by Jon Land
This building too was constructed with window wells off the basement windows to add drainage, and Dylan slipped into one not to hide again but to gain access. The window was latched but maybe not locked down. Pushing on it gained him little movement, but hammering it with a closed fist moved it slightly, enough to go back to pushing for the final result.
Click.
Dylan felt the latch separate from its slot and snap downward. The window came open in his hand; not all the way but enough, he hoped, to accommodate him. It was the first time in recent memory he was glad he had his mother’s size and not his father’s. He managed to snake his upper body through the gap first, then shimmy his lower body down after it. Extending his arms to cushion his drop.
Except there wasn’t much of one. The basement was more of a drainage culvert to hold water in the event of spring flooding. The floor was hard-packed gravel with a covering of stones, angular depressions every ten feet or so indicating some kind of pumping apparatus and catch basin.
Dylan’s eyes adjusted to the darkness quickly, not scared or hesitant, even when something with tiny claws scampered over the outstretched hands pulling him along. The whole way he kept feeling about the ceiling with his palms, hoping to find the hatchway he expected to be there to provide access to the man-made culvert. When he didn’t find one on his first pass beneath the building, he doubled back five feet down, resigned to repeat the process as long as it took for him to find a way into the building above where there had to be a phone.
In the end, it took five trips up and back before he found what he was looking for and then only by accident when he hammered the ceiling in frustration and heard the dull thud he’d been hoping for. He was similarly fortunate that the hatch he found opened both up and down. All he needed to do was yank back the bolt and the hatch would drop, allowing him to climb up.
Without the moon to follow, he’d lost track of time and didn’t care about it anymore, his focus changed now. He drew the bolt back and lowered the hatch slowly. Once all the way open, it barely cleared the stone topping layer of the gravel floor, and Dylan eased his upper body into position to climb through it, moving deliberately and agilely.
He was vaguely conscious of a bittersweet smell he couldn’t quite put his finger on, the whimpering sound a bit louder now too if he’d stopped to notice. Instead, Dylan was swept by a triumphant glee and sense of relief that comes when you realize the nightmare that just woke you up in a cold sweat wasn’t real at all. The misery of the last three days was going to end in this building he began to hoist himself into.
What he’d taken for whimpering sounded more like purring now in the darkness before him, accompanied by strange rasps and rattles that didn’t sound human at all. Dylan got his head through all the way, easing his shoulders up to follow as his eyes adjusted to the darkness.
“Oh, shit,” he thought at the sight around him, hoping for dear life he hadn’t said it out loud.
But maybe he had, because the next thing he knew the world exploded in light and the whimpers turned into screeching wails.
68
MIDLAND, TEXAS; THE PRESENT
She was a good girl, Malcolm Arno reflected, one of the best he’d ever had. He’d let her go into the bathroom after they were finished, passing the time by standing naked before the big bay window looking over the wooded rear of the complex, formed of transplanted trees. He’d had his personal residence built flush against those trees, wanting to feel, with a glance through the glass, that he was deep in the forest, far from the humanity he was dedicated to change forever. The hour after dawn being his favorite time of the day to revel in the view, the glow shimmering off the world a harbinger of things to come that immediately lifted his spirits.
Arno heard retching sounds coming from the bathroom, followed by the toilet flushing. He remained by the window, with only the trees to bear witness to the act now consummated.
He loved being in bed with one of his girls with the blinds open to the dark woods beyond. Reminded him of the few times his father had taken him camping as a boy before the demands of the church became so great and Malcolm had to share him with members and sycophants alike. It had been so long since he’d had his father all to himself, when the Texas Rangers came and set them off on the run together. Malcolm actually enjoyed those days more than he could have possibly imagined.
They hadn’t gone far actually—just to a local motel the church owned to wait the law out. Strange how those were such happy memories for Malcolm, the last he held of his father before he was killed in that parking lot by an assassin wearing a cinco-pesos badge. Three days spent watching pay-per-view movies and eating food his father’s bodyguards brought in from fast-food joints and pizza parlors. It was like a great adventure.
And then it ended, all too soon.
Arno heard the girl retching again. Flush, went the toilet.
She was a luscious find, but too small and immature in the bones. Underdeveloped thanks to malnutrition. Give her a few weeks here with the Patriot Sun, though, and watch her sprout and blossom. She hadn’t been ready for him tonight, but she would be soon. And in the meantime Arno would try out the others, his mind drifting back the whole time to nights spent hidden in closets or peeking through cracked-open doors at men from his father’s Church of the Redeemer doing the very same thing.
The toilet flushed again, the door opening to reveal the girl’s thin frame silhouetted like a stick figure against the single light reflecting off the mirror. Arno held his gaze upon her, repulsed in that instant by his own proclivities and whims, the shadows revealing this girl to be nothing like the vision conjured up by his fantasy.
He checked his watch, an exact replica of his father’s, and found the time for his scheduled video call was just a few moments away. Glad to have an excuse, Arno threw his T-shirt back on and pulled his arms through his bathrobe, tying it tightly as he walked downstairs to his office.
