Strong Enough to Die: A Caitlin Strong Novel

by Jon Land

  “You believe him?”

  “Let’s say I gave him ample stimulus to tell the truth.” Cort Wesley shook his head and took a deep breath in through his nose. “Don’t know what I would’ve done if one of my sons had been shot.”

  “They weren’t.”

  “Thanks to you.”

  “I got lucky.”

  “That what you call it?”

  “When a man’s firing two machine guns at you, yeah, that’s what I call it.”

  “I call it surviving, something you and I seem pretty good at.” Cort Wesley blew his breath out in a steady stream. “What happens now to my boys?”

  “I don’t know much about the procedure. Any relatives?”

  “ ’Sides me, you mean? Not unless they join the rest of Maura’s family in Mexico.”

  “Guess they end up in the system.”

  “Foster care, some shit like that?”

  “ ’Less you got a better idea, Masters.” Caitlin waited as long as she could to see if he posed one. “Course their lives being in danger, them being material witnesses and all, I suppose Captain Tepper can round up some protection for them, for a time anyway.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  They stood off to the side of the half-pipe, while the police activity continued to flare around them. More media vehicles had now shown up to join the sea of others, eager to report on a Wild West-style shoot-out in the suburbs. Rumors of a Texas Ranger right in the middle of things. Wait until they got hold of the fact that these killings were linked to the death of Pablo Asuna earlier the same day in East San Antonio, Caitlin thought.

  Cort Wesley stuck a cigarette in his mouth but stopped short of lighting it and tossed it aside, only to be retrieved by Caitlin.

  “This is still a crime scene,” she reminded him.

  “Right, musta slipped my mind.”

  “You get out of prison,” Caitlin said thoughtfully, “off you go to watch Dylan and Luke skateboard.”

  “Wanted to see how they’d grown up. Hope you don’t blame me.”

  “Only for talking to me right now instead of them.”

  “I’m close as I can get to that at this point.”

  Caitlin focused her stare on Cort Wesley’s rough-hewn looks, a sharp edge to every part of him, as if he used a file on his skin and bone. “Not close enough,” she said, starting to walk away.

  “Hold up,” he said, drawing even with her.

  “You’re not telling me the truth, Masters.”

  “Come again?”

  “You park your car outside the house, who was it you really wanted to see?”

  “I told you.”

  “You lied.”

  His stare hardened, forearms flexing to bands of knobby muscle. “Don’t like being called something I’m not.”

  Caitlin shook her head, started on again.

  “Where you headed?” Cort Wesley asked, keeping pace with her.

  “Back to the hospital, see my husband. You wanna tag along?”

  He stuck another cigarette in his mouth, again stopped short of lighting it. “If you don’t mind.”

  Caitlin looked him square in the eye. “Not at all. Think I’ll have your boys ride with us so we can keep an eye on them up close ’til Captain Tepper gets them settled.” She plucked the cigarette from his mouth. “Those things’ll kill ya, you know.”

  “Something’s gotta.”

  48

  SAN ANTONIO, THE PRESENT

  Dylan and Luke rode with them to the hospital in the backseat of Caitlin’s SUV, the bags they’d packed stowed in the hatch. Luke was holding a handheld video game, playing it or not she couldn’t tell. Dylan was staring straight ahead, his breaths making a slight wheezing sound. No one spoke.

  Captain D. W. Tepper and a second Ranger bracketed them front and rear. Tepper’s patchwork face had crinkled further at the sight of Cort Wesley coming along but to his credit he said nothing. It made Caitlin think of another of the Ranger tales of lore told to her by her grandfather.

  “Texas Rangers got a long history of straddling the law,” she said out loud, as much to break the silence in the SUV as anything. “I’m not talking about them necessarily committing illegal acts, much as forging alliances with bad men to go after ones who were worse.”

  She could see in the rearview mirror that both boys were looking at her now.

  “My granddad liked to tell a tale ’bout the Rangers taking on Mexicans who were making war on the border around, oh, 1920, after World War I. These Rangers were outnumbered at times ten to one and, ’cause they were still traveling on horseback in those days, they tended to pack light: rifle and sidearm, that was it. Now ’round the same time what would later be referred to as organized crime was running moonshine whiskey across the state in trucks guarded by men wielding the original tommy guns. So the Rangers recruited them to help in their efforts at the border. Those moonshine runners had more to lose than anybody under the circumstances, so they signed on. As my granddad told it, a few of them were formally deputized. Years later, one was found dead in a Chicago alley still wearing the badge.”

  Another check of the rearview mirror found both boys studying her, Luke looking up from his video game and Dylan looking alive again.

  “You ever shoot anybody before today?” he asked her.

  “Yup.”

  “Kill anybody?”

  “Yup. Not that I’m proud of it.”

  “You proud of what you did today?”

  “Nope.”

  “Figured.” Dylan sighed, leaning back with arms crossed. “Why?”

  “ ’Cause I was too late to save your mom.”

  “What’s it feel like to shoot somebody?” Dylan asked, after the SUV had lapsed back into silence.

