Tribal Ways (20 page)

There was something pressing outward from within her. Something she must say.

“Thank you,” she croaked to her supporters. “The sword—please…don’t tell anyone.”

Snake shook her head. “I won’t,” she said. “That’s between you and your Power. It’s not mine to give.”

“I didn’t see anything,” Sallie said determinedly, and Annja again heard that Ten Bears stubbornness ringing in her voice.

The disparate pair managed to support Annja across the yard and up the road, to where Johnny Ten Bears knelt with his father’s head cradled on his thighs.

The sight of her dad lying there was too much for Sallie. With a broken scream she launched herself from beneath Annja’s arm and fell across his bloody chest, sobbing wildly. Snake caught Annja as her knees buckled and kept her from falling, despite the pain it must have cost her.

Tom Ten Bears somehow retained the strength to lay an arm across his daughter’s heaving back. “You’re all right,” he said in a faint voice.

“Tom,” Annja said.

“My daughter is safe,” he said to her. “My son lives. It is a good day.”

Johnny raised his face to hers. His lean, bruised cheeks ran with tears.

“My father,” he said, reaching down to stroke the back of his sister’s head. “I found him. Now I’m losing him.”

“Your brother will take care of you, Sallie,” Tom said. “He is a good man. I…am proud.”

His head lolled to the side and the life left his eyes.

And then the thunder of rotors swept over them like a Great Plains thunderstorm. Annja looked up at the great shark shadows that seemed to fill the sky with their rotors sweeping overhead. It was too much.

She slipped into darkness.

Everybody was arrested.

After Annja came to and was herded to join the others sitting under the guns and black-visored gazes of the FBI SWAT unit, Annja learned the day’s terrible toll. Of those who’d gone with Annja, Johnny and Tom on their last ride, only she, Johnny, Snake, Angel and Lonny Blackhands survived. The others had died. Ricky had succumbed to his wounds, Angel told her in a lost and quiet voice, while shooting at the charging skinwalker. Angel herself had been shot through the upper arm.

The skinwalker had also killed two of the Indian-vet snipers before he attacked the house.

For some odd reason, the media never arrived before the survivors got shackled and bundled into the vehicles of the Albuquerque convoy, which had arrived at almost the same instant as the four FBI choppers. It took some soft words from Johnny to get Sallie to consent to be detached from his side and escorted into a sedan by a shocked-looking female assistant U.S. Attorney. Johnny himself as well as Snake and Angel went into ambulances to be taken under guard for treatment at University Hospital.

Annja’s and Lonny’s wounds were dressed by medics on the scene. They weren’t serious, and aside from cleaning lacerations and applying some bandages there wasn’t much to be done for them. They consisted mainly of massive bone-deep bruising and, at least in Annja’s case, a crushing sadness compounded of adrenaline letdown and grief and trepidation for the fates of herself and her friends.

When she found herself ushered, not ungently, into a black SUV with dark-tinted windows, the first thing Annja saw was Edgar Martínez grinning at her. Rocendo and Frank were in there with him.

“Welcome, fellow jailbirds,” he said. “We held ’em as long as we could. Hope it was enough.”

“You were perfect,” she said, with only a slight hitch in her voice.

Eventually they all wound up in the federal courthouse in Albuquerque. There they were subjected to what would later be termed extensive debriefing.

At the time it seemed to Annja a lot like plain old-fashioned interrogation. It went on for hours at a stretch. The only reason she wasn’t subject to twelve-hour sessions was that they just didn’t have enough personnel on hand to do that, especially given the gigantic investigation into the Dog Society and their now-infamous plot. Instead, between three- or four-hour grillings, Annja was left locked in the interrogation rooms to stew. Despite the fact she was deliberately not made comfortable she mostly slept.

They were clearly not happy, the Bureau agents and the U.S. attorneys. An edge actually came into Special Agent in Charge Lamont Young’s bland voice as he told Annja in no uncertain terms how disappointed he was in her.

Annja had no way of knowing how long they kept her. She never wore a watch, and she’d left all her gear with the Indian good old boys staying behind at the vehicles in what proved the futile hope of avoiding detection by the tech-heavy Crazy Dogs. The sound of the door opening awakened her. A little trim Latino with a brush of dense, backswept steel-colored hair and a handlebar moustache, dressed in an immaculate dark blue suit and a bolo tie, was ushered in.

“Annja Creed?” he asked in one of those deep, mellifluous trial-lawyer voices. “My name is Reynaldo Montoya. I must say it’s an honor and a privilege to meet you.” He had a dark complexion obviously darkened further by long exposure to the Southwestern sun; it lent him craggy gravitas. Notwithstanding his lack of height he fairly radiated energy and sheer presence.

