Tribal Ways (7 page)

And if at any time the opportunity presented itself, she’d bolt out the door and be gone with the ice-nasty Plains wind that beat and boomed outside.

“You shouldn’t think so much,” the man on her left said. “You should just leave.”

“Indian people don’t want you here,” the other said.

She frowned. Tom Ten Bears spoke with a blend of rolling Okie drawl and Indian staccato. Strange as that sounded when she tried to describe it to herself, in his actual speech it came out perfectly naturally. These men were both speaking deep in their throats in an exaggerated stereotype of a Native American accent.

“You should turn aroun’, drive back to Albuquerque,” the first man said. “Get on a plane and fly away home. You don’t belong here, stickin’ your long nose in where it don’t belong.”

The bad grammar sounded as forced as their accents. By their builds and the general shapes of their faces, which was all she could make out for the paint and the not-very-good illumination, she figured they really were Indians, probably Comanche. But they seemed to be playing a role, and rather too hard at that.

“Thanks for the advice,” she said. “I’ll give it the consideration it deserves. Now, if you’ll excuse me—” She started to walk between them.

The man on the left said, “Not so fast,” and grabbed her upper arm.

She spun smartly into him. Her left arm came up and struck his forearm on the underside, knocking his grip loose before he’d had a chance to clamp it down. The palm-heel strike she followed up with flattened his nose with a satisfying crunch of cartilage breaking.

He emitted a squeal and dropped to his knees, clutching his face, which was pouring blood. Having your nose broken for the first time tended to affect you that way, Annja had observed.

His partner had already started grabbing for her right shoulder; if the object lesson provided by his buddy made an impression it came too late for him. She wheeled back into him. Her right forearm struck his left, again breaking his hold on her. She let her hand flop onto his arm. Then, putting her hips into it, she snapped right, yanking his trapped arm straight, back into the open stall, and locking out the elbow. She put her upraised left forearm against the locked-out joint and drove with her hips.

Annja knew very well how much pressure it took to break an elbow, and exactly how it felt to apply it.

The Dog Soldier did not choose to find out for himself what it took to give his elbow a whole new dimension of play. He had no choice but to allow himself to be swung face-first into the stout floor-to-ceiling upright that anchored the stall’s front.

His face cracked against metal. He groaned and slumped. Annja gave him a Phoenix-eye fist, first knuckle extended, in the right kidney, just to get his mind right. He dropped with a painful thunk to his knees.

The other guy was game. On his knees, still trying futilely to staunch the blood from his broken nose with one hand, he groped for Annja with the other hand as she turned to go. She gave him a side kick that drove his other hand into his broken nose and snapped his head back against the other metal upright. He collapsed like an empty grain sack.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” she said. “No need to get up. The pleasure was all mine.”

“Mind if I sit down?”

Annja Creed’s blood froze. It was a warm, charismatic baritone voice, absolutely dripping testosterone-fueled charisma.

It also belong to Johnny Ten Bears, chieftain of the outlaw Iron Horse People Motorcycle Club.

Chiding herself for being unobservant she looked up. He loomed above her, smiling in a nonthreatening way all over his darkly handsome face, with his black hair hanging again unbound over his colors.

She kept herself from flicking her eyes left and right like a frightened rabbit to look for other threats. Instead, she softened and widened the focus of her eyes. It showed her only the blurry shapes of the diners who had been there a moment before. When she was eating in peace, alone.

“Do I have a choice?” she asked.

He laughed softly. “We always have a choice,” he said.

He sat down across from her. “It just doesn’t always make a difference.”

A mere quarter mile from her motel on the southwest outskirts of Lawton—not even a decent warm-up for long-legged Annja Creed—the Oklahoma Rose Café served a great breakfast.

Annja regarded the outlaw biker lord across the Formica tabletop. Outside the sun was bright, if not too far up the sky; the sky itself was pale blue and brushed over with thin tufts of cloud. The wind buffeted the picture window to Annja’s right, and despite all that glorious sunshine she felt the chill beating from it like heat from a well-stoked woodstove. The diner itself was nice and toasty, though, and filled with the smells of good cooking.

“How’re you walking these days?” she asked.

“Gingerly,” he admitted.

“Good.”

He laughed.

Annja’s server turned up. The tall, good-looking black woman in early middle age had light skin and straight auburn hair wound up on her head in something that irresistibly reminded Annja of soft-swirl ice cream. “Johnny Ten Bears!” she exclaimed. “What do you think you doin’, showin’ your face around here? This a respectable establishment.”

“Yeah, well, I’m the exception to the rule, Ruth. Coffee, please,” he said with a wink and a big grin.

