Strong Vengeance

by Jon Land

  “More like voodoo and other Cajun magic, but I suppose witch is close enough,” Braga said, seeming to relax slightly.

  “Did you know Mr. Jackson did a stretch in Louisiana’s Angola prison, Mr. Braga?”

  The pencil stilled in his hand. He looked honestly surprised. “I did not, no.”

  “He beat and robbed a man who fired him, he believed unjustly. He did three years of a five-year stretch and moved to Texas when his probation was done.”

  “And why is this relevant to the matter before us today, Ranger?”

  Caitlin made sure Braga could see her looking at him. The room’s lighting was dull, as if someone had neglected to flip all the switches on, and the resulting shadows made it look like someone had poured Braga’s eyes into his face. They kept shifting about, liquid pools of darkness.

  “Well, sir, there’s also the matter of the three union organizers who disappeared in these parts back in the early seventies. They were last seen at a sewage treatment facility managed by Alvin Jackson very similar to the one you’re describing.”

  Teo Braga snapped the pencil he’d been holding into two, squeezing the twin halves in both his hands.

  “Your mentor was a psychopath who believed violence was a legitimate way to respond to people who wronged, challenged, or opposed him. I thought that might sound familiar. Did you learn it from Mr. Jackson too?”

  “That’s enough,” one of Braga’s lawyers said, lurching to his feet. “We’re done here.”

  But Braga kept his eyes locked with Caitlin’s as he dropped the splintered pencil atop the table. “I don’t know what else I can say to convince you I played no part in Mr. Thoms’s actions of last night. And unless you can prove otherwise we’re finished here.”

  The room went silent except for the stubborn buzzing of an overhead bulb about to fail. Braga held Caitlin’s stare as if he were afraid what might happen if he broke it, something else she’d surprise him with once he looked away.

  “We’re not finished yet, Mr. Braga, not hardly. I shot and killed two men last night, two men who were trying to do the same to me.”

  Without realizing it, Caitlin had slid forward so she was almost nose-to-nose with Teo Braga, his lawyers too scared to intervene and D. W. Tepper too slow. One of the lawyers jostled the conference table while backpedaling for the door and both halves of the pencil Braga had snapped clattered to the scuffed-up linoleum floor.

  “I believe you sent your attack dog after me and the rest tumbled from there. I haven’t seen the report yet, but my guess is the two men I capped were shooters Thoms met inside Huntsville. And if you had any knowledge of their continuing association, that makes you guilty of harboring a criminal.”

  Captain Tepper finally wedged himself between them and started to ease Caitlin away. “Let’s go, Ranger.”

  “And if Jalbert Thoms comes anywhere near the Torres boys again,” Caitlin called out to Braga as she went. “I’m gonna shoot both of you in the balls.”

  59

  SAN ANTONIO, THE PRESENT

  Tepper slammed his office door behind them and took his phone off the hook.

  “What’s that about?” Caitlin asked him.

  Tepper’s leathery face had gone red, his ears seeming to have straightened in anger like a Doberman’s. “I figure the governor, maybe someone from the senate, or the president himself are gonna be calling any minute, and I want an excuse not to talk to them.”

  “Blame me.”

  “Nope, it’s my fault for believing you could be part of this century for a change. What the hell was I thinking.…”

  Caitlin started to sit down, then stood back up. “I didn’t say anything they didn’t know already and were prepared for.”

  Tepper felt about his cluttered desktop for his Alamo ashtray. “And what does that prove exactly?”

  “You don’t really think Thoms was the only violent offender Braga put to work as part of his Head Start program, do you?”

  “Second Chance,” Tepper corrected.

  “Yeah, whatever. He’s building an army in the tradition of his mentor Alvin Jackson.”

  “I’ve read Jackson’s file too, Caitlin. He was nothing more than a grunt for the corporate boys Braga eventually bought out.”

  “That was gonna be my next question downstairs. How exactly he came by the money. The article in Texas Monthly was a little vague on that issue, along with everything else in Braga’s history from a financial standpoint.”

  “Seems to satisfy the country club folk Braga keeps company with.”

