by Jon Land
Susan Pamerleau, meanwhile, had been the first woman sheriff to be elected in the county, in large part because she was a terrific administrator as well as a no-nonsense officer of law enforcement. And Pamerleau was apolitical. Caitlin was surprised as much by the skill of her campaigning as by the fact she’d decided to run in the first place.
There was a click, and then Sheriff Pamerleau’s voice filled the cab.
“What can I do for you, Ranger?”
“Thanks for taking my call, Sheriff. I was just wondering if you’d had any reports that stick out as strange, the past day or so.”
“As in…”
“Something that makes you think twice but leaves you short of dispatching the cavalry.”
“You mean besides this spate of domestic abuse and sexual assault cases lately?”
“I do.”
“Well, let’s see. A ten-year-old boy stole his mother’s car.”
“Not that.”
“Good thing, because he crashed the car. This morning we had a call about some bow hunters wandering off that Bexar County Bow Hunts place and going after bucks within range of an elementary school. Oh, and this afternoon a tourist filed a report about not actually seeing a ghost on the Silver Ghost tour last night. Then there’s the farmer whose dogs went missing.”
“Stop there,” Caitlin told her.
* * *
Located in Atascosa, the four-hundred-acre Burlein farm had been in the family for generations. According to Sheriff Susan Pamerleau, Colt Burlein had called in a panic that morning, saying he’d heard horrible shrieking wails the night before and had woken up to the realization that his three German shepherds were missing. He’d called the sheriff’s department, fearing foul play from one of the neighbors with whom he was constantly at odds, after he could find no trace of them anywhere on his property.
Caitlin squeezed through the fence rails onto Burlein’s land in the moonless night, with no more than a flashlight to carve herself a path. The wind rustled through the trees and nearby corn crops, making her think of summer, for some reason.
Caitlin rotated her flashlight about the sprawl of the farm, her thoughts turning again to those kids who’d gone missing from Armand Bayou. If it had been a kidnapping, law enforcement or the kids’ parents would’ve heard something by now. The fact that no one had heard a word suggested another factor here that she hadn’t figured out yet. A hostile action, for sure, but one rooted in a motivation other than money.
Terrorism maybe? Some homegrown ISIS-like group, intending to make a show of executing the kids one at a time to frighten the country into submission? The possibility was chilling, although the actual logistics still suggested far-more-seasoned, even professional or paramilitary, involvement.
Caitlin stopped suddenly and moved the beam of her flashlight about. The wind had stopped; the trees and crops had gone motionless. But she heard a rustling sound, hollow and different than animals make, and the ground seemed to rumble beneath her feet.
Caitlin swept her flashlight one way, then back the other, then in a circle, trying to determine where the rustling was coming from. It seemed to be all around her and she froze, feeling for the SIG holstered on her hip.
The rustling dissolved into a pounding, a thump-thump-thump coming straight at her through the darkness, from the crops on her right flank. Caitlin twisted the flashlight beam about that way, revealing nothing.
Thump-thump-thump.
Still coming.
Caitlin turned. Ran. No longer feeling for the SIG. Her mind picturing whatever had descended on Karl Dakota’s cattle out of nowhere and dropped them as they stood.
Her heart pounded her rib cage. Her lungs filled, emptied, and filled again. Then the gasps started, bred by panic and the unknown nature of whatever was chasing her down, the earth seeming to quake as if ready to open up and swallow her.
Something was coming.…
She’d been in more than her share of gunfights, situations where ambushes were more likely than not. But Caitlin had never known fear like this, not after a couple days of following leads that made no sense at all and confronted her with something between impossible and monstrous.
Ahead, the jittery beam cast by her swaying flashlight caught the reflection of a still pond nestled in the center of the Burlein property. Could whatever was coming, whatever had eaten Dakoka’s and Ilg’s herds to the bone, swim?
Caitlin was almost to the water shimmering under the light of her flashlight beam, when a black wave swept over her and she went down.
51
SHAVANO PARK, TEXAS
“Stop laughing,” she said to Dylan, when he broke up near the end of her story.
“It was the missing dogs, wasn’t it? Those German shepherds.”
“Damn things were blacker than the night.”
“So Caitlin Strong has finally met her match: dogs!”
And he laughed so hard he almost fell off the swing, sent it rocking into a fresh sway.
“Everybody’s gotta be scared of something, son.”
“Okay, what am I scared of?”
“Waking up one morning ugly,” Caitlin said, finally smiling herself. But it slipped from her face just as fast. “We were talking about Luke.”
Dylan’s gaze turned suddenly evasive. “About that,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“When’d you figure things out?”
“I didn’t, not totally. He told me last night.”
“He told you?”
“Surprised?”
“He never told me a damn thing, even when I asked him. Just rolls his eyes and blows the hair from his face.”
“You do that too, son.”
“Roll my eyes?”
“Blow the hair from your face.”
“No, I don’t,” Dylan said, doing just that.