Ruth went away shaking her head.

“Don’t even
try
turning that charm on me,” Annja told him.

“Wouldn’t think of it, Ms. Creed.”

“You know my name?”

He shrugged. “Turned out Billy White Bird, my head wrench, is a big fan. He recognized you. About an hour after you busted a pool stick on his pumpkin head and blew out of the Bad Medicine.”

“Really.”

He leaned forward and clasped his hands on the tabletop before him. It was a gesture of such schoolboy earnestness she almost laughed aloud. He had good hands, she couldn’t help noticing—big, strong, showing the calluses and scars of hard work despite his relatively few years. Only a few more than hers.

“You and my people kinda got off on the wrong foot,” he said. “I apologize for that. Personally, and on behalf of my club.”

“Whatever,” she said. She went back to eating. “Your family’s just full of coincidences, isn’t it?”

He raised a brow.

“I mean, you turning up like this,” she said.

“You’re watched every moment you’re in Indian country,” he said, and he wasn’t grinning. “Not all eyes are friendly. And, uh—what was that about my family?”

“The way your dad turned up in his cruiser on the county road north of the Bad Medicine the other night. To pick an example totally at random.”

He shrugged. “He’s wired into the Nation, too. Not much happens in Troop G territory he doesn’t find out about.”

“I got that impression.”

“We wondered where you’d got to. Nasty night out.”

“Yes, it was.”

“I’d like to try my best to correct some misunderstandings you may have picked up along the way. The Iron Horse People Motorcycle Club is not your enemy.”

“You put on a good act,” she said.

He shook his head. “Anyway. First, you blundered into a place we feel very territorial about. Second, you perfectly fit the profile of the sort of person who should not be wandering into random road houses in western Oklahoma—and I don’t mean just Indian bars or outlaw biker bars. Or both. Or, well, at first glance you
seemed
to fit the profile. I guess you showed how wrong that was. Turned out, unlike your normal tenderfoot tourist, you know how to handle yourself.”

She smiled thinly. “I like to think so.”

“Plus, my father may have fueled some fires here I’d like to tamp down. We
are
Indian secessionists. We’re up front about that. It’s our whole reason for being. What we aren’t is racist.”

“Oh, really.”

“Please, Ms. Creed. Hear me out. Yes, we picked on you because you were white meat—and would’ve been meat for real if you went through the wrong door in Comanche County. You still could turn out that way, no matter how tough you are. Our reflex first thought was that you needed a good scare to keep you from making a mistake that could seriously cost you.”

“Why would I believe that?”

“To start with,” he said, “we let you get out alive.”

She froze with a forkful of eggs partway to her mouth. “All right,” she said. “Point taken.”

“Our grievance is with the Great White Father,” Johnny said. “
And
his hirelings, whatever color they are. We want nothing to do with Washington. Take nothing from it—give nothing to it. That’s what we’re about. Self-determination above everything else.”

“Your mother said you had a lot of ideas in common with the old militia types.”

“My mother?”

She grinned. Despite the all-knowing-native act he could be caught by surprise, after all. “I met her in Albuquerque. Your father sent me to her for a cultural background briefing. He didn’t tell me she was associated with the ubiquitous Ten Bears clan, either.”

“Okay, so my dad and I aren’t always as dissimilar as we’d maybe both like to believe. How is she?”

“Fine. So’s your sister.”

His grin showed nothing but genuine pleasure. “Thanks. We don’t always keep in touch.”

The smile faded. “Please. Hear what I tell you. It’s not just that there are some people, whether Indians or shit kickers, in these parts who’re inclined to prey on lone young women. Especially ones as pretty as you are. Just fact, ma’am. No familiarity implied.

“It’s that this is a very dangerous time and place for any outsiders—especially inquisitive white-eyes. There’s a war going on. One that’s the more nasty for being underground.”

Annja frowned. “Your father told me there was bad blood between you and—”

“And the Dog Society. You saw some of them the other night.”

“Maybe.”

“Please don’t play coy with me, Ms. Creed. This isn’t bad blood—it’s war. I’ve seen war. I know what it looks and feels and smells like.”

“I know.” He spoke like someone who
did
know war. Those who only experienced it at second hand seldom understood about the smell.

“I’m talking about midnight disappearances. Decomposed bodies found in washes. A body count nobody talks about. And it keeps on rising.”

She couldn’t doubt the truth of what he said. She was surprised, though, by how much Johnny’s ever-helpful father hadn’t told her.

“The Dog Society were originally Cheyenne,” Johnny said. “A lot of them live around here, too.”

“I know the history part,” Annja said. “Your mother filled me in. It’s current events I’m not too clear on.”

