Tribal Ways (12 page)

“So what we got here,” Lieutenant Tom Ten Bears said, “is what we call in law enforcement, technically, a big ol’ mess.”

Actually, Annja was willing to bet they called it something much worse, but she wasn’t about to contradict him.

They stood together next to the grid marked out by the OU archaeological dig team. The sticks leaned. The twine boundaries sagged forlornly. The wind plucked them like flaccid violin strings, eliciting no music Annja could hear.

“And we’re right in the middle of it,” she said.

“That surely is the case. Where’ve you been hiding from me, Ms. Creed?”

“If I told you it wouldn’t be hiding,” she said. “Am I in trouble? Have I gotten you in trouble?”

“‘Not yet’ to both.” He chuckled deep in his throat. “That was a cute trick to set up this meet. Why go all around Kicking Bird’s barn to do it, though?”

She had called his cell from a pay phone. She told him to go to where they first met and ask about her. At the ICU of the Norman medical center they had given him a handwritten note. It read simply, “Dig site.”

“I don’t want to be arrested,” she said. “Much less die.”

“You don’t trust the authorities?” His voice had taken on an edge like the spring wind.

She turned to face him. “No,” she said. “You told me yourself—nothing happens in Indian country that doesn’t get seen.”

He stared at her for a moment. Then, slowly, he nodded. “I see what you mean.”

“It doesn’t necessarily mean a traitor,” she added.

He turned away and sighed a puff of condensation. “But it’s possible. Likely, even, now that I think about it.”

“Then there’s the Feds,” she said. “I didn’t want to risk them listening to your calls.”

He turned back. “You really think they’d—whoa. No need to finish that, is there?”

He walked a few steps away from her. “I’m a patriot, Ms. Creed,” he said. “Any true Indian is. Think about it. The American white-eyes beat us. That must make them the best there is, huh? So theirs is an honorable path to follow.”

He shook his head. “And it’s a good country. The bad things that were done a long time ago—they were plenty bad. They’re also long past. In the end your people treated mine better than a lot of conquered peoples have gotten. And we’re accepted—mostly.”

“Yes,” she said. She wasn’t sure where he was going.

“I’ve fought for this country,” he said. “Not just in Iraq. And I still believe in it. But—”

He shook his head again. “I can’t believe in everything it does. Done in its name. I can’t believe in what it sometimes seems it’s becoming. I see the part I’ve played in that—and I feel ashamed. Is that wrong? Am I weak?”

“No,” she said. “And no.”

“Why did you want to talk to me, Ms. Creed?”

“I didn’t want you hunting for me.”

He laughed. “That’s pretty up front.”

“I also don’t want to lie to you, Lieutenant. Mainly, I don’t know if I could get away with it. Is anybody looking for me?”

“No. Not…formally.”

That set Annja’s danger antennae to quivering. “What does that mean?”

“Well, that George Abell from the Nation’s special investigative unit has been putting the word out he really wants to talk to you. Seems he thinks you’re part of the problem.”

A chill ran down Annja’s back like meltwater from a snow-covered branch. “And you’re not going to hand me over to him?”

“Him?” Ten Bears laughed. “Georgie’s always been strong in the body, and he’s anything but stupid. But he still’s never showed many signs of being worth much. He likes to lecture people on the glories of our ancestors riding across the Plains, but he’s always done most of his riding on his daddy’s coattails. Him and his little rich-boy pals, they went off to school and got law degrees. Then they come back, and the next thing anybody knows, they got ’em this shiny new SIU. Most folks hereabouts just reckon that’s another toy his daddy, Rich Ronnie Abell, bought for him.”

“So that’s a no. Even though you’re a stand-up lawman.”

“Having a fancy badge don’t make you a lawman in my book, Ms. Creed,” Ten Bears said. “George wants to talk to you, let him do some real police work for once and run you down himself. Anyway, I still want you helping me track down this serial killer. Not like anybody else is looking for him.”

