by Ethan Cross
The back door crumbled like it was made of paper mache, nearly falling off its hinges from the force of the impact. Splinters of wood and dust filled the air, but not nearly enough to obscure Liana’s view of the young man who had just burst inside brandishing an AK47.
She recognized him immediately as one of John Canyon’s hired hands. Captain Yazzie had thrown the same man into the drunk tank on more than one occasion, whenever the Canyon boys acquired a new batch of homemade moonshine or, as she had always suspected, a new shipment of drugs.
“Don’t move,” she screamed, preparing to fire if he didn’t comply.
The young man, who she remembered as a half blood Mexican and Diné named Ramirez, had yet to acquire a target. She directed the beam of her flashlight directly into his eyes and screamed, “Police! Drop the weapon now!”
Ramirez reacted instantly, the assault rifle at his shoulder swinging its barrel toward her with a precision that gave evidence of rigorous training. She recalled that—like the majority of Canyon’s thugs—Ramirez was a military veteran. Canyon had even started a program for gang members to take advantage of the benefits of a short stint of military service. Most of the young men he had mentored in the program had come to work for him on the ranch after their tour was over. The rumor was that was always part of the plan, for them to receive combat training on the government’s dime, so that his thugs were a cut above. Not just men who had been drummed out of the service for their conduct or addictions, but young men who excelled at military life, under the tutelage of Master Sergeant John Canyon.
Ramirez said, “Stand down, officer. We’re on the same team here.”
“I’m not on Canyon’s team.”
The former soldier slowly pulled the AK47 from his shoulder and raised his hands in surrender. Bloody bandages covered Ramirez’s left hand, and his face was bruised and swollen. He said, “I simply meant to say that we are both here to rescue Tobias Canyon from this crazy SOB. Did you find him in here like this? Have you checked his pulse?”
Liana opened her mouth to respond, but a twitch in the back of her mind ordered her to stop as questions started to rise. How long had Ramirez been outside? Had he been listening in on them the whole time? Had he been lying in wait for the right moment to attack? That would have certainly adhered to Frank’s observations on the hunter’s need for patience. But why would Ramirez be asking her questions to which he already knew the answers? The only explanation was that he was testing her, which implied that they were definitely not on the same side.
Noticing that his right hand still held the rifle’s pistol grip, albeit with the barrel aimed at the ceiling, she said, “Put the gun down, and we’ll talk.”
Ramirez smiled, and she saw the devil in his eyes. “Are you getting sweet on this belegana, Officer Nakai?”
“I told you to put that gun down. I don’t want to be forced to restrain you, Mr. Ramirez.”
“So…you remember my name. That’s interesting. Maybe you’re just looking for an excuse to get closer to me.”
“It’s my job to know every scumbag in my district, and repeating myself is one of my biggest pet peeves.”
Ramirez’s lip curled up, and his left eye twitched. A part of her wanted him to try something. She felt confident that she would be able to drop the ex-soldier before he could make any kind of move on her.
But then a cold dread crept up the back of her neck, and she knew that she had made a grave miscalculation. First, she felt a disturbance in the air, the wind of movement against her skin. Second, came the cold steel of a gun barrel against the base of her spine. Ramirez’s partner—who held the assault rifle to her back—said, “I think you should be the one to put down your hardware. And I really, really hate repeating myself.”
Cursing under her breath in Diné bizaad, Liana complied and laid her Glock gently on the plank flooring.
Ramirez said, “Good girl. Now, get down on your knees. Hands on your head. We don’t want to hurt you, officer. But we will if you give us any trouble.”
Liana quickly complied. She knew that Canyon would have ordered his men to avoid confrontations with police officers, not murder them, and his thugs never strayed too far from their mission parameters.
Moving the rifle back to his shoulder, Ramirez took aim at her, gestured at his partner, and said, “Roll him over. I want to get a look at the guy who’s causing all the fuss.”
The partner said, “I thought you saw him at the ranch, earlier tonight.”
