by Jon Land
Cort Wesley met up with his young prison-guard friend Frankie Cakes again at the Cafe Texan restaurant on Sam Houston Avenue in Huntsville before heading south into Mexico. They sat in the smoking room so Frankie could continue fanning the habit he’d picked up in Iraq. Cort Wesley was glad for the choice since it was small, homey and many said served the best hamburgers in Texas. He’d spent five years within a mile of the place but, of course, had never been in a position to know if that were true or not. But he generally liked places that served breakfast all day and especially liked the ones that still had smoking sections because he was normally more comfortable around the kind of people who smoked.
They both ordered hamburgers and iced teas. Frankie Cakes came in his uniform that was wet with sweat in the underarms and over his flat stomach.
“Sorry, Cort Wesley. I got nothing for you, ’cause there’s nothing to get.”
“Really?”
“Looked under all the rocks I could find for your friend Clayton. Nothing there.”
“Ain’t that a shame.”
“So,” Frankie said, after draining almost all his iced tea in a single gulp, “you’re not even out a week and some mess you got yourself into.”
“Anything like that mess I got you out of with the Latinos?”
Frankie swiped his tongue across his upper lip. “You got no call to bring that up.”
“You were right not to run drugs in for them, podner. I admire a man who sticks by his principles.”
Frankie Cakes’s brow grew shiny with a layer of sweat.
“So tell me,” Cort Wesley continued, “is my next stop Warden Jardine’s office?”
“You’d rat me out for something I’m finished doing?”
“Not if you stop lying to me.”
“Huh?”
“You’re a bad liar, podner. Saw it in your eyes as soon as I sat down. You sitting there making up what you were gonna say.”
Frankie jammed his forearms down on the table hard enough to rattle the shakers and sugar packets. “Look, I can’t afford this coming back on me.”
“Can’t afford to have your drug dealing come back on you neither. Ever hear what happens to an ex-bull on the inside?”
Frankie Cakes looked around the room to see if anyone was looking their way. Then he shoved his chair farther under the table and lowered his voice.
“How exactly you know this guy Clayton?”
“I killed him a couple nights back, podner. Shot him in the head.”
“You didn’t think of mentioning that to me?”
“Didn’t think it was relevant.”
Frankie lifted his iced tea to his mouth in a suddenly unsteady hand and drained the last of it, letting the ice cubes smack up against his lips. “Oh, it’s relevant, all right. It’s pretty goddamn relevant.”
“Take it easy there, podner.”
“Take it easy? I shook some trees on your account, and what fell out could end up chasing me long after you and me are done.”
Cort Wesley slid his iced tea across the table to replace Frankie Cakes’s spent one. “I protect you from the Latinos?”
Frankie nodded.
“Well, I’ll protect you from this too.”
Frankie Cakes looked as if he wanted to laugh, but couldn’t. “Yeah? You really think so? Lemme tell you something. The shit you stepped in here don’t come off your shoes so easy.”
“What are you talking about, podner?”
“I’m talking about Clayton. He ain’t military no more. He is, was, with a private contractor for military-supported groups.”
“What the hell is a military-supported group?”
“Private companies that offer military services for big bucks. You ever hear of Custer Battles, Blackwater or Professional Protective Services?”
“No to all. Didn’t get to read the papers or watch the news much these past five years.”
“Well, Clayton seems to have hired himself out to all, but PPS mostly.”
“PPS?”
“Professional Protective Services,” Frankie Cakes continued. “Clayton and a bunch of hard-edged Special Ops types been selectively signing up for PPS but there ain’t a single mission-specific operation anybody I know inside Special Ops can find hide or hair of.” Frankie paused to drink down a hefty gulp of Cort Wesley’s iced tea. “So I keep checking on the down low, see about the postings of Clayton, no first name, and friends. Up comes a list heavy in Middle Eastern friendly locations like Abu Dhabai, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt.”
“Bahrain?”
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
“Never mind. Just tell me where this is leading.”
“To what those countries all have in common.”
“And what’s that, podner?”
“Torture, Cort Wesley. Those are the countries where we’ve been sending prisoners to get coaxed a bit. Cattle prods rammed up their asses, you know the drill. And people behind shit like that don’t like the trees they’re hiding in getting poked to see what drops. Already had my phone disconnected. Next week I’m moving.” Frankie gulped down the last of Cort Wesley’s iced tea. His hands were visibly shaking when he laid it back down. “How the hell you get mixed up with medieval bastards like this?”
“Just lucky I guess.”
32
SAN ANTONIO, THE PRESENT
Caitlin spent the next few minutes inside her SUV thinking back to the first time she’d met Peter in a bar and grill where she’d joined up with some of her former fellow Rangers nearly a year after she’d crossed the border into Juárez, Mexico. The occasion was her late father’s birthday and, among hard-core Rangers anyway, it was tradition to celebrate the birthdays of those who had passed. All the whiskey shots and barbecue later, the Rangers still in attendance were finally done swapping Jim Strong stories. And up walks Peter, getting to the table just as it went quiet.
“I just wanna say I appreciate everything you do,” he said to them all, though his eyes stayed mostly on Caitlin.
