Caitlin skulked about the outskirts of the neighborhoods just outside the riot zone. Through windows not boarded up or covered in grates, she spied more than one family following the simmering violence just a few blocks away on their televisions while they huddled against a wall.
According to the information she’d obtained from a trio of informants, Diablo Alcantara was running the show from his sister’s home, near J Street, two blocks from the brewing riot’s front lines. The cartels had trained Alcantara well, had taught him the tricks of their own trade, to inspire everyday people to turn to violence to the point that it came to define them. By the time a person found himself on this road, he was too far down it to turn back. So here, in east San Antonio, closing the schools for the day had turned hundreds of teenagers into virtual anarchists, looting and destroying for its own sake. Right now, Caitlin could still smell the smoke from a Laundromat that had burned to the ground after local firefighters and their trucks had been chased back by crowds hurling bottles and rocks. Three firefighters had been hospitalized, and one of the engines had been abandoned at the head of the street, where it too had been set ablaze.
The chemicals and detergents stored in a back room of the Laundromat had turned the air noxious for a time, the strange combination of lavender soap powder mixing with the corrosive bleaches to form the perfect metaphor for the city of San Antonio. Watching those white curtains of mist wafting through the flames to chase the rioters away—more effective than any efforts the authorities had mounted—had given Caitlin the idea to which Deputy Chief Alonzo had refused to listen.
Holding her position against a house, in view of the main drag, Caitlin checked her watch, then the sky, and finally her cell phone, to make sure she had a strong signal. Because word was the gangs were communicating via text message, there had been talk of shutting down the grid, but nobody could figure out a way to do it quickly—something Caitlin was glad for now.
Above the fire smoke and tear gas residue staining the air in patches, the night sky was clear, and she made out a collection of news choppers, their navigation lights flashing like the stars millions of miles beyond them. Creeping closer to J Street and the home of Diablo Alcantara’s sister, Caitlin froze. She was just beyond the spray of a streetlight, which showcased a block packed with gang members proudly and openly displaying their colors.
Amid the gangbangers unified in this unholy alliance was a stocky figure, more bulk than muscle, holding court near the rear. Diablo Alcantara had gotten into a knife fight while in high school and had ended up losing an eye to a slice that split the left side of his face right down the middle. Even in pictures, it was hard for Caitlin to look at the jagged scar, and the translucent orb visible through the narrow slit Alcantara had for an eye socket, without feeling a flutter in her stomach.
Caitlin knew that the stocky figure was Alcantara the moment he turned enough toward the streetlight for its spray to reflect off the marble-like thing wedged into his skull in place of an eye. She counted fifty bangers in the vicinity, armed with assault rifles and submachine guns no intelligence report had made mention of, meaning such firepower must have only just reached the scene, courtesy of the cartels.
The bangers, under Diablo Alcantara’s leadership, looked ready to launch the assault that would push the rioting from this neighborhood into the city proper. They were intent on turning San Antonio into Juarez. Caitlin’s plan hadn’t accounted for going up against heavy weaponry, but the reality made the plan’s implementation all the more necessary. Giving the matter no further consideration, she lifted the cell phone closer and pressed out three words in a text message: Come on in.
Caitlin figured she had three, maybe four minutes to wait. She spent the first of them following the gang members’ antics in preparation for what was to come. Some of them wore military-grade flak jackets, in odd counterpoint to the pungent scent of marijuana smoke gradually claiming the air. She watched beer bottles drained and smashed, a few stray shots fired into the air to the cheering of the most chemically altered in the bunch.
Caitlin checked her watch one last time before she stepped out from the darkness and into the street, light glinting off her badge, holstered pistol in plain view as she continued toward the center of the block.
“I’m a Texas Ranger,” she called out to the gang members, whose gazes fixed on her in disbelief. “All of you, stay right where you are.”
4
EAST SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS
Caitlin stopped thirty feet from Diablo Alcantara and swept her gaze across the other fifty or so gang members, who were armed to fight a small war.
“Diego Alcantara?” she called, breaking the silence that had settled over the block.
“Who wants to know?” Alcantara asked, emboldened by having a veritable army to back him up.