Strong Light of Day (29 page)

Ducking low again beneath the dashboard, Caitlin jammed the SUV into gear and floored the accelerator, tires first screeching and then finding purchase over the debris-strewn roadbed. Angling away from the shoulder, she felt a jarring impact against the vehicle behind which the last two gunmen were covered, forcing them into the open.

Then the cacophony of Paz's dual fire, one seeming to echo the other.

A few final shots from the area of spilled gravel before her.

Then, nothing at all.

 

66

M
ANHATTAN,
K
ANSAS

Jack Jerry—PhD, according to his title—wasn't the only member of the bioterrorism unit housed in Pat Roberts Hall to survive, just the only one with the kind of security clearance indicative of someone involved in the most high-level projects, deemed to involve a threat to the homeland—in this case an agroterrorist threat, specifically.

Jones explained that was his specialty. “But according to security logs, he hasn't been to his lab in a week.”

“Why?”

“Everybody who knows the answer to that is buried under maybe ten thousand tons of rubble,” Jones said, as they stepped out of the sedan that had been waiting for him at the airport when they landed.

“You see him as a potential accomplice?” Cort Wesley wondered.

“I did initially,” Jones said, leaving it there.

Jack Jerry lived alone in a University Heights cul-de-sac just off, or on the outskirts of, the Kansas State campus. The grass was so green and uniformly trimmed that it looked painted onto the ground. The house was easy to spot, due to the bevy of vehicles parked on the street before it and in the driveway—officials from local, state, and now federal agencies, here to keep Dr. Jack Jerry either safe or under guard. Cort Wesley couldn't ascertain which yet.

“People I spoke with hinted that Jerry may have mental problems, some sort of disorder,” Jones explained, after they'd flashed their Homeland Security badges to those manning the first line of defense and proceeded up to the next pair, stationed before the front door. “There's some issue with his medication. Know what he does to relax? Plays a rodeo clown on the Chisholm Trail circuit here in Kansas.”

“You're kidding.”

“Let's find out,” Jones said, flashing his ID to both uniformed officers standing on either side of Jack Jerry's front door. “You haven't asked what his specialty is.”

“I figured you'd tell me when you were ready.”

“He's an entomologist.”

“I don't even know what that is.”

“Insects, cowboy,” Jones said, and knocked on the door. “The man's an expert in all things insects.”

*   *   *

Dr. Jack Jerry answered wearing the greasepaint, colored face, wig, and clothes of his rodeo clown persona.

“Howdy, partners!” he greeted, smiling buoyantly behind eyes both glazed and glassy.

Cort Wesley couldn't tell if he was under- or overmedicated, but figured he must be suffering from bipolar disorder.

“Come on in! The show's about to start!”

 

67

M
ANHATTAN,
K
ANSAS

The inside of Jack Jerry's house was freezing, the soft hum of the air conditioner creating background noise that reminded Cort Wesley of the sea heard from a distance. But it was the walls that claimed his attention. They were dominated everywhere by framed portraits and pictures of famous rodeo clowns, starting with Flint Rasmussen, who was a seven-time winner of the Man in the Can award.

“I prefer Johnny Tatum,” Jerry told Cort Wesley, his eyes somewhere between him and Jones, as if unable to settle on which to focus on. “And this here's Quail Dobbs,” he continued, pointing to a framed photograph blown up so much as to look grainy and out of focus. Then he moved to another. “But my all-time favorite is the great Slim Pickens here. Folks know him better as an actor, of course, but he made his bones, and broke plenty of them, as one of the best clown broncobusters ever. I heard he could entertain the crowd by hanging on upside down. Now folks look at him and all they think of is old Slim riding an A-bomb all the way to its Russian target in
Dr. Strangelove,
like it was bucking bronc.”

