Strong Vengeance Read online

  “I could’ve shot you when you came through that door,” the boy said to her.

  Caitlin swallowed hard, her mouth dry and tongue pasty. She now bore the awesome responsibility for the fate of the hostages. However this turned out, it was all on her. For a brief moment she began to rethink the steps that had brought her this far, then refocused herself on the overweight boy before her, seeing only his gun.

  “But you didn’t,” she said, “because that’s not what you are or who you are, son.”

  “I’m not your son.”

  “True, but you’re a son of Texas, that’s for sure, and as a Texas Ranger, that places you in my regard and makes you my concern.”

  “That’s a load of crap and you know it.”

  “William, you hand me that gun and walk out of here by my side and I promise you that’s where you’ll stay until all this gets sorted out. That’s a promise from me and the Rangers. You made a mistake, but so far no one’s been hurt and there’s still time to get out of this with that remaining the case.”

  “I’m scared,” William Langdon said, his entire body starting to tremble, the pistol in his hand shaking as if attached to a paint mixer. Caitlin began to fear, along with everything else, he might open fire accidentally.

  “I know.”

  “No, you don’t. You don’t understand!”

  “I’m willing to try. Just lay that gun down and give me a chance.”

  “I … can’t.”

  His eyes shifted to the right, subtly but enough to make Caitlin wonder why he was looking that way. The gun looked all wrong in William Langdon’s hand, hardly strong or firm enough to hold it up with the extended magazine, which meant, which meant …

  Which meant what?

  Caitlin felt a flutter ripple up her spine. Something was wrong here, something beyond the thinking of Captain Alonzo and her commandos.

  I … can’t.

  Why can’t you, William? Caitlin asked in her mind, seeing in the boy’s eyes not just resignation but fear that mirrored what she’d seen on the faces of the roughly thirty hostages seated at tables or clinging to the floor. The same eyes that had just managed a sidelong glance.

  What was she missing?

  “We’re gonna get out of this together, William,” Caitlin said, finding his eyes with hers, stalling for time to make sense of what felt wrong about this. “You’re no killer, son. You never hurt anybody in your life no matter how much they hurt you. You think I don’t know how you feel?”

  “You don’t!”

  “Think again. When most girls were gossiping and playing sports in high school, I was out shooting guns. I smelled of gun oil instead of perfume and I never had a boyfriend. But I knew who I was and that made it all right.”

  “You don’t know me, you don’t!” the boy sputtered.

  “I know this isn’t you. I know somebody put you up to it.” The words coming now ahead of Caitlin’s thinking, as everything fell into place. What William Langdon had been looking at, what she had missed. “And I know he’s in this room right now.”

  With that, she snapped her right hand downward and in a flash of motion whipped her SIG from its holster. Already twisting, searching for the motion she knew would come.

  And it did.

  A rangy, stringy-haired boy whipped a cheap, semiauto submachine gun from under his leather jacket. Even from forty feet away to her left, she could see his eyes bursting with rage, the thirst for violence frozen on his expression. He almost grinned as he turned the MAC-10 not on her, but on a boy wearing a Letterman’s jacket seated at a nearby table.

  In her mind Caitlin saw herself shooting for his wrist, blowing the MAC-10 out of his grasp. But at this point instinct was in command, conscious thought burnished to the background.

  Caitlin put three bullets into the tall boy, spinning him around as muzzle flashes burst from the MAC-10’s barrel and nine-millimeter bullets stitched across the library to a torrent of screams and cries. But then he managed to steady himself, grabbing the boy wearing the Letterman’s jacket by the collar and jerking him from his chair for cover. His face froze in terror, bulging eyes seeking Caitlin out and latching upon her.

  Body armor! How had she missed that?

  Caitlin opened fire again before the young shooter had gotten his hostage all the way up. Her first bullet caught the boy in the Letterman’s jacket high in the shoulder, jamming him back against the shooter and opening up a fresh sightline for her. Caitlin fired three more shots in rapid succession, all aimed for the head with two of them finding the mark.

