Strong Cold Dead (8 page)

“That's what we need proof of before Allah,” Zurif picked up. “A demonstration to show you're not full of shit. Before we get the okay to move to the next stage.”

“A demonstration,” Cross repeated.

“And there's something else,” said Saflin. “Someone was watching your apartment building.”

Cross felt a tremor slip through him, starting in his stomach and spreading upward. “What's that mean, exactly?”

“It means Allah saved you by guiding you away, proof of His blessing over our holy mission.”

Zurif leaned across the booth, too, close to Cross's now forgotten plate of food. “And it means you made somebody's list, triggered an alarm somewhere. Not to worry. That's what Allah has placed us here for.”

“To keep you safe, so you can make good on your promises before the eyes of God,” Saflin added. “Now, about that demonstration…”

 

13

A
USTIN,
T
EXAS

Jones parked the van up the street from the rundown apartment building off East Saint Johns Avenue, shielded from view by leaking bags of trash piled high on the sidewalk. Guillermo Paz had counted a half dozen cars propped up on blocks since they'd hit this part of town, hopelessness riding the air as plainly as the stench of uncollected garbage.

“You know the drill, Colonel,” Jones told him. “The target's a lone wolf as far as we can tell. Can't be sure, of course. That's why you're here.”

“Lone wolf,” Paz repeated, glancing into the rear of the van, where the team members he'd chosen for this operation were gearing up.

Like him, they were veterans of the Venezuelan secret police, better known as the National Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services, or DISIP. Part of a never-ending and self-replenishing supply of soldiers, culled from the best and most ruthless that American dollars could buy. In return, they offered plausible deniability for Jones's black flag operations, undertaken on behalf of a shadowy subdivision of Homeland Security. As far as Washington knew, the colonel and his men didn't exist, and that suited Paz just fine.

“The target made overtures to ISIS via social media, but we lost the trail when he started pinging them via the Deep Web.”

“But that's not why you required my services, is it?” Paz asked him.

“Nope. You got the job, Colonel, because something finally pinged back.”

 

14

A
USTIN,
T
EXAS

Paz and his men were dressed like civilians, locals, secure in the knowledge that this wasn't the kind of neighborhood where residents were likely to call the police to report suspicious behavior. The apartment to which he and his three men were headed overlooked a rat-infested alley at the back of a building. This particular slum seemed to have a nondiscrimination policy, drawing its hapless from among various ethnicities and backgrounds. According to the intelligence gathered by Jones, Daniel Cross was the product of a rape, his mother having been a prostitute at the time of his conception.

Paz hadn't read any more of the file because he didn't need to. Half of Cross's genes belonged to a rapist, which in Paz's mind was as low as life could get. He'd come to realize that everyone is a prisoner of their own birth. Just as Paz had inherited psychic abilities,
brujería
as he called it, from his mother, Cross clearly carried the crazy, violent gene from his father's side.

According to visual surveillance, Daniel Cross was presently hunkered down in the apartment, working behind a computer. The lock on the building's front security door was broken, and Paz led his men through, submachine guns whipped out from beneath their coats. They shoved a kid zooming toward the door on a skateboard out of the way and stepped over a drunk passed out on the stairs, en route to Cross's third-floor apartment.

Paz stood before the door, his men taking their flanking positions. An electronic sweep before he'd been given the go signal revealed no trip wires or any other defense against intrusion. Not that Paz required such intelligence. He trusted his own instincts and the
brujeria
he'd inherited from his mother more than any machine, and right now that
brujeria
told him he had nothing to fear. But he also was struck by an odd feeling he couldn't quite identify, that left him distinctly unsettled.

Shaking the sensation off, Paz lifted his right leg off the floor and aimed the heel of his boot straight for the flimsy latch. The door shattered on impact, the hinges themselves as well as the latch, sending the splintered remnants rocketing inward.

