by Jon Land
Dylan moved out into the sudden storm, feeling it drench him. It felt cool and refreshing, and he imagined himself opening his mouth to it from the cover of one of those window wells. He dropped into the first one he came to, tucking his body in low and tight so it couldn’t be glimpsed from casual view. The positioning pressed him up against the window of a subbasement or cellar that looked dark and lifeless beyond the glass. Then he angled himself to the storm, dipping his head backward to drink in the rainwater, opened his mouth and closed his eyes against its cascading torrents.
Suddenly he felt a hand close on his neck and shove him forward against the building, his face mashed against vinyl siding. The strong smell of shit, like the one he caught wafting in the air, assaulted him as a voice found his ear.
“Stay still,” Dylan heard it whisper.
Then he felt a sharp knife work its way through the remnants of his plastic bonds until his hands came free.
“Now stay here,” the human stench behind him said softly. “I’ll come back for you as soon as I can.”
And then he was gone.
65
SAN ANTONIO; THE PRESENT
“You run that plate, Captain?” Caitlin asked before she’d even taken the seat before D. W. Tepper’s desk. She’d barely slept at all the night before, staying up with Cort Wesley to keep him as calm as she could. Ended up getting even more pissed off than he was, her rage over the still missing Dylan trapping her between tears and fury that left her trembling in a chair.
Tepper’s eyes looked milky and bloodshot, a clear sign he was having trouble sleeping again himself. “Rather not tell you what I found, Ranger.”
“Why’s that exactly? You worried about me going old school again?”
Those tired eyes held hers as best they could. “Not you I’m worried about.”
“I can control Cort Wesley Masters.”
“No, you can’t. Nobody can. Somebody in Austin managed to get part of his military file unsealed—just part of it, mind you.” Tepper shook his head dramatically from side to side. “Man oh man, what we know about this boy doesn’t even scratch the surface of what he’s capable of.”
“Tell them to unseal the whole thing.”
“Come again?”
“Cort Wesley’s a war hero, Captain. Problem is the kind of unit he was part of does everything under the sand. That’s the kind of man the State of Texas is willing to send back to Mexico thanks to a single letter from a corrupt governor.”
Tepper weighed her words, tobacco-stained fingers interlaced before him. “Tell me one thing, Ranger. Did he do what they say he did or not?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Just answer the question.”
“Yeah, he did, but—”
“I don’t wanna hear no buts right now. If Masters’s beef is genuine, tell him to take my nephew’s advice and get himself a high-priced lawyer and take it up with the attorney general. Our job is to bring him in and turn him over to the federal marshals. We don’t do it, you think Austin’s just gonna forget and let this go? And it’s not just Austin; we got Washington breathing down our backs to avoid some kind of goddamn diplomatic incident here.”
“Tell me about the truck, D.W., the truth behind that nonexistent hunting lodge in Kilgore.”
“Jesus Christ, Caitlin, are you listening to me at all?”
“You want me to bring in Masters, we’d best help bring his son back first.”
Tepper frowned, Caitlin catching a glimpse of the fresh tobacco stains on his front teeth. “This nonexistent hunting lodge is a front belonging to a shell real estate company that traced back to none other than the Patriot Sun.”
“Shit.”
“That was my thought.”
“Wraps everything up in a neat little bow, doesn’t it?”
“In a package we can’t touch, Ranger,” Tepper said coarsely. “What we supposed to say about what put us onto the truck in the first place, given the way the information was obtained?”
“You and my dad were never ones to stand on ceremony before, D.W.”
“This ain’t ceremony, Caitlin, it’s survival. There’s powerful folks out there who count themselves as friends and allies of Malcolm Arno. Hell, there’s pictures on the governor’s website of the two of them together, for Christ’s sake. Used it as his home screen for a time.”
“Homepage.”
“Huh?”
“It’s called a homepage.”
Tepper fished a pack of Marlboros from his top desk drawer, tapped one out, and stuck it in his mouth.
“Why you doing that in front of me, Captain?”
“To piss you off as much as you just pissed me off,” he said, flicking a match to life.
“Well, since I’m on a roll, try this out: I need to get inside Arno’s complex.”
Tepper sucked in a deep drag off his Marlboro, then wrinkled his nose. “Private property last time I checked. You’ll need cause.”
“I was thinking maybe a warrant.”
“Not based on what we got on that truck, Ranger.”
Caitlin thought back to her conversation with Jones and the man White from Homeland. “My friend in Washington believes Arno’s responsible for blowing up that judge in Galveston a few days back.”
“Sometimes you really know how to scare me.”
“Explosives were pretty sophisticated stuff, Captain. PETN—that’s pentaerythritol tetranitrate. My friend in Washington referred to it as military grade, one of the most powerful explosives known to man. You want to send him a sample of what they used trying to blow me up and see if it matches?”
“Your friend willing to go on record with this?”
“Anonymous source.”
“Still not enough to get you a warrant.”
“How about an interview?”
“Come again?”
“Can we make Arno a person of interest in the Galveston bombing?”
Tepper weighed her words. “You tell me.”
“Well, let’s assume we had evidence he’s got this PETN on the premises.”