“Well, okay. The Dog Soldiers, twenty-first-century edition. A few actual Cheyennes belong, as well as some Kiowa. Most of them are young Comanches. They
are
racists, who don’t like white-eyes worth spit. They’re hard-core traditionalists, or what they like to imagine Numunu traditions are, anyway. They really believe, and I can’t emphasize this enough, that as the American empire weakens, the time approaches when they can throw off the white-eyes’ yoke and rule.”

“Really?” she asked. “And that differs from your philosophy, how?”

“Fair question. We—the Iron Horse People—don’t want to force anybody to do anything but let us alone. We only want to rule ourselves. Yes, we think the empire’s going down, too. We’ve got eyes. Don’t
you
see it?”

She hesitated. “Let’s stick with the sales pitch for your philosophy.”

“The Dogs are eager to kill anybody whose feet stray from their very narrow path. We fight them, yes. To contain them. To try to keep them hurting too many people. Or setting a wildfire that could consume the whole Comanche Nation.”

He sighed. “My father will never believe it,” he said, “but we’re the good guys.”

“You expect
me
to believe it?”

He shrugged. “It’s the truth. Like any gift, what you choose to do with it once I give it to you is your business.”

Annja nodded.

He sat back, cocked his head and regarded her appraisingly.

Without warning the window exploded inward toward them.

With rattlesnake-strike speed Johnny Ten Bears reached over the table, grabbed Annja’s wrist as she hoisted another forkful and yanked her from the booth. As she cleared the table he pulled her toward him hard.

Shards of glass cascaded across the red vinyl seats of the booth, over the table and onto the floors. Annja slid past Johnny on the slick floor.

Automatic gunfire snarled outside. Glass and porcelain tinkled as bullets raked the diner’s interior, shattering crockery on the counter and beyond. Yellow-and-white chintz curtains flapped as the wind blew through the shot-out windows.

Annja writhed in Johnny’s grasp. Ignoring his shout to stop she pushed up to all fours, then ran bent over through more broken glass toward the door. It was exactly the sort of behavior safety experts told you
not
to engage in.

Annja did a lot of things that would make safety experts go faint. She didn’t always have much use for their advice, anyway. Given that somebody was spraying and praying—probably from a moving car—a quick glance outside would expose her to little additional risk. A lot less risk, in her estimation, than hunkering down and getting caught helpless if the shooters decided to stop their car, get out and walk inside to finish the job.

Luckily that didn’t happen. Instead, when she took a three-second look out the door she saw a junker brown sedan screaming around a corner with the long black barrels and distinctive ribbed foregrips of M-16s sticking out the windows. She glanced around to see if there were follow-up vehicles, or gunmen approaching on foot. She saw nothing threatening.

When Annja turned around she saw Johnny going quickly from customer to customer, making sure no one was badly hurt. She started doing the same. The diners had all gotten onto the floor and laid low with no apparent panic. They were picking themselves up now.

Ruth’s soft-serve hairdo popped up from behind the counter. “What the hell,” she demanded, “was
that?
”

“Dog Soldiers’ social call,” Johnny said.

The bullets had missed everyone. An elderly woman and a trucker had suffered cuts on their faces. They seemed pretty calm, considering.

“Why would somebody want to go and do something like that?” the old woman said as Ruth came up to examine the gash in her cheek. “What’s the world coming to?”

Annja turned to frown at Johnny.

“The Dog Society plays for keeps,” he said.

“Are you sure those were Dog Soldiers?” Annja asked.

Johnny shook his head and laughed in disbelief. “Do you think I’m dumb enough to sit there waiting for my own people to take a shot at you from a moving car, just to prove some point? You can’t be sure of hitting what you aim at, blasting full rock and roll from a moving vehicle. So you can’t be sure of missing, either, can you?”

“You’re right,” she said. “So, more coincidence.”

“Not really,” he said. “Somebody saw me and dropped a dime. Remember what I told you about life in Indian country.”

He raised his head and frowned in concentration, as if sniffing the air. Annja heard the faint whine of sirens begin to rise.

“This place is about to get even less healthy for me,” he said, “so I’m gone. Think about what I told you.”

“I will,” she said.

He tossed a few bills on an interior table and left, moving with purpose but no haste. She stood and watched as he forked his big red-and-buff bike, fired it up and blasted away.

Sirens were screaming on the wind, which blew unimpeded into the shot-up diner. Annja surveyed the scene. Ruth had mustered the kitchen staff, who were all unharmed, to see to the customers. They seemed to have the situation well in hand, with no serious injuries suffered. Annja found a safe chair and sat to await the arrival of the law.

