Strong As Steel

by Jon Land

  Tepper tightened his coat. “Anything else you want to tell me before I catch my death out here?”

  “No, it’s your turn. Your turn to tell me the rest of the story, starting with the night my dad spent with Luna Diaz Delgado in that motel room.”

  90

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS; 1994

  “I think I found your private jet for you, Ranger Strong,” greeted D. W. Tepper, “but you’re gonna have to hurry.”

  Jim Strong eased the receiver softly back onto its cradle, not wanting to disturb Luna Diaz Delgado, who was still sleeping. He leaned over from his seated position on the side of the bed and stroked her long black hair, trying to remember a time in the past decade when he’d been this happy. A few drunken escapades stood out, before he gave up the bottle cold turkey, along with watching Caitlin win a pistol-shooting contest as the youngest entry and only girl in the competition.

  “You have to go, Tejano?” the Red Widow said, without opening her eyes.

  Jim continued to stroke her hair. “We have to go.”

  “Can we pretend the phone didn’t ring? Can we stay here a little longer? I don’t want this to end.”

  “Everything ends. And we’ve got to go. That call came from a fellow Ranger with the information I asked him to dig up. Turns out there’s a private jet leaving from Stinson Municipal Airport in two hours, according to the flight plan the pilot filed. We need to get a move on.”

  Luna opened her eyes and sat up. “Why that airport, that flight?”

  “Because the flight’s bound for Rome.”

  “You think this man with no face will be on board,” she surmised. “You think he’ll have the ossuaries with him.”

  She flung the sheet off her, and Jim Strong turned so as not to see her naked, to give her a measure of privacy while she dressed.

  “That’s not necessary. You saw everything there is to see last night … Jim.”

  He almost melted at Luna calling him that for the first time. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life, which made him feel guilty, because that included his late wife.

  “It was dark, señora. And I had other things on my mind.”

  She came around the bed to where he couldn’t avoid the sight of her, tucking her blouse into a pair of slacks they’d purchased at Costco the previous day. “You feel that guilty over sleeping with a criminal?”

  “Not over what I did,” Jim confessed, “but how good it felt.”

  * * *

  Stinson Municipal was located seven miles south of downtown San Antonio and featured three runways, one of which was long enough to accommodate smaller Learjets and Gulfstreams, in addition to a grass runway for piston- and prop-based general aviation activities. The U-shaped terminal building was finished in mosaic stone and, from a distance, looked like a small prison, thanks in part to the control tower, which could easily have passed for a guard tower.

  D. W. Tepper met them in his wife’s tiny sedan, on a rise overlooking the airport, which Jim Strong was currently eyeballing through a pair of binoculars.

  “I’ve got a fix on the jet in question, with a match to the tail designation you provided, D.W.,” Jim said, handing the binoculars to Tepper. “But no sign of this man with no face or those shipping crates yet.”

  “Could be he’s in the hangar or the waiting area inside that terminal building.”

  “A man who hates mirrors that much wouldn’t be in the terminal building, where eyes could fix his way and linger.”

  “Okay, the hangar then.”

  “Let’s get a move on.”

  * * *

  Luna Diaz Delgado took a seat in the back of the truck that Jim Strong had borrowed from D. W. Tepper, the two men up front growing grimmer and more determined the closer they drew to the hangar. They’d ridden into gunfights before, in trucks instead of on horseback, and the feeling of trepidation, anxiety, and nervous energy was always the same.

  “Rome,” Tepper said, repeating the information he’d provided to Jim earlier that morning. “You’re thinking it must be the Church, the goddamn Vatican, who sent all these gunmen this way, on account of what’s inside those crates.”

  “There won’t be much of a Church left if the bones of Jesus Christ really have been found. Are you really surprised they’re pulling out all the stops?”

  “They got more gunmen in town than extras in an old Western movie,” Tepper noted. “But that Lear’s only a six-passenger.”

  “My thoughts exactly. Gives us a shot to pull this thing off.”

  “There’s no way they’re just going to hand those crates over without a fight,” Tepper said, as Jim pulled into the complex and parked well out of view of the mounted security cameras, “especially the head honcho, whose favorite holiday must be Halloween.”

  “I know.”

  “You wanna share your plan with me?”

  “Be glad to, if I had one, Ranger Tepper.”

  Tepper seemed to sniff the air. “You hear that, Ranger Strong?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Sounds to me like that Learjet just fired up its engine. I’d drive straight onto the tarmac, if I were you.”

  And that’s exactly what Jim did, easing Tepper’s pickup behind the cover of the hangar adjacent to the tarmac. This after a flash of their badges led the guard to manually slide the gate open. He looked genuinely excited by the presence of two Texas Rangers on the premises, following them with adulation as Jim steered the truck for the hangar.

  From the side of the hangar, they watched a massive figure emerge, wearing a floppy farmer’s hat to keep the sun from his face and wheeling a luggage cart piled high with three shipping crates that matched the size of the ones that had once resided inside a freight train car in Fort Stockton.

  “Holy shit,” Tepper mumbled.

  “The crates or the man?”

