Strong Cold Dead (24 page)

“A name, Terry. Give me a name.”

 

56

H
OUSTON,
T
EXAS

“What's that pounding sound?” Sam Bob Jackson asked Cray Rawls. “I can hardly hear you.”

“That pounding is me smacking a heavy bag, because if I stop now, I might drive back there and pound you instead, you fucking moron.”

“Cray, I didn't catch what you just—”

Rawls stopped his punching long enough to adjust the Bluetooth device riding his ear. “Never mind. Nice talk I just had with that cunt of a Texas Ranger you sent my way.”

“She wasn't taking no for an answer.”

“Your job, while you still have one, is to run interference. That means keep the attention off me.”

“She's a determined gal, with a reputation like an Old West gunfighter's.”

“A cunt gunfighter?”

“Pistols don't come in genders, Cray.”

“And you're scared shitless of her.”

“This is the Texas Rangers we're talking about.”

Rawls started hitting the bag again. “I'm glad you made that point for me, you fat tub of lard. I did some checking into Cort Wesley Masters. Remember him? The man you tried to scare off after he made that scene at the reservation?”

“I told you—”

“I know what you told me. Now let me tell
you
something. Before Masters did a stretch in Huntsville, before he worked as an enforcer for the Branca crime family, he was Army Special Forces.”

“What?”

Through the Bluetooth device, which had loosened up again, Rawls could almost hear the air going out of the fat shit. “That's right, Sam Bob. You picked a fight with a genuine Green Beret. And that's not all, not even close. Would you care to hazard a guess who his girlfriend is?”

“Oh, shit…”

“Match made in heaven, wouldn't you say? So your dumb ass has gotten us two for the price of one. You better hope the boatload of cash I had to dump to get those damn Indians to drop their protest alleviates things, because my next step is to drop you down an abandoned oil well. It's sure to be nice and slimy down there, so you'll feel right at home. By the way, that money I had to leave on the table at that reservation? It's coming out of your end.”

Rawls heard Sam Bob Jackson gulp down some air. “What does the Ranger know?”

“She's getting close, lard-ass.”

“But what we're doing, it's not a crime. Mineral rights we purchased plainly state ‘oil and gas reserves, along with anything else of monetary value discovered along the way.'”

“Oh, really? And does that absolve you from kidnapping charges, too, or how about from being an embarrassment to your mother's loins?”

“This coming from the son of a prostitute.”

Rawls started hitting the heavy bag so hard his hands throbbed inside his gloves. “I'm going to do you a favor and forget you said that, Sam Bob. What I'm not going to forget is, thanks to you, I've got a Texas Ranger and a Green Beret crawling up my ass. I don't know why I let you fly back here with me on the company Gulfstream. Given it to do all over again, I'd rather you hitchhiked, maybe shed a few pounds on the way.”

“Nothing's changed,” Jackson said, his words ringing hollowly in Rawls's ears, between smacks to the bag. “You said so yourself.”

“You know the biggest yacht in the world's longer than a football field and cost a quarter billion dollars? That's the kind of money I'm talking about. Enough to make your Texas oilmen kiss my ass, as long as you don't cause me any more problems.”

Through his earpiece, Rawls heard the tinny click tone of an incoming e-mail or text message on Jackson's end, followed by the return of Jackson's loud breathing.

“What's wrong now, Sam Bob?” Rawls asked.

“Er, we may have another one.”

*   *   *

“Masters did
what
?” Rawls asked, pounding the bag so hard he could barely hear Sam Bob Jackson on the other end of his Bluetooth device.

“I just got the call. He busted up a used car showroom, nearly killed the guys who were supposed to put a scare into him.”

“These being the ones who kidnapped his son.”

“They're headed for the hills as we speak. That's not the problem.”

“What is?”

“They told Masters I was the one who hired them to do the deed.”

Rawls let his gloves drop to his waist and leaned against the heavy bag to catch his breath. “I guess you can expect a visit too, then. Maybe Masters will take your whole building down this time.”

