Strong Rain Falling: A Caitlin Strong Novel (Caitlin Strong Novels) (6 page)

“Sir,”
a voice said from somewhere behind him, as Cort Wesley watched Luke step up to take his turn,
“you can’t be wearing that in here.”

“You’re holding it wrong, son.”

“That’s what Caitlin always says.”

“Well, maybe you should start listening.”

“Dad,” Luke spat at him, elongating the word and shooting him a glare that brought the rumbling back to Cort Wesley’s stomach.

“Sorry.”

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to stop.”

Cort Wesley heard the man’s voice again in the back of his mind, the front devoted to watching his son begin pecking away at the bad guys, the gallery rifle clacking off pellets a bit bigger than what he remembered as a boy. Missing more than he hit, the soft click of a shot followed every second or third time by the clang of a strike. Luke’s concentration was intense, so much so that he looked like he was trying to squeeze the paint off the rifle and Cort Wesley had to gnash his teeth to avoid telling him to ease up on his grip. Luke’s current score was a fraction of what he’d managed, making him think he should have missed more on purpose.

“Sir, the park has a strict no guns policy!”

For Cort Wesley, the night changed then and there. The cool, comfortable breeze turned hot against his skin, and suddenly the smooth darkness became nothing more than a ribbon of black set against the bright lights piercing it. The scents of popcorn, cotton candy, barbecue, and grilling food all got sucked into the vacuum of Cort Wesley’s defenses snapping on. He spun just as a lanky Latino shoved an unarmed security guard aside and drew his pistol in the same motion.

Cort Wesley yanked the gallery rifle from Luke’s grasp and steadied it on the gunman, opening up with full awareness of the load’s minimal capabilities. Because he targeted the man’s sunglasses, all wrong to be wearing at night, which made Cort Wesley remember the same man standing across from him at the SkyScreamer talking on his cell phone.

The pellets cracked the glass of both lenses and sent flecks flying toward his eyes. The man used his free hand to tear the glasses off and swipe at his now red and watery eyes, even as he opened up wildly with his nine-millimeter pistol.

Cort Wesley shoved Luke up and over the game’s heavy wood, waist-high front wall and then pulled himself over with his legs swept to the sides. The gunman’s initial shots found nothing as a result, his next bullets flying even more askew with his aim further upset by the unexpected turn of events.

“Dad…”

“Stay down!”

“Dad!”

“Down!” Cort Wesley ordered again, yanking a pair of freshly loaded gallery rifles down from the counter.

Ridiculous to think their rounds could accomplish much at all, but Cort Wesley figured this was the best time to try, with the gunman’s original intentions thrown all out of whack. He timed his lurch upward to coincide with a time lag he took to mean the gunman was jacking a fresh magazine home, and found the man in his sights just as he was bringing his pistol back up from fifty feet away.

Cort Wesley peppered him with a barrage of pellets from both rifles, his shots all aimed at the man’s face. He watched the man jerk both his hands up to shield his already hurt eyes, eliminating, for the moment anyway, the threat posed by his gun.

Cort Wesley was just about to leap back over the counter, when he caught more shapes pushing their way inward against the flow of panicked park-goers fleeing the area. He dropped down again, shielding Luke with his own frame just as fresh gunfire started—four guns, his hearing told him, all nine-millimeter pistols. Then a fifth was added to the mix, evidence of the original shooter regaining enough of his senses to rejoin the attack that blistered his ears and sent splinters and shards of wood spewing into the air.

“Dad!”
Luke wailed again.

And Cort Wesley felt the tug of helplessness that was no stranger to anyone who knows combat. But that tug had an entirely different feel when something much more was at stake than just himself or his mission. He had to protect his son. Priority One.

Which meant taking out the five gunmen with his own Glock stowed back in his truck, locked up inside in compliance with park rules.

Cort Wesley’s battle-tested mind churned through everything it had recorded near the shooting gallery, searching for some weapon, some equalizer. Cooking grease, hot coffee, the oil used to make the popcorn … What about turning the big Clydesdale horses giving wagon rides into a stampede?

“Stay here, son!” Cort Wesley ordered, no idea what he was going to do for sure, once exposed beyond the shooting gallery.