  “Because they don’t have reason to think otherwise. I do.” Something changed in Caitlin’s expression. “I never saw Dylan so scared before as when he described the way Thoms looked at him.”

  “Really taking this mothering thing seriously, aren’t you, Hurricane?”

  Caitlin squeezed her shoulders together. “Harder than a gunfight.”

  Tepper lit up a Marlboro despite not finding his ashtray. “I’ll bet you threw it out,” he said, continuing to look, “didn’t you?”

  Caitlin was about to respond when a knock fell on the suddenly open door.

  “Hope I’m not interrupting,” said Jones.

  60

  SAN ANTONIO, THE PRESENT

  “I swear I must’ve died last night and went to hell,” Tepper said, after introductions were exchanged.

  “I’d like to hear about that meeting you had this morning with the medical examiner,” Jones said, focusing only on Caitlin.

  “You’re out of your element, Jones. Surprised they let you beyond the Washington city limits without an ankle bracelet.”

  “The call I got from your boyfriend said you’d found one of my terrorists who still has his fingerprints.”

  “Who exactly you work for again, Mr. Jones?” D. W. Tepper asked him.

  “Same man you do.”

  “The governor of Texas or commander of the Rangers?”

  “Try the president of the United States. When all’s said and done, that’s who we all work for.”

  Tepper looked toward Caitlin. “He always this evasive?”

  “Today’s actually one of his more plain speaking days.”

  “I assume Ranger Strong has brought you up to speed,” Jones said, drawing closer to Tepper’s desk.

  “Found it!” he said, snatching his Alamo ashtray from between two file folders just in time to flick a long ash from his Marlboro. “Ranger Strong has indeed brought me up to speed on this issue of a potential terrorist strike and the Rangers are at your disposal … providing you tell me exactly whose disposal that is.”

  “Homeland Security.”

  “I’m afraid I need something more specific than that.”

  “That’s as specific as it gets in my business, Captain.”

  “I was talking about who your superior might be, who can authorize what you’re asking for on a piece of government letterhead.”

  “Got a pen handy?”

  “I must not be speaking plainly enough myself here.”

  “You think I’m any different from your Ranger over here?”

  “No, and that’s what scares the heck out of me.”

  The three of them went silent, running their eyes from one to another as if to gauge the intentions of each.

  “Why don’t you just get to the point, Mr. Smith?” Tepper asked him.

  “It’s Jones, Captain.”

  “And this be the same Jones, Smith, or whoever who helped out Hurricane here in Bahrain way back when. The same Jones who let her down at that gunfight in Juárez, so Colonel Paz had to bail her out. After that I hear you were generous enough to provide satellite recon of the Patriot Sun facility just to make sure she and Masters would go in with guns blazing. Oh, and you funded Colonel Paz’s private army down in Mexico. So, tell me, have I left anything out?”

  Jones’s breathing had picked up and Caitlin could see red flushing into his face. But he didn’t respond.

  “Why that mosque, Jone
s?” Caitlin asked him. “How’d you know to have an eyeball on it?”

  “Anwar al-Awlaki assembled these men specifically for this operation. His own personal A-team. Their presence in that mosque tripped our security program.”

  “Tripped?” Caitlin said, her torso canting forward.

  “As in facial recognition technology, advanced software keyed into supercomputers capable of a billion computations a second.”

  “I think I get it now,” Caitlin said nodding.

  “Get what?” Jones asked her.

  But instead of answering him, she took out her SIG-Sauer and laid it atop Tepper’s desk not far from the Alamo ashtray in which his cigarette was smoldering. “If I don’t hand this over, I might shoot this son of a bitch, Captain.” She swung back toward Jones. “You told Cort Wesley you had a plant inside the cell who got himself killed.”

  “That’s what I told him, yes.”

  “But it was a lie, wasn’t it? You didn’t have anybody inside anything. You made this cell because of their presence inside that mosque and nothing else. Because something somewhere set off a flag. Maybe the times they showed up, or the frequency. Maybe the way they cut their hair or forgot to zip their pants up.”

  “You got a problem with that, either of you?”

