Strong Darkness (43 page)

“I'll tell her, champ.”

“What was that, Cort Wesley?”

“Just saying that I wouldn't count on it.”

Three weeks had passed now since the explosion at the Yuyuan building and ten days since Caitlin had visited the White House. She pretty much had all the range of motion back in her shoulder and had regained almost all of her hearing. Her sleep was still racked by nightmares and she spent more than her share of nighttime hours dozing on the front porch swing until the autumn chill chased her inside. Dylan had returned to school at Brown but Luke, for the rest of this year anyway, was back at public high school here in San Antonio, deemed to be in the best interests of all.

“I've glimpsed them here from time to time, I know I have. But they've never had anything to say.”

“Maybe 'cause there's nothing you really need to hear, Ranger. Maybe 'cause you got things pretty well figured out on your own.”

“You believe that?”

“Compared to me, you bet I do.”

Just off to his right, Cort Wesley thought he caught Leroy Epps wink. Then he moved his gaze toward the road where Guillermo Paz's massive pickup truck was parked in a shady spot not far behind his.

“How long is he gonna follow you around?”

“Until we get Li Zhen.”

“Unless he's dead.”

“Paz is certain the man's still alive. Says he saw him in a dream. To me, that's as surefire as DNA.”

“What about Kai?”

Caitlin shrugged, a bit sadly. “Not yet.”

Her phone rang and Caitlin raised the handset to her right ear, through which she still heard better. She listened briefly to the voice on the other end, then lowered the phone slowly.

“Turns out the colonel was right, Cort Wesley. Li Zhen survived that blast for sure. We found him.”

“You know where he is?”

“Not exactly,” Caitlin said, “but close enough.”

*   *   *

Mareno emerged from the elevator and approached his office on the top floor of the Flatiron Building. He had tripled security since his near-fatal encounter with the cowboy and its aftermath. The shit had hit the fan in Texas all right, but fortunately he'd been downwind from the stink. He'd even come to believe his network would be able to emerge from the whole mess scot-free. The luncheon he'd just come from had gone surprisingly well, reassuring him he could remain unscathed.

One of the new security guards, a man Mareno didn't recognize and looked Latino, held the door open for him, catching a second guard's reflection in the glass. Latino too.

Where were they getting these guy from?

His assistant was not at the front desk and he continued toward his office, passing two more armed guards on the way. Mareno had just registered the anomaly that they looked Latino as well when he stepped into his office, bolting the heavy security door behind him.

“Hey, nice place you got here.”

Mareno swung and saw the figure of a massive man with shoulder-length hair gnarled in shiny ringlets squeezed into his desk chair. The man removed a flash drive from a USB port on the side of his computer and rose, his huge shoulders blocking out a measure of the sun that had been shining in Mareno's eyes.

“The existentialists had it all wrong about life being meaningless,” Guillermo Paz told him. “Point is a man's gotta find his own meaning, and times like this is where I get mine.” He stepped out from behind the desk, letting the sun burn into Mareno's eyes anew. “You mind if we make this quick?” Paz asked, glancing at the flash drive he was holding. “There's a lot of young women who need my help, all over the country by the look of things. This is gonna be fun.”

Paz turned to stare briefly out the window offering an expansive view of the Manhattan skyline.

“Hey, amigo, you think the reports will say you only fell twenty-two stories since this floor doesn't exist?”

*   *   *

Dylan found himself sleeping a lot upon returning to school. Lingering effects of the concussion he tried to ignore kept catching up with him every time he overexerted himself. Brown let him cut back on his course work, taking an incomplete in one class and dropping another, which left him plenty of time for the naps he had no choice but to take—sometimes two or three a day.

During one, out of nowhere Dylan dreamed about Kai. She was standing over him just like when he was in the hospital. He heard her voice just as he had then but, again, couldn't make himself answer her. He awoke feeling strangely refreshed with the pleasantly warm sun shining into his eyes. Sat up and stretched his arms, knocking something from his chest in the process. Looking down, he smiled and dabbed a sleeve against his eyes that had suddenly turned moist.

Then Dylan leaned over, retrieved the pink rose from his bare dorm room floor, and held it close.

*   *   *

For Li Zhen, it was not so much about defeat as delay. He believed wholeheartedly in the old Chinese proverb that a journey of a thousand miles begins with one small step. What he'd built at Yuyuan had ultimately turned into that one small step, with the rest of a great journey still ahead of him certain to yield great rewards.

Delay, not defeat, he thought again. Why else would he have survived such an explosion if fate was not firmly on his side? His wounds, most of them anyway, would heal in time, but not the wounds he'd someday inflict on the United States.

