Desolation Mountain
Page 24
“Migwech,” Cork said.
“Migwech?”
“It means ‘thank you’ in Ojibwe.”
“All right. Migwech it is.”
“If we need to meet, how about the fire ring on Crow Point? A good, safe place.”
The two men shook hands, and as Cork walked away in the early afternoon shadows, Bo looked after him, thinking how wrong Gerard had been. In every sea of lies, there were always islands of truth.
* * *
On his return to Crow Point, Cork found Jenny and Daniel at Meloux’s cabin. Daniel seemed in a particularly good mood.
“We finally tracked down those two we thought were poachers,” he told Cork. “Tom Blessing reported them at Bourbon Lake again, near the otter lodge. They were still out there when I arrived.”
“Thought were poachers?” Cork said. “They weren’t?”
“They were pretty reluctant to talk, but when I threatened them with the poaching charge and told them it could carry a sentence of up to two years in prison and a ten-thousand-dollar fine each, they spilled the beans.”
“Two years in prison? Ten thousand dollars? And they bought that?”
Daniel laughed. “Clearly not hunters.”
“So what are they?”
“They call themselves ‘prospecting geologists.’ ”
“Prospecting for what?”
“They were hired to find the limits of the Duluth Complex, this mother lode of heavy metals.”
“On the rez?”
“They think the bulk of the resources may be under reservation land.”
“Who hired them?”
“A company called PolyOre Exploration. They were supposed to keep this on the QT. That’s why they were so elusive.”
“PolyOre Exploration? I’m thinking we should know more about these people.”
“I already do. As soon as I finished interviewing the geologists, I got on the Internet. PolyOre Exploration is a subsidiary of Intercontinental Minerals Inc., which, if you follow the difficult track back, is owned by America Midwest Mining.”
“What do they think? That in the end they can mine anywhere they want? That land belongs to the Anishinaabeg.”
“All of the Black Hills belonged to the Lakota once,” Jenny pointed out.
“Did you keep them in custody, Daniel?”
“No reason. They weren’t poaching.”
“Where is everybody?” Cork asked, because except for his daughter and son-in-law, Crow Point was deserted.
“Rainy’s still at the clinic,” Jenny replied. “Henry, Leah, Beulah, and Waaboo are out gathering herbs. Trixie trotted along with them.”
“Stephen?”
“We haven’t seen him since he left with Rainy this morning. He should have been back by now.”
Bo’s warning—Keep watching your backs—returned in a powerful rush.
“Try his phone, Jenny.”
She used her cell, waited. “He’s not answering.”
“He could just be out of cell phone range,” Daniel said. “Hit and miss out here. But if you want to look for him, I parked my truck out at Crow Point East. I’ll drive.”
The two men moved quickly down the path that headed east from Crow Point and along the lakeshore. Cork went over in his head all the safe possibilities: Stephen was, as Daniel suggested, out of cell phone range; his phone was out of juice; he was involved in something important and had simply missed the call. At the same time, he had to consider the more dire possibility: just as Bo Thorson had speculated, there was more going on in Tamarack County, and Stephen was caught in some deadly, new threat.
“Cork,” Daniel said, pulling him out of his dark reverie. “Listen.”
They stopped near a copse of birch. A stiff wind shoved through the trees, and at first Cork heard only the loud liquid sound of the leaves rustling in its passage. Then he heard what Daniel’s younger ears had already picked up, the sound of an approaching vehicle. With all the uncertainty that had been the norm of late, they took to the trees to wait. In half a minute, Stephen’s dusty old Jeep appeared, carefully following the narrow path. Stephen wasn’t alone, and the kid in the passenger seat was quite a surprise to Cork. He and Daniel stepped into the open.
“You’ve been gone a long time,” Cork said, approaching the driver’s side. “And you aren’t answering your phone.”
“Sorry, Dad. It’s on vibrate, hard to feel in the Jeep.” Stephen took the phone from the pocket of his jacket and made the switch.
“Afternoon, Winston,” Cork said.
The kid stared down at his feet.
“What’s up, Stephen?”
“Dad, there’s something you’ve got to see. Show him, Winston.”
The kid had a camera in his lap, a fine-looking Nikon with a powerful telescopic lens affixed. “You . . . you need to come over here,” he said.
Cork moved around to the other side of the Jeep. The kid held out the camera in a way that made the display screen visible. What Cork saw appeared to be a military vehicle mounted with some kind of dish being operated by men in camo.
“What is this?”
Stephen answered: “Winston took that on Desolation Mountain the day Senator McCarthy’s plane crashed. Show him what’s in the sky, Winston.”
The kid took the camera, shifted the image on the display, enlarged it, and handed the camera back to Cork. After a long moment, Cork said, “We’ve got a lot of talking to do, son.”
* * *
Fresh in his mind was Bo’s warning of the possibility of surveillance bugs everywhere, even in the cabins on Crow Point, and Cork herded everyone to the safety of the fire ring to hear Winston Goodsky’s story. The young man was clearly uncomfortable with such a large gathering. Cork suspected he would be uncomfortable regardless of the size or makeup of the group. He was like an animal of the forest, a deer maybe, harmless, whose best defense was stillness and second best was flight.
