Earthway (23 page)

“I’ve worked on the Rez for nearly fifteen years, Ella, and I still can’t wrap my head around some things. Living out here, for one. I’ve backpacked into some pretty isolated places on fishing trips, but living full time in the middle of
nowhere? Not on your life.”

As they turned a switchback in the trail, they got their first glimpse of the house—a low, corrugated-metal roofed structure with wood siding and a big stovepipe. The windows were small, and the door very solid looking. There was no vehicle visible, but that didn’t mean Mike wasn’t home. A wooden shed, big enough to contain a pickup, stood fifty feet beyond the house,
and recent vehicle tracks led up to it.

Ella turned off the headlights, and used the parking lights to guide her a little farther before coming to a stop near the side of the house. They exited the SUV quietly, not closing the doors.

Ella pointed to the back of the house, then to herself, and Blalock nodded.

They moved forward with turned-off flashlights in hand and guns drawn. Blalock reached
the front door as Ella moved into place near the back. He knocked hard, identifying himself, but nothing happened.

Ella tried the handle next and the door opened easily. She stepped inside, switching on the flashlight and aiming it low, and to her side. A quick sweep around the one-bedroom house revealed several boxes of rifle ammo and a bag of ammonium nitrate, but the suspect wasn’t anywhere
to be seen.

Blalock came in through the front door, having found it
unlocked, too, and glanced around. “Looks like Henry Mike’s getting ready for a serious firefight. The question now is, where is he?”

“He’s got to be around someplace,” Ella said. “I doubt he’d leave this stuff just sitting here.”

“Let’s try the outhouse.”

They slipped out the back door and went about twenty yards into the
woods, along a narrow path, when they heard loud snoring. Ella glanced at Blalock and pointed ahead. A man was lying face down on the trail, next to an empty bottle of whiskey.

“This is how they freeze to death during the winter,” Blalock whispered, shaking his head.

As they moved in, Ella saw that the suspect had a semiautomatic rifle next to him. Henry was also as large as she’d been led to
believe. She motioned for Blalock to cover her, put her flashlight away, and crept toward the prone suspect, intending to grab the weapon.

The second she got close enough to do that, Henry reached out and tugged hard at her ankle.

Ella lost her balance and fell on her back, struggling to hold on to Henry’s rifle with one hand and her own pistol in the other.

“FBI! Don’t move!” Blalock ordered.

In a lightning-fast move, Henry rolled to his feet and dove down the slope into the trees.

“I’ve got him,” Ella called to Blalock, tossing the rifle over. It would only slow her down.

“I’ll cover the house in case he doubles back,” Blalock called out.

Ella scrambled down after Henry. She moved as quickly as she dared through the pines, trying to avoid tripping over logs or rocks that were sticking
up on the path.

Failing to find him as quickly as she’d expected, she considered the possibility of an ambush. Ella took several
quiet steps, then stopped and listened for movement. At first, she was sure she’d heard the sound of footsteps, but then it grew quiet.

It was still dark, so Ella brought out her flashlight, checking the forest floor cautiously, but found no footprints. Henry might
have feet the size of an elephant, but he knew the terrain and how to avoid leaving a trail.

After a few minutes, she finally stopped looking. It was dangerous to continue peering at the ground this intensely, knowing he was capable of a sudden rush when her back was turned. Her handgun was her only comfort now, though she wished it were a .45 instead of a 9 mm. Henry Mike was a moose, and a
little extra stopping power would have been reassuring.

It wasn’t long before she was forced to admit she’d lost him. Henry knew the area. If he didn’t want her to find him, it would be nearly impossible for her to do so now.

Ella headed back and met up with Blalock, who was standing behind cover at a spot where he could watch both the house and the SUV.

“No luck, I see,” he said, expelling
his breath in a hiss. “Maybe I should have gone after him, too, but guarding his stash here at the house seemed like a better idea at the time.”

“Even if both of us had given chase, we wouldn’t have been able to corner him. He knows the area better than either one of us, and is incredibly fast.” Ella looked at the shed. “Is his truck in there?”

“No, I already checked. According to the DMV he
has an old Chevy pickup, but maybe he stashed it somewhere down the mountain. It’s a long walk from here to the trading post otherwise,” Blalock said.

