Tribal Ways

by Alex Archer

  And she always had the sword, of course.

  Snake carried a Mossberg 500 combat-style shotgun in 20-gauge. When Annja cocked an eyebrow at her choosing that over the more conventional 12-gauge, the tall, tattooed woman had shrugged, smiled and said, “Three-quarters the killing power for two-thirds the recoil. I like the trade-off.”

  Billy and Cody Hawk both carried lever-action carbines chambered in .44 Magnum. Billy claimed those served as well as a semiauto rifle like the Mini-14, even in close-quarters battle; and while the needlelike .223s had a lot of penetration, the big blunt Magnum had torque. Like Annja, the three Iron Horse People carried holstered handguns as well as long arms.

  They had ridden horseback as close as they could get to their objective without being seen. Annja decided she wasn’t surprised that her biker buddies knew how to ride flesh-and-blood horses as well as iron ones. It fit perfectly with their philosophy of combining the best of the old with the best of the new.

  When they had ridden as far as they were going to they dismounted. Four of the elder warriors stayed to tend their young horse herd well behind the line of fire. The other four had gone to position themselves under cover. They would provide long-range fire support for the younger people assaulting the ranch buildings.

  “You wouldn’t think some of them would make it across the room,” Johnny said, shaking his head as the four snipers disappeared. “But they move like mist out here in the weeds.”

  “Don’t underestimate your elders, cub,” Tom said gruffly. For a moment Annja worried the truce between him and his wayward son was about to break at the worst possible moment. But then Tom’s seamed face split in his engaging grin, showing he’d been kidding. And to her relief Johnny laughed.

  They gave the old boys ten minutes. For Annja it was like squatting in boiling water, trying to contain her eagerness and awareness that the clock was running. Then they split themselves into three teams and moved out.

  The lone road to the Otero place ran up and over a low ridge from the west. Annja’s group intended to take up station on the far side, covering the back of the house from the cover of dry Rabbit Run Wash; they had the farthest to go. Johnny’s quartet would approach from north of the drive, his father’s from the south. The three parties were positioning themselves in an approximate equilateral triangle, to allow them to catch their opponents from flank and rear while minimizing the danger they’d cross fire one another.

  Annja had fretted about how willing Iron Horse bikers would be to put themselves under the command of a cop, much less their beloved chieftain’s until-recently estranged father. But Tom’s team, Angel and Ricky, plus a Kiowa named Satanta, seemed to respect the older man.

  It’s all going so smoothly, Annja thought as she duck walked along with carbine in hand. That’s what worries me.

  When they had reached a point Annja reckoned was due south of the house, she held up a hand to halt.

  “Let’s take a look,” she said softly. “Get our bearings.”

  The others nodded. Even more than concern over Tom’s reception, Annja had felt trepidation about how Snake would respond to being effectively under her command. But Snake just kept acting with her usual cool matter-of-factness. The running fight with the stolen tanker seemed to have won her respect.

  They went to their bellies. The earth was cool beneath Annja. She wore a light jacket over jeans and hiking boots. Working her way to the top of a low rise she peered through the yellow wraparound lenses of a pair of shooting glasses.

  Despite being built of stabilized mud brick the main house looked like a conventional contemporary ranch design. Maybe a three-bedroom. It still had glass in the windows; Annja guessed it couldn’t have lain derelict that long. Of course, out in the middle of nowhere untended window glass might have a greater life expectancy than, say, back home in Brooklyn.

  A maroon SUV was parked in front of the ranch house. To the west lay a garage and a small prefab building that might have been a shed or a workshop. Past a corner of the house Annja glimpsed a small barn made of poles and sheet tin.

  “All right,” she said. “We’re on the right track. We better move.” Once they reached their attack positions they’d use a mirror to flash quick signals to the other two groups.

  Snake caught her forearm in an unsettlingly hard grip. “Wait,” the tattooed woman said tersely. “What’s going on over there?”

  She pointed off to the northwest. Annja saw a commotion in the tall grass.