“I thought you should know, Cray, in case this leads back to you.”

“Only way that can happen is if you spill the beans. You wouldn't do that, would you, Sam Bob?”

“Of course not. But…”

“But what?”

“The Texas Rangers are involved too. Do the math.”

Rawls began tapping at the heavy bag. “Why don't you do it for me?”

“Adds up to us both being fucked here. Time to do some damage control, what you do best, Cray.”

Rawls started hitting the bag harder again. “The only damage of concern here was done by you, without my permission or knowledge. I'd say it's not time for me to do anything.”

Dead air filled the line. Rawls heard nothing but Sam Bob Jackson's heavy breathing, which fell into an awkward cadence that mirrored his own.

“Like you said, I'm the only one who can link you to all this, Cray.”

“Is that a threat, Sam Bob?”

“Call it an accommodation.”

Rawls started slamming the bag anew with his gloves. “I call it a load of shit. A Texas Ranger who thinks she's Wyatt Earp and an ex-Green Beret with a hair across his ass—they're your problems.”

“I messed up the Masters thing, for sure. But you should remember it was the Balcones land deal that poked Caitlin Strong like a stick. And, last time I checked, you were front and center on that one.”

“So what would you suggest?”

“Damage control, like I already said. Maybe I didn't go far enough. Maybe you need to go farther.”

“Against a Texas Ranger and Rambo? Others who've gone up against these two haven't fared so well, from what I've been told.”

“Don't believe everything you hear, Cray.”

“I'm glad you said that, Sam Bob, because it gives me call to do what I should've done five minutes ago.”

“What's that?”

“This,” Rawls said, and clicked off the call on his Bluetooth device.

 

57

O
VER THE
A
TLANTIC
O
CEAN

“Hey, mister, you wanna play?”

Hatim Abd al-Aziz turned in his window seat in the big plane's rear section to look at the young boy sitting next to him. The boy had set up an old-fashioned checkers game on his tray table. His parents and older siblings were sleeping abreast of one another, across the aisle in the plane's center seating section.

“I'm not very good,” he told the boy.

“How can you be bad at checkers? And don't let me win, either,” the boy said, making the first move. “Your turn, mister.”

Hatim Abd al-Aziz forced a smile, and then a move. That wasn't his real name, and he'd done his best to strike from his mind and memory the one given him at birth, since that person no longer existed. He'd taken the name Hatim because it meant “determined and decisive,” while Abd al-Aziz meant “servant of the powerful.” Especially appropriate, because he lived to serve Allah and nothing else. He did as Allah willed, and always had, ever since the time, as a boy, when he'd loosened the lug nuts on the wheels of his soccer team's bus and hid behind a tree to watch what came next. He'd been thrown off the team for fighting and figured that if he didn't get to play, then neither should anyone else. The bus had spun across the road at fifty kilometers per hour, knocking vehicles from its path like the flippers on an old-fashioned pinball machine. Several of his teammates were hurt, but none had been killed.

Which disappointed the young man destined to become Hatim Abd al-Aziz.

“You really are bad,” the boy was saying now. “I don't think you're paying attention.”

“I have a lot on my mind.”

“Work?”

“I love what I do.”

The boy cocked his gaze across the aisle, toward the sleeping form of his parents, who were resting against each other under a single blanket. “My dad hates his job.”

“That's too bad.”

“He makes a lot of money, but he hates it. I hear him talking to my mom sometimes.”

“Probably because he doesn't believe in what he does.”

“I don't know what that means.”

Al-Aziz began paying more attention to the game of checkers. He found himself losing badly. “A man must believe. It's where the love of one's work, one's duty, comes from.”

He began studying the board, seeking a strategy to seize the advantage from the boy, who'd already jumped five of his pieces and was marching unchecked across al-Aziz's side.

“I don't know what that means, either.”

