Judas Horse

by April Smith

  When the bird-watchers report they have seen three trumpet swans sailing along by the side of the road, I jump in with “Oh my God, how exciting!” and am finally invited to sit down.

  Now they are talking about rocks. Lillian and Dot turn out to be retired high school teachers with a lot to say—not only about birds but also about the joys of collecting minerals. Underneath her yam-colored parka, Megan is wearing a fuzzy sweater knitted with ropes of purple; her hair bursts out from tortoiseshell clips. Her eyes are bright and interested. The proprietress brings four coffees. When she is gone, Megan reaches into her knapsack and pulls out a silver flask. Dot reacts, all fluttery, but Lillian is eager and Megan matter-of-fact. I think about the empty wineglasses that littered the table at Omar’s.

  Megan pours a dark liquid into my cup. “Going to be cold out there tonight.”

  It is bourbon.

  “Wow, this helps,” I say gratefully. “I am so stressed.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” Lillian says. “Whatever you do, when they arrest you, don’t resist.”

  Dot taps her teeth. “The police broke my bridge in Atlanta.”

  I swallow the bourbon-flavored coffee. “No, not about freeing the horses. I mean I’m stressed about my life. I’m being kicked out of my apartment in Portland. I have to find another place.”

  Angelo said, “Make sure they know Darcy needs a place to stay.”

  Lillian laughs and waves her wrinkled fingertips. “Vasanas,” she says dismissively.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s a Sanskrit word for things of this earthly life,” Lillian says. “Bad habits. Mental bondage.”

  “Well, excuse my French.” I pout, and Lillian pats my hand.

  We pull into the total darkness of the turnout at Needle Gorge. The weather has cleared and it is as if the curtains of civilization have been drawn aside to show us the stars, lush and impenetrable, as they looked 200 million years ago from this same naked plateau. Our breath forms as soon as we are out of the cars. Immediately, there is giggling. Someone has to go to the bathroom. Someone else flicks on a small red beam to check the map.

  We follow the highway. I wonder what Fontana’s alibi would be if a sheriff saw us walking along in the dark single file. But for Darcy, this is the most thrilling thing she has ever done. I grip the sleeve of the conspirator in front of me with exhilaration. “Your first time?” whispers the woman kindly. “Stay by me. You’ll be okay.”

  We shuffle down a steep driveway, causing a small slide of pebbles. Two lights are shining from posts near the entrance to the site. Between them is a gate secured by a circle of heavy chain. Fontana snips the links with a pair of bolt cutters and we’re in.

  No more giggling now. Ahead is the compound of corrals, lit by a single lamp over the barn. I am shivering with cold, small tremors close to the bone. Suddenly, a spotlight appears above us, a circle of white around a huge fat owl in a tree. Its markings are beautiful, the eyes glossy black. There are shushes and rasping shouts. “Great horned owl!” And the flashlight snaps off. Lillian and Dot. The bird-watchers. Oh my God.

  The wide barn door is open. Inside, it smells of horse stink and hay. We creep past a system of green metal chutes, and then a box stall in which a spotted mustang mare and her foal are resting on a bed of straw. Even in the dimness, the up-close colors of their coats—their wild aliveness—makes your heart beat faster. There are muffled gasps from the group. The foal’s front legs are wrapped in bloody bandages from being run by the helicopter over the coarse gravel plain. Determinedly, we urge one another on, not suspecting this touching nativity scene may have been set up for that very purpose.

  We hurry through another open doorway and find ourselves in a maze of log railings twelve feet high, way over our heads. The lengths of the runs and the height of the fences are much greater than they looked on Fontana’s sketch. You can feel a ripple of uncertainty: This is the United States government. We are small; this is big—maybe overwhelming. The lighting is poor. The far corrals blend into country darkness. Our boots sink into dry mulch that muffles sound. And then we see the horses.

