Strong As Steel

by Jon Land

  “Where is Señora Delgado being transferred to?” Caitlin asked, as Rojas’s men fastened the Red Widow’s wrist and leg irons back into place.

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “Why don’t you tell her the truth, Colonel?” Delgado spat suddenly. “Why don’t you tell her you plan to deliver me to the killers who’ve been after the same thing I have for the past twenty-five years, but for totally different reasons? Why don’t you tell her how much they’re paying you to do this?”

  Rojas stiffened his spine, but otherwise showed no reaction. “Your transport is waiting, jefa.” Then, to Caitlin, he said, “Two more of my men are stationed outside this room to escort you back to your vehicle. Your firearm will be returned to you at that time.”

  Luna Diaz Delgado felt for the locket beneath her blouse, as if to reassure herself that it was still there. “Your father was a fine man, Tejano,” she said to Caitlin, a touch of genuine sadness and regret creeping into her voice. “You should feel proud that you take after him.”

  “We must go, jefa,” Rojas said, as his men started to lead the Red Widow toward the door, her leg irons clanking against the grimy tile floor. “I’m sorry this action has become necessary.”

  “Just as I’m sorry that you’re going to hell, Enrique. Estaré esperando cuando llegues allí,” Delgado said, as Caitlin looked on. I’ll be waiting when you get there.

  48

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  “Okay,” started Young Roger, after syncing his computer to the wall-mounted flat screen in the conference room of company headquarters, “here we go.”

  Cort Wesley sat with Jones on one side of the table, Captain Tepper sat alone on the other.

  “We got lucky with that camera built into that ATM outside the bank across the street from Bane Sturgess,” Young Roger resumed, bringing up the camera’s view from that morning. “It’s aimed directly at a window, as you can see here.”

  The perspective projected on the flat screen barely showed the window at all. Even the building occupied by Bane Sturgess was so small they could only barely make out any of its features.

  “What the hell good does this do us, kid?” Jones asked.

  “Wait.”

  Young Roger began tapping a key, slowly and repeatedly, the building, seen from the camera’s perspective, getting bigger and bigger. Then he activated the computer enhancement and extrapolation software, into which he’d already loaded the picture, and hit the Enter key.

  “Voilà,” Roger proclaimed.

  “Holy shit,” Tepper said, rising up from his chair. “Is this real?”

  “You’re looking at the scene inside Bane Sturgess just minutes before whatever happened … happened.”

  “You’re telling me you can advance the frame?” Jones challenged, standing up from his chair too, leaving Cort Wesley seated adjacent to the kid, little older than Dylan, who was playing the computer like a piano. “You’re telling me the ATM camera was focused on that window the entire time this was going on?”

  “Based on the lighting, this transpired just after dawn,” Young Roger explained. “In the still shots that follow, you’ll note a gradual brightening. Obviously, the bank hadn’t opened yet, and traffic was virtually nonexistent, meaning there was nothing to block the camera’s view until someone made a withdrawal, eighteen minutes into this recording. But by then it was over.”

  “You mean they were dead?” said Jones.

  “It’s better if you see for yourself.”

  * * *

  “What’s that on the table?” Tepper wondered.

  “Looks more like a desk,” Cort Wesley noted, changing his mind about letting everyone else do the talking.

  “Okay, what’s that on the desk?”

  Young Roger was already zooming in on the camera’s view, the picture first blurring and then sharpening, once the software got hold of the revised shot.

  “All of this for a goddamn box,” Tepper groused, shaking his head.

  Jones slid closer to the flat screen. “More like a chest. Made of resin, maybe stone.”

  “Stone,” said Young Roger. “Likely white or cream-colored when it was made, but now weathered, faded, and more gray-toned. The chest takes up about two-thirds of the desk, making it approximately three by four feet and three feet or so high.”

