by Jon Land
Arriaga looked at the Ranger, then back at the figure atop the tall horse.
“Now,” Wong added.
Arriaga removed the cuffs circling William Ray’s wrists and laid them before him on his saddle.
“Now you can make good on your word,” Wong said to William Ray.
The Ranger smiled. “Time and a place for everything, Mr. Wong, and neither of those is the case right now. But they will be, you can count on that.”
Wong smiled back at him. “Old Chinese proverb: ‘If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape one hundred days of sorrow.’”
“Well, I’m not sure what that means exactly, but I seem to remember another Chinese saying that goes something like ‘Talk doesn’t cook rice.’”
“It would seem you’re a more learned man than your demeanor suggests.”
William Ray’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “Demeanor? What’s that mean?”
* * *
The terrain was rocky, the grade uneven to the point where, for the final stretch through Las Bajadas the riders dismounted and walked their horses, clutching the reins tight. Something seemed to have made the animals uneasy—a smell or a sound, William Ray didn’t know which.
The sun had reached its peak in the sky when a rocky, downward-sloping ridgeline revealed oddly fertile lands rich in flora and growth in a valley beyond, with a similarly graded, sloping hill guarding its far side as well.
“Behold, Ranger,” said a beaming Felipe Wong, sounding like a father showing off his newborn child. “I believe you know what you’re looking at.”
60
CAMINO PASS, TEXAS
“That’s as far as I want to go right now,” Tepper finished. “You got enough on your mind already.”
“How is it that Andrew Ortega survived, D.W.?” Caitlin posed, putting the tale of William Ray Strong’s exploits in Mexico aside for the moment. “What is it he’s got in common with the late Lennox Scully?”
“You want to run the math for me and see what adds up?”
“Scully was sleeping one off in a converted supply closet and this kid was hiding out in a fallout shelter. Nothing in common there that strikes me off the bat.”
“As in why the cyanide didn’t kill them.”
“Because it didn’t spread to where they were. We figure out why, maybe we figure out where it originated in the first place.”
* * *
It was three more hours before their chopper settled over the jet-black helipad back at Stinson Airport, where the chopper provided by Homeland Security was housed twenty minutes from Company F headquarters.
“So we’re ruling out hostile action, an attack or something?” D. W. Tepper asked her.
“I am. Jury’s still out at Homeland, and Jones is champing at the bit to weaponize however the deed got done, to clear a path for him back to Washington.”
“That man is a walking enigma.”
“I don’t believe I ever heard you use that word before, Captain.”
“I’ve been doing a lot of reading. Distracts me from the winds of Hurricane Caitlin constantly blowing up a storm.”
“I didn’t go looking for this one.”
“But it found you anyway, didn’t it? You’re like human flypaper, Ranger, and wherever you go, the worst of the worst just sticks to you.”
61
WASHINGTON, DC
“Slow down,” Senator Ben Eckles said to Roland Fass, “and tell me what’s got you so spooked. Calmly.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Fass spat out. “You didn’t have a Texas Ranger in your office.”
“Another Texas Ranger?”
“Actually, it’s the same one, the very last person on the planet we want messing in our business, especially with its expanding nature and all.”
“Did you just say that over the phone?”
“I’m using a burner I picked up at the drugstore around the corner.”
“Good, that means what I’m about to say will stay between us. I picked you up off the scrap heap because you impressed me as a man who’d stop at nothing to get something done. That burned you in your former life, but both of us know there were another hundred things you did that could have gotten you nailed six ways to Sunday. I know about a few of those, and it’s a discussion we don’t need to have. The discussion we do need to have is that you’re starting to make me regret my decision, Roland. I served you up a second chance on a silver platter you’re now doing your best to tarnish.”
“You think I’m spooked? You think I’m gonna end up spilling to this Texas Ranger?”
“I know you’re spooked. I’m afraid you’re going to end up saying more than you should. You know that second chance you got? Well, fate has served up an even bigger one for the good ol’ U S of A. A chance to right a whole bunch of wrongs, wipe the slate clean as they say. You don’t want to get in the way of that, you hear me?”
“Loud and clear.”
“Good. Now, you need to make yourself useful. I’ve got a job for you to do. Something I know you’re good at because it’s about numbers. How high can you count up to, Roland?”
“What’s the difference?”
“Because if luck’s on our side, it’s going to reach the millions.”
62
HOUSTON
“What’s the haps, Pops?” Nola Delgado said, climbing into Cort Wesley’s truck, which was parked in the shady part of the Walmart parking lot where he’d told her to meet him. “You actually shop here?”
“Don’t call me that, Nola. And the phrase ‘What’s the haps’ is better fit for the Big Easy than Texas. You need to work on your English.”
“Dylan thinks I speak it just fine. What happened to ‘Like father, like son’?”
“Don’t make me regret calling you,” Cort Wesley said, already doing just that.
“I’m glad you did. I was getting bored. Watching people’s backs really isn’t my thing.”
