Strong Rain Falling: A Caitlin Strong Novel (Caitlin Strong Novels) (26 page)

“I was told to expect you, Ranger,” Erwin said, extending a hand instead of bothering with the gesture of a salute.

William Ray didn’t take the hand at first, then finally did out of respect for the man’s service. They must’ve been about the same age with the battle scars and weary eyes to prove it. “Told by who exactly, General?”

Erwin smiled like a man used to being in charge, just as William Ray was. “Let’s just say the people responsible for your orders.”

“Which have plainly changed by the look of things.”

“You’ve done your part,” Erwin said, leading William Ray aside and then moving to steer him away. “Now let us do the rest.”

He reached for the Ranger’s elbow to better do the leading, but William Ray snapped it away and Erwin looked down to see his own elbow grasped instead. “My
part,
sir, is to have at it with a few hundred monsters pretending to be men. Since you’re here I’m gonna assume you’ve heard of them.
Esos Demonios
.”

“Let go of my elbow, please, Ranger.”

“I’d like an answer to my question.”

“You mean, assumption. And I’ll thank you to release my arm first.”

William Ray finally did.

“Yes, I’ve heard of
esos Demonios
.”

“That it?”

“It’s more than you’re entitled to know. This mission is being undertaken on the orders of the president himself, who, by the way, has authorized me to thank you for your service on his behalf.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“We owe all this to you, Ranger.”

“Owe all
what
to me, General?”

Erwin stiffened slightly and didn’t answer William Ray’s question.

“How ’bout I take a crack at things, then? Way I see it, if you’re stopping our plan to wipe out these monsters, it’s because you’re fighting on the same side; with Carranza and Cantú against Pancho Villa and his fighters.”

“I don’t know anyone by the name of Cantú,” Erwin said smugly, not bothering to deny the rest.

“Then let me shed some light for you. Esteban Cantú is the cousin of President Carranza and the provincial governor of Mexicali, a position he’s used to build his own personal opium smuggling route into California. Now he’s moved his opium business east to Ranger country, forging a second major entry into the country with
esos Demonios
killing anyone in their path to build a distribution network. That killing includes the entire population of a town called Willow Creek.”

Erwin just stood there, maybe listening but maybe not.

“There a problem with your hearing, General?”

Erwin realized William Ray had raised his voice just enough to attract the attention of some junior officers standing close to them. “I’ll thank you to address me in a more respectful tone, Ranger.”

“And I’ll thank you to
kiss my ass
!”

Erwin started to move closer to William Ray, but stopped when he felt the heat radiating from within the Ranger’s flannel shirt.

“You used me and my men, General.”

“I did no such thing.”

“The people you represent, then.”

“I represent the same people you do.”

“No, sir, that is not the case at all. See, me and my men represent the dead folk of Willow Creek. We speak for them on account of nobody else seems to give a shit. So the way I figure it, you used the opportunity of Pancho Villa risking an attack in Juárez to flush
esos Demonios
toward us here in El Paso to finish Villa and the threat he poses to your friend Carranza off once and for all.”

Erwin neither confirmed nor denied his assertion, his gaze remaining flat and noncommittal in the light of lanterns strung from poles.

“You wanna tell me what I’m missing here, General?” William Ray asked, sensing there was something else going on.

“That isn’t your concern. And this isn’t your fight anymore. Take your men and leave the fighting to mine.”

“What am I missing?” William Ray repeated, holding his ground as a gesture from Erwin drew a host of infantrymen to both sides of him, hands too close to the triggers of their carbines for comfort. “Who exactly was it let you know what we were up to?”

The night’s heat was already oppressive before factoring in the fires that pumped more of it through the air, making the stockyards feel to William Ray Strong like he’d entered hell itself. All manner of insects and mosquitoes buzzed the air, thirsty for blood and, maybe, sensing its spill coming. The stench of a different spill from fresh slaughter in these very yards hung like a cloud, impervious to the wind as if it formed more of a wall.

“You know why they call a certain species of beetle June bugs, General?”

“Because I assume they come in June.”

“That’s the thing of it—they don’t; they come in July. Next month, not this.”

“What’s your point, Ranger?”

