Strong Darkness (27 page)

“A favor your country has repaid numerous times.”

Snip.

“You try my good graces, Ranger. Perhaps I should've contacted the State Department when I first learned you had returned.”

“What stopped you?”

Snip.

“Our shared history, I suppose. But there is one more thing as well.”

Zhen rose and led Caitlin along the winding path, past elegant rock gardens and majestic waterfalls that pushed water downward to be recirculated in a constant loop. He stopped before a magnificent collection of multicolored flowers that included a selection of the pink ones she recognized all too well. He extended his hand outward and Caitlin returned the pruning snips to him.

“You asked me about our garden's camellias in our last meeting, Ranger,” he said, working like a surgeon around a lush flower. “I'm going to provide you a sampling to see if these flowers match the petals found in the pockets of those gunmen.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Don't bother thanking me, Ranger. I do this because I know it will yield nothing but further embarrassment for you. Consider it a parting gift to add to your disgrace.”

With that, Zhen eased the collection of petals, leaves, and stem parts to Caitlin who held open a plastic evidence pouch in which to hold them. “This makes me think of something I spotted when I was pruning those flowers.”

“What's that?”

“A perfect bud just starting to flower. Right there among all that decay, there it was.”

“I don't believe I see your point,” Zhen told her.

Caitlin sealed the evidence pouch, staring at him again. “That there's plenty of strength below the surface we can't always see.”

“Something you'd be wise to remember, Ranger.”

“Something both of us would, sir,” she told him.

 

68

S
AN
A
NTONIO,
T
EXAS

“Nice place to meet, Colonel,” Jones said to Guillermo Paz inside the Alamo, the main building better known as the chapel that had been elegantly reconstructed based upon drawings, descriptions, and stories drawn from firsthand accounts. “I imagine you feel right at home here.”

Guillermo Paz continued to stroll about the angular setting, full of alcoves and corners jutting out here and there. One of them, he knew, was where the only survivors of the battle were found in hiding, women and children Santa Ana freed to forever hold the tale in their minds. Among these was Candelaria Villanueva, who claimed to the day of her death at the age of a hundred and twelve that she had served Jim Bowie until he was shot dead on the very cot on which she'd nursed him. Paz pondered what it was like to live that long but quickly dismissed the thought since he didn't really believe anyone ever died; at least their spirits didn't.

“I find myself wondering which side I'd rather have fought for,” he heard himself saying.

“The winners,” Jones said. “Haven't I taught you anything?”

“The Texans were massacred, yes, but their deaths sewed the seeds for Santa Anna's eventual demise and disgrace. So maybe the distinction is not as simple as it seems.”

“Nothing's simple with you, Colonel. That's why you need to get back to work. And I've got a nasty job for you and those cutthroats you've put together. Keep them raping and pillaging the locals for a time.”

“All my men go to church, Jones,” Paz said flatly. “If they aren't capable of making a change in their lives, they aren't right for my employ or my company.” With that, he started to gaze about the chapel again. “The only actual structure still standing from those times is the Long Barracks out back. Everything else is a re-creation, a carbon copy, a facsimile.”

“Another point I must be missing here, Colonel.”

“Look in the mirror and you'll see what I'm getting at.”

“You need to get moving, Colonel,” Jones said impatiently. “Looks like this assignment came up just in time.”

“I'm not taking it.”

“You don't even know what it is.”

“Something more pressing has arisen.”

Jones stopped and looked up to meet Paz's black eyes, his own only reaching up to the big man's chin. “You need to hear me out on this.”

“I'm busy.”

“It involves Caitlin Strong, Colonel, and we don't have a lot of time.”

 

P
ART
S
EVEN

The operations of the companies will be directed, more than has heretofore been the case, to the suppression of lawlessness and crime.… [Officers and privates] are required and expected to use unremitting diligence in hunting up and arresting all violators of the law and fugitives from justice wherever they may be or from whatever quarter they may come.

—General Order 15

 

69

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AN
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NTONIO,
T
EXAS

Caitlin had stopped at Doc Whatley's office to drop off the evidence pouch containing the camellia flower parts from Yuyuan's gardens, when he closed and locked his office door behind them.

“What's wrong, Doc?”

“Remember I told you about those dead homeless men found without a mark on them?”

“I do.”

“Their bodies are gone.”

“Come again?”

“You heard me. I had them stored in freezers under John Doe IDs. This morning they were gone. So unless we got ourselves a zombie problem on our hands, I'm thinking of putting in my retirement papers.”

“You don't figure county officials were behind this?”

“Not without me signing off on the forms. And there's something else. Remember I told you about them being found with no clear indication of the cause of death?”

“Sure.”

“I may have a clearer indication now, thanks to the death of that Chinese diplomat in the airport terminal.”

“He was a general in the Chinese army, I believe, Doc.”

“Well, according to the Chinese government, he's a diplomat—at least his body is supposed to be treated as such. And we're not having this conversation, Ranger. If anybody asks,
anybody
, it never happened.”

“It's not like you to be so mysterious, Doc.”

“We were allowed to store the body while the diplomatic issues were worked out. Weren't allowed to touch it, at least with a scalpel, though—that was the condition.”

“You follow it?”

“Not exactly. I guess a little of you has rubbed off on me, Ranger. Anyway, what I found makes no sense at all. That's what you need to hear about.”

 

70

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C
ITY

“You stay back, you hear me?” Cort Wesley said to Dylan while the crowd from inside the Flatiron Building spilled out onto the pedestrian plaza on the Broadway side of the building in response to the fire alarm he'd pulled.

