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

by Land, Jon

  The next member of the team was an utter stranger, given that he had only recently applied for entry into the Rangers. Manuel Trazazas Gonzaullas was the one name added by Adjutant General Harley, who requested he be reassigned from his current position as a special agent for the U.S. Treasury Department. Gonzaullas had been born in Cádiz, Spain, of naturalized American citizens visiting that country at the time of his birth. He’d actually spent several years in the Mexican army prior to going to work for Treasury and, as such, was well acquainted with the tactics and thinking William Ray’s team would be facing.

  The final name on his list had drawn a raised eyebrow and smirk from James Harley. “Great choice, ’cept he’s been dead for a year.”

  William Ray scribbled an address on a piece of Harley’s official stationery and handed it to him. “Then it’ll be his ghost who gets the telegram.”

  Two days later, in response to that telegram, famed Ranger captain Bill McDonald became the last of the group to arrive, even though his death from pneumonia had been widely reported nearly a year before.

  “Hell of a thing, reading your own obituary,” he told William Ray Strong and his son, Earl, when they picked McDonald up at the train station.

  “Something that could have been corrected, sir,” Earl noted, stopping just short of asking the Ranger legend for his autograph.

  “Thought about that for two seconds maybe,” McDonald relayed wryly, flashing a wink. “Then I figured I could use the privacy for a change.” A laugh dissolved into a retching cough that left him red-faced and heaving for air. “Not that the damn pneumonia won’t get me eventually, ’less of course something else does first.”

  “Not on my watch,” William Ray assured him.

  As a legendary Ranger captain, McDonald had taken part in a number of celebrated cases, including the Fitzsimmons-Maher prize fight, the Wichita Falls bank robbery, the Reese-Townsend feud, and the Brownsville Raid of 1906. A man, it was said, “who would charge hell with a bucket of water.”

  “Got a question for you, sir,” Earl Strong chimed in. “Did you really come up with the phrase ‘One riot, one Ranger’?”

  McDonald stifled another cough and winked. “If I didn’t, son, I sure as hell should have.”

  * * *

  Adjutant General Harley put “Strong’s Raiders,” as they came to be known, up in the Driskill Hotel on Sixth Street in the center of downtown Austin. The showplace hotel had been built by cattle baron Jesse Driskill in 1886 and was the choice locale of any number of dignitaries, including Texas governor William Hobby, who held his first inaugural ball there. Strong’s Raiders met in a side meeting room adorned with ferns left over from the celebration.

  “Must be allergic or something,” the famed Bill McDonald said, after a fresh coughing spasm overcame him.

  “Not bad for a dead man,” chided Frank Hamer.

  “We’re all gonna be dead sooner or later. Can’t control that, son, but we can control the terms of the arrangement.”

  “I thought you’d be bigger,” Hamer told him.

  McDonald looked the hulking Hamer in the eye. “Just like I thought you’d be smaller.”

  “You finished, ladies?” said William Ray, the lone among them standing now. “Good. Now you all know what brought you here, leaving us to consider where we go next. What you don’t know is that we’re not in this fight alone. There’s Mexicans my boy, Earl, and I believe are in it with us who’ve got damn near as much to lose as we do.”

  “I thought you got us together to fight Mexicans,” raised Monroe Fox, spitting tobacco juice into a glass mug.

  “Apparently we got the same enemies as these particular ones.”

  “Revolutionaries,” interjected the young Manuel Gonzaullas, summoning his own experiences with the Mexican army. “Pancho Villa’s troops who are trying to overthrow President Carranza.”

  “Right as rain, son. Way they tell it, Carranza’s got a cousin by the name of Esteban Cantú, currently the big man in Mexicali and Baja, who’s sending these killers known as esos Demonios north of the border to build distribution channels for his opium.”

  Gonzaullas stiffened. “Esos Demonios … Yes, sir, I’ve run into them before.”

  “Keep talking, son,” William Ray urged.

