by Jon Land
Father Morales hesitated. He’d heard the confessions of criminals and killers in prison that had turned his blood to ice, not just for the casual demeanor with which they related their acts, but also the utter flatness and resignation in their stares. Colonel Paz was nothing like them and yet far more dangerous to those who didn’t meet his moral code or, worse, pushed the buttons inside him that superheated his skin and left him bleeding oil from his pores.
“Everything I heard about you is true, isn’t it?” the priest said finally. “That you protected the poor people being victimized by drug lords in Juárez. That they called you Ángel de la Guarda, that you were a spirit sent to help them.”
“Well, that last part’s not true. Ever read Heraclitus, Padre?”
“No, Colonel.”
“He wrote that nothing endures but change. I’m living proof of that. I was a different man altogether before I met my Texas Ranger. I believe everything I’ve done since has been about living up to her example.”
Morales considered Paz’s words, nodding. “These men who victimize children … they are not kindred souls in the eyes of God and thus not deserving of the same rights as men, His forgiveness, penance, or blessing. Do you read Saint Thomas Aquinas, Colonel?”
“Some.”
“Aquinas wrote, ‘Justice is a certain rectitude of mind whereby a man does what he ought to do—’”
“‘—in circumstances confronting him,’” Paz completed. “My thoughts exactly, Padre.”
Morales closed his eyes and muttered a silent prayer to himself. “Then go with God,” he said finally, opening his eyes.
But Colonel Paz was already gone.
PART SIX
In response to a request from a reporter for his version of the ambush that gunned down Bonnie and Clyde in 1934, Frank Hamer responded, “Sure I can tell how it happened. We just shot the hell out of ’em.”
—Mike Cox, Time of the Rangers
60
MIDLAND, TEXAS; THE PRESENT
Dylan couldn’t remember a more miserable stretch in his whole life. Maybe sliding out the cramped confines of his mother’s womb, if he’d been able to recall that.
From the time he’d somehow managed to hoist himself into the back of the big bald guy’s truck and shimmy under one of the tarpaulins for cover, Dylan entered a dark, cramped world of steel and stench. The steel was wrapped in heavily oiled cloths that reminded him of his dad’s gun locker in the basement of their house. The stench came from the mildew, mold, and old rust caked onto the tarp like misplaced paint.
After doubling back through the desert, Dylan had squeezed himself in amid the gun sacks, his quivery legs cramping up on him and forcing the boy to bite his lip to avoid crying out. Fatty, the gimp, and Baldy were probably still out looking for him around the stretch of hills he’d run toward before doubling back. But sound could travel for miles in the desert night and he didn’t dare let a scream of pain betray his position and plan. A few more hours, maybe less, and his captors would figure him for coyote food.
That’s about how long it was before Dylan heard the three men return. The big biker was swearing up a storm, Fatty and the gimp showing him deference and insisting in broken English that they’d find the boy by sunrise. The biker threatened them with something Dylan couldn’t discern, then the driver’s door opened with a slight creak before slamming closed. The engine raced, roared, and then the big truck tore off.
Dylan felt elated, the first part of his plan having been accomplished. As for the next phrase, freeing himself, he was able to find a part of the truck’s steel bed that had creased away from the frame, probably from having something heavy dropped into it by a crane or winch. It wasn’t real sharp or jagged, but it was steel and narrow-edged enough to maybe handle the job. So as the truck thumped through the desert night, Dylan shimmied himself into position so his plastic-bound wrists were centered over it.
He got nowhere at first and when he tried to pick up the pace ended up slicing the hell out of his wrists dangerously close to veins and arteries that could leave him bleeding out. So he slowed the pace again, found that place in his mind where he wasn’t really here anyway, and fell into a twisted rhythm. Not that he made much progress, especially at first. But the mere sense of the plastic being gnawed at even slightly gave him purpose and hope.
