Strong Darkness

by Jon Land

  * * *

  The train’s speed was down to probably twenty miles per hour and still slowing when she crested the ladder’s top and pulled herself onto the roof of the rearmost car, spotting the clown already atop the center car now. The slowing clip allowed him to twist sideways and fire her way, missing with two shots and then a third.

  Caitlin knew how hard hitting a moving target while moving yourself was. So she lurched to her feet and chanced sprinting straight for him before he could jump off. The clown emptied the revolver’s cylinder, none of his shots even coming close. Caitlin opened up with her SIG in response, each report sending a pang through her eardrums, bullet after bullet skewing off target as the clown used a speed loader, slammed the cylinder back closed, and started firing anew.

  She felt the heat of one and then another of the clown’s bullets hiss right past her and slowed enough to steady her aim before letting loose with her next salvo. Waiting until she reached the break between the third car and the second, the train down to fifteen miles per hour, maybe ten when she hit her trigger again as the clown’s gun locked empty and he sank a hand into the baggy pocket of his Western clown suit.

  Before he could find a fresh speed loader, impact literally picked him up and threw him over the edge of the center car down to the break between it and the lead car Caitlin and Sharon Yarlas had boarded. She backed up to give herself enough of a start to easily leap from the top of the trailing car to the center one, bending at the knees as her boots touched down.

  The train’s slowing pace made it easy to cover the car’s distance quickly and she reached the break with the lead car to find the clown’s body pinned between them, lying faceup with his eyes locked open. Caitlin saw that he’d sweated most of his makeup off and crouched to get a better look because what she’d glimpsed standing didn’t seem possible. But it was, as revealed by the clear view afforded her now.

  The clown was Chinese.

  38

  PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND

  Coach Estes stood in the doorway to Dylan’s room, flanked by a dozen of Dylan’s teammates on the Brown University football team, maybe more.

  “Thought we’d stop by to visit,” Estes said, just starting to grasp the busted-up conditions of the room.

  “We’re gonna need some help getting out of here, Coach,” Cort Wesley told him.

  “Just tell us how,” Estes offered, his gaze finally locking on the Chinese man dressed as a doctor Dylan had shot dead.

  * * *

  The hospital floor was a study of chaos, just catching up to the sound of gunshots and reports of a violent struggle in a patient’s room. A parade of doctors, nurses, and attendants rushing in all directions through darkness broken only by emergency lights shining down from their wall mounts. They seemed not even to regard the sight of Cort Wesley wheeling his son’s bed down the hallway, enclosed now by a dozen Brown football players, led by the school’s head coach, whose big frames rendered it invisible.

  Cort Wesley was hardly surprised when he saw three more Chinese coming straight at him from the head of the hall, backup for the man left dead in Dylan’s room.

  “Now!”

  With that, Coach Estes and the Brown football players darted sideways and Cort Wesley sent the hospital bed speeding straight for the three Chinese men who froze briefly at the ruffled mattress and bedcovers rolling their way.

  Dylan had exited the room on wobbly feet between three massive offensive lineman more accustomed to blowing holes for him through opponents’ defensive lines. The three Chinese had managed to free their guns. But the empty bed speeding toward them proved enough of a distraction to give Cort Wesley the instant he needed to steady the mini-submachine gun he’d drawn from under a sheet.

  He opened fire just as the Chinese gunmen found their triggers and took all three out with a succession of single shots sprayed side to side, fighting against barrel jerk and sway that blew heat up into his face with each report. The gun was a piece of shit really, but from this distance it was good enough to do the job. The hospital bed had rammed the wall, one wheel oddly still spinning, when what looked like the whole Providence Police Department burst through a stairwell door just beyond the dead bodies at the head of the hall, guns leveled and ready to fire.

  PART FOUR

  “You may withdraw every regular soldier … from the border of Texas … if you will give her but a single regiment of Texas Rangers.”

  —Sam Houston

  39

  PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND

  “Drop it! On the floor now!”

  Cort Wesley had already shed the mini-submachine gun and was halfway there before the cop’s order was even finished. He was placed under arrest and transported to the Providence Police Department, after the knife wound he’d suffered was dressed. Turned out to be little more than a scratch.

  “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” Detective Finneran said, shaking his head, his expression stretched into a grimace from what might have been a bad case of heartburn. “This kind of shit followed you here just like it followed our favorite Texas Ranger.”

  “Not exactly. Those shooters were coming to finish the job on my son. I’m not there at the time, you’d be investigating his death instead of theirs.”

  “But you were there and we’ve got four dead bodies to prove it.” Finneran paused, something changing in his expression. “Your son recognize any of them?”

  “He didn’t get a very good look,” Cort Wesley said, not bothering to inform the detective that Dylan had actually shot one of the gunmen himself. “But you can bet the two incidents are connected.”

  “Can I? Is that because you know something you’re not telling me?”

  “That girl’s the key, Detective,” Cort Wesley told him. “The one my son left the bar with.”