To her surprise the first to arrive on the scene weren’t Lawton cops or Comanche County officers, nor even the highway patrol, but a pair of gleaming gray sedans full of trim young Indian men in business suits with short haircuts. Some of them drew handguns and moved out of sight, evidently to check the rear exits to the building. Three entered the diner.

The obvious leader was a man in his late twenties, who was built like a power lifter. He stood a moment with hands on hips, pooching out the tails of his suit coat, frowning over the scene. Then he approached Annja.

“You’re Annja Creed?” he said, flipping open a leather case to display a shield that read Comanche Nation Law Enforcement.

“Yes.”

“I’m pleased to meet you. I’m George Abell, chief inspector of the Comanche Nation’s new special investigative unit.”

He seemed young for such a prestigious assignment. It never did any good that Annja had seen to point that sort of thing out to people. It always annoyed her mightily when someone said something like that to
her
. So she made no comment beyond politely acknowledging the introduction.

“What happened here?” he asked. His two companions drew handguns and went back to check the kitchens and the back rooms.

She told him. Since the other people in the diner would tell the investigators about her companion she told him the truth. Most of it, anyway; she saw no point in mentioning the Bad Medicine. After all, he was concerned with what just happened
here
.

Abell started frowning at mention of Johnny Ten Bears. His frown only dug itself deeper into his round, slightly coarse face as she gave him an edited account of their conversation.

“You’re a very lucky woman, Ms. Creed,” he said when she’d finished. “John Ten Bears is a dangerous man.”

“I’m sure he is, Chief Inspector,” she said. “But wasn’t it the Dog Society that shot at me?”

He scowled even deeper and put his hands behind his hips, elbowing out the tails of his dark suit coat. His men came out of the back shaking their heads—nobody hiding there. He nodded briskly to them and they began moving among the witnesses, asking questions of their own.

“The Dog Society are basically radical activists,” he said. “Sometimes they let their zeal for social justice run away with them. While I won’t rule out that some Dog hotheads might’ve been responsible for the shooting, since Johnny Ten Bears is a bitter and brutal enemy, I think most likely our shooters were disaffected Iron Horses. They’re a gang of violent criminals, Ms. Creed. There’s nothing they’re not capable of.”

Except stabbing or shooting me when they had their chance, and I even gave them a halfway decent excuse, Annja thought. Interesting. Then again Abell wouldn’t be the first cop with a hatred for bikers.

The chief inspector spoke like a college-educated man—closer to an academic than a stereotypical Midwestern law-enforcement man, or even Lieutenant Tom Ten Bears, who wouldn’t settle for being anybody’s stereotype. He was surface pleasant, at least, slick in a way that belied his powerful appearance.

He lost points when, smilingly, he said, “I really urge you to go home to New York and leave the investigation to professionals, Ms. Creed.”

“I’m a journalist,” she reminded him, “as well as an archaeologist. I’ve done consulting work for law enforcement before. I won’t interfere in your investigation.”

“You misunderstand me,” he said, shaking his head and smiling. “I only have your safety at heart. It might not be going too far to suggest you may be a marked woman. Ten Bears is a criminal. Probably even a terrorist. He’s also a punk. He’s always been a punk and a wannabe.”

Annja shied back from him, ever so slightly.

“Please forgive my vehemence,” Abell said. “I’ve known John since we were kids. It makes me angry that he’d put you and these other innocent people at risk from such potentially deadly violence.”

“I was afraid I’d find you here,” a voice said from the door.

Both Annja and Abell turned, the latter frowning again.

“Lieutenant Ten Bears,” Annja said.

The stocky highway patrol officer had stepped aside to clear the way for emergency crews bustling in to examine the wounded. He stood with his thumbs hooked in the front of his belt. He didn’t look as cheerful as usual.

“Morning, Annja,” he said. “Mr. Abell.”

Abell nodded shortly. “Lieutenant.”

The air temperature dropped a few degrees from where the nasty Plains wind had already pushed it. She could practically see the testosterone swimming in midair, like dust motes. Departmental rivalry in action, she thought. No doubt complicated by the fact of Johnny Ten Bears.

Ruth rushed up. “Tom! That crazy son of yours was in here. He brings trouble with him wherever he goes.”

“Tell me something I don’t know, Ruth. Everybody okay?”

“Aside from a few nicks and scratches. Nothing they won’t get over. I sure hope Mrs. Kubica’s insurance covers this mess, though.” She scrubbed her hands in her apron, shaking her head. “Lucky thing those so-and-sos couldn’t shoot for diddly.”

“Amen,” the lieutenant said. Other troopers came in with evidence techs and began taking statements. “Ms. Creed, I’d like you to come back to the barracks and give me a statement.”