His greatest enemies became thirst, heat once night became morning, and time in general. Through the drive and the several stops along the way Dylan passed it by waiting, gnawing, and dreaming. He slipped off to sleep a few times, further disorienting him from the true passage of time to the point where he lost track of what day it was. The presence of the guns reassured him somewhat, since it seemed to make any ruffling through the bed’s contents unlikely at best. They were headed somewhere, all right, a final destination perhaps, and Dylan held to the hope he’d find a way to jostle himself free before being discovered.
Time was quickly eclipsed by the sun’s blistering heat. When they’d first set out, the cold was his biggest problem. The night air blowing past him as the big truck hurdled down the road, puckering the tarpaulin and making it feel like ice when it brushed against him. Soon, though, his body heat radiated outward, forming a kind of blanket out of his own smell and sweat. In fact, for a time he felt comfortable, until the sun reclaimed the sky in the morning.
And then, as he continued to shift his arms back and forth, he felt the plastic cuffs snare on an edge of the jagged steel, locking him in place and curtailing his thoughts of escape through the several stops that followed. Dylan fought against panic and focused on working the cuffs free of their bond. But the more he tried, the more the plastic seemed to catch. Dylan felt tears brewing in his eyes and stopped shifting his arms altogether, searching for an alternate strategy to avoid making things worse yet.
But how could they be any worse than this?
The road ran flat for hours, the air smelling of fresh-baked tar until a thunderstorm soaked him through the tarpaulin and he drank rainwater like a dog where it collected in the folds. Peeking out enough to ease this thirst also convinced him he was back in Texas for sure, the big truck cruising down a freeway heading west. Not home, but closer, and that gave the boy the will to restart his efforts to free the flex cuffs from their snare on the bent steel of the bed liner. And finally, finally, somehow Dylan jerked them free. Though the cuffs were still clamped on his wrists, he took solace in his success, however slight, helping him ignore the coppery smell of his blood and the cramping in his shoulders and back.
Then, after more hours than he could possibly track, the big truck slid to a halt and Dylan heard a brief, muffled conversation after which it started on again. When the truck came to a stop next, just a few moments later, the engine kicked off and Dylan heard the rasp of an emergency brake being yanked into place. He heard the driver’s door rattle open and the big biker’s boots clacking against hard pavement.
“It’s about time, Brother LaChance,” Dylan heard a new voice greet.
61
MIDLAND, TEXAS; THE PRESENT
“I’m not your brother,” LaChance said. “Only brothers I had were killed up in Quebec.”
“What’s the news on the boy?” Malcolm Arno asked him, approaching the truck’s rear.
“Nothing new or good. He hasn’t turned up yet. You ask me, he’s dead.”
Arno’s brow crinkled and his lips curled back in something between a scowl and a sneer. He could feel his pulse rate slowing in disappointment. His eyes sought out LaChance’s, seeing in their flat acceptance of the world before them a dark evil and fearsome loathing. LaChance had no stake in the boy’s fate beyond delivering him here, and it showed. His tattooed skin seemed to radiate static that turned to prickly heat beneath the blazing sun. LaChance favored snakes for his tattoos, and every time he came to the Patriot Sun, a different one seemed to spring to life across his neck or banded arms exposed by a sleeveless denim vest. It had clearly been a jacket once, but he’d sliced the slee
ves off, leaving frayed tatters in their place with the right side riding up the shoulder an inch or so more than the left.
Arno was not a man to fear anything, especially in his current circumstance with the world behind him, commentators on radio and television singing his virtues and proclaiming him a visionary to lead a moral movement well into the century. And he wasn’t scared of LaChance either, not in those words anyway. It was more like the man flat sucked the strength out of him, his black egg-shaped eyes looking like what his father would have called glimpses of the abyss.
“You should have handled the boy yourself, LaChance,” he said finally. “I thought I made that plain.”
“Along with the importance of picking up those samples.” LaChance straightened his spine, seeming even bigger and more imposing. “Not a good idea to have the boy in tow when I did that.”