Al-Aziz's first kill had been when he was just a bit older, a few years after he sabotaged the bus. It was a young woman his own age who refused to wear a veil, calling herself secular. Totally acceptable, as was her promiscuousness, in Western-leaning Turkey, but not to him. So, one night he pretended to give in to her overtures, leaving her in the woods to die after he bashed her skull in with a rock. At that point, it was the greatest moment of al-Aziz's life.

He'd been fifteen at the time, twenty years ago now, when no one had dared to contemplate the existence of the Islamic State to which he'd dedicated his life—first as a soldier, then quickly rising through the ranks as the group formed its hierarchy and system of succession on the fly. His fluency in several languages made him a great asset, and his penchant for violence fueled his even faster rise. Today, many believed that what the world knew as ISIS was on the run, both its numbers and its influence declining. But members of the cadre, like al-Aziz, knew the group was just biding its time, picking its spots, lying in wait for the right moment to make its impact felt in a way that would secure its legacy and service to Allah forever.

And now, that moment had come.

“King me!” the boy pronounced, as al-Aziz realized that winning the game was impossible.

This game, anyway, he thought, as he kinged the boy. Back in Syria, he trained boys of this age to behead men kneeling at their feet. How to handle the heaviness of the sword and turn its weight in their favor. The angle, the aim, the cut—it was all about technique.

“I could teach you how to play better,” the boy was telling him, as if he honestly felt bad. “So you could win.”

“I could do the same for you.” Al-Aziz smiled.

Perplexed, the boy looked at the game board, which showed him far ahead. “But I'm already winning.”

“There are other games.”

Al-Aziz gazed across the aisle and pictured this boy slicing off the heads of his parents and siblings as they slept. In his experience, that was a great test, revealing a young warrior's true mettle and level of loyalty to the caliphate. He must renounce everything in the past so that he might turn toward the future unencumbered. Al-Aziz genuinely believed he was doing these boys a favor. The process had yielded ISIS some of its finest young warriors.

“Mister…,” the kid was saying.

Al-Aziz gazed about the plane. The majority of passengers were sleeping now. He wondered how many heads he could take before anyone stirred. Imagined them cowering before his masked form, his sword splattered with blood, which had splashed the walls and windows of the plane as well.

“Hey, mister.”

They wouldn't fight back because they were sheep. In killing them, al-Aziz would be performing a service, ridding the world of their burden. They served nothing and no one, did not understand the vision for the world as expressed by the one true God al-Aziz existed merely to serve. Al-Aziz wouldn't rest until that day had come to pass. The power and efficacy of his beliefs was about to be more righteously rewarded than even the caliphate's supreme leaders had dared to foresee.

“Mister…”

They would bring their greatest enemy to its knees, al-Aziz himself now responsible for wielding a sword that could slaughter millions instead of one. A great gift, bestowed by Allah Himself, in recognition of al-Aziz's devotion to the word of the one true God, a devotion that wouldn't cease or even abate until all the nonbelievers were gone. Nine others were accompanying him on this blessed mission, all taking other flights, on other airlines, to different cities, en route to their rendezvous a day later. Nine others, to bring the total to ten, the same number the prophet Muhammad himself had killed when he conquered Mecca. A holy number.

Ten.

“Mister!”

Al-Aziz finally turned back the boy's way.

“It's your move, mister,” he said.

Al-Aziz smiled. “Yes, it is.”

 

P
ART
S
IX

Cattlemen and ranchers went to war over the practice of stringing barbed wire around plots of land. Bands of armed “nippers” worked at night cutting the barbed wire, causing an estimated $20 million in damage. The Texas Rangers were called in on patrol. Ranger Ira Aten proposed arming the fences with bombs triggered to explode when the fence wire was cut. The idea was nixed. (September 1, 1883)

—Bullock Texas State History Museum, “The Story of Texas”

 

58

B
ALCONES
C
ANYONLANDS,
T
EXAS

“I made us a snack,” Ela said, clambering down the plank steps, back into the root cellar.

She sat down on the blanket across from Dylan and laid a plate down between them.