Strong from the Heart--A Caitlin Strong Novel

by Jon Land

  “You want to tell me something they’ve got in common, all the same?”

  Caitlin moved toward the black hole beyond the steel blast doors Paz had just hoisted opened. “Let’s hope we get to ask Andrew Ortega that question.”

  Caitlin clambered down the ladder under the spray light from a flashlight that had magically appeared from one of the pockets of Paz’s tactical pants. She was glad Tepper had called him, since she’d been thinking of doing the same. He was a creature of fate more than a man, it seemed at times, which made his presence reassuring, to say the least, in an airless town where that same fate had struck a brutal blow.

  At the bottom of the ladder, she waited for Paz to drop the flashlight to her before she continued on into the depths of the fallout shelter. Maybe Paz was wearing off on her, because Caitlin thought she could actually feel the fear that had collected down here, mixing with the dry rot and must that smelled of rank perspiration.

  She had never been in a fallout shelter before. The short hallway widened toward a mouth, beyond which she glimpsed a lantern flickering. Kerosene, she thought, as opposed to batteries.

  Reaching the mouth of the sprawling, rectangular shelter itself, she spotted two men and a woman, bound and gagged, with their own belts, socks, and jackets serving as bonds.

  “Drop the gun,” a young, terrified voice wheezed.

  57

  CAMINO PASS, TEXAS

  Caitlin crouched to lay her pistol on the dirt-encrusted plank floor, careful not to shine her flashlight at the boy who was holding a twelve-gauge shotgun in a trembling grasp, his lips quivering and eyes swimming with fear.

  “Andrew Ortega,” Caitlin said calmly, in what had started out as a question. “I’m glad you’re alive.”

  “That’s what they said,” the boy managed, stealing a gaze at his three captives. “What happened? What’s going on? Tell me!”

  “I’m a Texas Ranger, son. I’m here to help you, just like these folks are. You’ve done nothing wrong and have nothing to fear. I want you to lower that shotgun so it’s not pointed directly at me. Do you mind doing that?”

  The boy swallowed hard and complied, dipping the barrel even lower than Caitlin had asked him to. She looked toward Homeland Security’s search and rescue team again; their bonds were indicative of a victim who likely had been held, and tormented, in similar or even identical fashion. Caitlin wished she’d had the opportunity to meet Andrew Ortega’s father up close and personal, wished the boy or his mother had called the Rangers instead of the highway patrol to report him.

  At first glance, Andrew Ortega hardly seemed the type to fight back against a brutal, bullying father prone to letting the bottle get the better of him. He looked thin to her, with the kind of slight frame that struggled to hold up a pair of jeans even with a belt. His arms were scrawny, his face gaunt, with hollowed-out cheeks and black hair the same color as his eyes. She could hear slight sounds of movement behind her, indicating Captain Tepper and Paz were following in her wake, sure to stay back when they realized her intentions.

  “I lowered the gun, now tell me what happened up there,” he managed, his voice cracking through lips that continued to quiver. “Is it true what they said? Is everybody dead?”

  “I’m afraid so, Andrew.”

  “Then why did I live?”

  “I don’t know. Almost surely because you were hiding down here. I can’t tell you why, but that’s got to be it.” Caitlin paused just long enough. “You were hiding down here from your father, weren’t you?”

  “Do you know him?”

  “Wish I did, so I could lay him out for the way he treated you. If you know anything about the Texas Rangers, you know I’m telling the truth.”

  “But you’re a woman.”

  “A lot has changed in the three days you’ve been down here.”

  The boy seemed to relax a bit, Caitlin’s light comment achieving its desired effect.

  “I didn’t know what to do.” He tilted his head toward the bound DHS team. “And when they showed up, I didn’t know what to do then, either. I thought they were looking for me. They weren’t making any sense.”

  “Would you mind laying the shotgun on the floor, Andrew?”

  “Are you going to arrest me?”

  “You haven’t done anything wrong.”

