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

by Land, Jon

  “Her,” Guajardo repeated.

  “Figure of speech, ma’am.”

  “That all, Ranger?”

  “That’s up to you.”

  94

  JUÁREZ, MEXICO

  Luke was scared. Luke was terrified.

  They’d stuffed him in the trunk of a car with a bottle of water to drink and an empty one to use if he needed to pee. The men didn’t seem to speak English and got angry every time the boy failed to understand what they were saying.

  They brought him to what must have been Mexico, some stench-riddled slum, and stuffed him in a thinly walled room with plywood nailed over what passed for windows. The room, hot and stifling even at night, stank worst of all, the smell seeming to rise through the rickety floorboards, assaulting his nostrils with virtually every breath he took in. He’d heard how somebody could get used to practically anything, but Luke couldn’t imagine ever getting used to this.

  He’d been in his share of scrapes, but nothing like Dylan. So maybe this was his chance to prove he was just as brave and strong as his older brother. Truth was he’d always wanted to prove to Caitlin and his dad that he could handle tough things just as well, and Dylan had been the very same age he was today the day they’d both witnessed their mother shot to death.

  Now Luke regretted ever wanting to prove anything to anybody. All he could do was huddle on the dirty, smelly floor with his hands tucked between his knees to still their trembling.

  Why don’t you just suck your goddamn thumb, you baby.

  He’d barely formed that thought when the boy had the sense there was someone with him in the room. He might have dismissed the feeling out of hand had he not smelled sweet talcum powder suddenly blocking out the stench of ass and shit. The smell made Luke feel better and he actually felt himself nodding off to the sight of a smiling black man sipping root beer and telling him everything was going to be all right.

  PART TEN

  They may be the most fantastic organization in the world. When you’ve got a situation like this, they move in and they move in to stay.… They are there until the problem is solved.

  Fort Worth Star Telegram; June 16, 1985

  95

  SAN ANTONIO

  It was well after dark by the time Caitlin made it back to the city, impatience starting to get the better of her as it mixed with anxiety over her last call just after she crossed the border moments before dusk.

  “All right, Ranger” said Captain Tepper, “no sign of your friend Jones yet, but Masters is here with his boy Dylan, and so is Young Roger, who’s chomping at the bit to get started. He hasn’t briefed me yet, but judging by the look on his face and number of machines he’s got strung round the conference room he’s gonna have a lot to say. And he looks a bit scared to me. You scared, Young Roger?”

  “In a big way, Captain,” Caitlin heard him reply. “The whole country should be scared.”

  “You figured all this shit out, didn’t you, son?” Tepper’s voice returned.

  “I believe I have, but I hope I’m wrong.”

  The man known as Young Roger was a Ranger himself, but the title was mostly honorary, given after his technological expertise as a computer whiz 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 as needed and as the investigative caseload demanded. Young Roger wore his hair too long and played guitar for a rock band called The Rats. Caitlin had never seen them play but she’d listened to the CD. Not the kind of music she preferred, but Dylan told her it was pretty good.

  “Okay,” Young Roger started, Caitlin hearing him clicking on a keyboard as well, “I wish you could be here to see the visuals on this, Ranger, but I’ll do my best to lay it out verbally. My instructions were to give the holdings of Ana Callas Guajardo the once-over to see if I could find anything that suggested a threat, some attack about to be launched against the United States, and, boy, did I ever.”

  Caitlin felt her stomach quiver inside as Young Roger continued.

  “Normally in such assignments I’m looking for something suggesting weaponry and ordnance. Ingredients for explosives, shipping orders with the wrong weights attached to them to suggest dummy invoices and falsified documents, manifests with plenty of lines to read between, evidence of lots of men being moved from one place to another—that sort of stuff. First thing you gotta realize is I found none of those things here, but what I found could be even worse.”

  The sound of fingers clicking a keyboard stopped and Caitlin wondered what everyone in the conference room was now able to see that she couldn’t.

  “This is a woman with diversified holdings the world over. But I decided to stick, initially anyway, with Guajardo’s holdings in Mexico, specifically a number of companies spread throughout the country with the most interesting ones being based in Guadalajara.”

  “Why interesting?” Caitlin asked, hearing her own voice echo in tinny fashion over the Bluetooth.

  “Because they were start-ups opened in the last three to five years, two especially: a software company and a toy factory refitted into a manufacturing plant. The software company because since it’s been open, I can’t find a single product it’s produced either on its own or on a subcontract basis.”

  “A front, in other words.”

  “That was my first thought, Ranger.”

  “What was your second?” Caitlin asked him.

  “What the hell would she need with carbon filament at a remodeled toy factory?”

  “Carbon filament?”

  “Its strength, especially when comprised of graphite fibers, makes it a relatively low-cost favorite of both the auto and aerospace industries. Pretty much any machine that moves and involves complex internal combustion is going to make heavy use of carbon filament. The problem in this case was the amount Guajardo, or her subordinates, ordered. Tons of it over a three-year period that was roughly a hundred times what NASA ordered. Added up, the order came to about the same amount as all three American auto companies during the same period.”

