by Jon Land
* * *
Cort Wesley didn’t say a word to his oldest son, too many thoughts cascading through his mind to manage the effort. Those thoughts came in splotches like still photographs passing before his eyes, all in a heartbeat’s time.
The other two gunmen were advancing toward Caitlin.
He couldn’t take them out with the bullets he had left.
He had no other weapon to go at them with.
Except he did.
Cort Wesley was on his feet in the midst of that final thought, surging toward the Expedition and hurdling inside through the open door with the man he’d shot in the face still attached to the mirror. The engine was already on, the vehicle shot to hell and smelling of grease and gasoline over the fresh leather interior. Cort Wesley hit the gas and jammed the Expedition into reverse in the same moment, following the rest of what transpired through the backup camera on a five-by-seven-inch screen high on the dashboard.
He saw the remaining two gunmen grow in shape.
He heard the clatter of the dead man dragging along the vehicle’s side.
He watched one of the gunmen swinging as the Expedition surged over the central island and burst upon him.
He saw that gunman open up with a barrage drowned out by the roar of the engine.
He saw both gunmen swallowed up by the Expedition’s charge, one heavy thump followed almost immediately by another.
His mind registered the two men clinging side by side to the Expedition’s rear and kept the vehicle right on going toward the heavy wood frame structure at the entrance to Opie’s Barbecue.
Impact against the building barely slowed the Expedition at all, Cort Wesley with his foot pressed all the way down by that time, mashing the final two gunmen against the wall. He heard a crunching sound, followed by a squishing accompanied by a sensation not unlike stepping on a marshmallow, except he felt it from the driver’s seat. The engine belched smoke and the stench of burned and seared tire rubber flooded the cab. He was aware of nothing else in the next moment, other than the absence of sound, which meant the absence of gunshots, and lunged from the vehicle past the dragged body to find Caitlin charging toward him with pistol raised.
Cort Wesley’s gaze turned to the Expedition’s rear, whatever was left of the two gunmen he’d plowed into pressed between the frame and the wood splintered at Opie’s entrance. He reached in through the open door and switched off the vehicle’s engine, Caitlin already at its rear with gun poised just in case.
“Man oh man,” D. W. Tepper said, emerging stiff-legged from inside and shaking his head at the sight before bringing his eyes to rest on Cort Wesley. “Glad you made it, Mr. Masters.”
71
SAN ANTONIO, THE PRESENT
Guillermo Paz stood outside the Islamic Center of San Antonio, gazing up at the lime-colored dome centered atop the flat roof of the one-story building he’d learned was also known as a masjed. The building was dwarfed in size and scope by a nearly completed replacement structure being erected further back that was more than three times its size. The new building looked to be formed of ridged white limestone and was bracketed in the front by a series of spiraling pillars.
Paz spotted a man in robes and skullcap kneeling on a prayer rug in a shadow cast by the limestone of the new masjed. He approached, his boots gliding silently across the grass as it gave way to rough gravel and stone. He stood back from the man he recognized as the head imam from a picture outside, ignored until the man noticed a second shadow fall over him.
“Oh,” the imam said, after turning to find Paz’s massive shape looming over him.
“Don’t get up on my account, padre, please,” Paz said.
But the imam rose anyway, dwarfed as much by Paz’s shadow as he had been by that of the sprawling new structure.
“Hey, what should I call you? Padre doesn’t seem to cut it.”
“Imam will do. You can even call me Faisal.”
“Faisal?”
“It’s my first name,” the imam smiled.
“You mind if I stick with padre?”
“That would be fine. You’re Spanish then?”
“Venezuelan by birth, but my ancestors were Mayan warriors. Something I think you can relate to.”
The imam cocked his head to the side, as if to look at Paz differently. His embroidered cap captured a thick mane of hair and his complexion was ruddy and marred by acne scars.
“I don’t think I understand.”
“Do Muslims believe in confession, padre?”