  The boy gestured toward the Homeland Security team. “I took them hostage. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “But they won’t be pressing charges.” Then, with her eyes trained on the three people, she added, “Will you?”

  Three heads shook resolutely from side to side.

  “Smart move, because that way we can keep the fact that they let a kid get the jump on them from getting out. That’s not something they’d want to become common knowledge.”

  “What about me?”

  Caitlin turned back to Andrew Ortega. “We need to get you checked out, see how it is you survived. Get you some food. I’ll bet you’re starving.”

  The boy shed the shotgun from his grasp like it weighed a ton. She could see the boy’s throat expand as he tried to swallow but failed.

  “How’d everybody else die?”

  Caitlin decided to leave out mention of a second survivor to avoid questions she didn’t want to answer. “They were poisoned. We’re not sure how exactly.”

  “Killed?”

  “It was an accident, Andrew, and if we can figure how it was that coming down here saved your life, we’ll be able to fill in a bunch of the blanks. Can you stand up?”

  “I’ve been sitting here a long time.”

  “You want me to help you?”

  The boy nodded, his doe-like eyes widening. “I’m sorry for what I did to those folks over there. But they were talking crazy, like my father. I thought maybe he sent them. I couldn’t be sure. You believe me, don’t you?”

  Caitlin made sure he could see her nod.

  “I’m scared again. I guess I never stopped being scared.”

  “You can now, son,” she said, reaching down to help the boy to his feet.

  58

  CAMINO PASS, TEXAS

  Captain Tepper and Paz worked the Homeland agents free of their bonds while Caitlin tended to Andrew Ortega in the flickering lantern light.

  “They’ll be waiting to tend to you up the road at the command center,” she told him.

  “You gonna leave me with them?” the boy asked, as if terrified by the prospects of that.

  “I’ll check on you soon, Andrew, and regularly. That’s a promise.”

  The boy managed the thinnest of smiles before the hatch-like door closed behind him.

  The Homeland agents returned to their vehicle, and then Caitlin followed closely as they headed back to the checkpoint.

  “Any thoughts, Colonel?” she asked Paz, while D. W. Tepper worked awkwardly through some emails on his phone, swearing under his breath when the one finger he was using refused to cooperate. Then he remembered Andrew Ortega was sitting next to him and apologized.

  “This, what happened in this town, was an accident.”

  “We’ve already figured out that much.”

  “There’s more. The residue remains. What happened here opened a door. I understand my actions at the school now.”

  “You mean doing live fire exercises with elementary school kids in gym class?” she said, drawing a rise from Tepper.

  “I knew I was preparing them for something, but I didn’t know what. I could feel it, Ranger. I could smell what was coming, and I smelled it again in that town.”

  “You’re saying we need to stop somebody bad from turning what happened here into a weapon, Colonel.”

  “If they haven’t already, Ranger.”

  * * *

  A windstorm had kicked up by the time they made it back to the checkpoint manned by the highway patrol. Caitlin personally escorted Andrew Ortega to the RV-size Homeland Security mobile medical unit, which would soon be tending to the three Homeland agents the boy had held hos
tage for several hours as well.

  “This is Colonel Guillermo Paz,” she said, by way of introduction, when Paz entered behind her and Andrew Ortega, ducking to clear the doorway. “He’s an agent of the Department of Homeland Security, attached here in Texas, and the boy will be remaining under his protection. Anybody have a problem with that?”

  A few gazes tilted toward Paz’s intimidating shape. No one offered any protest.

  “Glad we’re all agreed, then,” Caitlin said and retraced her steps out of the mobile unit.

  Outside, the sandstorm had already picked up in intensity. Dust and gravel swirled about the air, stinging her skin like pinpricks and forcing Caitlin to retreat back inside the Ranger chopper, which was already encrusted with a thickening blanket of grime.

  Captain Tepper climbed in next to her and slid the door closed after him.

  “Any objections voiced about King Kong’s involvement?” he asked, gazed tilted toward where the mobile unit was parked.

