Strong As Steel

by Jon Land

  “Goddamn nothing.”

  “How about the fact that the planks look discolored in these three rectangular patches?”

  Dabney squinted to better follow the beam. “Discolored?”

  “In comparison to the spots left open by what this train hauled here from up north. I’m thinking the freight must’ve piled through some weather on the way up here, and this car seems to have a leaky roof. So the discoloration you see here is actually dry patches where the floor was covered up by cargo.”

  Jim ran his beam around the perimeter of one of the lighter patches, drawing a perfect rectangle maybe four feet by six, give or take a few inches.

  “Three shipping crates, by the looks of things,” he resumed. “Maybe more, if they were piled atop one another. Then there’s these marks.”

  “What marks?”

  Jim angled the beam downward on a straight path to the freight car’s door. “Scratches in the wood where whoever off-loaded these crates must’ve dragged them across the floor.” He ran his thumbnail along the line of one of the scratches. “Depth tells me whatever was in those crates was plenty heavy, a few hundred pounds at the very least.”

  Dabney tried to smirk, but came up short. “That thumb of yours a new Ranger investigative tool?”

  “There was a time when I rode a horse more than a pickup. I learned to make do.”

  “I ever tell you I once worked with your daddy?”

  “Pretty much every lawman in Texas worked with Earl Strong at one point or another.”

  “I miss him, even though I didn’t know the man all that well.”

  “I miss him too, Dabs.”

  “What about these two dead Mexicans, Ranger? Where do they fit into this picture you’re drawing?”

  “I think they were guarding whatever was loaded inside this car,” Jim Strong answered, surprised by his own honesty.

  Dabney’s bulbous face puckered, an indication that he was deep in what passed for thought. “You figure these boys were killed by whoever stole those shipping crates, Ranger?”

  “I think they were here to steal the shipping crates. But the fact that they got themselves killed didn’t stop whoever accompanied them from finishing the job.”

  Dabney started to scratch at his scalp again, forgetting he’d put his hat back on. “Not a goddamn mark on them, not a single one, like they got struck by lightning bolts or something.”

  “You ever see what a body looks like that’s been struck by lightning, Sheriff?” Jim asked, picturing the two occasions in his career he’d come upon just that. “Because, believe me, we’d know it.”

  “Well, jeez, Ranger, I was only making a point.”

  Jim Strong left it there, wanted to give Dabney something to hang his hat on. “You check the bodies for IDs?”

  “Yes, sir, and they weren’t carrying a thing that could help us identify them, even with all those pockets in their pants.”

  Jim nodded, pretending he was impressed by something he’d already figured out himself. What he couldn’t figure was the precise chronology and whether the single shooter had somehow managed to drive off with the stolen crates all by himself, a job better fit for King Kong.

  He turned his flashlight beam back on those dry patches of wood, three of them lined up in a neat row like coffins.

  “We don’t know shit, do we, Ranger?” Dabney asked, suddenly by Jim’s side.

  “All we know, Dabs,” he said, “is that whatever was inside those crates was worth ten men dying over.”

  PART ONE

  In the 1830s, Rangers were paid $1.25 a day, and had to furnish their own arms, mounts, and other equipment. They elected their own officers. Until more formal organization of Ranger forces occurred after the Civil War, Rangers existed primarily as volunteer companies, which were raised when the need arose and disbanded when their work was done. Because of this, many famous Rangers of the Republic of Texas period and the early years of statehood were men whose “formal” Ranger service may have lasted only a brief time. But because of their very active lives during these formative years, these men are remembered as Rangers, and their tradition of bravery and spirit of adventure became part of the Ranger tradition and legend.

  —“Lone on the Range: Texas Lawmen” by Jesse Sublett, Texas Monthly, December 31, 1969

  1

  DALLAS, TEXAS

  “You want to tell me what I’m doing here again?” Caitlin Strong said to Captain Bub McNelly of the Texas Criminal Investigations Division.

