Strong Rain Falling: A Caitlin Strong Novel (Caitlin Strong Novels) by Jon Land Read Free Book Online Page B

in an army green canvas shirt, vibrated as he continued to fire, M16 rotating in the neat arc the shooters had formed. His bullets trailed them in neat three-shot bursts, Cort Wesley adding his own fire to the mix in the next instant. He used the counter as a springboard to reach the bed of Paz’s truck, hitting the trigger the moment his feet touched down.
    Paz’s fire was trained to the right at that point so Cort Wesley worked his to the left. He recorded the shape of the man Paz had plowed over bent and broken in the middle of the midway. Paz had already left a second gunman splayed atop a picnic table and Cort Wesley’s fire spun a third into the abandoned popcorn cart, spilling it over to the pavement. They opened up together in the next instant, their twin streams effectively crisscrossing to hold the final two gunmen at bay behind concrete-encased trash receptacles.
    “Let’s go, outlaw!”
    No time to reflect or reconnoiter, not even any to breathe, before Paz was behind the wheel of the big truck again, gunning the engine. The man seemed to live in an entirely different plane of existence, no wasted thought, motion, or action whatsoever.
    “Luke!” Cort Wesley called.
    To his credit, the boy popped up immediately, climbing atop the counter to accept his father’s helping hand into the big truck’s cab.
    “Go!” Cort Wesley yelled to Paz, slamming a hand down on the truck’s roof to signal him on.
    And Paz tore out of Six Flags Fiesta just as he’d torn into it, Cort Wesley waiting until he was sure no more gunmen were about before climbing into the truck’s rear seat.
    *   *   *
    “The Ranger sent me, outlaw,” Paz said, his massive hands swallowing the wheel as he made straight for La Cantera Parkway and the I-10 beyond it.
    And then it all clicked into place. “Dylan…”
    “He’s fine, the Ranger too. Kind of under arrest, though.”
    “Kind of?”
    “There were casualties up in Province as well.”
    “Providence,” Luke corrected from the passenger seat, eyeing Paz as if he were an animal in a zoo with no bars separating them. “And I recognize you. You … you were there the day my mom was killed.”
    “He saved our lives in Mexico not long afterward, Luke,” Cort Wesley reminded, the rationale sounding feeble even to him.
    Paz tilted his gaze toward the boy, as he gave the truck more gas. “And the man you see before you now was reborn that day. I can’t change what I’ve done, only what I can do from that moment forward.” With that, Paz extended his cell phone back to Cort Wesley. “The Ranger wants you to call her. In Providence. There were five gunmen up there too.”
    “Coordinated attacks, then.”
    Cort Wesley could see Paz’s saucer-like eyes peering into the rearview mirror. “Nothing new, outlaw.”

 
    P ART T WO
    A genuine Texas Ranger will endure cold, hunger and fatigue, almost without a murmur, and will stand by a friend and comrade in the hour of danger and divide anything he has got, from a blanket to his last crumb of tobacco.
    Andrew Jackson Sowell, Rangers and Pioneers of Texas

 
    11
    Q UINTANA R OO, M EXICO
    Ana Callas Guajardo led the two men, her most trusted captains, around the lee of her sprawling home toward the stables that were her pride and joy. “I’m disappointed in your failure, gravely disappointed, but I’m not angry. Anger accomplishes nothing. Bob Parsons, the great CEO who founded Go Daddy, says that when you get knocked down, the sooner you get up and get back to business, the sooner your failure can be rectified. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
    “We took elaborate precautions,” said Juan Aviles Uribe defensively. A former major in the Mexican federal police force, Uribe had lost an eye in a shoot-out; the menacing black patch he now wore made the nests of scar tissue that dotted his cheeks stand out all the more. “There’s nothing linking the men we used back to us.”
    “That’s not what I asked you, Major.