“Is that what you’re doing in Providence? Watching my son’s back?” Cort Wesley said, rolling the driver’s side window all the way down to let more air into the truck.
“Dylan doesn’t need me for that, Pops. He can take care of himself.”
“What did I say about calling me that?”
“Would you prefer ‘Dad’?”
“I’d prefer we weren’t having this discussion, but ‘Cort Wesley’ should do.”
Nola frowned. Looking at her in the shadowy half light of the lot’s shaded portion made him think of Caitlin. Nola didn’t sound like her, held herself in an entirely different way. But every once in a while, when he looked across the seat, for an instant he thought he was looking at Caitlin. Same long hair, same strong features and, most of all, the same eyes. A gunfighter’s eyes, the eyes of Jim Strong, who’d fathered them both.
“Yeah, about that. We’re beyond a simple first name basis, don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You really don’t get it, do you?”
“Since I have no idea what you’re talking about, I guess not, Nola.”
“Dylan and I are a couple.”
Cort Wesley cringed. “You ignored Caitlin’s warning to stay away from him.”
“You mean my sister’s warning?”
“Half sister.”
“Blood is blood, Pops, and the heart wants what the heart wants.”
Cort Wesley regarded Nola Delgado closer, trying to forget that a woman who’d taken as many lives as lung cancer was living with his son.
“So, what do you need?” she asked him. “And how many do we have to kill to get it?”
63
HOUSTON
There were four guards, two outside the warehouse and two inside. Nola nailed their positions, with the help of a pair of night vision binoculars, from the roof of a building down the street.
“Give me ten minutes to clear the field.”
Cort Wesley grasped her forearm, feeling the tight strands of banded muscle that felt like pliab
le steel. “Nobody dies, Nola.”
“Don’t be a killjoy.”
“Was that supposed to be a pun?” Cort Wesley asked her.
“You asked for my help and here I am. Gotta have a little fun in return.”
“By killing.”
“Come on, Pops, lighten up. I’m just trying to ease the tension here.”
Lots of thoughts scurried through Cort Wesley’s mind, but one rose above the others for his attention: his oldest son was dating a psychopath. Or maybe it was a sociopath; he always got them confused. Hell, maybe Nola Delgado was both.
“Hey, thank the Ranger,” she said, as if reading his mind.
“For what?”
“Dragging me into your lives. Here’s the plan,” Nola continued. “I’ll work my way onto the property and take care of the guards inside. Give me ten minutes and then the two outside are yours. How’s that sound?”
“Don’t kill them, Nola.”
“Whatever you say, Pops.”
* * *
Cort Wesley worked his way to the perimeter of the fenced-in property containing the warehouse, careful to cling to the darkness so as not to be spotted by any cameras they may not have spotted. Of course, cameras these days could be easily concealed and remain utterly unobtrusive. Better to take other precautions, which in this case meant donning a neoprene mask still fancied by special operators. Not something particularly conducive to the Texas heat and humidity, even at night, but he wasn’t about to risk being captured on video for all interested parties to see.
As he approached the fence line, Cort Wesley reviewed the specifications of what he and Nola were likely to find inside. Since the Texas economy remained dependent on the oil industry, there was no shortage of petrochemical facilities throughout the state, although he’d never heard of one located this close to a population center. Cort Wesley recalled a plant explosion that took a dozen lives, caused by chemicals that remained inert on their own but were stored close enough together to shed vapors that ignited the blast and resulting fire. The fact that a petrochemical storage facility had been permitted within the Houston city limits told him the fix was in, the stench of whatever was inside these walls reaching all the way to Washington.
By the time Cort Wesley, clad entirely in black, melded into the night and reached the fence line, he could no longer spot either of the perimeter guards. He located the spot in the fence where Nola had popped the lock to a towered gate, then slid inside the exterior yard in what he imagined was her wake.
Still no guards, though, which left Cort Wesley wary as he approached a rear security door Nola was supposed to have entered through. She’d left the door open just a crack, and Cort Wesley opened it just enough to slip inside and close it all the way.
Turning all the way around brought him face-to-face with a grinning Nola Delgado, who stood between the downed frames of the two guards he was supposed to have taken out.
“What took you so long, Pops?”
64
HOUSTON
“Hope you don’t mind I decided to finish what I started,” she continued.
“What I mind is how much you seem to enjoy it.”
“And you don’t?”
“I don’t go looking for opportunities to finish what I start, if that’s what you mean.”
“Hey, they’re still breathing, aren’t they? Now, are we going to stand here and argue or are you ready to check this place out?”
The warehouse beyond was sprawling and cavernous. A single level was subdivided by rebar-reinforced concrete walls to form separate storage units for the individual chemicals stored here. Cort Wesley had read that, in Texas, storage of hazardous, potentially dangerous and toxic chemicals had pretty much gone away from the old-fashioned fifty-five-gallon drums to be replaced by what were called intermediate bulk containers. These steel, rectangular units, which resembled basement furnaces, had a 350-gallon capacity, equal to six drums. They could fit on a single pallet and be handled by a single forklift. Because of the new units’ superior and more secure construction, the older drums could now be replaced by far fewer IBCs, which were designed to be reusable. Further, they were designed to put safety first; all were outfitted with a bottom drain, which eliminated any need to turn them on their sides to empty their contents in the event of an emergency. It would have made the residents of Texas sleep a lot better, had they been aware in the first place of how many dangerous chemicals were stored from one side of the state to the other.
