Strong As Steel

by Jon Land

  Suddenly, Jim could see those big, dark eyes again, no longer moist but filled with the same resolve that must’ve been there when the Red Widow had killed Hector Delgado, must’ve been there when she massacred the heads of all four cartels and their immediate families.

  “The bones of Jesus Christ,” Luna finished.

  71

  SONORA, TEXAS

  “Look,” Lieutenant Governor Maurice Scoggins interjected, bringing the story to an abrupt halt, “I’ve gotta get to a meeting now. You can make of this whatever you want.”

  “Do you believe it was true?” Caitlin asked, needing to clear her throat in the middle of her words.

  “I was paying more attention to the fact that your father disobeyed a direct order from Governor Richards. Show me a man foolish enough to poke a hornets’ nest with a stick and I’ll show you a man who’s no stranger to being stung.”

  “You referring to my father?”

  “His story had no credibility, and there were some who believed he made it up to increase his own self-importance.”

  Caitlin felt a pressure building behind her eyes. “I’m going to guess you only met Jim Strong that one time.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Then you never got the opportunity to call him a liar to his face. That makes you a lucky man.”

  Caitlin thought she heard Scoggins try to muster a laugh. “Of course, that’s what made him Jim Strong, just like it makes you his daughter. You Strongs are aberrations, leftovers from the world that time forgot. You don’t belong in law enforcement, you belong on display in a museum. You, your father, and your grandfather were never content just to catch catfish; you had to go after great white sharks.”

  “It’s the sharks that keep finding us, Mr. Lieutenant Governor. I don’t have an explanation as to why.”

  “But there you are, saving the Red Widow’s life yesterday, just like your father did back in 1994.”

  His knowledge of what had transpired the day before caught Caitlin off guard. “You heard about that.”

  “Word travels fast for those of us who know how to listen. So what would you call that, exactly, Ranger? Fate, fortune, dumb luck, fill in the blank?”

  “I’d go with none of the above, sir. And let’s fill in that blank later, after I’ve done some more digging. There’s lots happening here that makes 1994 seem like yesterday, but I haven’t got it all sorted yet.”

  “You will,” Scoggins told her. “It’s what you do. People are always spouting off about Caitlin Strong the gunfighter, last of a breed, a throwback to the days of Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson. But that diverts attention from all the collateral damage you leave in your wake, like not caring if the whole basis of human history goes to shit. Does the phrase ‘bigger picture’ even enter into your vocabulary?”

  “Depends on if that bigger picture includes whoever’s behind the gunmen my father went up against,” Caitlin said, thinking again of those four skeletons pulled from the desert with bullet holes that matched her father’s .45. “The same force behind them appears to be back, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  And that set her thinking about the still-unidentified bodies that had been found in the alley across the street from Bane Sturgess in New Braunfels. Killed by an assassin that legend had it was a century old. Hell, maybe el Barquero really was the Ferryman.

  “But I’ve got another question for you, sir. Back in 1994, did you ever hear any mention of a man with no face?”

  “Come again?”

  “You heard me. He was big, too, the kind of man who needs to duck under doorways.”

  “No, and I have to get to my meeting.”

  “Just one last thing. When you tried to call Jim Strong off, in 1994, who was pulling the strings? I’m guessing it’s someone with a foreign zip code, and I don’t mean Canada. Which government we talking about?”

  “You’re so smart and you haven’t figured out it wasn’t a government at all.”

  Caitlin felt something hit her like a hammer to the back of the head. “The Vatican,” she realized. “It was the Vatican that made you call my dad off, wasn’t it, trying to protect the secret they couldn’t let out for the world to know?”

  “There’s no calling the Strongs off,” Scoggins said, the way a snake might if it could talk. “I have no idea where you are, where you’re going, or what you’re going to find when you get there. All I know is I don’t want to hear about it.”

  “Just answer me this, sir. Was it you who sent that team to retrieve the computers the Rangers confiscated from Communications Technology Providers as evidence?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “They showed up with Criminal Investigations Division badges dangling from their necks. Trouble is, CID had no idea of their existence, and no record of taking possession of those computers, when I asked them.”

  “So why are you asking me, Ranger?”

  “Because it would take somebody with a lot of power to set up a ruse like that. And since you insinuated about the Vatican, I’m figuring maybe it was forces there that wanted to make sure their tracks were covered again.”

  Caitlin heard what sounded like a low growl from Scoggins on the other end of the line. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, in something like a hiss, “and I’ve had my fill of the whole Strong family, Ranger. I’d like to live out my days and never hear that name again, but somehow I know I will.”

  “So long as it’s not on the obituary page, sir.”

  72

  SHAVANO PARK, TEXAS

  “Of course, it could be the bones of somebody else, who died the same day,” Dylan continued, after giving his revelation time to sink in.

  “It’s not,” Cort Wesley said, recalling the bloody path that box of bones had blazed since it reached Texas soil in 1994.

  “Before you get too excited, I need to point something else out.”

  “There’s more?”

