Strong Vengeance

by Jon Land

  “Then I suppose we’ll let this go,” Caitlin told him, racking the slide and clipping the holster to her belt. “This time.”

  She closed the cabin door behind the boys, ignoring the last of their protestations and not bothering to explain how vulnerable they all were to a gunman firing from the deck sixty feet above. They’d towed the emergency raft the whole way with them, speed kept slow to keep its contents as undisturbed as possible.

  Caitlin reluctantly pulled out her cell phone and called D. W. Tepper at Ranger Company D headquarters, while Captain Bob worked to tie down their boat against the support leg.

  “I thought you said you were going fishing,” he said, after she’d filled him in.

  “I did. Caught something I wasn’t expecting.”

  “Bodies just seem to keep finding you,” he said after what seemed like a longer pause than it really was, “don’t they?”

  “At least this is one I didn’t kill myself, D.W.”

  “Clang-clang, Caitlin. That’s the sound of the desk I chained you to. And I gotta tell you I’m of a mind to have you wait for the Coast Guard. You wanna tell me why I shouldn’t?”

  “Because there’s bad trouble sixty feet away and maybe more people dying. You want to explain to them or their families why you waited for the Coast Guard?”

  “Why do I think you planned this whole damn thing?” She heard him retch and cough up some phlegm, thanks to the pack-a-day habit he’d quit a hundred times only to resume just as fast. “What would you do if I ordered you to wait for the Coast Guard?”

  “Probably climb on board that rig anyway.”

  “I see all that desk duty has really mellowed you, hasn’t it? You got your gun?”

  “No, sir,” Caitlin said, not bothering to elaborate.

  “Just stay put, and that’s an order.”

  “I could take Captain Bob along.”

  “He tell you how he first became acquainted with your daddy?”

  “Nope. I assumed it was being hired for a charter.”

  “Not quite. Man was captain of a boat known for ferrying bales of marijuana, not people. Jim Strong and I busted him on the back of a shrimp trawler the Rangers raided after learning it was picking up more than shellfish at sea. Believe Captain Bob did himself a stretch in Huntsville as a result.”

  “His tattoos bear that out.”

  Caitlin heard Tepper clear his throat and cough up some more mucus. “Damnest thing is that was the last time I was ever on a boat. I got so damn seasick, I puked on my boots. Your daddy was still laughing when we dropped our badges on the poor bastard.”

  “That why he became the Strongs’ choice for charter?”

  “That and the fact that we found the biggest trout and striped bass you ever saw on the same ice that was hiding the drugs.”

  “I’m heading up to the rig, Captain,” Caitlin said, starting for the ladder.

  “No, you’re not. Ranger, you listen up here and listen good.…”

  But she hit End before Tepper could continue.

  12

  NORTHERN GULF STREAM, THE PRESENT

  Save for the hot steel of the rungs burning her flesh, the climb passed easily with no sightings of any threats above and the stiff winds posing only a minor inconvenience. As soon as she crested the ladder and climbed aboard the Mariah, Caitlin noticed the scorching heat first, the vast assemblages of steel holding the sun’s blistering rays like a blast furnace. A jack-up rig like the Mariah might be only half the size of its massive deepwater brethren, but Caitlin could otherwise see little difference on deck. Baffles and mounts rose from the surface everywhere, fighting for space amid what looked to be a random assortment of multileveled clutter when she knew quite the opposite was true.

  Everything aboard an offshore rig came with a purpose, and the Mariah was no exception. She smelled grease and paint where the deck rails had been given a fresh coat. The pungent odor of a strong industrial solvent laced the air as well, evidence that the decks had recently been swabbed down. She caught the sour stench of drilling mud stored in an endless array of fifty-five-gallon black drums stacked on shelves reachable only by cranes that hovered over the deck like silent sentinels. She didn’t recall seeing this many of them even on board the larger deepwater rigs that were so self-contained they even mixed their own drilling cement.

