Strong Enough to Die: A Caitlin Strong Novel

by Jon Land

  “There is no shame in fear.”

  “What about failure?”

  “There is no shame in that either, only the failure to try to become a better man.”

  “You think I can do that, really?”

  “All men can. Look into your heart and soul and you’ll find the strength you need.”

  “Face my fear . . .”

  “Yes, my son.”

  “Overcome it.”

  “Before it overcomes you and turns you weak.”

  “I think I get it.” Paz took a deep breath, his chest free for the first time since before he’d met the eyes of Caitlin Strong. “I feel a lot better.”

  “In fear and weakness there is shame. Acting out of shame is the devil’s due. Acting out of virtue makes you a soldier in the army of the Lord.”

  “I like the way you talk, Father.”

  “Have I helped you, my son? Will you steer a path clear of sin now?”

  Paz started to ease his massive bulk from the cramped confessional, the wood creaking from the strain. “I can’t promise that, Father, but I’ll come back and let you know either way.”

  54

  SAN ANTONIO, THE PRESENT

  “Turns out Mr. Albert Johannson’s story checks out,” D. W. Tepper told Caitlin from behind his scuffed pine desk. “Other three members of this Fire Arrow team are dead for sure, one from a brain aneurysm and two from accidents.”

  “What kind of accidents?”

  “Car and a fall down the stairs.”

  “You read the autopsy reports?”

  “Not even sure there were any.”

  “Can you check?”

  “Why?”

  “Just a feeling.”

  Tepper’s office was situated on the second floor in the darkest part of the San Antonio Ranger Company D headquarters to help him avoid use of the air-conditioning as much as possible since he said it played hell with his sinuses. He had also trained himself to work with the lights off during the day, helping to keep the room even cooler while leaving it perpetually gray. Caitlin remembered he was also keen on opening the windows in the morning to let in the cool breeze, and then closing them well before noon, leaving his office as stuffy as it was bleak. Old Wanted posters, some stretching back a generation or more, adorned the walls. The office smelled of a mix of stale cigarette smoke and musty newspapers.

  The building was located on South New Braunfels, halfway between downtown and the Riverwalk. An innocuous two-story slab set off by itself with no tree shade and not much growth to speak of lifting out of the pale dirt.

  “Along with this Johannson fella,” Tepper continued, “RevCom had nine full-time employees in 2007 when your husband disappeared. Of those, three are dead, three have disappeared, and the others we’re still looking for.”

  “Hollis lied to me about having any contact with DynaTech or any knowledge of RevCom. I’m sure of it.”

  “Why you figure he’d do something like that?”

  “Under orders, I’m guessing. Didn’t impress me as the kind of guy you call to handle the heavy lifting.”

  “Which brings us to MacArthur-Rain.”

  “Run a check, Captain, and you’ll find both RevCom and DynaTech are subsidiaries of theirs.”

  “So they shut down RevCom around the same time Peter supposedly dies in Iraq.”

  “This all started years before that.”

  Tepper’s expression tightened. In the room’s murky light, the furrows in his face looked like black divots. “The night Charlie Weeks got killed in the West Texas desert.”

  “MacArthur-Rain put the bullets in those mules’ guns, Captain. Clayton worked for one of their subsidiaries, something called Professional Protective Services. That company’s dirty as dirty gets.”

  “Don’t get to be as powerful as they are without having their waters muddied, I’m afraid.”

  “Clayton, no first name, running things that night in the Chihuahuan for them instead of Cort Wesley Masters like we thought originally.”

  Tepper puckered his lips the way he would if he was still packing chew in there like he used to. “Discussion always seems to come back to him lately.”

  “He’s in the middle of things now, like it or not.”

  “You like it or not?”

  The question might have seemed simple enough but the portent in Tepper’s sagging eyes told Caitlin otherwise. “He’s been helpful so far.”

  “And?”

  “He saved my life.”

  “And?”

  “The one decent clue we’ve got is these computer chips he’s latched onto.”

  “And?”

  When Caitlin remained silent this time, Tepper decided to answer for her.

  “When I gave you back your star, Ranger, did I have to remind you that association with known criminal elements wasn’t in the handbook?”

  “He’s no criminal element anymore, Captain.”

  “How many men you figure he’s killed?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Take a guess.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Tepper frowned. “That’s my point: nobody knows. I talked to someone in the gang unit at SAPD. He told me some tallies put it over a hundred. FBI’s thinking about naming a whole new category after him.”

  “Juárez Boys, Mexican Mafia and a whole host of wannabes accounting for all of them.”

  “You know that for a fact?”

  “Course not.”

  Tepper seemed to weigh his next words. “Anything I can say to discourage you from spending any further time in his company?”

  “Not if he has information that could be vital to this case.”

  “And what exactly would that entail?”

  “I don’t know yet, not for sure.”

  “Got his kids stashed at a safe house confiscated from a Mexican family that was running dope from a youngest boy in middle school to a grandmother who sold to her senior center friends who couldn’t afford health insurance.” Tepper leaned forward, then back again. “Something I wanna make clear: I’m doing this ’cause he saved your life. That reason alone.”