  “So we’re going under the assumption that those dead Bane Sturgess boys are the ones who dug those chests, boxes, or whatever you want to call them out of the desert night before last,” concluded Captain Tepper, scratching repeatedly at his scalp for want of a cigarette. “Working, almost surely, for the same folks behind those gunmen Caitlin plugged in Dallas. Means just because we can’t see the other two boxes in these pictures, doesn’t mean they didn’t get lifted from that office too. How can you be sure the box is made of stone from a picture, by the way?”

  “Because, Captain, it’s an ossuary.”

  Tepper felt for his Marlboros, only to stop in mid-effort. “And what’s that?”

  “Like a coffin, a final resting place for the bones of the deceased in ancient times.”

  “Hold on,” Jones broke in. “You’re telling me all this is about bones?”

  “No, sir, I’m telling you that chest is clearly an ancient ossuary associated with human skeletal remains. Since we can’t see inside, I can’t definitively say that’s what this particular one contains.”

  “And how can you be sure how ancient it really is?”

  Young Roger closed in further and froze the screen on a scrawl of hand-carved, curving letters that fit within the raised outline of a rectangle on the side of the chest facing the window.

  “Because that language you see there is Aramaic, associated mostly with Jewish and Roman scribes from several thousand years ago.”

  “Aramaic,” Jones repeated, as if he’d never heard the word before.

  “What happens next?” Tepper prompted eagerly. “Advance the frame, son. Do that tapping thing with your finger again.”

  Young Roger obliged, the result reminding Cort Wesley of those old books that create the semblance of a moving picture when you flip through the pages. He followed the changing action on the flat screen as best he could, his mind extrapolating motion in between the still shots:

  Four figures now in frame around the chest …

  One of those figures stretching his hands outward …

  The thick chest top gradually surrendering its position, to the point where the chest was opened halfway …

  All four men peering inside …

  The men looking at each other, engaged in conversation …

  Then they were gone, only the half-open box remaining in frame.

  “Shit on a shingle,” Tepper muttered. “They dropped, didn’t they? Dropped dead just where we ended up finding them.”

  Jones piped in before Young Roger could answer. “How long’s the lag between those four talking among themselves and dropping out of frame?”

  “I’d say twenty-six seconds. Add that to the roughly forty they were talking, and you’ve got just over a minute.”

  “Just over a minute between the time they opened that chest and fell dead to the floor.”

  Young Roger nodded.

  “Bring us up to the point where somebody came in and took that chest they opened off the desk,” Cort Wesley heard himself say.

  “You’re going to be disappointed.” Young Roger shrugged, preparing them for what they’d see next: the vague shape of a hand snapping the wooden blinds closed.

  “Must’ve come in through the back door,” Tepper hypothecized. “Picked up that crate, and the two others, and off they go on their way, out of sight and mind.”

  “How much would an ossuary like that weigh?” Cort Wesley asked Young Roger.

  “Educated guess: anywhere between a hundred and fifty and two hundred pounds.”

  “No easy lift,” Jones noted. “And I assume you’ll check the feeds of the security cameras angled on the back d
oor, see what they might have seen.”

  “I wouldn’t waste your time,” Cort Wesley countered.

  “And why’s that, cowboy?”

  “Because, Jones, whoever clipped those crates from Bane Sturgess clearly knew about that security camera from the get-go.”

  “So you’re the resident tech expert now?”

  “Stick with me and maybe you’ll learn something. You mind rewinding the footage?” Cort Wesley asked Young Roger.

  He brought the tape back to the point where one of the principals of Bane Sturgess slid the top of the stone chest off, exposing its contents. A time lag followed before all four principals of the company dropped out of the frame.

  “Now, could you zoom in on that lettering,” Cort Wesley asked him, “that Aramaic?”

  “Got an eye for ancient languages all of a sudden, cowboy?” Jones asked him.

  “No, but I know somebody who does.”

  49

  CHIHUAHUA, MEXICO

  Caitlin’s two Mexican Policia Federal escorts led her in the opposite direction from those transporting Luna Diaz Delgado. There seemed little doubt that the Red Widow was about to disappear forever, not so much thanks to the Mexican government, with whom she was in league, as to the same mysterious entity responsible for the hit squad Caitlin had gunned down in Dallas. She’d seemed almost resigned to her fate, and Caitlin was not quite sure what to make of a person this ruthless and powerful going quietly into the night.

