Cold River Resurrection (28 page)

C
hapter
67

Smokey kneeled with his head on the floor, his mind numb. He didn’t hear the shouting around him, and the movement in the room. Nathan came up and shook him.

“Smokey.”

Go away, I want you all to go away.

“Smokey,” Nathan said, his voice cracking, “Smokey, what do you want us to do?”

Smokey pushed himself up and sat back on his knees, his head spinning. He looked around the room as if he were just seeing it for the first time. He held his hand up and Nathan grabbed it, pulling Smokey to his feet. They put their arms around each other and stood like that for a few moments. Smokey’s head turned cold, his thoughts frozen on one thing.

“Jen, you sure?”

“I, uh –,” Jennifer said, looking up from Sarah, and then she started crying again. “I, uh, I saw Alvarez shooting at her, she was running, and then she went down and didn’t move. Out on the runway, but they took her and put her in the trunk, she wasn’t moving. I don’t know where she, I uh, I’m so sorry Smokey.”

Smokey held out his hand and Jennifer came to him. She held him and cried on his shoulder
; her tears ran down his cheek. Smokey pulled her arms from his neck.

Enough of this, we’ll do it later. Got things to do.

Smokey gently moved Jennifer away.

“Not your fault,” he whispered.

“Here’s what we’re gonna do,” he said, his voice surprisingly strong. He turned to Nathan.

“Uncle, you with me?”

“To the end, Little Brother.”

“Here’s what brother and I are going to
do. Find my baby girl, dead or alive, and take her home, or die trying.” He looked out at the packaging tables. Burwell and Sgt. Lamebull were approaching through the building, backing through the aisle, their guns trained on the door in the front. They stopped by the group coming out of the storeroom.

“Okay, here’s what we will do,” Smokey said, looking at each of them in turn. “Big Brother and I are going to find Laurel
. Lamebull and Burwell and Sarah are going to get Jennifer and Amy back to the plane, take off and get out of here. Kincaid dead?”

Burwell nodded. “He took one in the head, he’s gone.”

“We’ll get his body out with us if we’re still alive,” Smokey said. “We’ll cover you to the van.”

“No.”

Sarah held her assault rifle with her right hand, her left arm around Jennifer.

“Wha
t?” Smokey looked at her.

“No,” Sarah said. “I’m not leaving without Laurel
either. We’re all in this together. I love her too, and I’ll die with you trying to get her. I’m staying with you and Nathan, and that’s final.”

“Me too, Boss, I’m in.” Burwell said. “Jim Kincaid was my best friend, and I should have a say in how I avenge him.”

“You’re starting to think like an In-din, talking about avenging,” Smokey said, and touched Burwell’s shoulder, nodding his thanks. Lamebull just looked. Smokey knew what he thought. He turned to Amy.

“You didn’t ask for this,” Smokey said. “We have put you in extreme danger, you coming here with us, and we love you for this, helping us find my baby.”

Amy slung her laptop under her arm and Smokey waited, catching her eyes.

“I just don’t think we should split up for anything
,” Amy said. “All stay together, we could die, but we should all stay together. Don’t you ever watch movies where people split up? Look what happened to Custer.”

Smokey didn’t think he could ever laugh again, but he started chuckling, and they were all laughing, grinning, hugging Amy, and then he stopped. He looked at them. Burwell and Nathan, bloody from numerous minor wounds. Jennifer’s head was bleeding. Of all of them, only Lamebull and Amy weren’t bloody.

“You’re a sorry looking bunch,” Smokey said, “and I love you all.” He picked up his assault rifle, pulled the sling tight, and looked over the room.

“Let’s go find Laurel.”

He led the way down the aisle toward the door. Burwell came up and grabbed the doorknob, looking to Smokey.

“Hell’s awaiting for us out there, Boss,” Burwell said quietly.

Smokey nodded, Burwell jerked open the door, and Smokey walked through the opening.

Amazing.

I don’t hurt.

C
hapter
68

In Laurel’s dream she was alive, sitting at her desk in her bedroom, her Šiyápu doll in her lap. She bent over her diary and wrote furiously with a pencil, her hand skipping over the page. She wrote to her diary and her daddy at the same time. As she wrote she absently fingered the leather necklace to make her strong.