  His question was aimed at Caitlin, but it was Cort Wesley who answered. “Feels good, if it stopped them from doing the same to you.”

  “How many men you killed?”

  “None that didn’t deserve it and wouldn’t have done the same to me, given the chance.”

  “A lot then, right?”

  Caitlin watched Cort Wesley twist slightly in the passenger seat to face Dylan, who flinched at the sudden motion, still jumpy from all that had happened. “Whether you’ve killed one or a hundred, it’s the same thing. You look in the mirror and see somebody different staring back, you got call to worry.”

  Dylan nodded, though it was clear he didn’t get Cort Wesley’s point. Caitlin wasn’t sure she did either. But she figured that was as close as he could come to breaking ground with his sons. Talk about something he knew best of all.

  “That was a mighty good story, Caitlin Strong,” Cort Wesley told her. “I think I heard almost the very same one from my great-uncle.”

  She glanced briefly his way. “You never told me your uncle was a Ranger.”

  “ ’Cause he wasn’t. He was a moonshiner.”

  49

  SAN ANTONIO, THE PRESENT

  Peter’s hospital bed was littered with precision tools, diodes, wires and chips. Caitlin couldn’t tell which had come from what. He perked up at her appearance, shoulders lifting and eyes brimming briefly with recognition, before his expression flattened as if he’d forgotten why. Cort Wesley stood in the doorway directly across from Captain Tepper, watching his boys in the protective company of the night shift who’d taken over for Rangers Berry and Rollins.

  Caitlin approached Peter alone, not wanting to risk startling him with the presence of strangers.

  “I finished,” he said, looking alive again as he had when she’d left.

  He used the bedside remote control to turn on the television, then struggled out of bed and dragged his bare feet across the cold tile floor. Caitlin noticed they were bent inward, the toes gnarled and twisted. The screen coming to life stole her gaze from them, and Caitlin saw her cell phone had been wired to it via a thin connecting wire in place of the cable box. She identified at least one adapter and could tell he had been busy splicing a
ny number of wires together in search of compatibility.

  Peter jogged the phone’s menu to video and activated the PLAY command. Captain Tepper edged into the room to better see when the screen brightened to life. Cort Wesley remained in the doorway.

  The screen sharpened to reveal a much larger version of what Caitlin had watched on the tiny screen. She turned the volume up on the television and watched the receptionist retake her seat behind the desk and start doodling on a notepad before reaching for the phone.

  “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 quiet now, pen laid down.

  “No, her questions seemed innocent enough. She just asked about RevCom. . . . Yes, it was a woman. . . . Hold on, I wrote it down.”

  Eyes back on the notepad.

  “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.”

  “Can you play it again?” she asked and took out her notepad. “Peter?” she prodded, when he didn’t respond, his expression remaining blank. Caitlin moved directly into his line of vision. “Can you play it again, please?”

  This time Peter obliged robotically, working her cell phone once more. When the screen lit back to life, Caitlin focused on the woman’s fingers on the telephone keypad, jotting down the numbers she was hitting.

  Nine first for an outside line, then one for long distance. Area code 713. Houston.

  Caitlin watched that part of the recording three more times to make sure she had the number right. Then tore off the sheet from her notepad and handed it to Tepper.

  “You get me the address that goes with this, Captain?”

  He folded the piece of paper in half and tucked it into his pocket. “When I started with the Rangers, a canteen that kept the water from boiling off was considered high tech.”

  “You still got your man.”

  “More often than not, anyway.”

  “Houston,” Cort Wesley Masters echoed.

  “Seems to have struck some chord in you,” Caitlin noted.

  “Those crates from the warehouse in Juárez, that’s where they were headed.”

  She watched Masters move to the bed where Peter had scattered the tools and various unused parts. He lifted a small black square, shiny with green lines running through it, from the covers.

  “What’s this?”

  Peter paid no attention. Cort Wesley looked to Caitlin for help. She took the black square from him and held it in front of her husband.

  “Do you know what this is?”

  “Computer chip. Cheap. Piece of shit.”

  “What’s it do?”

  “Nothing now.”

  Caitlin turned back to Cort Wesley. “Why the interest?”

  He took the chip back from her. “Because in Juárez the warehouse guy’s daughter was wearing something like this around her neck.”

  PART SIX

  In February 1934, Lee Simmons, superintendent of the Texas prison system, asked former Ranger Frank Hamer if he would track down the notorious criminal couple Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. Hamer trailed Bonnie and Clyde for one hundred and two days. Finally, Hamer and other officers, including former Ranger B. M. Gault, caught up with the dangerous duo in Louisiana’s Bienville Parish. The officers had hoped to take the outlaws alive, but when the pair reached for their weapons, Hamer and the others opened fire. The career of Bonnie and Clyde was over.

  —Mike Cox, with updates from the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum Staff, “A Brief History of the Texas Rangers”

  50

  HOUSTON, THE PRESENT

  The katana hissed through the air of Harm Delladonne’s private dojo up in his office loft, slicing imaginary enemies. The sword was one of twenty in his collection, all antiques dating back as much as five centuries. Several had been smuggled out of Japan. Others had been refurbished to their original condition at considerable expense and time, five years or more.

