Strong Vengeance

by Jon Land

  “Since when did you need permission?”

  “Since my provisional reinstatement. This alert Whatley was talking about concerning men ‘appearing’ to be of Arab descent—did it cross your desk too?”

  “Ranger, it crossed the desk of every law enforcement commander in the country from a police chief in Podunk to the public safety commissioner in New York City.”

  “You agree with its intent?”

  Tepper shrugged. “Never gave it much thought, to tell you the truth.”

  “So it never occurred to you or Whatley, or the chief of police in Podunk or public safety commissioner in New York City, that we may be turning American-Arabs and ordinary peaceful Muslims into terrorists by treating them that way?”

  Tepper gazed theatrically up toward the ceiling.

  “What are you looking at, D.W.?”

  “The high horse you rode in here on, Ranger. See, there was this thing called nine/eleven…”

  “And from my high horse, I can see that American-Arabs and the American Muslim community in general had no more to do with that than you or me.”

  “Spare me, Hurricane. Just this once, could you please blow in a different direction?”

  “How about toward Teo Braga?”

  Tepper blew his next waft of smoke through his nose. “You know him sending that fruitcake was strictly to get a rise out of you, and I’d say you played right into his hands.”

  “Except I walked out alive, in case you’re forgetting.”

  “Good thing too, since it allowed me to drink my morning coffee over the news someone’s planning to start Armageddon here in Texas, and there’s a dozen bodies in a Houston morgue with John Doe toe tags until this gets sorted out. Am I leaving anything out?”

  “Only that Jones believes a terrorist the world thought dead is here pulling the strings.”

  “Oh yeah, how could I forget that?” Tepper pressed his cigarette out on his desk blotter, missing his cracked Alamo ashtray altogether.

  “Whatley tell you about the rest of our conversation?”

  “For God’s sake, Hurricane, haven’t I heard enough?”

  Caitlin pushed her chair closer to his desk. “He told me about the trip you made with Earl and Jim to Austin to interview the fraternity brothers of those murdered pledges. Told me about my dad’s interview with the expert on Jean Lafitte on his legendary lost treasure.”

  “There a point to you raising this?”

  “Maybe it’s not so legendary.”

  “You don’t have enough on your plate in the present to go mining the past for more?”

  “The Mother Mary’s remains were under that oil rig too, D.W. Just answer me this one question: what got my dad so hot and bothered about that trinket that looked like a crucifix you found in one of the dead boy’s hands?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  “Ranger, you are trying my—”

  “Whatley said the three of you headed to Louisiana from Austin. What’d you find there? What is it you’re not telling me?”

  Tepper’s phone buzzed before he could respond, his eyes wide with surprise when he laid the receiver back on its cradle. “Well, it seems as if your friend Teo Braga just saved you a trip, Ranger. He’s downstairs now.”

  57

  SAN ANTONIO, THE PRESENT

  “Who were they?” Sam Harrabi asked Anwar al-Awlaki, as their River Walk tour boat cruised the channel with shops and restaurants on either side. “Special Forces? A CIA assassin team?”

  “The imam believes most of them were Mexicans.”

  “Mexicans?”

  “That’s what he said. He described one of them as a giant with hands the size of trash can lids. He said he may never sleep again with that man haunting his dreams.”

  “They weren’t wearing masks?”

  “Only the two Americans.”

  “This makes no sense.”

  Al-Awlaki actually found some comfort in that, since everything suggested the United States government hadn’t been behind the raid, at least not the traditional authorities.

  “Perhaps we should consider alternatives?” Harrabi suggested.

  “Like what?”

  “The timing, sayyid, only the timing.”

  Al-Awlaki kept silent, expressionless as he seemed to study the faces of the tourists strolling the River Walk. He looked placid, though his eyes were narrowed more from harshness than the glare of the sun.

  “Like the timing of what happened to you, to your family, in Tennessee?” he asked suddenly. “What was the name of the town again?”

  Harrabi hesitated. “Wolfsboro.”

