Strong As Steel

by Jon Land

  She wasn’t getting anywhere. Sitting ducks right here, and even more so if she risked trying to flee with Delgado in tow, here and now, on foot.

  A familiar whop-whop-whop touched the edge of her hearing, the sound rising above all others as a helicopter gunship soared overhead. Caitlin clung to the hope that it was Mexican Army or Policia Federal, but it had no markings of any kind, which made it more likely that it belonged to the commandos who’d attacked the federal police station.

  The armored vehicle’s rear camera, which Delgado had switched on, displayed a dozen, maybe fifteen or more of those masked fighters charging through the carnage of the street. They sprayed fire forward, oblivious to anyone or anything that might have strayed into the way, as much to keep their quarries pinned down and on the defensive as anything. And what chance did Caitlin and the Red Widow have, anyway, with a gunship backing up their efforts from the front?

  Then the gunship opened fire, not at the armored vehicle but over it. Firing on the masked fighters, obliterating everything in the street with a relentless rage of 7.62-millimeter fire from a mini gun mounted on the chopper’s underside. It swirled, dipped, and then darted directly overhead, letting loose with Hellfire rockets that launched abandoned vehicles airborne. These crashed back down to create a flame-rich blockade, behind which the attacking fighters were now effectively trapped. And the gunship, barely fifty feet over the street, just to the driver’s side of the armored vehicle, continued to rain a blistering wave of fire down from its mini gun.

  Caitlin glimpsed none other than Guillermo Paz in the cockpit.

  “Angel de la Guarda…”

  Delgado rasped the words out in shock. She obviously knew of the colonel’s past exploits in Juarez, where her bullying minions had likely been among those with whom Paz had waged war and ultimately won.

  “I wasn’t sure he was real,” Delgado continued.

  “Oh, he’s real, all right.”

  Paz smiled, waved. Caitlin waved back, and the colonel soared away to finish off the remaining fighters and cut off any possible pursuit of the armored vehicle.

  “I owe you my life, Tejano,” the Red Widow told her.

  “And you can pay your debt by telling me the truth about what was in those shipping crates. But, first, I think you dropped this,” Caitlin added, easing the gold locket from the pocket of her jeans.

  “Gracias,” Delgado said, closing her fist around it. “It means a lot to me.”

  “To me too, ma’am. Because it belonged to my mother.”

  PART SIX

  In his career in law enforcement, Manual T. “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas became one of the “Big Four” in the Ranger service in the early to mid-1990s. The others were Francis A. “Frank” Hamer, Thomas R. “Tom” Hickman, and William L. “Will” Wright. They guarded the border; they tamed oil-boom towns; they chased outlaws and killers. Hamer will be forever remembered for taking part in the gunning down of Bonnie and Clyde. Gonzaullas belonged to another group also. He combined his faith—Presbyterianism—and his law enforcement work to become one of the leading Christian Rangers.

  —Tracking the Texas Ranger: The Twentieth Century, edited by Bruce A. Glasrud and Harold J. Weiss, Jr., University of North Texas Press, 2013

  52

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  “I understand,” Enrico Molinari said into the cell phone that automatically encrypted all incoming and outgoing calls.

  He listened some more to the Order’s leader in America, dual failures in Texas and Mexico stoking his ire.

  “It is difficult to accept God’s will in this case,” Molinari responded calmly. “He may work in mysterious ways, but it’s difficult to imagine those ways conspiring so much against our noble cause.…

  “Of course, Your Eminence, as soon as I have something additional to report.…

  “Yes, I believe I know what must be done. I am following the Lord’s directive. I won’t burden you with the details. If I succeed, you will have my report. If I don’t, you’ll know I’ve been called to Him.”

  “There is no place in His kingdom for failure, Captain,” the head of the Order in America warned, referring to Molinari by his former rank in the carabinieri. “The reinforcements you requested are en route. The prefect has seen to it himself.”

  The phone call done, Molinari moved through the sliding glass door that led out to his room’s balcony and gazed down at the cluttered Riverwalk, a veritable sea of the worthless and aimless, those without purpose and direction, among whom he couldn’t even imagine mixing.

  Molinari couldn’t bear to be seen, especially in the daytime, because his appearance, that patchwork face resembling a scarecrow’s, inspired revulsion. Gazes jerked away, his visage burned into their psyches forever.

  There is no place in His kingdom for failure, Captain.

  The report from Mexico had turned the day even darker than it had started. First there was the fiasco in New Braunfels, when the two fighters he’d dispatched to eliminate the Texas Ranger had turned up dead in an alley. And now the assault meant to capture or kill Luna Diaz Delgado had ended horribly and inexplicably, with dozens of his fighters killed or wounded. The wounded would never talk, regardless of whatever steps the Mexican authorities took to make them. They’d die before they’d talk, just as he would.

  Then, just before his call, word reached him that Mexico had gone wrong, yet again, because of that same Texas Ranger—daughter of the very Ranger who had waylaid his efforts here a quarter century before, as it turned out.