  “We were proceeding on the assumption that she may have set him up, that the attack was a robbery gone wrong.”

  “Seems pretty obvious you can rule that out now.”

  “Not to me, Mr. Torres.”

  “It’s Masters and I don’t think I’m reading you here.”

  “Well, I read you as the kind of man who attracts trouble. You say the men you killed came after your son when it could just as easily have been you.”

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “I’ve got four bodies to account for.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “It’s the best I can do.”

  “Then can I have my cell phone back to make a phone call?”

  “To the Ranger? I’ve already brought her up to speed on what happened.”

  “How gracious of you.”

  “Not really. I just wanted to make sure she was back in Texas. Looks like she got into a pretty big scrape of her own—with Chinese gunmen too.”

  “I need my phone,” Cort Wesley said, rising.

  40

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  “You wanna tell me what all this is about?” Cort Wesley asked Caitlin, after each had caught the other up on the events that had just transpired. “What we did to piss off the entire nation of China.”

  “We got a Ranger already up at Luke’s boarding school in Houston just as a precaution. You say they got you and Dylan separated?”

  “According to Detective Finneran, it’s routine in matters involving a shooting, multiple in this case.”

  “Dylan recognize any of the shooters from that beating he took?”

  She heard something change in Cort Wesley’s breathing on the other end of the line. “He killed one of them, Caitlin.”

  “Oh, shit…”

  “Shot him dead and likely saved my life.”

  “You talk to him?”

  “They got me back at the station and he’s still at the hospital. Got Finneran to station a cop at the door, though. In feudal times, Chinese assassins always worked in groups of four. You wanna tell me what kind of shit we stepped in this time?”

  “It all goes back to that gir
l Dylan told people he was helping out, Cort Wesley. We find her, we’ll have our answers.”

  “Easier said than done.”

  “My guess is we’ve got several people not telling us everything they know. But I have great faith in your powers of persuasion.”

  “Providence police won’t be happy at my continued involvement, Ranger.”

  “That concern you?”

  “Not even for a second,” Cort Wesley told her.

  Caitlin spotted a crime scene technician rushing up to Captain Tepper, holding something in his hand.

  “Call you right back, Cort Wesley.”

  41

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  Tepper had taken charge of the crime scene set up around the train that had been stalled on the track bed for hours now. Lights had to be set up to make sure no evidence from the gunfight was missed. The tall, freestanding lights were the kind construction crews used in night work, overly bright with a foglike sheen sprayed from their powerful bulbs. The team would probably be on scene much of the night, mostly inside the train collecting evidence in the form of fingerprints and shell casings, working to confirm Caitlin’s version of events with fancy laser measuring devices that could pinpoint from where exactly each bullet had been fired.

  Caitlin had worked with Sharon Yarlas to evacuate the stopped train in as calm a manner as possible. The museum grounds were a good three miles back and buses were ordered up to retrieve the riders who were promised a full refund and free ticket to return anytime they wanted.

  Caitlin reached Captain Tepper amid the spill of the floodlights, just as the crime scene tech was handing him an evidence pouch.

  “All the victims had a few of these in their pockets,” explained the man whose ID badge, dangling from his neck, identified him as Ramirez. “Mean anything to you?”

  “Pink flower petals,” Caitlin said, regarding the contents of the pouch.

  “I believe he was asking me, Ranger,” Tepper groused. “They look like pink flower petals,” he told Ramirez, handing him back the pouch.

  “Any idea why all four of the gunmen would be carrying them on their persons?”

  “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to tell us, son? Why don’t you get those over to Doc Whatley at the Medical Examiner’s Office and let him have a go at this?”

  “Will do, Captain. Oh, and one more thing. Each of the suspects had the same number of petals in their pockets. Exactly four.”

  42

  SHAVANO PARK, TEXAS

  Caitlin saw Guillermo Paz’s truck parked under the umbrella of elm tree branches. The moonlight splayed their shadows over the shiny paint and windows, making it look like the massive pickup was in the grasp of some multitentacled monster.

  She watched the driver’s-side window roll down at her approach. “How’d you know, Colonel?”

  “I had a vision, Ranger, a bad one. Full of darkness and fire and things that looked like clowns.”

  “Clowns,” Caitlin repeated, as if to reassure herself she’d heard him correctly.

  “Does that mean anything to you?”

  Caitlin regarded Guillermo Paz’s huge shape filling the entire driver’s seat almost to the car’s roof. She felt the warm dampness rising out of her skin again, touching the sweat-darkened portions of her shirt. Through all the hours spent at the crime scene around the train, she’d been unable to feel anything but hot. The lingering effects of the gunfight, along with worry over exactly where this was headed now that Dylan was clearly still in danger, had conspired to keep her body temperature in the red.

  “I went to a circus once as a boy,” Paz continued suddenly, “not to watch, but to pickpocket the wallets of men at the concession stands. I think I was fourteen at the time, right after I killed the man who murdered my priest. I wasn’t very good at it. People took too much notice of me. I guess I stood out even then. The clowns had whips they used on the animals, elephants mostly, to make them do what they were supposed to. The whole time with smiles painted onto their faces. I learned a lot that day, Ranger.”

