by Jon Land
23
HOUSTON, THE PRESENT
Harmon Delladonne had taken over his father’s house, as well as his business. A 15,000-square-foot Georgian mansion located in the plush suburbs of River Oaks with ten bedrooms and twelve baths. He only used one of each, almost always alone, except on nights when mood and circumstance required company. And company meant an exclusive escort service with no questions asked.
Delladonne had time for sex; he had no time for love or romance. His father had introduced him to the world of prostitutes, just as he had introduced him to the world of business. Prostitutes on his twenty-first birthday, business, at least real business, shortly after that.
They were both in New York City in 1993 during the first attack on the World Trade Center. Father and son had rushed to the scene drawing as close as the police barricades allowed. The horror and fear were palpable in the air. Harm Delladonne could never remember seeing so many anxious, crying people.
But his father seemed to revel in it, his eyes gleaming in the glow of the constant swirl of revolving lights. He could barely keep down his smile.
“This is just the beginning,” he said, as much to himself as to his son. “More attacks are coming, increasing in scale, until one day the world will change. That’s what we have to be ready for. When the time comes, and this country needs what we have to offer, we’re going to be there.”
Harm stood by his father’s side through dozens of acquisitions that brought MacArthur-Rain to the forefront of the then-nonexistent business of global security. He thought Franklin Delladonne had lost his mind, leveraging all the company’s assets to buy up soft- and hardware companies, along with as many oil industry offshoots as he could get his hands on. He never listened to Harm’s ideas or suggestions, even the discovery Harm was most proud of. First thing he’d commissioned on his own, and his father shot it down without so much as a demonstration.
“Just do what I tell you,” his father told him. “Listen and learn.”
Then 9/11 came and the listening and learning were over.
Almost overnight MacArthur-Rain was transformed into the government’s ultimate go-to global conglomerate, having positioned itself with a virtual monopoly in areas of security and surveillance no one else had even considered. Franklin Delladonne’s vision had made that all possible, but a stroke killed him prior to it being fully realized, leaving Harm to pick up where he left off.
And so he did, more ruthlessly and ambitiously than his father ever imagined. Never entrusted with any true responsibility by Franklin Delladonne while he was alive, Harm tried to prove his father wrong now that he was dead. By the time potential competitors reinvented themselves, MacArthur-Rain had gained an insurmountable advantage that rendered that competition nothing more than prime fodder for additional acquisitions. Every one of these was greeted with a like level of obsession by Harmon Delladonne who knew even the smallest investment could lead to huge returns in the future. And under his stewardship, MacArthur-Rain positioned itself as the only company capable of so many things that the government seldom bothered to look elsewhere. It had been so long since they actually needed to submit a bid, that Harm to a great extent had forgotten how the process worked, thanks to the mutually dependent relationship he had forged with those who truly wielded power in Washington.
“MacArthur-Rain,” his father had said suddenly to him, just days before his death. “Where does the name come from?”
“You never told me when I asked you.”
“I wanted you to figure it out for yourself.”
“What’s the difference?”
His father had glared at him. “The difference is a vision that will not just usher our company into the future, it will also give us control over that future.”
“Tell me, please.”
“Figure it out for yourself.”
To this day Harm Delladonne never had. He’d just dismissed his prostitute for the night, and was considering the origins of the company name for the first time in a while, when his phone rang. He snatched it from his bedside, expecting Clayton to be on the other end. Then he saw the ten zeroes projected in the caller ID and knew otherwise.
“What happened?” he greeted.
“Turn on your television.”
Still lying naked in bed, Delladonne hit a button on his remote and a fifty-inch plasma rose from inside the entertainment center across the room. He switched to a local channel picturing a chaotic scene on a street not far from the Alamo. Delladonne recognized the building pictured as the Survivor Center Clayton had targeted, the reporter droning on and trying to get an interview with an older man who looked like a walking corpse wearing a Stetson.
“Clayton and his men are all dead,” the voice on the other end of the line told him.
Delladonne wondered if he was dreaming. “This was supposed to be a simple operation.”
“No such thing.”
“What happened?”
“We’re still trying to ascertain that.”
“Then fucking ascertain it and call me back.”
Delladonne’s private line rang again ten minutes later.
“A Texas Ranger was inside at the time.”
“You’re telling me one Texas Ranger took out seven men?”
“Not by herself.”
“Herself?”
“Someone else was involved, to what degree we’ve been unable to determine. A man named Cort Wesley Masters.”
“Is that supposed to mean something?”
“It does to me. We made good use of his skills ourselves during the Gulf War. He didn’t know it, of course. If he still worked for us, he’d be the first person I’d call now that Clayton is out of the picture.”
“Guess we’ll have to look elsewhere then.” Delladonne was breathing hard and sweating through his silk sheets. The room felt like a sauna to him, in spite of the air-conditioning.
“I’d recommend going out of country.”
“I was just about to say the same thing to you.”
“Clayton was good. I’m better. The man I’m talking about is the best. A Venezuelan, former colonel in Chavez’s secret police.”