A different day, a different plan. His destiny as inevitable now as it was before.

Delay, not defeat.

Li's phone rang, a call he'd been desperately awaiting coming at last.

“N
ǐ
h
ǎ
o,”
he answered. “Hello.”

*   *   *

On the other end of the line, Caitlin Strong nodded to Young Roger who sat behind a console he'd constructed from data that survived the blast at Yuyuan. He flipped a single switch to activate the signal from the Chinese satellite still orbiting overhead.

“Good-bye, Mr. Zhen,” Caitlin said.

 

A
UTHOR'S
N
OTE

I did a page like this in
Strong Rain Falling
and kind of liked laying out for you the book's origins and where fiction breaks from fact. Since you've just flipped the last page (not counting this one), it's no spoiler to tell you from where the concept for
Strong Darkness
sprang.

Sometime in 2013, early I think,
60 Minutes
ran a story on a Chinese company called Shinzen that has its American headquarters in Plano, Texas (coincidentally). Turned out that Shinzen actually built the fourth generation, 4G, wireless network many of us use today every time we pull out our cell phones. Yup, a Chinese company. I kid you not. Some stuff is too incredible to make up. So Shinzen became Yuyuan, the 4G network became the 5G and,
voila!
,
Strong Darkness
was born.

As you probably figured out, I had a blast teaming Caitlin's fictional great-grandfather William Ray Strong with the very real Judge Roy Bean and pitting them against the forces of the Southern Pacific Railroad. So much has been written about the famous hanging judge (who really did only hang a single man), I hope I've done justice to him here. The remnants of his saloon can still be found in Langtry, Texas, called the Jersey Lilly now. And the first case Bean ever heard as a judge was that of Joe Bell who was brought before him by, you guessed it, the Texas Rangers, in July of 1882.

As for the Trans-Pecos rail line, it was indeed completed in 1883, originating in El Paso and finishing in San Antonio. Since that geography didn't mesh with the story I wanted to tell, I invented that “spur” the Southern Pacific was building to link up with a line to the north.

The Deep Web, meanwhile, is very much real. I'm sure we'll all be hearing lots more about it down the road. In the meantime, check out the November 11, 2013, issue of
Time
magazine to learn enough to scare you as much it scared me.

Oh, and those who have as deep an abiding interest in the Texas Rangers as I do may know that Company F, formerly based in San Antonio, is now based in Waco. But I've left Captain Tepper and Caitlin based in San Antonio because, well, I love the city and it makes for a great setting. Call it dramatic license.

Hey, remember how you used to stay for the credits of the old James Bond films just to see JAMES BOND WILL BE BACK IN … Well, you can look forward to Caitlin's next adventure,
Strong Light of Day
, right around this time next year. Can't tease you with what it's about, because I've got no idea myself yet. But I will once it's time to get started. That's a promise from writer to reader, as sacred a bond as there ever was.

So be well until next we meet.

Providence, Rhode Island; December 2, 2013

O
THER
B
OOKS BY
J
ON
L
AND

The Alpha Deception

*
Betrayal
(nonfiction)

*
Blood Diamonds

*
The Blue Widows

The Council of Ten

*
Day of the Delphi

*
Dead Simple

*
Dolphin Key

The Doomsday Spiral

The Eighth Trumpet

*
The Fires of Midnight

The Gamma Option

*
Hope Mountain

*
Keepers of the Gate

*
Kingdom of the Seven

Labyrinth

The Last Prophecy

The Lucifer Directive

The Ninth Dominion

The Omega Command

The Omicron Legion

Pandora's Temple

*
The Pillars of Solomon

*
The Seven Sins: The Tyrant Ascending

*
Strong at the Break

*
Strong Enough to Die

*
Strong Justice

*
Strong Rain Falling

*
Strong Vengeance

The Tenth Circle

The Valhalla Testament

The Vengeance of the Tau

Vortex

*
A Walk in the Darkness

*
The Walls of Jericho

 

A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

Jon Land is a critically acclaimed author of thirty-five novels, including the bestselling series featuring female Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong:
Strong Enough to Die, Strong Justice, Strong at the Break, Strong Vengeance,
and
Strong Rain Falling,
which won the 2013 USA Best Books Award for Mystery/Suspense. In addition, Land is the coauthor of the nonfiction bestseller
Betrayal,
winner of the 2013 International Book Award for True Crime. Jon Land lives in Providence, Rhode Island, and can be found on the Web at
www.jonlandbooks.com
.

 

 

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

STRONG DARKNESS

Copyright © 2014 by Jon Land

All rights reserved.

Cover photographs by Getty Images and Arcangel Images

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