Strong Cold Dead (41 page)

Caitlin lost track of al-Aziz and Daniel Cross and focused her efforts on the nearest ISIS gunman instead. He was firing a shaved-down Kalashnikov with one hand, using a teenage girl as a human shield with the other, to ward off Paz's men. More than one bystander had fallen to his fire, when Caitlin mounted one picnic table and then leaped onto another, which brought her over and behind him. The ISIS gunman was twisting his weapon on her when she fired twice, one bullet taking him high in the shoulder and the second obliterating the right side of his jaw.

That was enough for his hostage to tear free of his grasp. The man still had the presence of mind to swing in the direction of a pair of Paz's soldiers, who pulverized him with twin automatic bursts. Fired from opposing directions, the bullets had the bizarre effect of holding the ISIS gunman upright until both stopped firing and he crumpled in a heap.

Caitlin had moved on by that point, focusing her efforts on shepherding as many of the panicked to safety in the adjoining streets as she could, amid the traffic clog. The windshields of numerous vehicles had been struck by stray gunfire, which continued to clack away in a constant cacophony, courtesy of a close-in firefight like nothing she'd ever witnessed before. Paz's men swept and swerved about the crowd, paying little heed to the collective safety of bystanders, whose presence didn't seem to fully register with them. They were killers, plain and simple, chosen by the colonel for their prowess and their willingness to utilize it.

Caitlin added her help and fire to bystanders, pulling the wounded to safety, as far out of harm's way as she could. Amid it all, in insane counterpoint, the rides continued to twirl and spin, on three- to five-minute looped cycles that swept riders about, through, and above the carnage and panic, as more people rushed to flee Klyde Warren Park.

“Go, go, go!” she instructed, herding panicked patrons along, ready the whole time with her SIG Sauer.

An ISIS fighter, wounded by fire from Paz's troops, snapped a fresh magazine into his Kalashnikov and started to sweep it forward. Caitlin poured bullets from her SIG into him, punching him backwards until he flopped over a trash container and took it down with him to the grass. Gunfire continued to sound, a bit more sporadically now, as she turned her attention back to protecting the crowd.

And spotted al-Aziz dragging Daniel Cross with him toward the botanical garden and the nearest exit, which spilled out not far from Captain Tepper's and Beauchamp's position.

“You read me, Captain?” she said into her hand mic.

“Got ourselves a genuine shit storm out here.”

“It might be about to get heavier. Al-Aziz is headed your way with Daniel Cross in tow.”

“Jesus H., Ranger. Where's Lee Harvey Oswald when you need him? The Mountie and I will be ready.”

Caitlin lit out after al-Aziz, stopping just short of the boarding point for the roller coaster, pistol steadied, with al-Aziz square in her sights. She was about to fire, when a huge shape obscured her vision of everything ahead, seeming to block out the whole world, in the last moment before she was launched airborne.

 

102

H
OUSTON,
T
EXAS

Dylan could only shake his head when Cort Wesley finished explaining Ela's map. “Pedestrian tunnels? Beneath Houston? How could I never have heard of them?”

“Because you never had call to use them, son,” Cort Wesley told him. “Twenty feet below street level, spanning six miles over maybe a hundred city blocks. Whole bunch of access points from buildings and off the streets. A subterranean world all onto itself.”

Dylan looked down at the map lying on his lap, as Cort Wesley sped down an access ramp to Route 290 that would connect up with the 610 into Houston. “Then these ten red X's…”

“Major chokepoints at what's got to be one of the most congested areas during rush hour, all centered around the Downtown loop where lots of the retail establishments are concentrated.”

“Let me have your phone.”

*   *   *

“Jesus,” Dylan said, jogging through the app he'd just downloaded for Houston's underground tunnels on Cort Wesley's smart phone, “there's like two hundred stores. They got everything down there.”

“Including people, lots of them. In a confined space where that shit can spread at will.”

Dylan was trying to compare a schematic featured on the app to the red X's on Ela's map. “You're right. They're all in one central area, along the tunnels converging on this food court here. Shit, you wouldn't believe how many Starbucks are down there.” He shook his head. “Near as I can tell each of the X's is located near one of the entrances.”

