Strong As Steel

by Jon Land

  “Anyway,” Caitlin said, leaning forward, “it turns out Young Roger had already transferred plenty of the data on those computers onto a thumb drive.”

  “That boy never ceases to amaze me.”

  “You should see his band.”

  Tepper lit up his Marlboro and chuckled. “You know the last concert I went to? Bruce Springsteen.”

  “The Boss? Now I’m impressed.”

  “Don’t be. I don’t think he was the Boss yet. It was 1974, at Liberty Hall up in Houston. Your dad and I were there on business.”

  “What would that be?”

  Tepper yanked the cigarette from his mouth and held it before him, letting the smoke collect in the air between them. “Jesus Christ, that was over forty years ago. I can’t even remember what I was doing going back four hours.”

  “Cort Wesley’s on his way to meet up with Jones now. Sounds like it’s connected to whatever he thinks led to the massacre yesterday.”

  “Five of the workers from that computer company, it turns out, are going to make it. Five lives saved, Ranger. All in all, not a bad day’s work.”

  “Right place at the right time, Captain, but not soon enough to save the others, and I’m including Bub McNelly there.”

  “Anything else you want to know about the fate of those computers, you’ll have to ask Jones.”

  “I can’t wait. Meanwhile, Young Roger’s going to sift through all the accumulated data in search of the reason why somebody ordered the deaths of all those techies.”

  Tepper started to flick the ashes into his ashtray, realizing just in time he’d yet to replace the one that had gone missing, and flicked them off into the trash can instead.

  “Careful, D.W.,” warned Caitlin. “Don’t want to go starting fires, now.”

  “No worries, Ranger. Thanks to the winds of Hurricane Caitlin, I’m used to putting them out.”

  21

  MARBLE FALLS, TEXAS

  “Sorry, cowboy,” Jones greeted him, rising from the other side of the table, “we’re way early for pie happy hour.”

  Cort Wesley pulled his chair out and settled down in it. “That’s okay,” he said, using his left hand to open a menu that had been set on the paper place mat listing the vast array of pie choices for later in the day, “you can buy me breakfast instead.”

  The Bluebonnet Café might’ve been famous for its daily buy one slice, get another slice free promotion, but all the food was good. Big portions served home style upon the same tables that had been there since the place opened a million years before. Their table was bare wood, neatly polished, with each chip, scratch, or mar bearing the story of someone who’d brought a piece of their life through the entrance.

  “You up to speed on what happened in Dallas yesterday?” Jones asked, his voice lowered a few octaves.

  Cort Wesley laid his right forearm on the table, feeling like he was lifting deadweight. “I thought you wanted to talk about Caracas.”

  “Caracas never happened, totally off the books. That’s why I sent you. That also means no reports, in writing or otherwise.”

  “Plausible deniability in case the Venezuelan government issues a formal complaint?”

  “They won’t, and Washington wouldn’t give them the time of day even if they did. I do have one question for you, before we drop the whole thing: What the hell was Paz thinking?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  “It’s a question only you or the Ranger can answer.”

  Cort Wesley didn’t need to ponder the issue further. He worked his right hand into and out of a fist to assure himself that the cramping that had plagued him was continuing to improve. “I think it all played out exactly the way he wanted it to. I think leaving Venezuela the way he did left him feeling like he ran away, so he ran back and left them something they could remember him by.”

  “He couldn’t have known I’d send in the cavalry, cowboy.”

  “Really? This is Paz we’re talking about.” Cort Wesley waited for a server to fill the big coffee mug placed in front of him. “And he’s clearly not what you called me here to talk about.”

  “I’m putting you on yesterday’s massacre, on behalf of Homeland.”

  “Texas Rangers already got it covered, Jones.”

  “Not their jurisdiction.”

  “Since when did that stop you-know-who?”

  Jones nodded, grudgingly accepting Cort Wesley’s point. “We’ll let her work the boundaries while you work outside the lines, as in getting me a line on who was responsible. I’m more interested in that than what they were after. Take Paz along for the ride, if you want.”