  “Not a one. Those folks know what happened to Lennox Scully at University Hospital. They don’t have much grounds for an argument.”

  Caitlin hadn’t bothered clearing the windshield of dust and grime, leaving only dim patches of light to penetrate the cab. Tepper continued clumsily returning some emails and text messages, fighting his own thumbs and occasionally staring at the windshield as if he could see straight through the sand-colored coating that continued to thicken.

  “It’s gonna be a while before the chopper can take off, D.W.”

  “So?” Tepper asked, even though it was clear he knew what she was getting at.

  “So we’ve got time for you to pick up the story of my great-granddad and Pancho Villa…”

  59

  MEXICO; 1898

  The ride continued, the heat pouring out of the blazing sun seeming to pick up degrees with each yard they covered. The trail thinned, steepened, and the parade of horsemen led by Jesus Arriaga was forced to take a single-file procession. The brush grew sparse, then strangely thickened again as they approached what William Ray took for a thin gully cut out of the Las Bajadas by the years and the elements.

  Suddenly, gunmen who hadn’t seemed to be there a moment before appeared amid a nest of boulders, one of which was blocking the trail, keeping the group from advancing farther. They wore strangely shaped hats to keep the sun from their faces, enough of a disguise to keep William Ray from noticing they were Chinese until they drew to within a few yards. He was too far away to hear the conversation between the lead Chinese gunman and Arriaga, and he focused on the rifles they had stripped from their shoulders instead: Mausers, the very model used to kill the Camino Pass posse from upward of five or six hundred feet away.

  William Ray watched Arriaga tap his horse to make it reverse, opening up enough space for a pair of the Chinese gunmen to ease the big boulder blocking the trail aside like it weighed nothing at all—because it didn’t, or close to that anyway. It must have been some kind of model, replica, or something, made out of paper or cardboard, with a tin facing colored to look just like the real thing.

  The horses started on again, this time led by the head Chinese gunman, with a second trailing the pack slightly. The grade of the trail slackened, leveling off as they reached the ridge, and then William Ray figured he had to be seeing things. Before him, layered along the rocky ridge, was a town made of tents and open-sided structures formed of logs from trees harvested in the foothills where they’d made camp. There were roads and alleys and outhouses, even a bar and what William Ray would’ve bet next month’s salary was a brothel, given that it was built of logs and was one of only two structures to boast walls.

  The other such structure was much more elegant and ornate, painted a majestic red and topped by a sharply peaked roof of the sort William Ray had seen in magazine articles about Chinese culture. It looked entirely out of place here, and he was at an utter loss to figure out how a structure this complex and sophisticated could have been built this high up in the mountains. He’d never been to this part of central Mexico before, but he had heard tales of how the desert ended on one side of the mountains forming Las Bajadas, and some of the country’s most fertile lands could be found on the other.

  Arriaga’s men waited for him to climb down from his horse before they dismounted. Pancho Villa beat William Ray to the ground and moved to help him manage the effort while wearing wrist irons, but pride made the Ranger manage the effort all on his own. This, even as he couldn’t for the life of him figure out how a place like this might be connected to a whole bunch of children kidnapped just over the border.

  “You ever fixing to tell me what it is you’re after in these parts?” William Ray asked him softly. “Or why you came along for the ride? I’m guessing it wasn’t to see the sights.”

  Villa smiled slyly, looking older than his years. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Ranger, and if I did have something to tell you, right now you’d take it to the grave.”

  “We’ll see about that, amigo. I’ve been in tougher scrapes than this. My daddy’s regiment in the Civil War beat back a Northern brigade ten times their number. Nobody would’ve given them a chance, neither.”

  Villa turned his gaze down on William Ray’s empty holster. “But at least they had guns.”