“When you’re nervous or on edge about something.”
“I’m not nervous or on edge about this.”
“No? How about how your dad is going to take the news?”
“Well…” Dylan’s expression tightened, then grew questioning. “Luke really told you? On his own?”
“Guess I knew when I saw him and the other boy together in that office at the nature center. Something in their eyes.”
“The way they looked at each other, you mean?”
“The way they didn’t,” Caitlin told him. “Like each was pretending the other wasn’t even in the room.”
“Is there anything you don’t notice?”
“Well,” Caitlin shrugged, “there were those dogs earlier in the night.”
They smiled together this time, just before the screen door rattled open and, in the same moment, a pair of halogen headlights from Cort Wesley’s truck hit the porch like a spotlight.
“What are you guys talking about?” Luke asked, emerging from inside just as his father parked his truck in the driveway.
52
SHAVANO PARK, TEXAS
Caitlin and Cort Wesley sat on the porch swing, the night silent save for the wind whistling through the trees and the slight creak of the swing’s hinges from the rocking motion caused by their weight upsetting the delicate balance.
“How long have you known about Luke?” he said finally.
“We don’t have to do this, Cort Wesley.”
“We don’t?”
“You should be talking to Luke, not me.”
“I need some time to process this first.”
“How do you think he feels?”
“I wouldn’t know, because he didn’t see fit to tell me.”
“Maybe he thought you’d be pissed.”
“And I am pissed, Ranger … that this is the way I had to find out.”
Caitlin held to her calm, knowing Cort Wesley’s emotions were all twisted into knots. “You want to blame me for that, go ahead.”
“I want to blame you for not telling me as soon as he told you. Now answer my question.”
“I don’t remember i
t.”
“How long have you known?”
Caitlin thought back to spotting Luke in the office at the Armand Bayou Nature Center, the incredible wave of relief she had felt starting to get washed away by the question of why exactly he and that other boy, Zach, had gone off into the woods alone the night before. She’d noticed something tense and uneasy in Luke’s expression that was neither guilt nor fear so much as resignation. It happened the moment their eyes met and she saw in Luke’s the same look a kid flashes when you find something you’re not supposed to in a drawer or between the mattresses—not so much denial of the act as regret over not doing a better job at hiding the truth. But Caitlin knew she couldn’t verbalize that for Cort Wesley and opted to tweak the tale a bit.
“Last night,” she told him. “You were right. He wasn’t asleep. He told me when I went upstairs. He also told me again about the lights he spotted in the woods. Got me thinking.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“I’m not. I was only telling you about our conversation. It stuck with me, but I didn’t know why until just now.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I think those boys got themselves turned all the way around, Cort Wesley. They thought the lights were coming from the west, but they were really coming from the east.”
“The Gulf,” Cort Wesley realized.
“That’s right. Whoever snatched those kids did it by boat.”
53
SHAVANO PARK, TEXAS
The revelation didn’t seem to register with Cort Wesley or, at least, didn’t seem to matter to him.
“Luke told you he was gay before me,” he said, about something that did.
“Give him time, Cort Wesley.”
“He’s had fifteen years.”
“I don’t think you mean that the way it sounded.”
“Nope,” Cort Wesley sighed, “just the frustration talking.”
“What’s changed? He’s still the same kid.”
“It doesn’t bother you, Ranger?” he asked, shaking his head. “Not at all?”
“Why should it?”
“My dad would’ve beaten me senseless if it were me.”
“Then I guess it’s a good thing you’re not him.”
“I just, I don’t…”
Cort Wesley’s voice tailed off and Caitlin didn’t press him to continue, until he was ready.
“Did you ever suspect something was wrong? Tell me the truth.”
“No, because there isn’t anything wrong.”
He shook his head, scolded her with his eyes. “You know what I mean.”
“The answer to that is no, too. I never suspected anything because he’s a normal kid. Being gay doesn’t change that.”
“Well, it changes other things.”
“Like what?”
Caitlin saw a vein start pulsing over Cort Wesley’s left temple, as if he were trying hard to come up with an answer, without success, so she spared him the trouble. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Being judgmental.”
“I get your point,” Cort Wesley told her.
“Do you?”
“You being judgmental with me like I am about Luke.”
“Can’t put anything over on you, Cort Wesley, can I?”
He almost smiled. “You know what’s really bothering me here? The fact that you were afraid to tell me over how I’d react, the fact that you’re worried about how I was going to deal with this.…”
“Well,” Caitlin said, “you kind of proved my point.”
“And the fact that I didn’t see this for myself. How could I not have? I’m his goddamn father and I didn’t even have a clue.”
“Don’t blame yourself.”
“Can’t help it, Ranger. If he’d come to me earlier, I can’t believe this wouldn’t have been easier on him. So I blame myself for not having the kind of relationship I thought I had with my youngest. That’s why I’m sitting here steaming.”
“Stop beating yourself up.”
“Why is it easier with Dylan?”
