by Jon Land
“That man and woman you’ve been expecting just got here,” Kean reported. “All business, like you said.”
“Then let’s go greet them, shall we, and get some business done.”
55
WASHINGTON, D.C.; THE PRESENT
“My father killed his, the Reverend Max Arno, when I was fourteen,” Caitlin said, listening to her voice as if it was someone else’s.
Jones’s eyes twinkled, flashed, as Caitlin continued.
“And Malcolm Arno’s movement, militia, or whatever you want to call it, this Patriot Sun, is based in Midland not far down the road from where his father’s Church of the Redeemer had set up shop.”
“Your father led the raid that took it down,” Jones said, clearly well versed on the subject.
“Along with my current captain, D. W. Tepper. But the gunfight happened a few days later.”
“You were there,” Jones realized, shaking his head slowly. “Man oh man…”
“So was Arno’s son. He watched his father die.”
“Shot by yours.”
“A knife, actually.”
“So what was that like, Ranger?” Jones asked, his eyes boring into hers, genuinely curious.
“I felt like a coward, ’cause I wasn’t able to help him.”
“Well, you’ve more than made up for it.”
“You think Arno’s son was the recipient of a billion dollars from the neo-cons?”
“Maybe more and who better? He’s got the heritage and more than enough motivation to lead the call to violence. He hosted a gathering at his complex just yesterday, a regular whackjob jamboree. The best advantage we’ve had against the militia and patriot movements was they’ve always been decentralized. That’s not the case anymore.”
“Thanks to Arno.”
“Right as rain, Ranger.”
“You have anyone inside?”
“Of the groups in attendance? Yes. At the Patriot Sun headquarters? No. We haven’t been able to crack that yet. Arno runs background checks on members of his flock that would make the CIA proud, probably with the help of his neo-con pals.”
“And that’s where I come in.”
“Well, the two of you do have a history.”
“All the more reason he’ll want to keep the Rangers, especially me, out at all costs. My guess is we’ve avoided the place to keep from appearing provocative and, unless I’ve missed something, Arno hasn’t broken any laws.”
“You mean fomenting a revolution doesn’t qualify?” Jones challenged. “Give a man who witnessed his father being killed by forces of the big bad State a bunch of bucks and watch what he does with them.” His hard-edged stare returned, eyes like daggers of ice stabbing the air. “Even a fraction of that two million number shooting off guns Arno provides them is enough to make us forget shoe bombers and airplane jockeys for a long time to come. Pretty soon they’ll be making daily headlines and dominating the news. Courts, women’s health clinics, state houses, federal buildings, local government seats, libraries that carry unapproved books, churches that perform gay marriages, lawyers who arrange adoptions for same-sex couples, liberal talk-show hosts, politicians not sympathetic to their cause, schools that teach evolution—”
“I get the point, Jones.”
“Do you? Because I haven’t made it yet. We’re adding soft targets to the expected hit list every day, and we can’t possibly watch them all. Plenty of the suspects we’re talking about are ex-military who’ve shot plenty of guns and rigged more than their share of explosives. These aren’t yokels liquored up on a onetime dare. Think the Unabomber, the D.C. Sniper, and McVeigh himself multiplied by a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand. There’s the very real possibility that that’s what we’re going to be looking at if somebody doesn’t put Malcolm Arno on a leash.”
Caitlin could only shake her head. “You’re a real son of a bitch, Jones.”
“Duly noted.”
“You want me to call Arno out.”
“It’s in your DNA, Ranger. I’m just offering you a chance to finish what your father started.”
“I was wrong before, wasn’t I?” Caitlin said, staring him in the eye as White looked on like part of the wallpaper. “You knew I was there, at the Tackle and Gun that day twenty years ago.”
“Of course I did. Your file takes up a whole goddamn cabinet. You’ve drawn the attention of lots of people who work out of offices like mine.”
“They retire their waterboarding tables too?”
