Strong Darkness

by Jon Land

  He’d been sixteen at the time too. Paid the matter no more heed than Dylan was now. The boy showed no ill effects, seeming to brush killing a man off with ease. Had he seen and experienced so much of the like to have become immune to its effects and accepting of its necessity as a result?

  Goddamn, he thought, most parents only have to worry about teaching their kids about the birds and bees.…

  Cort Wesley returned his attention to the Flatiron Building and the task at hand. A far more subtle approach than going in with guns blazing was called for in dealing with whoever was distributing high-end call girls through the country from the twenty-third floor that didn’t, apparently, exist.

  “You ready, son?”

  “You haven’t told me the plan yet, what I’m supposed to do.”

  Cort Wesley grinned. “I think you’re gonna like this.…”

  * * *

  Inside the lobby, Cort Wesley nodded at the security guard behind a small counter and flashed the black keycard in front of a scanner. A light glowed green and he pushed his way through a turnstile with Dylan by his side.

  There were six elevators and Cort Wesley chose the one farthest down on the right because the cab door was already open. He laid a hand against the door to keep it that way for Dylan to enter and then joined his son inside.

  Cort Wesley studied the panel to find, not surprisingly, no floor marked twenty-three. He still had his black keycard in hand and looked for another scanner to wave it before, but none was immediately evident.

  “Let me try,” Dylan said.

  He snatched the card from his father’s grasp and angled it in front of a lens higher up on the panel that Cort Wesley had taken for a security camera. As Dylan held the black access card near it, though, the lens glowed blue and the elevator doors closed. A moment later, the car was in motion, streaking for a floor that shouldn’t have existed with the two of them as the only passengers.

  “Those jeans are too tight,” Cort Wesley said suddenly, not exactly sure why.

  “That’s the way they’re supposed to fit.”

  “Well, son, it looks like you already outgrew them from where I’m standing.” Cort Wesley stole another glance, in spite of Dylan’s caustic stare. “I can almost tell the last number you dialed on that throwaway cell phone we grabbed down the street.”

  “Oh, man,” the boy muttered, as the elevator continue to zoom upward, making no other stops.

  “I saw your credit card statement. How is it they cost so much when there’s so little to them?”

  “They don’t cost that much, Dad.”

  “That’s because you’re not paying.”

  Dylan gave his father a long look, as if sizing him up. “You look naked.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re not carrying a gun.”

  The elevator reached the twenty-second floor and kept climbing.

  “And you’ve got no idea what we’re going to find up there. What if it’s a trap?”

  A bell chimed as the elevator stopped on the twenty-third.

  Cort Wesley eased Dylan behind him and pressed up against the front of the cab, out of sight from anyone who might be waiting when the door slid open.

  “We’ll know soon enough, son.”

  61

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  “Gate Seven, Ranger!” a TSA supervisor called out when Caitlin reached the security checkpoint at San Antonio airport’s international terminal.

  Two TSA workers escorted her through, bypassing the scanners and X-ray conveyor. The checkpoint had pretty much ground to a halt since the sudden death of a Chinese diplomat farther down the concourse just prior to his boarding a flight back home. Captain Tepper actually wasn’t sure he was a diplomat, just that he was Chinese and dead reportedly of natural causes.

  Which begged the question why a Texas Ranger was required at the scene.

  Caitlin saw the reason as she approached Gate Seven in the imposing form of Consuelo Alonzo, deputy chief of the San Antonio Police Department. Alonzo had risen quickly through the ranks of the department, becoming the youngest woman ever to make captain three years prior to her recent promotion to deputy chief. And she was rumored to be in line for the job of public safety commissioner that came with a plush Austin office, a job that would place her, among other things, as chief overseer of the Texas Rangers. Alonzo had overcome an appearance often referred to as “masculine” by even supporters, and much worse than that by her detractors. Caitlin put little stock in the rumors pertaining to Alonzo’s personal life and her own sexual preferences, knowing she’d born the brunt of similarly caustic attacks herself.