  “For starters, Carranza and the politicians he controls arranged for the Federal Army to put Cantú in charge of Mexicali, Tijuana, and Baja in 1911. As governor, his first order of business was to construct a road through the mountains to join the desert with the coastal region.”

  “So what?” Monroe Fox challenged.

  But it was Earl Strong who replied. “So he could have himself an easy route to bring opium into California.”

  “And that drug money,” Gonzaullas picked up, “helped get Carranza elected president.”

  “I believe I am starting to see the connection here,” said William Ray.

  “To defend his distribution network, and make sure no one rose up against him, Carranza provided Cantú with this private army of esos Demonios gathered from the most murderous and trigger-happy soldiers he could find. So this expansion into Texas is all on Cantú, hiding behind the shield of protection offered by his cousin south of the border. But, make no mistake about it, this is about money and the power it can buy both of them.”

  “Son,” said Frank Hamer, lurching to his feet, “I don’t give a good goddamn what’s it about. All I know is I don’t want that shit ruining lives north of the border the way it has to the south.”

  The other men nodded in unison, as Monroe Fox spit more tobacco juice into his mug.

  “Now,” William Ray picked up, “whether it’s Carranza, Cantú, or the devil himself behind these esos Demonios don’t matter a lick. What matters is we got a meet set up with some Mexicans who got their own reasons for wanting them dealt with: three of the resistance’s top commanding officers.”

  Bill McDonald arched his spine forward. “I got a proposal on that note.”

  “What’s that, Ranger?” William Ray asked him.

  “Let’s send esos Demonios back to hell.”

  40

  AUSTIN, TEXAS

  “These three commanding officers,” Caitlin started, something clearly on her mind after Sandoval had stopped his tale suddenly. “Do you have any idea who—”

  Caitlin stopped when she saw Sandoval’s gaze suddenly shift about, the color starting to drain from his face.

  “What’s wrong, Mr. Sandoval?”

  “My coffee…”

  “Sir?”

  “I asked one of my men to bring it to me out here,” Sandoval told her. “He never showed up. I just realized. Must’ve lost myself in that story I was telling you.” He tried to muster a smile and failed. “It could be nothing, I suppose.”

  From their vantage point, Caitlin couldn’t see all the way into the lobby, and didn’t feel comfortable leaving Sandoval alone to check it herself. She yanked her cell phone from her pocket.

  “Company headquarters,” Caitlin said, after a receptionist’s greeting, “this is Caitlin Strong up here in Austin from San Antonio. I need a patch-through to the security detail handling the Four Seasons conference.… Called off? When? By— Never mind, sir. Just get every Ranger you can to the hotel right now.… Please do it, sir. I’ll explain when they get here. And please alert Austin PD we have a situation.”

  “Ranger?” said Sandoval, watching as Caitlin ended the call but continued to hold the phone in her hand.

  “Any of your men watching you now?”

  “They should be.”

  “Signal them. Get them over.”

  Sandoval raised a hand slightly overhead and curled two fingers in toward him in subtle fashion, then repeated the motion when no one responded or moved into view. His eyes found Caitlin, as much angry as scared now, the reality of his son’s murder returning like a sudden kick to the gut.

  “We need to get out of here, Mr. Sandoval,” she told him, rising as she slid the phone back into he
r pocket. “We need to get out of here now.”

  41

  SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA

  Paz’s vast bulk blocked the light streaming in from outside, his face shiny with sweat from the building Arizona heat.

  “I didn’t see you on the plane, Colonel,” Cort Wesley said, as Dylan and Luke shrank away.

  “Different airline, outlaw,” Paz said. “I was already on the ground when you arrived. Did you know the navigation devices on the rental cars here speak Spanish too?”

  “You came alone?”

  Paz cast his gaze toward Dylan and Luke, both still wide-eyed over his mere presence. “Your boys are safe. Whoever did this is gone.”

  “That doesn’t make them safe.”

  “I meant for the time being.”