  “His prison guard friend also linked Clayton and others from this MacArthur-Rain subsidiary to the same countries where men like Peter were taken to be tortured.”

  Tepper’s eyebrows flickered. “You didn’t call him your husband.”

  “He doesn’t know I’m his wife.”

  “Makes for a complex situation.”

  “Still makes Peter the only RevCom employee who can tell us what Fire Arrow was all about.”

  “Think you can get it out of him?”

  Caitlin shrugged, picturing Peter hovering over a hospital bed strewn with tools, wires and pieces of the cable TV box. “I’m making some progress.”

  Tepper looked visibly disgusted, his face squeezed tight to the point where the shadows seemed ready to swallow the rest of it. “Americans torturing Americans . . .”

  “Seems to be the size of it, yeah.”

  “Go get ’em, Ranger.”

  55

  JUÁREZ, MEXICO, THE PRESENT

  Larrito walked softly up the stairs toward his room on the third floor, holding the brown shopping bag tightly so the bottles inside wouldn’t clack against each other. He’d been holed up in this roach-infested motel that stank of piss and stale sweat for three days now and had changed rooms to start each one. He’d shuttered his ware house and sent his daughter to Tijuana to stay with his sister until things settled down.

  Larrito couldn’t say when that would be under the circumstances. Pedro and Luis had been with him for two years, surviving any number of unpleasant encounters only to be gunned down in a single breath by the big American who’d come calling. But it wasn’t the big American Larrito was hiding from now. No. He worked for a man who did not like mess and this was surely one better to run from than try to explain.

  He worked the lock of his withered wood door open and turned the knob with the key held in
his mouth, tasting the rust. Pushed the door open and entered, holding fast to his shopping bag as he flipped the wall switch.

  Nothing happened.

  And then he saw the two figures in the corner of the room on the far side of the bed, flanking a man seated in the room’s lone chair.

  Larrito dropped his shopping bag to the floor, listening to the crackle of bottles breaking, as the smell of beer and tequila wafted up toward him.

  The room’s thin, tattered curtains let in the spill of lights from the marquees along the opposite side of the street, some of the letters projected backward across the cracked paint of the walls. A red flashing hue tinted the seated man’s face, making him visible only in alternating seconds; enough for Larrito to see he had a white fedora hat tipped low over his forehead that obscured everything above his nose. He was immaculately dressed in a cream-colored suit, matching shirt and tie.

  “You know who I am?”

  “Sí, jefe. You are Garza.”

  “Some think I’m the devil, others God. Still more believe I’m nothing at all. No longer, eh?”

  Larrito remained silent.

  “I have some questions for you, Señor Larrito,” Garza said, speaking just loud enough for Larrito to hear. “Since you’ve been a loyal employee of mine for several years, I assume you don’t have a problem answering them. Is that correct?”

  “Sí, jefe.”

  “My men told you not to leave the ware house unattended, that they would be returning with more questions, did they not?”

  Larrito nodded.

  “Answer me.”

  “They did.”

  “You disobeyed them. You ran.”

  “I was afraid, jefe.”

  “That this American would come back.”

  “Yes.”

  “He scared you.”

  “Yes.”

  “As much as me?”

  “No.”

  Garza shifted slightly, enough for the red glow to catch his eyes. Larrito thought the sockets looked empty. Or maybe the eyes were all black, with no whites at all.

  “You’re a weak man, Señor Larrito.”

  Larrito didn’t bother arguing.

  “A disgrace to your people, my people,” Garza continued. “Men like you have forgotten we were once a warrior nation with a proud heritage. I’ve spent my life trying to live up to that heritage and working to restore the legacy of our grandfathers. The drug business gives me the money and power I need to accomplish this, but it also allows me to punish the Americans who see us as peasants fit only to wash their clothes and mow their lawns. They see us this way, while their children buy our drugs. They see us this way, while my people take over their cities with guns, cash and the kind of violence that sends them fleeing to their gated communities in SUVs the size of buses. Someday when they try to take those cities back, they will know us for the warriors we are and they will understand how badly they have misjudged us. How are we to accomplish this, while depending on the likes of you?”

  “I am sorry, jefe.”

  “Tell me about the American, Señor Larrito.”

  “He knew things from years ago. About the shipment to Houston.”

  “You told my men that.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you tell him the shipment went to Houston? I strongly advise you not to lie to me.”

  Larrito tried to swallow, his mouth too dry to manage the effort. “I told him. After he shot Pedro and Luis.”

  “You should have let him shoot you too.” The man flashed something in his hand. In the naked glow sifting through the flimsy curtains, Larrito could see it was a husk of black dangling from the black cord through which it was looped. “You know what this is, Señor Larrito?”

  Larrito’s bowels had already turned to ice. He tried to speak and for a moment found he had no breath.

  “It belongs to my daughter,” he rasped finally.

  “Actually, it’s mine. Part of the shipment trucked to Houston five years ago. What I need to know now is whether the American saw your daughter wearing it.”

  Larrito tried to re-create the picture in his head, couldn’t quite fit all the pieces together. “Maybe.”