  This was Texas, after all, where a woman needed to work twice as hard, and be twice as good, in a profession ruggedly and stubbornly perceived to be for men only. Caitlin and Alonzo had had their differences over the years, but had maintained a mutual respect defined by their professionalism and the sense that their own squabbles only further emboldened those who sought their demise.

  “Congratulations, Deputy Chief,” Caitlin greeted as she drew closer, having not seen Alonzo since her formal appointment.

  “Save the pleasantries, Ranger,” Alonzo snapped in a tone typical of their past dealings. “You’re only here so I don’t have to explain to anybody why I never called in the Rangers. So make sure you face the media when we let them in.”

  “I can see you’re really enjoying your new position.”

  Alonzo ran a hand through her spiky hair. She was heavyset and had once set the woman’s record for the bench press in her weight class. She’d also done some boxing and was reputed to be the best target shooter with a pistol in the entire department. They might never be friends, or even allies really, but Caitlin knew far more made them alike than different professionally.

  “Why don’t you tell me exactly why I’m here?” Caitlin said, drawing close enough to Alonzo to smell peppermint-scented gum mixing with hair gel that smelled like flowers. She recalled it hadn’t smelled that way prior to her promotion.

  “Because we’re gonna need all the political cover we can get on this one,” Alonzo explained. “The deceased was a high-ranking Chinese official and, apparently, his government had no idea he was even here.”

  “This official have a name?” Caitlin asked her.

  “General Mengyao Chang.”

  * * *

  General Mengyao Chang had been talking on his cell phone when, according to witnesses, he was shaken by a crushing pain consistent with a heart attack and then collapsed. Efforts to revive him by members of his security detail, as well as by a Chinese doctor who happened to be at the gate, failed. He was pronounced dead by the San Antonio paramedics who’d followed the airport’s own emergency personnel to the scene. As far as Caitlin could tell, everything had been handled just as it should have been. The body had not been removed from the scene because General Chang’s security contingent refused to release it.

  Right now the corpse lay covered on a gurney still enclosed by paramedics determined to protect it from the heated back and forth currently ongoing between members of the general’s entourage and Deputy Chief Alonzo herself, who was trying to deal with having three men addressing her in Chinese at the same time. Caitlin had moved off to the side, closer to the covered corpse with Alonzo no longer paying attention to her.

  “I understand the victim was on his cell phone when he died,” she said to the nearest paramedic.

  “It was still in his hand when we arrived on the scene,” the paramedic confirmed. “Never saw one quite like it before. I think one of the detectives already bagged it.”

  “You think you might be able to get it for me?” Caitlin asked him. “I’d like to have a look for myself.”

  * * *

  The paramedic was right. The phone looked to be a Chinese-made, upgraded model without a brand name on it; thin, sleek, shiny black everywhere with rounded edges. She’d just given it back to the paramedic who’d handed it to her when a p
air of men who might’ve been twins appeared on either side of Caitlin.

  “We need you to come with us,” the one on the right said, the two of them snapping matching wallets open that identified them as officials from the State Department.

  “Right away,” added the one on the left.

  “I’m here on direct orders,” Caitlin told them, rotating her gaze between one who was thin and the other whose bulbous upper body had swallowed all semblance of his neck. “Why don’t you take this up with my captain?”

  The one on the right, the thin one, started to reach out to take her arm. “We already have, Ranger. If you’ll just come with us, we’ll explain everything.”

  62

  NEW YORK CITY

  The elevator doors opened into a spacious but simple reception area with no one laying in wait for Cort Wesley. He breathed easier and noted a pair of plants atop a thin pile carpet set before a glass wall and matching doors. No furniture whatsoever unless you counted the big wide shapes of two men standing on either side of those double doors, out of sight from anyone inside.

