Cold River Resurrection (4 page)

C
hapter
5

Cold River Indian Reservation

Tribal Police Department

Smokey walked to the front of the squad room and faced the assembled officers. The noise level dropped. Six uniformed officers and four detectives had been waiting to execute a tribal search warrant for possession and sales of meth. Some were on a scheduled day off and not too happy with him. Just part of my job, he thought, and waited for a few more seconds.

Officers Kincaid and Burwell were laughing about something and eating dinner from a large McDonald’s bag. Across the table from them Officer Sarah Greywolf was putting on her duty belt, adjusting her gear. She looked up and glared at the two officers.  Sgt. Lamebull was reading a Field and Stream magazine, his black hair rolling off the shoulder of his grey uniform shirt.

They
aren’t going to be happy when I tell them they might be joining the search team after the raid, Smokey thought. But now that they are here, they are as much conscripts as my great uncle when he was an Indian scout for General Crook in the Modoc Wars.

Kincaid slugged Burwell in the arm and laughed. Burwell pointed at the lieutenant.

“Way too much testosterone in here, Lieutenant,” Sarah said.

“Looks like you got most of it, Officer Greywolf,” Burwell said with a grin. Kincaid gave him a high five.

“I wasn’t talking to you, Butthole, just about you,” Sarah said, thrusting her face within inches of Burwell.

“Lieutenant Kukup, sir,” Burwell said, “Officer Sarah is harassing me.”

“Yeah, sex-shull-lee harassing both of us,” Kincaid said.

“K
nock it off,” Smokey said.
Children
. I’m dealing with a bunch of kids. But he knew that they would perform with courage and professionalism when the time came.

“Okay, listen up.” He turned to Officer Greywolf. “Sarah,
chill!”

She stuck her tongue out at Kincaid and Burwell, sat down, looked at Smokey, and folded her arms. Kincaid blew her a kiss.

“Now!” Smokey said.

The room was silent. Smokey turned to Detective Williams.

“Lock the door please.”  What he was about to brief them on he didn’t want to give to any person who wandered down the hallway.

“Detective Johns is handing out the tactical operations plan
along with a map of the house, the area, photos of suspects, and our weapons and positions assignments. It’s Detective Johns’s plan and he will detail it later.  Detective Williams has the informant and search warrant. He will go first.”

Williams pointed to a picture taped to the briefing board. “This is Alberto Hermes. Some of you have met him before. Kincaid and Burwell chased him across the river into the State of Oregon a coupl
e of months ago, took him to county, he bailed.  He’s wanted for numerous crimes, part of a bad group of illegals bringing meth from a superlab near Hermosillo in the State of Sonora, Mexico. He’s wanted for multiple murders in Mexico. Just won’t stay home.”

Smokey knew that Williams had their attention now. Meth was king on the rez, not just here but in most of Indian Country around the United States. Most of it coming from superlabs in Mexico.

“As of one hour ago, Hermes was at the Littledeer residence up at Givens Heights.”

“We have to deal with that little asshole again
?” Sarah asked.  “Last time we went up there with a search warrant, that little Eighteenth Street gangbanger shot at Frick and Frack here,” she said, pointing at Kincaid and Burwell.

“Yeah, he’s there, along with a half dozen of his slimy partners from the Eighteenth Streeters, plus whatever tweeker and open sore that might be hanging around.” He showed pictures of a half dozen other gang members, all known to the officers from numerous arrests and street contacts.

“So you’re saying, a normal dope search warrant,” Sergeant Lamebull said, flipping the magazine on the table.

“Looks like all the food groups are represented all right,” Sarah said. The officers in the room nodded and murmured their agreement.

“Okay, assignments, on the sheet.” Lieutenant Kukup got their attention. “Burwell and Kincaid, AR-15’s, perimeter east and west, lead car, get out fast. Rear is covered by two detective teams in place, one on the rocks above, a two-officer team in close. Okay, listen up.”

The room was quiet now, officers studying their assignments, positions, faces of the gang bangers.