  It was the lack of sound on the rig that bothered Caitlin the most, her hand straying close to Cort Wesley’s holstered Glock on her belt. Other than the rhythmic whirring coming from the louvered engine room, there was nothing. No deafening clatter emanating from the driller shack or heavy thunk-thunk of the derricks driving steel downward. No boisterous yells or calls from the deckhands and roustabouts who should have been everywhere but instead weren’t anywhere to be seen.

  The Mariah looked to be a newer rig or had perhaps been retrofitted to be more efficient and economical. Caitlin’s tour of one of its larger deepwater brethren had stressed the fact that rig owners and operators received regular reports of the pumping operation itself twenty-four/seven. They’d also be constantly in contact with personnel on board the Mariah via phone or computer. With that in mind, she figured somebody at headquarters was likely already panicking and she’d be surprised if other calls hadn’t been put into the Coast Guard in addition to the one Captain Bob had made.

  The wind picked up, carrying a rusty odor on the air with it, and Caitlin thought she could feel the platform wobble ever so slightly beneath her feet.

  Wait …

  The smell of rust that lingered briefly increased her unease for the most part because she could see none in evidence. So maybe it wasn’t rust at all, but something else, and only one other thing applied there:

  Blood—the odor faint enough to be missed by any but someone both trained to know it and, like Caitlin, having experienced the distinctive smell firsthand all too often.

  Caitlin drew the Glock, which made her feel no better at all. She slid past the exhaust manifolds and ventilation ducts. The platform was rectangular with several abutments jutting outward over the sea. One held a helipad that was currently empty, twin drilling derricks resting atop two more.

  She moved toward the two-story stack of prefabricated housing units. The elevated drill shack containing the bridge and office of the operations installation manager, or OIM, together with the derricks combined to throw shadows across the deck, slicing it into splotchy grids and making Caitlin further feel as if she had entered some world ruled by a robotic race. Emergency alarm pulls were stationed everywhere it seemed, adding even more to her deep sense of foreboding. It seemed impossible to even conceive of something catastrophic occurring on the rig without a single of those alarms being pulled. But clearly none had been triggered, which meant that whatever had befallen the crew had happened so fast none of the two dozen or so could reach a station.

  She bypassed the housing units in favor of the engine room. The steel entry door, more like the hatch variety normally associated with a submarine, was cracked open and Caitlin entered to the clatter of piston-driven machinery loud enough to make her ears bubble. Everything must have been functioning on autopilot since not a single worker was in evidence.

  Caitlin did a cursory check of the claustrophobic chamber, smelling no blood amid the grease, oil, and superheated steel. But the sudden tinny blare of sound left her slightly disoriented and discomfited that her ears could no longer provide advance warning of a potential attacker’s approach. She emerged from the engine room even more wary and certain that whatever had sent the gunshot victim fleeing the Mariah aboard the emergency raft was long done.

  Fresh paint …

  She recalled the orange stains on the dead man’s jumpsuit and followed the line of WET PAINT signs stuck to the drying handrails. She came to a point not far from where a flotilla of emergency escape craft, including the oblong life pods and more rafts like the one currently tied to Captain Bob’s charter boat, were located on the furthermost edge of the deck. Sure enough
, she found a spot on the handrail that was marred by grease and smudged to reveal the dull old paint beneath the new. Still palming the Glock, Caitlin crouched and studied the grated deck floor, catching what could have been dried blood.

  Though shot, the dead man had managed to get this far and then used one of the inflatable rafts to escape. Caitlin pictured him at work inside the engine room when gunmen burst in firing. He’d been hit but managed somehow to delay death at least long enough to take flight. But he wouldn’t have been alone in the engine room, so where were his workmates? Where was the rest of the Mariah’s crew?

  Both Caitlin’s father and grandfather preached that they’d never been scared of anything they could see or stood before them. It was the unknown—a drunk laying in ambush, a punk wanting the criminal glory of taking down a Texas Ranger, a meth head poised behind a door in a darkened room—that cost them sleep and became fodder for nightmares. But Caitlin couldn’t recall a single one of even Earl Strong’s many tales where he’d come up against anything like this, where a couple dozen or so men had simply vanished into thin air.