  “Hey,” Cort Wesley said innocently, pretending to be out of breath as he approached them, “I’m sorry I’m late.”

  He pulled Dylan along with him, the men watching both of them in confusion.

  “My appointment was for, oh, fifteen minutes ago,” Cort Wesley told him. “This is my son. He wants to be a model. He’s the one looking for representation, not me.”

  The two men looked at each other.

  “I think you’ve come to the wrong place,” one of them said.

  “No,” Cort Wesley started, coming right up to them in an utterly unthreatening manner. “See, they gave me this to make sure I could access your floor.”

  He flashed the black access card, then purposely dropped it. When the man on the right stooped to retrieve the card, Cort Wesley slammed a knee square into his face, then lashed a vicious sidewinder of a strike with the side of his hand into the second man’s groin. The second man doubled over, letting out a gasp that sounded like the air escaping a balloon. He didn’t have much hair, but Cort Wesley grabbed what he could and slammed him into the glass wall.

  He felt, or imagined he felt, the glass buckle, giving like a sponge. When the man’s eyes still clung to consciousness, Cort Wesley smashed his skull against the glass twice more. He saw his eyes go glassy and let him slump the rest of the way down.

  By that time, the first man was stirring, starting to lumber back upright with his face covered in blood from his shattered nose. His effort ended when Cort Wesley slammed his interlaced hands into the back of the man’s skull where it met the neck and spine. He could feel the big shape stiffen, back arching as he crumpled to the carpet below.

  Cort Wesley crouched and retrieved the black access card from where he’d dropped it. Then he led Dylan to the double doors and waved the card in front of a lens identical to the one the boy had spotted in the elevator. A click sounded, and the doors snapped electronically open.

  * * *

  Once through the glass doors, Cort Wesley swung left toward a reception desk where a woman rose in befuddlement at his approach.

  “Can I help you?”

  “You sure can. I’m here about representation.” Cort Wesley stood aside so the woman could get a better look at Dylan. “For my son, not me.”

  “How did you get in here?”

  Cort Wesley flashed his black card.

  “I mean past the guards,” the woman said, peering beyond them as if expecting the two currently unconscious men to appear.

  “I told them I had an appointment,” Cort Wesley said nonchalantly. “About getting representation for my son.” He squeezed Dylan’s shoulder. “He wants to be a model, but he looks more like an actor or rock star to me. What do you think?”

  The woman was hitting a button on her phone over and over again. “I think you must be in the wrong place.”

  “You came very well recommended, though.”

  “I don’t believe I got your name, sir.”

  “But I want to make it clear as crystal,” Cort Wesley said, ignoring her, “that I want no funny stuff.” Then he hardened his voice, let the woman glimpse him as he really was. “Anybody looks at my son the wrong way, it’ll be the last sight they ever see.”

  That’s when four men stormed down a dark hallway from whatever lay beyond the woman’s desk. The two in front looked like Wall Street traders and a bulky one in the middle could have been a clone of the two who’d been parked outside the glass doors. But it was the fourth who grabbed Cort Wesley’s attention. Dressed and coiffed right out of a fashion magazine, with a genuine tan, combed-back hair perfectly oiled, and eyes with the smallest pupils of anyone Cort Wesley had ever seen, as if the whites were in the process of swallowing them. His ears were pressed so tight to his head that they looked glued in place.

  “You need to leave, sir,” the big man in the middle said, beefy hand stretching forward as he advanced ahead of the others.

  “Huh?”

  The hand found Cort Wesley’s arm. “You and the faggot need to leave. You don’t belong here.”

  Cort Wesley twisted his hand off. “Don’t touch me. I’m just here because I heard you—”

  The big man grabbed his arm firmer this time and steered Cort Wesley back toward the entrance in the reception area, cutting off his words. “Now.”

  Cort Wesley let himself be pulled straight to the door, watching the man’s eyes widen in befuddlement when he realized the two guards who were supposed to be posted there were nowhere to be seen.

