Strong Rain Falling: A Caitlin Strong Novel (Caitlin Strong Novels)

by Land, Jon

  Cort Wesley peppered him with a barrage of pellets from both rifles, his shots all aimed at the man’s face. He watched the man jerk both his hands up to shield his already hurt eyes, eliminating, for the moment anyway, the threat posed by his gun.

  Cort Wesley was just about to leap back over the counter, when he caught more shapes pushing their way inward against the flow of panicked park-goers fleeing the area. He dropped down again, shielding Luke with his own frame just as fresh gunfire started—four guns, his hearing told him, all nine-millimeter pistols. Then a fifth was added to the mix, evidence of the original shooter regaining enough of his senses to rejoin the attack that blistered his ears and sent splinters and shards of wood spewing into the air.

  “Dad!” Luke wailed again.

  And Cort Wesley felt the tug of helplessness that was no stranger to anyone who knows combat. But that tug had an entirely different feel when something much more was at stake than just himself or his mission. He had to protect his son. Priority One.

  Which meant taking out the five gunmen with his own Glock stowed back in his truck, locked up inside in compliance with park rules.

  Cort Wesley’s battle-tested mind churned through everything it had recorded near the shooting gallery, searching for some weapon, some equalizer. Cooking grease, hot coffee, the oil used to make the popcorn … What about turning the big Clydesdale horses giving wagon rides into a stampede?

  “Stay here, son!” Cort Wesley ordered, no idea what he was going to do for sure, once exposed beyond the shooting gallery.

  “Dad!”

  “Do what I say!”

  Cort Wesley realized he was squeezing the boy’s arm hard enough to make him wince, stripping his hand free just as he heard the loud grating sound of an engine racing in the red, a vehicle risking its transmission to surge right into the middle of the gunfight. There was a screech of tires, followed by the sickening thud of steel meeting flesh and bone. Cort Wesley peeked over the counter to see Guillermo Paz barreling toward the shooting gallery in a massive, extended-cab pickup truck.

  10

  SAN ANTONIO

  Paz spun the truck into a whiplash turn that left its passenger side blocking the front of the shooting gallery, providing additional cover for Cort Wesley and Luke. Paz was firing out his open window with an M16 even then, still firing when he threw the truck’s door open and lunged out. In the same motion, he managed to hurl a second assault rifle up and over his truck, dropping it straight into Cort Wesley’s waiting hands. At near seven feet tall and all of three hundred pounds, Paz might have been the biggest man Cort Wesley had ever seen, but in moments like this he moved like a gazelle. His motions flowed in an eerie rhythm, as if thought and action had merged into one.

  His huge shoulders, encased in an army green canvas shirt, vibrated as he continued to fire, M16 rotating in the neat arc the shooters had formed. His bullets trailed them in neat three-shot bursts, Cort Wesley adding his own fire to the mix in the next instant. He used the counter as a springboard to reach the bed of Paz’s truck, hitting the trigger the moment his feet touched down.

  Paz’s fire was trained to the right at that point so Cort Wesley worked his to the left. He recorded the shape of the man Paz had plowed over bent and broken in the middle of the midway. Paz had already left a second gunman splayed atop a picnic table and Cort Wesley’s fire spun a third into the abandoned popcorn cart, spilling it over to the pavement. They opened up together in the next instant, their twin streams effectively crisscrossing to hold the final two gunmen at bay behind concrete-encased trash receptacles.

  “Let’s go, outlaw!”

  No time to reflect or reconnoiter, not even any to breathe, before Paz was behind the wheel of the big truck again, gunning the engine. The man seemed to live in an entirely different plane of existence, no wasted thought, motion, or action whatsoever.

  “Luke!” Cort Wesley called.

  To his credit, the boy popped up immediately, climbing atop the counter to accept his father’s helping hand into the big truck’s cab.

  “Go!” Cort Wesley yelled to Paz, slamming a hand down on the truck’s roof to signal him on.

  And Paz tore out of Six Flags Fiesta just as he’d torn into it, Cort Wesley waiting until he was sure no more gunmen were about before climbing into the truck’s rear seat.