“Just put them in storage,” Jones said unabashedly. “This right-wing extremist thing goes down the way our worst-case scenarios say it might, the people who made us put the tables away will be begging us to set them up again. These aren’t theoretical groups living on millet in the desert and buying explosives with the expiration dates blacked out. These are homegrown fanatics with a billion-dollar-plus bank roll and enough weapons to fight a full-scale war.”
Caitlin rose from her seat, suspended between intentions. The floor felt wobbly, her blood pressure rising into the red, and she laid her palms down on the table for support. About to respond to Jones, her BlackBerry beeped, flashing an incoming text message from Cort Wesley:
NEED YOU FAST
“Get yourself another gunfighter, Jones.”
“Lots of people are gonna die here, Ranger.”
“Then I’d recommend you strap your guns back on.”
* * *
After Caitlin had gone, Jones slapped a twenty-dollar bill down on the table.
“What’s that?” White asked.
“A bet. I say we’re gonna hear from the Ranger again, that she ends up taking the job.”
“But she just said—”
“I don’t care what she said,” Jones told him, casting his gaze out the window as if to watch Caitlin Strong emerge from the building. “You ever hear of Frank Hamer, Bigfoot Wallace, Jack Coffee Hays, Bill McDonald, or the woman’s own grandfather Earl Strong?”
“Not a single one.”
“Gunslinging Texas Rangers all who had the proclivity to clean up anyplace they happened to hang their hats. Caitlin Strong’s no different, a gunfighter through and through. Only difference is the territory has gotten bigger.”
“How’s that?
“The whole damn country,” said Jones, still holding his gaze out the window.
56
SAN ANTONIO; THE PRESENT
The call from Miguel Asuna at his body shop came three hours after Cort Wesley had left him. There were fewer men at work in the bays than earlier in the day, but the scents of fresh leather and rubber told Cort Wesley Asuna had taken some new deliveries in the course of the afternoon.
This time they went into his office, highlighted by a calendar featuring a different naked woman for every month. The calendar was from 2003.
Asuna yanked a beer from a small fridge and tossed Cort Wesley one without asking if he wanted it. “Turns out there’s only about two dozen shops who can do a custom job on a truck like the one you’re describing. Mike Beardsley found four trucks matching your description and claimed he could account for the owners of all but one. Here, check it out.”
Cort Wesley came around to the other side of the desk while Asuna worked a computer keyboard clumsily with his thick fingers. Nonetheless, a black truck with tires somewhere between five and six feet tall appeared on the screen, framed on either side by two men in overalls beneath a sign that read JAKE’S CUSTOM CLASSICS.
Cort Wesley gave the picture a closer look, narrowing his gaze to picture Dylan hiding for dear life in the cargo bed. Hands still bound behind him and scared out of his wits; it made Cort Wesley’s flesh crawl, the arrest warrant or whatever it was from Mexico shoved aside for the time being.
“You get a registration?” he managed to ask through the thickness that had settled inside him.
“What, you think I was born yesterday? Yeah, I got a registration.” Asuna tore a piece of paper from a pad and handed it to Cort Wesley. “Truck is re
gistered to a hunting lodge in Kilgore. I looked it up just for fun.”
“What’d you find?”
“Nothing, because that’s what’s there: nothing. Just a big empty chunk of land.” Asuna’s big, droopy eyes tightened on him. “This business, jefe?”
“Personal.”
Asuna grinned like he knew what that meant—for the truck’s owner, anyway. “’Cause I can move a truck like that in minutes. They use them to mount machine guns south of the border. Hey, they could probably fit a Howitzer on this one.” Then he looked at Cort Wesley wryly, an old friend and associate again instead of a stranger off the grid for seven years. “So you thinking about coming back to the life? There’s more work than ever, if you’re interested.”
“I got two boys to raise now, Miguel. I think those days are behind me.”
Asuna flashed him a knowing grin that stopped just short of a wink. “Sure, jefe, whatever you say.”
