by Jon Land
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For International Thriller Writers, keepers of the flame
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Welcome back to those who’ve been with me before and welcome to those visiting my fictional world for the first time.
Speaking of which, this isn’t a great time for the publishing world. Never an easy business and now a nearly impossible one and that makes me appreciate the Tor/Forge Books family all the more, starting at the top with Tom Doherty and Linda Quinton, dear friends who publish books “the way they should be published,” to quote my late agent, the legendary Toni Mendez. Paul Stevens, Justin Golenbock, Patty Garcia, Karen Lovell, Phyllis Azar, and especially Natalia Aponte are there for me at every turn. Natalia’s a brilliant editor and friend who never ceases to amaze me with her sensitivity and genius. Editing may be a lost art, but not here, and I think you’ll enjoy all my books, including this one, much more as a result.
Some new names to thank this time out, starting with Lindsay Preston and Jeff Buck, who were instrumental in guiding me through the complexities of drug smuggling over the United States–Canadian border. (We’re actually doing a nonfiction book on the subject together that will be every bit as riveting a thriller as my fictional ones. Check back at www.jonlandbooks.com for updates or drop me a line at [email protected].) Many thanks also to Michael Anthony and his terrific book Mass Casualties* for the seed that gave birth to one of Strong at the Break’s key subplots. My friend Mike Blakely, a terrific writer and musician in his own right, taught me Texas firsthand and helped me think like a native of that great state. The help I received in researching right-wing militia groups is too voluminous to detail and came from those who mostly asked that I not use their names, so I’ll respect those wishes.
Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank all of you who’ve written and e-mailed me about how much you enjoyed the first two tales in the Caitlin Strong series. Rest assured the third does not disappoint. Excited? I am, so let’s turn the page and begin.
P.S. For those interested in more information about the history of the Texas Rangers, and to see where a lot of my info comes from, I recommend The Texas Rangers and Time of the Rangers, a pair of superb books by a great writer named Mike Cox, also published by Forge.
*Mass Casualties: A Young Medic’s True Story of Death, Deception, and Dishonor in Iraq by SCP Michael Anthony, Adams Media, 2009.
The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.
—ERNEST HEMINGWAY
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Prologue
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Part Two
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Part Three
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Part Four
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Part Five
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Part Six
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Part Seven
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Part Eight
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Part Nine
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Part Ten
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Epilogue
Other Books by Jon Land
Copyright
PROLOGUE
He may not win the laurels,
Nor trumpet tongue of fame,
But beauty smiles upon him,
And ranchmen bless his name.
Then here’s to the Texas Ranger,
Past, present and to come,
Our safety from the savage,
The guardian of our home.
—from an anonymous poem written by a Texas Ranger in West Texas, 1897
MIDLAND, TEXAS; 1990
“How much longer we gonna sit here, Dad?” Caitlin Strong asked, fidgeting in the old truck’s passenger seat.
Jim Strong turned his gaze from Pearsley’s Tackle and Gun Shop across the parking lot toward his thirteen-year-old daughter. With her next birthday just weeks away, Caitlin had seemed to sprout overnight. The little girl gone, replaced by a young woman with the same wavy, raven-colored hair as her mother. The thought brought a lump to Jim’s throat. Memories of his late wife, gone for a decade now, had grown no easier to bear with the passage of time.
“Not long,” he managed, returning his gaze to what locals referred to simply as the “Tackle and Gun,” a one-story bunker of a building with a flat roof plagued by broken downspouts that left water stains streaked in blotches
down its beige exterior. The gravel parking lot offered only a single shady area courtesy of a grove of bigtooth maple trees standing alone against the otherwise sparse land. But the early afternoon sun had risen high enough to overwhelm them, the truck fast becoming a sauna.
“That’s what you said, like, an hour ago,” Caitlin told him, making no effort to hide her displeasure as she continued to sit with her shoulders slumped.
“But I mean it this time.”
Caitlin sat up all the way, into the hot swatch of sunlight streaming in through the windshield. The old truck’s interior always smelled rusty and sour when it heated up, though she wasn’t sure why. “This is some kind of stakeout, ain’t it?”
“Isn’t it,” Jim corrected.
“Grandpa always said ain’t.”
“Grandpa never had the benefit of your education, Caitlin.”