  “Can you just listen to me for once? This shit surprised the hell out of me too, so I looked up a whole bunch of other ossuaries and compared the inscriptions to this one,” Dylan said, laying the original version alongside the one with the superimposed translation. “And I found a few things you should know. First thing I can tell you is that the construction is pretty much a perfect match, so you can bet carbon dating will confirm the general time period. It’s something else that’s bothering me.”

  “What?”

  “Could be nothing. Why ruin the party?”

  “What?”

  Dylan swung back toward his laptop, Cort Wesley no longer able to read his eyes. “I’ve got some more work I need to do first.”

  “You told me it was something I should know.”

  “But I’m not ready to tell you yet.”

  Cort Wesley’s phone rang as he formed that thought, JONES lighting up in the ID box. Cort Wesley didn’t slip out of Dylan’s room to take the call, figuring there was no need to.

  “Saddle up, cowboy,” Jones greeted, when he answered. “We’re going on a road trip. I’m on my way to pick you up now.”

  “How do you even know where I am?”

  “I always know where you are,” Jones told him. “Shit’s hitting the fan and we gotta hope the whole world is downwind when it comes.”

  “Where we headed, Jones?”

  “Atlanta, cowboy. The Centers for Disease Control.”

  73

  BOERNE, TEXAS

  Guillermo Paz sat at his priest’s bedside at the Menger Springs Senior Living Community. The side rail had been lowered so he could feed the man his dinner, consisting of watered-down oatmeal the texture of drilling mud to make it easier for him to swallow. Paz was the only one who could get him to eat anything at all, which convinced the colonel that Father Boylston could still grasp the meaning of his words, even if he could no longer respond to them. Strange that he hadn’t even known the priest’s name until Father Boylston had been brought here after suffer
ing his stroke.

  “I had to come see you today, Padre,” Paz said, as the old man worked his mouth feebly and then managed a swallow, “because what I have to say, I can’t share with anyone else. Not even with my Texas Ranger or the outlaw; they wouldn’t understand. Even they don’t know what it’s like to face the devil and live to tell it. I know my new enemy, my latest test to continue my transformation, is just a man. But in my vision I saw a man without a face. And a man without a soul,” he added, as an afterthought.

  Paz had been hoping, just this once, for a reaction, as if mention of the devil himself might spur his priest back for a few brief moments of lucidness. That finally being enlisted on the right side in the epic battle between good and evil might stir something down deep in Father Boylston’s core and bring it to the surface. A nod, a look, a flash of the eyes or squeeze of his hand. It didn’t have to be much. Paz would take anything.

  And he needed something.

  But nothing came, and he dabbed the spoon into the bowl of soupy oatmeal and eased it forward. His priest opened his mouth a crack and sucked up the meager contents with a slurping sound.

  “I know you can’t talk to me anymore, Padre, but you can still listen, and I wanted you to know that all the time you put into me has paid off. Bet you never thought I’d be facing off against the devil himself, but here we are.”

  The old priest finished working that spoonful down his throat and opened his mouth for the next. His once bright eyes were dull and lifeless, his thinning white hair flattened to his scalp in some places and sticking up askew in others. The room was laced with deodorizing spray to hide the stale scents of bodily waste and dried, scaly skin racked by bedsores. Paz detested injustice of all kinds, but this seemed like the ultimate one, for a man who’d given his life to others to have his own snatched from him this way.

  “I know whatever’s still inside you, whatever’s listening to me now, accepts the existence of evil in the world. I think I’ve brought you along to believing that evil is as much a force of nature as wind and rain, and just as unstoppable, if the right people don’t get in the way. You from the pulpit, me from where I’m at. I think that’s what makes us true kindred spirits. Your job is to make people think prayers can keep them safe from that evil, and I’m the answer to those prayers.”

  Paz watched his priest swallow the latest spoonful. He realized Father Boylston’s lips were trembling in anticipation of more oatmeal, and he quickly readied the next spoonful, scooping up too much for the old man to manage and needing to shake some of it back into the bowl.

  “I only just realized that, Padre. And I also realize now why you gave me that book about Mother Teresa. I remembered this quote, something like, ‘Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.’ What she doesn’t say is that small things lead to bigger ones, and there’s no limit to how strong a man can become if he retains his faith. I learned that from you, and I wanted you to know that. I wanted you to know that if it wasn’t for you, I’d still be on the wrong side of things, thwarting prayers instead of answering them on your behalf. And if you never have the chance to help anyone again, you’ll always know how much you helped me along this new path you helped me chart.

  “You know Kierkegaard is one of my favorite philosophers, and it was him who said, ‘The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.’ But here’s the thing: people pray in different ways. I’m not necessarily one to kneel and recite the prayers. I’ve got more of a conversational thing going with God, and even though he doesn’t talk back, I know he’s listening.”

  Paz waited for a response, then continued when none came.

  “It was Buddha himself, I think, who said, ‘Doubt everything. Find your own light.’ Well, I wanted you to know that you’ve been that light for me, that when I kill the devil I felt today, it’ll be my gift to you—to God, sure, but mostly for you.”