57
MIDLAND, TEXAS; THE PRESENT
Arno approached the man and the woman currently standing in the floral courtyard centered amid the living quarters to create a parklike setting. They could have sat on one of the teakwood benches but had chosen to stand. Perhaps they’d been strolling past the children’s swings, slide, and sandboxes. From here they had a great view of the school building, playing fields, and gymnasium—facilities certain to draw more need as the numbers residing inside the Patriot Sun grounds continued to swell.
Malcolm Arno was good at guises, putting on whatever face best suited him at the time. Occasionally, when people looked at him wrong or funny, he wondered if he’d slipped the wrong mask on by accident, getting the same flutter in his gut that came when you find yourself naked in a dream. He needed to be especially cognizant of that today.
The man and woman saw him coming and instantly stood straighter, almost to attention. The man was Chester Singleton, one of the foremost political operatives in the country. Arno hoped the fact that he was the only African-American currently on the grounds wouldn’t make him uncomfortable, while the woman already looked uncomfortable. She was tall, basketball-playing tall, towering a head over Singleton, just a few inches short of Arno’s six feet even. Her name was Sue Ellen Ward, a take-no-prisoners, win-at-all costs strategist who’d learned the divide-and-conquer strategy from Karl Rove himself as a lowly White House staffer. Ward and Singleton were working together now, having joined forces to climb onto a political tidal wave of a candidate they believed capable of winning the upcoming presidential election.
Drawing closer, Arno watched Singleton remove his sunglasses to reveal slightly crossed eyes.
“A pleasure to meet you, sir,” Singleton greeted.
“We were so happy to receive your call,” Ward added, pumping his hand.
Arno pulled it back, amazed to find his hand now felt slick across the palm, as if somebody had greased it.
“Well,” he said, swiping his palm across his slacks, “I believe we have plenty in common. I believe we want what’s best for this country and are in a unique position to make that happen if we work together.”
Both Singleton and Ward nodded enthusiastically, looking like robots, albeit highly polished ones.
“That’s our thinking as well,” said Singleton.
Sue Ellen Ward nodded once more. “Let me add that the governor was thrilled by your invitation. She’s been a big admirer of yours for some time now too.”
“Do you hunt, Mr. Arno?” the cross-eyed one asked him. “It might be the perfect way for you to get acquainted with the governor on a personal basis.”
“Let me tell you something, Mr. Singleton,” Arno said, feeling his blood simmer with no help from the sun. “I’ve got an old musty shirt hanging in my closet I haven’t put on in twenty years. I was wearing it the day that Texas Ranger killed my father and it’s the one thing I have left from my childhood besides his teachings. It’s got blood splattered all over it. I look at it every day and that’s the only blood I ever need or want to see, ’sides them that wrong this country bleeding out from sucking wounds that make them linger a while before they die. So if you don’t mind, I’d like to cut to the chase here, all of us being busy as we are. I don’t see the point in mincing words and making small talk. Not bullshit each other, in other words.”
Singleton and Ward seemed to freeze before him, suddenly yanked from their element. Robots for sure, since the sun didn’t seem to bother them or raise even the slightest sheen of sweat to the surface of their skin.
“I’d like to do everything I can to get that governor of yours elected president. I got ten million of the most patriotic Americans there are that I can count as supporters, and they’re yours along with the leaders they are beholden to who are beholden to me. I got mailing lists, e-mail lists, phone bank records. If you add the largest church congregations in the country I’m aligned with, the number I can deliver is closer to twenty million, or at least fifteen. And, most important of all, what I got is money, a fully legitimate donation thanks to the new finance laws, bless the Supreme Court. I’m thinking a half a billion dollars. You think that might do it?”
“How about fishing?” Sue Ellen Ward said after grabbing her breath back, breaking into a smile that made her look almost human after all.
“I think we could try that,” Arno told both her and Singleton, coming up just short of a wink. “See, I’m pretty good with a lure.”