  God worked in mysterious ways.

  Indeed.

  For two years after all his surgeries and grafts, the hulking Molinari had worn a form-fitting nylon mask that held his face together and prevented infection. The mask covered his entire head and neck and was the one hope he had of keeping the new face the Order had given him. And when that mask finally came off, the results were considered a miracle, though not to Molinari. He looked into the mirror and a monster looked back.

  The burn damage had also affected his nerves; this was damage that even the surgeons who’d sewed him a new face were ill-suited to repair. As a result, Molinari’s face knew only a single, unchanging expression, never looking happy or sad, never smiling. His bald pate, perpetually colored a sunburned red, still showed the scars of his burning, above where the mask he had worn for two years had rested. Molinari still had that mask, keeping it as a reminder of his transformation and of finding himself in service to a God he had bitterly disappointed today.

  Molinari moved back inside the room and fished from his travel bag the thick pouch in which he kept the mask. It had folded up on itself and he carefully smoothed the contours, holding it up before him and seeing the man he had been during the course of his transformation. He carried it as a testament to that time that marked the beginning of his transformation, while never donning it again.

  Perhaps the mask’s work hadn’t been finished. Perhaps his becoming remained incomplete.

  In that moment, on a whim Molinari started to squeeze the mask back down over his face. The fit was impossibly tight, the elastic fabric having returned to its original contours. Still he squeezed, pulled, tucked, and rolled it downward from his scalp, not caring if he peeled off his patchwork face in the process. The thing smelled rancid, of old skin, blood, and sweat mixed with antiseptic cream and liniment that had dried into the nylon fabric.

  Instantly, Molinari’s mind began to clear. The world looked so different to him through the slots molded into the mask to fit his eyes. He moved through the sliding door, back out into the balcony’s blistering heat, which made him think this must have been what hell felt like.

  In that moment, Molinari heard what could only be the voice of God through the fabric that covered his ears.

  She must die. A pause followed, then, Kill her.

  Her.

  The Texas Ranger.

  Follow God’s word and His becoming would be complete, the Order’s work done. Follow God’s w
ord and the contents of that long-missing ossuary would be his, the Lord’s miracle delivered unto man in order to better do His work.

  Once he killed Caitlin Strong.

  53

  SHAVANO PARK, TEXAS

  “I need your help with something,” Dylan heard his father say through the cell phone braced against his ear, as Selina Escalante worked the buttons of Dylan’s jeans.

  He tried to push her away, but she wasn’t having it. “My help?” Dylan said to his father. “Did you dial the right number?”

  “All those ancient language classes you took at Brown as part of your archaeology thing…”

  “It’s a major, Dad, and, yeah, I’m just a whiz with dead things.”

  “How about we put that knowledge to good use? I’m on my way home now. I’d like you to try your hand at translating something for me.”

  “Sure,” Dylan said, unable to hold Selina off. “I’ll be here.”

  * * *

  She’d showed up out of nowhere while he was playing a video game. His dad’s call reminded him, yet again, that he needed to look into which classes to register for, once he was officially readmitted to Brown.

  “How’d you get in?” Dylan had asked Selina.

  “Door was open.”

  “I locked it.”

  “You thought you did.”

  She was dressed to slaughter, not just kill, leaving Dylan envious of whoever had been on the other end of her pharmaceutical sales calls earlier in the day. He gave up pretending to still be interested in killing the monsters on his flat screen and watched Selina yank open his closet door.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Changing. Just need to borrow a pair of jeans,” she said, flipping through his hanging assortment before settling on one of the skinny pairs his dad hated.

  “Those’ll never fit you.”

  “No? You ever see a girl put a pair of these on?”

  Dylan shook his head, embarrassed for some reason.

  “Watch and learn, boy. Maybe you can help me squeeze in the last part of the way.”

  In the end, Selina managed the effort all on her own, wearing Gap Raw Selvedge like a second skin she’d have to peel off like the skin off a grape. She smoothed them out with her palms, down to the knees, clearly pleased with the result.

  “I think I might keep these.”

  “That would make my dad happy.”

  “How about I buy you dinner in exchange?”

  * * *

  “My dad needs my help with something. He’s on his way home now.”

  Selina checked herself in the mirror that had been perched on Dylan’s bureau since he was a kid. Then she smoothed out the jeans some more.

  “Want to do something until he gets here?”

  54

  CHIHUAHUA, MEXICO

  “Gracias. It means a lot to me.”

  “To me too, ma’am. Because it belonged to my mother.”

  Caitlin’s own words echoed in her mind, but there weren’t many more spoken between her and Luna Diaz Delgado after they’d sped away from the fortress that held the headquarters of the Policia Federal in Chihuahua.

  “There’s a place we can go, one of my places,” Delgado told her, breaking the silence that had settled in the big armored vehicle’s cab. “Close by, but on its own pretty much. You can drop me there.”

  “It’s safe?”

  “At least until my soldiers arrive. I have several refuges where I can hide out in the event of a situation like this.”