  “How many other mosques you got eyeballs on, Jones?” Caitlin challenged.

  “You don’t have the security clearance to ask that question or hear the answer.”

  “I’m going to take that to mean quite a few.”

  Jones hesitated, uncharacteristically tentative all of a sudden. Caitlin realized the reddening of his face stood out all the more because his skin was dry and pale. His neck looked smaller and midsection a bit paunchier than what she remembered, evidence of too many hours inside and away from the gym.

  “We’re all friends here, Mr. Jones,” Tepper said diplomatically. “If we’re gonna sign on to this project of yours without that signature I was referring to, we need the whole picture.”

  Jones nodded as if someone was moving his head for him. “All.”

  “All?”

  “Every mosque in the country, Captain. We got eyeballs on them all.”

  61

  SAN ANTONIO, THE PRESENT

  “You don’t see that as violation of civil rights?” Caitlin asked him, still not believing what Jones had admitted.

  “I see it as a way to keep this country safe,” he said stridently. “You want to find Muslim men who’ve potentially been radicalized, you don’t look in synagogues or churches, you look in mosques.”

  “I want to make sure I got this right,” Tepper said, coming out of his chair. “You got surveillance on every mosque in the entire U.S. of A.?”

  “Along with Islamic Centers and whatever else they’re being called these days. And if we didn’t, we’d never have caught wind of this Texas plot.”

  “Where’s the suspected perpetrators getting executed fit into that scenario?”

  “I already explained that, Captain. Whatever al-Awlaki assembled them to do was done. He didn’t need them anymore.”

  “Could be something else,” Caitlin suggested.

  “What’s that?”

  “Accidental death of that man in our morgue might’ve spooked your king terrorist. He wipes out those men you found in the basement of that mosque to keep anybody from drawing possible connections.”

  “I think we’re both right, to varying degrees.”

  “The difference being I’m not a racist asshole like you.”

  Jones frowned at her. “Is that a fact, Ranger? Because history may dispute it. The early Texas Rangers were the ultimate profilers and the massacres of innocent Mexicans through the years are common knowledge. Almost got the Rangers disbanded for good around World War One, I’m told.”

  Tepper pressed out his cigarette in disgusted fashion, spraying ash across the contents of his desk blotter. “We learned from our mistakes, Mr. Jones, and you’d be wise to do the same.”

  “No can do, Captain. I have my orders. The whole damn thing is my operation at Homeland. They turned me into a desk jockey and gave me a whole host of new weapons to fight my war. You think I can’t handle a shooting war anymore? Truth is I’m in one every day, only I’m firing off pictures, not bullets.”

  “Well, I imagine that’s a bit safer anyway, Mr. Jones.”

  “I liked it better before when we were knocking down doors and renditioning targets.”

  “You mean suspects, don’t you?” Caitlin asked him.

  “Same thing. You know why I loved serving in Afghanistan? Because it was so goddamn backward. War gone primitive. You search a cave, the bad guys are either there or they’re not. Not the case when a subject like al-Awlaki comes along who’s not a run-of-the-mill towel head. He’s American, which means he knows how we think, not just how he thinks we think. But he also knows this is his last stand.”

  “Your department ever look into what makes a homegrown terrorist?”

  “That’s somebody else’s department, Hearts and Minds. I’m in Bodies and Bullets.”

  Tepper just shook his head. “You’re a real piece of work, Mr. Jones. What Ranger Strong has told me over the years just doesn’t do you justice. She might be a hurricane of category ten proportions, but you, sir, you are an asteroid the size of Nevada, a genuine extinction event in khaki pants and a polo shirt.”

  “I think what my captain is saying,” Caitlin picked up, “is that maybe your actions have helped spawn these homegrowns more than helping to catch them. You’re turning people into terrorists to justify your own existence.”

  “Throw a stone into the air in one of these mosques, Ranger,” Jones said, his expression close to a sneer, “and you’re bound to hit someone who justifies my existence with no help from Homeland.”

  “Well, what I’m really saying,” Tepper started, “is that this whole thing stinks to holy hell and I think it’s a matter for the Department of Public Safety, the National Guard, the Lone Ranger, and the ghost of John Wayne. We are way out of our league and way past our authority here.”