“Except we don’t.”
“Arno won’t know that.”
Tepper pressed out his cigarette in a dish he used as an ashtray since he’d tossed all his real ones the last time he quit, his face looking like he was coming down with indigestion. “Past is gone, Ranger, and better left that way.”
“I’m fine with that, Captain, so long as Malcolm Arno is too.”
66
SAN ANTONIO; THE PRESENT
“Not sure whether that puts him on our side or not,” Cort Wesley said, after Caitlin summarized the salient points of her conversation with Captain Tepper. “Well, yours maybe.”
“He’s giving us the cover we need.”
“Only you, from where I’m standing.” He was leaning against the fender of Caitlin’s dust-encrusted SUV, looking almost spectral in the darkness around him.
“I’m talking to Arno, somebody’s gotta check the grounds.”
“What do you think your captain would think about that?”
“I don’t really give a damn right now.” Caitlin checked her watch. “Come on, we got an appointment across town before we head west in the morning.”
“Appointment?”
“Sometimes even the best need backup, Cort Wesley.”
* * *
Their backup was seated at a shaded terrace table at Starbucks on the Riverwalk. Dressed like a cowboy right down to the Wrangler jeans, fringed coat, and hat beneath which a shock of white hair flowed well past his shoulders. The cowboy took off his sunglasses and rose at their approach.
“R. Lee Shine,” he said, extending his hand to Caitlin first before moving it and his eyes on to Cort Wesley.
Caitlin waited for Cort Wesley to finish sizing the man up before speaking. She could see his muscles tensing, regarding Shine as if he were a foe instead of friend. His eyes narrowed, preferring to see a narrower piece of the world he was just reminded wasn�
�t his to control.
“Mr. Shine here’s one of the best criminal attorneys in the state,” she said, hoping to get Cort Wesley to focus.
“I don’t need to be thinking about that right now,” he said instead.
“Sit down, Cort Wesley.”
His eyes remained fixed on the lawyer as if this was a draw down. “I don’t mind standing.”
“Let’s all sit down.”
Caitlin did so first, Shine following while Cort Wesley remained standing with the setting sun hitting him like a spotlight. “Cort Wesley,” she prompted.
And he finally sat down, pushing his chair an uncomfortable distance from the table and crossing his arms before him.
“As I was saying,” Caitlin resumed, “Mr. Shine here comes very highly recommended.”
“By who?”
“By folks in even worse predicaments than you, I suppose,” Shine said, facing Cort Wesley and showing no fear or trepidation whatsoever. He had gunfighter’s eyes, the kind that never seemed to blink or back down. Cort Wesley met his gaze, seeming to respect that. “Been retired for a few years now,” Shine continued. “But once in a while a case comes up I can’t resist. The two of you wanna get something inside?”
“Not right now,” said Cort Wesley.
“We could go for something stronger instead. My granddaughter’s band, The Rats, is playing at a roadhouse just up the road a ways.”
Cort Wesley shook his head. “I’ll take a rain check, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” Shine told him. “Anyway, I had the privilege to cross paths a few times with both Ranger Strong’s father and grandfather and now I’m glad to have the pleasure to be meeting her.”
“My dad and granddad both said you were as good with a law book as they were with a pistol. Think it was my dad who said when you addressed a jury even Justice herself pulled off her blindfold to watch.”
“Well,” said Shine, settling back in his chair, “I won almost all of them, but there are still nights when sleep won’t come on account of the ones I lost.” He turned his gaze on Cort Wesley. “Ranger Strong asked me to have a look at your case. She also explained some of the circumstances involved, which we’ll call irrelevant now far as legal purposes go.” He leaned forward, a thin band of amber sunlight splitting his face down the middle. “Let’s start with the second most pertinent part of the Extradition Treaty between the U.S. and Mexico: ‘The Contracting Parties agree to mutually extradite, subject to the provisions of this Treaty, persons who the competent authorities of the requesting Party have charged with an offense or have found guilty of committing an offense, or are wanted by said authorities to complete a judicially pronounced penalty of deprivation of liberty for an offense committed within the territory of the requesting Party.’”
Cort Wesley pushed his chair forward a bit. “Right now, I got one thing on my mind and one thing only. That’s finding my son. ’Til that happens, I’m not going to be much for listening to such crap.”
“You said that was the second most pertinent part,” Caitlin interjected, so Shine would continue addressing the issue at hand.
“Yes, I did,” the old lawyer said, words aimed at Cort Wesley, “because here’s the first: ‘Extradition shall be granted only if the evidence be found sufficient, according to the laws of the requested Party, either to justify the committal for trial of the person sought if the offense of which he has been accused had been committed in that place or to prove that he is the person convicted by the courts of the requesting Party.’ You see the point here?”
“Mexicans gotta prove I did it to make the United States give me up.”
“Not exactly. They just have to show a preponderance of evidence suggesting your guilt, and the standard applied, my friend, is America’s, not Mexico’s. You got a dollar, Mr. Masters?”
“I do,” Cort Wesley said and fished it from his pocket.