“Allah is so merciful that when someone commits a sin and asks for forgiveness He forgives. Should the person again repeat the same act and ask for forgiveness, He forgives until seventy times pass.”
“What happens after seventy? Bad joke, I’m sorry. See, I’ve spent a lot of time confessing my sins these past few years. It’s helped me reconcile who I am in the context of the world around me.”
“That is the best one can hope to achieve through religion.”
“I’m not really religious. But I’ve committed so many sins, my confessions were long overdue. What I’ve learned is that it comes down to context. That sinning isn’t always a matter of right and wrong necessarily.”
The imam regarded Paz suspiciously, his eyes darting one way and then the other perhaps in the hope someone else would approach. “And why do you come to me with this?”
“Because I want to understand.”
“Understand what?”
“How your people can do the things they do, the jihadist wing I’m talking about. See, padre, there was a time when I was guilty of the very same kind of acts in service to my government and president. Now, in looking back at those years, I hate myself for what I did and my whole life ever since has been about that forgiveness I just asked you about.”
The imam stiffened, defiance replacing fear and reservation in his expression. “So it’s not help for yourself that you’ve come here seeking, is it?”
“I guess not.”
“Because we are a peaceful people. These others you speak of, these jihadists, make up a very small percentage indeed. They act the way they do because they feel they have no other choice, that God has not given them one.”
“You blaming God, padre?”
“Not me, them. Isn’t that what you want, an explanation?”
Paz took a step closer to him, enough to make the imam shrink back his shoulders, flinching. “Some of your brothers—I’m sorry, jihadists—are planning something right here in Texas, something that’s going to get a lot of people killed. People they don’t know, who’ve done no harm to them. I had to leave my own country after I refused to murder the people of a village who’d accepted help from a foreign reformer to win hearts and minds. That made him a much bigger threat than commandos and Special Ops teams. But these jihadists don’t care about hearts and minds. They prey on fear and seek to spread it like a plague.”
The imam squeezed his eyes closed, his lips moving as if he were having a silent conversation with someone else. When he opened his eyes again, they were wide with hope, welcoming and respectful in their gaze.
“Tell me,” he said to Paz, “have you ever read the Arab philosopher Edward Said? He wrote that ‘So far as the United States seems to be concerned, it is only a slight overstatement to say that Muslims and Arabs are essentially seen as either oil suppliers or potential terrorists. Very little of the detail, the human density, the passion of Arab-Muslim life has entered the awareness of even those people whose profession it is to report the Arab world. What we have instead is a series of crude, essentialized caricatures of the Islamic world.’”
“Orientalism,” Paz nodded, elaborating on the quote.
“I’m truly impressed. So do you believe that Said’s words hold validity?”
“They don’t justify violence against innocents, padre. They don’t justify the war that’s coming.”
“Nor do they condone it. They only seek to explain it. And until we understand th
e cause, we can do nothing about the effects.” The imam waited for Paz to respond, resuming when he didn’t. “I’m sorry I couldn’t satisfy your curiosity or supply the answers you seek.”
“But you did. I came here hoping there was another way and you’ve given me no reason to believe there is. What you’ve justified is the purpose behind the presence of people like me in the world. I think the whole reason for me visiting confessionals was to find the answer to that question, and you’re the first to actually supply it. Because this elusive cause you speak of is ese es un pedazo de mierda.”
The imam regarded Paz questioningly.
“A load of shit, padre, pardon my English, because if we figure out one cause, the people who murder innocent people to suit their ends will just find another. It was that way with the drug dealers I killed in Mexico and the so-called patriots I killed in a compound in Texas. And as for these people of yours who are plotting this Texas thing, I’m going to kill them too. So thank you for clarifying things for me.”
While the imam stood there speechless in the setting sun, Paz’s phone beeped with an incoming text message and he excused himself to check it.