“I didn’t see a thing. He came out of nowhere and choked me out. It was over before I could catch a glimpse.”
The partner took a cautious step toward Frank, the assault rifle trained on the outsider. Then the skinny little man nudged Frank with the barrel of his gun.
“Would you roll him over already. Dude is probably dead. And I’ll be joining him at the rate you’re moving.”
The other man shot Ramirez a scathing glance and asked, “How’s your hand?”
The comment incited a string of Navajo curse words from Ramirez. With the two men’s attention on each other, Liana’s eyes strayed toward her Glock, which rested on the plank flooring just a few feet away. But it wasn’t worth the risk. Maybe she should have kept her gun and stood her ground with these two hired thugs? Or better yet, she should have anticipated that Ramirez wouldn’t have come alone and that his backup would have been coming in through the front of the building.
“If you want to look a dead man in the eyes so badly, then you turn him over. I’m perfectly happy to let him bleed out right where he is until Mr. Canyon gets here.”
Apparently, the thin man feared Frank’s chindi may follow him home. Liana would never call herself a traditionalist, but that thought frightened her as well.
As the two grumbled and scowled at each other, a strange thought struck Liana. Frank’s knife that had been stuck into the floor in front of him was now missing. She had laid her gun right beside the spot where the bone-handled Bowie knife had been embedded into the wood. She had seen the fresh gouge, but the knife was gone. She hadn’t seen Frank or either of the goon squad grab the knife. But it was definitely gone, which meant that Frank must have…
She looked away from the gouge and the Glock in time to see Ramirez finally step up and roll Frank over himself.
When he did, the former soldier’s eyes went wide, and he yelled, “Grenade!”
34
Ackerman had nearly dozed off as he listened to the normals make fools of themselves. The posturing coming from both sides of the equation had entertained him for a moment, considering that none of the people arguing and threatening to hurt one another truly wanted to make good on their threats. All the while, they ignored the true threat.
He had been waiting for one of the the three to attempt to roll him over and check for vital signs. His arms were tucked up under his body where the others couldn’t see, and he had plenty of practice performing similar maneuvers in the past. Although, those were always when he was on the opposite side of the law. He supposed the concept was the same, and therefore, Ackerman considered himself an expert in looking lifeless.
As he waited—and calculated the odds that the children may shoot one other before he could diffuse the situation—Ackerman considered Emily Morgan’s departure, not only for the moment but potentially forever. There were very few people in his life whose absence he would notice in any meaningful way. Emily was one of them. The thought of her not being part of the team or his life filled him with a strange empty feeling that he couldn’t identify. Or perhaps the sensation merely stemmed from the shards of metal embedded in his side, that were possibly pressing against his spinal column.
Finally, the one Liana had called Ramirez rolled Ackerman over and set the tumblers in motion. He had premeditated his response since the moment he smelled the cheap aftershave and sheep feces that stained all of Canyon’s men. That scent—being carried on the strong updrafts crawling up the side of the sharp drop-off at the back of the
property—was a dead giveaway to the presence of additional playmates. Ackerman had even detected the smell of a well lubricated assault rifle. From that point, it had been simply a matter of holding Liana’s hand while he handled the situation.
Now, Ackerman greeted Ramirez with the sight of a grenade in his right hand and the pin for that grenade in his left.
He watched Ramirez’s eyes go wide, but Ackerman decided to sell it even further and released the detonation mechanism of the grenade.
Ramirez shouted a warning and dived toward the back door. His partner and Officer Liana rushed into the front room.
Ackerman tossed the grenade, which was already beginning to spill smoke, into the front room of the trading post. Then, he pulled the bone-handled Bowie knife from where he had tucked it into his waistband and rolled toward the fleeing form of Ramirez, whom he had deemed as the greatest of the two weak threats.
Still in motion, Ackerman swung his arm out in a wide arc and connected with the back of Ramirez’s leg. The blade, which Ackerman had sharpened to a razor’s edge, easily sliced through skin and sinew and dropped the fleeing former soldier onto his face against the rotting plank floor.