The Rangers, Caitlin included, raised what was left of their beers to him in a toast. He smiled graciously, paid his bill with a credit card and left the restaurant.
Though much more drunk than she’d had any intention of getting, Caitlin rose and said she’d be right back, making a beeline to the waitress who’d walked off with the credit card receipt to get the man’s name. There were four Peter Goodwins listed as residents of San Antonio in the law enforcement database she logged into upon returning home to the house she’d inherited from her father, but only one Peter F. Goodwin. He was as surprised to hear from her, as she was to have made the call.
Truth was Caitlin had never dated very much, not even in high school. Back then she’d never been able to deal very well with young men’s attitudes that left women little more than something to possess and screw to cement their place in the high school food chain. Add to that the fact that most were as intimidated by her as she was unimpressed by them. They always seemed too weak, too easily subservient. Caitlin had grown up around strength and been fashioned in that very mold, always figured the man in her life would be one who could outride and outshoot her. If not that, at least be someone who knew how to stand up for himself without his ego getting in the way.
One man took her to a road house for dinner on their first date, only to have a greasy-haired drunk with his belly hanging outside his shirt come up to the table and ask her to dance.
“Excuse me, the lady’s with me,” her date said, “if you don’t mind.”
“But I do mind,” the drunk said. “I mind you coming into my home and not treating me with the proper respect. Instead of your woman, think I’ll have my way with you.”
Caitlin saw the buck knife sheathed to his belt, no idea in the moment whether he intended to use it but not about to wait and find out. Before her date could move, she grabbed her beer bottle by the neck and smashed it into the drunk’s groin. When he doubled over, she slammed his face into the table hard enough to splinter the wo
od. Local cops took the drunk away, not bothering to ask Caitlin for a statement. The man she’d come to the road house with never called to ask for a second date.
Nothing comparable befell the early weeks of her relationship with Peter. He was smart, fun, engaging and it felt good to be around him. His company had helped distract her from the transitional period after leaving the Rangers that had left her feeling lost, and she often found herself thinking of him into the cold hours of the morning after he dropped her off. They began staying over at each other’s places only after the first few months had solidified their friendship. They liked the same movies and music and, truth be told, Caitlin was happier around Peter than when she was alone.
So when he suggested they get married, she had said yes happily, though not excitedly. Suddenly there was a new future ahead of her and Caitlin looked forward to that as a way of finally breaking the past’s hold, going so far as to sell her father’s house and move into Peter’s town house condo in Slate Creek at Westover Hills.
As it turned out, though, the past proved reluctant to let go.
“There it is,” Caitlin said with a smile, retrieving her cell phone from the DynaTech counter five minutes after leaving it there. “It’s a good thing my head’s tucked inside my hat, or I might have forgotten that too.”
Back outside, she drove halfway around the parking lot before finding a shaded space to watch whatever the recorded video had to show her. The picture and sound quality were pretty good under the circumstances, and the angle on which she’d perched the phone allowed for a clear view of the receptionist pressing out the number of whomever she’d called as soon as Caitlin was outside. She’d have to enhance the shot on a computer to read the numbers, left for now with a one-way conversation that was more than enough to stoke her curiosity.
The small cell phone screen pictured the receptionist still hunched over her desk with the exchange entered.
“Mr. Hollis, please.”
A pause, while the woman fiddled with a pen, scratching designs into a notepad.
“Mr. Hollis, it’s Grace Devallos over at DynaTech in San Antonio. . . . Yes, sir, I know, but my instructions were to call if anyone came around asking about—RevCom, that’s right, sir. . . . A Texas Ranger. . . .”
The woman listened for a time, stopped doodling and laid down her pen.
“No, her questions seemed innocent enough. She just asked about RevCom. . . . Yes, it was a woman. . . . Hold on, I wrote it down.”
The woman looked toward the notepad again.
“Strong, Caitlin Strong. . . . Yes, I checked her ID. . . . She was dressed like Rangers always dress. . . . No, sir, she only asked about RevCom, if they’d left a forwarding address or something. . . . Yes, of course, sir.”
Caitlin felt herself roasting inside the SUV, so she closed the windows and switched on the air-conditioning. Played the video a third time and was just starting a fourth when the phone rang.
“Caitlin Strong,” she greeted.
“This is Ranger Berry over at the hospital, ma’am. Something going on here I think you should see.”
33
JUÁREZ, MEXICO, THE PRESENT
The heat built up the closer Cort Wesley got to the Mexican border and by Juárez the humidity was beating back the air-conditioning in Pablo Asuna’s old Ford. He probably should have asked Asuna for a better vehicle but liked the Ford’s innocuousness and, after five years of not driving, was used to its ride now. He kept his eye on the temperature gauge the whole way, dialing back the air-conditioning in favor of the windows every time the needle flirted with the red.
Heat like this had always hardened his edge even more, welcomed today in view of the fact that he needed to get information out of people likely unwilling to provide it.
“Are you carrying any weapons with you?” a border agent asked him at the checkpoint.
“Wouldn’t even think about it, sir.” Cort Wesley smiled and was waved through into Mexico with his Smith & Wesson wedged under the driver’s seat.