“After school, I went to take some pictures on the mountain. My granddad lets me use his truck as long as I don’t leave the rez. I couldn’t get to the mountain that day. There was some work going on and the road was closed.”
“Roadwork?” Daniel looked to Cork and Stephen. “Wes Simpson and his cousin at the barricade.”
“Let him finish,” Cork said.
“I know lots of old logging roads, so I drove around to the north side, and parked near Little Bass Lake and hiked up from there. I wanted to get some pictures of those rocks at the top against the clouds. I thought it was, you know, a dramatic setting.”
“I saw one of your photographs of Desolation Mountain at your grandfather’s gallery today,” Stephen told him. “I thought it was awesome.”
The kid’s face lit up at the praise. “What I wanted to do was make a series across the whole fall, then winter and spring and summer. My granddad said I should call it the Desolation Series.”
“Go on,” Cork said.
“I was standing just where the trees end, that ring of aspens, you know. I liked the long shot up the bare slope, nice foreground stuff. I put on my AF lens.” He tapped the powerful attachment on his camera. “I did a couple of shots, then that truck or whatever showed up. It parked at the top of the mountain and those guys started working with that thing in back. They ruined the whole scene. But I thought what the heck and kept shooting anyway.”
“Did they see you?”
“Not then. I was still in the cover of the trees. But I heard the plane coming and then, it was really strange because the sound of it cut out. Like the engines just died. I could see it starting to fall from the sky and I took shot after shot. I got so caught up that I moved out of the trees to follow it as it fell. That’s when they saw me.”
“What did they do?” Cork asked.
“I don’t know. As soon as they saw me, I ran. I got down to my granddad’s truck and took off and went back to Allouette as fast as I could.”
“Did you tell your grandfather what happened?”
“I saw you there,” Stephen said.
“I know. When you came into the gallery, I was afraid you would recognize me and tell my granddad.” The boy looked at the others in a guilty way, thinking, perhaps, that what he’d revealed to them was a breach of his promise.
“You’ve done the right thing,” Cork assured him.
What he didn’t say was that he understood now Bo Thorson’s concern regarding Gerard. Winston Goodsky was the loose end that needed tying up.
CHAPTER 44
* * *
The call came much sooner than Bo had expected.
“Just wanted to say thank you for all your help, Bo. In the language of the Ojibwe, that would be migwech.”
“No problem, Cork. You folks up there in Tamarack County, you take care of yourselves. I’m sure our paths will cross again someday soon.”
He turned his Jeep around and headed back to the double-trunk birch, then along the trail to Crow Point. It was late afternoon when he found Cork and the others gathered around the fire ring. With them was a teenager he’d never seen before.
O’Connor introduced Winston Goodsky and explained all.
“Let me see the picture.”
Winston showed Bo the image on the camera display.
“EW, I’m guessing,” Bo said.
Cork gave him a look of incomprehension. “EW?”
“Electronic warfare. A weapon that fires an electromagnetic pulse, an EMP. They’re designed to take out electronic systems. Shooting planes out of the sky is one of the potential uses.” He glanced at the kid. “Which might explain why you heard that plane’s engines go suddenly quiet.” Bo studied the image again. “I’ve only seen pictures, so I don’t know for sure. I have a friend in the Pentagon, a guy who used to work Secret Service with me. He might be able to help us out. Can I get a copy of this?”
“I’ll have to download it first,” Winston said. “My laptop’s at my granddad’s.”
“We need to talk to your grandfather,” Cork told the teenager. “He should know all of this.”
The kid didn’t look happy about it.
“Okay if I go along?” Stephen addressed this to Winston, not to his father.
The kid looked so relieved he almost smiled. “Thanks.”
In the end, it was Bo, Winston, Cork, and his son who headed into Allouette. Stephen led the way, ferrying the Goodsky teenager in his old Jeep. Cork and Bo followed. On the way to town, they went over the pieces, trying to fit things together.
“An EW, that would be a military weapon, right?” Cork said. “So, how did the Lexington Brigade get its hands on something like that?”
“They sure as hell didn’t buy it off the Internet,” Bo said. “Stole it, maybe.”
“If it was an electronic weapon that brought the senator’s plane down, why is the word from NTSB that a missile was responsible?”
“This sounds like that rare bird, multiple agencies of the government actually working together, in this case to cover up the truth.”
“Which brings us to Gerard,” Cork said. “If he’s this fixer, who’s he working for and how does he fit in?”
“He keeps the hands of important people clean. Very important people. Who is that in this case? You could cover him in red-hot coals and he wouldn’t tell you.”
“Might be a good man to have on your side,” Cork noted.
Although he couldn’t disagree, Bo added, “But one hell of an adversary.”
* * *
On the way to Allouette, Winston was quiet, staring straight ahead as if looking into a dismal future.
“Don’t worry,” Stephen told him. “My father will square things with your granddad.”