  McNelly, who favored string ties and shiny cowboy boots, turned to the quartet of figures in equally shiny windbreakers, milling behind him in the makeshift staging area. Caitlin had heard he was a descendant of the famed Texas Ranger captain Leander McNelly, a man who’d once told the whole of the U.S. government to go to hell, but wasn’t too keen on the freedom with which Rangers still operated today.

  “Special Response Teams hang their hat on being multijurisdictional,” McNelly told her. “Consider yourself the representative Ranger.”

  “Since when does an SRT look more comfortable holding briefcases than firearms?”

  “I need to tell you that computers are the real weapons these days?” McNelly asked her. “And those boys accompanying us are forensic experts who know how to fire back.”

  “Just two guns, yours and mine, backing them up,” Caitlin noted.

  “I don’t need a computer to do the math, Ranger,” McNelly said, while the four techs wearing windbreakers hovered behind them in front of the elevator. “You and I serve the warrant on the geek squad upstairs and let the experts do their thing with brains instead of bullets. How hard can it be?”

  They were about to serve a search warrant on an information technology firm on the forty-second floor of the Bank of America Plaza, the city’s tallest building. Caitlin had served plenty of more “traditional” search warrants in her time, on the likes of biker gangs, drug dealers, and various other suspects. The kind of service that found her backed up by guns, and plenty of them, instead of briefcases and backpacks.

  A chime sounded ahead of the elevator door sliding open.

  “In my experience,” Caitlin said, stepping in first to position herself so the door didn’t close again before the SRT computer forensics techs were inside, “it pays to have brains and bullets.”

  McNelly smiled thinly. “That’s why you’re here, Ranger. You were specifically requested for the job.”

  “By who?”

  “I don’t know. Orders came from the top down.”

  The cab began its ascent. If this were a Ranger operation, as opposed to CID, Caitlin would have insisted on securing the space in question prior to bringing up the civilians. Because that was clearly what these personnel in ill-fitting windbreakers pulled from a rack were. Civilians.

  “Get your warrant ready, Captain,” she told McNelly, as the cab whisked past the floors between L and 42.

  He flapped the trifolded document in the air between them. “Got it right here.”

  “What’s CTP stand for again?” Caitlin asked, referring to the acronym of the company on which they were about to serve the warrant.

  “Communications Technology Providers. I thought I told you that.”

  “Maybe you did, but you never told me what the company did to get on the Criminal Investigations Division’s radar. I’m guessing that’s because somebody ordered you to take me along for the ride. All well and good, in this political world we live in, until something goes bad.”

  McNelly flashed Caitlin a smirk, as a chime sounded to indicate the elevator had reached its desired floor. “I can tell you this much, Ranger. The suspects we’re after here don’t know a gun from their own assholes. Worst thing they can do is infect us with a computer virus.”

  He led the way through the open door, without waiting for Caitlin to respond. She exited next, followed in a tight bunch by those four computer techs in their windbreakers, which made it look like they’d stuck their arms through Hefty bag
s.

  The doors along the hall were uniformly glass, sleek and modern, some frosted. According to the building layout Caitlin had studied, Communications Technology Providers occupied a pair of adjoining office suites adding up to nearly five thousand square feet in total. One was a corner office, meaning at least a portion of those suites would enjoy wraparound windows and plenty of natural light.

  Caitlin had just reflexively shoved her jacket back behind the holster housing her SIG Sauer P-226 nine-millimeter pistol, when the glass double-door entrance to Communications Technology Providers ruptured behind a fusillade of gunfire.

  2

  CARACAS, VENEZUELA

  “Do you have anything to say before sentence is carried out, Colonel?” General Santa Anna Vargas asked Guillermo Paz.

  “I was wondering about your name,” Paz said from atop the gallows in the military prison yard outside Venezuela’s capital city. “Were you named after Antonio López de Santa Anna, the Mexican general who lost Texas?”

  Vargas’s expression turned quizzical. He looked about at the officer cadre poised with him atop the platform, as if to exchange smiles at the doomed man’s flippant remark. But they had heard too much about Guillermo Paz and the reputation he’d earned as a colonel with the Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services, better known as the Venezuelan secret police, to find any amusement in anything the man said.