Ending the roll by shooting to his feet—which stabbed sweet pain into his side—Ackerman grabbed Ramirez by the belt and pulled the fleeing attacker away from the exit.
His opponent’s training was evident in the quick recovery the man displayed despite his wounds, as he turned on Ackerman and started striking and grappling. Perhaps, under different circumstances, Ackerman would have enjoyed testing his ground game against Ramirez, who he had pegged as a former Marine. But at the moment, he had another opponent to subdue and an innocent bystander to babysit.
Ramirez tried to his best moves to bring Ackerman to the ground, but the effort was quickly silenced by a knife penetrating Ramirez’s left arm, the one holding the assault rifle.
Ackerman left the knife embedded in Ramirez’s flesh and ripped the rifle from the screaming former soldier’s grasp. As Ramirez reached for the handle of the knife, Ackerman ejected the magazine from the AK47 and cleared the round from the chamber. He then used the butt of the rifle to incapacitate Mr. Ramirez with a blow to the head.
The young man’s head snapped back with sufficient force that Ackerman was satisfied that Ramirez was now either unconscious or wishing he was. The rest of the building had filled with smoke, but he could still make out two shadows within the chemical haze. Luckily, the remaining attacker was a head taller than Liana. Unfortunately, the young officer was not doing as he had instructed and staying out of his way. Instead, he watched as the smaller shadow rushed at the larger one and began an attempt at wrestle the assault rifle from the thin man’s grip.
Ackerman rolled his eyes. It was so much easier working alone. Holding Ramirez’s emptied rifle by the stock, he flipped the weapon over, with the butt facing the front room and the pistol grip point at the ceiling. To do it the other way threw off the weight, as he had learned from experience.
Stretching his left arm out in front of him as a guide, he hoisted the rifle above his right shoulder as if he were throwing a spear.
Once in position, he yelled, “Liana! Down!” Then he cocked back his arm and launched the weapon at the head of the thin man.
As he twisted his core to make the throw, he felt white hot tendrils of pain shoot through his midsection. To Ackerman, the pain that would have likely caused a normal person to pass out altogether was akin to a sexual release. Although, he also felt the metal fragments growing closer to his spine and understood that the pleasure of his pain hid the fact that Liana had been correct in her assessment… If his wounds weren’t treated soon, he would bleed out and die.
The rifle he had used as a make-shift javelin struck its mark, knocking the thin man back a few steps. To his surprise, the skeletal attacker stayed on his feet and kept hold of his rifle. Thankfully, Officer Liana had followed instructions, dropped low, and moved away from the intruder.
Ackerman stepped into the fray with two large strides, grabbed the thin man by the right wrist, twisted the arm up, and dislocated the shoulder with an audible pop.
Canyon’s thug screamed and released his AK47, which Ackerman emptied and discarded as he had the other rifle. The thin man dropped to the floor and clutched his as he rolled back and forth in pain and cursed in the People’s language.
Retrieving the smoke grenade from where he had tossed it previously, Ackerman calmly walked to the back door and threw the handy little gadget over the side of the bluff.
As he passed the dazed and shaking Ramirez, he pulled the Bowie knife from the man’s forearm, which woke the former soldier with a shriek of agony. Then he pulled over his original milk crate and sat back down, waiting for the smoke to clear. Once the haze had sufficiently dissipated, he said, “If you boys want to live, I’m going to need you both to kindly remove your pants.”
The thin man—still crying in the front room—screamed, “You broke my arm!”
“It’s only dislocated. Stop whining. Count yourself lucky that it wasn’t your neck.”
Ramirez—as he removed his belt and applied it to his leg as a tourniquet—said, “What are you going to do with us?”
Glancing from one man to the other, Ackerman shrugged and replied, “If you play stupid games, you’ll win stupid prizes.”