  “And you have seen what happened there as punishment for your failings, your betrayal, for too long. You were serving Allah’s purpose then, just as you are now. A means to an end. The path He chooses for us is often not straight. But in the end it takes us where we must be. Tell me about your path, my brother.”

  “I turned away from the one true God. I turned away from my people.”

  “But not for money, not riches.”

  Harrabi felt his insides quiver and spasm. “I fell in love.”

  “With an American.”

  “We raised a family,” Harrabi nodded. “I was happy.”

  “Until those you trusted, those with whom you laid your faith, turned against you.”

  “After nine/eleven. I became their enemy, a man without friends. Looked down upon, shunned.”

  “So you turned back toward your own people who forgave your transgressons and forgave you.”

  “It brought me to Tennessee and a growing Muslim community in Wolfsboro where I only wanted to do good. Redeem myself for my indiscretions.”

  “And what happened as a result?”

  Harrabi looked down. “You already know the answer to that.”

  “I want to hear you say it. I want to hear you confess out loud what happened.”

  “They murdered my sons,” Harrabi said, swallowing hard.

  “And what of your wife, the woman who accompanied you to Tennessee? How was she rewarded for her love and loyalty?”

  “Please, sayyid.”

  “Say it.”

  “My wife witnessed the attack. She never recovered,” Harrabi muttered, the words feeling like ground glass in his mouth.

  “But she spoke to you, did she not? Gave you a message, a mission of your own.”

  In spite of himself, Harrabi nodded. “She told me to get back at those who murdered our children. To avenge them for her.”

  Al-Awlaki’s gaze fixed on him tighter, flashing what looked like compassion. “Where is your wife now?”

  “A facility in San Antonio. I had her moved here so we could be close.”

  “Then you should visit her, my brother,” al-Awlaki said, as the tour boat snailed toward the dock. “I will accompany you. Now.”

  * * *

  Harrabi stood at his wife Layla’s bedside, staring down at her emaciated form, her once luxurious hair gone brittle, her beautiful eyes closed perhaps forever to reflect on the final terrible sight they recorded. But for Harrabi the feeding tube was the worst, because it signaled the loss of all hope. Of course the doctors told him his beautiful Layla might yet come back to him, but he knew she was gone for good.

  “Look what they have done to you,” al-Awlaki said, his warm grasp suddenly closing on the top of Harrabi’s shoulder. But then Harrabi felt the cleric stiffen. “We have sacrificed so much. I had to die so I could live, my brother. The Americans had to think me dead so I could be free to bring them to their knees. There is no retreating from that. I have only my deeds, my work, to sustain me. But I feel a great freedom too, because what else can they take from me I have not already taken from myself? You can’t kill a man who’s already dead.”

  The cleric’s gaze returned to Layla Harrabi’s bedside. “A part of you is dead too, my brother. Look at the happiness they have stolen. Look at it and tell me our
mission can be put off in any way.” Al-Awlaki settled himself with a deep breath. “Tell me about that night that freed you as my death freed me. Tell me what happened.”

  “It hurts too much, sayyid.”

  “Share it with me so I can know your pain and help to take it away.”

  “Our numbers were already swelling in Wolfsboro by the time I arrived, so a bigger mosque was needed. Money was raised, land purchased, the proper permits acquired. I helped with the design myself, volunteered to do all the electrical schematic and engineering work.”

  “Your specialty,” al-Awlaki nodded, “the very skills that drew us to you. Fate again.”

  “I’m thankful for that much.”

  “You were a good neighbor, a good American. You even served in the armed services where your expertise was demolitions. Tell me, my brother, how did it feel killing your own in the Gulf War?”

  “It hurts now, sayyid. I’ve seen how wrong I was.” His eyes locked on the inert form that had once been his beautiful Layla. “I paid a terrible price for that when the people in Wolfsboro rose up against us,” Harrabi said through the thick clog that had formed in his throat. He tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry to manage the effort. “After their efforts failed in the proper chambers and courts, they sabotaged the heavy equipment at the work site. And when that failed to deter us, they blew up a dam and flooded our land.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “We started over, believing this to be a test of our faith and looking forward to the rewards our new holy place would yield.”