  “You got bigger problems than that, señora. Those commandos raided a federal police barracks. They must want you dead awful bad, and if you think your own people can keep you safe with those odds, then be my guest.”

  “Do you have a better idea, Tejano?”

  “I was thinking we dump this tank and get ourselves over the border into Texas.”

  The Red Widow snickered. “And you think you can keep me alive up there?”

  “I think you already know who can keep you safe up there.”

  “Angel de la Guarda.” Delgado nodded. “Your giant.”

  “The colonel isn’t mine. He works for Homeland Security.”

  “They must have a serious staff shortage.”

  “Actually, it’s the country’s enemies who’ve been experiencing a shortage, since Paz signed on.”

  Delgado settled all the way back in the passenger seat of the cab. “I’ll take my chances down here, if you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all, señora, so long as you don’t mind me sticking around for a time.”

  “And how long a time might that be?”

  “Long enough for you to tell me how it is my father came to give you my mother’s locket, and what exactly happened after the Rangers tried to pull Jim Strong off the case.”

  Delgado cast a sidelong glance at Caitlin. “You’re just like him, and neither one of you are much for following orders, are you?”

  “That depends on the point of those orders. In my father’s case, back in 1994, he wasn’t about to walk away from something that had gotten a whole bunch of men killed. The killing all started with the contents of that train car. Now those contents have resurfaced and the killing has started up again, even more than the first time.”

  “You can’t win this one, Ranger, any more than your father could in his day. You’re dealing with something you can’t possibly comprehend.”

  Caitlin squeezed the thick steering wheel tighter, glad they were on a back road where there were far fewer eyes to regard the vehicle. Standing out now was clearly not in their best interest.

  “How far away is this place you were speaking about, señora?”

  “You know where the old freight depot is where I met your father for the first time?”

  “Roughly.”

  “That’s where it is.”

  * * *

  The station in question had closed years before. Today it was no more than a boarded-up relic, replaced by a multirail depot several miles away that was far better capable of handling the big increase in trade that had sprouted in the wake of the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement. A small cantina sat in the depot’s shadow; it likely had been a bustling hotbed of activity before the depot moved to its new location.

  From a distance, the cantina looked closed as well, waiting to be swallowed up by the encroaching desert just as the rail lines were overgrown with scrub and practically buried by the stones and gravel washed in by storms. Drawing closer, though, Caitlin caught lights flickering through the windows caked with grime.

  “It’s a safe house of sorts,” Delgado explained. “One of numerous locations throughout Mexico my men can retreat to in the event they need to hide out.”

  “Bet you never expected that to be you, did you?”

  Delgado stared at the cantina through the windshield, seeming to will it closer. “I’m worried about my grandchildren.”

  “You must have people you can trust taking care of them.”

  “After what happened today, I’m not of a mind to trust anyone. You don’t need to convince me how dangerous this enemy I’m facing is. I’ve faced them before.”

  “Then I imagine you’ve got a pretty good idea who they are,” Caitlin said, recalling the gunfight in Dallas where she’d gunned down four men who, by all indications, likely were part of the same force as the one that had just attacked the Policia Federal barracks.

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Seems like it is to me, ma’am.”

  “To understand the who, Tejano, you have to understand the why and the what.”

  “By ‘what,’ you mean whatever was inside those three crates that just went missing for the second time.”

  The Red Widow didn’t respond, her gaze remaining fixed on the approaching cantina. “Pull around the back, out of sight,” she told Caitlin. “We can finish this discussion inside.”

  55

  CHIHUAHUA, MEXICO

  Besides two burly men
wearing bandeleros, behind the bar, they were the only people inside, seated at a table positioned so both could watch, through the cantina’s grime-encrusted windows, the open space between this building and the crumbling freight depot. Caitlin kept her eyes on the Red Widow, who took a satellite phone from behind the bar and made several calls.

  “My people will be here in thirty minutes,” she reported, sitting back down. “I don’t think you want to be here when they arrive. A few have bad histories with the Texas Rangers.”

  “I’ll take my chances.” Caitlin paused. “You call your son, father of your granddaughter, Isabella, your chosen successor?”

  “That’s not something a lot of people know, Tejano.”

  “I did some research on you.”

  “Enough to tell you I wouldn’t trust my oldest son with the lives of his own children?”

  “Actually, it was you who told me that. You mentioned your granddaughter, Isabella, and daughter, Nola, by name but had nothing to say at all about any of your sons.”

  “That’s because Isabella and Nola are ruthless.” The Red Widow stopped, then started again immediately. “Like you.”

  “You think I’m ruthless?”

  “I don’t believe anyone could have survived all you’ve done if they weren’t.”

  “Seems like you’ve done some research of your own.”

  “I like to be prepared.”

  “The difference being, ma’am, that I knew I was going to be seeing you, while the reverse wasn’t true.”

  Delgado’s eyes darted about again, anxious, the way she’d been for a time in the interview room. “You should walk away from this now, this very minute. You can’t shoot what you’re up against this time.”