“Then what are you waiting for?”
24
SAN ANTONIO, THE PRESENT
Caitlin came through the door to her condominium with gun drawn.
“Get your hands in the air and stand up slowly.”
“That the way you greet all the people who save your life?” Cort Wesley Masters asked her from an easy chair in the corner of the living room, staring into the barrel of her SIG.
“Do what I say and keep your hands where I can see them.”
Cort Wesley rose slowly, hands stretching upward. Caitlin saw the pistol wedged into his belt and yanked it out, SIG steadied on him the whole time. Kept it that way as she backed off.
“Can I put my hands down now?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“Maybe you forgot about me putting a bullet in that guy’s head a couple hours ago.”
“Not exactly your intention when you came to the center, I’m guessing.”
“You arresting me based on intentions?”
Caitlin laid Cort Wesley Masters’s gun down on the kitchen island. The townhouse was simply and sparsely furnished, and she’d done nothing to change it since Peter’s departure for Iraq.
“How about carrying an unregistered firearm.”
“I’m not carrying it, you’d be dead.”
“You can sit down now,” Caitlin told him. She watched Masters retake his chair. Her gaze fell on the lamp he’d switched on alongside it. “Should have left the light off.”
“Why? Then you wouldn’t have known I was inside and I’d miss the fun of seeing you with your gun out again.”
“I could have shot you.”
“You didn’t in El Paso.”
“That was different.”
“Sure was. You thought I was guilty back then. Now you know I’m innocent.”
<
br /> “The hell I do.”
“DNA speaks, Ranger.”
“Not to me.”
Masters looked back at the pistol. “You wanna put that down?”
“Not particularly.”
“Then keep my gun as a souvenir. I’m not carrying it, you’d be history now.”
“That thought had crossed my mind.”
Cort Wesley Masters stirred slightly in his chair. “Explains why you haven’t shot me yet.”
“You had a similar opportunity earlier tonight, as I recall.”
“You seem determined to make me regret that choice.”
“So here we are.”
She flipped on the switch for the overhead ceiling fan-light combo, letting the two of them see each other clearly.
“You don’t look much like a Ranger these days.”
“That what you risked getting shot to tell me?”
“Nope, ask you something.”
“What?”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why you framed me.”
“I didn’t.”
“Bullshit.”
“Listen to me, Masters—”
“Call me Cort Wesley. I save a woman’s life, it puts us on a first name basis.”
“That what your friends call you?”
“Don’t have any friends. Well, one maybe,” Cort Wesley said, thinking of Pablo Asuna.
“First time anybody ever saved my life before.”
“Lots of firsts happening lately.”
“You kill those two men in the bar earlier today?”
“Could’ve killed all five, if I had a mind to.”
“Sounds like that makes you proud.”
“Nope. Did what I had to, like you tonight. Gunned down five by my count.”
“Four and that was different.”
“How?”
“They were trying to kill me.”
“Likewise. And you still took out twice as many as me.”
“Tell it to someone else, Masters—”
“Cort Wesley.”
“—someone who doesn’t know you set those poor assholes up like targets on a shooting range in that bar.”
“Got a price on my head. What I did should make plenty more assholes think twice before gearing up. Might’ve saved more lives than I took.”
“That’s one way to look at it,” Caitlin said, and holstered her weapon. She started for the liquor cabinet. “Gonna pour myself a drink. Can I offer you something?”
“Whatever you’re having.”
“Bourbon.”
“Suits me just fine.”
Caitlin poured a couple fingers of Jim Beam into two rocks glasses, added ice cubes, and brought Masters’s glass over to him.
“Thanks, ma’am.”
“You have a drink in that bar earlier today?”
“What do you think?”
“Nope.” She dragged a chair across the wood closer to him; not too close, though. “Also think you came to the center to kill me tonight. Right or wrong?”
“Lucky for you I did, in the end.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Maybe finish what we started in El Paso.”
“I seem to recollect I started and finished things then.”
“Caught me on a bad day.”
“I wasn’t having a great one either.”
Cort Wesley sipped some Beam, stopped and sipped some more. “Wasn’t me in the Chihuahuan that night, Ranger.”
“Blood evidence said otherwise.”
“Past tense.”
“Depends who you ask.”
Cort Wesley swirled the brown liquid around in his glass, liking its pleasant heat burning his throat on the way down. First drink he’d had since entering The Walls. “You expect me to believe you didn’t frame me?”
“No more than you expect me to believe you weren’t there the night Charlie Weeks got killed.”
Cort Wesley half toasted her. “Think about it.”
Caitlin slid her chair a bit closer, hitching her jacket back to make sure he could see her gun. “Oh, I have.”
“I’m talking about me and a bunch of drug mules out of Juárez. This at the same time I was working toward eviscerating the Juárez Boys, Mexican mob and anybody else who moved on my bosses’ territory.”
“Eviscerating,” Caitlin repeated. “Nice word.”
“Learned it in the prison library.”
“In between shankings, no doubt.”