  “How about both?”

  Jim cocked his gaze back toward the truck to make sure Luna was heeding his orders to stay put. So far, so good.

  “What now?” Tepper asked him.

  Jim said nothing while the big man watched four hulking subordinates hoist the crates off the luggage cart and into the Learjet’s cramped cargo hold. The hatch had barely closed on their bulk when the four strapping figures followed the one who nonetheless dwarfed them up the stairs and onto the plane.

  Jim chose that moment to finally respond to Tepper’s question. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  He drove Tepper’s truck right up to the Learjet, the move so innocuous and casual that nobody in sight paid them any heed. Anyone watching would think it was just more passengers about to board, Jim having parked at an angle that took advantage of the passengers’ and cockpit’s blind spot.

  The cargo hatch had been closed but not locked. The engines were continuing to fire up while the pilots went through their preflight checks. Jim hoisted the cargo hatch open, Tepper ready at that point to help him hoist each of the shipping crates from the hold. They’d loaded two and were just lifting the third out when the Learjet’s door opened and two of the big figures they’d glimpsed earlier leaned out, pistols flashing in their hands. No way Jim and D. W. Tepper could drop the crate and get their own guns out in time for it to matter.

  An instant before the gunmen’s first shots rang out, though, a blistering roar split the air and a divot the size of a softball appeared in the Learjet’s suddenly pockmarked skin, just to the right of the open cabin door. Luna Diaz Delgado’s second shot with Tepper’s twelve-gauge carved a similar divot over the opening, but her next two were dead-on with the opening, chasing the hulking gunmen back inside and buying the Rangers the time they needed.

  “Hurry!” she yelled, pulling herself up behind the wheel.

  Jim Strong and D. W. Tepper lugged the final crate into the pickup’s bed and joined her in the cab, the Red Widow tearing off before they even got the doors closed, an instant ahead of the back window exploding.

  “Shit!” Tepper exclai
med.

  “You running a damage report in your head, Ranger Tepper?”

  They both had their pistols out, firing through the jagged gap where the rear window used to be.

  “I’m sending you the goddamn bill, Ranger Strong!”

  Luna crashed through a gate, much to Tepper’s consternation, to reclaim the road. No pursuit was evident, at least for the first mile. They pulled over long enough for Jim Strong to take over behind the wheel.

  “I hope you got a plan,” Tepper said from the backseat, with Luna looking over her shoulder from the passenger seat.

  “As a matter of fact,” Jim Strong said, “I do.”

  * * *

  That plan started with Jim Strong pulling over, a few miles down the road, once he was satisfied they weren’t being followed. Tepper and Luna Diaz Delgado piled out of the truck in his wake.

  “What gives, Ranger Strong?”

  Jim glanced toward the Red Widow. “Make sure she stays safe, and get her back home, Ranger Tepper.”

  “Say that again?”

  But Jim’s attention remained fixed on Luna.

  “Those crates belong to me, Tejano.”

  “And I’ll get them back to you in short order. But you won’t be able to stick the truth about the Almighty in people’s faces, give the Church what you think it’s got coming, if you’re dead. Beyond that, you’ve got kids who already lost their father and can’t afford to lose their mother too. We square on that much?”

  She stiffened. “Running’s never been my style.”

  “You’re not the one running. I am. The man with no face will be coming, and I’m gonna find a place to have it out with him and whoever tags along for the ride.”

  “But—” Luna started.

  That was as far as she got, when Jim kissed her hard on the lips.

  “I owe you this much, señora,” he said, holding her at arm’s length. “For last night, for making me feel like a man again.”

  Luna swallowed hard, the rare vulnerability that flashed in her eyes putting her at a loss for words. “And to you,” she said finally, “for making me feel like a woman.”

  Jim Strong reached up to his neck and unclasped a thin chain from which dangled a locket he’d given his wife and hadn’t taken off since the day of her murder. He eased it gingerly into his grasp and handed it to the Red Widow.

  “This is for you, for safekeeping until we get back together.”

  Delgado nodded, her expression one of resignation as if she knew that day would never come.

  They left it there. No embrace, hug, last kiss—nothing. Just a tall, lanky man with focused but weary eyes, climbing up behind the wheel of the pickup and tipping his hat Luna’s way, as she squeezed his wife’s locket tight in her grasp. He met D. W. Tepper’s stare one last time, more passing between them than any words could hold.

  * * *

  Of course, Jim Strong had no intention of ever delivering those shipping crates to the Red Widow, not with those three bodies he’d found in the freight car still at the forefront of his mind. It hadn’t been a curse that killed them, and that was enough to tell him God did indeed work in mysterious, and often deadly, ways. Religious thoughts aside, there was something inside one of those crates that had killed three men in seconds, and there was no way Jim could risk that falling into the wrong hands.

  So, after dropping D. W. Tepper and Luna Diaz Delgado off, he headed west, clinging to the less traveled roads. Jim had no firm plan in mind at that point, other than the knowledge that the desert held a lot of secrets beneath its sandy soil. There was a shovel in the truck’s bed and, absent finding another suitable resting place for the three crates, he’d dig a hole as deep as he could, someplace their contents would never again see the light of day.