It didn’t hurt so bad, Daddy. Really, I know you have been shot before, in
Afghanistan and maybe some other place, and then on the mountain, so you know, Daddy, sometimes it’s not so bad. But Daddy, I worry ‘bout you now, with me and mommy gone away from you, and no one to take care of you.

She stopped writing and looked around her room. The house was intact the way it had been before the fire, the headboard above her bed overflowing with stuffed animals.

Oh, Daddy, I wish I could see you and Jennifer, maybe she can take care of you now, but you have to find her, Daddy. She went away with those bad men, but she is strong, so you have to come quick, Daddy.

The lights in her room dimmed, and then went out. Laurel wrote in the dark, the pencil lead getting fat, needing sharpening; she wrote on in the
blackness of her night.

Dad, sometime carry me up on the mountain with you, find a way to take me to the places we used to go when I was a little kid, when Mommy went with us, so I can see it again. In the summer when the wildflowers are out, and it’s warm.

It’s so cold here.

Laurel wrote until she couldn’t see the page, bending over her diary until her nose almost touched it, her hand cramping, slowing, and she stopped.

Smokey jumped through the door and froze.

“Alto!” The command came from the end of the building. He looked down the street and saw what appeared to be fifty armed men, their rifles trained on him, and he slowly turned, his rifle up, his finger ready to fire a long burst, when he saw another large group of men with rifles and pistols pointing at him. Nathan came up beside him and trained his assault rifle on the group down the street. Lamebull stood beside Smokey.

“Just say the word, Lieutenant,” he said.

Smokey sensed the others behind him. After the first command to stop, it was quiet, the high overhead lights on the street between the buildings casting long shadows, pools of darkness and light, and no one spoke. They stood like that, neither group moving. Someone coughed at the end of the street. A figure moved out of the shadows, coming toward them.

It was so dark and cold.

Laurel’s head hurt so bad she wanted to cry.

And she opened her eyes in the darkness.

She was no longer in her house, couldn’t be, her house had
been burned down by the bad men. She remembered now, she had been on a plane with Jennifer.

Shot.

She was in the corner of a large building. Lights from the outside came in a window, but it was dark in the corner. 

My head hurts.

She put her hand up to her head and screamed, the pain so intense she thought she was dying. She pulled her hand away and looked at the blood, black in the darkness.

She tried a smile.

Daddy always said if you hurt, you’re still alive.

That’s what I am.

Alive.

Daddy, come quick.

I’m gonna find Jennifer.

Laurel stood, shaking, her head blinding her with pain, and then she remembered shouts and a lot of shooting as she was coming awake.

She smiled. That much shooting could mean only one thing.

My
daddy’s here. And he’s coming to get me.

She felt a certain calmness that she knew she should not have, but she did.

Daddy’s coming to get me.

And I know how to help him.

Laurel began making her way from the corner of the large dark building, walking slowly toward the streetlights where the shooting had come from.

Coming Daddy.

Smokey held his rifle up, the pain in his shoulder from his wound making itself known again, and he didn’t know how long he could hold it up, no matter how much he willed himself to do it. A figure came out of the shadows, walking slowly toward them.

“Alvarez,” Jennifer whispered.

Smokey’s finger tightened.

The man wore khaki fatigues, boots, held a pistol in his right hand. He pointed it at Smokey.

“You’re apparently a hard man to kill,” Alvarez said as he stopped in front of Smokey.

“You won’t be,” Smokey said. His grip tightened until he shook.

I’m gonna kill him now, but the others will die. Will anyway.

He heard a commotion at the end of the building, and then someone in that direction screamed. And then another.

“Serpiente!” And then a chorus of screams.

Lamebull got it first, and his face slit into a wide grin.

Laurel pushed the door open, and she stepped into the street. She stood in the shadow behind a group of men, all holding rifles. She slipped behind them, trying to see what they were doing, what they were pointing their rifles at. She stood at the end of their line and peered down the street. Some people there.

Daddy!

My daddy’s down there! Sarah and Jennifer. She looked closer and saw Uncle Nathan. She wanted to yell at them, to run to them, but that would be the wrong thing to do now. And then she knew why she was there, what she could do to help her daddy.