  Paz figured that God’s tolerance for his murderous actions could only get him so far, the fact being that, while he’d long ago lost track of the number of people he’d killed, the Almighty certainly hadn’t. So maybe it had finally caught up with him. He’d come back “home” for his mother’s funeral, unable to deny himself the fulfillment of an obligation and duty he saw as sacrosanct to the mission his life had become. What kind of man didn’t come home to attend his mother’s funeral? Guillermo Paz, all seven feet and three hundred rock-hard pounds of him, wasn’t about to risk squandering all the moral progress he’d made by shirking such a duty.

  He felt a soldier position a stool behind him, to facilitate the task of looping the rope noose around his neck. He could feel the man’s trembling hands struggling to complete the simple task, and might have offered to help if his hands weren’t bound behind his back. Three additional soldiers, not part of the execution squad, stood farther back, assault rifles trained on Paz in case those bonds didn’t hold. Two of them had made the mistake of positioning themselves so the sun blazing down out of a cloudless sky shined straight into their eyes. Not that it should have mattered to a doomed man. It was just something Paz couldn’t help but notice amid the humidity that made the air feel like someone was wringing moisture out of a sponge.

  “You haven’t answered my question,” he said to Vargas. “You can’t kill me until you do.”

  “Yes,” Vargas relented, “I was named for the great man and general.”

  “Too bad your parents forgot the Antonio López part. Not much of a first name they gave you. I’m wondering if people think you may have been named after Santa Claus instead.”

  Vargas took a step backward and signaled a priest holding an open Bible to come forward. “I understand you found religion.”

  “More accurately, you might say it found me.”

  “Our esteemed president insisted on extending you this courtesy. Do you have a favorite prayer?”

  Paz felt the soldier on the stool behind him tighten the noose. His eyes swam about the ground below, the military prison yard filled with soldiers from the Venezuelan army, standing at attention, called to witness the price of Paz’s indiscretion and perceived treason. Paz couldn’t even begin to count them all. He wondered if they were really here as a warning or, perhaps, to further discourage any attempt at escape.

  Paz aimed his gaze back at Vargas. “Is your mother still alive?”

  “She is.”

  “I hope you make time to visit her often. I wish I had visited mine more. I wish I hadn’t waited until her funeral.”

  “Do you have a prayer you’d like the padre to read or not?” Vargas snapped, impatient to have this over with.

  Paz responded with his gaze on the priest, who was clutching his Bible in a grip so tight he’d squeezed the blood from his fingers. “I remember another priest who steered me down the proper course in life, to choose good over evil. He was murdered by the gangs because of his efforts. I was ten years old when I found him bleeding to death from a knife wound suffered for no more than trying to help the local impoverished lot the gangs sought to control. I held his head in my lap, my own tears falling onto his robes, as my first priest took his last breath. I closed his eyes and crossed myself the way my priest had taught me, silently swearing to avenge him. Then I went about collecting the bread and vegetables the man had died for, that had spilled out of the grocery bags when he fell.”

  His impatience growing, Vargas signaled the priest to start reading, without waiting for Paz to make his selection.

  “Padre nuestro, que estás en el cielo,” the priest started, reciting the Lord’s Prayer in Spanish. “Santificado sea tu nombre.”

  “I found my mother crying when I returned to the tiny clapboard house with a tin roof I shared with my four brothers and sisters,” Paz said, interrupting the priest’s train of thought and causing him to lose his place. “She’d been struck by one of her visions she called desfallecimientos, which was Spanish for ‘spells.’”

  A gust of wind flipped the pages of the Bible about, the priest quickly struggling to find the one he’d lost, which contained the Lord’s Prayer.

  “You see, my mother was a bruja, a witch,” Paz continued to Vargas. “The people of the hillside slum where we lived, in Caracas, stayed away from her as a result, even the most hardened criminal element afraid to cross her, lest they risk a spell being cast against them.