  A heartbeat later Johnny Ten Bears rolled into sight, grappling for his life against a bulky, bare-chested George Abell. A knife flashed in the Crazy Dog chieftain’s hand.

  “Freeze where you are!” a voice barked behind Annja.

  27

  Annja was already in motion upward with no ready way to stop. She also knew that people who were talking didn’t usually shoot. It took time, and generally an act of will, to shift state from talk to shoot. So she took a calculated risk and turned.

  Of course, she anticipated a loud noise, and shattering impact, and blinding white light for every millisecond of the movement.

  Annja already knew what she’d see. Three stocky guys in Old West Indian-reenactor drag pointed thoroughly modern assault weapons at them.

  The Dogs didn’t bother blacking their faces anymore; they were out in the open, as it were. Instead, they had painted themselves with various symbols in assorted colors. They wore buckskin pants, bone-bead chest pieces and eagle feathers.

  She gave points to the guy who went shirtless. The air was cool. The relentless Great Plains wind turned it into knives.

  “Way to walk into the trap,” one warrior said. The Crazy Dogs were all keyed up on adrenaline; from the looks in their eyes, they had been for days.

  Annja’s comrades stood and turned to face the men who had the drop on them. They held their long arms loose in their hands, muzzles angled down.

  “Throw down your weapons,” the bare-chested leader directed.

  Gunfire broke out to the west. Annja felt suddenly nauseous. But the diversion was a welcome assistance to what she was about to do, anyway. Try not to think you’re probably listening to friends dying in ambush, she told herself, and dropped the Mini-14.

  She kicked it toward the three painted gunmen.

  As Annja made her move she’d noted the flicker of three sets of eyes turning reflexively toward the sound of shooting. The drop-kicked carbine sailed up toward the face of the man in the middle. He reacted by reflex. And his immediate instinct was to guard his eyes, not shoot.

  He yanked up his own rifle to block the flying weapon. Annja was already in motion. The sword sprang into her hand. She slashed at him.

  But he had already flinched back so far from the object flying unexpectedly up in his face that he overbalanced. He backpedaled madly. He bounced the Mini-14 off his own rifle. Then the sword slashed his M-16 across the receiver. Its tip only gashed his cheek.

  She was already whirling right. She cut the man on that side across the chest as he raised his rifle. He spun away from Annja as if propelled by the blood gushing from his chest.

  Behind her a gunshot cracked. Then more, rippling like sudden hail on a tin roof. She flinched. I’m dead, she thought.

  It took little time to realize that wasn’t the case. She wheeled, sword still in hand. Its miraculous blade gleamed in the sun.

  She caught an impression of the third Dog gunman falling, dropping his M-4 carbine. With an eagle scream of fury the leader whipped his long black rifle to his shoulder, aimed it squarely at Annja’s face and pulled the trigger.

  Annja’s sword stroke had split open the M-16’s chamber. The easiest path for the terrible fire and force unleashed by the primer bursting was not pushing a jacketed lead pill out of the cartridge neck and forcing it to screw its way down a long grooved barrel. It was to jet out like a superheated knife into the leader’s painted face.

  He never had time to scream.

  Annja turned to find Snake
and Billy in Weaver combat stances, staring over the front sights of their respective handguns. Cody Hawk still stood with his own rifle in hand. His dark eyes were wide.

  “Whoa,” he said.

  Annja realized the other two, having dropped their long arms and with handguns still braced and leveled at the air their opponents had occupied moments before, had clicked their eyes to her. Theirs were pretty wide, too.

  “Later,” she said. “First, survive until later.”

  A brisk firefight was going on to the west of the main house. Despite having obviously been ambushed by the Crazy Dogs, as well, the other two parties were making a fight of it. Johnny! she thought in sudden terror. And stepped hard on the thought.

  “So much for the Feds being smart enough to kill the SIU’s passwords,” Snake said, relaxing out of firing position. She ejected the 1911’s partially depleted magazine onto her palm, tucked it away beneath her bulky Army jacket before popping a fresh one into the well. Meanwhile Billy was ejecting the full-moon clip from his big revolver and reloading, too.