“Entry team, UMP submachine guns, Sergeant Lamebull first up, Sarah second . . .” Smokey continued with the assignments, looking over the officers in the room.

“I will bat cleanup, with the medic unit staged behind me. Listen up for Detective Williams. Vehicle assignments are on the tactical operations report. After Detective Williams is done, we meet at the cars in five minutes. We go in fast. As soon as we leave the parking lot here the entire rez will know we’re going to raid something.”

Sarah raised her hand. “Lieutenant, what about the search for the missing lady?  Anything?”

“I was out there this afternoon. Woman’s been missing for her second day. She had a bag, a little food. Just don’t know. We’ll use some of you in some capacity when this raid is over.”

Burwell raised his hand.

“Yes.” Smokey smiled. Burwell was young and energetic, had seen more violent activity in his first year on the re
servation than most cops do in ten years, regardless of their department. He was cocky, and was getting the hang of it. He and Kincaid, the Blues Brothers.

“Sir, we heard the missing lady was camping on the rez, looking for Bigfoot.”

“That’s what we know so far.”

“So Bigfoot exists on the rez then, far as you know?”

Smokey laughed. Time to stop this and get to work. “Only in your dreams, Officer Burwell.”  He looked at Detective Williams and motioned for him to continue.

Sarah held her thumb and forefinger up in front of Burwell, holding them about an inch apart.

“You heard the Lieutenant, Burwell, in your dreams.”

It’s gonna be a long afternoon, Smokey thought.

It’s gonna be a long afternoon.

And then he had another thought. When he was a kid, camping up in the Mt. Jefferson wilderness with his uncle, he had heard things, seen things that he didn’t talk about with anyone. Certainly not when he was in the white man’s school up there in Madras.

I hope this woman, whoever she is, doesn’t hear and see any of the same things I saw. I had my uncle with me, and he told me to ignore them, but my uncle was scared then, and he wouldn’t let me talk about it. Not then, not ever. If she sees things and comes out of the mountains alive, she will not be the same.

I wasn’t. I should talk to her. If she comes out.

Smokey heard the detectives call the officers to their cars. He heard the voices far away, as if he were in another land.

If she’s still alive, this Jennifer Kruger, she certainly is in another land. A land closed for almost two hundred years, back in a time before computers, cars, airplanes, penicillin, a time of magic and superstition. A land closed before the conquest by the European invaders.

A time when beasts now forgotten roamed at will.

But we don’t talk about them.

C
hapter
6

Aboard 939
th
Air Rescue Squadron Blackhawk

Near Mt. Jefferson

While Smokey prepared the search warrant team, Sergeant Nathan Green was straining to see the countryside out of the side door of the Blackhawk. The nose of the helicopter tilted and they hovered a thousand feet above Jefferson Creek. Across the creek, off the reservation, the creek was the jumping
-off spot for the Bigfoot Expedition members. Nathan leaned forward toward the pilot and observer. He pulled his microphone closer. “There, at nine o’clock, Hole-in the-Wall Park.” He pointed.

“They would have crossed the creek there, and then on the trail to the northeast, under Waldo Glacier, to somewhere in the area of Parker Creek.”

“Rugged country,” the pilot said.

“It gets worse if she gets into the Whitewater Glacier drainage. Steep canyons, rock slides, dead trees crisscrossing every animal trail.”

“Any trails at all in there?” the observer asked.

“Except for the Parker Creek Trail, the one that starts at the Hole-in-the-Wall Park, none.”

“I have someone on the trail, looks like four people,” the observer said. He pointed to the north.

“That’s our group, tribal police officers, with the boyfriend. He supposedly is going to show us where their camp was.”

“Why all the police?”

Nathan looked down at the hikers. “This boyfriend, Carl, he just might be lying. Their camping area, if there is one, may be a crime scene. We’ll just have to see.  Should know in a couple of hours.”

They turned back toward the north, rising with the terrain to stay a thousand feet above ground level.

Rugged. It didn’t get much worse than this, unless they continued on past Parker Creek.

“Search area?” the pilot asked, looking at a map on his knee.