  “That a suggestion or an order?” Cort Wesley asked him, settling on a veggie egg white omelet.

  “Whoever it is you’re after thought nothing of machine-gunning a whole bunch of civilians yesterday, cowboy. You tell me.”

  The server came and took Cort Wesley’s order, Jones saying he was fine with just coffee.

  “Can you get me a detailed ballistics report? And any crime scene photos that picture the guns the shooters came packing?”

  “Sure, as soon as you tell me what you need them for.”

  “This morning Caitlin mentioned something about not recognizing the weapons the shooters were using. Since she’s shot just about every gun on the planet, that raised a flag.”

  Jones shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “I’ve got grunts I can send off to chase bullets.”

  “They don’t have my sources or my perspective. I’ve been at this awhile, Jones.”

  “In case you’ve forgotten, I’m no stranger to it, either. I didn’t always drive a desk, cowboy.”

  “Since those were your people who got gunned down yesterday,” Cort Wesley told him, “I hope your license isn’t up for renewal anytime soon.”

  “The bodies are only part of my problem,” Jones said, as if he were speaking of a lost dry cleaning order.

  “Touching display of compassion.”

  Jones gave the place mat menu a fresh look, as if regretting that he hadn’t ordered anything. “You talk to the Ranger this morning?”

  “I don’t even know what time it is. I haven’t exactly gotten a lot of sleep lately.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes, so let me give you the latest: all the computer equipment she removed from Communications Technology Providers without authorization was confiscated from Company G headquarters.”

  “I’d expect nothing less of you, given how much you enjoy marking your territory.”

  Jones leaned forward, close enough for Cort Wesley to smell the black coffee on his breath. “That’s the problem, cowboy, because I had nothing to do with it. No one associated with Homeland or any part of the U.S. government did.”

  Cort Wesley held his stare, unsettled for the first time since he’d sat down. “What’s that leave us with?”

  “Exactly what I expect you to find out,” Jones said, lowering his gaze. “After you get that arm checked out.”

  “You noticed?”

  Jones shook his head.

  “Caitlin?”

  Jones nodded.

  “I think I might shoot her.”

  “She told me you’d say that, cowboy. Told me to tell you only if you use your right hand.”

  22

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  “Got a few minutes, Doc?” Caitlin asked Bexar County Medical Examiner Frank Dean Whatley, fortunate enough to have caught him in his office instead of the lab.

  “Not if it’s about those skeletons Captain Tepper dug out of the desert last night. And if it’s about those poor bastards left dead after that shoot-out in Dallas yesterday, you’ve come to the wrong city.”

  “I’m here about bodies, all right, just not either of those sets.”

  “Is there another gunfight you’ve been involved in lately that slipped my mind?”

  “Not me, Doc, and not a gunfight, either.”

  Frank Dean Whatley had been the Bexar County medical examiner since t
he time Caitlin was in diapers. In recent years he’d grown a belly that hung out over his thin belt, seeming to force his spine to angle inward at the torso. Whatley’s teenage son had been killed by Latino gangbangers when Caitlin was a mere kid herself. Ever since then, he’d harbored a virulent hatred for that particular race, from the bag boys at the local H-E-B supermarket to the politicians who professed to be peacemakers. With his wife lost first in life and then in death to alcoholism, he’d probably stayed in the job too long. But he had nothing to go home to, no real life outside the office, and remained exceptionally good at his job, which he approached with rare pathos and compassion for those who had the misfortune of ending up on one of his steel slabs. Caitlin had run into him at a Walmart once, pushing a cart full of linens. He had said he liked refreshing the supply, out of respect for those whose deaths he was charged with detailing.

  The Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office and morgue was located just off the Loop 410, not far from the Babcock Road exit on Merton Mintor. It was a three-story beige building that also housed the county health department and the city offices for Medicaid. The office inevitably smelled of cleaning solvent, with a faint scent of menthol clinging to the walls like paint to disguise the odor of decaying flesh. The lighting was dull in the hallways and overly bright in offices like Whatley’s. She’d had occasion to come here often over the years, but normally to discuss current investigations, as opposed to those undertaken twenty-five years ago.