He stuck his hands in his jacket pockets. “Brr. Cold out here. Dunno how the ancestors put up with it without pockets.”

“What do you mean, Lieutenant? About nobody looking for the skinwalker?”

“We been passed by,” he said. “We’re old news. All these poor, dead people—nobody’s interested in that now. Serial killers were all the hot thing a few years ago. Now it’s terrorists.”

“They pulled you off the investigation?”

“No. Only just about everybody else.”

She drew a deep breath. “I saw something,” she said. “The other night.”

“What?”

She told him what she’d witnessed in the training center. She left out any indication she’d done anything other than duck and run—and, of course, all mention of the sword. She let him think she’d escaped by a combination of resourcefulness and dumb luck.

“Why didn’t you call me, then?” he asked when she’d finished.

“You already know that,” she said. “The Dogs had already set me up for abduction. Then I went and blew up their terror confab. How do you think I’d have wound up if I blurted that on the phone?”

“Like that poor reporter girl yesterday,” he said. “I knew her folks, you know? She interviewed me a few times.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Hey, if bad things only happened to people who deserved them, people like me’d be out of a job. You, too, I think.”

She sucked in a breath.

“Now, why’d I go and say a fool thing like that?” he said. “You’re just an archaeologist, right? Anyway, it looks like we’ve got us a full-blown war between rival gangs of would-be terrorists on our hands.”

“What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “From the news it surely looks like the Iron Horses have struck back at the Dogs.”

“You believe them?”

“They got evidence,” he said. “Monica—Ms. Stevenson—was investigating the Iron Horses. So who else was it went and did her and that poor camera fella like that?”

The Iron Horses tell me otherwise, she thought desperately. They figure the Dogs must have been setting Stevenson up for this for weeks. To frame the Horses.

She believed them. For one thing she’d seen both the Iron Horse People and the Dog Society up close. She knew which bunch kept trying to kill her.

But she couldn’t tell
him.

“Where you been keeping yourself, Ms. Creed?”

“I have contacts in the area. From my college days.” It was true, as a matter of fact. Also irrelevant. “I’ve got help,” she said.

He looked worried. “You sure you know what you’re doing?”

“No. But it’s what I have to do.”

“Don’t play this too cute,” he said. “The stakes are too high. The game is too ugly.”

“I’ll try not to. I don’t want to end up like Ms. Stevenson. I promise.”

“Let me give you one bit of advice—stay clear of the Iron Horses. And especially John.”

“What about you?”

He looked away from her, squinting up into the rain that began to spit from cloud bellies the color of bullets.

“I’m gonna find him before anybody else does. That’s a promise.”

“And then?”

“And then—well, a man’s got to be able to shoot his own dog.”

“Y
OU TALKED TO THAT
policeman,” the woman named Snake said the moment she walked in the safe house door that afternoon.

And here I was thinking our inevitable eventual encounter couldn’t get more uncomfortable, Annja thought. She was sitting on the couch, looking at her computer.

“Yes,” she said, shutting the laptop and placing it beside her.

Snake coiled her sinuous length onto a footstool and regarded Annja without friendliness.

“So you’re crashing here with us?” Snake asked.

“Wait,” Annja said. “You’re not going to accuse me of selling you out?”

“You’re not stupid,” Snake said, “even if you don’t always have much sense. We’re your only chance of survival, as long as you stay in the area. You think the Dog Soldiers couldn’t reach out and touch you if you were locked up in a cell?”

“No. I know perfectly well they could.”

“You could always fly away home to New York.”

Annja wasn’t at all sure that would work. If she left, law enforcement was likely to take an unhealthy interest in her. She felt, possibly irrationally, that her best chance for avoiding that kind of uncomfortable scrutiny was to see this thing through.

For that matter the Dogs weren’t likely to give up on her scent, either. As long as they were at large and scheming they threatened her.

“I’m not leaving,” she said. “I still have my friend’s death to avenge.”

“You mean that? I thought you liberal white college girls didn’t believe in vengeance.”