“Let’s stay within ten miles of where their camp should have been, at the head of Parker Creek. Even though she could be fifteen miles away now, hundreds of square miles.”

“This won’t be easy, with all the trees and slides,” the pilot said.

“Never is,” Nathan said, “never is.”

“We might try the FLIR this evening, or at least in the early morning,” the copilot said. FLIR, Nathan knew, was an acronym for Forward Looking Infrared Radar, a unit that tracked heat sources. Heat, as slight as body heat from one person (or deer, bear, or cougar) generated an outline of the mammal. It was also useful in finding campfires, or fires in general.  Law enforcement had used the technology for years to locate marijuana growing operations. The military used it to find enemy campfires, engine heat, and soldiers.

The FLIR unit could, under optimum conditions, trace a person’s movement through the landscape, with body heat lingering in the air. In some cases, you could see footprints that faded as the heat left them.

They flew him back to the base camp, and immediately took off to use the remaining daylight.

Whitewater River

Jennifer heard a noise and looked up. A buzzing noise. She just wanted to sleep. She clutched her Nanna and kissed the doll and closed her eyes. She had heard the noise before, but she couldn’t remember where. The buzzing grew closer, then faded, and was gone altogether. Silence came back to her place.

Helicopter. That’s what it was. Helicopter. Sometimes they came up the Willamette River, through downtown Portland, not too far from
my deck..

But they shouldn’t be this close
.

Good thing they went away. I need to sleep.

C
hapter
7

Cold River Indian Reservation

Given
s Heights Subdivision

Smokey looked over the line of vehicles ahead of him. They were two blocks from the target house when his cell phone rang. Surveillance team on the house.

“Smokey.”

“Uh, bad guy number one is still here, we got at least seven Eighteenth Streeters in and around the house.”

“We’ll be turning on the street now.”

“Right. See the first patrol car now, we have the rear and corners of the house covered.”

“Copy.”

The subdivision was spread out on a sagebrush hillside, each house on an acre lot, the target house at the end of the lane. The hillside rose up behind the house to a line of basalt rim rock, two hundred yards away. A detective was up there with a spotting scope.

The lead patrol car turned on the street, accelerated past a house toward the target house a hundred yards away, with four additional marked patrol cars, and four unmarked detective cars close behind, each car slamming around the corner. This run and shoot was the only way to do it in the daytime, and daytime raids were all they
ever got.

Go in fast, get the perimeter out and the entry team up. Hazardous, but the only way to do it.

The house was a single story ranch-style house with nondescript grey siding. As Smokey rounded the corner with the ambulance trailing behind him, he could see eight or ten cars in the driveway and on the side of the house. Some had been permanent fixtures for years, left there for tenant after tenant to work around.

The lead patrol car slammed to a stop at the entrance to the driveway. The front doors flew open and Officers Kincaid and Burwell ran out, running fast to their assigned perimeter positions. Kincaid ran for a tree on the west side of the residence as Burwell ran for a vehicle on the east side, thei
r submachine guns up and in firing position.

Smokey saw the rest of them come up fast,
three patrol cars and a detective car, doors flying open and officers running for their assigned spots.  Smokey stopped and watched as the entry team ran for a spot to the west of the front door. Sergeant Lamebull was followed closely by Officer Sarah Greywolf, her UMP machine gun at the ready.

Bad guys have to know we are here by now. They get out and on the run, we’re go
ing to have trouble containing this.

     
From where he was at the end of the line of cars Smokey could hear yelling from the house. The last member of the six-officer entry team got to the house, all of them low below the front window. Sgt. Lamebull held his hand up to wait, and the windows shook with a loud explosion from the rear of the house.

The plan was for the officers in the rear of the house to throw a stun grenade against the back wall, using the explosion as a diversion, and as a signal for the entry team to move.

Lamebull dropped his hand and an officer stepped forward with a steel ram, swung it back and rammed it forward into the lock. The door slammed open, the officer stepped back out of the way, and Sergeant Lamebull ran into the doorway and inside the house, followed closely by Sarah Greywolf and the rest of the team.