Her father turned toward her and Caitlin noticed the light sheen of perspiration coating his cheeks, a bit thicker along his forehead. The sun could’ve been to blame, she supposed, except his seat was on the truck’s still shady side.
“I thought we were going fishing,” Caitlin said.
“We are.”
“Not sitting here in this parking lot.”
Neither as colorful nor elaborate as his legendary father, Earl Strong, Jim Strong was also not nearly as prone to telling Caitlin of his Ranger exploits. Of course her granddad’s tales had been of days past, wild adventures from the heyday of the Texas Rangers. But all that had ended when Earl Strong died peacefully just short of ninety years old a few months back. His passing had left Caitlin with only an old aunt on her mother’s side, who watched television with a magnifying device wedged in front of the screen, for a babysitter. So Jim Strong had resolved to stay closer to home and pretty much had, except for the stretch when he and fellow Ranger D. W. Tepper led the takedown of a cultlike group of fanatics known as the Church of the Redeemer here in Midland.
“This is about that church, isn’t it?” Caitlin prodded from the passenger seat.
“Might have called themselves a church,” Jim Strong told his daughter, his cheeks reddening with the suppressed rage that accompanied his most angry moments, “but tips we got had girls not much older than you being bedded by men could’ve been their grandpas. Walking around in robes, figuring themselves to be holier than holy, all led by a man the state’s been after for not paying taxes on account of he calls himself a reverend.”
“Maxwell Arno,” Caitin said.
“I tell you that?”
“I’ve been reading about him. Says he made the children sleep in bunkrooms and use outhouses. Wanted to train them away from the sin of modern conveniences. That’s a quote.”
“Is it now?”
“You bet.”
“Well, the Rangers raided Arno’s complex outside of Midland after learning he was stockpiling guns and ammunition in an old storm cellar. What I saw in there made my stomach turn, and that’s the God’s honest truth. Girls not much older than you already carrying babes in their swollen bellies. Girls who…”
Jim Strong stopped suddenly and turned back toward the Tackle and Gun. The sun cleared the rest of the bigtooth maples and cast shadowy stripes across his face, making the sweat glow. His neck looked thin and knobby, his Adam’s apple suddenly like a golf ball he’d swallowed.
“You’re still angry, Daddy,” Caitlin said after holding her words in briefly. “Why’s that so if you shut this place down?”
“’Cause Max Arno got away.”
“I read that too. You figure he’s coming here?”
“I figure he might.”
“What else, Daddy?”
Jim Strong swung toward his daughter. “Now how’d you know there was something else at all?”
“Don’t know,” Caitlin shrugged. “Just do. Know what Grandpa would say?”
“What would he say?”
Caitlin sighed deeply before continuing. “Dog poo’s about impossible to get off your shoe no matter how much you rub. Even when it’s gone, the smell’s still there, like, forever.”
Jim Strong smiled slightly, a bit sadly, in spite of himself. “I seem to recall him saying that very thing to me. But that doesn’t stop you from still rubbing.”
“You got another tip, didn’t you?” Caitlin asked her father.
“Probably nothing,” said Jim Strong. “Figured I’d best check it out.”
“Just you.”
“It’s my fight, Caitlin.”
“Why?”
“Got my reasons,” Jim Strong said, the sadness he’d managed to chase away returning to his eyes.
Caitlin nodded. “Guess that means it’s our fight now.”
That’s when the white cargo van pulled into the parking lot. Caitlin watched her father tense behind the wheel, leaning all the way forward into the sun. His eyes squinted. The left side of his mouth twitched and his hand involuntarily swayed to the Springfield model 1911 .45 caliber pistol holstered on his hip. He watched as the van found a space and two men who looked like football players emerged, surveying the scene. Apparently satisfied, they opened a side door of the cargo van and Caitlin watched Maxwell Arno emerge into the sunlight, accompanied by a boy about her age who must’ve been his son, Malcolm.
“Stay here,” her father ordered, reaching for his door latch. It stuck briefly and Jim Strong had to shoulder it open. “I’ll be right back.”
“Daddy—”
“Not now, Caitlin,” he said, all his focus drawn to Maxwell Arno, his son, and the two giants walking toward the Tackle and Gun on either side of them.
