Strong As Steel

by Jon Land

  Cort Wesley flexed his fingers. The motion felt sluggish, but he was able to tighten those fingers into a fist. Then he lifted the arm up and put it down again, repeating the process as if to prove the doctor wrong.

  “Do you have a pharmacy you’d like us to call the prescription in to, Mr. Masters?” Shazir continued.

  “No.”

  “I’ll just write one out for you. Then you can fill it at your pharmacy of choice. And I can see if we’ve got any samples to get you started.”

  “I’d appreciate that, Doc,” Cort Wesley said, still trying to make sense of all he’d heard.

  “Have you been under an unusual level of stress lately?”

  Cort Wesley didn’t know how to answer that question, so he said, “Not particularly.”

  “Because you’ll want to avoid stress as much as possible.”

  “And my arm?”

  “I expect you to ultimately regain full motor function within the next week or so, in all likelihood, and you should continue to notice gradual improvement.”

  Cort Wesley found himself breathing easier. Literally.

  “So I don’t need to worry.”

  Dr. Shazir’s gaze was noncommittal. “You’re twice as likely to suffer a major stroke as the typical man your age.”

  “I don’t like those odds.”

  “That’s why we’re going to do something about it, Mr. Masters. Would you like me to make an appointment for you with a neurologist?”

  “I’d appreciate that, Doc. Anything else?”

  “Just one thing, Mr. Masters: try not to worry—it’s stressful.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  * * *

  Cort Wesley bought a pair of original Hires Root Beers to go with the prescription he had filled at a pharmacy located near the walk-in clinic. Back outside, he popped both caps off with his thumb, under a round plastic table shaded by an umbrella, which technically belonged to the frozen yogurt shop next store. He was supposed to do a Skype call later, to talk with Luke in Europe, but the technical intricacies of getting the thing loaded escaped him, meaning he needed Dylan or Caitlin around to handle that chore.

  Other than that, he had time to kill, nothing on the agenda besides waiting for Tom Baer to call him with whatever he’d been able to find out on surplus shipments of the nine-millimeter pistols and submachine guns that the killers Caitlin had gunned down had been toting.

  He’d just swallowed two of the blood thinners with his initial gulp when he heard a voice that seemed to emanate from his own head.

  “What are we drinking to today, bubba?” asked Leroy Epps.

  32

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  “How about good health, champ?”

  The ghost of the best friend Cort Wesley ever had in the world stopped just short of reaching for the other opened bottle of Hires, made with genuine sarsaparilla, but his eyes sparkled at the sight before growing grave.

  “Guess you’re not so invincible after all,” Leroy noted.

  The spectral shape’s lips were pale pink and crinkled with dryness, the morning sunlight casting his brown skin in a yellowish tint. The diabetes that had planted him in the ground had turned Leroy’s eyes bloodshot and had numbed his limbs years before the sores and infections set in. As a boxer, he’d fought for the middleweight crown on three different occasions. He’d been knocked out once and had the belt stolen from him on paid-off judges’ scorecards two other times. He’d been busted for killing a white man in self-defense and had died three years into Cort Wesley’s four-year incarceration, but ever since, he always seemed to show up when Cort Wesley needed him the most. Cort Wesley had given up trying to figure out whether Leroy was a ghostly specter or a figment of his imagination. He just accepted the fact of Leroy’s presence and was grateful that his old friend kept coming around to help him out of one scrape after another.

  Prison officials had let Cort Wesley attend Leroy’s funeral, which was held in a potter’s field for inmates who didn’t have any relatives left to claim the body. He’d been the only one standing at the graveside, besides the prison chaplain, when Mexican laborers had lowered the plank coffin into the ground. Cort Wesley tried to remember what he’d been thinking that day, but it was hard, since he’d done his best to erase those years not just from his memory but also from his very being.