  Whatley looked up from the stack of papers he was sorting through on his desk, eyeing Caitlin with a frown nearly swallowed by his encroaching jowls. “You’re talking about Fort Stockton, those bodies your dad came upon at the freight yard in 1994.”

  “I am indeed.”

  He looked back down. “Jim Strong worked that case with Captain Tepper. Ask him.”

  “I did. He sketched the broad details about the night in question, what was waiting for my dad in that freight car, and how it took them both to Chihuahua.”

  Whatley pondered that briefly. “He didn’t tell you about the bodies, what became of them after I tried to figure out what killed them?”

  “Tried?”

  “Long story, Ranger.”

  “That’s why I’m here, Doc.”

  Whatley gave her a long, hard gaze, as if looking for something he’d never seen before. “Where did D. W. Tepper leave off, exactly?”

  “In Mexico, when he and my dad came face-to-face with the Red Widow.”

  “Then pull up a chair and strap yourself in, Ranger. It gets a little crazy from there.…”

  23

  CHIHUAHUA, MEXICO; 1994

  “So what do you say, Tejano?” the woman known as the Red Widow continued, from across the Chihuahua train depot. “Can we call a truce?”

  “I don’t have any bone to pick with you, señora,” Jim Strong said, unsettled slightly by the tinny echo of his voice

  “I was speaking of the history between Mexico and the Texas Rangers.”

  “Last time I checked, ma’am, that history doesn’t include you and me. We got no history between us whatsoever. Isn’t that right, D.W?” he added, looking toward Tepper.

  “Not directly, anyway,” the Red Widow said, with just enough of a smile to let Jim know they’d crossed paths in the past, at least peripherally.

  “Well, if it turns out I killed any of yours, I hope you won’t take it personally.”

  “Likewise, Tejano.”

  “I believe you have me confused with someone else, ma’am.”

  “And why would you believe that?”

  “Because the term ‘Tejano’ refers to a Texan who’s a Mexican American. That’s not me.”

  “The term was also used to denote residents of your state who were descended from the original Spanish-speaking settlers, the true founders of Texas. So calling you that implies respect and honor, even if it’s not technically accurate. Call it a colloquialism.”

  “Then I’ll accept it in that spirit exactly, providing you have your men there lower those Thompsons.”

  Delgado waved a hand to signal them to do just that, and Jim watched the guns go down en masse. “Magnificent weapons, aren’t they? Formidable and historic at the same time.”

  “I’ve never shot one myself, ma’am. Neither has my partner here. But my dad, Earl Strong, knew his way around a Thompson from both sides of the barrel,” Jim said, picturing the fury of what a drum- or mag-fed burst of .45-caliber shells could do to a man.

  “I appreciate your sense of history and its importance, Tejano. Something else we have in common.”

  “I wasn’t aware we had anything in common.”

  Luna Diaz Delgado ignored his comment. “You’re here about last night’s train car robbery in Fort Stockton.”

  “There’s also the matter of those three men found dead inside the empty car, not to mention a murdered train crew and two men identified from their photos as ex–Mexican Special Forces. They were killed without even getting to their guns. Means they faced formidable opposition, I’d say.”

  Luna Diaz Delgado wasn’t a young woman, although Jim Strong couldn’t have said exactly how old she was. Staring at her from across the old railway station, all he could see was her beauty. Like all Rangers, and Texas law enforcement in general, he’d heard all the stories about her. How Luna Diaz had been one of the few survivors of the massacre that had taken the lives of her parents. The massacre had been laid at the feet of rival drug cartels, and Luna had ended up being raised by working-class relatives of her mother, embarking on a much different future than being part of a family that eschewed power.