  Caitlin thought briefly, listening to the muted sounds wafting in over her speakers through the Bluetooth. “How come this didn’t raise any flags with Homeland, NSA, or somebody else?”

  “Routing orders were manipulated to disguise the amounts being sent to a single location. There were over a hundred different shipping destinations scattered all over the world that ultimately were rerouted and ended up at that old toy factory in Guadalajara.”

  “What’s all this add up to, Young Roger?” Caitlin heard Captain Tepper ask.

  “I can’t tell you for sure, sir, other than to say carbon filament has plenty of military uses as well, though this amount doesn’t jibe with anything I can figure. Other than to tell you my researching got the notice of some watchful eye down Washington way and forced me to get on another computer to continue my search. Only other thing I came up with of note was a number of anomalous shipments from a manufacturing plant in Germany that Guajardo purchased from Siemens, notable for the fact they followed much the same routing history as those carbon filament shipments.”

  “What did these shipments contain?”

  “Can’t tell you that, Ranger Strong. But I can tell you the weight of each shipment was just about exactly the same, leading me to believe Guajardo was putting the same thing in those boxes, no matter what the invoice might have said.”

  “She must’ve had a real good reason to go through all that trouble.”

  “Wish I could tell you what that reason was, Ranger.”

  “Can you tell me what this Siemens plant in Germany that Guajardo purchased manufactured?”

  “They were primarily an assembly plant, and one thing sure did catch my eye.”

  “What’s that?” Tepper asked before Caitlin could.

  “Transformers, sir. Electrical transformers.”

  96
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  SAN ANTONIO

  Jones climbed out of his car outside Ranger Company F headquarters just after Caitlin, jogging to catch her before she reached the door.

  “This better be good, Ranger.”

  “Or what? You won’t come to my next birthday party, so we can’t play pin the tail on the asshole?”

  “You’re a piece of work, Ranger, the genuine article.”

  “How’s Sandoval, Jones?”

  Jones’s cheeks puckered, making it look as if pen tip–sized holes had been punched in them. “I wouldn’t know. I got a message he’s no longer interested in working with us, that he’s come to doubt we’re actually pursuing the same goals.”

  “Smartened up, in other words.”

  “Or more likely got scared off by a certain Texas Ranger who’s a walking tampon for all the blood that flows through Texas.”

  He’d intended the remark to get a rise out of her, but it produced only a smile. “Nice metaphor, Jones. You mind if I use it myself someday?”

  Jones shook his head repeatedly, seemingly with nothing else to say until he resumed suddenly. “Where’s the fire this time, Ranger? You know, life’s gonna be pretty boring when you run out of targets to fix in your sights.”

  “There were plenty of them the other night at that high school lacrosse game, or maybe word of the fifteen dead and seventy-five wounded never reached your desk.”

  “There are some at Homeland who want to cancel all sporting events for the foreseeable future.”

  “I don’t think Ana Callas Guajardo will have call to attack another anytime soon, Jones.”

  Jones’s eyes widened, then narrowed in suspicion. He started to shake his head again, but stopped. “So what did the most powerful person in Mexico do to find your crosshairs, Ranger?”

  “Killed five children with her own hands, but that’s just for starters. I think she’s planning an attack on the whole country, our country.”

  Jones rolled his eyes. “You couldn’t find a bigger windmill to tilt at this time?”

  “You know Guajardo, Jones?”

  “Only by reputation. And why attack something you can just buy the same way she bought Mexico?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it has something to do with the carbon filament she’s been stockpiling.”

  Jones stopped just short of the door, grasping Caitlin by the elbow. The grip came accompanied by a look on his face somewhere between shock and realization, his eyes flashing like an LED readout. Caitlin thought she could feel pulses of electricity transferring out of him and into her.

  “Say that again?”

  “Carbon filament, Jones, tons of it. That must mean something to you.”

  “It means you just may have done it again. It’s truly amazing, Ranger, that no matter where somebody leaves a pile of shit, you find a way to step in it.”

  97

  SAN ANTONIO

  The conference table was littered with fast-food wrappers when Jones trailed Caitlin into the room.

  “Look who’s here,” D. W. Tepper greeted, quickly brushing the refuse into a nearby wastebasket. “I guess the meeting of Shitheads Anonymous can now commence.”

  “Stow it, Captain,” snapped Jones, training his gaze on Dylan. “And somebody tip the delivery boy so he can be on his way.”

  “He doesn’t leave my sight, Jones,” Cort Wesley told him.

  “No? I seriously doubt he has the security clearance to hear what I’m about to say, cowboy.”

  “That may be true, but the other night he knocked out a stone killer with a lacrosse ball to the skull. I believe he can handle whatever it is you have to say, and for your sake it better be something that helps me get my other boy back.”

  Jones chuckled and shook his head. “What is with you people? Is there something different about the water in this damn state?”

  “Why don’t you just stick to the subject, Jones?” Caitlin prodded.

  “Fine by me, Ranger, since the quicker we get this dealt with, the quicker I can get out of this swamp. The subject is a soft bomb.”

  “Come again?”