  One thing he did remember was that the service was the first time he’d smelled the talcum powder Leroy Epps had used to hide the stench of the festering sores spawned by the diabetes. And in retrospect he realized that, for days after the funeral, Cort Wesley had been struck by the nagging feeling that Leroy wasn’t gone at all. The scent of his talcum powder still hung heavy in the air inside his cell, and Cort Wesley woke up at least once every night, certain he saw Leroy standing there, watching over him, grinning, and sometimes even winking, when the illusion held long enough.

  “So, champ, am I gonna be joining you soon?” Cort Wesley asked him.

  “Not for me to say.”

  “’Cause you can’t or won’t?”

  “Little of both, I suppose, bubba.”

  “You hear what that doctor said?”

  “Didn’t understand all of it, but I got the gist.”

  Cort Wesley massaged his bad arm. “Gist being I had a stroke.”

  Leroy shook his head. “That’s not what I heard.”

  “What’d you hear?”

  “TIA…”

  “Same thing.”

  “Not from where I be. More like the difference between a cold and pneumonia, bubba.”

  Cort Wesley flexed his arm; the sluggishness was the same as it had been in the doctor’s office. “What if it never comes back, champ? What if I have to spend the rest of my life treating my arm like it’s a grocery bag?”

  “You trust me?”

  Cort Wesley nodded. “You, my boys, the Ranger, Paz, and that’s about it.”

  “Here’s the way I see the world as it be.”

  “That the future you’re looking at, champ?”

  “No, bubba, I’m looking at you, a man who’s made plenty of mistakes in his time, but never the same one twice, on account of you learn not to trip in the same crack a second time. This TIA thing done tripped you up, but it didn’t send you falling, and you’ll get this worked out ’fore the next one does.”

  “What if my arm never works right again?”

  “You asked me that already. And that doctor said it would.”

  “He said probably.”

  “Just like you’re probably gonna take another breath in a few seconds.”

  “That’s your answer?”

  “You want guarantees, go to Sears.”

  “They closed most of their stores.”

  “No shit? Jeez, good thing I’m not in the market for a major appliance.” Old Leroy’s expression seemed to brighten, his eyes wet and wide. “You fixing on telling the Ranger gal?”

  Cort Wesley shrugged, the idea that he was explaining himself to a ghost not bothering him in the least. “She’s the one who got me to go to the clinic. Dylan’s going back to school in a couple weeks. Telling him can wait.”

  “You wanna tell me what’s really bothering you?”

  “I’m scared, champ.”

  “You never been scared of dying, in my recollection.”

  Cort Wesley swallowed some more Hires. “I’m scared of losing the only thing I’m good at.”

  “Killing?”

  “Being able to shoot a gun, hold my own when I haven’t got one. Hard to do either with only one arm that works right.”

  Leroy nodded knowingly. “Like I said, killing.”

  “I don’t want to look in the mirror and not recognize the man who looks back.”

  The ghost of his best friend seemed to be taking it all in, pondering. “I ever tell you I played ball myself back in the day, just like your boy?”

  “No, champ. I only knew about the boxing.”

  “Well, it’s true. Plenty of sandlot wh
en I was a boy growing up in Memphis, and then in high school for a time. Coulda gone on, played college ball, too.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, bubba, it’s like this. My daddy took sick and died, and there was nobody to put food on the table for my brothers and sisters. He and my mom liked kids so much they kept having them, and his passing left that responsibility with me. Guess you could say it altered my life path more than a little.”

  “Doesn’t seem fair, does it?”

  “Since when is life fair? I shouldn’t need to tell you that. That said, once in a while the good guys get to win, and I’m glad to hear your oldest is headed back to the field.”

  “Best thing in the world for him, champ.”

  “You ever play?”

  “In high school, until too many personal foul penalties started piling up the suspensions.”

  “Issues with your temper, I’m guessing, bubba.”

  “They call it ‘anger management’ these days. Add to that the fact that my dad needing me for jobs didn’t take into account my practice or game schedule.”