A shaft of light illuminated a shape in a desk chair, swinging toward him, silhouetted by the flimsy, drawn blinds, something dark and shiny held in his hand. Sound-suppressed fire from his men tore the figure apart. The whole chair wheeled backwards and slammed into the blinds, which dropped from their mounts and folded over what was left of what had been sitting there.

“Madre de Dios,”
one of Paz's men muttered.

*   *   *

“A dummy?” Jones repeated, wondering what Guillermo Paz had tucked in his hand, when he returned to the van.

“Stuffed animal, actually, dressed in clothes and a baseball cap.”

“Don't tell me, Colonel: facing away from the window so my surveillance team wouldn't figure things out.”

“The blinds cracked enough to let them see what they expected to.”

“Yeah, there's a post in Alaska waiting for them, as of tomorrow.”

“I left my men in the apartment to make sure it was secured for your tech team. Tell them to watch out for the candy wrappers.”

“Candy wrappers?”

“They're crumpled up everywhere. Hershey bars, I think.”

“You could have told me that much over the radio, Colonel,” Jones said.

“But there was something you needed to see,” Paz told him, showing Jones what he'd been holding. “Right away.”

Jones looked at the framed picture, shaking his head. “Oh,
shit
…”

 

15

W
EST
H
OUSTON,
T
EXAS

“Well, poke me with a stick!” Sam Bob Jackson said, entering the reception area of his office with a wide grin, hands clasped before him as if he were praying. “If it ain't Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong, in the flesh!”

Caitlin popped up from her chair and extended her hand. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Jackson.”

The owner of Jackson Whole Mineral clasped the hand in both of his. “I am so sorry to keep you waiting. I knew a Texas Ranger would be coming, but I didn't know it'd be you, by God.” His eyes narrowed, head canting slightly to the side, as he pulled his hands back. “You don't remember me, do you?”

“I'm afraid I don't, sir.”

“Why, I'm the one who presented you that commendation on behalf of the Texas Chamber of Commerce after you plum near saved the state from those Russian fellas fixing to do us harm, just like your daddy did back in his time. Hell of a thing, wasn't it?”

“I'm not allowed to comment, Mr. Jackson, though I am curious about how you came by the information you did.”

Jackson winked. He was a big man, with a triple chin dangling over a string tie that made him look like a fake cowboy. His belly hung well over his belt, which looked to be stitched from the same leather as his boots.

“Well, Ranger,” he winked, “I suppose we both got our sources.”

Caitlin nodded, figuring it was best to leave things at that.

“Now, let's go down the hall to my office so I can help you out in whatever it is that brought you here.”

Jackson Whole Mineral occupied a floor of a gleaming new office tower located, appropriately enough, in west Houston's Energy Corridor, with a clear view of the Katy Freeway out one of Sam Bob Jackson's office windows. Caitlin took a seat in front of his desk and watched Jackson struggle to adjust the designer blinds just enough to keep the sun from her eyes.

“There we go,” Jackson said, finally. “You comfortable?”

“I am, sir.”

“How about something to drink?”

“Your assistant already offered.”

“Yeah, Muriel's a peach, ain't she?”

Jackson Whole Mineral advertised itself as an experienced and trusted purchaser of oil and gas mineral and royalty interests throughout Texas, Louisiana, and, most recently, the Dakotas, thanks to the Bakken oil field up there. As a third-party consolidator, the company's role was to generate the best possible offers for clients who, like the Comanche, were looking to sell off interests in their land. Toward that end, the company maintained a staff of geologists, engineers, and economic analysts whose job was to get their clients the highest possible return for either leasing or selling their oil and gas interests.

Still giddy, Sam Bob Jackson reclined comfortably in his leather desk chair, propped his boots atop his desk, and laced his fingers behind gelled hair that smelled like something out of a bakery. He looked like a caricature more than a man, but the persona seemed just genuine enough to leave clients with a comfort level bred by an old-school Texas oilman who seemed fit for an episode of
Dallas
.