“Dad!”

“Do what I say!”

Cort Wesley realized he was squeezing the boy’s arm hard enough to make him wince, stripping his hand free just as he heard the loud grating sound of an engine racing in the red, a vehicle risking its transmission to surge right into the middle of the gunfight. There was a screech of tires, followed by the sickening thud of steel meeting flesh and bone. Cort Wesley peeked over the counter to see Guillermo Paz barreling toward the shooting gallery in a massive, extended-cab pickup truck.

10

S
AN
A
NTONIO

Paz spun the truck into a whiplash turn that left its passenger side blocking the front of the shooting gallery, providing additional cover for Cort Wesley and Luke. Paz was firing out his open window with an M16 even then, still firing when he threw the truck’s door open and lunged out. In the same motion, he managed to hurl a second assault rifle up and over his truck, dropping it straight into Cort Wesley’s waiting hands. At near seven feet tall and all of three hundred pounds, Paz might have been the biggest man Cort Wesley had ever seen, but in moments like this he moved like a gazelle. His motions flowed in an eerie rhythm, as if thought and action had merged into one.

His huge shoulders, encased in an army green canvas shirt, vibrated as he continued to fire, M16 rotating in the neat arc the shooters had formed. His bullets trailed them in neat three-shot bursts, Cort Wesley adding his own fire to the mix in the next instant. He used the counter as a springboard to reach the bed of Paz’s truck, hitting the trigger the moment his feet touched down.

Paz’s fire was trained to the right at that point so Cort Wesley worked his to the left. He recorded the shape of the man Paz had plowed over bent and broken in the middle of the midway. Paz had already left a second gunman splayed atop a picnic table and Cort Wesley’s fire spun a third into the abandoned popcorn cart, spilling it over to the pavement. They opened up together in the next instant, their twin streams effectively crisscrossing to hold the final two gunmen at bay behind concrete-encased trash receptacles.

“Let’s go, outlaw!”

No time to reflect or reconnoiter, not even any to breathe, before Paz was behind the wheel of the big truck again, gunning the engine. The man seemed to live in an entirely different plane of existence, no wasted thought, motion, or action whatsoever.

“Luke!” Cort Wesley called.

To his credit, the boy popped up immediately, climbing atop the counter to accept his father’s helping hand into the big truck’s cab.

“Go!” Cort Wesley yelled to Paz, slamming a hand down on the truck’s roof to signal him on.

And Paz tore out of Six Flags Fiesta just as he’d torn into it, Cort Wesley waiting until he was sure no more gunmen were about before climbing into the truck’s rear seat.

*   *   *

“The Ranger sent me, outlaw,” Paz said, his massive hands swallowing the wheel as he made straight for La Cantera Parkway and the I-10 beyond it.

And then it all clicked into place. “Dylan…”

“He’s fine, the Ranger too. Kind of under arrest, though.”

“Kind of?”

“There were casualties up in Province as well.”

“Providence,” Luke corrected from the passenger seat, eyeing Paz as if he were an animal in a zoo with no bars separating them. “And I recognize you. You … you were there the day my mom was killed.”

“He saved our lives in Mexico not long afterward, Luke,” Cort Wesley reminded, the rationale sounding feeble even to him.

Paz tilted his gaze toward the boy, as he gave the truck more gas. “And the man you see before you now was reborn that day. I can’t change what I’ve done, only what I can do from that moment forward.” With that, Paz extended his cell phone back to Cort Wesley. “The Ranger wants you to call her. In Providence. There were five gunmen up there too.”

“Coordinated attacks, then.”

Cort Wesley could see Paz’s saucer-like eyes peering into the rearview mirror. “Nothing new, outlaw.”

P
ART
T
WO

A genuine Texas Ranger will endure cold, hunger and fatigue, almost without a murmur, and will stand by a friend and comrade in the hour of danger and divide anything he has got, from a blanket to his last crumb of tobacco.