The robots tried to smile, not quite catching his meaning, which might explain why they had so much trouble managing the effort. They were holding the best they could come up with on their lips, when Malcolm Arno watched a black truck with tires the size of small planets clear the security booth and drive onto the complex.
58
WASHINGTON, D.C.; THE PRESENT
“No sign of Dylan,” Cort Wesley said as soon as Caitlin called him from outside the FEMA building. “But I met up with the lowlifes who took him for a ride north.”
“Paz?”
“Paz.”
“Lowlifes still alive?”
“Couldn’t tell you and don’t care.”
“Cort Wesley—”
“Don’t be lecturing me now, Ranger. Time’s not there to spare and I’m working on a lead to find Dylan.”
“Where are you exactly?”
“Just had a burger at my favorite joint.”
“You’re home?”
“Thereabouts, but keeping a very low profile.”
“Why do I have trouble believing that?”
“I’m not thinking about Mexican jails right now, Ranger. I’m thinking about finding my son. He’s alive for sure; I can feel it. Lowlifes met none other than Buck LaChance outside a town called Concepción del Oro the other night. That’s when Dylan made his getaway.”
“Into the Mexican desert after dark?” Caitlin asked, feeling dread grasp her.
“With his hands cuffed behind him to boot.”
“So why is it you sound so hopeful?”
“’Cause I know my kid. Just humor me on this for a minute. LaChance is the key here and we’ve gotta find him. One of the lowlifes said there were Texas plates on his truck. I already got something of a make on it but need you to trace it down closer.”
“Cort Wesley—”
“Don’t say it, Ranger.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“If it has to do with that extradition order, I don’t want to hear it. You need to bring me in when this is done, we’ll cover that then.”
“That’s not what I was going to say at all.”
“Then what were you?”
Caitlin started to speak, then stopped. “It can wait until I get back from Washington.”
“What the hell brought you all the way out there?”
“Turns out some folks got a war they want me to fight for them,” Caitlin said, her mind picturing Malcolm Arno as a boy staring at her from across the Tackle and Gun parking lot while his father lay dead by his side.
>
“So what else is new? Your truck gets lousy gas mileage, by the way.”
“Advertisements said different.”
“Can’t believe anyone these days, can you?”
59
MEXICAN DESERT; THE PRESENT
“Am I still your only customer, Padre?” Guillermo Paz asked the priest he had brought down from Mexico City to preside over his soldiers.
The priest, whose name had been Juan Jose Morales in another life as a petty criminal and pickpocket until he’d found God, looked at the huge man through the gaps in the mini blinds. “So far, Colonel.”
“Easter Sunday’s just a few days off. That service will make up for it, you’ll see.”
“What can I do for you now?”
“Remember that dream I told you about the other day, that vision?”
“Something to do with a Texas Ranger,” Morales nodded. “Yes.”
“Along with guns and blood. A lot of both.”
Morales could see Guillermo Paz scrunched onto the wooden seat on the other side of the blind, his vast size forcing his legs under the curtain covering the cubicle. His skin looked shiny and smelled like motor oil. His wild black hair had the texture of rope, wet with sweat and grease. But his eyes stood out the most; big, empty, sad, and suddenly uncertain, even quizzical. Morales had never seen a pair of eyes so poorly matched to the man seeing out of them.
“I buried two men in the desert yesterday.”
“Is that what you’ve come to confess?”
“No, because it wasn’t a sin. They deserved it. That’s not the problem.”
“What is?”
“These men took advantage of children. Kidnapped them to be sold as slaves.”
“Madre de Dios…”
“Our God isn’t always watching, Padre. A lot slips past him, including those two men I buried.”
“In killing them you exercised the wrath of God Himself. You were His instrument and, as such, I agree you have nothing to confess.”
“Not yet.”
“Colonel?”
“It wasn’t Mexican officials looking for a way out of their country’s mess who put me here, Padre; it was God. I haven’t been able to think of anything besides that since I presided over the funeral of those two men in the desert. Those who harm children have to be stopped, all of them.”