William Ray got right up in Erwin’s face before responding, the infantrymen enclosing the general tensing but still frozen in place. “That whoever called them June bugs to begin with was full of shit. Just like you.”

65

N
UEVO
L
AREDO,
M
EXICO

“Pancho Villa reached the outskirts of Juárez about the same time your great-grandfather reached El Paso, Ranger,” Sandoval continued.

“In keeping with his part of the plan,” Caitlin followed, “having no idea he’d already been betrayed, sold out.”

“I always assumed the Americans were behind that. A change in priorities. They saw the plan Strong’s Raiders had put into place as the means to help President Carranza crush the Villistas once and for all.”

“That wasn’t the case at all, sir—at least, I don’t believe it was.” Caitlin held her gaze on Alejandro Luis Rojas and Juan Ramon Castillo, the cartel leaders. “And I believe that betrayal is the reason we’re all here today … and why your children were murdered.”

Rojas swallowed hard while Castillo’s stare grew more rigid and hateful, aimed at no one in particular.

“What you’re suggesting,” Sandoval started, seeming to lose his train of thought in mid-sentence. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Finish your story, Mr. Sandoval,” Caitlin prompted. “Then I’ll explain what I’m getting at.”

Sandoval needed to collect his thoughts before resuming. “Villa launched his initial attack on Juárez not long after midnight on June fifteenth. His troops cut through barbed-wire barricades with wire cutters provided by Strong’s Raiders and entered the city, the advance done in a way to keep their bullets from flying across the border into America.”

“But Villa didn’t lead the battle himself, did he?”

“No, it was led by his godson, General Martin Lopez, because Villa was sick.”

“He was sick all right, sir, sick after he was tipped off about the betrayal. Just because he’d come too far to retreat doesn’t mean he was ready to sacrifice himself in the battle.”

“I never thought of that.…”

“But you’ve thought about what happened next.”

“The Villistas made progress initially, until General Erwin ordered his troops into action,” Sandoval expounded. “He’d cobbled together forces from the Twelfth Infantry and Eighty-Second Field Artillery, along with regiments from the Fifth and Seventh Cavalries. His attack began with the shelling of Juárez Racetrack, where Villa’s forces were concentrated.”

“And by that time,” Caitlin recalled, “the Mexican troops had returned to their fort, leaving it strictly to the American forces to put down the Villistas. Suggests a lot of coordination, doesn’t it? Suggests that the battle was over before it even began.
Esos Demonios
weren’t even in Juárez at the time. Villa’s men had walked straight into a trap.”

“All very interesting,” said Castillo, each word measured and pronounced in perfect English. “But what does all this have to do with the child I lost in your country?”

“I’m getting to that, sir,” Caitlin told him.

Rojas leaned so far forward in his chair, it seemed he was about to stand up and Caitlin was pretty certain his gaze had darted out beyond the bead curtain to make sure no one was laying in wait beyond. “And how do we know you haven’t lured us here on a similar pretext? How can we be sure this isn’t a trap as well?”

“Because if I’d set that trap,
señores,
it would’ve sprung already.” She hesitated long enough to let them weigh her words. “We need to listen to the rest of what Mr. Sandoval has to say to fully understand why what happened in that battle in nineteen-nineteen ended up getting your children killed almost a century later.”

Castillo and Rojas looked at each other, then back at Caitlin, nodding simultaneously.

“Mr. Sandoval,” she prompted.

“There’s not a lot more to tell,” Sandoval sighed. “After the artillery shelling, Erwin sent his thirty-six hundred men across the Rio Grande to engage the drastically weakened Villistas. But that too was a trap meant to get Villa’s forces to stage a retreat that subjected them to relentless shelling by Erwin’s artillery. Salvo after salvo lobbed across the border, the shrapnel rounds wiping out entire sections of the Villistas at a time. When the Americans reconnoitered at daybreak, they found a host of adobe structures leveled where the resistance fighters had fled. There were bodies everywhere; weapons, ammunition, horses and mules left behind when the survivors fled to melt back into their everyday lives. For all intents and purposes the revolution ended that night. Villa managed to flee and muster what was left of his forces together again, but in their weakened state they were crushed in Durango.”