“Police with a search warrant! Get Down! Get Down! Police!”

Smokey heard the officers yelling from the open doorway. He walked forward along the line of patrol cars.

“Got some runners out the back.” The detective on the radio sounded like he was running as well. And then, “Runner with a gun! In the back!”

Smokey was moving fast as he heard the last, running for the left side of the house, waving to Officer Kincaid, making sure Kincaid saw him before he ran around the corner.

Three shots in rapid succession from inside the house, a UMP submachine gun firing a three round burst. Shit!

They would have to take care of the situation in the house, and unless they call for more people in there, I’m staying on course at the rear, Smokey thought. He ran up to Kincaid.

Good man, staying on position
to cover his corner, even when things were going to hell.

“Got at least three runners out the back, at least one with a gun, don’t think we have any of them contained, Lieutenant.” And then from Detective Williams at the rear of the house, “You guys see that first one, all the tattoos?”

“No, he’s in the brush, somewhere south of us.”

Yelling from the rear of the house.

“Two down in the back, one still on the loose. Spotters on the hill, can you see our third suspect?”

“Nope, still looking.”

Smokey keyed his lapel microphone. “Freeze the action in the rear, keep who we have, we’ll look for the runner later.”

“We need help in the house!”

Smokey ran back around for the front door.

When Sarah ran into the house behind Sergeant Lamebull she began yelling, “Police with a search warrant, get down! Get down! Police with a search warrant!” Lamebull ran in straight ahead, Sarah hooked to the right, saw movement, two bodies on the floor, another running for the hallway, and two more standing in the living room, one with baggy pants, no shirt, jail tattoos on his arms, black bandanna on his head, holding a pistol in his right hand, backing away.

“Freeze! Drop the gun!”

Baggy pants raised his arm, and swung it around toward Sarah.

“Nooo, drop it!”

He continued the swing and the motion slowed for Sarah, and she yelled again, seeing movement from one of the tweekers on the floor, sensing an officer behind her, Lamebull yelling from the hallway, her UMP forty caliber machine gun lined up on the middle of baggy pants’s chest, and he swung the gun around, throwing himself sideways as he brought it up, and Sarah fired fast, touched the trigger, a three round burst, the burst catching him center in the sternum, three rounds as one, almost the same entry hole, blood spraying out as he went down, his head snapping back as he fell.

“Get down
, Asshole,” she heard Sergeant Lamebull yell from her side at the other person standing in the room. The man dropped and she covered the remaining three with Lamebull, swinging her UMP on the bodies on the floor, looking at her sergeant.

She heard Sergeant Lamebull ask for more help in the house, and then ask for a medic unit immediately. 

“Clear so far,” Lamebull said as Smokey came in through the front door, followed by a medic team. “We still have to search the attic, the crawl space, and the runner outside.”

Sarah lowered her machine gun as the three on the floor were handcuffed.

“You shot Jimmy, you bitch, you’ll pay for – .”

Smokey moved forward, fast, jerked him to his feet, and pushed him to the door where Burwell waited.

“Get him in a car, now!”

Sarah watched as Martina, one of the medics, pulled her stethoscope away from the gunman’s chest and looked up, shaking her head. Dead. She let herself be led outside by Smokey.

Kincaid came up and tapped her shoulder. Burwell put his arm around her and then followed Kincaid inside the house. She put her gun on safe and took the sling off her shoulder and handed the machine gun to Smokey.

“You alright?”
he asked.

She looked up at him. “For now, Smokey. For now.”

So this was what it was like. Been shot at a lot of times, girl, but never shot someone. I should feel more, but I don’t. I want my babies, they need me, need to get them out of the community center.

“El Tee, can we get my kids from the center?” She was surprised at how calm she sounded.

“Soon,” he said, sounding far away. They had too much going on. Drug raid gone bad. Woman lost, possibly dead. The smell of
pishxu
, sage, was strong. There would be more death.