  He drove with the intention of burying the crates in the first wasteland he came to, ending up on the road to the desert around Sonora, which fit the bill perfectly. He drove along old Route 190 and was just passing a convenience store and diner rest stop with no customers when he caught the sounds of a helicopter soaring overhead.

  He’d noted several of them back at Stinson Airport, and he cursed himself for not anticipating that the man with no face might commandeer one to come after him. And he’d made that task all the easier by driving out here on a road where he was the only vehicle.

  Should’ve given the truck to Tepper. Should’ve thought of another way to stash the crates.

  Well, too late now, Jim thought, as twin sprays of automatic fire clanged against the truck, the windshield shattering under the dual burst and almost costing him control of the wheel.

  Jim righted the truck as best he could and tried to speed on. But the hood was bleeding smoke from a shot-up radiator, and he felt the pop of a tire going out, which left him riding on the other three and one rim.

  Sorry, D.W.

  The rest stop could offer him no respite or cover from which to fight back. His gaze swam about the horizon, locking on an old Spanish mission that looked ready to crumble into the desert, and he twisted the pickup that way.

  The truck thumped and bumped across the rocky, gravel-strewn terrain, a front tire joining the rear one, blowing out under another fusillade from inside the chopper circling overhead. The abandoned mission’s gate was cracked open and Jim slammed through it with the last the truck would give him, spinning to a grinding halt that coughed dust plumes into the air and almost obscured the audience that had gathered.

  Because the mission wasn’t abandoned at all.

  He ended up right next to an old oil tanker that looked World War II vintage, a relic more grown out of the desert than parked atop it.

  “You folks need to get out of here!” Jim ordered, dropping out of the truck and already slamming fresh rounds into the twelve-gauge Luna Diaz Delgado had used back at Stinson.

  Then he repeated the words in Spanish to make sure his instruction was heard.

  None of them moved. Undocumented, for sure, Jim thought, squatting here in this old mission that was as close to a home as they had.

  As Jim was scrabbling for a ladder that led to the high ground offered by the mission wall, he saw the chopper drop into a descent that whipped the desert grounds into a tornado-like funnel cloud. He pictured it settling down on the desert floor, as he climbed the rungs with one hand and clutched the twelve-gauge with the other. Then he felt the ladder wobble. Someone else was joining him on the climb.

  “Who the hell are you?” Jim asked, twisting to look at the man.

  “Frank Aidman.”

  “Well, Frank Aidman, get your ass down and as far away from here as you can!”

  “These are my people, Ranger. I’m responsible for them.”

  “Then get them as far away as you can, too!”

  “How can we help?” Frank Aidman asked, determined grit stretched over his otherwise smooth complexion.

  An office type, Jim figured. A man who worked with pencils instead of guns.

  “It’s my fight,” he told Aidman, trying to sound firm. “Get lost.”

  But Aidman joined him at the wall a few seconds after Jim reached the ledge. The five figures he recognized from the airport were heading through the dust storm still being whipped around by the slowing rotor. One towered above the other four, and all five were armed like they were going to war.

  Close enough, Jim reckoned.

  “This is their home, Ranger,” Aidman said to him. “They’ve got nowhere else to go.”

  “All right,” Jim said to him, “maybe there’s something they can do for me, after all.…”

  * * *

  “This thing have any oil left in it?” Jim asked, tapping the old, weather-beaten rig’s tanker as if to check.

  “Not for thirty years maybe,” Aidman told him. “We retrofitted it to carry water.”

  “Water?”

  Aidman nodded. “A full load, as of this morning.”

  Jim pictured the five gunmen continuing to advance across the desert, getting an idea
. “That’ll do. But, first, I need your help hiding something for a time.”

  * * *

  When the man with no face led the gunmen crashing through the mission gate, they found the ground damp and pooling with liquid that spread about them as they stood with their guns pointed at the tall figure standing near the truck that was the source of the flood.

  Jim Strong held both hands overhead, one holding a lighter spouting a long, thin flame. “It’s in your best interests to stay right where you are.”

  The three shipping crates had been removed from the bed of D. W. Tepper’s pickup and rested side by side in the thickest puddling of liquid.

  “It’s kerosene,” Jim told them, “explaining the lack of smell. But, man, will it go up if this flame hits it. I mean, poof!, and we’re all yesterday’s news.”

  He focused on the massive figure of the man whose face looked stitched together out of cardboard in patchwork fashion, almost like a jagged checkerboard. First time he’d actually laid eyes on the man and the fear of fire was plain in every visible feature.

  “I’m guessing you’ve been there and done that already. You really want to visit that hell again?”

  One of the other men crouched low enough to rake a hand over the darkened ground, touching a finger to his mouth. “Hey, this is—”

  His words were ended by a rock slamming into his skull, ahead of the nonstop flurry raining down from the mission wall, flung by Frank Aidman and the people he was protecting here.

  Jim had his pistol out in the next instant. He fired and kept firing at shape and motion, not particularly distinguishing between the two.