  “He never saw you play?”

  “Not even once.”

  “Same with mine. He was the school janitor and he said he never came to games because he didn’t want the kids to make fun of him. But it was really on account of him not wanting to embarrass me.”

  Cort Wesley thought he detected a slight crackling in Leroy’s voice, the big, bloodshot eyes seeming to moisten. He reached down to collect his bottle of Hires again and noticed that the top third of the second bottle had been drained, as if it had evaporated into the air.

  “Anyway,” the ghost was saying, “he was one of the good guys, too. Hey, what say we head east and take in a game with your boy in uniform?”

  “I doubt he’ll see much of the field.”

  “Sidelines is close enough for me, bubba, though I don’t suppose that makes much sense to you.”

  “How’s that, champ?”

  “I can think of a lot of words to describe you, but ‘spectator’ sure ain’t one of them. You gotta be carrying the ball all the time, even if there’s no blocking in front of you and the defense is primed to tee off. Good work you done down in Venice-uela, by the way.”

  “Just another day at the office.”

  “Well, don’t get too comfortable in some cushy desk chair, ’cause more work’s headed this way.”

  Cort Wesley felt a chill in the air, as if a cold front had passed right over the shaded picnic table at which he and Leroy were seated. “I thought you couldn’t see that far ahead down the road.”

  “And that’s the God’s honest truth, bubba. But what’s coming isn’t that far down. In fact, it’s near close enough to reach out and touch.”

  Cort Wesley drained the rest of his Hires and noticed that the second bottle was just about gone, too.

  “Ah,” from Leroy Epps, smacking his lips, which didn’t looked parched anymore. “Now that wet my whistle.”

  Cort Wesley heard his cell phone ring and felt the thing vibrating in his pocket.

  “That yours or mine, bubba?”

  “Take a guess,” Cort Wesley said, drawing the phone out and answering it.

  “Good news,” Tom Baer greeted him. “I got a line on those guns.”

  “You still know how to hit a target, Gunny.”

  “It gets better, Captain Masters. You don’t have to go far to find them.”

  33

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  Young Roger had vacated the conference room for an empty side office on the second floor of Texas Ranger Company G headquarters. Caitlin had the sense that he was staring straight at the doorway in expectation of her arrival, the moment she glimpsed his form hunched over a laptop he wasn’t regarding.

  “It’s about time,” Young Roger said, his voice laced with uncharacteristic edge.

  “Sounds like you found something.”

  “Is it true all great investigators don’t believe in coincidence?”

  “I don’t know. Next time I run into one, I’ll be sure to ask.” Caitlin closed the door behind her. “I notice this particular office has a nice view of the street and building entrance.”

  “In case the men who came for those computers come back for me, Ranger.”

  Caitlin nodded, recalling Jones’s insisting to Cort Wesley that whoever had confiscated them wasn’t from Homeland or the U.S. government at all. “Any chance they were somebody else besides Homeland Security?”

  “Now that you mention it, they spooked me so bad I never asked to see their IDs, just took them at their word, given that I was kind of expecting them to show up anyway.”

  “You remember anything that stands out?”

  “They had badges dangling from their lanyards. Three words, the one being ‘Criminal.’ I think the second was ‘Investigation’ or something.”

  “Could the third have been ‘Division’?”

  “I suppose,” Young Roger said. “Texas CID was the outfit you were serving that warrant for.”

  “But Homeland’s been known to use locals to do their dirty work for them, so you weren’t too far off. Pretty much on the money.”

  “Except Homeland claims they weren’t involved.”

  “Taking their words at face value is like playing three-card monte against a man with four hands. I’ll look into things further.”

  “Thanks, Ranger.” He thought for a moment. “Speaking of which, Communications Technology Providers was a government-funded outfit, at least under the table, right?”

  “Pretty much,” Caitlin told him. “But, as a private intelligence outfit, they didn’t rely on Jones and company for all their business.”