  Luna Diaz Delgado might have accepted that, but Caitlin couldn’t. Halfway down the hall, alone with the two federales, Caitlin pretended to stumble on a slick patch of tile. One of the officers reached out to grab her, and she quickly righted herself and yanked the semiautomatic pistol from his holster. She slammed the pistol butt into his nose and then, through the explosive flow of blood that followed, hammered it down on the soft part of his skull.

  The second officer had almost gotten the assault rifle from his shoulder, when Caitlin jammed the other man’s pistol under his chin.

  “How this plays out from here is your call,” she told him.

  Caitlin made him slap the other officer’s cuffs into place on the unconscious man’s wrists. Then, having shouldered his M16 assault rifle, she did likewise to him, before supervising the process of him dragging his compadre into the interview room. Holding a Heckler and Koch USP pistol, standard issue for Mexico’s Policia Federal, on him, she smashed both their walkie-talkies against the wall, grabbed hold of the keys clasped to his belt, then exited and locked the door behind her.

  She’d just started to rush down the hall in the direction Colonel Rojas had escorted Luna Diaz Delgado, when gunfire rang out.

  50

  CHIHUAHUA, MEXICO

  Caitlin couldn’t be sure of its precise origins, because of the initial burst’s echo. But the return fire placed it firmly at the main entrance to the building. It was more of a stockade, a fortress, than a building, with a high wall, topped by barbed wire, that enclosed the entire complex, complete with guard towers.

  Boom! Boom! Boom!

  The blasts came just as she’d formed that thought. Caitlin pictured rocket-propelled grenades taking out the guard towers.

  She picked up her pace, bringing the assault rifle around to the front. Rojas and his men had clearly walked into a trap. The entire Policia Federal complex was under siege to make sure Luna Diaz Delgado never got the chance to tell anyone everything she knew.

  Caitlin neared the front of the building to find all the forces the station could muster rushing up to defend it. Her boots crunched over glass from shattered windows, screams and shouts sounding from outside the breached front entrance. She knelt down when she spotted something shiny on the floor, retrieving what she recognized as the Red Widow’s locket. Pocketing it, she neared a heavy steel door that had been blown right off its hinges and found a slew of bodies, both wounded and dead, fallen to what was clearly an elaborately staged ambush and deftly coordinated attack.

  She guessed Colonel Rojas, leading candidate for the betrayal, would be nowhere about. Or, if he was, he’d likely also been betrayed, by the very forces that had contracted him to turn Delgado over to them.

  The courtyard beyond, meanwhile, was a sea of gunfire. With the high ground surrendered, thanks to the flaming remains of the guard towers, the federales were outgunned and outmatched. Likely looking for a way to flee rather than to fight. Some of the vehicles that had been parked in rows were now askew, due to men trying to escape or to small-explosives blasts that had uprooted them from their positions.

  Black-garbed, masked commandos continued to besiege the compound. Caitlin searched for Luna Diaz Delgado amid the carnage, the bursts of smoke and flame, and the fallen bodies. One especially thick pocket of smoke cleared to reveal the Red Widow pinned against the massive tire of an armored vehicle Caitlin recognized as the type Homeland Security supplied to foreign crime fighters to help win the elusive war on drugs.

  Caitlin had trained with an M16 numerous times, but that was hardly the same as a combat situation, when forces of this caliber would be firing back on her. But she had to reach the Red Widow, had to find a way to spirit her to safety, and not only because Delgado was the key to finding the link between the dead bodies from both her father’s time and her own.

  It was because of something she’d now remembered, realized, a connection both inexplicable and impossible.

  Caitlin thumbed off the assault rifle’s safety, racked back the slide, and tested her finger on the cold steel trigger. The weapon was heavier than film and television made it seem, especially when being toted in fast, desperate motion.