  She watched the shooter splay backward against a freestanding magazine rack that tumbled under the force of the impact, spilling the latest issues to the floor, the tall boy crumpling atop them.

  Caitlin was immediately conscious of a flood of sound and motion, as Captain Alonzo’s SWAT team burst into the library from all angles, gun smoke wafting toward the shattered windows through which several of them had just crashed. She tried to process all that had happened, but her focus was gone, the world turned very small and centered on the SIG-Sauer suddenly hot and heavy in her grasp. But she held it steady in the next sweep of her eyes that caught the boy in the Letterman’s jacket holding his shoulder, his face twisted in agony and blood dribbling between his fingers. Directly before her, William Langdon had slumped all the way to the floor, the Glock 19 resting by his side with his hands cupped on his stomach to stanch the blood flow. His face was milk pale and his lips were trembling so hard Caitlin could hear the clacking of his teeth from across the room.

  The SWAT commandos split and spread, the young hostages beginning to stir amid the cries and whimpers. Sirens wailed.

  “Nice work, Ranger,” the SWAT team leader, a man named Esteppa, told her. But she couldn’t tell whether he meant it or not.

  5

  SAN ANTONIO, THE PRESENT

  “I messed things up good, D.W,” Caitlin said, holding her head in her hands. “I messed things up for sure and a lot more blood got spilled than should have on account of that.”

  Tepper sat down next to her on the curb set before the NO PARKING, SCHOOL BUS ZONE yellow grid. “I didn’t hear anything in advance about a second shooter.”

  “The other boy’s eyes glanced that way a few times. I should have noticed, I should have noticed before I finally did. I should have made that boy as the real shooter in my first scan of the room. But I was too busy looking for Dylan and his friends.”

  “So you’re criticizing yourself for being human.”

  Caitlin finally looked up at Tepper. “My grandfather was human, my dad too. Neither of them would’ve messed up this bad. They would’ve figured on the fact the real shooter might’ve been wearing body armor.”

  “Hell, Ranger, in Earl Strong’s heyday the closest thing they had to body armor was a truck to hide behind. And if it means anything that boy you got in the shoulder is gonna be just fine.” Tepper’s expression wrinkled. “The second perpetrator, well, it don’t look as good for him but those aren’t your shells inside him either.”

  “William Langdon was no perp, Captain.”

  “That Glock and those thirty bullets said otherwise, Ranger, and don’t you forget it.” Tepper stuck a cigarette in his mouth, but didn’t light it. “Ask yourself what if Dylan had been in that library in the line of fire. Ask yourself that.”

  Caitlin spotted Captain Alonzo firing off some choice words at a Department of Public Safety official who’d taken charge of the investigation. “Guess she’s not too happy.”

  “Too bad. Her trigger-happy SWAT team did the deed instead of you, we’d have lots more than two rescues leaving the scene right now.”

  Tepper said that just as medical examiner Frank Dean Whatley followed a pair of paramedics wheeling a dolly toting a black body bag through the door.

  “Dean Sturgess.”

  “What?” Caitlin asked him.

  “The name of the kid with the MAC-10. Posted something on his Faceblog account that he
was gonna take a bunch of kids with him today.”

  “Facebook,” Caitlin corrected.

  “Huh?”

  “It’s called Facebook.” She cocked her gaze back toward Captain Alonzo, their stares locking just long enough for her to catch Alonzo’s hateful sneer cast her way. “Gonna be hell to pay for this, D.W.”

  “We should talk about that,” Tepper said, finally lighting his Marlboro.

  “Did either my dad or granddad ever shoot a kid?”

  “Can’t say. Neither one of them ever asked for an ID before firing.”

  “I figure things out when I should have, maybe this ends different, Captain.”

  Tepper yanked the cigarette from his mouth and glared at her. “And maybe it doesn’t, Caitlin. Even God screws up; how else could a human mess like Dean Sturgess find his way into the world? If you had another choice inside that school, I can’t see it.”