“Sorry, padre, we’ll have to finish this another time,” he said, squeezing the phone so hard the plastic case actually cracked at the top and bottom of the frame. “Looks like that war I was telling you about got started early.”
72
MARBLE FALLS, THE PRESENT
“Well,” said Captain Tepper inside Opie’s Barbecue, which had become the de facto command center for the investigation that would soon include every three-letter organization out of Washington, “only thing we know about the four shooters for sure is that none of them were Jalbert Thoms.”
“He might as well have been number five,” Cort Wesley told him. “Prison guard friend of mine who knew Thoms inside The Walls claimed he was tight with a mercenary group called Rubicon X-Ultra. This thing’s got their stamp all over it.”
“Well, that’s something anyway.”
Caitlin shook her head slowly. “I doubt it, sir, since we’ll never find anything linking Thoms to X-Ultra. Hell, there’s probably nothing that’s going to link those four bodies to X-Ultra in the first place. Their fingerprints will likely lead us to empty folders or files we’re not allowed to see.”
“We’ve got DPS, ATF, and FBI converging on Marble Falls like Sherman’s army on Atlanta. Maybe they can see what we can’t.”
Cort Wesley read the response to a text message he’d sent a few moments before. “Paz is on his way.”
“Oh,” Tepper scowled, “that makes me feel a whole lot better.”
“Jones too, for sure,” Caitlin added.
“Not quite,” a voice said from the doorway. “He’s already here.”
73
MARBLE FALLS, THE PRESENT
“Rubicon X-Ultra?” Jones repeated.
“You claim you’ve never heard of them, I’ll shoot you right here,” Caitlin told him.
He scoffed at her remark. “Sure, I’ve heard of them, but I’ve never used them. Those psychos make Blackwater look like choirboys, typical of the whole private army cottage industry that’s sprouted up. All of a sudden, the shit I wipe off my shoes gets drummed out of the military and straight into six-figure employment. The crazier, the better, and plenty in Homeland feared just this kind of profile would end up being retained by the likes of the Patriot Sun. Remember them, Ranger? That’s exactly why I sent you in there.”
“My recollection on the subject’s a bit different, Jones.”
“Sure,” he smirked, stopping just short of a wink, “whatever you say.”
“If the two of you are done rehashing the past,” D. W. Tepper interrupted, “I’d like us to focus on the present. I just heard from Doc Whatley at the Medical Examiner’s Office. Says he may have uncovered something that could crack this terrorist thing wide open. Says he needs another day or so to be sure, which gives us that long to figure out what to do about four stone killers dressed up like Robocops shooting up Texas streets. That was aimed at you, Mr. Jones,” he added after a pause.
“This X-Ultra thing’s no lead, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Jones told him, holding a sidelong gaze at Caitlin as well. “There won’t be anything connecting your gunmen to them and even if there was, they don’t have an office, a Website, anything to publicly advertise or even acknowledge their existence.”
“Sounds like a peculiar way of doing business, Mr. Jones.”
“Not so much in the circles I move in, Captain. If you have a need for the services they provide, chances are you’ve heard of them through back channels or know somebody who has.”
“You’re wrong about one thing, Jones,” Caitlin told him. “We’ve got a connection to these X-Ultra boys in the person of Jalbert Thoms.”
“Just itching for another go at him, aren’t you, Ranger?” Tepper asked her.
“He’s just a small part of this, Captain. It’s his boss I’m after, and if you want to tell me I’m off base or out of line or trigger happy or a menace to society, feel free.”
Tepper nodded to himself, his narrowed expression seeming to push his eyes even further back in his head. “Have at it.”
“Did I just hear you right?”
“Ranger, I believe we are in the eye of the hurricane here right now, and we’d best deal with it before the storm hits us head-on.”
74
MARBLE FALLS, THE PRESENT
“We need to talk about this gun thing,” Cort Wesley told Dylan, stammering through the words the whole way in a back corner of Opie’s.