  “Your authority is whatever Homeland wants to make it and Homeland is standing right here in front of you saying this is how we’ve got to play it. The last thing we need is every goddamn Tom, Dick, and Harriet chasing their own tails and making it impossible for us to operate in the arena as we define it.”

  “Do you ever stop to listen to yourself, Mr. Jones?” Tepper chided.

  “Once we get firm intel on what al-Awlaki’s up to, we’ll call in the cavalry.”

  “And where’s this intel supposed to come from?” Caitlin asked him.

  “Starts at the coroner’s office with that body. I’d appreciate you phoning the proper authorities to tell them I’m on my way over.”

  Tepper was already reaching for the phone. “Yeah, I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to see you.”

  Jones slid out the door, leaving Caitlin and Tepper alone in the office.

  “The fact that you’re still here doesn’t bode well for my acid reflux,” he told her.

  “Need you to authorize some evidence to be dug up from a past case.”

  Tepper rubbed his stomach. “Yup, I can feel it now.… Don’t tell me, Ranger, Galveston Island again.”

  “Remember that broken cross my dad found in one of those dead frat boys’ hands?”

  Tepper stiffened a bit and reached for his ashtray as if forgetting he’d already pressed his Marlboro out. “Doc Whatley tell you something about that trip the Strongs and I made to Louisiana?”

  “He told me to ask you.”

  “Tell you what, let’s have supper later in Marble Falls. I’ll see if I can get a hold of that cross in the meantime.” Tepper saw the look on Caitlin’s face and felt his turn dour and cautionary. “Trail’s dead, Ranger. There’s cold cases, then there’s frozen ones.”

  “We’ll see,” Caitlin said, heading for the door.

  62

  ROUND ROCK, THE PRESENT

/>   Teo Braga worked the controls for the big John Deere Waste Handler, a modified bulldozer built for the expressed use of handling waste materials. This one was the 850J model with an elongated curved blade perfect for pushing sludge. A lot had changed since he’d worked under Alvin Jackson back in a time when environmental concerns were normally an afterthought. The only thing that hadn’t changed, in fact, was probably the stench of the sludge itself. Then as now an ammonia-like smell permeated the air surrounding storage lagoons comparable to the one he was now clearing.

  Braga used the Waste Handler to push the lagoon’s waist-high sludge toward the pumps that funneled it into his waiting tanker truck. And the more the day wore on, the more he was able to get away from the meeting at Texas Ranger Company D headquarters. Caitlin Strong had caught him off guard with her remarks about Alvin Jackson’s criminal record, even more so about the disappearance of those union organizers who’d threatened to upset the delicate balance the company maintained between management and workers over working conditions and wages. He wondered if she suspected that they’d ended up in a sludge pile not unlike this one and that their bodies had ultimately been shoveled into black fifty-five-gallon drums to be dumped in landfills or at sea. Braga didn’t know where those particular barrels had ended up exactly and didn’t much care; he’d been manning the dozer that day, while Alvin Jackson himself supervised the process.

  They both stunk to high heaven by the time it was over, three dozen identical black barrels sealed closed and stacked on the back of a massive flatbed for transport. Since there was no time to shower before they drove that flatbed to the disposal unit, they rode with the windows open as time slowed to a crawl.

  “How’d you like to own this company, son?” Alvin Jackson had asked him on the way.

  “In my dreams,” a much younger Braga replied.

  “I mean, what if there was a way? What if I could help you pull it off?”

  “I don’t think I understand, Mr. Jackson.”

  “I’m a black man, son, with a past that’ll make folks raise their eyebrows. Me coming into such an ownership would make most look crossways and the rest look away altogether. See, I’ve done things I’m not proud of, but couldn’t avoid neither. And the sudden procurement of the kind of funds necessary to enact the advancement that comes with ownership would no doubt raise flags I don’t need flying over my life right now.” He’d stopped and looked across the seat, carrying the stench of sludge even on his breath. “But a young man like you with education and a hard-luck story behind him would lower such flags.”