“I do.”

Snake shrugged. “Point to you.”

“Also,” Annja said, “I don’t want to see the Iron Horse People made the scapegoats here. I feel responsible in some way.”

“You aren’t,” Snake said. “This was going on a long time before you got here. Probably go on a long time after you’re gone.”

“Some of it, maybe. But I’m not going anywhere until I see things settled with the skinwalker. And the Dogs.”

Why am I so convinced that they’re tied up together in this? Annja wondered.

There was way too much coincidence involved. The skinwalker and the Dogs seemed to be coming from the same direction. With this wave of murder breaking things wide open, the terrorists and the shadowy serial killer
had
to be working together by now. If they hadn’t been all along.

Snake gave Annja a sidewise glance. “Johnny likes you.”

He does? Annja’s heart did a little bounce.

“And that’s a problem for you?” she asked.

“It distracts him. At a time like this that’s not good.” But the long, lean Cheyenne woman wasn’t meeting Annja’s gaze, Annja noted.

“I think he’ll manage.”

Snake stood. “He’d better,” she said. “He’s a great man. He has the potential to be a catalyst. Help people create serious changes—changes for the better. I won’t let anything happen to him.”

Annja met her gaze. “Good,” she said. “I hope you’re right.”

C
APTIVITY QUICKLY BORED
Annja silly. Her natural drive to be off and doing things soon turned into a caged-panther frustrated pacing. She didn’t even dare log online to get e-mail.

At least Doug can’t bug me here, she said, thinking of her Chasing History’s Monsters, producer, Doug Morrell. It was a blessing that law enforcement hadn’t released to the media any of the details identifying the I-40 Killer as a skinwalker. Otherwise, he would have been after her to follow up the monster angle with an eye to doing a show about werewolves.

Fortunately her few friends and her co-workers were accustomed to her dropping out of sight for protracted periods. They had convinced themselves she contracted out to do things, like help authorities in far-flung countries track down relic poachers. And occasionally that was even true.

Fortunately Annja kept a large selection of books and researched papers on her handy little computer.

But she could only spend so much time reading.

She wasn’t literally a prisoner. Not of the Iron Horse People, anyway. She wasn’t sure why they treated her so hospitably, although the more contact she had with them the more she found herself liking them. And vice versa, apparently.

But if she left the isolated safe house she risked being trolled in by law enforcement. Or abducted by the Dog Soldiers. And there always remained the chilling possibility that they could amount to one and the same thing.

Annja didn’t even dare go for a run in the hills—that would increase the risk of being spotted too much. She could go outside in the yard and do some practice with her sword. The house had no clear sight lines for any great distance, especially to any road or neighboring dwelling.

The majority of the time she had the place to herself. Clearly the club had other safe houses and secret hideouts. She figured most or all the Iron Horse People had some other occupation than mere motorcycle outlaw—especially since she knew that selling drugs, the popular income stream for modern biker gangs, was something they didn’t do.

They seemed in many ways oddly prim for a band of outlaws who carried weapons and were willing to use them. Their day jobs were going to be threatened if it was known they belonged to what the FBI now loudly trumpeted as a domestic terrorist group.

Annja felt safe swinging the sword in the backyard. And in bumming around the house in general. So much so that habits from her rare and cherished intervals at home in her own Brooklyn loft began to kick back in.

And so it was the second afternoon alone that Annja emerged from the bathroom after the shower for the short walk down the hall to her sparsely furnished but comfortable room wearing nothing but a fuzzy towel wound around her long wet hair in an impromptu turban…

And promptly found herself face-to-face with Johnny Ten Bears.

“Is this what you’ve been doing all this time?” Johnny Ten Bears asked her. “Running around the house buck naked? Sorry I’ve been away so much.”