Cort Wesley was having trouble focusing on the words coming through a pair of lips painted bright orange on a man smeared with greasepaint. It turned out Jerry wasn't wearing a wig, but his overly long, unkempt hair seemed to extend in all directions at once, more likely a result of poor grooming than a part of his costume. Whatever illness Jack Jerry, PhD, was afflicted with, he was definitely off his meds. Cort Wesley had heard stress could be a contributor there, too, and that was certainly the case here, making him wonder all the more what exactly Jerry had been working on at the lab that had been reduced to rubble the preceding night.

“I'd love to come watch you in action,” Cort Wesley told him. “Bring my boys, too.”

“Leave me your number. I'll call you when I book my next show.”

“You been on the circuit lately, Dr. Jerry?”

“No, sir. Not lately. Been too busy. Lots going on, too much, lots of studies, projections, and scenarios I had to work up.” Jerry narrowed his eyes, crinkling the greasepaint around them and cracking the portions that had dried too tight. “I'm allowed to talk to you, right? Being that you're from Homeland Security.”

“Most definitely,” Jones told him. “You should feel free to tell us anything. About these studies, projections, and scenarios you just mentioned.”

“Which one most interests you?”

“Tell me about the most recent one,” Jones said, trying so hard to sound comforting and reasonable that it seemed to actually hurt him.

“I can't.” Jerry leaned forward, voice reduced to a whisper. “Top secret.”

“We're Homeland Security, remember?”

“Oh, that's right.”

“So you can tell us.”

“Better to show than tell.”

“Show us what?” Jones said, stealing a sidelong glance toward Cort Wesley.

“Follow me,” Jerry said, moving down the hall. “Right this way.”

 

68

S
AN
A
NTONIO,
T
EXAS

“Well, Hurricane,” D. W. Tepper said, taking the seat next to her in the backseat of his truck, “it appears as if you've broken your own record. Over two hundred rounds fired, and still counting.”

Caitlin didn't bother asking him if that included both sides. Tepper had left both doors of his truck open to keep air flowing through the cab and help her cool off, but so far she still felt like she was fighting off a fever.

“Here's a big surprise for you,” he continued. “None of the gunmen were carrying IDs. You want to tell me who's got it in for you this time?”

“Calum Dane would be the most obvious choice, Captain, but this isn't his style.”

“An ambush and gunfight on a major interstate, Ranger? Just whose style would that be?”

“My guess is their pictures and prints will come back Russian.”

“How you figure that exactly?”

“Because it's the only thing that fits, where all this seems to be leading.”

“Oh boy, those category ten winds are blowing this into an international incident now. Wasn't taking on China enough, or do you have to mix it up with every superpower on the planet?”

Caitlin had stripped off her shredded shirt to find streaks of color and threads missing, from bullet trails drawn that close over her frame. She'd slipped on a T-shirt over her sports bra, from a change bag Tepper always kept with him—maybe for a decade, judging by its dry mustiness. She gazed out of the open truck to find Guillermo Paz still standing on the other side of the roadbed, leaning against the wheel well of his massive truck, big enough to basically block the four-foot-high blackwall tire. Both his arms and feet were crossed casually, as if he were resting up for the next battle.

“Did you know he was riding your shadow?” Tepper asked her.

“Not until he shredded the tires on Asa Fraley's Suburban, back at the heliport.”

“Yeah, I heard about that,” Tepper said, massaging his scalp. “Report said something about down to the rims.”

“Accurate, from what I saw.”

Tepper slid back out of the truck, slammed the door behind him, and took a few steps back. Then he popped a Marlboro into his mouth and turned away from the wind to fire it up.

“You want one?” he offered, pressing the Lock button on his car remote to seal the door, in case she tried to throw it open.

“I'd rather let something worthwhile kill me, Captain,” Caitlin said through the open window.

“I imagine that's what Congressman Fraley would like to do, but he'll probably settle for hauling your ass before that committee of his.”

“The son of a bitch is in the NRA's pocket and he wants to embarrass me for excessive violence?”

“Something like that. But there's a long line ahead of him right now.”

“How's that?”