Shine took it from his grasp and slipped it into his lapel pocket. “We’ll call that a retainer. Makes me your duly appointed attorney charged with your representation. Now tell me this: did you kill this man as it is alleged?”
“Yes, sir, I did.”
“Were there witnesses?”
“None that were looking once the bullets started flying.”
“How far away were you from the nearest witness?”
“Ten feet maybe.”
“Facing him?”
“Back turned.”
“Inside or outside?”
“Inside. A bar.”
“Then we can assume any witnesses were drinking.”
“A fair estimation.”
Shine leaned back again. “You can see what I’m getting at here. We need to demonstrate in the appropriate federal court that the preponderance of evidence is not enough to warrant granting the extradition request. The problem is that with a murder case most times the court will side with the requesting party unless there are witnesses present to contradict the alleged crime in its entirety. A witness offering an alibi, perhaps. But an affirmative defense, or claim of self-defense, seldom if ever flies at this stage.”
“What are my chances?” Cort Wesley asked him.
“Of avoiding jail in Mexico, I’d say fair to pretty good. Can’t say the same about avoiding some incarceration north of the border.”
“I miss something here?” Caitlin interjected.
“No, ma’am. Once Mr. Masters turns himself in, he won’t be eligible for bail because no suspect subject to extradition qualifies under the statute. And the Mexican authorities are notoriously slow in producing the requested material and documentation required for the court to render a decision. Not a verdict, mind you, just a decision whether to grant the request or not. Best chance we got is to make a prima facie case based on the facts alone being in dispute and seek a directed verdict. But I’d be lying if I said I thought I could convince even a drunken monkey of that, and there are plenty on the federal bench who fit that description to a T.”
“I don’t like the part about turning myself in,” Cort Wesley said, stiffening.
“Figure of speech. From what I’ve been able to gather, this is being pushed at the highest levels so the American, and thus the Texas, authorities have no choice but to act and act quickly.”
“You understand granting the extradition request is basically a death sentence,” said Caitlin. “Cort Wesley Masters has got no better chance living long enough down there to stand trial than I do of growing a third arm.”
Shine processed that with his eyes widening slightly and shifting between the two of them before they locked onto Cort Wesley again, stiffer than the steel chair on which he was seated. “I’m not gonna lie to you, Mr. Masters. This is one big ugly mess, best thing being that I’ve cleaned up far worse ones and you’ve got a Texas Ranger vouching for your character. I understand what you’re going through with your boy. Got six kids myself and eleven grandchildren. Anybody tried to separate me from them, you know what I’d do?”
Caitlin and Cort Wesley waited for him to continue.
“I’d get me the best lawyer there was with a gunfighter’s mind-set who doesn’t take prisoners and never misses the bull’s-eye.”
“That’s the problem, Mr. Shine,” Cort Wesley told him, his joints cracking as he leaned forward. “Everybody misses sometimes.”
67
MIDLAND, TEXAS; THE NIGHT BEFORE
The night before, Dylan had pulled himself up out of the window well long after the man who smelled like a sewer pipe failed to return. It was well past midnight, if he was reading the sky correctly, probably around three a.m. He’d nodded off a few times, only to be awoken by a combination of the hunger panging his stomach and the stench rising off his clothes more fit for a dumpster than his body. He hated the feel of filth all over him and the oil matting his hair to his skin and scalp.
The sprawling complex had fallen quiet and still after dark, though he thought he heard popping sounds coming from under the ground. Could be fr
om slant drilling born of oil wells actually located miles away. Could be this whole complex was built directly over hell itself.
There were guards posted about and others patrolling the grounds in Jeep Wranglers. Dylan also noticed a pair of watchtowers manned by men with spotlights and binoculars that reminded him of prison movies he’d seen. Made him wonder if they had tripod-mounted machine guns up there and just who the tower guards were fixing to shoot if they did.
It helped him to think this way, focus on the goal at hand to take his mind off how miserable he felt. He needed to find a phone to make contact with his dad and Caitlin, and the time had come to do that instead of just thinking about it. The relief over being able to use his hands after the cramped ordeal of the past day, just being able to zip his pants up, had abated, but at least those hands and arms had stopped cramping.
Dylan stayed low as he emerged from the window well, moving in a crouch and sometimes hitting the thick grass when lights of the patrolling Jeep Wranglers splayed his way through the night. He moved toward a heavy concentration of buildings and used them for cover in working his way around to the most outlying structures, where he was least likely to encounter resistance.
One building in particular caught his attention because it was situated totally by itself. There was a guard posted at its front but no one else in evidence Dylan could see. The windows looked to be partially blacked out, or perhaps just covered by dark shades, allowing just the slightest glow of light to emanate from within.
Dylan risked a hundred-yard dash across open ground, glad also for the fact that this far out no security cameras mounted on nearby buildings were likely to catch him. He reached the far side of the building’s rear without incident and pressed himself against the dark siding, listening to the steady hum of air-conditioning units that had further disguised his approach. Leaning up against the structure, he heard strange sounds coming from within that made him think of dogs whimpering from fear of a thunderstorm or some other reason humans couldn’t understand. But he thought little more of that and busied himself instead with finding a way inside.