“He worries about me. A lot.” The kid sat slumped, as if under a heavy burden. “He won’t talk about it, but everybody knows he’s dying. He’s worried what’ll happen to me when he’s gone.”
Not an unreasonable concern, Stephen knew. Across the course of his life, living so near the rez and being of mixed heritage himself, he’d seen the frightening pitfalls of the foster care system firsthand, especially when it came to Native kids.
“No family left on the rez?” he asked.
“No one interested in taking me.” Winston’s hands gripped his knees, as if trying to hold himself down. “I grew up in the city. Feels strange on the rez. I’m not like the other kids there. And I’m not like the kids in town.”
Not Ojibwe enough for the Ojibwe or white enough for the whites, a feeling Stephen knew well, one that had plagued him, too, for most of his life. And he thought about his vision and Winston’s part in it. Him and not him. Kindred spirits, he understood.
In Allouette, Winston lingered in front of the door to his grandfather’s gallery, gathering strength to face the music.
“It’ll be okay,” Stephen assured him.
Stephen’s father put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Telling us was the right thing.”
“Convince my granddad of that,” the kid said hopelessly.
Inside, Winston led them through the curtains into the back area of the gallery, where his grandfather sat at a bench, building a frame of lacquered birch for one of his photographs. Goodsky looked up from his work, clearly surprised to see his grandson in all that company.
“What’s going on, Winston?”
“Okay if I explain things?” Cork asked, and Winston looked grateful.
When he’d finished the story, Cork said, “It’s a good thing he told us, Harmon. There are still people out there trying to track him down.”
“And they’re the kind of people who won’t stop until they find him,” Bo added.
Goodsky stood up. In the wake of his conversation with Winston, Stephen was struck by how all the man’s ailments threatened to topple him. “Go on,” Goodsky said to his grandson. “Put that photo on your laptop. I want a few words with these men.”
Winston headed upstairs.
“Wish you didn’t know any of this,” Goodsky said. “A secret never keeps long on the rez.” He looked toward the ceiling. “I fear for him.”
“With good reason,” Stephen’s father said. “But maybe the best way to protect him is to make sure the right people hear what he knows.”
“And who would that be?”
“Why don’t we start with talking to the sheriff?”
“I don’t want to talk to the sheriff.” Winston stood at the bottom of the stairs. He held his laptop and a cable connection. “Can’t you just show them the picture?”
“It’s on the laptop now?” Bo asked.
Winston nodded and handed over the computer. They spent a couple of minutes together, transferring the image to Bo’s cell phone.
When they’d finished, Bo said, “What do you think, Cork? Once we get confirmation about the EW, we can take everything to Sheriff Dross. I think in the meantime we could leave Winston out of this.” He eyed the boy. “You understand that you’ll have to tell your story eventually.”
Winston looked as if he were suffering from a toothache.
“We’ll be there with you,” Stephen assured him.
The rest of the day they waited on Crow Point. Dusk came, and still no word from Bo’s contact at the Pentagon. After dark, Stephen walked out into the meadow, unrolled his sleeping bag, and lay down, staring up at the stars. Daniel and Jenny had erected a big tent next to Leah’s cabin, where, until the craziness in Aurora had passed, they would sleep with Waaboo. Cork and Rainy shared the cabin with Leah. Bo Thorson had accepted the loan of a good thick blanket and had thrown it out in the meadow near the tent. Stephen, too, preferred to bed down under the open sky, but he’d mo
ved far away from the others. He should have felt satisfied because at last he’d been able to divine much of the meaning of a vision in time for it to be useful, at least where protecting Winston Goodsky was concerned. He understood the element of him and not him now. Winston, a kid of mixed heritage, unsure of his future, whose eyes saw the world in a way others did not, and who was somehow able to capture that vision with his camera. Stephen, who often felt like an outsider, too, and had his own unique way of seeing. But there were still two significant elements of the vision that remained a mystery. He didn’t understand the part he’d played—or may have yet to play—in the bird shot from the sky. And, maybe most important, he had yet to face the monster at his back.
Dog-tired from another long day, he was asleep before he knew it. And the vision visited him again.
He woke with a start and sat up. A glow came from beyond the rock outcrops where the fire ring lay. He slipped from his bag, put on his boots, and headed toward the fire. Except for Henry, all the men were there: his father, Daniel, and Bo Thorson.
“What’s up?” Stephen said.
“We thought you were sound asleep,” his father told him.
“I was. What are you all doing here?”
“I got a message from my friend in the Pentagon,” Bo said. “He’s onto something. I’m waiting for the next communication.”
“We’re all waiting,” Stephen’s father said. “Have a seat.”
Stephen sat between Bo and Cork and stared into the fire.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you about this vision of yours,” Bo said. “I know the general outline, but I don’t know the specifics. Mind going over it with me?”
Although he’d told it many times now, Stephen told it again in detail.
“The eagle shot from the sky? You think that’s the senator’s plane?”
“What else?”
“Hmmm.” Bo tossed a stick onto the fire. “Why, in this vision, does Winston shoot the eagle out of the sky? It wasn’t him operating that electronic weapon on the mountaintop.”
“I don’t know.”