  * * *

  “The Ranger sent me, outlaw,” Paz said, his massive hands swallowing the wheel as he made straight for La Cantera Parkway and the I-10 beyond it.

  And then it all clicked into place. “Dylan…”

  “He’s fine, the Ranger too. Kind of under arrest, though.”

  “Kind of?”

  “There were casualties up in Province as well.”

  “Providence,” Luke corrected from the passenger seat, eyeing Paz as if he were an animal in a zoo with no bars separating them. “And I recognize you. You … you were there the day my mom was killed.”

  “He saved our lives in Mexico not long afterward, Luke,” Cort Wesley reminded, the rationale sounding feeble even to him.

  Paz tilted his gaze toward the boy, as he gave the truck more gas. “And the man you see before you now was reborn that day. I can’t change what I’ve done, only what I can do from that moment forward.” With that, Paz extended his cell phone back to Cort Wesley. “The Ranger wants you to call her. In Providence. There were five gunmen up there too.”

  “Coordinated attacks, then.”

  Cort Wesley could see Paz’s saucer-like eyes peering into the rearview mirror. “Nothing new, outlaw.”

  PART TWO

  A genuine Texas Ranger will endure cold, hunger and fatigue, almost without a murmur, and will stand by a friend and comrade in the hour of danger and divide anything he has got, from a blanket to his last crumb of tobacco.

  Andrew Jackson Sowell, Rangers and Pioneers of Texas

  11

  QUINTANA ROO, MEXICO

  Ana Callas Guajardo led the two men, her most trusted captains, around the lee of her sprawling home toward the stables that were her pride and joy. “I’m disappointed in your failure, gravely disappointed, but I’m not angry. Anger accomplishes nothing. Bob Parsons, the great CEO who founded Go Daddy, says that when you get knocked down, the sooner you get up and get back to business, the sooner your failure can be rectified. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “We took elaborate precautions,” said Juan Aviles Uribe defensively. A former major in the Mexican federal police force, Uribe had lost an eye in a shoot-out; the menacing black patch he now wore made the nests of scar tissue that dotted his cheeks stand out all the more. “There’s nothing linking the men we used back to us.”

  “That’s not what I asked you, Major. I asked if you understood that now we must find a way to turn your failure into success.”

  “We will need more men, jefa,” Uribe said, missing the point.

  “Because your preparation and planning fell short. You underestimated the opposition in spite of my warnings. Bob Parsons also says that most mistakes stem from subjective sources, limited information, and inaccurate assumptions.”

  “I am just a soldier,” snapped Colonel Ramon Reyes Vasquez in a voice that sounded more like a slurred growl. “I don’t understand all this.”

  Vasquez wasn’t tall but he was almost absurdly broad, with a chest that looked like a rack concealed beneath his sweat-soaked shirt. It was said that Vasquez kept a piece of every man or woman he’d ever killed. A personal collection he showcased only for himself. Some dared suggest he was not a man at all, but a chupacabra, a mythical Mexican vampire-like beast best known for leaving its victims, both animal and human, drained of blood. But he walked with a slight limp from shrapnel still lodged in his hip from one bomb blast and had lost a good measure of his hearing to another, which had felled a dozen men while leaving him as the lone survivor.

  Guajardo’s gaze bore into him. “All you need to understand at this point is that the Torres boys are still alive and that
is the failure that must be rectified.”

  The two men looked suddenly uncomfortable in her presence, unaccustomed to taking orders from or being criticized by a woman. But Ana Callas Guajardo was no ordinary woman. Far from it. She occupied a very rare place in Mexican culture as a political power broker and kingmaker whose party had returned to power in the most recent election, in large part thanks to the millions she had plunged into her presidential candidate’s campaign. His victory had increased her power many times over, making her someone to be feared and respected at the same time, but mostly feared. The respect came from her status as Mexico’s wealthiest woman, having built upon her father’s vast success. The fear stemmed from the ruthless manner with which she pursued her fortune. Business was a war, every deal a battle where prisoners were left dead on the battlefield. Even the cartels grudgingly accepted the reasonable peace over which she now presided because it served their business better as well.