  Delladonne didn’t care. He was a patient man for the most part, keenly aware that the things that were most important could not be rushed. Quality never sacrificed for speed.

  The same held true for his vision for the country, his desire to see it safe and protected. For years money had been his prime motivation. Now, with literally billions in hand, he had turned the vast resources he had accumulated toward the far more daunting obsession to insulate the United States from its enemies now and forever. A crowning achievement that would leave the current administration and every other beholden to MacArthur-Rain.

  Just as his father had envisioned but failed to accomplish.

  Now, so soon after that goal had been tantalizingly within his reach, Delladonne felt it slipping from his grasp. And, worse, he had begun to fear he could not insulate MacArthur-Rain from the fallout over the latest attempt to cut the company’s cord to its own failed efforts.

  Fire Arrow . . .

  The ultimate weapon, the weapon that could help Delladonne realize all his goals at once. If only Peter Goodwin had simply agreed to cooperate, that weapon would be operational now. The most dire enemies of this nation, the men his father had failed to stop, would be reduced to no more than minor inconveniences and distractions. Struck down when his will imposed it.

  If only . . .

  Then by now Harm Delladonne would have become more powerful than any president or politician. Not a king, not even a kingmaker. But the man pulling all the strings behind the curtain, just as his father had foreseen that day in 1993.

  Delladonne considered himself a master at judging people, at how to get what he wanted from them by pushing just hard enough. But he had badly misjudged Peter Goodwin’s resolve, and that failure now threatened the very fabric of his being. He’d retreated to his private dojo in the hope that slicing up imaginary enemies would compensate for having lost the opportunity to eliminate real ones.

  Guillermo Paz had not reported in, and Delladonne imagined himself also cutting the big man in half for his stunning failure. The baggy sides of his kimonolike training hakama flopped in an invisible breeze as he repeated the simple moves of the kata again and again. There was such beauty in simplicity. And the simplicity of sword training held the greatest secrets of success in all things.

  But everything else had turned absurdly complex. Delladonne had already heard from Washington. The powers controlling the purse strings of his multibillion-dollar government contracts wanted a meeting, the prospects of which held a grim portent for the once promising future.

  Delladonne’s private phone rang, the one line he’d had rigged in his dojo. He sheathed the katana and lifted the receiver, noticing the ten zeroes in the caller ID.

  “I’m on my way down there now,” the voice said.

  “You damn well better clean up this mess your man made. You assured me he was good—the best, you said.”

  “He is.”

  “Doesn’t say a lot for your judgment, does it? Have you at least heard from the Venezuelan?”

  “I reached him this morning.”

  “And?”

  “That’s why I’m on my way down. Handle things up close and personal.”

  “I want him gone.”

  “That’s the problem. He won’t leave.”

  “Won’t leave?”

  “Says he has an obligation to a higher power to make good here. Honor his commitment.”

  “Higher power?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “You’re telling me he’s still in San Antonio.”

  “Yes. To finish the job, he says.”

  “The Ranger knows what he looks like. They’ll be looking for him all over the city. That makes him a liability. I want him pulled. Pay him off and send him home.”


  “My intentions exactly.”

  “You’ve worked with a lot of men like this.”

  “Never a man exactly like this, no, sir.” A pause followed, the air heavy over the line. “How’s your security?”

  “You think he’d come after me?”

  “I don’t know what he’ll do. Just be extracautious until I arrive.”

  Delladonne glanced from his sheathed katana to the rest of his swords mounted on the wall, each of which had spilled blood and taken lives. He was respectful of that reality each and every time he bowed in reverence before and after drawing one of them.

  “Don’t worry,” he told the voice on the other end of the line.

  51

  HOUSTON, THE PRESENT

  “I’m hoping you can help me, Mr. Hollis,” Caitlin said to Charles Hollis. His title listed him as director of Internal Security for MacArthur-Rain Industries. The number dialed yesterday by DynaTech’s receptionist had been to his exchange here at the company’s headquarters in Houston. Caitlin had driven to the airport and flown here, as soon as Captain D. W. Tepper had reached her with the news.

  “I’ll do my best, Ranger,” Hollis promised, not seeming anxious or on his guard. He had strawlike hair colored the chalk yellow of a bad dye job, cropped close enough to make him look military. But his blue eyes were weak and shifty, having trouble staying focused on anything for more than an instant. Kind of guy, Caitlin thought, who buys a uniform at an Army-Navy store and wears it to the shooting range, or to play paintball on a corporate outing. “Does this have something to do with one of our employees? Because that’s the primary focus of my office.”

  “Corporate espionage, sabotage, that sort of thing?”

  “It’s more common than most realize.”

  “I’m sure it is, but that’s not why I’m here, Mr. Hollis. I’m here about a company in San Antonio called DynaTech. Used to be known as RevCom.”