Annja felt all too aware of his presence. His very
male
presence. He was a big, healthy, young masculine animal who smelled of outdoors and motor oil and a hint of sweat, dressed in his colors and olive drab T-shirt and faded jeans. He stood within her usual personal space for the simple reason that she’d all but walked into him when she came out of the bathroom. And he stood there smiling appreciatively at her and did not step back.

She felt a surge of fear. How well do I know this guy? she thought. I’m totally in his power. As far as he knows.

The sword’s constant absent presence was, as often, a comfort. But not a major one. He was strong and panther-quick, she knew. And well trained. She should never forget he’d been an Army Ranger in Afghanistan. At these close quarters he might well immobilize her before she could summon the sword, or even disarm her if she did.

As was her reflex when ambushed, she counterattacked. “A gentleman would look away,” she said tartly.

He laughed. “I’m not a gentleman. Not exactly part of my cultural heritage.”

Damn it, he
is
attractive, she thought. The European concept of
gentleman
may have been alien to his tradition, but his bearing was as beyond-confident assured as any medieval lord’s. She began to understand just why the Comanches had once been called Lords of the Plains.

She stomped past him down the hall and slammed the door to her room behind her.

Her philosophy was, if you crash your plane, you need to get back in the air as soon as possible. So within five minutes she was dressed in jeans, a T-shirt and a bulky man’s flannel shirt her hosts had lent her. She even put on socks and shoes, instead of going barefoot or in stocking feet as she usually did. Then she stalked out to the living room.

Johnny sat talking earnestly to some of his bikers. When one’s glance registered her, he looked back over his shoulder and grinned.

“Got all dressed, did you? Don’t feel obliged to do it on my account.”

“That’s precisely why I did it, Johnny.”

The others laughed. “You’re not afraid to stand up to anybody, are you?” Johnny asked. “In any circumstances.”

“I haven’t met everybody,” she said, “nor under every circumstance. So I can’t say for sure. But so far—no.”

They all laughed at that. Angel, who was on the couch, invited Annja to sit beside her. Annja did. It seemed safest all around.

More members came in as they discussed the difficulties they were having trying to earn a living, much less trying to track down their rival Dog Soldiers without getting picked off, either by the Dog Society or law enforcement.

“FBI’s living up to its reputation,” Ricky reported. “Basically they trample around alienating everybody.”

“Standard operating procedure for the Bureau,” his girlfriend, Angel, said.

“Bigger trouble is the Staties,” Ricky said, with a sidelong glance at Johnny, who was eating a pear.

“Because of my father,” he said.

Annja frowned. She felt a burning urge to argue the case with Johnny. It seemed vital to her for any number of reasons—not least the fact she found herself liking and respecting both men—to somehow find a way to get the two past their mutually interposed walls of pride and misunderstanding.

But it didn’t seem the sort of thing to discuss in front of the rest. It felt too personal. Besides, she was pretty sure that in front of his clan Johnny would feel especially challenged, and resist listening to anything she had to say.

“So we’re keeping out of the way of trouble,” Johnny said. “But that’s not getting anywhere. We can’t afford to play a waiting game for very much longer. Sooner or later they’ll start to run us down.”

“The good news is the Dogs haven’t stuck their ugly heads up much since they went on their killing spree a couple days ago,” Billy reported. The TV news had reported three more bodies found. “The bad news is, we can’t turn up any trace of them, either.”

“Maybe they’re afraid they overstretched and have shut it all down,” Ricky said, reaching for a handful of chips. Fruit and various snacks had begun appearing periodically as the discussion went on.

But Johnny, who for once had bound his hair back in a ponytail that hung well down his arrowhead-shaped back, shook his head. “We wish. They’re
preparing.
The casino opening’s tomorrow. They’re using their success in transferring the heat to us to get ready for their final move.”

“But what will that be?” Angel asked. She absently tousled Ricky’s hair, which he wore relatively short.

“That’s the bitch of it,” Johnny said. “The clock’s running on us. But all I can see to do now is sit tight and wait for their next move. And that truly sucks.”

He looked at Annja. “Unless somebody has a better idea?”