Caitlin’s mouth almost dropped. “‘Dylan’ and ‘easier’ in the same sentence? Do you really mean that?”
“In some ways I do.”
“We comparing love lives of your sons here? Do I need to remind you about some of the romances Dylan’s had that almost got him killed?”
“Why don’t you just say what you mean?”
“You look at Dylan and see yourself, Cort Wesley.”
“And what do I see when I look at Luke?”
“You shouldn’t need to ask me.”
“I just did anyway.”
“You see his mother. When you look at him it gets you thinking about what your life might’ve been like if you’d made different choices.”
“Like Luke did, you mean?”
“It’s not a choice.”
Cort Wesley lurched up out of the porch swing fast enough to crack one of the boards. “I can’t think about this any more right now,” he said, stopping short of the porch railing and squeezing his hands into fists. “What do I do about Zach? Do I talk to his parents, invite them over for dinner or something?”
“What makes you think you’ve got to do anything?”
“I don’t know, Ranger; that’s why I asked.”
Caitlin looked away, then right back at him. “You hear from Jones?”
“While you were inside,” Cort Wesley told her. “A building blew up on the campus of Kansas State University earlier tonight.”
“What’s that have to do with us, with all this?”
“Apparently, the building in question houses the nation’s top biosecurity research institute.”
“I’ve heard of it,” Caitlin nodded. “Agriculture biosecurity, specifically.”
“Which includes something else, Ranger: agroterrorism.”
54
PENZA, RUSSIA
Yanko Zhirnosky felt the big SUV thump over the rut-strewn gravel road turned to mud by a recent storm.
“You still haven’t told us where we’re going,” one of his political party’s ministers said, impatience crackling in his voice.
“The future, that’s where I’m taking you. Beyond that I don’t want to spoil the surprise.”
His armored SUV’s run-flat tires took turns dropping into fresh divots dug out of the road, beyond which the thick tree line hid endless fields of scrub brush in Russia’s Chernozem, or Black Earth, region. They had set out at dawn, neither Zhirnosky nor any of the four ministers of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia informing even their closest aides of their plans or true destination. LDPR, of course, was a name left over from the party Zhirnosky had usurped and molded in his own ultranationalist image, to the point where Vladimir Putin himself began to fear his right flank, exposed by Zhirnosky’s and the LDPR’s growing popularity, as shown by the rising number of seats it now held in the Duma.
Zhirnosky’s rise to such a standing was made even more incredible by the fact that he’d been one of the prime conspirators in an August 1991 attempted coup aimed at forestalling the collapse of his beloved Soviet Union. Working in concert with other, similarly minded Kremlin leaders, the conspiracy had been hatched with the help of Zhirnosky’s mentor and then-head of the KBG, Valentin Krychkov. Ultimately, Zhirnosky had survived the fates suffered by his fellow conspirators by giving up Krychkov to Yeltsin’s flacks. Zhirnosky took great pride in the fact that he’d never given in to the drunken fool, and he fretted only minimally over betraying his mentor, since Krychkov was a marked man anyway. Hell, Krychkov would’ve been proud of him for his actions, since they’d proved he learned his lessons well.
One of those lessons was to never give up on ultimately restoring the Soviet Union to its rightful place of prestige and power. And now, that goal was within his reach, with Zhirnosky himself installed as the nation’s leader, once his plan was complete.
“But I can tell you this,” Zhirnosky resumed. “Do any o
f you believe the future of our nation would not be best served by the fall of America as a superpower and the eradication of the American way of life as it is known today?”
His ministers remained silent and still.
“Does anyone object, then, to fully exploiting an opportunity that fortune has delivered onto us?”
“And what opportunity is that?” one of his ministers asked.
“The reawakening of something we gave up for dead,” Zhirnosky told them all, “a long time ago, during the Cold War that may have ended but never entirely went away, as we have now seen. That is what this trip is about—to demonstrate to you precisely how we will seize upon that good fortune.”
Zhirnosky was a short man, barely five and a half feet tall, who had long adopted a stiff-spined posture to make himself appear taller. His hair was slate gray and fit his scalp like a cap; none of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia’s ministers could recall ever seeing a single strand out of place. So, too, Zhirnosky held his expression in a perpetual scowl, born not only of the need to look stronger than anyone he was addressing but also of his mounting frustration over what he saw as the current government’s lip service to the heritage and future hegemony of the Russian nation. In that respect, the party’s name was a misnomer for the country’s most ardent supporters of Russian ultranationalism. In increasing measures, Vladimir Putin was a peacenik when compared to the dogma of the LDPR.
“And what of our supporters in the Duma?” Zhirnosky continued, referring to the lower body of the Russian parliament that essentially ran the country. “What can we expect their response to be to our role in America’s inevitable collapse and ultimate disintegration?”
“They are wary of opposing Putin,” noted Igor Lebedev, the party’s chief deputy in the Duma, as the SUV thumped on through a wooded area that featured some of Russia’s most fertile lands.