“True enough,” Ella said. “Too bad we didn’t have a Taser handy.”

“Yeah. I chose not to fire when he bolted because we
needed answers, not a body. I just never expected we’d come out empty-handed,” Blalock said.

“At least we’ve neutered him for
a while.” She pointed to the rifle in Blalock’s hand, a Remington autoloader. “What caliber, Dwayne?”

“It’s a .308, and fully loaded. Let’s see what else our boy stashed in there,” Blalock added, gesturing to the house.

“Rifles are common out here,” Ella said, falling into step beside him, “but I’ve never seen anyone outside an arms dealer with so much ammo on hand. Then there’s the ammonium
nitrate.”

“Maybe he was involved in that burglary over at Valley Construction,” Blalock said.

“Could be. If we also find some of the dynamite and detonators inside, we’ll know for sure. As for the ammo, it looked like military issue to me, at least at first glance,” Ella said. “Some of these guys have been known to smuggle back whatever they can.”

“Yeah, but the bullets you recovered outside
the gas station were civilian, not military issue,” Blalock said as they entered the cabin.

“This guy’s definitely not playing with a full deck—and his profile says loner. Look at this,” she said, opening the closet door and showing Blalock a row of rifles, some of them military and dating back to World War II.

“That British SMLE and the Springfield are still top-notch sniper rifles,” Blalock
said, helping her search. “There’s plenty of ammo here for those weapons, but I don’t see any detonators. Look, a can of black powder. We should check this against what was used in the pipe bomb.”

Ella took out her cell phone, verified that she could still get a signal, then called in the rest of her team, requesting an arrest-and-hold on Henry Mike. She then went back to studying the rifles,
beginning with the two weapons they
found in .308 caliber. The one in the closet was a hunting rifle with a scope. “Neither of these weapons have been fired recently.”

“Here’s a cleaning kit and it looks well used. He seems to take good care of his firearms. So what have we really got here, Ella? Someone who collects weapons because they make him feel secure, or something else altogether?” Blalock
asked in a faraway, thoughtful voice. “These weapons are better suited for forties-era guerilla warfare, not present-day terrorism. Not an automatic weapon or handgun in sight.”

“Maybe it’s his way of maintaining an arsenal without really breaking any laws,” she answered. “Or he could be selling them to collectors, or to hunters for cash.”

“He doesn’t have a criminal record except for the spousal
abuse, but he’s armed himself like one of the old-fashioned survivalists. What are we missing?” Blalock asked.

“Let’s keep looking,” Ella said. “It’s getting light to the east and maybe we’ll find something else.”

Ninety minutes later Justine showed up with Neskahi and Anna Bekis. “Did you see anyone on your way here?” Ella asked the moment she saw them.

Justine shook her head. “No, and we
were looking just as you asked us.”

“This is quite a stash,” Anna commented, looking around.

“Process everything here and let me know what, if anything, is on the stolen-weapons hotlist. Also, see if you can turn up any detonators or dynamite,” Ella said, then looked at Anna. “We need to find Henry Mike’s wife. She’s going to know more about him than anyone else. I’d like you to focus on that
as soon as you get back to the station.”

“I’ll find her,” Anna said. “Count on it.”

Something about Anna’s tone of voice and the determination in her eyes told Ella that the job was as good as done.

As her team got back to work, Ella glanced at Blalock. “The sun’s up so let’s expand our search around the cabin.
He must have had a vehicle someplace. Maybe now we can find some tracks.”

They
hiked around carefully and eventually found a forest trail and tire tracks among a grove of ponderosa pines. Continuing down the narrow path, they came across an old abandoned pickup with its hood up. Though the keys weren’t in it, it was unlocked, and the DMV papers in the glove compartment revealed that the truck was registered to Henry Mike.

A quick look under the hood revealed that a battery
cable had worn out and corroded completely through. “He fiddled with the battery cables for a while and still couldn’t get it to start up again, so he hoofed it from here,” Blalock said. “But where to? The highway must be twenty miles away on these winding roads.”

“Yeah, but the Sanostee Chapter House is only about five miles northeast of here,” Ella replied, pointing down the mountainside. “He
could have run down the mountain and helped himself to someone else’s ride. Let’s check out that possibility first. If not, then Mike’s still in the area, and we’ll need to go after him. We have some excellent trackers and it wouldn’t take long for them to trailer in their horses.”