  By her mid teens, that future left her as a waitress at a Mexican bar frequented by cartel honchos, which included one Hector Delgado. One night, while Delgado sat at his usual back corner table, Luna overheard a pair of men she’d already figured for gunmen talking about making their move. So she kept her eyes on the two men, until she spotted the sawed-off shotguns beneath the bulky coats they’d yet to shed.

  Luna’s intention had been to approach Hector Delgado to warn him. But that plan went bust when the two would-be assassins drew back their coats to go for their sawed-offs. The only thing Luna had time to do was grab the heavy top-shelf tequila bottle she’d pulled from the bar in case she needed it. The men were shoving their chairs aside when she slammed the bottle over the head of the nearest man, felt it shatter against his skull, spraying glass and alcohol through the air. All she had left was the neck of the bottle, finished in a jagged edge, which she promptly jammed into the second man’s throat as he was yanking his sawed-off from some makeshift holster. A blood spurt erupted, showering her and pretty much everyone else within ten feet of its spray.

  Hector Delgado didn’t just thank Luna for saving his life, he married her at the tender age of what turned out to be sixteen—well, Jim corrected in his mind, seventeen by the day of their wedding. That was 1980, by his recollection, and Luna Diaz Delgado didn’t look any less beautiful fourteen years later, at the age of thirty-one. She’d seamlessly taken over her husband’s criminal enterprise after he was assassinated two years before, and according to what Mexican authorities knew but couldn’t prove, she had proceeded to kill the three other cartel leaders thought to be complicit in Hector’s murder, along with their families. In the years since, that story had been corrected to eliminate the conspiracy angle, Luna opting to kill all three drug titans because she didn’t know which of them was behind her husband’s death.

  The legend of Luna Diaz Delgado had been born, and now Jim Strong found himself standing thirty feet away from the person behind it.

  “The missing cargo is none of your concern, Tejano,” Delgado asserted.

  “Since we’re having this discussion, ma’am, I’m going to guess that cargo belongs to you.”

  “Guessing and knowing are two entirely different things. This is no concern of yours, no concern of the Texas Rangers, your state, or your country.”

  Jim Strong took off his
Stetson and held it by his hip. “Well, ma’am, there is the matter of the train crew. Their murders are surely of concern to their families—all based in Texas, which makes it my concern, too.”

  Delgado nodded, conceding Jim’s point. Neither had moved to close the gap between them, but they hadn’t widened that gap either.

  Their positions were frozen in time and space, two predators sizing each other up and opting not to chance a fight that would likely lead to the death of both.

  It was Jim Strong who broke the silence. “I’ve said what I came here to say, ma’am. Learning more about that cargo headed here would help me bring a killer to justice, a killer who’s hurt people on both sides of the border. I mistakenly believed you might want to help me catch a killer so I could get you your cargo back.”

  “I’m sorry you misjudged the situation, Tejano. But leaving this case alone is for your own good, yours and your daughter, Caitlin’s. Fourteen years old now—have I got that right?”

  Jim Strong felt himself stiffen. “Let’s leave family out of this, ma’am. Notice I haven’t mentioned your sons, all three of them in school under false identities back in Texas for safekeeping. If you’d like, I can check in on them from time to time, just to make sure they’re okay.”

  Delgado stood there like a statue before him. “You came into my world today, Tejano. You don’t want me coming into yours.”

  The threat should have gotten a rise out of Jim, should have angered, if not enraged him. But somehow the woman known as the Red Widow didn’t pack a lot of bite behind the comment, as if it were something she had to say. Jim had barely recorded the words, too busy staring at her to be either frightened or intimidated. She was like some devilish she-beast hypnotizing him with her looks and guile, a modern-day Medusa. He knew he needed to break her stare or risk turning to stone there and then.

  “I believe Ranger Tepper and I will be going,” he managed finally.

  “I approve of your decision.”

  “I don’t care one way or another about your approval, ma’am.”

  Luna Diaz Delgado’s expression flirted with a smile. Jim Strong felt something melt inside him and couldn’t take his eyes off her, whether he turned to stone or not.