  “‘I didn’t steal it,’ I told her, laying out our small share of the food the priest would’ve allotted us. ‘I didn’t take anything that wasn’t mine.’”

  The priest relocated the page he’d been reading from and resumed. “Venga tu reino. Hágase tu voluntad en la tierra cmo en el cielo.”

  “‘But you’re going to take plenty in the years to come,’ my mother told me. ‘You’re going to take more lives than I can see. Your fate was sealed today, and now I see why, just as I see the blood staining your clothes.’”

  “‘I didn’t hurt anyone, Madre,’ I insisted.”

  “‘But you will. You will hurt many, more than you or I can count.’”

  “‘I’ll find another priest,’ I pleaded. ‘I’ll pray!’”

  “‘It won’t matter,’ my mother said. ‘The smell of blood will be forever strong on you, Guillermo.’”

  “Danos hoy nuestro pan de cada día,” the priest resumed, his voice quickening to be done with his reading of the prayer as quickly as possible. “Perdona nuestras ofensas, como también nosotros perdonamos a los que nos ofenden.”

  “And, true to my mother’s word, it has been—even stronger than she could’ve possibly foreseen,” Paz continued, still ignoring the prayer and aiming his next words straight at General Vargas. “But I’m not that man anymore. I haven’t been since the day I first crossed paths with my Texas Ranger.”

  Paz could have elaborated further but chose not to. He’d been retained to kill that Texas Ranger, a woman, of all things, a fact that bothered Paz not in the least, until their eyes met in the midst of a gunfight and he saw what had been missing in his own. He’d never returned to Venezuela after that, calling Texas and America home now, thanks to an arrangement with Homeland Security that kept him inoculated from prosecution. All he needed was to do the bidding of a shadowy subdivision of Homeland, under the leadership of an equally shadowy man.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Paz continued, “I’ve spilled plenty of blood since, but the smell of it no longer clings to me the same way. It’s important to me that you know that, because I’m about to spill a whole lot more and I want to confess that in
advance.” He moved his eyes back on the priest. “So, Padre, will you hear my confession? Can you absolve me of the sins I’m about to commit?”

  Vargas stepped over to the wooden lever that would release the trapdoor beneath Paz’s feet and send him plunging to his death.

  “No nos dejes caer en tentación y líbranos del mal,” the priest said, taking that as his cue to resume. He tried to meet Paz’s gaze, but couldn’t. “Amén.”

  “Lo siento,” Paz said to him, as Vargas’s grasp tightened on the lever. “I’m sorry.”

  And that’s when the first shots sounded.

  3

  DALLAS, TEXAS

  The glass blew outward like ice crystals, showering the air, pinging to the floor in oddly melodic fashion.

  “Get clear!” Caitlin ordered the four techs wearing windbreakers, her pistol already palmed, adding “Take cover!” when they failed to budge.

  Then she was in motion, pressed against the near wall, with McNelly pinned close enough that she could smell the lavender-scented soap he must’ve showered with that morning. He was using a walkie-talkie feature on his cell phone to call for backup, and, in that moment, how Caitlin wished he was indeed a descendant of the legendary Texas Ranger captain Leander McNelly and just as good with a gun.

  She could hear the soft rat-tat-tat clacking of silenced automatic fire, overcome in splotches by the desperate cries and screams of those at which that fire was aimed. Going in guns blazing to any situation was hard enough without having a clue about the number and placement of the opposition, much less with a partner Caitlin figured hardly knew his way around a gunfight. McNelly had his own nine-millimeter in hand by then, his hold on it anything but steady.

  “Stay here and wait for the backup,” she rasped to him, her tone just above a whisper. “I don’t need you in my way. Only way you use that Glock is if somebody with a gun comes out ahead of me.”

  * * *

  Caitlin’s boots crunched over the first shards of glass, fifteen, maybe twenty feet from the shattered entrance of Communications Technology Providers. That much force concentrated behind that many bullets had its own way of rewriting the rules of physics.