  The cartel leaders had taken Ana Guajardo lightly at first, until they quickly discerned how little her appearance suited her or the position she occupied. Her flawless skin looked perpetually and naturally tan. Her eyes were steady, calm, and reassuring, belying the true intentions and ambitions of a woman who crushed her enemies and used her supporters for the sole purpose of increasing her own hold on power. She had been pictured on the front pages of Mexican newspapers and websites at gala events and openings, equally at home there as she was in dark, dingy buildings where her less savory associates were headquartered.

  “I was clear in my warning not to attack the Torres boys in the presence of their father or this Texas Ranger,” Vasquez groused.

  “But that doesn’t explain the failure on the fairgrounds, does it? The roots of that failure lie in yet more poor preparation on your part.”

  “We could not anticipate the appearance of Angel de la Guarda, jefa.”

  “And what if you had? Would you have needed a hundred men, a thousand?” Guajardo shook her head, her impatience showing in a flush of red through her features. “This Guardian Angel, as you call him, is just a man who bleeds like any other.”

  “Guillermo Paz may be a man,” Uribe echoed, “but he doesn’t bleed like any other. He earned his nickname from first protecting Mexican peasants from the local cartel lords and soldiers and then exacting his own revenge upon them.”

  “So he’s a better man than you.”

  Uribe stammered over a response, Vasquez picking up for him. “The cartels put a price on his head that no one has dared try to collect.”

  “A truly dangerous man, jefa,” Uribe said, finding his voice.

  “I know,” she told them both. “Guillermo Paz once worked for me.”

  12

  QUINTANA ROO, MEXICO

  “It was through Chavez,” Guajardo elaborated, “when we were doing some business down there and Paz was part of his secret police. We needed a village cleared so we could exploit the mineral rights. Chavez ended up keeping them all for himself.”

  “I’m surprised he avoided assassination, jefa.”

  “He had Paz.”

  Guajardo stiffened as their stroll brought her stables and riding pen into view. Not far away, a withered shape in a wheelchair baked in the sunlight under the careful watch of a white-garbed male attendant. Her two captains made it a point to ignore Ana’s wheelchair-bound father, not even acknowledging his presence as the attendant leaned over to check his pulse. Ana Guajardo’s father had built this entire sprawling estate in Quintana Roo around those stables, constructing the riding pen in a way that allowed view of the horses from all sides of the hacienda but the rear. The four-story, ten-thousand-square-foot home was finished in an elegant cream stucco beneath a clay-colored roof with an overhang supported by majestic pillars modeled after renderings of ancient Aztec temples.

  Concealed within this beauty, though, was the highest level of concrete and steel construction, capable of withstanding a Category Five hurricane. All the windows were made of bulletproof glass with fitted hurricane shutters for extra protection. The main rooms were outfitted with forty-five-foot-long, low-arching boveda brick ceilings, and each of the six bathrooms was finished with handmade Mexican tiles. The seven bedrooms all opened onto large balconies; the main, seven-hundred-square-foot veranda off the second floor overlooked a tennis court Ana Guajardo never used and a swimming pool she had not once swam in. Nor had she ever visited one of the beaches, among Mexico’s most beautiful, located just five miles away, because there was always too much else to do.

  “I knew of Paz’s connection to the Ranger, not the cowboy,” Uribe defended. “And I didn’t know, no one knew, he was still in Texas.”

  Guajardo stopped within clear view of her horses at play in the field. “But we know now, don’t we?” She took a quick glance toward her father, then returned her attention to Uribe and Vasquez.

  “We won’t fail next time, jefa.”

  “You’re right, because there’s not going to be a next time,” Guajardo said suddenly. “The Torres boys are not your problem any longer—they are mine. That will free you to focus on the bigger picture.”

  “What picture is that, jefa?”

  “Our coming attack against the Estados Unidos.”

  Guajardo’s captains looked at each other, unsure they’d heard her correctly.

  “Jefa?” Vasquez raised.