Cort Wesley expected any number of responses from his seventeen-year-old son, none of them including the slight smile he managed. “That the best you can do?”
“I missed your last birthday.”
“Huh?”
“It just occurred to me that after missing the first fourteen, I promised I’d never miss another. I apologize for breaking that promise.”
“It’s not, like, you could help it. You were in that prison ’cause of me, ’cause of what you did to the asshole who ran down my girlfriend.”
“That doesn’t make it any easier for me. Worst thing is I didn’t even know I’d missed it. Inside that prison dates have a way of slipping away from you. All the days are the same.”
“How’d you survive exactly?” Dylan asked, while his younger brother remained fixed by the shattered window watching the night fall over the chaotic scene beyond.
“I had to hurt people,” Cort Wesley said, quickly correcting himself. “No, not the way you think, son. Bare-knuckle fights staged in makeshift rings for the viewing entertainment of all. I lose one and I’d be a dead man.”
“So you never lost.”
“Nope. Thinking about you, your brother, and Caitlin just wouldn’t allow it.” His eyes sought out his son’s that were dark and brooding just like his mother’s. “And I imagine that’s the way it was for you tonight when you went for that gun.”
Dylan pursed his lips, started to blow out some breath but stopped. “I wasn’t really thinking that far. I knew the gun was there and I knew I had to get it. I don’t even remember shooting, just missing.”
“It saved my life all the same.”
“You back for good?”
“I believe so.”
Dylan suddenly looked very young. “So you’re not sure.”
“Caitlin and I got some business to finish.”
“’Cause of tonight…”
“There was something else even before then and it was that something else that got me sprung from jail.”
“She tell you what we found on that oil rig?”
“She told me she caught you smoking a joint. You want to tell me that’s not true?”
“I’m seventeen, Dad. You wanna tell me you hadn’t done worse when you were that age?”
“We weren’t talking about me and I don’t even want to get into what qualifies as worse. You share the joint with your br
other?”
“Fuck, no!”
“And how’d you feel if you caught him doing the same thing?”
“I’d knock him upside his—”
Dylan stopped, realizing he’d made his dad’s point for him even before catching the look on Cort Wesley’s face. He sighed deeply and let his expression dissolve into a frown.
“Believe we’re done here for now, son.”
The boy started his hand forward. “Dap me, Dad.”
“Come again?”
“Dap me. It’s like, you know, shake.”
Cort Wesley met his hand halfway with a resounding slap.
“Daps,” said Dylan. “One more thing,” he added, letting go of the grasp. “Who sent those men to kill Caitlin tonight?”
“Can’t say for sure,” Cort Wesley told him, only half-lying. “But they’re gonna have a real bad time once we catch them.”
75
MARBLE FALLS, THE PRESENT
“Hold on a sec,” Caitlin said, after spotting the black truck flash its lights down Main Street, “got something I gotta take care of.”
She left Cort Wesley and the boys halfway between Opie’s and Cort Wesley’s rental car. It was after midnight, the clear night quickly darkening with storm clouds. Heat lightning flashed in the sky with the portent of an electrical storm that might or might not get this far. The dead gunmen’s machine gunning had blown out the windows on both her SUV and Tepper’s truck, and she was more than happy to hitch a ride with Cort Wesley and the boys back to San Antonio.
Both of them had been interrogated by the FBI, ATF, and Texas Department of Public Safety officials about their respective parts in the gunfight. They answered questions while Dylan and Luke watched Opie’s big-screen bar television, always in sight to the point where Cort Wesley insisted on accompanying the boys to the men’s room when necessary. The spray of bullets had left numerous bystanders wounded, mostly by flying glass, but miraculously only the four gunmen were dead. The officials’ questions were repetitive and perfunctory, and they remained especially suspicious of Cort Wesley’s presence until Jones pulled the agents aside and made some facts plain to them on behalf of Homeland Security.