  “Don’t come back,” he said, pushing Cort Wesley through the doors and Dylan right after him.

  The door closed and sealed behind him. Cort Wesley watched the big man talking on his wrist-mounted microphone and got one last look at the man with the slicked-back hair and glued-on ears, their stares holding briefly before he drifted out of sight.

  * * *

  “What’s next?” Dylan asked him inside the elevator.

  “You’ll see.”

  “Why don’t you just tell me?”

  “I need to have a little talk with their boss,” Cort Wesley said, the elevator hitting its cruising speed.

  “The oily-looking guy who looked like Euro trash?”

  “I don’t know what Euro trash looks like, but that’s the one.”

  “Do I look gay?” Dylan asked suddenly.

  “Huh?”

  “That guy called me a faggot.”

  Cort Wesley looked at his son wryly and winked. “I told you those jeans were too tight.”

  The elevator opened on the lobby level.

  Cort Wesley led Dylan out, moving straight for the revolving door exit when he unobtrusively yanked down on a fire alarm, a deafening screech sounding immediately.

  63

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  The men from the State Department brought Caitlin to a sterile, windowless room normally reserved for interrogations of foreign nationals flagged by ICE agents. They sat at a steel table outfitted with slots for both hand and leg restraints, the two men seated across from her on the left and right as if they rehearsed their positioning. For some reason the disparity in their sizes made her think of the old comic team of Laurel and Hardy, Hardy being the bigger one.

  “You are to have no further contact with Li Zhen,” today’s Oliver Hardy told her.

  “He has something to do with that dead Chinese general?”

  “Mr. Zhen filed a formal complaint with the State Department accusing you of acting toward him in a threatening manner and intimating his involvement in a series of killings.”

  “You referring to the four Chinese gunmen I killed on a train yesterday or the ones shot dead up in a Rhode Island hospital?”

  Neither Laurel nor Hardy seemed at all moved by her question.

  “Mr. Zhen enjoys certain protections afforded by the Foreign Nationals Protective Act,” said the man who reminded her of Stan Laurel, the smaller member of
the famed team.

  “Even though he isn’t protected by diplomatic immunity,” added Hardy, “he is served by many of the same rights he is alleging you violated.”

  “You are under orders to cease and desist all further contact with Mr. Zhen under any and all circumstances.”

  “Should you have any further questions you wish to pose, forward them to our office and we will pass them on with a request the answers be furnished in writing.”

  Caitlin looked from Laurel to Hardy and back again, then just shook her head. “Do you guys have to practice this act, or does it just come natural?”

  “That’s a direct order from the secretary of state.” Hardy.

  “Violating it would be grounds for the department filing federal charges against you and ordering your immediate arrest.” Laurel.

  “And which department would that be?” Caitlin asked them both. “State or Homeland?”

  The two men stood up in unison.

  “You have your orders, Ranger,” Laurel told her.

  “Is Jones behind this? Oh yeah, you boys may know him as Brooks in these parts.”

  “TSA officials are waiting outside to escort you from the terminal,” Hardy said, instead of answering. “Refusing to comply with their instructions is also a federal offense.”

  Caitlin joined them on her feet. “You boys afraid to handle the chore yourselves? Afraid what might happen when we’re out of the terminal and officially back in Texas?”

  Laurel and Hardy flashed almost identical smirks.

  “What’s General Chang got to do with Li Zhen and Yuyuan?”

  The two men started for the door.

  “You boys curious at all about what brought Chang to Texas and who he was talking to on the phone when he died?”

  One of them opened the door. “You have your orders, Ranger,” from Laurel.

  “Step foot in Yuyuan again without authorization and you’ll face five years in federal prison,” from Hardy.

  “You can’t walk all over Washington the way you do with Austin, Ranger.”

  “A fine mess, then, isn’t it?” Caitlin caught their utterly blank stares and just shook her head. “Never mind.”