“So, what can I do for you, Ranger? You didn't specify the reason for your visit.”

“That's because my visit isn't part of an active investigation, nothing like that,” Caitlin told him. “I'm just here for some background on the Comanche Indian reservation outside Austin.”

Jackson nodded, poking at the air with a finger that looked as thick as a cigar. “Where those young folk are staging a protest.”

“That's the one, sir.”

“You mind calling me Sam Bob, Ranger?”

“Not at all.”

“On account of we got history between us and all, and I'm not just talking about that award the Chamber gave you.”

“No?”

“Your daddy got mine out of a whole mess of scrapes. He was a good man, my daddy, kind and generous to a fault. But he couldn't hold his liquor, and Jim Strong was always there when a bender got the better of him.” Jackson pulled his boots off the desk and rocked his chair back forward. “Be glad to return that favor any way I can.”

“Well, sir—”

“Sam Bob.”

“The truth is, I understand you were hired by the Blackfoot up on the Fort Berthold reservation in North Dakota. And I understand there was some trouble up that way, as well, in the course of more than thirteen hundred wells being dug.”

“There was indeed, Ranger, regrettably.”

“I believe the tribal chief who pushed the whole deal through, Tex G. Hall, ended up establishing his own energy consortium, with a shell company established by you, according to the paper trail. Hall's currently facing a slew of indictments and has been implicated in a pair of murders.”

Sam Bob Jackson forced a smile, trying to look casual and undaunted but unable to disguise the edge that settled in his voice. “Does your jurisdiction extend to North Dakota, Ranger?”

“No, sir, but it does to the Balcones, and some of the Comanche have expressed concern over your involvement there, as well.”

“You're speaking of those protesters, I assume.”

“There were protesters up in North Dakota, too, Sam Bob, who got it in their mind to draw attention to what fracking would do to their land. From what I've heard, they were pretty much right.”

The giddiness fled Jackson's expression like air from a balloon. His face suddenly looked smaller, his gelled hair not as shiny.

“That's something you'd have to take up with the oil companies Jackson Whole sold off the mineral rights to.”

“Well, Sam Bob, the protests I'm talking about happened before the drilling operation began, when your company was still running the show. And one of the leaders of the Blackfoot protest ended up in a coma after a serious car accident. Another disappeared and turned up drowned, after falling out of his skiff while fishing the Snake River. Another of the leaders had a change of heart and ended up with a brand-new home for his whole family.”

Jackson interlaced his fingers again, this time with elbows laid atop his dark wooden desk. “What exactly are you getting at, Ranger?”

“Who would have the most to lose by a protest like that gumming up the works?”

“The Natives, for sure. And the oil companies who'd bought the leases, of course.”

“And if they'd decided not to drill and pulled up stakes within a specified period, on account of not wanting to push their way past a bunch of kids standing in their way? That would leave Jackson Whole holding the bag, wouldn't it? On the hook for the nonrefundable advance you paid the Blackfoot, and the Comanche in this case, for the rights to sell or lease mineral rights to their land.”

“You still haven't answered my question, Ranger.”

“What question was that?”

“How I can be of service to you.”

“That's because I came here to be of service to
you
. I believe it's in everyone's best interests here to make sure that no harm comes to those young Comanche standing their ground, 'cause we both know this'll pass soon enough. Time and money getting lost are nothing compared to lives. And it's in those same mutual best interests for you to tell me who might be capable of something like that—which both of us would regret. I just figured that a civic-minded man like yourself would want to do right. Make sure nobody gets hurt in a way that would reflect badly on everyone involved. Would I be correct in that regard?”

“I couldn't agree more,” Jackson said, sounding as if he meant it.

“That's good, sir, because Texas has one thing North Dakota doesn't, Sam Bob.”

“What's that?”

“Rangers,” Caitlin told him.

*   *   *