  “Did you say attack the United States?” followed Uribe immediately.

  “I need fifteen hundred pilots,” she told them both, “perhaps as many as two thousand.”

  “Airplane pilots?” Uribe posed in disbelief.

  Guajardo remained utterly calm, her gaze fixed on her frolicking horses as she replied.

  “They are not thoroughbreds, you know,” she said from the edge of the pen they’d just reached. “They are paso fino, horses raised for the mountainous regions of South America. The first two were gifts from my father’s associate Juan Arrango in Colombia. I was a teenage girl when a stable boy, a peasant, saddled his first mare wrongly. My father made me watch as he took a hatchet and chopped the boy’s hand off for punishment while two workmen held him down.”

  Vasquez and Uribe grinned in approval. Both had heard the story before. The legend was well-known, one of the many tales that had helped foster the Guajardo family’s well-earned mystique and reputation for ruthlessness. Nothing inspired fear more than a myth like that.

  “These horses remind me of what I came from,” Guajardo continued. “I look out at my paso fino, and I remember my roots as well as those who sought to destroy my family. That is why I brought those children to die at my own hand in Willow Creek. That is why the Torres boys should be dead now too. Because only when the past is laid to rest can the future truly rise. And six days from now, mis compadres, that future begins with our attack. Come, there’s something else you need to see.”

  She led them past the horse pen into the lavish, rolling fields abundant with exotic flowering trees and plantings native to the Yucatán and others, which Guajardo had paid exorbitantly to have transplanted and then maintained. There were Chak Kuyché, also known as Shaving Brush Trees, colored a deep wine-red color, and perfumed flowers in white and magenta. Mixed in among these were Royal Poinciana and orchid trees that seemed in perpetual bloom.

  Guajardo’s flowering fields ended at a drop-off, beyond which a stretch of land had been cleared for several acres, surrounded on three sides by native brush that grew wild and untamed. Vasquez and Uribe saw a foreman wearing a wide-brimmed hat supervising the work of flattening and leveling the land with a combination of heavy rollers and payloaders. He noticed Guajardo and tipped his hat, as she led her two most trusted officers forward.

  “The pilots needed for the attack will be trained right here,” she said, just loud enough to be heard.

  Vasquez and Uribe exchanged a befuddled glance, having no idea how that could be possible in such a limited space, but not about to challenge Guajardo on the point. Just as they never challenge
d the story of her father hacking off a boy’s hand for mis-saddling a horse.

  “The work goes well, Cesar?” Guajardo asked when they reached the foreman.

  “Sí, señora, very well.”

  He tipped his hat reverently to her again and that’s when Vasquez and Uribe noticed his other arm dangling useless by his side, ending in a stump where his hand had once been.

  “Six days,” Ana Guajardo told them. “In six days, our war begins.”

  13

  SAN ANTONIO

  “Where’s it stop, Ranger?” Captain D. W. Tepper asked Caitlin from across his desk, showing his disgust in the scowl that seemed to deepen the furrows carved into his leathery face.

  Those furrows looked more like shadows nesting in his skin, courtesy of a four-bulb overhead light fixture that currently had only one screwed in. The result was to cast only the area before his desk in any decent light, Caitlin feeling it spraying down over her while Tepper himself moved in and out of the spill with each rock of his chair forward.

  “There was no other choice I could see, Captain.”

  “You talking about killing four men in Providence or calling in Paz to kill three down here? You know, San Antonio does have a police department that, last time I checked, had a working phone number.”

  “And how do you think ordinary cops would have fared in Six Flags last night?”

  “Guess we’ll never know.”

  “I do,” Caitlin said, half under her breath.

  “They’ve got guns too, Ranger.”

  “But scoring one hit per magazine doesn’t cut it against what Cort Wesley was up against.”

  * * *

  Earlier that day, Cort Wesley and Luke had been waiting when Caitlin and Dylan emerged from the jetway at San Antonio International Airport.

  “You came yourself?” Caitlin said, after they hugged tightly.

  “I didn’t trust the job to anyone else and I wasn’t about to leave Luke alone.”