  The mustangs are completely silent. They circle their enclosures like fish, heads low, shoulder-to-shoulder in slow undulating patterns of chestnut and dun. A few break off and form other groups, and then they all flow together again. There is no nickering, no alarm at being captive, no rebellious kicking of heels—because the stallions and foals, I learn, have been separated from the rest. Leaderless, childless, the silence of the mares is haunting: a plaintive, voiceless female rebuke. Heard by whom?

  Heard by us.

  We surge forward to our assigned corrals to wait while Fontana moves down the line with the bolt cutters. It is hard to gain traction in the mulch and I feel like I am running in slow motion, but that is also because I am aware of other forces at play in the wings of darkness—armed officers speaking softly into body mikes, and invisible snipers on the barn roof. I jog past Megan, already posted at pen number four, where twenty or thirty slack-necked mares slink unconcerned toward the center. I am climbing the logs of the gate to grasp the padlock with stiff, cold fingers. I’m about ten feet up when the crack of a rifle shot echoes off the mountains.

  I think it is Fontana, gone crazy, but then I realize the shot came from the darkness to the east, and Fontana is standing frozen like everyone else in the middle of the runs, having whipped around toward frantic shouts from the barn. My first thought: Where is Donnato? Is he in the line of fire? From my vantage point halfway up the fence, I see a black-suited SWAT officer toboggan sideways down the corrugated iron channels of the roof, then drop off the edge.

  The SWAT team answers with automatic weapons and the horses spook in a thousand directions, hurtling against the rails, which are shimmying violently, as if about to blow apart. A muscular chest rams my toes and a huge equine head with bared teeth and rolling eyes sweeps over mine as I am flung off backward, hitting the ground and rolling and snapping my forehead on the foot of another post. Spitting hay and who knows what else, I get to my feet and see nothing but chaos up and down the track.

  We head for the barn but are thrown back by deputies with assault rifles and in full riot gear. Two, now three and four are tackling Fontana. Some of us try to escape by straddling the railings, pinned at the top by the cops on one side and the skittish haphazard movement of the heavy-boned horses on the other. Someone is calling instructions over a bullhorn, while another numbskull has turned on the flashers of every sheriff’s vehicle in the county, surrounding the compound in strobing red.

  Where is Donnato?

  I have to fight my own instincts and training and wrestle back into Darcy’s identity, and continue to run, disoriented, like everybody else. Then Megan has me by the jacket, pulling and screaming incoherently, and we trip over each other and sprawl together in the dust and straw.

  Megan is crying, “We have to get her out!”

  White-haired Lillian is standing in the middle of a corral in her wilted, filth-encrusted blue parka, completely encircled by panicked animals. Her eyes are shut and she is standing absolutely still, as if some divine column of light will protect her from being trampled.

  “Get out, Lillian! Get out!” Megan is pleading, and I find myself scaling the gate. My mind flips to an unaccountably quiet scene: After inching through a massive traffic jam on the Santa Monica freeway, I came upon the accident. Highway Patrol officers were guiding motorists in slow and silent procession around the victim—a well-dressed African-American male who was lying in the middle of the road in the fetal position. His body was intact; a briefcase lay twenty feet away. There were no crushed vehicles, no cars involved at all. How did he get there? Did he think he could run across six lanes of traffic?

  “Lillian!” I shout. “Look at me! Look at my eyes. I’m coming!”

  Her face is shut down. She is praying, or dead standing up. The horses are running in random circles; the patterns that kept them bonded and
calm now completely shattered. That’s okay. I’ll focus on Lillian and the divine light will guide me, and the raging waters will part.

  But inside the pen, it is as if fear has shape-shifted into raging horses, attacking chaotically like a cavalry possessed. Pinned against the railings, I wait until the surge flows in the opposite direction, then dash across the mulch to drag Lillian to safety, but she can’t seem to move.

  “Lillian, run. Run with me. I’ve got you—”

  Like a sharp wind whipping back, the horses reverse direction and angle toward us. I see it in their shining dark eyes, which in my enlarged perception seem wise and close: the simple, unemotional impulse to flee. They’re going to trample us and break through the fence. Scores of deputies have massed at the fence. And then Lillian goes limp and collapses.