  Al-Awlaki’s hand tightened on Harrabi’s shoulder. “But that never happened, did it?”

  “No.”

  “Why, why my brother?”

  Harrabi tried to swallow again but failed, his eyes moistening. “I was standing guard duty one night with my sons and my Layla.”

  “How old were your sons?”

  “Fourteen and sixteen, sayyid.”

  Al-Awlaki reached out and touched the depression on Harrabi’s skull. “That’s where you got this, when trespassers assaulted you with a baseball bat.”

  “My boys both played baseball. They were stars.”

  “And when you regained consciousness, what did you find?”

  Harrabi opened his mouth to speak, but no words emerged right away and when they finally did, it seemed to be in someone else’s voice. “My sons were both lying there on the ground. Beaten to death. My beautiful Layla was cradling the head of one in her lap. His face was … gone.”

  “Close your eyes.”

  “Sayyid?”

  Al-Awlaki eased a hand that smelled of lavender and lilacs over Harrabi’s face and eased his eyes closed for him. “Picture your wife as she was before that awful night. Can you see her?”

  Harrabi’s throat was too clogged to respond, so he simply nodded.

  “Now open your eyes.”

  Harrabi did, focusing again on the feeding tube that was keeping his once beautiful Layla alive.

  “Look upon your wife now, symbol of not just your broken dreams but of the broken dreams of our people. We have the ability to break this nation’s dreams as they broke yours. When struck by tragedy as you have been, it is in our nature to grieve and bemoan our fate. But these times demand we forge a new fate, that we make something of the tragedies that will haunt us forever. You and all the others who had their dreams broken were selected for this mission for a reason—not by me, but Allah Himself. I am merely his vessel, fulfilling the holy mission I’ve been charged with. There can be no alteration to our plans. Our mission has already been blessed. It will not fail. And when it succeeds, we will have the redemption we seek, and all we have sacrificed will be justified. You will have atoned for all your mistakes and misjudgments, and nothing can be allowed to get in the way of this opportunity Allah has provided.” He waited for Harrabi to look at him before continuing. “Is the meeting with the American set?”

  “Yes, sayyid, for this afternoon. How many others will be accompanying us?”

  “None, my brother.”

  Harrabi couldn’t hide his surprise.

  “The American believes us to be nothing more than businessmen,” al-Awlaki explained. “So that is what we must be.”

  58

  SAN ANTONIO, THE PRESENT

  They met in the conference room that was currently overrun with boxes of case files waiting to be transported to storage: Caitlin, D. W. Tepper, Teofilo Braga, and three of his lawyers who said nothing but glared a lot.

  “You and the Rangers have my sincerest apologies, along with those of Braga Waste Management,” Braga said to Caitlin and Tepper. “And I want you to know, it’s crucial to understand, that I had no knowledge of Mr. Thoms’s actions or intentions.”

  “But he was working for you, right?” Caitlin asked. “You did ask him to deliver that document to me.”

  Braga looked like a man baffled by the inability of others to see him properly. “Yes, I did, as part of BWM’s Second Chance program through which parolees and ex-convicts are provided with an opportunity to reintegrate themselves into society.”

  “Well, sir,” began Tepper, “I believe it’s safe to say that Mr. Thoms squandered his. Ambushes and gunfights in a bar are no way to start a path to redemption.”

  “You have any idea how many men work for me?”

  “Nope,” Tepper responded. “How many of them are pedophiles?”

  “I’ve never even met Jalbert Thoms. Mistakes happen. I believe we’re all fortunate here no bystanders were hurt.”

  “What about the boy Thoms molested with his eyes?”

  “I wasn’t even aware of his employment with my company until your call alerted me to the fact. I’ve already turned over all our records and alerted the police and corrections departments that he is no longer in my employ.”