  “That’s what your daughter said too.” Garza frowned. “I was hoping you could be more specific.”

  56

  SAN ANTONIO, THE PRESENT

  “You tell your captain I was out here?” Cort Wesley Masters asked, after Caitlin had closed the door to her SUV behind her.

  “Didn’t think he’d take kindly to the news.”

  “Here I am, all the same,” he said, shifting his thick shoulders about in search of comfort. Caitlin noticed he hadn’t unsnapped his shoulder harness.

  “You said you had someone you wanted me to see.”

  “Need you to do something for me first.”

  “After.”

  “This a negotiation, Caitlin Strong?”

  “You tell me.”

  “After’s fine.”

  “What is it you need done?”

  “You to tell my boys the truth.”

  “No.”

  “No?” Masters asked like a man not used to hearing the word.

  “That’s gotta come from you.”

  “How ’bout we do it this way: I tell the older boy while you tell the younger.”

  “Now who’s doing the negotiating?”

  “I’m just trying to do the right thing, podner.”

  “We’re not partners.”

  “Lot we got in common right now from where I’m sitting, Ranger.”

  “Doesn’t make us any more than we already are.”

  “Which is?”

  “Still trying to figure that out,” Caitlin told him.

  “So how’s a woman get to be a Texas Ranger?” Cort Wesley asked her as they drove through Terrell Hills, an upscale suburb of San Antonio where Volvos and BMWs dotted the driveways and children’s bicycles littered the well-trimmed lawns.

  “Runs in the family. How’s a man get to be Cort Wesley Masters?”

  “Runs in the family.”

  “I’m not talking about your dad being a loan shark and you taking over the business,” Caitlin told him. “I’m talking about after.”

  “Blame the army.”

  “Why?”

  “They showed me the only thing I was good at and taught me how to do it better. That was a war that didn’t last long for most people, but I was there a bunch of times before and after, handling the stuff nobody read about in the papers. Iraq was only the first stop on the merry-go-round. Trouble is it came to a halt after a few years and I didn’t have a lick to show for it. Only one thing I was good at and the Branca family was more than happy to pay me to keep doing it.”

  “Killing.”

  Cort Westley smirked at her. “Know what I think? I think in high school you used to like guys like me.”

  “Bad boys?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No.”

  “You’re lying to me, Caitlin Strong,” Cort Wesley said.

  “Guess that makes us even for last night.”

  The breath whistled through his lips. “Some things I just choose not to tell people.”

  “Like how you really felt about Maura Torres.”

  “Not gonna leave that alone, are you?”

  “Saw it in your eyes last night. She didn’t ask you for the kids, did she?”

  “First one kinda just happened. Second one was different.”

  “Your idea, not hers.”

  “You figure that out all by yourself?”

  “Heard it in your voice when you talked about staying away to keep them safe.”

  Cort Wesley could only shake his head. “All Texas Rangers as good as you?”

  “Plenty are better.”

  “Was a time I wanted to be a Ranger.”

  “Really?”

  Cort Wesley nodded. “It’s the truth, all right; every boy in Texas does. Then I found out they gotta follow the rules these days like
everybody else.”

  Caitlin looked him in the eye. “I’m a fifth-generation Texas Ranger, Masters. The first rode after the very Mexicans who massacred three hundred and fifty of Sam Houston’s men at Goliad. He understood better than you and me what it’s like to take on somebody whose level of conviction allows them to go as far as they need to get whatever it is they want.”

  Cort Wesley’s features tightened. “These sons of bitches come after my kids again, they’re gonna find out what conviction really is, Caitlin Strong.”

  57

  TERRELL HILLS, THE PRESENT

  They pulled up in front of a two-story hacienda design home in a plot that looked no more than five years old, judging by the lack of tree growth, which left the homes to boil in the unbroken sunlight.

  “You ready to tell me who lives here exactly?” Caitlin asked him, easing her SUV into park.

  “Former associate of mine.”

  “Branca family?”

  “Not the muscle side. Nothing to be afraid of.”

  Caitlin pushed open her door. “I’m not afraid.”

  “Identity theft,” Cort Wesley said, joining her outside the SUV.

  “What about it?”

  “Big business for people like the Brancas these days. Man who lives in this house started out with his wife and two kids in a studio apartment. Built his own computers and wrote his own software. When the Brancas decided to move into identify theft, he was their man. Knows his way around those machines like Colt knows pistols. Name’s Jimmy Farro, though he used to be called Jamie Formosina.”

  “Latino.”

  “Genius doesn’t discriminate, Ranger.”

  The man who answered the front door was thin and wiry with patchy skin and bumps stitching his jawline. He gazed out at first with the kind of perfunctory smile he probably used to greet Girl Scouts and the paperboy. The smile disappeared when he saw Cort Wesley, his expression slipping further into dismay when he noticed the woman wearing a Texas Ranger badge standing next to him.

  “Been a long time, Jimbo,” Cort Wesley greeted.

  Farro’s eyes remained riveted on Caitlin. “Heard you were ins-s-s-side.”