  I grab at the fake fur neck of the parka before she goes down, cutting a gash in her neck with the zipper, then hoist the body in two beats—one, against my knees; two, into my arms—and stand in the midst of that ring of fire, holding the old woman aloft like some awful pietà, fingers probing the flesh of her throat for a carotid pulse as the gate opens and a cowboy on a paint bursts through at full gallop. The gate is closed, locking us into a surreal rodeo, a daring ballet in which the cutting horse, outfitted in silver, plunges fearlessly through the roiling mass, its body coiled to match, movement for movement, a mirror image of each individual animal, herding the mares one at a time into a tight bunch in the eastern quadrant of the circle, and keeping them there as the long-legged wrangler, wearing a beat-to-shit suede jacket and a battered, yellowed western hat, sits perfectly still, hands low and head tipped forward, as if he isn’t doing anything at all.

  While the mares are held back, two paramedics enter the ring at assault speed, take Lillian from my arms, and carry her out of there in about fifteen seconds. At the same moment, the paint lets go of its position and prances backward in tiny steps until the cowboy reins it around on a dime. They’re leaving me here. What the hell?

  But before the mares can break across the ground like billiard balls, he’s galloping right at me, hanging off the side of the horse like he’s about to scoop a bandanna out of the dust, but it’s me he’s aiming for, and I am lifted off the ground in the crook of an arm of steely strength, lifted into the air, and swung into the hard leather cradle of the saddle, the cowboy riding behind me now on the bare rump of the horse, and someone has opened a narrow passage in the gate. We canter out, as if passing through the eye of the needle.

  His chest is pressed against my back. I’m smelling chewing gum and sharp male sweat, and although I’m bouncing wildly, staring at a careening world through the terrifying space between the horse’s ears, his suede-fringed arm remains strong and steady, and I feel the anchoring motion of his hips in rhythm with the horse. He won’t let you fall.

  We come to a halt and I manage to slip off, completely dazed. Staring up at a man on a horse—rugged-looking, mid-thirties, five ten, 140 pounds, with stick-thin legs that jeans are made for and red leather cowboy boots you know he wears every day of his life—who has just saved your life can have that effect.

  “Thank you, sir.” I offer my hand. “Darcy.”

  “Sterling McCord.” He leans in the saddle to shake. “You okay?”

  “Yes. Wow,” I say breathlessly. “That was quite a ride.”

  “When are you people gonna get it? Messin’ with wild animals is not a hot idea.”

  His rebuke is stern; more like a cop than a cowboy.

  “I’m sorry. I guess you’re used to it.”

  “I don’t like to see anyone get hurt.”

  “I understand.”

  “Hope your friend’s all right. You take care, now, Darcy,” he says, and canters toward some other pandemonium.

  Over by the barn, the whirling lights of an ambulance illuminate a knot of paramedics around the SWAT team officer on the ground; a gurney waits, riderless.

  Fifteen

  Mike Donnato is waiting inside an interrogation room the size of an organic lentil. He wears a windbreaker with FBI across the back and greets me gruffly. The two grim sheriff’s deputies, who marched me over from the jail where we, the radicals, were held overnight, do not know I am undercover. The iron grip on my biceps makes that clear. Donnato instructs them to unlock the handcuffs, and we sit down and face each other across a small table as they pocket the keys and leave.

  “We didn’t get breakfast,” I say right off. “And there are folks who need medical attention.”

  Donnato just rubs his reddened eyes.

  “These boondocks deputies are real redneck pigs. I saw them shove an old lady and withhold water when we repeatedly asked for some. It’s bullshit, Mike—”

  “The officer who was shot last night died at the scene,” he says heavily. “His name was Todd Mackee, a sergeant on the Portland SWAT team. Single shot to the throat.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Took his head right off.”

  I wet my lips. “Must have been one monster bullet.”

  Donnato nods. “Fifty-caliber. Not your average shooter.”