Annja stirred. She had been dead asleep, stacked in a corner with her Windbreaker huddled about her. It was colder in the interrogation room than it had been in the derelict ranch house out on the Great Plains.

“Thanks,” she said. “I think. Are you the one playing good cop?”

He laughed. “Ms. Creed, I assure you, I’m not a cop at all.”

He came to her side and helped her up. He got her settled into a chair at the obligatory interrogation-room table, then looked up at the blatantly obvious camera mounted in a corner of the ceiling.

“Get some hot coffee in here for this woman,” he barked. “Now.”

Montoya sat down across the table from her and smiled. “I’m eager to hear your story,” he said. “But first there are some things I must tell you.”

“Who are you?” she asked. Fatigue still weighed on her. “And, uh, what are you doing here?”

“Those are as good places to start as any. I am an attorney. I’m retired from paid practice. These days I devote my time and energy to fighting for the rights of those falsely accused, prosecuted or convicted. I am—I
was
—a friend of Tom Ten Bears. We met several years ago when he played a key role in helping us exonerate a young Acoma Pueblo man falsely charged with rape and murder in Lawton, Oklahoma.”

That surprised Annja. She would’ve thought that, good man though she knew the lieutenant to be, his warrior ethos would dictate his putting cop solidarity above all. Instead, he seemed committed, as she herself was, to justice as an ideal. Not another empty promise chiseled into the wall of a government building.

She felt shame then at having underestimated the man, in even such a trivial way. It became easier likewise to understand how Johnny had misjudged him. He had grown up as the man’s son, after all, ensuring that in ways he understood him less than anybody, for reasons of rivalry and adolescent rebellion.

As Tom, in fairness, had underestimated his son at least as badly.

“As to what I’m doing here,” Montoya said, folding his hands on the desk before him after allowing her a moment to process his words, “I am assisting you and your comrades from the incident in Harding County. I might mention I am but one of a human wave of attorneys hurling themselves against the walls of this courthouse, by the way.”

“Who’s paying for all this?”

He laughed. “You’ve dealt with lawyers before, I take it? I donate my efforts. I have done well on investments made during a long and lucrative career, largely by ignoring the advice of pundits and advisers. As for the rest—some are likewise donating their time, as friends of Tom Ten Bears or simply of justice. And others constitute part of the truly imposing amounts of pressure being applied to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Attorneys’ Office by the Oklahoma and New Mexico state governments, as well as half a dozen Indian tribes, to let you all go.”

“Is there really even a chance of that?”

“Oh, yes, Ms. Creed. What I might term a very good chance.
If
you agree to certain terms, which, I admit, you might find unpalatable.”

“Winding up in a federal penitentiary for the rest of my life would be pretty unpalatable, Mr. Montoya. But I have to warn you—I’m not going to sell my friends for my freedom.”

“Fortunately, I don’t believe it will come to that. Not if you agree to the terms I am about to convey to you. If not—” he shrugged “—then you may find yourself faced with such a dilemma.”

“What’s the deal?” Annja asked, as much out of curiosity as hope. Once law enforcement got their jaws in you, she had observed, they tended not to let go until they could shake you into pleading guilty to something.

“The Bureau and the Department of Justice find themselves in a most uncomfortable position,” he said. “To be perfectly blunt, stumbling late onto a slaughter of unquestionable criminals does not provide nearly the media extravaganza as actually slaughtering the aforementioned criminals in a shootout, broadcast throughout the world in real time. Especially since the media, contrary to the evident expectations of Special Agent in Charge Lamont Young, who commanded the operation, never showed up until well after the action had ended and you and your associates were on your way here.”

“That puzzled me, too. Especially since we heard before we went in that the FBI had leaked the operation to the media, and the U.S. Attorneys’ Office—here, I guess—was hoping to avert a massacre that would play into the Crazy Dogs’ hands. We, uh—we had contacts of our own in law enforcement, you see.”

“Oh, yes,” he said, and his dark eyes twinkled as he nodded. “I know that very well, believe me. It turns out that Tom’s network has its tentacles in lots of unexpected places. A benefit of a culture that emphasizes strong bonds across extended families, I believe. It would appear that the media experienced certain technical difficulties. Including being mysteriously directed to the wrong location.”

Annja laughed. It felt good to do that. Even if it made her feel as if she was being speared through the lungs.

“So here’s what we find—fifteen more dead terrorists, nine dead civilians, a delightful and highly photogenic young Native American girl hostage released unharmed. And not a federal agent in sight until it was all over.”