  Caitlin edged onward, trusting her nose now. She could remember her granddad’s tales of hunting down escaped cons literally by catching wind of their stench. It got so word spread through the penal system not to run before taking a shower. So she sniffed the air for the coppery rust scent she’d caught on the wind earlier.

  Trouble was the wind was whipping everywhere now and likely spreading the blood scent with it. Caitlin continued her inspection more traditionally instead, finding the mess hall, media center, and recreation room all empty and undisturbed. Whatever had happened here, whatever had befallen the crew, had gone down too fast to get out a Mayday call. The normal condition and working order of the rig itself seemed to eliminate some form of attack, sabotage, or violent spree by a wayward roustabout or deckhand. That left something premeditated and thought out to the last move, and that didn’t bode well at all for the fate of the crew. She wondered if this might have been a kidnapping, the force behind it with an ax to grind against whatever oil company owned the Mariah. Or maybe it was terrorism.

  Caitlin had started to carve a serpentine path through the endless machinery, baffling and venting toward the cabins when a door marked GYM caught her eye. She’d missed it in her initial survey of the deck, recalling only now Luke’s mention of such a facility as a mainstay of even the smaller jack-up rigs like this.

  Caitlin holstered the Glock long enough to turn the hatch wheel until the door snapped open. She eased it inward and started inside, gun in hand again. A few stray rays of the sun illuminated her path just before something struck her hard and fast, a gunshot exploding in her eardrums.

  13

  NUEVO LAREDO, MEXICO; THE PRESENT

  Cort Wesley Masters faced the giant from the center of the makeshift ring atop the dirt, gravel, and stones of the prison yard. He could feel the heat from the relentless sunlight earlier in the day steaming his feet through his shoes. His prison-issue trousers bagged on him like a burlap sack and the matching shirt was dry and scratchy against his skin. That sunlight was intermittent now, coming and going between clouds that had grown darker and more ominous as the day wore on.

  The prison yard came complete with two cracked asphalt basketball courts featuring steel nets and dinged flat walls to play a paddle game Cort Wesley hadn’t quite figured out yet. If not for the white stone walls topped by barbed wire and three guard towers, only one of which was manned, he supposed this could have been a schoolyard instead. But he doubted that schoolyards came with dust so thick it coated the occupants’ mouths and airways to a degree no amount of coughing could relieve, almost as if they’d swallowed chalk. It clung to everything here in Cereso prison, its residue lingering on flesh and hair long after the sun and heat had given up their holds on the day.

  The man before Cort Wesley, today’s opponent, was well over six feet tall, all of it ugly right up to his rotting teeth held in something trapped between a sneer and a smile. He circled left and then back right, in and out of the sun-dappled grounds darkened by encroaching storm clouds, eager for the fight to start.

  Fellow inmates of Cereso prison formed a circle around them, the lowlifes who called themselves guards keeping the choicest spots for themselves. Cort Wesley tightened his fingers into the thick callus pads at their base, squeezing the air from his fists to maximize the efficiency of the blows he was about to unleash. Had to land them fast and sure while keeping his distance. In close the giant, who reeked of something between body odor and dried feces, would gain an advantage he’d never be able to overcome. But keep him moving and parrying, and he would tire fast enough for Cort Wesley’s hammer-like fists to finish the job.

  The giant was Cort Wesley’s twelfth opponent, or maybe his thirteenth. He was the sole American here at Cereso, allowed to live only because his reputation and skills preceded him. He’d bested the reigning champion his first week in and every challenger since, aware each time that losing bore its own terrible price. His myth destroyed and purpose lost, his fellow prisoners would descend upon him with clubs, rocks, and blades the way they would’ve already had he not provided such great entertainment and discussion. And now the very skills and proclivity for violence that had landed Cort Wesley here in the first place were the only things keeping him alive.

  Cereso, like many Mexican prisons, was essentially run by inmates. There were guards about, even what passed weakly for an administration with a warden housed in a white office building enclosed by a separate fence and protected by the single operational guard tower stocked with machine guns that looked vintage World War II. But the inmates kept order themselves, their own hierarchy and pecking order determining virtually every perk and privilege, or the lack thereof.