“Leading ultimately to Villa’s surrender in nineteen-twenty,” Caitlin interjected.

“He managed to stay alive for three more years until he was finally murdered in July of nineteen twenty-three by assassins likely dispatched by Alvaro Obregon, President Carranza’s successor, who had no interest in honoring the terms of Villa’s truce with his predecessor.”

“Now we wish to hear from you,
el diablo Tejano,
” Castillo said to Caitlin, no longer bothering to hide the disdain in his voice. “We wish to hear what all this has to do with the murder of our children.”

“I did some research before I came down here, sir,” Caitlin told them all, “research into some men who strolled through history anonymously with blood coating their hands. I believe the blood they caused to be spilled in nineteen-nineteen is what caused the deaths of your children today. All the times this story’s been told and their names never even get mentioned.”

Rojas finally came all the way out of his chair and pressed his fingertips into the tabletop. “Who were these men?”

“What were their names?” Castillo added, rising too.

“You both need to be sitting down to hear this.”

But neither moved an inch. “We’re fine as we are,” said Castillo.

“Suit yourself,” Caitlin told them. “Turns out those three generals Strong’s Raiders joined forces with were the ones who betrayed Pancho Villa. They had their own reasons for doing so, reasons that ultimately brought down Esteban Cantú, at the hands of William Ray and Earl Strong, I figure.”

“But who were these generals?” asked Sandoval.

Caitlin hesitated, meeting the drug cartel leaders’ stares before resuming. “Their names were Rojas, Castillo, and Aguilar.”

66

T
EXAS-
M
EXICO
B
ORDER

Caitlin’s SUV edged forward amid the line of cars waiting to make it through the border checkpoint. It was taking no more time than usual, but her impatience to get back to the case at hand made it seem interminably longer.

Back in Nuevo Laredo, all three men had been speechless when she revealed what she believed they held in common, dating all the way back to 1919 and Strong’s Raiders.

“What about me, Ranger?” Fernando Lorenzo Sandoval had asked. “Since my grandfather was not one of Pancho Villa’s generals.”

“I’m still working on that, sir. There’s got to be something else connecting you to the group, just like there’s something connecting Maura Torres.”

“You’re saying this is about revenge,” said Rojas, his tone more measured and less confrontational. “You’re saying someone’s getting back at us for something from a past we had nothing to do with.”

“I suppose that’s not how whoever’s behind all this sees it, sir.”

“What else is it you’re not telling us?” Castillo asked her.

“I’m not telling you anything more until I’m sure.”

*   *   *

Caitlin needed to get back to San Antonio to pick up her investigation, so distracted that she barely noticed she’d finally reached the checkpoint.

“Identification, please,” the border agent asked, after she eased the SUV into park.

Caitlin routinely handed over her Texas Ranger ID and badge, thinking nothing more of it until the border agent stepped back and was almost immediately joined by two more, one of whom was considerably older.

“I’m going to have to ask you to step out of the car, ma’am.”

Caitlin didn’t budge. “What’s this about?”

“Step out of the car, please.”

With that, another pair of agents came up on the passenger side of her SUV, studying her through the windows.

“Ma’am?” the older man prodded.

“It’s
Ranger,
sir,” Caitlin said, easing the door open and stepping out.

“I’m going to need you to surrender your firearm too,” he said next.

Caitlin did so slowly, making sure her intentions could not be confused. “What’s this about, sir?”

“National security,” he told Caitlin, as the four younger agents moved up to enclose her.

67

R
IO
G
RANDE
V
ALLEY,
T
EXAS

“Cort Wesley Masters? No shit!”

“And this is my son Dylan. Seems like you’ve heard of me.”

“I have indeed,” said Jan McClellan-Townsend, the older woman who now ran the McClellan family farm. She’d married an Easterner and moved to Massachusetts, of all places, until her husband died. Around the same time no one else in the family was interested in continuing to run the farm’s day-to-day operations, so Jan had returned home to take over the business in the heart of the Rio Grande Valley, followed in rapid succession by three of her four kids, who’d all sworn off ever even looking at the fields near which they’d been born again. That kind of stuff, she explained, was in the blood like it or not. “I believe my father and your grandfather did some business together.”