  The Ranger was about to respond when he caught Pancho Villa’s gaze tighten on that structure that looked lifted from another place and time entirely. William Ray turned to follow his gaze and spotted the figure of an average-size Chinese man wearing woolen suit pants and matching vest into which a perfectly knotted tie had been tucked. He looked like he was going to a wedding or some fancy office somewhere, thumbs hooked inside his vest pockets as he scanned the riders before settling on William Ray.

  He seemed to float down a set of stairs from the porch, which enclosed the whole of the fancy structure, and walked, absent fear or thought, straight toward William Ray. Jesus Arriaga and his men fell into step behind him, one after the other, making for quite the crowd by the time he stood before William Ray.

  “A Texas Ranger, in the flesh,” the Chinese man said in English lacking any accent whatsoever. “I’ve waited for this moment for a long time, ever since I came here.”

  “And when would that have been?” William Ray wondered.

  The man looked toward Pancho Villa. “Before he was born, surely. Probably a few years prior.”

  “It appears you have the advantage on me, sir.”

  The man bowed ever so slightly as he extended a hand. “Felipe Wong, Ranger.”

  William Ray took the hand, wrist chains clanging, and found it dry and smooth. Wong’s grip was like a vise. “William Ray Strong.”

  “The Rangers have made inquiries as to my whereabouts. I’m surprised you’ve never heard of me.”

  “There’s others of us more familiar with these parts.”

  “Would you like to see the source of their interest in me? Would you like to see the great commerce I’ve brought to this country?”

  “Right now, all I’d like to see is those kids I’m guessing you had snatched.”

  “In time, Ranger.”

  “No time like the present, Mr. Wong.”

  Wong stepped back and moved slightly aside so as not to have the sun directly in his eyes, to better size William Ray up. “Your genuine show of respect and manners are much appreciated, Ranger.”

  “I respect all men, sir, even the ones I have to kill.”

  Wong’s expression stretched into a smile, coming up just short of a laugh. “It’s really true, isn’t it?”

  “What’s that?

  “All the legends, the bravado of the mighty Texas Rangers.”

  “Well, sir, I’m not learned enough to know the precise meaning of ‘bravado,’ but if it means the willingness to tell a murderer he’s full of shit, then I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  Wong looked as if he wanted to laugh. “My enterprise here requires much labor.”

  “You trying to
tell me that’s what you needed the kids you took for?”

  “It’s better I show you, Ranger. I’ll have my horse brought round.”

  * * *

  Wong’s horse was a magnificent steed; thick-legged, as tall as any William Ray had ever seen, and broader at the shoulders than any he’d ever crossed before. Perfect dimensions to cover the difficult mountain terrain that would snap the legs of a lesser animal. It snorted as Wong climbed on, blowing out hot breath in a manner that made the Ranger think of a fire-breathing dragon.

  Wong positioned himself next to William Ray, who was back atop Jessabelle, towering over him, thanks to his horse’s comparative size. A trio of what the Ranger took to be Wong’s personal bodyguards rode close behind them, followed by Jesus Arriaga.

  “Where we going, sir?”

  Wong kept his gaze fixed ahead, not regarding William Ray when he responded. “Immigrating to Mexico was not a random decision, Ranger. Me and others came here with a plan, and we didn’t come empty-handed.”

  “You talking about those Mauser rifles your men used to gun down a bunch of farmers and ranchers?”

  “That bothers you.”

  “You bet it does. I don’t abide the slaughter of innocents, Mr. Wong. No Ranger does. You might even say it’s what’s kept us together for going on seventy-five years now. I’ve seen what marauding Indians have done to entire families and settlements. I’ve seen Mexican bandits shoot up towns with a man who can’t find his dentures serving as sheriff. I’ve seen dreams dashed, good intentions wasted, and lives ended for no other reason than they happened to be standing somewhere at a particular time. So if you truly are responsible for the murder of those folks who went out looking for their kids, I’ll have no choice but to kill you.”

  Wong smiled at William Ray and signaled the procession to stop before he summoned Arriaga up to the front.

  “You have the key to those wrist irons?”

  Arriaga flashed it.

  “Take them off,” Wong ordered.