Sure enough, the steel intermediate bulk containers were the only kind in evidence, not a single old-fashioned fifty-five-gallon drum anywhere to be seen. The IBCs were stacked up to a dozen high in what looked like a tower. Cort Wesley couldn’t say what each of them contained specifically, only that the amount stored here was incredible in scope, too much to even estimate in terms of gallons.
“Notice anything?” he said to Nola.
She tensed, scanning the sprawling floor with focused intensity. “I miss somebody?”
“I was talking about the storage containers.”
“There’s a lot of them.”
“Look closer.”
Nola did. “They all look exactly the same.”
“As in brand new.”
“Yeah. So?”
“Intermediate bulk containers aren’t a new concept,” Cort Wesley explained. “They shouldn’t all be new.”
Nola nodded. “Think I’m reading you now, Pops. You’re saying this Fass guy had them all manufactured from scratch, like a special order or something.”
“Or whoever’s behind him did. Either way, that would allow a custom design to be employed, specific to what might be the real purpose of this place.”
“Just enough real chemicals to pass muster and not attract attention,” Nola concluded.
“How about we have a look?”
But that initial look proved disappointing. Cort Wesley tapped the steel exterior shells of dozens of IBCs with a thin-headed ball-peen hammer. The resulting sound, a pinging, told him they did in fact contain the liquid or granular petrochemical they were supposed to contain, as opposed to the opioid pills he’d been expecting to find here, based on the conclusions he’d reached with Caitlin.
“What now, Pops?” Nola asked him.
“That was the easy way. Now we have to try the hard one.”
* * *
Cort Wesley had learned to operate plenty of heavy machinery while pulling jobs with his father, particularly loaders to lift the refrigerators and ranges clipped from warehouses like this into the back of similarly stolen trucks. Fortunately, he found a bucket loader with controls almost identical to a set he was familiar with, which allowed him access to the topmost IBCs upon the stack.
It took him a few moments to get the hang of things again, but as soon as he was being raised into the air inside a bucket, he thought of the old Glen Campbell song “Wichita Lineman.”
Closer to the top of the stack, Cort Wesley repeated the process with his ball-peen hammer. Modern forensic techniques would have employed X-rays or ultrasound to confirm the actual contents, but this was all he had, his technological limits reached with managing the controls of the loader.
At first, the results disappointed him; the sound produced by tapping the steel shell was identical to the IBCs at floor level. He’d hoped for false bottoms in the containers to conceal the opiates stored inside, in which case the ping from the ball-peen hammer would have been slightly different. But there was nothing, no difference at all.
And then Cort Wesley felt something like a feather scraping up his spine as he realized why, realized he’d had this part of whatever Roland Fass was involved in wrong. This wasn’t where illicit opioids were being stored at all. These canisters really did contain chemicals, almost surely one chemical in particular. He saw that now, still fitting the pieces together when the bucket extension thumped on impact with the floor.
Nola Delgado was nowhere in sight, but Cort Wesley heard the onrush of at le
ast four sets of feet before he could step from the bucket.
“Freeze! Don’t move!”
One figure was speaking while three others, garbed in black tactical gear, raced ahead of him with assault rifles steadied, fingers tensed on the triggers.
PART SIX
JOHN B. JONES
In 1874, Jones—a distinguished veteran of Texas forces in the Civil War—was chosen to head the Frontier Battalion, a newly created organization composed of six large Ranger companies and tasked with protecting the Texas frontier. Under his firm hand, the Rangers reached new levels as a state police force, helping preserve law and order in the chaotic period following the Civil War and Reconstruction. Train robber Sam Bass, one of the most notorious outlaws of the time, eluded capture until July 1878, when one of the members of his gang turned informer, writing to Jones of Bass’ plans to rob a small bank in Round Rock. Jones’ Rangers met the robbers there, and in the ensuing gunfight Bass was fatally wounded. In 1879, Jones was given even greater responsibility as adjutant general of the state of Texas; he died in service in 1881.
—Sarah Pruitt, “8 Famous Texas Rangers,” History.com
65
HOUSTON
“You boys don’t want to be doing this,” Cort Wesley said, hands in the air, a different picture coming together in his head.
“Come out of there real slow like and keep your arms where I can see them!”
Cort Wesley had to lower one of his hands to pop open the latch, keeping that hand in plain view as he did so and started to emerge from the bucket. “Listen to me. Get out of here. Leave now, while you still can.”
The four men looked like they found that funny.
“What,” another of them started in, “you got invisible friends or something?”
Yes, Cort Wesley almost said, thinking of Leroy Epps, but that’s not your problem.
“This isn’t on me, if you don’t get your asses out of here.”