Strong from the Heart--A Caitlin Strong Novel

by Jon Land

  Caitlin wandered if Hargraves was facing away from the town to keep fear from stretching over his expression. “That crisis response team, or whatever it’s called, is en route now. Our orders are to secure the area in the meantime. So we’ve closed every access road out a mile and have directed air traffic control to steer all aircraft away from the area.”

  “I don’t think this town lies in anybody’s flight pattern.”

  “If it did, it doesn’t anymore, Ranger.”

  Caitlin turned her gaze in Camino Pass’s direction. “What about nine-one-one calls, police reports, any anomalies arising in the past twelve hours that might give us more of an idea of what happened here?”

  Hargraves shook his head, his expression tightening anew. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

  Caitlin took off her Stetson and held it by her hip, just over her SIG. “I’ll reach out to the cell phone providers.”

  “What did I just say?” Hargraves asked, like a man thinking he was talking to a wall.

  “I heard you, Captain. I’m talking about contacting them to get a notion as to cellular traffic coming out of the town. See when it stopped, to give us a better notion as to the timeline of whatever happened here.”

  A heavy wop-wop-wop announced the arrival of two more helicopters, barely specks coming in from the north, until they quickly grew into massive june bugs splitting the air. Army Black Hawks, by the look of things, meaning DHS’s surge capacity force was now on-site. That explained the presence of the massive SWAT-like RV parked off to the side, straddling the shoulder, likely dispatched from San Antonio in the initial moments of chaos after Homeland’s agents had called in what they’d seen.

  “Care to tell me what to expect next?” Hargraves said, his voice carrying over the loudening roar of the choppers.

  Caitlin’s gaze moved from the RV to the choppers just now setting over the scene. “The Homeland personnel land, and I suit up to join them in checking out the town.”

  6

  HOUSTON

  “You can see your son now, Mr. Masters.”

  Cort Wesley practically bounced out of his chair in the hospital’s emergency room waiting area. His legs felt heavy, the overly bright lighting around him seeming to have dulled. Dr. Riboron wasn’t standing more than six feet away from him, but it felt like a mile.

  He’d spent the last several hours cataloging his son Luke’s youth, able to count the times on a single hand that he’d disciplined the boy for just the slightest of infractions, which didn’t even approach, much less suggest, drug use. Part of him figured he was going to be ushered into a room to find another boy altogether lying there, a mistake having been made. The other part, meanwhile, contemplated exactly what he was going to say to his younger son, because this clearly was no mistake.

  “Your son’s one of the lucky ones, Mr. Masters,” Riboron said, after Cort Wesley had fallen into step alongside him. “Near as we can tell, he ingested the drugs last night. His roommate found him unresponsive this morning. Absent that stroke of fortune, we’d be having an entirely different conversation.”

  “Stroke of fortune?”

  “The fact that somebody was there to find him in that condition. Most of those, the vast majority, who overdose aren’t as lucky.”

  Cort Wesley almost said he didn’t consider having a son who’d overdosed on opiates very lucky at all.

  “You have any notion as to what it was he took, Doctor?” he asked instead.

  “OxyContin or an equivalent generic oxycodone, according to the tox screen. The drug of choice these days,” Riboron continued, speaking with an edge to his voice that sounded like resentment to Cort Wesley.

  They stopped just outside the curtained cubicle where Luke remained, hours after his initial treatment.

  “We’ll be doing a psych evaluation of your son soon, Mr. Masters, which is strictly routine in cases of overdose.” Riboron hesitated, until Cort Wesley met his gaze. “That same routine also dictates we inform the police. We’ve done that and filed the appropriate report but have yet to let them know he’s regained consciousness, so you can see him first.”

  “That’s not routine, even for a minor?”

  “In Texas, drug offenders are considered adults at sixteen, just like with violent crimes.”

  “You think my son is an offender?” Cort Wesley wondered, taking umbrage at the doctor’s use of the term.