  I resist the urge to say how relieved I was last night, in my panic at hearing the shot, to realize Donnato would be here at the command center and not with the tactical team at the barn.

  “Makes you sick,” he says.

  “Oh God.”

  I’m losing my resolve. Between the primacy of the mission and the bond I’ve made with Lillian, Dot, Megan, and the others, I’m done. After a sleepless night crammed four to a cell and with zero food, I have a killer headache and my breath could melt steel.

  “This was supposed to be a controlled operation. To lose a life—” I clamp both hands over my face. “I want to go home.”

  “I didn’t hear that.”

  I raise my eyes. “Lillian had a heart attack.”

  “Who’s Lillian?”

  His ignorance inflames me.

  “The lady who got trapped in the corral!” I snap. “Elderly, a bird-watcher? You don’t know about Lillian?”

  He shrugs. “I heard something about a protester being taken to the hospital.”

  “But you were more concerned with Officer Mackee.”

  Donnato’s eyes grow hard. “Frankly…yes.”

  “Let me tell you about Lillian.” Finger pointing again. “She’s close to eighty. She had a heart-valve replacement, but she didn’t tell anyone because she was afraid they wouldn’t let her come.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Mike! She risked her life for the horses!”

  Donnato settles into himself. “Ana,” he says very carefully, “you’re sounding a lot like the other side.”

  “I was on the other side, and I think the deputies responded with unnecessary force.”

  He waits.

  “Think again.”

  He doesn’t want to report what I’m saying.

  “Mackee was one of those guys, ‘proud as hell to be a cop,’” Donnato says. “The one who organizes the department trip to Kodiak Island to fly-fish for salmon, know what I mean?”

  I nod, understanding the message.

  “Three children, ages six through eight, and a wife of ten years who’s a parole officer for juvenile offenders.”

  “Always the good people,” I murmur, and lay my head on the table, completely dissipated. “SWAT had to respond. You’re right. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Exhaustion.”

  “Want some coffee?”

  “Just shoot it in my arm.”

  He opens the door and speaks to the deputies, giving them the message the suspect is at that point where the thing could turn on a friendly cup of joe. He comes back in and touches my shoulder, a signal to get it together.

  “I’m okay.” I sit up, resuming the posture. “I’m past it.”

  My partner nods. Will he ignore the lapse?

  “We located the shooting site beyond the perimeter,” he continues matter-of-factly. “It was a heavy sniper rifle
, an M93, something like that. You can tell from the blast-pattern plume it left in the dust. It’s a sniping rifle, not for antipersonnel use, but antimatériel. They used them from fixed positions in the Vietnam War.”

  “Why so heavy? It must be a bitch to break down and carry.”

  “What the shooter had. How he was trained.”

  “In the Army?”

  “Maybe. Army snipers shoot from a tripod. This joker shoots off a pack. There was a depression on the ground and a trail in the dirt where he dragged it behind him. Still, it was a hell of a shot. Correcting for drop and wind? A thousand yards away in the dark? This is someone with the training and resolve to sit out there and make the shot.”

  “Dick Stone?”

  “Or,” says Donnato, “someone hired by Stone. Except he didn’t get his money’s worth. A good sniper never leaves his brass behind. And this guy did. We recovered the bullet casing.”

  “That was a mistake.”

  “Big-time. We have the slug from the roof. All we need is the weapon it came from. A suspect is in custody. Barnaby Nuñez, Native American, thirty-eight years old, priors for DUI and domestic abuse. Picked up three miles from the corrals. Fired from working at a filling station, claimed racial discrimination, arrested for trespass and making threats against the manager. Theory is, he uses the mustang protest as a way to make things right. Former Marine, which fits.”

  The deputy brings coffee for the prisoner, hot and black as road tar.

  When he’s gone: “Did you get anything in the cell from Megan?”

  “Nothing hard. I wonder if she knows what Dick Stone’s really up to.”

  Donnato sips the coffee. “Will she flip?”