  “Maybe I could have…”

  “What? Shot some books to come tumbling down on Dean Sturgess? Blow off a fire sprinkler head and douse him into submission? You been watching too much television since you went mom on me. Things don’t end as such anywhere outside TV land. And I lied to you before.”

  “Captain?”

  “When you asked me whether Jim or Earl had ever killed a kid. Truth is you know plenty about old Earl’s exploits in cleaning up Sweetwater back in the oil boom days, but you don’t know all.”

  “I know what he told me.”

  “And he likely left out the part about the teenager shooting up the local saloon trying to get the man who left his father for dead in a field. Winged two ladies of the night and gut-shot the piano player. Earl had no more of a choice back then than you did today. And he saved a bunch of lives, just like you did.”

  Caitlin felt like reaching out and touching his shoulder warmly, but didn’t. “What else is on your mind, Captain?”

  Tepper looked around him, as if to gauge exactly where he was. “Remember the last time you and me sat on a curb outside a building?”

  Caitlin nodded. “The Survivor Center after Cort Wesley and I gunned down that Special Ops team three years ago now.”

  “I gave you back your badge that night. Talked you into returning to the Rangers.”

  “You did at that, sir.”

  Tepper tossed his Marlboro aside and slid closer to her. “Now I want to do something different. I want to talk you into taking some time off.”

  Caitlin just looked at him.

  “I promised myself that was the way it had to be the next time you got in a gunfight.”

  “But you just said—”

  “I know what I said, just like I know what I’m saying. I think it’s coming too easy for you, almost like it’s what you want. Today was a lesson for both of us, Ranger. I’m doing this before Austin forces my hand based on what Captain Alonzo over there is sure to tell them. You can come in and work a desk while Luke and Dylan are in school, but I want you home by the afternoon to keep your focus on them for a time. Get your priorities straight.”

  “My priorities?” Caitlin repeated, feeling the back of her neck go fiery hot.

  “Anybody else, this would be routine procedure. I can’t give you cover anymore. There’ve just been too many bullets and too many bodies. You’ve become a poster child for excess and a rationale in Austin for cutting back our budget.”

  “That what you believe, D.W.? Why don’t you just tell me straight?”

  Tepper cocked his head to the side, the sunlight diving deep into the furrows lining that cheek. “I believe what you just told me about Dylan maybe having an effect on your thinking when you walked into that library. I believe this mothering thing has changed your thinking and altered your focus to the point where you’ve become a liability for the Ranger force.”

  “You want me to quit, why don’t you just say so?”

  “Because I don’t. Because I want to believe all this will settle itself out.”

  “But you’re not sure.”

  “Are you?”

  She watched Tepper push himself back to his feet, knees creaking and cracking. “How long exactly, Captain?”

  “How long it take Samson to topple that temple with his bare hands?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Well, Ranger, neither do I.”

  As he said that, Captain Alonzo slowed near Caitlin on her way to the school entrance.

  “Any shots fired, Ranger, innocents wounded?” she asked, shaking her head.

  PART TWO

  Their role changed once again in May 1874, when the state Democrats returned to power and Governor Richard Coke, along with the Legislature, appropriated $75,000 to organize six companies of 75 Rangers each. By this time, Texas was overrun with outlaws, Indians ravaging the western frontier, and Mexican bandits pillaging and murdering along the Rio Grande River. The new troops were stationed at strategic points over the state and were known as the Frontier Battalion. During this era, the Ranger Service held a place somewhere between that of an army and a police force.

  —Legends of America:

  Texas Legends: The Texas Rangers—Order Out of Chaos

  6

  SOUTH TEXAS, SEVEN MONTHS LATER

  Saud Harrabi watched the desert come alive before him in the night, dust swirling and rising in the truck’s wake. Normally darkness would have obscured its approach, but the glow of wildfires burning out of control fifty miles to the east lit the sky with an amber glow that gave up the night’s secrets.