  “According to the law he is,” Riboron said, parting the curtain enough for Cort Wesley to enter the cubicle.

  Luke was sitting up, propped by pillows, chewing on crushed ice packed into a plastic cup he was holding. His eyes were narrowed and glassy, lagging between sight and recognition, judging by the languid fashion in which he viewed Cort Wesley.

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” he managed, voice cracking.

  Cort Wesley felt his insides melt as he drew even with the side of the bed on which Luke was resting, safety rails lowered. His mind froze between thoughts, intentions.

  “Sorry doesn’t begin to cut it, son,” was all he could manage.

  Luke swallowed hard, worked some more ice from the cup into his mouth.

  “I mean, what were you thinking?” Cort Wesley continued.

  “Clearly, I wasn’t.”

  “Please tell me this was the first time.”

  Cort Wesley heard the crackle of Luke chewing on the ice.

  “Mostly,” the boy said.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Almost.”

  “Almost the first time you snorted OxyContin?”

  The boy’s features sank. He sighed dryly. Cort Wesley saw tears forming in the corners of his drooping eyes.

  “It was the first time I snorted it, yeah.”

  “But not the first time you’ve used.”

  “Everybody at school does, at least the seniors.”

  “I wasn’t asking about everybody; I was asking about you.”

  “It was a mistake, Dad,” Luke said, between a wheezy exhale of breath.

  “How many mistakes we talking about exactly?”

  “Like a half dozen. Six or so times.”

  “With oxy or with other drugs too?”

  Luke looked past Cort Wesley, toward the curtain that flapped slightly when a nurse or doctor passed by beyond. “Vicodin, I think.”

  “And you’re telling me everyone in your class is using?”

  Luke started to roll his eyes but didn’t quite complete the motion. “Don’t use that word.”

  “What word?”

  “‘Using.’ It’s for addicts, junkies.”

  “From where I’m standing, that suits you just fine. Now answer my question, son. How many kids in your class are using?”

  “Some.”

  “What happened to ‘everybody’?”

  “A few. Can you back off? My head is killing me.”

  “You should’ve thought of that before you snorted oxy, son.”

  “Like I said, I wasn’t thinking.” Luke smacked one side of his head and then the other. “Stupid, stupid, stupid. I don’t know what I was thinking, all right?”

  “There’s something else you do know you can tell me, son.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Where you got the drugs,” Cort Wesley told him, feeling cold sweat mat his shirt to his back even as something heated up inside him. “As in who sold them to you.”

  7

  CAMINO PASS, TEXAS

  “On whose authority are you here again?” Colonel Samwell Teavens, designated head of the DHS’s surge capacity force, asked Caitlin.

  “Same authority as you, sir,” she told him, fingers looped through a handhold on board the armored RV that came equipped with its own oxygen supply. “That being the Department of Homeland Security. This isn’t my first rodeo, Colonel, and it’s not my first time in a hazmat suit, either.”

  Teavens nodded grudgingly. He was full time with the Texas National Guard out of San Antonio and crisis response leader for the region. Lik
e Caitlin, he’d been detailed out to both Quantico and Washington, DC, to learn the ins and outs of managing catastrophic events like this one, specifically when it involved a potential threat to the country, hostile or otherwise. In all probability, some kind of accident had claimed the lives of the residents of Camino Pass, but that didn’t mean whatever it was didn’t hold the potential to do grievous harm well beyond the town’s borders if the cause wasn’t identified and isolated.

  “All the same…” Teavens started.

  “All the same what, sir?”

  “Whatever killed these folks isn’t something you’re going to be able to gun down, Ranger.”

  “Really? You sure about that?”

  Teavens had been less than enamored by Caitlin’s presence on scene, even before she voiced her intention to join his hazmat team in investigating whatever had transpired in Camino Pass.

  “We don’t need a glory hound getting in the way here,” he groused, while inventorying the equipment the personnel accompanying him had carted off the two choppers.

  “You think that’s what I am?”