“I wish I did.”

“One thing on our side,” Billy said, sitting back in his chair and putting his hands behind his head.

“Do tell,” Johnny said.

“We may be running out of time, but what we don’t have is a definite deadline. The Dogs do.”

“The casino opening,” Annja said.

“Got it in one.”

“Well, we just have to hope that’s enough,” he said. “Now, who wants something serious to eat? I’m hungry.”

“S
O ISN’T THAT A STRANGE
activity for outlaw bikers to take up?” Annja asked, picking up a slice from one of the pizzas someone had brought and plopping it on her plate. Outside the windows, night had arrived. At least a dozen of the Iron Horse people had gathered in the safe house living room. Disregarded, the television flickered in the background. “Fostering a barter network among the Comanche and Kiowa communities—even whites, if I’m hearing you correctly?”

“So you figure we’re not doing enough armed robberies, then?” Johnny asked.

She shook her head. “It’s not that at all. You’re just being difficult.”

Johnny held a piece of pizza in the air, tipped his head back like a hungry baby bird and bit off the dangling tip. “You expected something different?”

“Well, we ride bikes,” Billy said. “And we do things we think are right, whether or not they’re strictly legal. So I guess that makes us outlaws. So, outlaw bikers, huh?”

“Tell her about the project you and Snake cooked up, Billy,” Johnny said.

Annja craned around to look at Snake, who sat on a footstool off to one side with her tattooed arms crossed. The woman gave her a thin smile.

“It’s about getting people set up for small-scale power generation,” Billy said enthusiastically. Windmills, solar—there are some really exciting technologies coming up the pike, make localized and even household-level power generation more and more feasible. Snake there handles the technical aspects. She was a real black-program electronics whiz for some DARPA-connected company before quitting to go in the wind.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Not a bit of it.”

“Okay, here’s something else I don’t understand,” Annja said. “Aren’t you supposed to be big on restoring your native traditions? And yet here you are trying to promote some pretty high technology.”

“Them high-and-wide old days on the Plains,” Billy said, “they’re gone forever, Annja. And we wouldn’t bring them back if we could.”

“I’m officially confused now.”

“We’re exploring,” Johnny said. “Experimenting. Trying to find the proper balance. Even that’s not the right word. What we’re working on is finding and making use of the best of the old and the new.”

“So we’re looking to maximize our advantages,” Billy said.

Annja cocked a brow at him.

“Don’t mind Billy,” Johnny said, helping himself to another slice of pizza. “He got himself a degree in economics a couple years back. Pretty much the only dude in the OU program to do it while working full-time as a fleet mechanic for a local trucking firm.”

Annja looked around at the dark, cheerful faces. “Is this some kind of PhDs-only motorcycle club?” she asked.

“Well,” Johnny said, “we
are
a motorcycle club. We all love to ride—love the sense of freedom it gives you. And freedom’s what it’s all about for us. But you’re right—that isn’t all we are.”

He picked up a napkin and dabbed grease from his lips. “I didn’t start the Iron Horse People, see. That was Billy, years ago. He started—you’d call it networking now—getting together with some like-minded people. People interested in getting off the grid. People interested in trying to build a society that’d work without involving the government at all.”

“In some ways the luckiest thing ever happened to us Comanches and Kiowa was getting screwed out of our reservations by the government,” Billy said.

“Reservations were always just a nice name for concentration camps,” Snake said.

“That’s true,” Billy said. “And reservation Indians have always been wards of the state. Any crazy-ass bit of social engineering theory that came up, they got force-fed like laboratory guinea pigs. They basically have no control over their own destinies. Their own lives. One week the official policy is to wipe out Indian culture and force everybody to be a fake white man. Next week suddenly they’re trying to preserve traditional ways. Only those ‘traditions’ are what some bureaucratic hobbyist in Washington thinks they are.”

He shook his big round head. “No wonder people take to the bottle so much.”

“What about the income from casinos? That seems to be making a lot of money for a lot of tribes,” Annja said.