Hardly a wizard with technology, Arno nonetheless much preferred a video call to the standard variety. He liked looking at the speaker’s eyes, believing they had far more to say than words. As he settled in behind his computer screen, though, the problem was the other man’s features were virtually lost to a spectral blur of colors and dots that intensified with each slight movement. His eyes were no more than black holes chiseled out of his head. All Arno could tell was that the man was wearing a doctor’s lab coat, of all things, and he had a nametag pinned to his lapel wrongly identifying him as someone named GILROY.
“Last time I checked that wasn’t your name,” Arno said.
The man picked at his gray mustache, which looked more silver in the strangely dancing color schemes. “It’s been a long couple days.”
“I assume that’s why we’re talking.”
“You’re going to have a visitor later today. A Texas Ranger named Caitlin Strong.”
Arno felt every part of him stiffen. Even his toes seemed to lock into place. “I know the name.”
“I thought you might. There are several among us who are concerned by what the subject of her visit might be.”
“Concerned?”
“We never authorized the hit on that judge in Galveston, Mr. Arno.”
“I don’t recall needing your authorization to run the Patriot Sun as I see fit. That is why you came to me, isn’t it?”
“My parents were devout members of the Church of the Redeemer. That made you the perfect choice to help realize our common goals.”
“So you acknowledge I don’t take orders from you.”
On the screen before him, the man’s grainy visage tightened. “There was no implication either way.”
“Why can’t you just say what you mean?”
The man angled his face sideways, hardly looking into his webcam anymore. “We tried to deal with this problem for you. Things didn’t work out.”
“What do you mean by that?” Then, before the man could answer, “Wait, you’re not telling me you tried to kill a Texa
s Ranger?”
“It was deemed an appropriate protocol.”
Arno shook his head, hoping the man on the other end of the feed could see his displeasure. “Appropriate protocol,” he repeated. “And you’re criticizing me for taking out one pain-in-the-ass judge?”
“Sir, I remind you that—”
“No, soldier, I’d like to remind you that your military cabal came to me with the money I needed to do something the Patriot Sun is now well on its way to doing. I listened because your parents were devoted followers of my father and I believed our causes were the same. But I also need to remind you that your side isn’t the one in charge anymore. You know what you’ve got for power besides the Tea Party that can’t get out of its own way? Me, you’ve got me. You want the civilians on our side militarized? You want to take full advantage of the tide turning in our direction? Then just sit back and get out of my way.”
The man pulled back from the camera, further obscuring his features. “Your past involvement with this Texas Ranger is a concern, Mr. Arno.”
“The one you failed to kill?”
“Sir, you need to—”
“I don’t need to do anything, soldier. This is my show now and I’ll thank you to stay out of it. Maybe next time you want to make a move like taking out a Texas Ranger, it should be you asking my permission. Only good thing that came out of your cabal’s work in Iraq was the money you funneled to me. So excuse me if I don’t profess a lot of confidence in your ability to nation build.”
Arno thought he could see the man swallowing hard, his anxiety clear even through all the pixilation on the computer screen.
“You don’t understand the complexity of the situation, sir,” the army man offered.
“But I understand it’s got to be rectified and that’s what I intend to do when Caitlin Strong shows up.”
The doorbell rang and Arno rose, still angled so the webcam could find him. “There’s something else I need to attend to. We finished here?”
“I hope not, sir, I truly do.”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Arno said, terminating the feed.
He moved into the spacious wood-paneled foyer and threw open the front door to find Jed Kean waiting outside, toothy grin stretched from ear to ear, the first rays of the morning sun framed behind him.
“What are you so happy about?” Arno asked, still irritable and on edge after his conversation with the army man.
“I’d rather show you, boss,” Kean said, grinning.
69
YUCATÁN PENINSULA; THE PRESENT
As the first public official to ever wage open war against the Mexican drug cartels, Fernando Lozano Sandoval had good reason to sleep in a different bed practically every night. But that didn’t mean he had to demean himself or his lifestyle. His position as chief of the Chihuahua State Investigations Agency came with an unlimited expense account—for good reason since it was the only way he could stay alive long enough to win the war he was waging against the all-powerful cartels.
This seaside home at the base of the Yucatán Peninsula had been confiscated from a major drug lord Sandoval had incarcerated along with dozens of others. He found a pleasing irony in making their lavish homes his personal hostels; not so pleasing was the fact that much of his budget stemmed from similarly confiscated drugs being resold to consolidators for whom this business was no different from widgets or surge suppressors. Just another product, a commodity to put out to bid.
Sandoval had gone for a long walk on the beach under the first light of the dawn, finding great pleasure in the smell of the sea air and the waves hammering the shoreline with the promise of an approaching storm. He loved this time of day, the world at its most peaceful where even hope seemed possible. He finally returned to the villa with two of his guards to find the four watching the exterior of his home nowhere to be seen. The men who’d accompanied him on his walk stowed him behind the tree line and moved toward the house. The door facing the water, Sandoval could now see, was cracked open. There should have been three more men inside the house and four watching all points of the access road, in addition to the missing ones who should have been patrolling the perimeter.