Tepper gazed back toward where the bodies of seven gunmen had been staked off. Crime scene techs were busy scrutinizing every inch of road and vehicle, including the pile of gravel dropped in the road to set the ambush. Trace its origins and they'd be that much closer to the route taken by the gunmen to get here.

“Only seven bodies, by my count, Hurricane. I believe that leaves several hundred million more Russians for you to fix in your sights.”

Caitlin got the door unlocked and stepped out. “How about you tell me more about the time my dad came up against them back in eighty-three?”

Tepper backed off, turning to the side to protect his cigarette from her. “What makes you think I know any more?”

“Because I'm figuring you must've been there, D.W.”

 

69

S
AN
A
NTONIO,
T
EXAS; 1983

“Who else knows about this?” D. W. Tepper asked Jim Strong.

“You're looking at him.”

“So you've decided to fight the Cold War all by yourself.”

“Somebody's gotta do it, D.W., and who better than the Texas Rangers?” Jim said, forcing a smile. “Hell, all these Indian marauders and Mexican bandits we've handled over the years—what's a few Russians?”

“That's not your call.”

“Maybe it wasn't, but it is now. My man's the one inside, and I don't think he'd take kindly to working with anybody else.”

“This being Boone Masters.”

“The very same.”

“You check his sheet before you decided to deputize him?”

“I didn't deputize him.”

“Might as well have, Ranger. And what did you have to promise him to get him to cooperate?”

“To keep his son out of jail for being an accessory to his crimes.”

“You got evidence that would stick?”

“Not even close. But Masters doesn't know that.”

Tepper fired up a cigarette and offered up another from his pack, which Jim declined. “Those'll be death of you, D.W.”

“You mean if you don't beat them to it. So what's the play?”

*   *   *

They went to lunch at La Fonda, San Antonio's oldest Mexican restaurant. Jim ordered the espinacas omelet with a side of hash browns while D. W. Tepper opted for migas La Fonda and a fruit cup that came out first.

They picked up their discussion with Jim explaining the rows of tanks labeled Propane that Boone Masters had spotted in Anton Kasputin's warehouse, all the stolen merchandise likely just a front for whatever the Russian was really up to.

“You mind telling me how you came by the information that the KGB was using Texas as a launching pad for some attack meant to level the country?” Tepper interjected, before he'd finished.

“I had a source,” Jim Strong said evasively.

“Reliable?”

“FBI agent doing surveillance, pissed off that no one was acting on his reports that the Cold War was heating up right under our very noses.”

“Maybe they ignored them because it's Texas. Been known to happen with the Feds.” Tepper nodded, his mind sorting through all the complications. “Which begs the question, Why isn't the FBI sitting here with us? Tell me that. You can't, can you? And that tells me you don't have enough faith in the information to run it up higher on the flagpole, either.”

“That what you think?”

“I just said it, didn't I?”

“And since when do you have an overwhelming desire to work with the Feds? As I recall, you've thought the same thing about them I have, since they squelched our investigation into those murdered college kids on Galveston Island a few years back.”

“True enough, Ranger,” Tepper conceded. “But I might be prone to make an exception in the interests of goddamn
national security.
”

“Problem being, my source really didn't have much to go on. I got more Shinola than shit to share, and my experience with the Federal Bureau of Bullshit is that they're more likely to fan a fire than put it out. They would've laughed me out of the office, or believed me just enough to spook Kasputin and his boys. So I figured, if there really was something here, only way to dig it out would be to handle the shovel myself.”

Their meals came, the portions so large they were spilling off the plates.

“So what drove Kasputin and his boys to come in and wipe out that other gang?”

“I think Stanko was just biding his time, laying the groundwork. Once things turned operational, he became a liability, his contribution done and his worth a flat zero. They sent in the A team, and now that A team is behind whatever they intend to do with those tanks Boone Masters got himself a look-see at.”

Tepper started to work his fork into his migas La Fonda, then stopped. “You read the reports detailing all the chemical and biological shit the Soviets are working on back home?”