  “Better known as the BLU-114/B. Highly classified and probably never mentioned outside of very select circles until this very moment. We’ve been using soft bombs through a bunch of wars now, most prominently Bosnia. A soft bomb consists of chemically treated carbon graphite filaments that rain down on their targets in a kind of cloud, a really dense one.”

  “Carbon filaments?” Cort Wesley raised, the soldier in him speaking. “Doesn’t sound much like a weapon of mass destruction to me.”

  “It isn’t, not in the traditional sense, anyway. But soft bombs can be just as effective when it comes to the targets they were designed to hit.”

  “And what targets are those?”

  “Power plants, cowboy.”

  * * *

  Jones continued, filling in the blanks in the mental picture the others in the room were already drawing. “We used an early variation in Desert Storm, the war where you cut your teeth, Masters. Back then they were variations on the Tomahawk missile, only packed with bomblets filled with small spools of carbon-fiber wire. We rained enough of those babies down to rob Iraq of eighty-five percent of its electrical power while doing only minimal damage to infrastructure.

  “Now, the BLU-114/B was an updated version of that principle and worked even better in strikes against Serbia. We put three quarters of the country into darkness and as a result were able to do things I’m not gonna mention in front of the delivery boy there. See, the updated smart bombs utilized filaments that were only a few hundredths of an inch thick. When the carbon fibers hit transformers, signal switching stations, and especially the power plants themselves, poof!, you’ve got yourself a made-to-order short circuiting which, in turn, vaporizes the carbon in its electrical arc flow, leaving no trace, and thus no evidence, behind.”

  Jones stopped to resteady his thoughts.

  “Of course,” he continued, “to manage that, the Ranger’s friend Ana Guajardo would need a delivery system akin to the one we used. So unless Mexican bombers are gonna sneak through NORAD and our other air-defense networks, I’d say we’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Young Roger, working his keyboard again.

  98

  SAN ANTONIO

  Young Roger brought up a schematic on the big-screen television to which his laptop was linked. “This is what they were building inside Guajardo’s converted toy factory.”

  Tepper squinted to better make out what he was seeing. “Looks like a model airplane to me. Remote controlled. Used to fly them when I was a boy.”

  Jones moved closer to the screen, frowning. “And that’s supposed to scare me? No, sir, unless we’re missing something here, Ana Guajardo might as well attack the U.S. with a fleet of toy stock cars.” He shook his head, his frown growing into a scowl. “You don’t need Homeland Security here, you need Hasbro.”

  “We are missing something,” Dylan said suddenly, drawing the rest of the eyes in the room to him. “That’s not a model airplane, least not the kind you used to play with, Captain.”

  “Then what the hell is it, son?”

  “It’s known as a monster-scale radio-controlled plane. I saw one at a fair last year. Built to scale and plenty big too, maybe twenty feet long with a wingspan almost that big. Much bigger flying range than what Hasbro might make,” the boy said, with his gaze moving to Jones, “but still controlled with a remote no bigger than a smartphone, maybe even a smartphone these days.”

  “Okay, okay,” Jones broke in, not wanting to be outdone. “So what are we saying now, that Guajardo’s used all this carbon filament, tons of it, to make miniature bombs to match her miniature fleet?”

  “No,” Caitlin said, breaking the silence that fell in the wake of Jones’s question. “What if, what if…”

  “What if what, Ranger?” Tepper prodded.

  “What if these planes themselves were the bombs? What
if Guajardo layered this carbon into the frames and blew a couple thousand of them up directly over their targets? What then, Jones?”

  He was speechless for a moment, his mouth hanging open and lower lips quivering in a motion more akin to a spasm. “You’d have a hell of a mess, Ranger.”

  * * *

  “But it wouldn’t be irreparable and would leave no lasting damage,” Jones continued immediately. “So if you think Guajardo’s master plan is to plunge us into eternal darkness this way, you must be drinking more of that Texas water.”

  “Transformers,” Caitlin said almost too softly to hear.

  “Say that again?”

  “Transformers. Tell him, Young Roger.”

  “Another of Guajardo’s companies. She bought a manufacturing plant in Germany from Siemens that makes them.”

  Jones’s mouth started to lower again. “Siemens makes ninety percent of the transformers in this country.”

  “You mean Guajardo does, Jones,” Caitlin said, “and has been for as much as five years now.”

  “Oh, shit…”

  “What is it?”

  Jones looked like a young boy who’d been caught pinching quarters from his own piggy bank. “Looks like maybe that Texas water isn’t so bad, after all.”

  * * *

  “In the past five years, nearly three quarters of the transformers in the country have been replaced,” Jones continued.

  “First I’ve heard of that,” noted Captain Tepper.

  “That’s because it was all done under the radar to avoid attracting attention to the fact that Homeland had identified a major flaw in the system, specifically how vulnerable the older design was to overloads and its incompatibility with newer software. So we authorized a new design built to incorporate security measures that allowed for faster and more secure switching and transfer.”

  “Don’t tell me,” said Young Roger. “You nationalized the grid so Homeland could take control, if it ever came to that.”