He could find no trace of the Saez brothers anywhere in Juárez. All a half-day’s labor had earned him was the fact that their mother had died six months after Caitlin Strong had paid her a visit. And, no, the building landlord had no idea where Jesus and Rodrigo could be found. They were dead too, for all he cared.
The cockfighting arena where Caitlin Strong had met up with them was a boarded-up shell of a building now, and all of the neighboring businesses professed to have neither heard of nor met either of the brothers. Then he remembered Caitlin Strong mentioning a warehouse where the shipment they had trucked into the United States had been stored. Turned out the cockfighting arena had been a ware house called El Candida, according to the dilapidated sign still hanging over what had been the entrance. When the Mexican phone book was no help in providing further information, he walked into a local real estate office to inquire about such space and left with a list of two more El Candida ware houses located on the outskirts of Juárez.
In this case outskirts meant a considerable drive, and Cort Wesley spent it sweating with the windows down and a hot breeze blowing through the car, thinking about Caitlin Strong. That night with the Saez brothers had changed her in ways she could only begin to imagine, brought her to a dark, unfamiliar place. A state of mind more than place, actually, that was difficult for any man, or woman, to rid themselves of. Cort Wesley had never done drugs but he’d known enough who had. Smack, crack, methamphetamines; whatever poison a junkie picked, they told the identical story when it came to getting hooked.
Cort Wesley figured it was the same for Caitlin Strong that night in Juárez. She’d crossed a line with the Saez brothers that left her a different person and no amount of volunteer work in a torture recovery center could change that. She’d figure that out for herself soon enough; far be it from him to tell her.
He parked outside the first El Candida ware house outside Juárez and sat for a time in Asuna’s Ford just studying things. The trucks were dissimilar in design and color and several were missing plates. Not hard to figure from that alone that these ware houses were still being used for the same purpose they’d been five years back, almost surely operated by the Mexican Mafia to smuggle marijuana and whatever else across the border.
Cort Wesley smoothed on some underarm deodorant and changed from a soaked shirt to a clean, steaming fresh one before making his way across the gravel parking lot into the front office.
“I’d like to see the manager,” he said in Spanish to a girl behind the desk who looked all of sixteen. She was pretty with long dark hair and a full smile. A piece of jewelry—thin, black and maybe a half-inch square—dangled from a nylon cord looped over her neck.
“He’s busy.”
“Tell him I got business to transact. And I come with references.”
“He’s still busy.”
“PPS.”
“Excuse me?”
“Just tell him Personal Protective Services. He’ll know what it means. Tell him Clayton sent me.”
Cort Wesley was rolling the dice here, figuring it either got him an in or nowhere at all, which was no worse than where he was now.
“He’ll be out in a minute,” the girl said, after passing his message over an old-fashioned phone with lit buttons along the bottom of the faceplate.
“What kind of stone is that?” Cort Wesley asked, gazing at the small black object hanging over her shirt.
“This?” she said, holding it up. “I dunno. I just found it here one day. It was getting thrown out. I like trinkets, stuff nobody else has.”
Cort Wesley was about to respond when a man emerged from the back of the ware house. He was short and squat, five and a half feet tall and just as wide it seemed. A human fireplug or maybe a beer keg. He had no neck and it was impossible to tell where his waist ended and legs began. He emerged with two other men riding his rear with equally bad teeth and loose shirts worn outside their work pants to hide the pistols wedged up in their belts.
“Talk fast,” the manager said.
Cort Wesley realized there was no air-conditioning going. Just commercial-strength blowers suspended from the ceiling over a concrete floor that must have once been part of the ware house itself. The blowers did little more than move the heat around, leaving the air thick, stale and laced with the fetid stench of mold. Besides the girl’s desk and pair of offices partitioned with unfinished plywood, there was the concrete floor, slab walls and nothing else.
“You store and ship shit or not?”
“Depends what the shit is, doesn’t it?”
Cort Wesley took out an envelope and flapped it in the air for Fireplug to see. “I don’t know, does it?”
“You want to do business, we can talk. But we’re discreet here. References required.”
“Discreet, yeah. How ’bout Clayton?”
“So we’re starting with him, her, whoever.”
“Him. And he’s the one recommended you to me. Said you could move anything. In or out, doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t, depending on what, where and how much.”
“Same stuff as Clayton, maybe five years ago. Through El Paso using a couple of mules named Rodrigo and Jesus Saez.”
“Never heard of them.”
“You heard of Clayton.”
“Why don’t I take a look at what you got inside that envelope and then we can talk serious?”
Cort Wesley puckered the envelope open and flashed it, grinning.
“It’s empty,” said Fireplug.
“That it is. What I’m offering you here is your life. Figure that’s worth more than enough to make talking to me worth your while.”
Fireplug twisted toward the two men behind him. In the next instant, two beefy hands darted under twin baggy shirts.
Cort Wesley drew his Smith first, firing a single shot at each that blew both men back into the resealed heavy doors with holes bored through their foreheads. Before Fireplug could react further, Cort Wesley turned his gun on the young girl behind the desk.