  She had sprinted out into the courtyard before consciously deciding to, letting go with a burst toward the blown gates, which a trio of trucks toting heavy machine guns had just poured through. Those guns opened up on the building entrance where Caitlin had just been, literally tearing it apart and scattering the last line of the federales’ defense.

  Still making her way toward Delgado’s position, Caitlin continued to clack off individual shots from the M16, no longer trusting her prowess on full auto and keenly aware that she had no replacement magazines with which to reload. A pair of the black-garbed commandos, who might as well have been twins, were rushing toward the Red Widow. Caitlin was unable to tell whether the intent was to kill or to capture. Unable to accept the risk of either, she clacked off one shot after another, head shots all, given the likelihood that the men were wearing body armor.

  The two commandos went down like somebody had yanked the world out from under them, clearing her path to Luna Diaz Delgado.

  “Not our lucky day, eh, Tejano?” Delgado managed, her clothes soiled and torn, face streaked with grime and smoke-stained hair pasted to one side of her face.

  “I’m getting you out of here, ma’am,” Caitlin said, unclasping the Red Window’s wrist and leg irons with the keys she’d clipped from the officer inside the barracks.

  “Always the hero,” Delgado managed to muse, “just like your father.”

  “That’s why I’m doing this—for him,” Caitlin said, leaving it there, as the gunfire intensified around them.

  Delgado shed her wrist irons and pushed herself tighter against the big tire, going to work on the shackles binding her legs. “One riot, one Ranger,” she said, repeating the Texas Ranger motto. “But this is a lot more than a riot.”

  Caitlin squeezed off a few more shots, the magazine just about expended, and, from her stance over Delgado, reached up for the passenger door latch of the armored RV. She had to stand all the way up to work the door, but the latch gave and the door opened.

  “Like I said, we’re getting out of here,” she told the Red Widow. “Get in!”

  51

  CHIHUAHUA, MEXICO

  Delgado had shed her elegant shoes and was barefoot when she slammed the armored vehicle’s passenger door behind her, as Caitlin slid across the slippery fabric to claim the driver’s seat. She still had the guard
’s Heckler and Koch pistol but had shed the nearly empty M16 to help the Red Widow and to climb into the vehicle herself.

  Behind the cab was a flat space with jump-style seating for commandos. Slots for a variety of weapons, too, all of which were regrettably empty. But it had a push-button starter that required no key and an engine that sounded like a 737’s when she got it revving.

  The sound must have drawn the focus of the attacking commando force, because small arms fire began to rain down on the vehicle. Thanks to its armored skin, each hit resulted in no more than a ping, while more rounds carved tiny divots out of the windshield’s bulletproof glass.

  “Get down!” Caitlin ordered Delgado.

  “Give me the gun!”

  Caitlin handed over the pistol. She had no reason to really trust this woman, beyond the fact that they were under fire together, but there was no way she could drive this thing and shoot, anyway.

  As the vehicle barreled for the blown gate, currently blocked by a pair of the attacking force’s own heavy vehicles parked nose to nose, Delgado slid the passenger side window down just enough to allow her to poke the Heckler and Koch’s barrel outside. She fired with the calm and dexterity of a truly practiced hand, holding off the enemy just enough to keep them from launching an attack from that side.

  The bulletproof windshield burst into a dozen separate spiderweb patterns as fire was directed at Caitlin’s vehicle from unidentified origins, leaving barely any of it clear and whole. But she could see well enough to aim the heavy thing straight toward the blocked gates.

  Impact against the trucks in her path shook Caitlin wildly and sent her teeth crashing together. But she moved the trucks just enough to surge between them onto the street near central Chihuahua, where pedestrians and drivers alike were racing to flee. Stalled traffic forced many to abandon their vehicles and join the flight on foot, the armored vehicle plowing through everything in its path.

  Caitlin worked the gas pedal and transmission, trying to gather the momentum needed to forge an opening, a chasm through the clutter. The scent of scorched rubber added to the chaos, which was further fed by those desperately fleeing and a chorus of blaring horns that gave no signs of stopping.