  Harrabi watched the truck’s lights flash and flashed his in return, his heart hammering with excitement. He hand-combed his thinning hair into place and wet his fingers with his tongue to further mat the stubborn strands down. His cotton button-down shirt was moist with sweat and the seat of his khaki trousers stuck to the seat’s upholstery.

  Before him, the truck’s lights burned brighter as it continued its approach. The great man’s arrival signaled that the final stage of the plan was about to begin, bringing all of Harrabi’s labor, and the holy purpose behind it, full circle.

  Listen to me, he thought, I sound like one of them.

  Specifically, one of those he had resented and even loathed since his youth growing up as an American and detesting those from the Arab culture who did not see this as their country. As a child, his parents had registered him as “Sam” Harrabi in elementary school, and during those years he never had call or reason to believe himself to be any different from the other children. He was an American, just like them. His parents were well-educated, successful, and his house was just as big as everyone else’s and bigger than plenty. He never identified himself as an Arab, or Muslim, and demonstrated his priorities perfectly by marrying a white Christian woman, thus turning his back on his heritage in favor of embracing the culture he far more saw himself a part of.

  But that was all gone now. Everything had changed.

  The truck slid to a halt thirty feet before Harrabi, its high beams blinding him as he stepped out into the cool desert night. The sweet smells of mesquite and chaparral were tinged by the harsh scent carried by the wildfires to the east, something like leaves burning in autumn. That thought made Harrabi think of his family and he felt his stomach muscles knot, recharging his resolve.

  A man emerged from the truck and walked out of the harsh spill of the high beams toward him. Average height, even slightly below average with narrow, stooped shoulders. Against the most ardent teachings of his fundmentalist beliefs he’d actually shaved his beard. The great man had also cropped his hair so close to the skull it made for little more than a dark outline of his receding hairline. He wore thin glasses that made him look somehow dull and bookish in stark comparison to the hero Harrabi had never met but nonetheless had come to idolize.

  “I’m blessed by God to see you, sayyid.”

  “We are all blessed in the eyes of God, my brother,” the cleric said, touching his head.

  Harrabi looked closer at the great man. He’d never seen him
pictured in anything but the robes of a cleric and the civilian clothes hung shapelessly over his frame, his shirt billowing in the desert winds.

  “We have much to attend to,” the cleric continued abruptly, his voice stiff with a concern Harrabi first passed off to the long journey and difficult final stretch coming up along this back route from Mexico.

  “All is ready, sayyid, everything prepared to the precise specifications we discussed.”

  “Later,” the cleric said. “First you must take the oath of jihad. Kneel before me, my brother.”

  As Harrabi knelt on the hard desert gravel, a pair of SUVS with lights flashing tore onto the scene. He recognized them as Border Patrol vehicles, fearing all the precautions taken had not been enough.

  But the cleric seemed unmoved as the twin SUVs screeched to halt, laying his hands firmly upon Harrabi’s shoulders. “This oath,” he explained, as if unaware of the armed men leaping down from the vehicles with assault rifles leveled, “is called Hilf al-mutayyabin, an oath of allegiance taken in pre-Islamic times by several clans of the Quraysh tribe, in which they undertook to protect the oppressed and the wronged. Do you make such a commitment here before me today?”

  Harrabi was too distracted by the border patrol agents to respond, one coming straight for him and the cleric, the other toward the cleric’s truck. “But sayyid—”

  “Swear your allegiance, my brother.”

  “I swear.”

  “Then hear my words and obey them.”

  “You two, hands in the air and turn around slowly!” the approaching border patrol agent shouted.

  “You swear by Allah that you will strive to free the prisoners of their shackles, to end the oppression to which our people are being subjected, to assist the oppressed and restore their rights even at the price of our own lives, to make Allah’s word supreme in the world, and to restore the glory of Islam. Do you so swear?”

  “Hands in the air or I’ll shoot you as you stand!” threatened the border patrol agent who’d stopped twenty feet away with assault rifle steadied, as the other agent reached the truck.