“You’re right,” Arno conceded. He could feel himself sweating now and angled himself sideways so the big man wouldn’t see it soaking through his shirt. “How about we check out the merchandise?”
“I think you’re gonna be real, real happy with what I got here,” LaChance said, and threw back the tarpaulin.
62
SAN ANTONIO; THE PRESENT
“You mind giving me that again?” said D. W. Tepper on the other end of the phone line.
Waiting at the gate for her flight back to San Antonio to be called, Caitlin could hear the crackle of cellophane being stripped off a pack of cigarettes. “My old friend Jones—”
“Thought his name was Smith.”
“It varies. Anyway, Jones thinks that poor kid from the Intrepid got his legs blown off because he caught wind of a Homeland Security investigation into billions of dollars in cash missing from Iraq.”
“Oh, shit,” Tepper droned.
“My thoughts exactly. Trail seems to lead to the right-wing militia movement.”
“Wait a minute, you telling me those unadulterated nutcases got their hands on that kind of green?”
“Straight from similar nutcase higher-ups in the army, among the original cadre running the Iraqi reconstruction.”
Tepper felt as if he’d swallowed something sour. “Meaning they were likely the ones who tried to blow you up down the road from the Intrepid last night. I’ll see their asses strung up a flagpole before this is over, Ranger.”
“It gets better, Captain. Jones brought up the name Malcolm Arno in particular.”
“If your daddy could hear this now…”
“What do you know about Arno and the Patriot Sun, Captain?”
The labored breathing returned again ahead of Tepper’s voice. “Well, Ranger, lemme put it this way. I wrote the report that brought the FBI to Waco. I scouted the woods on horseback when we took on the Republic of Texas folks, and I closed down the Church of the Redeemer with Jim Strong himself. I’m telling you this ’cause when you look these kind of men in the eye often enough, you get to know the type. I never met Max Arno’s son in person, never laid eyes on him up close, but I’ve seen him on television filling up the screen and that’s enough to tell he’s as bad as any of them, maybe worse. Not suicidal like Koresh, fanatical like Randy Weaver, or holier-than-thou like his father. And ’cause of that he scares me most of all.”
63
MIDLAND, TEXAS; THE PRESENT
“Very impressive,” Arno said, regarding the sight revealed beneath the now cloud-filled, late-afternoon sky.
“That was my thought too,” LaChance said. “Latest models just off the production line for the same price as the older ones.”
“You’re a good negotiator, LaChance.”
“Must be my charm,” the big man said.
Arno pictured a collection of guns like this in the hands of men beholden to those who’d been out to the ranch that week. Let loose on a country in which the kind of action that was coming was long overdue.
* * *
“Why don’t you get yourself a meal and rest up? I’ll meet you in the diner straightaway,” Dylan heard the other man say, as the boy pushed himself tighter against the big truck’s hot blue finish, scalding his arms. He’d managed to drop out of the bed when neither of them was watching, taking the impact on his shoulder and biting down the pain as he shimmied under the far side of the truck. The exhaust system’s chrome pipes steamed heat, roasting him more than the sun. He smelled gasoline mixing with the lingering stench of oily exhaust fumes and baked tar.
Through the long hours of the drive north from Mexico, he’d mostly forgotten about his dick still being out, but now there it was rubbing against his zipper, the boy doing everything he could to get it covered with his shirt even here under the truck’s cover.
“Mr. Arno?” he heard Baldy call, voice more distant now. “I’m sorry things didn’t work out with the boy.”
“Fortune dropped him into our lap and fortune took him away again,” said the man named Arno. “I suppose it’s God’s will, but I’m hard-pressed to figure out why.”
They exchanged more words, but Dylan had stopped listening by then. What the hell did the guy mean about fortune dropping him into his lap? Who was this guy and what did he want with him? Could be it had something to do with his father. An old enemy of Cort Wesley Masters Dylan had somehow stumbled upon in his quest to reach Maria Lopez.