Officer Sarah Greywolf motioned to the side of the building and Smokey followed her around the corner, away from the patrol cars, the drug suspects, the other officers. She turned her head to his shoulder, and the first tears came.

Near Hermosillo, Mexico

Enrico Alvarez stood alone on the platform and looked down on the workers below him. The large warehouse was brightly lit, even at midnight, the work continuing around the clock. From where he was the workers resembled white insects, their breathing apparatus looking like strange colorful antennae. He knew that he should wear a respirator like the workers, but he was only going to be in the weighing and packaging room for a minute longer.

The workers wore respirators so they wouldn’t get addicted so quickly to the powder they were weighing. Once they got addicted, they made mistakes, and eventually would have to be killed or dumped in Mexico City with a habit.

Alvarez wore his usual grey suit and light blue shirt, with twin scars running down his cheeks, remnants of a childhood spent in the slums of Zihuatanejo, and later, Mexico City. He had shoulder length thick black hair that draped over the collar of his suit
. He was short and fat, but no one had called him that for almost twenty years. A door opened behind Alvarez and a large man dressed in khakis stood behind him. His second in command, Roberto.

At a table below, a dozen workers meticulously weighed the powder and  placed it in bags.  The bags were then sealed in cans with various food labels for export to the United States. A woman suddenly became animated, waving her arms, urging the others around her to work faster, her long hair pulling out of a bun and falling on her shoulders.

Alvarez pointed. The man behind him spoke into a radio. Two men came in a side door below and grabbed her arms and pulled her from the room.

They turned walked outside and down a stairway. He waited for
Roberto and they walked together to the adjacent building.

This one was not so brightly lit on the inside. Smaller, darker. Two men were bound and gagged, laying on the floor in the middle of the room, with a half-dozen guards standing over them. The bound men wore the uniforms of the local
policia
.

There are some good
policia
, and some bad ones, Alvarez thought. The bad ones, like these, thought they could arrest two of his employees. The good ones, they just leave me alone.

He walked up and held out his hand.
Roberto placed a .45 caliber pistol in it, and Alvarez shot the first man in the head. The second one, maybe twenty-one years of age, Alvarez thought, began pleading.

“Por favor, Senor, I will do anything
, just give me the chance, I will work for you do any . . .”

Alvarez shot him and calmly handed the gun to
Roberto, walking to the door.

“Put them where we talked about,” Alvarez said, “by morning.”

Leticia Morales drove her aging Ford Taurus as fast as she dared, the
coche
shaking violently when she drove over 100 kilometers per hour. She was one of the few vehicles on the Blvd Luis Encinas Freeway as she sped through the dark morning toward the center of Hermosillo.

It was 5:15 in the morning and she was going to be late for a breakfast meeting at the hospital. She still had to drop her kids off at a friend’s house on the way. Her four year old daughter was sleeping in the back seat, her five year old son munching
cereales
next to her in the front. The sun was coming up behind her as she flew past the Universidad de Sonora, took the off ramp and stopped for a traffic light in front of the museum, the formal columns guarding the massive front doors.

Something dripped on her windshield. Reddish black, thick, like softened ice cream. She reached for the wiper switch when another drop hit the window in the center, this time a splatter.
Aves?
Bird?

She tapped her foot and waited for a bus to cross. Her son leaned forward and craned his head to look up above the car, his right hand poised to reach for more cereal. He pointed.

“
Madre, La Mordida
.” He waved up at whatever it was above the car.

“
Madre
,
muy feo, rostro
,” he said, excited now, and Leticia thought he said, “Halloween.”

She leaned forward and looked up as another large splatter of goo hit her windshield, and there was something up there, two something’s hanging from the stop light.

Cabeza?
A head. A
cabeza
with a
policia’s
hat.

Cabezas, two of them, severed, blackened.

Two severed heads, swinging from the stop light, one with a hat, the other sporting a leering, lopsided grin, as if he knew some great and terrible secret, and Leticia began to scream.

Photos of the heads were on YouTube within the hour. By evening, as Alvarez was landing in Denver, there had been over a million hits worldwide.