Strong Darkness (24 page)

“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 pair 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

N
EW
Y
ORK
C
ITY

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

S
AN
A
NTONIO,
T
EXAS

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.”

The two men started through the door in step.

“Your captain's been informed of this meeting,” Laurel informed her.

“So has the governor and director of public safety,” Hardy added.

“Hey, you forgot to mention the president.”

The two men stopped, one slightly ahead of the other.

“Yes,” from Laurel, “we did.”

“But he's been informed as well,” Hardy told her.

 

64

N
EW
B
RAUNFELS,
T
EXAS

Li Zhen often lost track of time when he was down in the sublevel from which he would trigger what Qiang had called
Q
ǐ
shì
, Chinese for the apocalypse.

He'd thought the deal he had made years before with the Triad to assume this new social standing would have vanquished the obsession of a youth and manhood spent among lessers. Had his great-grandfather not been cheated by the Americans, had he received the due his invention deserved instead of having it stolen, no arrangement with the Triad would have been necessary. His great-grandfather would have returned to China a rich, powerful, and respected man with a stature that his forebears would reap for centuries to come. Instead, he was first humiliated and then killed, further sentencing the family he left behind to live as peasant scum with no hope of rising to the higher social standing he sought in coming to this country in the first place.

And now that country would be held accountable. Now that country would pay for the sins that had rendered Li Zhen's dreams hopeless even before he was born.

Q
ǐ
shì
 …

Now this spiteful country would reap what those railroad men had sewn. This was their making, not his. In laying the tracks that joined the vast frontiers of America together, they were actually laying the seeds of their own eventual destruction.

Li Zhen heard his name being called, wondering if it might not be his great-grandfather speaking to him through the years, until it sounded again in his ear through his Bluetooth device.

“Yes,” he said, clearing his throat.

“The Texas Ranger is back,” Qiang told him.

 

65

N
EW
B
RAUNFELS,
T
EXAS

“Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Zhen,” Caitlin told the head of the Yuyuan company, from the same chair she'd occupied in her initial visit.

“I'm already going to place a phone call to officials at the State Department, Ranger. I imagine they will send federal marshals to take you into custody.”

“You may want to rethink that call, sir, since my visit here today concerns your own personal safety.”

Caitlin watched Zhen lean forward, the motion as stiff as his posture. “
My
safety?”

“I believe you might be in danger. It concerns General Mengyao Chang.”

“I have been informed of his tragic passing, Ranger, but don't see how that could possibly endanger me.”