I’ll try it on the one next to me. Daddy said that he didn’t like it, didn’t really believe it, and he once argued with grandmother about it. But I can help him.

I can.

Laurel turned to the soldier in front of her, a large man with a black moustache and long black hair, and she looked at his rifle. She turned slightly and thought about the largest meanest baddest snake she could think of, and looked
again at his rifle.

The effect was immediate.

The wooden stock on the man’s rifle instantly turned into a large, twisting python. He stared, his eyes bulged, and he screamed. He tried to throw his rifle down, but it twisted around his arm, and she turned to the other men in line, and looked at their rifles, each in turn.

The drug soldier standing next to Alvarez (and that was how Smokey thought of them,
drug soldiers
) screamed and jumped back. A three-foot Coral Snake was twisted around his arm, the red, black and yellow bands glistening in the harsh light. The snake drew its head back and struck so swiftly that Smokey thought he had only imagined it, the fangs hooking into the man’s cheek. The druggie pulled on the snake and ran blindly to his left, his legs pumping as he crossed the street and ran full speed into the wall of the money building. He fell to the ground, writhing like the snake he was trying to pull from his face.

A tall drug soldier stumbled past, holding the largest snake Smokey had ever seen, a thirteen
-foot Black Mamba, its mouth completely over the druggie’s left eye socket. Vitreous fluid spurted out of the Mamba’s mouth, the man struggling with a pistol in his right hand.

Smokey didn’t know if the druggie was trying to shoot the snake when the man
pulled the trigger and blew off the right side of his face,  popping his right eyeball out to lay on his cheek. Smokey turned to the cacophony of screams behind him, sounds of an asylum from hell. All manner of snakes were biting, striking, sinking fangs into necks, faces, arms.

He saw a seven foot Diamondback Rattler repeatedly strike the prone form of a druggie, the man not moving. Copperheads, Water Moccasins and a twelve foot King Cobra danced a venomous waltz with the druggies, the flared hood of the Cobra sending a chill up Smokey’s back.

What is happening here?

Alvarez jerked his gun forward, suddenly holding a twisting snake. Smokey was struck with a hatred, a pure white rage for this man who got rich poisoning the children of others. Alvarez screamed. Smokey fired a burst into the drug leader’s head, the face and skull disintegrating and Alvarez dropped straight down, holding onto the snake as he died.

Laurel picked her way through the twisting, screaming druggies, the men busy with their own visit to hell. As she walked, she focused on her
daddy. He was hurt, but he looked so beautiful. She was going to tell him that. And she tried to call to him but the words just didn’t come out.

Daddy!

She tried again, and gave a little wave to Jennifer.

“Daddy!”

Smokey slumped down, the pain from his wound causing him to double over, the grief of his loss coming in waves, and then he saw Laurel.

A dream.

And he heard her call his name.

Daddy.

“Laurel?”

She ran to him, twisting her way around bodies and snakes, and he dropped to his knees, his rifle clattering to the ground as she reached him. She kissed him again and again.

“Oh Daddy, you’re so beautiful.”

“That all you got to say,” he said, his face wet with tears.

“Take me home?”

Nathan put his hands under Smokey’s good arm and lifted. Smokey grinned at his
big brother, thinking that they might get home after all. Laurel put her arm around his left side, and as they limped to the van, Smokey heard Sarah talking to the others.

“Let’s burn it.”

“Wheels up,” Weasel said. He turned to Charley. “Your airplane,” he said, and unstrapped. “Just get us across the border.”

Burwell and Amy sat together, making room for the wounded, Smokey the most critical. Laurel and Jennifer tended to him, both fussing over him like a couple of little mothers, stopping every few seconds to hug and kiss each other and giggle.

“What did I just see, there in the street?” Amy asked.

“In-din stuff,” Burwell said, and after a few moments, she nodded.

Sarah made her way through the crowded aisle. She leaned over Burwell and Amy to look out at the burning buildings below. She pulled back from the window and placed her face in front of Burwell’s. She leaned forward and kissed an astonished Burwell on the lips.

“First
Šiyápu I’ve ever kissed,” she said, winking at Amy, “and Burwell, you better get used to it buddy, you’d better get used to it.”