35
John Canyon had never really prayed any of the traditional Diné blessings, nor had he ever been all that interested in learning the stories of his people. Not until he went to war. One night during his time in the Persian Gulf—after checking his sleeping bag for camel spiders and scorpions and settling in with the zipper cinched up tightly around his face for fear that the same arachnids, and worse, would try to snuggle in with him—he had recalled the prayers of his grandfathers…
In beauty I walk
With beauty before me I walk
With beauty behind me I walk
With beauty above me I walk
With beauty around me I walk
It has become beauty again
Hózhóogo naasháa doo
Shitsijí’ hózhóogo naasháa doo
Shikéédéé hózhóogo naasháa doo
Shideigi hózhóogo naasháa doo
T’áá altso shinaagóó hózhóogo naasháa doo
Hózhó náhásdlíí’
Hózhó náhásdlíí’
Hózhó náhásdlíí’
Hózhó náhásdlíí’
It had been those prayers—or at least the small portions he could remember—that helped John Canyon survive his time at war, and those same prayers that encouraged him to make a new way, not just for himself, but for the People.
He recited the lines of prayer in his head now as he thought of his son and what he would to do the man who had stolen him. John and Tobias had never been close, the elder having decided early on during his tenure as a father that he was better to let the boy’s mother handle the day to day maintenance, while he focused on leaving his son, and his people, a true legacy. Despite all the sacrifices he had made, Toby seemed to resent him. But he hoped that it was merely a phase all young warriors experienced, a rite of passage into manhood, and not the influence of the belegana culture.
The road ahead of him was still dark. Canyon sat behind the wheel of his pickup truck, a caravan of his men behind him in various vehicles, a war party on the march. The rest of the world slept. That was where he should have been, at home, in bed. Alone.
Canyon’s thoughts turned to his wife, Reyna. His bride—whose resentment of him seemed to outweigh the boy’s, had been spending most of her time holed up in the casino’s Presidential suite. He took responsibility for some of the chasm that had formed between them, but he knew that a bigger reason for her absence was the five grand a week she snorted up her nose, and his recent intervention of reducing her available supply. But all that had accomplished was causing her to spend all day in bed. For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what she would ha
ve to be depressed about. She had everything. The queen of an empire, who was treated as royalty should be. It was certainly several steps above the gutter from which he had pulled her. He suspected that her ailments came from a combination of her drug abuse and her strange religious beliefs, and less from his neglect.
She didn’t know about Toby’s abduction, and he didn’t intend to tell her.
The road ahead wound its way through the hills and up to the top of a large bluff where some damn fool had decided to build a general store. The Red Bluff Trading Post, which served the scattered remnants refusing to leave an area mostly tainted by the belegana’s uranium mines, had went out of business when those who lived farther down in the valley had started frequenting the Walmart in Farmington.
Ramirez, one of his lieutenants, must have responded to his earlier lesson, since the kid had been the one to first discover where the outsiders had holed up. The former Marine had always been a good soldier for Canyon. This evening’s screwup and a struggle with addiction aside, Ramirez was another shining example of a child he had pulled from the gutter. Without his intervention and guidance of the boy, who had been adopted as an indentured servant by his wife’s Uncle Red, Ramirez would have been nothing, just another half-breed banger. Instead, he was a man with a future. A man with hope. Canyon supposed that was what he had really brought to his people: hope.
The belegana had sent his people down a dark road, but just as the headlights of his truck cut through the darkness ahead, he intended to shine a light for all of the Diné with no hope or prospects. He gave them gainful employment, nice homes, and an overall better life.
The caravan cut through a series of hills and then came down into a small valley that marked the bottom of Red Bluff. He couldn’t see the trading post yet, but he guessed they were less than a mile out.
His internal musings were cut short when his lights shined upon two men walking down the center of the road. Stopping dead, the others behind him following suit, he jumped down from the big F-150 and approached the two men. Both had been stripped to their underwear with their hands tied behind their backs and their pants stuck atop their heads, flowing down their backs like a headdress. The two were leaning on each other for support. Ramirez in particular seemed to be having trouble walking and now, not only was his hand bandaged from where John had smashed it with the stone tomahawk, but his calf and forearm were also bandaged with blood showing through the white of the cloth.