The boy tried to angle himself closer to better hear the conversation. But he brushed his shoulder against one of the exhaust pipes as he shifted position and felt his skin singed through his shirt. Dylan bit his lip to avoid crying out but cracked his head good against the crankshaft when he jerked involuntarily away from the pipe.
“You hear something?” he heard the man named Arno say.
64
MIDLAND, TEXAS; THE PRESENT
“No, sir,” the big biker said. “Engine fluids just cooling off, that’s all.”
Arno didn’t respond. Dylan could see his legs and felt his breath seize up when the man’s knees bent slightly, as if he was crouching down to check under the truck.
“Something else, Mr. Arno,” Dylan heard Baldy continue. “The two men who delivered the kid to me in the desert have gone missing.”
Arno’s legs straightened again. “I would have expected as much, under the circumstances.”
“I don’t think they ran off. I think they’re in the ground. A couple army types showed up in a bar where they were drinking. The men left with them, under some duress I’m led to believe.”
“We own the army down there, LaChance.”
“I said army types. Uniforms, guns. They leave with the Mexicans and the Mexicans drop off the face of the earth.”
“Dig deeper. Find out who’s holding the leash of these army types.”
“Soon as I get back from up north. I missed my brothers’ funeral, you know.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Plenty more gonna be sorry before this is done. You know that stuff they say about feeling it when your twin gets hurt?”
“Yes.”
“It’s bullshit. They pulled the burned bodies of my brothers out of what was left of that grow house, one shot and the other with a knife still sticking out of his throat, and I didn’t feel a goddamn thing.”
“A knife sticking out of his throat?” Dylan heard the man named Arno say.
“That’s right. Why?”
“No reason. Nothing really.”
Dylan listened to Baldy’s biker boots finally clacking away across the pavement. He waited for the Arno guy to leave too before shifting out from beneath the truck the same way he’d gone under it. Wasn’t easy with his hands still bound behind him and this time his dick rubbed against the hot pavement.
He peered out from the cover of the big truck, registering he was on the grounds of some massive fortlike complex. The Arno guy had called it a ranch but it was plenty more than that. Virtually a self-contained small town—no, more like an army base. From the sprawl, Dylan figured it could accommodate thousands.
Which meant lots of hiding places.
He needed to hide out until he could find himself a phone, maybe a computer. Something to get word to his dad and Caitlin he was here.
Which was where exactly?
Dylan hoped the name “Arno” would give them enough of a clue. In the meantime, it was still light out and would be for a couple more hours. So maybe the thing to do was hole up until dark and then find a way out under the cover of night. Get to the nearest main road, and hope somebody picked him up.
Dylan’s lips were cracked and bleeding from dehydration. His mouth was a dry sewer bed and his tongue felt like a wad of cotton stuck in his mouth. His stomach ached with hunger, but he needed water more than anything, something else to put on the list.
The building nearest the parking lot looked to be some sort of welcoming and reception center. Dylan watched people he took for visitors entering and then emerging shortly afterward with some sort of badge in an adjustable holder dangling from their necks. They had transplanted some cedar elm and white ash trees to offer shade for the building both front and rear. That rear, he noticed, backed up against an assemblage of exposed piping perched on a berm, like they were having sewer trouble or something. And, sure enough, when the breeze turned right, Dylan caught the scent of human waste and stale manure.
Or maybe drainage was the problem in general, since the exposed foundation at the rear of the welcoming center looked higher than the front. The low-slung windows were outfitted with big wells to soak up the rain and keep it from inside the building. It was the closest structure, sure, but still a hundred yards away. A good half of that could be covered with parked vehicles for cover, which still left half in the open right under the thickening clouds.
Dylan managed the first half without incident, settling himself between a pair of nearly identical SUVs for the last stretch. He wondered what the residents of this place would make of a teenage boy lighting out the rest of the way with hands cuffed behind him and dick swinging free. Then, though, fortune smiled when the clouds opened up, spilling heavy rain that chased workers and strollers away from the outdoors.