Andrew Jackson Sowell,
Rangers and Pioneers of Texas

11

Q
UINTANA
R
OO,
M
EXICO

Ana Callas Guajardo led the two men, her most trusted captains, around the lee of her sprawling home toward the stables that were her pride and joy. “I’m disappointed in your failure, gravely disappointed, but I’m not angry. Anger accomplishes nothing. Bob Parsons, the great CEO who founded Go Daddy, says that when you get knocked down, the sooner you get up and get back to business, the sooner your failure can be rectified. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“We took elaborate precautions,” said Juan Aviles Uribe defensively. A former major in the Mexican
federal
police force, Uribe had lost an eye in a shoot-out; the menacing black patch he now wore made the nests of scar tissue that dotted his cheeks stand out all the more. “There’s nothing linking the men we used back to us.”

“That’s not what I asked you, Major. I asked if you understood that now we must find a way to turn your failure into success.”

“We will need more men,
jefa
,” Uribe said, missing the point.

“Because your preparation and planning fell short. You underestimated the opposition in spite of my warnings. Bob Parsons also says that most mistakes stem from subjective sources, limited information, and inaccurate assumptions.”

“I am just a soldier,” snapped Colonel Ramon Reyes Vasquez in a voice that sounded more like a slurred growl. “I don’t understand all this.”

Vasquez wasn’t tall but he was almost absurdly broad, with a chest that looked like a rack concealed beneath his sweat-soaked shirt. It was said that Vasquez kept a piece of every man or woman he’d ever killed. A personal collection he showcased only for himself. Some dared suggest he was not a man at all, but a
chupacabra
, a mythical Mexican vampire-like beast best known for leaving its victims, both animal and human, drained of blood. But he walked with a slight limp from shrapnel still lodged in his hip from one bomb blast and had lost a good measure of his hearing to another, which had felled a dozen men while leaving him as the lone survivor.

Guajardo’s gaze bore into him. “All you need to understand at this point is that the Torres boys are still alive and that is the failure that must be rectified.”

The two men looked suddenly uncomfortable in her presence, unaccustomed to taking orders from or being criticized by a woman. But Ana Callas Guajardo was no ordinary woman. Far from it. She occupied a very rare place in Mexican culture as a political power broker and kingmaker whose party had returned to power in the most recent election, in large part thanks to the millions she had plunged into her presidential candidate’s campaign. His victory had increased her power many times over, making her someone to be feared and respected at the same time, but mostly feared. The respect came from her status as Mexico’s wealthiest woman, having built upon her father’s vast success. The fear stemmed from the ruthless manner with which she pursued her fortune. Business was a war, every deal a battle where prisoners were left dead on the battlefield. Even the cartels grudgingly accepted the reasonable peace over which she now presided because it served their business better as well.

The cartel leaders had taken Ana Guajardo lightly at first, until they quickly discerned how little her appearance suited her or the position she occupied. Her flawless skin looked perpetually and naturally tan. Her eyes were steady, calm, and reassuring, belying the true intentions and ambitions of a woman who crushed her enemies and used her supporters for the sole purpose of increasing her own hold on power. She had been pictured on the front pages of Mexican newspapers and websites at gala events and openings, equally at home there as she was in dark, dingy buildings where her less savory associates were headquartered.

“I was clear in my warning not to attack the Torres boys in the presence of their father or this Texas Ranger,” Vasquez groused.

“But that doesn’t explain the failure on the fairgrounds, does it? The roots of that failure lie in yet more poor preparation on your part.”

“We could not anticipate the appearance of
Angel de la Guarda
,
jefa
.”

“And what if you had? Would you have needed a hundred men, a
thousand
?” Guajardo shook her head, her impatience showing in a flush of red through her features. “This Guardian Angel, as you call him, is just a man who bleeds like any other.”

“Guillermo Paz may be a man,” Uribe echoed, “but he doesn’t bleed like any other. He earned his nickname from first protecting Mexican peasants from the local cartel lords and soldiers and then exacting his own revenge upon them.”

“So he’s a better man than you.”

Uribe stammered over a response, Vasquez picking up for him. “The cartels put a price on his head that no one has dared try to collect.”

“A truly dangerous man,
jefa
,” Uribe said, finding his voice.

“I know,” she told them both. “Guillermo Paz once worked for me.”