“And us no doubt facing a really remarkable array of federal charges,” Annja said.

“Well, therein lies the rub. Technically, no doubt, laws were broken. Bent, at the very least. Now imagine, please, presenting defendants to a jury on the basis of crimes committed while combating terrorism, at substantial risk and cost to themselves and their accomplices, defeating those terrorists and returning young Allesandra Ten Bears safely to her mother. And you, as a prosecuting attorney, are asking these twelve good Americans to send those defendants to prison. Would
you
want to be that prosecutor, Ms. Creed?”

She thought about it. Then she laughed until the pain in her chest stole her breath.

“I don’t think so.”

“Indeed not. It’s a truism that jury behavior is unpredictable. And I daresay their reaction would be unpredictable. For example, would they settle simply for acquitting on all charges after seconds of deliberation, or would they physically chase the U.S. Attorney out of the courtroom in an attempt to lynch him? Or her.”

All Annja could muster this time was a pained chuckle.

“The Crazy Dogs Who Got Their Wishes to Die did a remarkably comprehensive job of fouling their own den,” Montoya said. “Some of them were rogue law-enforcement agents, members in full standing of the national security network who themselves perpetrated some of the most heinous acts of domestic terrorism in America’s history, and who came within a hair of taking top place almost within sight of the scene of the Oklahoma City bombing. There’s no better way to forfeit the sympathies of an American public who, for better or worse, tend to harbor strong prejudices in favor of the police.

“Surviving members of the group have admitted to engaging in the abduction, torture and murder of various important personages with the Comanche Nation, not to mention a young female reporter and her African-American cameraman, which hasn’t endeared them to the Numunu people, nor Oklahomans in general. They have even been accused of luring in a number of noted radicals—black, Latino and antiglobalist activists wanted for a whole spectrum of terrorist acts themselves—and murdering them in some abandoned training facility outside Lawton. That’s turned the left and the radical community against them. At this point, the Dog Society could actively improve its image by enlisting Osama bin Laden.”

Annja nodded. “I see. But what exactly are you offering me, Mr. Montoya?”

“The same thing all your associates are being offered. That includes the members of the Iron Horse People Motorcycle Club, as well as a number of acquaintances of the late—and, might I add, highly decorated and widely respected—Oklahoma Highway Patrol officer and homicide investigator, Thomas Ten Bears.”

“All right. I’m listening.”

“You sign an agreement jointly presented by the Justice department and the Department of Homeland Security, undertaking never to speak, publicly or privately, about the events of the past few days or indeed anything concerning your interactions with the Dog Society, the late Dr. Michel and the kidnapping and rescue of Sallie Ten Bears. Should you all agree to and sign this document, the events will then be classified as secrets vital to national security. If subsequently you do speak of it, you will vanish from the face of the earth instantaneously. I cannot sufficiently emphasize that, regardless of the legalities involved, that
will
happen.”

“I believe it,” Annja said. “But what do we get?”

“Agreement not to prosecute you or your friends for any acts in any way connected with the events. Any acts, in any way connected. And please believe me, Ms. Creed, when I tell you that this is not an empty promise nor a trick, the way so many plea deals offered to accused persons turn out to be. Notwithstanding the enormous public and official support you and your associates enjoy, the blunt truth is that if the Bureau had not determined that this course was in its own best interests, it would never have assented.”

“But that’s a cover-up,” she said, sitting up straighter. “Of fairly massive proportions.”

“Yes to the first,” he said. “The second—not so much.”

She frowned and shook her head.

He laughed again. “From what I have been able to learn about you, Ms. Creed—and I am thoroughly impressed by it—you are far too intelligent a human being to be surprised by that.”

She sighed. “Well. I can’t argue with you in this case.”

She sat for a moment without speaking. She would’ve liked to be able to say she was mulling his proposal over. The truth was she was nodding off to sleep.

She caught herself as her chin dropped toward her clavicle. “I suppose this includes anything pertaining to the skinwalker—to Dr. Michel?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Doug Morrell will digest the lining of his own stomach. He’s my producer on Chasing History’s Monsters. But he can deal. Do you happen to know what’s been learned about him, by the way? Uh, Dr. Michel, not Doug.”

“I can tell you such of it as will eventually be released to the media by the Bureau. It seems agents have gotten their hands on Dr. Michel’s journals. He describes everything in what I am told is blood-chilling detail. His sympathy for the plight of Native Americans, his hatred of U.S. cultural imperialism within its own borders as well as abroad, his growing fascination with the Navajo wolf life-way. Plus the horrid rituals, involving much torture, rape and murder whereby he made himself a witch and skinwalker.”