“Read my file or ask the bulls, Ranger. I was a model prisoner.”
“A changed man.”
“Wouldn’t go that far.”
“Don’t know. Otherwise I’d be dead.”
“Guess you could say the same thing for me,” Cort Wesley said and downed the rest of his Beam.
Caitlin matched him with a single gulp.
“Shot for shot, Ranger?”
“It beats bullet for bullet.”
“Booze instead of blood.”
“Wise choice.”
Caitlin thought about refilling their glasses, but didn’t.
“So how many men you killed, Ranger?”
“One more if you’d drawn on me in El Paso, Masters.”
Cort Wesley rolled the rocks glass around in his big powerful hands. Caitlin thought he looked ready to crush it. Their eyes met and Cort Wesley felt a flutter in his gut. He couldn’t remember ever seeing a more beautiful woman in the ways that mattered most to him, Caitlin Strong making him ache in places he thought were long dead.
“Don’t know how many I’ve killed,” he told her. “There was the army and then there was after.”
“And now?”
“There was always somebody pushing the buttons before. Now there’s nobody.”
“So I guess what happened in the bar today was an accident. Dropped your 9 millimeter and it happened to go off six times.”
“Smiths been known to do that.”
“Maybe you should ask for your money back. Then again, even in Texas convicted felons can’t own pistols.”
“Falsely convicted, I think you mean.”
“You come here to catch up, Masters, I think we’re caught up.”
Masters rose, not quite as tall as he looked in Peter’s doorway, but just as broad. “That’s some pretty bad folks who’re after you.”
“Appreciate the concern, I really do.”
Cort Wesley glanced at her Stetson, hanging atop a coat rack. “Think I would’ve made a good Ranger?”
“Hundred years ago maybe.”
Her cell phone rang and Caitlin eased it to her ear after three rings, recognizing D. W. Tepper’s number in the ID box.
“Home safe and sound, Captain,” she said, staring up at Cort Wesley Masters.
“Got some news here for you, Caitlin.”
“That’s Ranger Strong to you.”
“Then listen up, Ranger. Fingerprints on the corpse in your husband’s room identify the man as Clayton, no first name and lots of soldiering in his background. Goddamn killing machine, near as I can tell.”
“Seem to be a lot of them in my life lately, Captain,” she said, as much to Masters as to Tepper.
“It gets better. We ran his blood and came up with a second interesting match.”
“From?”
“The El Paso desert the night Charlie Weeks got killed, Ranger. Clayton, no first name, was there.”
25
LA VEGA, VENEZUELA, THE PRESENT
Only one of the church’s double doors was open, and Guillermo Paz turned sideways so it could more easily accommodate his bulk as he entered. His long, thick hair had draped over his face, and he brushed it back with his hands to make himself more presentable. Then he rubbed his palms on his army fatigues to wipe off the grease, turning the fabric dark in splotchy patches across the thighs. Sometimes he wore a bandana to collect the oil that slid from his scalp like a leaky faucet to make his forehead look bright and shiny. But he
had stowed the bandana in his pocket for this visit, wanting to present as formal an appearance as possible for a man wearing generic army olive drab pants and shirt he seldom washed, since obtaining spares to suit his massive size was all but impossible.
The church lay at the base of the hillside containing one of Caracas’ hundreds of slums, the slum where Paz had spent the first thirteen years of his life until he killed his first man. The latter of those years were dotted by memories of lugging buckets of water or propane tanks from the foot halfway up the steep hill to what passed for a home in order that his sisters and brother could bathe, eat and use the toilet. His mother seemed pregnant more often than not, but Paz barely knew his father, a small-time thief who used the profits of his thefts to guzzle down warm beer in any bodega or bar that would have him.
It had been his father who brought Guillermo Paz into the Venezuelan underworld by introducing him to the local crime boss known only as Carnicero, Spanish for “butcher,” thanks to what happened to those who crossed him. Paz started out as a pickpocket but quickly mastered robbing tourists at knifepoint. All the proceeds, of course, were handed over to Carnicero, nothing ever held back on penalty of losing a finger or worse.
Today, as he strode up the old church’s center aisle, those memories seemed so distant as to belong to another man entirely. The church, on the other hand, was exactly as he remembered. A ramshackle, rectangular building with a cracked cross above the door and patchwork wood and shingles atop the roof where a steeple had once stood. The interior remained surprisingly clean and well kept, the pews bracketed into the floor so they couldn’t be stolen for wood with which to burn or build. In slums like La Vega, men had died for far less. The inside of the church even smelled the same—of must, mold, old sweat and rotting planks from the uneven floor. Paz had never visited the confessional as a boy, so he followed his instincts to a small alcove on the right, the same route he followed when he’d killed another priest just a few days before in another church.
The door to the confessional was warped and a darker shade than the frame around it. Paz smelled sawdust and wood rot and thought back to the boyhood nights spent in his slum house listening to rain pinging against the tin roof and feeling sheets of it misting through gaps in the wood slats hammered over the cardboard walls.