“Dad,” the boy started to protest but Cort Wesley cut him off.

“Just do it, son.” Cort Wesley continued to study the emerging crowd, locking his gaze on the sharply dressed man he'd recognized from the nonexistent twenty-third floor, and readying the pistol he'd taken off one of the big guys upstairs. “I seen all I want to see of you in a hospital bed.”

*   *   *

Cort Wesley slithered through the crowd, making himself thin and light. It wasn't anything he'd ever been taught and he couldn't say exactly how he did it.

That crowd proved even more of a gift when he realized the man with the orange-toned flawless skin had been separated from the two thugs with whom he'd emerged from inside the unseen section of the offices upstairs. Cort Wesley spotted them gazing deliberately about, then refocused his gaze on his target, his mind charting a course his body followed as if on autopilot.

Before he knew it, he was close enough to the man to smell his fancy aftershave mixed uneasily with too much dry-cleaning solvent used to launder his suit. Pistol pressed hard into the man's ribs.

“Straight ahead, hoss, and don't stop for anything unless I say so.”

 

71

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AN
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NTONIO,
T
EXAS

Doc Whatley locked the door to his analysis lab too, after ushering Caitlin inside.

“Ever seen a cell phone like this before?” he asked her, his breathing coming fast and his gaze never far from the locked door.

Caitlin gazed at the cell phone through the plastic evidence pouch. “It's General Chang's. I recognize it from the airport but I've never seen one like it before.”

“That's because it's from China. Not even available here. But it's not the one belonging to the victim at the airport, no, and that's what I can't make any sense of at all.”

He moved toward a locked drawer and fumbled for the right key on his ring that still contained a good dozen of them. It took him several tries to get the drawer open and remove a trio of evidence pouches that contained cell phones identical to the one he'd just shown Caitlin. Whatley laid all four out in a neat row on the counter and backed off wordlessly, as if what Caitlin was about to see spoke for itself.

“Where'd these come from exactly?”

“Those four homeless men whose bodies flat out disappeared into thin air.”

“All died of unexplained causes, you said.”

“Just like the victim at the airport, near as I can tell.”

“General Chang grabbed for his chest just before he keeled over in the terminal. Based on that and other signs, paramedics were pretty sure it was a heart attack.”

“Same for the four homeless men.”

“Whose bodies are now missing.”

“And what the hell were they doing with those cell phones, Ranger?”

*   *   *

The more Caitlin ran it through her mind, the less sense it seemed to make.

How could the deaths of four homeless men possibly be connected to the death of a high-ranking Chinese general? More to the point, what were those homeless men doing with cell phones at all, much less of a Chinese variety not commercially available in the United States?

Caitlin had just started down the stairs to exit the building when she saw Young Roger stepping around the stairwell straight for her.

“We need to talk, Ranger,” he said, file folder tucked tight under his arm.

 

72

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“You have any idea of the world of hurt you're going to be in?” the man asked, coming awake bound to a desk chair in a Chelsea Hotel room a few blocks away from the Flatiron Building.

“That's good, Mr. Mareno,” Cort Wesley said, tossing the man's wallet aside.

Cort Wesley had already drawn the blinds and left only a single lamp on, angled so it caught Mareno's face, making the bronze tone look as if it could be peeled off like a Band-Aid. He'd checked into the room in the newly renovated, formerly fleabag hotel before heading over to the Flatiron Building, the semblance of his plan having already taken shape. They called such places “boutique” these days, but to Cort Wesley that was just another world for “old,” right down to the radiator fed by old-fashioned steam pipes and the network of fire escapes attached to the building's exterior with rust already peeling through their fresh black paint.

“You make that up yourself or did someone write it for you?” Cort Wesley continued.

“That boy you brought upstairs to my office, are you fucking him or something?”

“You're nothing more than a pimp, hoss, and no fancy office on a floor that doesn't exist can change that.” Cort Wesley looked down at the man tied to the chair, his hands laced behind him. “Know how you can really tell when a man is scared shitless? When he tries to talk tough like you are.”

“You think I'm scared?” Mareno smirked.

“You're not?”

Mareno smirked again. His skin looked powdery dry, more like a mask stretched over his skin. “I'm too busy picturing what's going to happen to you down the road. And not too far down it either.”

“Really? Then maybe you should look down, not too far toward your crotch.”

Mareno did and noticed the substantial bulge there that looked like a folded-up sweater had been stuffed down his pants. “What the fuck?”

“Believe I detect a note of fear in your voice, hoss.” Cort Wesley sat down on the edge of the bed and faced the man. “I know you've heard about all those fancy tortures we got—water boarding, electrocution, and the like. But when you're in the field you learn to be a bit more creative.”

Cort Wesley watched Mareno swallow hard.

“Know what's down there?”

The man just looked at him.

“Dry ice mixed with salt to slow down the chilling process. I'm guessing your privates are starting to feel a bit cold at the moment, aren't they?”

The man's eyes were blinking rapidly.

“Here's what happens from this point, hoss. You don't talk to me, tell me what I want to know, we just sit here and watch your privates freeze up solid. Know how long you can last before your prick and balls are done for good, no different than a snowman's nose?”

Mareno didn't respond.

“Me neither,” Cort Wesley told him. “But based on what I've seen of frostbite, I'm guessing maybe twenty minutes. So you and I, we're gonna do some talking, or I'm gonna stick a sock in your mouth, walk out the door, and lock it behind me. By the time they find you, your prick'll be a Popsicle that'll break off as soon as they stand you up.” He stood up towering over Mareno, giving his last statement more time to sink in. “So, you wanna start or you want me to?”

 

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