  Young Roger’s eyes flashed, measuring Caitlin’s words. “How much of a notion do you have of what a company like CTP does?”

  “Besides the obvious, not much.”

  “What’s the obvious?”

  “I imagine the same thing you’d get from the CIA, on a smaller scale. Actionable intel on the movements of particular targets, electronic monitoring and surveillance, maybe analysis of material gathered in the field.”

  Young Roger nodded. “Go back to surveillance. You remember when the army was trying to find Osama bin Laden in the Tora Bora mountain range?”

  “I remember they failed.”

  “And that failure ushered in a whole new technological age for geo-mapping. Taking technology developed by oil companies right here in Texas to find crude and adapting it to find human heat signatures, for movement detection, and especially to spot subterranean disruptions indicative of somebody digging in or digging out.”

  “Makes sense.”

  Young Roger nodded again. “That was CTP’s specialty, their claim to fame, so to speak. Besides your friend Jones under the table, their primary business came from oil and gas exploration companies worldwide looking to hit veins with the same pinpoint accuracy as your phlebotomist when you have blood drawn.”

  “Okay, so…”

  He swung all the way around in his desk chair to face his laptop, working some keys to bring up an elaborate graphic that made no sense to Caitlin. “So somebody hired Communications Technology Providers to do detailed geothermal scans of an area in South Texas roughly the size of Rhode Island.”

  “Okay, I’ll bite,” Caitlin said, recalling Jones’s suspicion that CTP was moonlighting for someone he had reason to believe was unsavory. “Who?”

  “I can’t tell you that, but I can tell you where the company’s search settled.”

  Young Roger hit a few more keys and his laptop screen divided into eight segments, each with a picture of an isolated segment of a Texas desert. He rolled his chair back, so she could come closer to the screen.

  “Do any of these look familiar to you?” he asked Caitlin.

  Caitlin approached and crouched slightly, running her eyes from one angle of the same patch to another. “Nope, not at all.”

  Young Roger’s gaze cheated toward the win
dow before he rolled his chair back in front of his laptop. Caitlin watched him click on an icon at the bottom of the screen, and an instant later four fresh pictures filled half the screen, pushing half the overhead shots off.

  “How about now, Ranger?”

  “Holy shit,” was all Caitlin could say, her eyes narrowing to make sure she’d seen things right.

  “That was my thought, too.”

  34

  NEW BRAUNFELS, TEXAS

  “I got a bad feeling about this, bubba,” Leroy Epps said from the passenger seat of Cort Wesley’s truck.

  Cort Wesley had finally given up trying to find the address Tom Baer had provided and had programmed it into his GPS. Frustrated, he’d tried to do it manually while driving, until the thing started talking to him in a voice that, for just a moment, he took to be a friend of Leroy’s speaking from the backseat. But the voice simply prompted him to ask the right questions to get where he was going, and according to the navigation screen, he was just one mile and one turn away now.

  “Why don’t you reach into the glove compartment and hand me my Glock, champ?”

  “I ain’t much for gripping things, in case you didn’t notice. Kind of like you these days.”

  Cort Wesley shot the ghost a look. “Doesn’t seem to be a problem when it comes to Hires.”

  “Well now, I don’t want your good money to go to waste, do I? And maybe it’s you drinking both bottles and just imagining it’s me.”

  “I think I’d know how much root beer I drank.”

  “Like you know what your oldest is up to with his lady friend back at the house right now?”

  “You got something to say, just say it.”

  “I thought I just did. Where I be, seeing ’round corners is like staring straight through this windshield. That girl’s trouble, bubba, and remember you heard it here first.”

  “Yup, Dylan sure knows how to pick ’em, doesn’t he?”

  * * *

  “According to the serial numbers on those PM-84 Glauberyt nine-millimeter Para submachine guns and Steyr pistols recovered from that gunfight,” Tom Baer had told him over the phone, “they were part of a shipment delivered to Bane Sturgess.”