“Which mostly winds up lining the pockets of the tribal governments,” Johnny said, “and their cronies.”

“Is that why you’re opposed to the new casino opening tomorrow? I mean, I’m not sure how much power the Comanche Nation government has, since they don’t have a reservation to administer.”

“Increasing income to the Nation from casino receipts can only centralize wealth and power,” Billy said. “Encourage people to support a sort of top-down model—those up top bestow largesse on those below. Saps the independence of the people, too. Makes ’em dependent. The polar opposite of what we’re about.”

“So you think it represents voodoo economics?” Annja asked.

“I thought it was more the way socialism works,” Johnny said. “The notion that concentrating wealth and power and calling it ‘the state’ will somehow help the masses.”

Annja shook her head. “This is all pretty wild. Half the time you talk like total radicals. Half the time you sound like some kind of militia types out of the nineties.”

The Iron Horses looked at one another and laughed. “Looks like you’re starting to catch on,” Billy said, helping himself to pizza.

A
S IT GOT LATE
the Iron Horse People began to drift away to wherever they’d lie low for the night. Because of their strong comradeship, which Annja found so appealing, they were willing to risk bunching up for limited periods of time. But they understood the value of dispersal—a single bad break wouldn’t wind up with all of them dead or behind bars.

When the crowd had thinned Annja went into the kitchen, where she found Johnny Ten Bears elbow-deep in foamy water.

“What kind of biker lord does the dishes?” she asked, propping her rump against the edge of the kitchen table.

“The kind whose turn it is to do the dishes,” Johnny said. “Anyway, you already know we’re not exactly an orthodox motorcycle club. And besides, the word
lord
sure doesn’t apply to me. The concept’s not part of South Plains Indian culture. You should realize by now these particular misfits are the very last people on earth who’d submit to any kind of lord.”

“What are you, then?”

He shrugged. “Speaker. Guide. It’s all by consensus. Persuasion. Everything is voluntary. That’s a tradition we definitely want to keep. Nobody has power over anybody else. Nobody wants it—nobody’d consent to letting anyone have power over them.”

“I can see why your ancestors had such a hard time adjusting to the European-derived overculture.”

“Well, some of us adapted way too well.”

“So, Billy didn’t resent your taking over as—whatever you are?”

“Oh, hell, no. I do take responsibility for keeping us together and seeing everybody’s cared for. Road boss is probably the best term for what I actually do. Billy’s good at doing things, and he’s more than a bit of a dreamer. A hell of a dreamer. But he isn’t fond of responsibility.”

“So how’d you get tied up with the Iron Horse People, anyway?” Annja asked.

“Well,” he said, setting another dish in the rack to dry, “I’ve known Billy White Bird my whole life. You probably noticed my father and I don’t see eye to eye. It’s always been like that, ever since I was little. He wanted me to play GIs and Nazis—I wanted to play cowboys and Indians. And have the Indians win. Billy was an old war buddy of his who turned into something of a surrogate father to me.”

“Oh,” Annja said. She wanted to encourage him to open up, but didn’t feel she could say something like, “I see.” Because she wasn’t sure she did.

“When I got back from my second tour in the ’Stan I was pretty messed up. Not physically—I was lucky that way. Not even psychologically, like so many of the people I served with. That’s one place a lot of us Indian types have an advantage. Comanches are still a warrior culture. We know what we’re getting into.”

“So how were you messed up, then?”

He shrugged. “Morally, I guess. Let’s just say it turned out we weren’t fighting for what I and most of my buddies thought we were. And I began to see how that reflected a country that had turned into something other than what I thought it was. Except, as I started to study a little deeper, I came to see maybe there hadn’t been such a big change, after all—that the country wasn’t about things like freedom and opportunity and tolerance that we’d always been taught it was, and never had been. That it was all a bill of goods we were sold so we’d line up and turn into obedient little consumers and conscripts.”

“That seems like kind of an extreme reaction.”