  “You seem to get your name in the papers a lot, Ranger.”

  “Not by choice, sir, I can assure you of that. And I’m here on orders, just like you.”

  Caitlin found herself missing the man she knew only as Jones, the shadowy Department of Homeland Security operative who’d called Texas home until he was unceremoniously relieved of duty six months back, when the government needed a fall guy for an operation gone wrong. She owed her involvement with DHS matters like this to him and had half expected Jones to step out of the lead chopper, until Teavens emerged in his stead. Not that she trusted Jones all that much, but he was a professional who knew his way around a gunfight, which meant the kind of pressures that awaited in Camino Pass wouldn’t bother him. Teavens, on the other hand, had the button-down look of a man more used to commanding paper and firing off reports instead of bullets. Kind of man for whom the uniform looked more like a wardrobe accessory than a lived-in garment.

  Teavens’s eight-man surge capacity force included a pair of communications specialists, one of whom would remain behind and set up shop at the checkpoint. There were also a pair of doctors with infectious disease expertise and two forensic scientists who would be gathering the proper samples for lab study. Since they were not permitted, under any circumstances, to remove any of the bodies from the quarantined town, a task left to a much larger team out of Washington being assembled now, those samples would prove crucial to any initial assessment and analysis as to the cause and potential virulence behind whatever had killed nearly three hundred men, women, and children. The team was rounded out by a pair of specially trained national guardsmen, who’d be toting M4 assault rifles with them instead of sample collection kits.

  “Just so we’re clear on one thing, Ranger,” Teavens told her, after Caitlin had climbed into her hazmat suit with far more dexterity than the rest of his team. “I’m in charge here.”

  “Wouldn’t have it any other way, sir,” she told him.

  Upon pulling to a halt in the center of Camino Pass, Caitlin helped the doctors and scientists fit their hazmat helmets snugly in place, after which Teavens opened the RV’s rear door in the middle of the town’s main drag and led the procession outside. She could feel herself baking inside the hazmat suit, as she always did, regardless of temperature. The fabric was stiff and airtight to ensure that no germs or microbes could pass through. And with the helmet securely fastened, she always felt as if she were scuba diving on land, the sound of her breathing resonating in her ears and the light sheen of sweat on her face inevitably swelling into dollops.

  “On my lead,” she heard Teavens say through her helmet’s built-in speaker, as he led the way out of the SUV and toward a squad car complete with revolving light array riding its roof. It was labeled “Camino Pass Sheriff” in letters that looked like they were painted over another marking, as if the vehicle were a hand-me-down from a larger department.

  Caitlin’s heavy, plastic-coated rubber boots made walking a slog, and she was aware of the two soldiers taking up strategic flanking positions on either side of the group. Defensive, as if anticipating an attack.

  Closer to the vehicle, she spotted the body of a man in uniform who’d crumpled just short of the car, eyes frozen open and mouth agape. Out of habit, Caitlin noticed that his gun was still holstered, but his hat lay between him and the driver’s door, as if it had been shed as he was reaching for the latch.

  “Any thoughts?” Teavens asked, suddenly alongside her.

  Caitlin kneeled by the body, another motion made difficult by the confines of her suit. “Whatever hit him, he had time to make a go for his car, out of instinct probably.” She looked up, judging the distance from the storefront sheriff’s station to the squad car. “Twenty-five, maybe thirty seconds, more or less.”

  “Meaning he was awake when whatever it was happened, in contrast to the rest of the town.”

  “On duty, in all probability,” Caitlin advanced, “while pretty much everybody else was asleep. Maybe somebody else was awake, too, and they called the station. Looking at it that way, he could’ve been in the process of responding to a call. That could indicate whatever happened didn’t happen all at once.”

  She watched one of the scientists move off to collect samples of the air and of standing water in a puddle left over from a rainstorm the night before. Eventually, he’d take and catalog samples of pretty much everything they encountered. Everyone else proceeded directly toward the car, where both doctors and the remaining scientist took turns examining the corpse already stiffening on the asphalt.