  “Wait outside, boys,” Cort Wesley said with his eyes fixed on Paz.

  “But Dad—”

  “I don’t want to hear it, Dylan. Just wait outside.” Cort Wesley hesitated long enough to hold his oldest son’s stare, its intensity and harshness looking misplaced amid his soft features as his long hair was moved about by thin wisps that blew from an air-conditioning baffle.

  “Come on,” Dylan said to Luke, leading his brother out the door past Guillermo Paz, who had turned sideways to let them pass.

  Paz cast his gaze toward the two dead bodies, regarding them cursorily without expression.

  “First the boys’ mother and now her sister,” Cort Wesley continued. “Maura and Araceli Torres. That’s what this must go back to. Something in the past with the Torres family, not Maura herself.”

  “How much do you know about that family’s past, outlaw?”

  “Not a damn thing, other than both Maura and Araceli were born on farms to Mexican migrant worker parents. I haven’t got a clue as to where exactly and I’m not even sure their real name is Torres.”

  “But you’re sure they were of Mexican descent.”

  “Maura was first generation American, Colonel. I don’t think she told me any more about her family than that, and I never cared enough to ask.”

  Paz gazed toward the bodies again. “And the sister?”

  “She hated my guts even before she blamed me for Maura’s death, and fought me briefly for custody of the boys. After that, she really hated my guts.”

  Paz nodded, his gaze now moving outside, eyeing Dylan and Luke leaning against the rental car while seeing everything around them as well. “We don’t have much time.”

  “Enough to search the house,” Cort Wesley told him. “Enough to find something to tell us who Maura’s parents really were.”

  * * *

  With time at a premium, Cort Wesley called Dylan and Luke back inside to aid in the process. As was the case with the vast majority of area homes, there was no basement to search, so they concentrated their efforts on the first floor. Dylan and Luke focused on the sprawling kitchen that included two storage closets. Cort Wesley concentrated on the living room area, including drawers and storage units beneath the built-in birch-wood bookshelves. For his part, Paz handled the second-floor closets and the home office in a loft-style third story that had replaced the attic.

  Cort Wesley was just about to call a halt to things, the police still not having been notified, when Luke appeared from the kitchen with a shoe box clutched in both hands.

  “I think I found something,” the boy said.

  42

  AUSTIN, TEXAS

  “Let’s go, Mr. Sandoval,” Caitlin said, rising stiffly having not yet decided in which direction to head.

  She didn’t fancy a shoot-out in the lobby with bullets flying everywhere, almost certain to find bystanders and hotel employees.

  “This makes no sense,” she heard Sandoval say. He was a man used to being hunted and had built his life around precautions designed to keep him a step ahead of those he targeted and who targeted him in return. Now, in the space of seventy-two hours, those layers of precaution could prevent neither the murder of his son nor an attack on his own life. “No sense at all.”

  Caitlin heard his words, spoken calmly with no trace of fear, only in a corner of her mind. The rest of it was racing to determine her next move, even as her hand strayed to the butt of her SIG Sauer and unclasped the holster.

  “My enemies would kidnap my son, not…” Sandoval’s voice dissolved into nothingness, sparing him completing the thought. “This is something different, Ranger, someone different.”

  They’d expect her to head through the lobby, bait their trap where they could hide in plain sight. But they couldn’t hide in plain sight along the next most available escape route.

  Via the pool. Where men wearing jackets meant to disguise their holsters would stand out.

  “This way,” Caitlin said to Sandoval, her own words an afterthought in contrast to her actions.

  She had the SIG out now and held low, concealed just behind her hip. A flagstone path led along a circuitous route to the Four Seasons outdoor pool. From a distance it looked surprisingly crowded for such an early hour, the unseasonably warm temperatures likely to blame along with businessmen who must have brought their families along for an electronics convention that had filled every downtown hotel to capacity. Lots of splashing and happy yelps told her kids had laid claim to the pool, complicating the issue even further.

