t interested in buying you anyway.”

  * * *

  Steeldust Jack took a seat atop the nearest hillside to watch the procession fan out through the reservation. The activity was centering around a stretch of grasslands where Rockefeller’s surveyors and engineers must have pinpointed the biggest of the potential oil strikes. Steeldust Jack watched them work, while sipping water from his canteen and eating the dried beef he’d smoked himself. Ate it all and drank, while trying to determine his next move, only to conclude he didn’t have one.

  It took much of the rest of the day for Rockefeller’s workers to empty the wagons of the digging and drilling equipment they were hauling. A whole bunch of men were already taking to the ground with shovels while Rockefeller’s brigade of ex–Civil War gunmen watched over them protectively. Their eyes continued to scan the nearby woods, lands, hillsides, and ridgelines as if expecting to see an attack coming at any moment. But none followed, and by the time light began to bleed out of the day, Jack Strong had pretty much figured none would be.