As they hurried back up the forest trail, Ella used her cell phone to caution her team in case Henry doubled back
to hijack one of their vehicles.

After Ella listened to Justine’s preliminary report, she hung up and glanced over at Blalock. “They found some diesel fuel at the cabin. There was a small barrel with about twenty-five gallons just beyond the shed. Henry’s pickup had a gas engine, so you know what I’m thinking?”

He nodded slowly. “Ammonium nitrate, diesel fuel, and a detonator are the basics
for a really nice bomb, like the one used in the Oklahoma City attack. Fortunately, this bomb would have been way smaller than the one McVeigh constructed.”

“How big does it have to be to kill one man?” Ella mumbled, picking up the pace.

About forty minutes later, they spotted a home they hadn’t seen during their night approach. They parked and went in on foot, but soon it became clear that
no one had lived there for years. The windows had been smashed and the doors were missing most of their hardware. Tumbleweeds were almost as thick inside the house as around the outside. “There’s no hole punched in the side, so no one died here,” Ella commented.

“Cheery thought,” Blalock muttered.

“Abandoned places like these aren’t uncommon. Squatters could have been kicked out, or maybe it’s
a matter of people walking away from a place that’s falling apart because they can’t afford to fix it,” she said.

“When we first got out of the vehicle, I noticed the roof of another home just over the hill. Let’s go check it out.”

They arrived two minutes later at a stucco home. Its windows and doors were intact and smoke was curling out of the stovepipe poking through the tar-paper roof. There
was no hogan visible, nor any sheep or other livestock, but the occupants had what looked like a pump house and a well.

“So, are they Traditionalists, or can we go up to the door and knock?” Blalock asked.

“When in doubt, wait,” Ella said.

Just then, the front door opened and a young woman wearing a traditional long Navajo skirt and cotton-print blouse came out and waved.

“Are you here about
our pickup?” she asked as they approached.

“Excuse me?” Ella asked.

“You’re the police, right? My husband told me he’d use the phone at the trading post on his way to work to report the theft. We don’t have a phone of our own. We figure the
thief must have taken our pickup either late last night or early this morning. When I got up to fix breakfast, I looked out the window and it wasn’t there
anymore.”

“I’m Investigator Clah of the Navajo Tribal Police. Can you describe the truck for us?”

“It’s a faded blue, ’66 Ford. It’s no prize, but you’ve got to get it back for us. It’ll take months and months for us to save up enough money to get another one.”

“We’ll do our best,” Ella replied, then called in the description of the stolen truck. Manpower was thin on this part of the reservation,
but a description of what Henry Mike was driving would help.

Continuing the investigation, they followed the tracks to the chapter house where the paved road began. From there it was about ten miles to the main highway.

“So what now?” Blalock muttered. “He could have gone south, then turned off in a dozen different places. Or maybe he went north?”

“To Shiprock, you mean. We better find him
fast, then. He’s a disaster waiting to happen. Henry’s probably armed, has a problem with alcohol, and a reason to resent Ford. And he could have more bomb supplies stashed somewhere.”

Ella updated her team, then she and Blalock headed back toward Shiprock. They’d been driving for about ten minutes when her cell phone rang.

“Got a problem, and thought you’d want to know,” Teeny said in a clipped
tone. “Someone’s outside the fence line watching my place, so I called the PD. Unfortunately, the closest officer can’t get here for another half hour. I’ve got things covered for now, so you don’t have to worry. I just wanted to keep you informed.”

“Be careful,” she said, giving him an update on Henry Mike. “He may have another weapons stash, and bomb making supplies.”

“Good to know,” he said.
“I’ll keep you updated.”

“For what it’s worth, I doubt you’re dealing with Henry Mike,” Ella added. “There’s no way he could have known Ford was at your place.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Teeny answered slowly. “Ford took the dog and went over to the church by himself yesterday while I was out purchasing supplies. He never mentioned the trip to me, but I found out later when I reviewed the surveillance
tape. When I asked him about it, he said that he’d gone to help Reverend Campbell. There was an emergency with one of the parishioners Ford had been counseling. She’d gone to the church looking for him and Reverend Campbell couldn’t calm her, so he asked Ford for help.”