From the safety of the tree line, Sandoval neither saw nor heard anything coming from the house. Nothing to suggest something was amiss, but also nothing to indicate it wasn’t.
More minutes passed. Sandoval checked his watch to find time had frozen, its battery dead. He took that as a terrible omen, the false serenity the beach had provided vanishing in the same instant that left Sandoval conjuring terrible thoughts about the fate of his wife and his children. Questioning himself over the course of action that could only get him killed with all his vast accomplishments wiped out in a single moment that seemed upon him now. Did he really think he could insulate himself from the same treachery that had plagued his country since the cartels had taken over so much of it? What a fool! He shook his wrist, checked his watch again as if to cling to a faint hope fostered by seeing the time move again.
“It’s just after seven,” a voice said from behind Sandoval, just as a smell like stale cooking grease reached him. “Time for us to talk.”
* * *
“Your men are all fine,” Guillermo Paz told him when they were inside, seated in chairs overlooking the sea, the waves crashing on the shore looking like bursts of white light against the fog now encroaching on the shoreline.
“You could have just called, Colonel.”
“Suficiente verdadero. But I figured this was a good way to make my point.”
“By which you mean…”
“That you can’t stop me.”
“Stop you from doing what, Colonel?”
Paz responded with his gaze lingering on the sea. “How many places are there like the one in San Luis Patosí where children are bought and traded like coffee beans?”
Sandoval didn’t hesitate. “Fifteen. Scattered across the country.”
“You have an agreement with these people, of course.”
“An arrangement would be a better way of putting it.”
Paz turned toward him, his eyes glowing like black rubies in the room’s ambient light. “It’s time to break it.”
“Perhaps you forget that you work for me, Colonel.”
“Not at all. But perhaps you forget why you came to me in particular to do your bidding. Another reason why I disabled your men, to remind you.”
“What do you want?”
“I think you know.”
“I already gave the Ranger San Luis Patosí.”
“It’s not enough. You brought me in to build an army to help you cleanse the country. Well, that’s what I intend to do with these fifteen safe houses, and the quicker I finish, the quicker I’ll be able to get back to the task at hand.”
Sandoval tried to remind himself he was the one in charge, but all he managed to do was gulp down some air.
“I suspect your friends in the American government have no idea of this arrangement,” Paz told him. “Imagine the repercussions if they were to learn of it.” He stopped and maneuvered his chair to better face Sandoval. “The man responsible for seeing these children brought home will become a hero, on the other hand.”
“I already am a hero, Colonel.”
“A much greater one then. Do you read Cervantes?”
“No.”
“Not even Don Quixote?”
“Perhaps.” Sandoval shrugged. “A long time ago.”
“Cervantes wrote that a person dishonored is worse than dead. Do you wish to be dead?”
“Need I remind you we’re on the same side, Colonel?”
“Answer my question first. Do you wish to be dishonored?”
“That’s a different question.”
“No,” Paz told him, rising from his chair toward a pair of ceiling fans spinning lazily on either side of him, “it’s not.”
PART SEVEN
He’s a strange combination of the old and the new … with the glory of t
he old still clinging to him and shining out with the glory of modern achievement in his line of work. He has of necessity clung to the traditions and methods of a vanishing age, yet at the same time, he is a modern-day scientific investigator, fully schooled in the utilization of ballistics, chemistry, finger-printing, and all the other scientific devices through which up-to-date law enforcement agencies bring criminals to justice.
—The Alamo News, 1941
70
MIDLAND, TEXAS; THE PRESENT
“Your friend didn’t give us a lot of reason for hope, did he?” Cort Wesley said after they’d set out on the long drive to Midland.
Caitlin felt stiff behind the wheel, the sun seeming to find her no matter which way the road headed. “R. Lee Shine’s not my friend. But he just might be the best criminal attorney in Texas history.”
“That how he got to know Earl and Jim Strong?”
“Yeah, by getting off a host of folks they arrested and then buying the beers afterward. And I must’ve heard a different tale than you did come off Shine’s lips.”
Cort Wesley looked at her with his eyes catching a reflection of the sun, while not seeming to blink. “I’m not going back to jail, Ranger.”
“I don’t expect you’ll have to.”
“I’m talking about even for a day. Once I surrender myself, I lose all control and the next stop could be Mexico.”
“Did you hear what I just said about R. Lee Shine?”
“I heard you, but it’s not enough.”
“Maybe you should’ve thought of that before you plugged that drug dealer.”
Caitlin could see the light sheen of sweat that had risen to Cort Wesley’s brow in the mere moments they’d been speaking. “I shouldn’t have killed him. It was a foolish act bred of nothing but vengeance. Is that what you wanna hear?”