  “Lividity and settling of the blood confirms whatever it was happened fast,” she heard one of them say.

  “Not so fast he didn’t know something bad was happening,” Caitlin offered.

  “How can you tell?”

  “Because he strapped his gun belt on before he went for the car. In a rush or a panic, since he didn’t stuff the end of the belt through the loop.”

  The others nodded, except for Teavens.

  “Looks like something in the air to me,” the colonel said. “I’d say close to for sure on that.”

  “Let’s not to jump to any conclusions,” Caitlin heard another voice say inside her helmet.

  “Running a preliminary analysis on the air now,” chimed in the scientist off to the side, busy following the LED readouts. “So far, it’s clean. No contaminants, toxins, or unidentified chemicals or compounds.”

  “You mean, not anymore,” another voice reminded.

  “All the same,” said the scientist, leaving it there.

  Teavens was running his gaze along the street and then letting it drift to the closest nesting of homes.

  “Let’s take a walk,” Caitlin heard him say.

  * * *

  They checked out six houses right off the bat, breaking off into two teams to better manage the effort, starting with the homes closest to the center of town. The hard stuff, as Caitlin’s father or grandfather might have called it, given that they knew what awaited them.

  There was something familiar about Camino Pass, but Caitlin couldn’t put her finger on what exactly. Probably a case her grandfather or father had worked; there were so many embedded in her memory, it was impossible to keep them all straight. Beyond that, she knew nothing about Camino Pass. It was just another border town, one of literally hundreds that dotted the jagged line dividing Texas from Mexico. The ones closer to the Rio Grande tended to have larger populations, thanks to the surrounding farms and ranches. In these parts, there weren’t a lot of either of those; the residents of towns like this one scraped by as best they could, working odd jobs while in search of more permanent employment just to make ends meet.

  The furnishings in the three homes Caitlin checked in tandem with Colonel Teavens, an MD, and one of the scientists were testament to that. They were simple, old, or both, likely handed down through multiple generations or pur
chased at secondhand stores before they could be acquired by other families. The only exception in each home seemed to be the flat-screen televisions mounted on cracked, peeling walls that looked ready to crumble under their weight. One of the sets was still humming, radiating sunlamp-like heat from being on for so many hours straight. A man wearing pajamas and a bathrobe sat in a chair set directly before it, his frozen features identical to the dead town sheriff’s. They found his wife in the identical condition in their bed. The couple was too old to still have kids in the house.

  There were kids in the next two houses they checked, though. Caitlin walked about the single-story structures that seemed uniform in design and layout. She tried to busy herself by putting her investigative skills and instincts to use, seeking some clue as to what did this. But her observations yielded nothing and her team was left to catalog the bodies and nothing much else.

  “You ever seen anything like this before?” Teavens asked her, his lips seeming to move a beat ahead of his voice reaching her.

  “No.”

  She watched him flash a grin utterly devoid of amusement through his helmet’s faceplate. “I thought you mixed it up with space aliens once.”

  “You didn’t ask me about space aliens,” Caitlin told him, whatever had struck this town having forged an uneasy bond between them.

  “How about recent reports of anything odd, out of place, beyond Camino Pass since last night?”

  “Nothing like this, Colonel. Not even close.”

  “So whatever killed these folks is contained,” he said, nodding. “That’s something.”

  “For now, anyway.”

  * * *

  Back in the street, the guardsmen carrying M4s were nowhere to be found. Teavens tried to hail them, to no avail.

  “We don’t have a lot of daylight left here,” he said, turning his gaze on the sun dropping toward the mesas that climbed the horizon.

  “What happened to your men, Colonel?”

  “I handpicked them myself. They didn’t run off, I can tell you that much. Get back to the vehicle,” Teavens ordered the doctors, scientists and communications specialist. “If we’re not back in twenty minutes, tell the driver to get out of Dodge.”