  The gunmetal had warmed in her grasp, Caitlin noting the presence of several men in swimsuits seated on chaise lounges around the pool. Which should have been cause to relax, but wasn’t.

  Because whoever was behind this and the bodies in Willow Creek would never leave so obvious an escape route unguarded, meaning …

  Meaning she’d played right into their hands, done exactly what was expected of her. Well, not quite. They’d expect her to relax now, to figure she was home free until they chose the right moment to yank weapons stuffed beneath their chaise lounge cushions and open fire. But how to tell bad guys from bystanders, how to know which to shoot with the fourteen bullets readied in her SIG?

  Caitlin kept leading Sandoval on, not about to do anything to provoke the gunmen swathed in suntan lotion and lying atop towels emblazoned with the Four Seasons logo until it was on her terms.

  Why do swimming pools have fire hoses?

  A question she always asked herself when she spotted one curled up behind steel and glass, posed today with a different thought in mind. Caitlin veered right toward the building facade where the firebox was placed, Sandoval on her inside with the gun between them.

  “Are you armed, sir?”

  “No,” Sandoval told her.

  “I slipped my backup pistol into my jacket pocket. I want you to slip it out. Get ready to use it.”

  And Caitlin felt him do so as they reached the firebox, positioned in front of him as she twisted a valve to activate the water flow and yanked the canvas fire hose free of its spool. She spun, already twisting the nozzle to the “on” position, full out for maximum force.

  The hose became a powerful, thrashing snake in her grasp, filled out to its full diameter in an instant as a torrent of spray exploded outward. Caitlin’s first pass coated the pool-goers with a sizzling, needle-like blast powerful enough to topple a few unoccupied chaise lounges and spill some unaware guests from others to the chalkstone pavement below. She kept the spray going until three men in pool gear that looked all wrong on them fought back to their lounges after the spray had passed them.

  Tucking the hose under her left arm, Caitlin raised the SIG in her right, blasting away at the men just as their hands cleared their lounge cushions with dark steel glinting in the sunlight. She fired with no discernible lag between righting her aim and pulling the trigger, the motions indistinguishable from each other. Caitlin wasn’t sure how many bullets she’d fired or how many exactly had found their mark, only that all three men were down, two of them with multiple pools of blood spreading beneath them.

  She heard the screaming as soon as she twisted the nozzle to the “off” position. Some of the guests clung to the m
eager cover provided by their lounges or toppled tables set up poolside. Others were fleeing, while still more were climbing from the pool in terror, children in tow.

  Caitlin recorded all that in a kind of choppy, surreal motion even as her eyes stayed fixed on the three downed bodies shedding blood on the concrete with their weapons left baking in the sunlight.

  “I’ll take my second pistol back now, Mr. Sandoval,” she said, still watching in case one of them stirred.

  43

  MEXICO CITY

  Ana Callas Guajardo entered the conference room moments before the meeting was about to start, the members of the Guajardo Enterprises board lapsing into stunned silence that left them fidgeting in their chairs.

  “Please,” she said, smiling at the five, who refused to meet her gaze, “don’t stop on my account.”

  The message she’d received while meeting with her brother, Locaro, in Cereso Prison had advised her that this emergency meeting had been scheduled for the next day, called by Ricardo Salinas Velasco, who had run the company for her father and continued in that role under her. The top-floor conference room in which it was being held offered a panoramic view of Mexico City’s gleaming Interlomas district through thermal windows that automatically darkened during those hours when the sun was at its strongest.

  Velasco, a tall, dapper man with perfectly coiffed salt-and-pepper hair, rose stiffly from his chair, clearly unnerved by her unexpected presence. “This is a closed meeting, señora.”

  Guajardo took her customary seat at the far end of the table, well apart from the officers of her board of directors, who had clustered at the near end. The windows had darkened in synchronicity with the afternoon sun superheating the glass, casting her in a strange mix of light and shadow, her skin certain to maintain its powdery radiance with the sun’s rays too muted to disturb it.