  “What do you know about the Triad, Colonel?”

  “They are what passes for the Chinese mafia.”

  “Four Chinese tried to kill me today. They were disguised as clowns.”

  Paz showed no surprise, no reaction at all. “The outlaw too?”

  Caitlin nodded. “Up in Providence where that ambush had already put his son in the hospital. Only they weren’t dressed as clowns there.”

  She could see Paz squeezing his leather-wrapped steering wheel. “I got in my truck and it brought me here. I don’t remember the route. I think maybe my mother was doing the driving.”

  “I’m going inside, see if I can grab some sleep.”

  Paz nodded. His long, tangled hair looked shiny in the moonlight and his clothes smelled of a load of wash done with too much laundry detergent. A car passed by on the street, both of them tensing as its headlights pierced Paz’s eyes, which looked like black spheres wedged into his skull.

  “I told you about my vision, Ranger.”

  “You said you saw darkness coming.”

  “I was wrong,” Paz told her. “Because it’s already here.”

  Caitlin started to turn away, then thought of something and swung back. “Ever cover the Chinese in your studies of philosophy, Colonel?”

  “For sure, though without very much success at all.”

  “Does the number four have any special meaning?” she asked him, thinking of the flower pedals recovered from the pockets of each of the Chinese gunmen, of which there had been four as well.

  Another car drove past them on the street, its headlights reflecting off Paz’s liquidy black eyes and brightening the space between him and Caitlin.

  “The number four symbolizes death,” he told her.

  43

  PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND

  “When can I get out of here, Dad?”

  “How’s your head feel?”

  “I told the doctor it felt a lot better.”

  “You lied to him, in other words.”

  “I think this place is making it worse. Just back me up on this, okay?”

  * * *

  First thing that morning, Finneran had shown up with coffee in hand at the holding cell where Cort Wesley had spent the night.

  “Peace offering?” Cort Wesley asked, easing himself upright.

  “More like a going-away present. You’re a free man, cowboy. How is it guys like you and this Texas Ranger end up with friends in the highest of places?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking about Washington. Word got passed down from on high this morning that we needed to cut you loose. So get yourself on an airplane, cowboy. I never want to see your sorry ass in this state again.”

  But Finneran didn’t step aside when Cort Wesley approached the cell door to take his leave.

  “I pulled your file,” he said instead. “At least I tried to. Got plenty from the state of Texas but nothing out of the national databases, and that includes the FBI’s.”

  “You’re in my way, Detective.”

  “I know a rigged deck when I see one, cowboy. My lieutenant told me to back off. Apparently somebody caught wind of the fact that I was looking into your background and didn’t like it. But the way you operate, even your friends in Washington won’t be able to pull your ass out of the fires you keep setting.”

  “I’ll take that under advisement.”

  * * *

  Cort Wesley had taken a cab to the hospital, not about to ask Finneran to snare him a ride. Dylan was sitting up when he got there, his bed raised as upright as it would go. He was using a handheld control that also connected him to the nurse’s station to scan through the channels. Just like home. The blinds were open and the sun’s angle was starting to push fresh light through the window, illuminating a trail of wet footsteps from the bed to the bathroom.

  “Doctors want to hold you for further testing and ob
servation. I told them we were leaving today.”

  Dylan nodded. “My clothes are in the closet. I want to get dressed. I hate these hospital things they make you wear.”

  Dylan deactivated the mute button, then put it back on before even a word had been spoken on the screen. The sun framed his face with a halo, making his skin look the way it did when he came in after a run. His long black hair was wet at the ends, evidence of a recent washing that left him smelling vaguely of antiseptic hospital soap. It hung in slow-drying tangles past his shoulders. Cort Wesley watched the boy twirl some stray strands that had collected near his cheek around his finger, release them, and then twirl them all over again.

  “We were talking about that girl Kai before the shooting started yesterday.”

  Dylan switched the television’s sound back on and turned it up as far as it would go.

  Cort Wesley sat down at the foot of his son’s bed. “Your mom never told me much about you mostly because I didn’t ask. But what I remember most of what she did tell me was that you were fond of picking up strays. Started with squirrels and progressed all the way to dogs and cats. Like you could never stand to see anything left on its own.”

  Dylan rolled his eyes. “So?”

  “That proclivity seems to have grown up with you. I think what attracted you to this girl was that she was a stray. You recognized her from that video and thought maybe you could save her just like you saved all those animals back before when you were a little kid. But this time you got a little more than you bargained for and I’d like to hear what that was exactly.”

  “She said she had family back in China and was turning tricks to raise the money she needed to bring them over.”

  “And you believed that?”

  Dylan shrugged. “Not for a minute, but I didn’t think it was any of my business. It was just kind of cool, recognizing her from that video in a bar. She didn’t even bother denying it, kind of played along like she was glad I knew who she was—well, what she did anyway.”