“Chokepoints,” Cort Wesley repeated, “like I said.”

“Each between fifty and a hundred yards apart, all centered around this part they call the Downtown Loop.”

“Highly congested for sure and accessible via the McKinney Garage where the terrorists can all park.” Cort Wesley checked his truck's dashboard clock. “Give me my phone back. I need to try Caitlin again.”

*   *   *

Cort Wesley had never driven faster, the miles to Houston along U.S. 290 East dragging on forever. Caitlin wasn't answering her phone, Jones wasn't answering his phone, nobody was answering their phone. And he didn't know if he was going to reach Houston in time for it to matter. His navigation screen had read 166 miles at the outset of the trip, and they had covered the bulk of those already, slipping from one lane into another, then veering sharply across traffic when space allowed, the whole time holding his breath against the possibility of congestion or an accident snarling traffic. He was ever so glad, in that moment, that he'd let Dylan and Luke talk him into buying the more expensive truck model, which included the sport package.

“I'm sorry, son,” he said, breaking the silence that had settled between them.

“For what?”

“For Ela.”

“She'd tried to stop them, Dad. She changed her mind.”

“I know.”

“I was holding her when she died. It brought me back to when Mom died. I never wanted to feel that way again.”

Cort Wesley swallowed hard. “You said it yourself, son. It was different this time.”

The boy twisted toward him, tugging against the bonds of his shoulder harness. “Sure it was. Because you were right all along. I let myself be duped. I didn't see it coming 'cause all I saw was Ela. I feel like an idiot. I feel like it's my fault.”

“How's that?”

“I should've known I was getting played. I should have played her instead.”

“You mean, like, show her the error of her ways?”

“Something like that. At least get her to change her mind, get her to realize she had things wrong.”

Cort Wesley took a deep breath that dissolved into a sigh. “I believe you did that, son.”

“I don't know if I can ever go back to school now, not after this.”

“Not a decision you need to make today.”

Dylan turned back toward the windshield, board-stiff in his seat. “We're gonna kill them, right? These ISIS fighters who killed Ela. Just tell me we're gonna get some payback here.”

Cort Wesley's expression fixed as flat as the windshield glass. “Count on it.”

 

103

K
LYDE
W
ARREN
P
ARK,
D
ALLAS,
T
EXAS

Caitlin's grandfather always talked about vision, when it came to gunfighters. Not that they could see better so much as they could see more. Like, three things at once: left, right, and center.

Caitlin's center was dominated by the huge, looming shape of al-Aziz's chief henchman, Seyyef, his head like an anvil atop his shoulders.

To her right, the whirling shape of Guillermo Paz barreled forward against the grain of fleeing families, a path seeming to open for him down a center his charge created.

To her left, al-Aziz was pushing his way through the mass of people fleeing the park on the Pearl Street side, dragging Daniel Cross with him.

Center and right merged as Paz slammed into Seyyef in a collision akin to a pair of semis in a head-on, the two huge forms hurtling backwards. The collective force pitched them up and over the lead car of the roller coaster, which had just discharged the last of its riders.

Dazed, Caitlin fought to reclaim her footing, feeling instantly woozy when she did, the world all out of kilter. She leaned against a stanchion, holding on to a rope divider for balance, vision clearing all the way to reveal Jones yanking Daniel Cross from al-Aziz's grasp, the kid surging away toward the exit beyond the botanical garden.

The two men struggled amid a brief rainbow of muzzle flashes. Jones staggered now, still pushing on as al-Aziz retreated, charging in the opposite direction, to the east, clinging to the tree line.

Caitlin steadied herself against the stanchion, turning back to see the twin hulking shapes of Paz and Seyyef in hand-to-hand struggle. Their search for any advantage they could muster generated enough force to send the gravity-fed coaster rolling down the track, where it banked into the initial climb and then picked up speed as it crested, into the first dip.

Caitlin's head was on fire. Her teeth were chattering. She realized she'd dropped her pistol and she stooped to retrieve it, her mind clawing at the memory of al-Aziz sprinting across the park, likely toward the exit that spilled out on Harwood Street.