  That protocol had unofficially taken effect in the wake of a series of violent outbreaks that included a 2007 riot staged with rocks, bullets, and blades while three hundred women and children there for visitor’s day cowered in fear for their lives. The violence continued for nearly three days before five hundred state and municipal police officers finally managed to quell it. The riot had not been an organized revolt for prisoner’s rights or against the awful overcrowding of a facility designed for fifteen hundred inmates, but bursting at the seams with twice that number squeezed in. It had erupted instead out of a power struggle between rival gangs, most notably the Aztecas and the Mexicles.

  The state’s solution was to create a governing board run by leaders of those and three more gangs. Order was kept, and violence restrained, by the open staging of bare-knuckle fights that made the days of the ancient Roman coliseum seem civilized by comparison. Men chosen for their prowess like Cort Wesley, or others selected as sacrificial lambs served up to the jeering crowd, fought for their lives on the dried gravel and dust of the prison yard. The very prison guards occupying best viewing points also operated lucrative side businesses smuggling all manner of contraband onto the grounds with the acquiescence of the prison administration.

  Cort Wesley had been recruited by the Mexicles gang his first day in. They’d made sure he was placed in their cellblock and didn’t offer up much negotiation as to terms. The four years of his life he’d spent in the brutal Huntsville, Texas, prison known as The Walls were nothing compared to his first four days in Cereso. And it was abundantly clear that the only way he could survive his stay was to remain in the Mexicles’ good graces by keeping the unofficial championship in their block. The giant with the rotting teeth standing across from him now represented the Aztecas, who were committed to ending Cort Wesley’s reign here today.

  He had never seen the prison yard so full; thousands had assembled today to watch a battle between the champions of two rival gangs for prison supremacy. His ribs ached from the pounding they’d been taking over the course of so many fights. His knees swelled from the sudden twists and slips on the prison’s gravel yard where the fights were staged.

  Killing a piece of shit Mexican drug deale
r had been what landed Cort Wesley in Cereso. Turned out the dealer was the cousin of the local governor who didn’t take kindly to Americans blowing away his family members in a cantina. The extradition request to Austin, forwarded from the U.S. State Department, had made for quite the diplomatic crisis until Cort Wesley turned himself in on advice of a counsel who proved no match for the corruption on both sides of the border. His imprisonment here was a kind of compromise while he awaited trial in Mexico. In the interim, corrupt officials on both sides of that same border tried to work out a compromise that would grant his freedom. It was supposed to take a month tops.

  Cort Wesley was beginning his tenth month inside Cereso today.

  The anger, the frustration, fueled his rage. He stored and bottled it inside him until he needed it the most, then let it go. Each punch he threw, each blow he struck, had that unrestrained fury behind it, and each time one landed he saw the face of Dylan, Luke, or Caitlin Strong and knew he was that much closer to getting home to them.

  If he was ever going to see them again, though, he had to get past the giant whose rancid smell flooded his nostrils from ten feet away. Thunder crackled in the darkening sky, sounding like the thunk of a fist mashing flesh, jawbone, and teeth. Then drizzle began to pepper the air, the storm clouds still somehow leaving thin gaps for the sun to sneak in and out of.

  “Man’s a beast, bubba,” he heard old Leroy Epps say from his side, the way a trainer might.

  “He is at that, champ,” Cort Wesley said soft enough so no one else would hear.

  Leroy Epps had been a lifer in The Walls, busted for killing a white man in self-defense, whose friendship and guidance had gotten Cort Wesley through his years in captivity. The diabetes that would ultimately kill him had turned Leroy’s eyes bloodshot and numbed his limbs years before the sores and infections set in. As a boxer, he’d fought for the middleweight crown on three different occasions, knocked out once and had the belt stolen from him on paid-off judges’ scorecards on two other occasions. He’d died three years into Cort Wesley’s incarceration, but ever since always seemed to show up when needed the most. Whether a ghostly specter or a figment of his imagination, Cort Wesley had given up trying to figure out. Either way, here in Cereso Epps was his only friend and the only person, or whatever, he could talk to.