  Braga looked utterly unruffled to Caitlin, his skin powder dry and gaze resolute and unwavering. She knew he was lying, could feel it in her bones, but nothing in the man’s tone or mannerisms gave him away. She had known plenty like him in her time, hardened criminals mostly. Men who constructed elaborate facades built on rationales meant to justify actions as reprehensible as they were immoral. In Caitlin’s experience, such men grew calmer the deeper they dipped into cesspools of depravity, exceedingly comfortable in their own skin that might as well have been reptilian scales.

  “I don’t know what else I can do under the circumstances,” Braga finished, the calmest she had seen him yet.

  Caitlin eased her chair closer to the table, drawing flinches from the annoying screeches it made scratching across the floor. “How about this, Mr. Braga, how about you answer a few questions?” She could feel Captain Tepper tense across from her, as she finished.

  “If I can, Ranger.”

  “I think you gave Jalbert Thoms this assignment yourself knowing exactly how things would turn out.”

  “That’s not a question, Ranger.”

  “I think Thoms drove out to Shavano Park knowing full well I wasn’t there just to scare the wits out of a couple of teenage boys.”

  “He may well have done that, but not on my orders.”

  “Then that’s where we differ. I provoked you in our interview and this was your response. I understand you’re not a man who likes getting pushed around, Mr. Braga. I get the fact that you’ve had to overcome a lot of obstacles and enemies to get where you are. But that doesn’t give you license to intimidate or threaten others, sir. And bringing children, threatening them no less, into the mix crosses a line Rangers have been drawing since my great-great-grandfather rode in the days before the Civil War.”

  “Ranger—” Tepper started, but Braga cut him off.

  “Are you finished?”

  “You tell me, Mr. Braga.”

  Braga stared at Caitlin for a long moment, his eyes not budging or blinking. He snatched a pencil from a holder before him and began tapping it on the table. “You know the toughest job I ever had, Ranger? Breaking up slud
ge in one of the company’s wastewater treatment facilities back in the days when I was still working for Alvin Jackson. You familiar with the process?”

  “No, sir, I’m not.”

  “Well, what you basically do is separate the water out from sewage. The sludge is what you’re left with, this awful stench-riddled gunk that permeates your skin and soaks through your pores. I went down into that tank for hours at a time, lugging a heavy high-pressured hose over my shoulder to blast away at the sludge collected under three feet of black water. Never seemed to get to the bottom since you can’t see the bottom, and the whole time this smell like ammonia filled me up. It made me want to gag a thousand times, but I didn’t give in no matter how light-headed or sick I got. Just kept blasting away with that hose, feeling the muck churning at my feet.”

  “I’m sure it looked good on your résumé, sir.”

  “You know what didn’t? For every day you spend shoveling sludge, it takes a week to get the smell off you and a month to get rid of the queasy feeling in your stomach. Alvin Jackson didn’t have to send me down into that sludge tank; he did it to see if I’d quit. And when I didn’t until we’d liquefied every ounce of that black shit, he promoted me to foreman and entrusted me with the kind of responsibility I’d only dreamed of previously.”

  Caitlin looked at Braga today, dressed casually but fashionably in linen slacks and a crisply ironed shirt, and tried to picture him in overalls hefting that hose. “Mr. Jackson sounds like he made for a pretty decent mentor, sir.”

  Braga passed the pencil from one hand to the other. “He was that and much more, Ranger.”

  “Explains why you speak of him so highly.”

  “I owe him a debt I’ll never be able to repay and he’s never far from my thoughts. Without him taking me under his wing, I might be nothing now.”

  “Is that all?”

  Braga regarded Caitlin suspiciously. “I’m not sure I know what you mean by that.”

  “You mentioned Mr. Jackson was from Louisiana, Cajun country I believe, in our first interview.”

  “That’s right. Alvin had lost his parents by the time I met him, but his grandfather was still living.”

  “A witch, right? The gris-gris, you called it.”