  Paz stowed the empty bowl back on the tray that rested by his priest’s bedside. Then he rose, squeezed Father Boylston’s hand, and kissed him lightly on the forehead.

  He thought he felt something in that moment, and he looked down to see his priest squeezing his hand back. A flicker of life flashed briefly in his eyes, then quickly faded, just as his grip let go.

  “Thank you, Padre,” Paz said, smoothing Father Boylston’s hair. “Thank you.”

  PART EIGHT

  You know, we look back now at the Rangers in the late 1800’s as having old-fashioned firearms, but then, the Colt was cutting-edge technology. In fact, the Walker Colt is named for a Ranger, Samuel Walker, who helped develop it. The Rangers saw a need for a reliable, well-designed, heavy-duty revolver that they could take out on remote patrols. The firearms that were available back then weren’t as fast or as easy to load, so the Colt was a pretty revolutionary firearm. Until then, you had to hand-load every round, and if you carried one revolving pistol, you only had six rounds. We are always looking for new technology to make us better, and the Rangers were doing the same thing back then.

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

  74

  SPINNAKER FALLS, TEXAS

  “You’re not going to believe this, Ranger,” Cort Wesley’s voice blared over the Bluetooth, as Caitlin drew closer to the combination gas station and convenience store from where the credit card receipt had originated.

  “I was just pressing your number. You’re not going to believe what I’ve got to tell you, either.”

  “I’ll go first,” he said.

  Driving through the emptiness of space like this was something Caitlin had never gotten used to. The mostly barren road was like a black ribbon cutting the world in half. The convenience store that Young Roger had identified by using the receipt she’d plucked from the smoldering ruins of that small fire was located in the town of Spinnaker Falls. It was a town in name only, no more than a way station for people on their way to tour Fort McKavett or somewhere else, many of whom had strayed off the interstate that had rendered Spinnaker Falls obsolete.

  “I got a tentative translation on that ossuary, Ranger,” Cort Wesley continued. “Hope you’re sitting down for this…”

  “I’m driving, Cort Wesley.”

  “Because the bones inside might well belong to—”

  “Jesus Christ,” Caitlin completed for him.

  Dead air filled the line, to the point where Caitlin thought maybe the call had been dropped.

  “How’d you figure it out?” Cort Wesley asked finally, breaking the silence.

  “How did you?”

  Cort Wesley explained the content of Dylan’s translation, finishing with “Okay. Your turn.”

  “I got the story from the current lieutenant governor of the state himself, Mo Scoggins, who tried to call my father off the case in 1994. Turns out Jim Strong had a hand in saving Luna Diaz Delgado’s life, too.”

  “Like father, like daughter.”

  “According to the story, the Red Widow was after those bones to discredit the Church, a particular obsession of hers, given her background.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Cort Wesley muttered.

  “The story or the fact that we came by it at the same time?”

  “Take your pick, Ranger.”

  “Where are you, by the way?” Caitlin asked him. “The background sounds funny.”

  “I’m in a plane, flying to Atlanta with Jones.”

  “Atlanta?”

  “The CDC,” Cort Wesley told her.

  “About those bodies found in that freight car twenty-five years ago?” Caitlin asked, recalling that they had ended up in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s possession.

  “That’s all I can tell you, because it’s all Jones has told me.”

  “Word from the past is it was a curse that killed those men on the tra
in car,” Caitlin said, recalling the story Luna Diaz Delgado had told her father. “What happens when somebody opens something they’re not supposed to?”

  “Well, since we’re headed to the CDC, it’s safe to say maybe it was something that got out, instead.”

  Caitlin’s hands tightened on the wheel, a black patch of air in the narrowing distance suddenly entering her field of vision.

  “Uh-oh.”

  “What is it, Ranger?”

  “A fire, Cort Wesley. I think the place I’m headed to might be burning.”

  75

  SPINNAKER FALLS, TEXAS

  The source of thick, black, billowing smoke was something else entirely.

  The effects were akin to an oil fire, in this case fueled by natural gas, the kind of job hellfighters like Red Adair would have relished battling. The heavy, soot-rich smoke drifted over a slew of irregularly placed pump jacks that had long ago stopped pumping, as if the oil had abandoned these parts along with the people.

  Drawing close enough to smell the noxious smoke, even with the air-conditioning on, helped Caitlin recall that she’d had actually heard of this site, at least anecdotally. Fire wasn’t spewing from an oil well per se so much as from a trench. What had transpired here was akin to a similar incident that had taken place in the Karakum Desert, located in the country of Turkmenistan, wherever that was exactly. It was called the Darvaza gas crater, more affectionately known as the Door to Hell.

  In 1971, Caitlin recalled, when the republic was still part of the Soviet Union, a group of Soviet geologists had gone to the Karakum in search of oil fields. They found what they thought to be a substantial oil field and began drilling. Unfortunately, it turned out they were drilling on top of a cavernous pocket of natural gas, which couldn’t support the weight of their equipment. The site collapsed, taking their equipment along with it, and the event triggered the sedimentary rock of the desert to collapse in other places, too, creating a domino effect that, by the time all was said and done, resulted in several open craters.