Abell opened his mouth.

“Of course, Lieutenant,” she said. Turning to Abell she extended a hand. He gave it a firm if perfunctory shake.

“I appreciate your solicitude, Mr. Abell. Goodbye.”

“I’ll want a copy of any statements the witnesses make,” Abell called as the lieutenant and Annja left.

“Send the request through channels, George,” the elder Ten Bears said. “You know the drill.”

Once safely enclosed in the car and prowling away down the road from the shot-up diner, Annja said, “Thanks for rescuing me—again.”

“All part of the service, Ms. Creed. That Georgie’s always been way too full of himself. Is a bit of a bully—loves to throw his weight around. And had a lot to do it with, too.”

He shook his crew-cut head. “You can get serviceable cops out of beginnings like that. A good one, I don’t know about. Guess we ought to give the youngster a chance to grow up some.”

Annja bit down hard on the urge to ask if George Abell had bullied Johnny when they were kids. Instead, on the drive to the Troop G barracks on the east edge of Lawton, she gave the lieutenant a summary of current events. A considerably fuller one than she’d given Abell, extending to the previous couple of days.

At the station she gave a videotaped statement and then filled out the usual reams of forms. When that was done she went back to Ten Bears’ office, as he’d requested.

He was peering over the tops of his reading glasses at his computer monitor, as if whatever he saw there smelled bad. He waved her to a seat.

“You report that little restroom encounter to the New Mexico authorities?” he asked.

“No,” she said quietly.

He sighed, took off the glasses and swiveled to face her. “Your little playmates in there committed multiple crimes. Including a little thing we call felony battery.”

“Outside your jurisdiction,” she said.

“Well, I
am
sworn to uphold the law. And I’ve always gotten along pretty good with those New Mexico State Patrol boys and girls.”

She shrugged. “Well, I am reporting it. To you.”

“I’m guessing you don’t want to pursue this?”

She shook her head emphatically. “I’ve already had my face splashed all over the news too much because of my involvement with poor Paul.”

He raised an eyebrow at her.

“Okay,” she said, “I’m a television personality. That doesn’t mean I’m a celebrity, or want to be one. I don’t live for face time. I work for Chasing History’s Monsters because it’s fun, it pays well and I feel as if it gives me a chance, if not always a fair one, to shine the light of science and reason into some dark, superstitious places. In terms of the show, though, I’m just a minor and occasional talking head. That suits me fine.”

For far more reasons than I hope you’ll ever get wind of, she thought.

He chuckled and nodded. “Fair enough.”

She leaned back in her chair then, and gave him an intent look. “So, Lieutenant, why didn’t you tell me you were related to Dr. Watson? To say nothing of Johnny?”

“Didn’t see it was any of your business.”

His tone remained light and bantering; he gave off none of the challenge that usually accompanied that class of statement. From her limited acquaintance of the man she guessed he was capable of both perfect sincerity and total fraud. Whatever served his ends, as a law-enforcement officer or, probably, a Comanche.

“Anyway, I reckoned you’d find all that out. And you did.”

He studied her a moment. Outside, the day began to show signs of fading.

“So what’d you make of Johnny?” he asked.

“He’s obviously an intelligent man,” she said. “He certainly seems sincere in his convictions.”

“So he gave you that Great White Father crazy talk of his. I don’t know where I went wrong with that boy. I tried to raise him with his head on face-frontwards.”

“Does it ever occur to you, Lieutenant,” she said, “that you might have?”

He frowned at her. Then he laughed. “You’re a sharp one, Ms. Creed. I see I better look sharp to make sure you don’t slip one past this poor old lawman.”

“Nothing could be further from my intentions,” she said. “Anyway, horsecrap. Nobody ever slips anything past you, Lieutenant. Do they?”

“Well, come to think of it…mebbe not all that often, at that,” he said.

“I haven’t learned much about what happened to Paul, or what’s going on in Comanche County, nor what they might have to do with each other,” she said. “But I have a better idea how things stand.”

“I’d say so, given all the bullets cracklin’ past your ears and all. Now that you’ve seen for yourself what the stakes are around here, are you sure you want to stick with it?”

“Yes.” She started to rise, then hesitated. “You don’t believe it was Johnny’s own people who shot up the Oklahoma Rose, do you?”

After a moment he said, “No. I don’t put much past them, don’t get me wrong. But the Dog Society won’t be mistaken for the Ladies’ Aid anytime soon, either. As you found out back in New Mexico. If I weren’t an upholder of the law, sworn in all right and proper, I’d be tempted to opine they deserve each other.”