Caitlin rolled down her window as her father crossed the truck’s hood, making straight for Arno with his .45 out now, hammer thumbed back. She took her eyes off him long enough to pop open the glove compartment and extract the old Colt her granddad had given her, making Caitlin promise never to tell her daddy. Something had made her hide it there before they set out early that morning, all oiled and loaded. Now she eased it from the dark confines, cocking the Peacemaker’s hammer while she reached for the latch on her door.
“That’ll be far enough, Mr. Arno,” she heard her father say. Jim Strong had come to a halt a good fifty feet from Maxwell Arno and his giants, a tough shot with a pistol for anybody but the best, like him.
The two giants swung, hands dipping quick into their jackets. Arno turned just after them, easing his boy behind him and smiling almost placidly. Caitlin, strangely, saw only him, the giants reduced to spectral blurs at the edge of her vision. Arno’s skin was milky white, his hair all slicked back save for a stubborn cowlick strung across his forehead that made him look like a child. Even his smile was innocent, likely bred of the constant cajoling of parishioners, followers, and especially donors he needed to be beholden to him.
“It’s Reverend Arno, Ranger,” he said, recognition flashing in his eyes when they fell on Jim Strong, who was holding his .45 dead on him.
“Tell the Frankenstein brothers there to bring their hands out from their coats slow and empty, Mr. Arno.”
In the frozen moment that followed, Caitlin felt herself climb out of the truck onto the steamy, hard-packed gravel that baked her feet through her sneakers. Her granddad’s old Colt felt so heavy in her hand she wondered if she’d be able to raise it, even with the help of all ten fingers. Funny how it never felt so heavy when she hoisted it at the range. Well, not funny really. She edged a little forward, angling herself so as not to be directly behind her father so she’d have a clear shot if it came to that.
If it came to that …
She wished her granddad were here now to help her bring the gun up and keep it steady. Stand behind her and cup his hands around hers the way he’d done on the range since she was eight. None of that today, though. It was her and her daddy and nobody else. Jim Strong was crazy if he thought she was going to leave him on his own, thirteen or not.
Maxwell Arno grinned. “Why don’t you tell them, Ranger?”
“I just d
id,” her daddy said. “And I don’t see them complying.”
“You walk out of this now, you walk out of it alive,” Arno told him, so confident and unruffled he looked as if he had doused himself in baby powder.
“Too late for any such thing, given there were plenty of children hurt while under your care.”
Maxwell Arno’s gaze found Caitlin, a leering grin stretched across his face. “That your daughter back there holding a gun looks like it came from a model kit?”
Jim Strong stiffened, but didn’t turn. “I imagine it is.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t be the one telling me how to tend the children in my flock.”
“Your flock’s done and gone, and you, sir, are a wanted man.”
Arno bobbed his head from side to side, as if to acknowledge Jim Strong’s words. “This could get ugly, Ranger.”
“It’s already ugly, ’cause you made it that way. I’m placing you under arrest here and now, Mr. Arno. How that happens from this point is up to you.”
Caitlin wanted to get her granddad’s Colt up and ready to fire. But it wouldn’t budge, almost like somebody was holding it down, keeping her out of firing position. Her feet felt as heavy as the gun, sneakers melting into the gravel, Caitlin unsure whether the sizzling she heard in her head was real or not.
Time froze up again. Nobody moving except those exiting the Tackle and Gun to scamper their way to safety at the sight of what was transpiring. Caitlin found the eyes of Malcolm Arno before his father pushed the boy back behind him.
Then the old Colt slipped from her sweaty grasp. She felt it dropping, heard the clunk when it hit the gravel. Her daddy almost turning when the giants yanked the pistols from their jackets, one a little behind the other. Jim Strong shot that one first, the other managing to get off a single wild shot that wouldn’t have been good from twenty feet never mind fifty, before her daddy plugged him too. But both men righted themselves fast, wearing that bulletproof stuff for sure. So her daddy opened up again, pouring the last six bullets from his .45 so fast Caitlin could barely distinguish the crackling sounds in her ears.
She watched the giants’ faces explode in bursts of blood, bone, and foamy spray that looked like dark, dewy mist. They keeled over on either side of Maxwell Arno, looking like felled trees bracketing another about to be cut down. But then Caitlin saw the pistol flash in Arno’s hand, sunlight glinting off both it and the smile suddenly filling his face.