Caitlin caught sight of Jones sinking to his knees, bleeding from everywhere at once it seemed, but still with the presence of mind to wave her on, after Hatim Abd al-Aziz.

She lit out in his wake, bettering her angle just in time to cut off his route to Harwood Street, unleashing a torrent of fire. He spun to return it, and his shots went wild as he veered back into the cover of the amusement park and the attraction set off in the very rear, on the grass in front of one of the performance pavilions: the Chamber of Horrors.

*   *   *

Guillermo Paz had known men as big as Seyyef, and as strong, but never one who was both, and Seyyef had a litheness and agility that belied his bulk and brutish appearance. Paz could tell from the first blow he landed that the man used pain, probably liked pain, was impervious to strikes powerful enough to shatter bone. He'd heard boxers were like that, so used to being struck that taking the blow becomes second nature.

The modest roller coaster was into its second rise before Paz realized they were moving, adjusting his footing and balance to make that motion work for him. Claiming the high ground that a moment before had been the low ground. The move seemed to confuse Seyyef, who nonetheless absorbed a brutal flurry of strikes that shattered his jaw and right cheek. One eye was closed now, the other bulging with rage and the sense of battling an opponent equal to him.

True to his name, Seyyef was an executioner who knew how to kill.

Paz was a soldier, a killer too, but one who knew combat. The advantage had turned clearly his way, until Seyyef projected all of his vast bulk forward, whether fortune or by design, just as the coaster dropped into a fresh dip, giving the high ground back to him. And before Paz knew it, he was bent over the front of the car, Seyyef jamming his face down toward the track.

*   *   *

Caitlin followed al-Aziz through the lingering chaos to the Chamber of Horrors, laggardly at first, forcing the light-headedness from her consciousness and summoning whatever it took to gather herself and beat back the pounding that felt like a knife poking around inside her skull.

She fired when al-Aziz neared the flat-roofed modular building, but her shots flew wildly askew. He spun and returned her fire with his own, just before disappearing into the structure.

Caitlin stayed on his tail, charging toward the same double doors al-Aziz had used, into a black void. Suddenly she was a little girl again, struck by the memory of her father forcing her to board a similar ride with him when she was a kid.

I'm too scared!

That's why you have to do this, little girl.

Her father had dragged her on and lifted her into the lead car, next to him. She was still crying when the car crashed through a pair of double doors painted to look like the devil's mouth.

Now Caitlin found herself charging through a set of double doors made up to look like … the devil's mouth. The warped wood and fading colors made Satan's teeth seem chipped.

Because this was the very same Chamber of Horrors, the same ride that had terrified her as a child, around thirty years ago. Time circled about, catching up, and Caitlin half expected to see her father in the next car as dangling skeletons dropped down before her.

*   *   *

Paz's face was jammed close enough to the track to smell the grease lubricant. He was helpless to do anything but force his neck and shoulder muscles up against Seyyef's desperately determined thrust downward. Paz, who had once pushed a man's face against a churning fan belt, wondered if this was payback for that. His entire life experience was on rewind, seeming to go only as far back as the first time he'd met the gaze of his Texas Ranger, Caitlin Strong. Wanting the glare that looked back at him to be his. To feel what she did, behind those steely eyes that had changed his life even as he was trying to take hers.

Paz felt the heat of the tracks, imagined the sparks generated by the friction flying upward when his skin met steel. And then he saw Caitlin Strong's eyes in his mind. It was enough to launch him backwards, feeling the sinews tearing in his neck muscles as he twisted around. Facing Seyyef, the brute's breath blowing a stench like roadkill into him, Paz smashed his ridged knuckles into a neck wrapped in layers of muscle. Felt them crunch into the softer cartilage, and the cartilage giving way in their path.

Coming apart, shattering. The man's breath bottlenecking in his throat, his face reddening, only forty-five seconds to a minute at most before he lost consciousness. Paz felt his balance waver as the coaster dropped into its final dip, sweeping round the perimeter of Klyde Warren Park, over Olive Street, in the same moment that Seyyef sank his hands into Paz's throat.