  Annja recovered her fallen Mini-14. She jacked back the charging handle far enough to confirm a round was still chambered, because she was properly trained, too. She also gave the bottom of the thirty-round black stamped-steel banana magazine a whack to make sure it hadn’t come unseated during the acrobatics the rifle had been called on to perform. If it had, the weapon would lock up when she fired the chambered cartridge.

  “Cody,” she said softly. The boy continued to stare at her. “Cody.”

  She sharpened it up as much as she dared. She didn’t want her voice to carry, although with all the shooting going on—gunfire was coming from the house now, as well—it was unlikely any Dogs could hear anything but their own caps busting.

  The young man blinked. She took that to signify he’d returned to earth. “Watch our tails for us. We don’t want any more bad guys sneaking up on us like that. You got that?”

  “Oh, yeah.” He nodded feverishly, firmed up his grip on his lever action and started sweeping the surrounding grass with wild eyes.

  Annja went to a knee and peered up and over the low crest. She felt Snake and Billy slide up on either side of her.

  For the moment the battle had devolved into a static firefight. The Horses had gone to ground and traded shots with Dogs firing from behind the outbuildings and the SUV. Annja had no idea how any of her friends had survived being cut down or captured—they had walked into ambush as flatfooted as Annja and her team had.

  She heard a strangled scream, saw a Dog who had spun back behind the garage reach up to the red spurting gape where his jaw should’ve been.

  “The old-guy snipers!” she exclaimed. “They’re picking off the Dogs!”

  Annja could see no sign of Johnny and his burlier foe. She didn’t know if that was a good sign or not. She never thought for a moment either side would pack it in just because a leader fell.

  Only death would keep Johnny or his father from rescuing Sallie—or wreaking bloody vengeance on her kidnappers if they were rash enough to kill their captive. And for the other Horses this was personal. They were going to settle the score with their bloody rivals.

  “Don’t forget,” Snake whispered, “the choppers are on their way.”

  “And that’s not a good thing,” Billy said.

  Annja nodded. “One thing to do,” she said.

  “Of course,” Snake said.

  “Damn straight,” Billy said.

  “Cody,” Annja called. “We’re going in. Follow us.”

  “Straight in?” he asked. They’d be approaching the ranch house from the side, not the back as planned.

  “Seconds count,” she said.

  She’d figured out a plan. They could bring flanking fire on the Dogs shooting from outside the house. But the quartet of old Indian lawmen who had hidden themselves out in the tall grass had that covered. They could continue to work their way around to come in from the west as planned. But aside from the fact that would take them through the fields of fire of Johnny’s bunch, if any were still firing, that would take a long time.

  And it wasn’t just the FBI kill team coming closer with every sweep of their choppers’ main rotors. The longer this went on the greater the likelihood the Dogs would kill Sallie. Or even that a stray bullet from her rescuers would do the job.

  There were no good answers. So Annja opted for the quickest.

  She jumped up and charged the house.

  28

  Speed was everything. There was a window in the wall that faced them. Curtains hung in it, their patterned dark cloth long since bleached by the sun to a mottled gray-brown. Annja saw the curtains twitch. Then glass exploded outward as full-auto fire erupted through the window.

  A second burst blew curtain tatters flapping out the window. Cody grunted and fell headlong to the dirt. His limbs flopped as he rolled.

  A tremendous boom burst from Annja’s left. A head Annja had only just spotted fell away inside the window. Snake had paused just long enough to take quick aim before firing her shotgun.

  Annja scattered shots through the window to keep the defenders’ heads down. Shooting blind might endanger Sallie. But if somebody picked her, Snake and Billy off as they covered the last few yards to the house, she was likely dead, anyway.

  Half turning Annja pressed up hard against the wall between the window and the back of the house. Snake slammed up beside her.

  A moment later Billy joined them, his short, bowed legs pumping determinedly if not exactly fast. Although he puffed like a steam engine he rumbled right past the women, heading for the back door. Bending low to avoid being spotted out the kitchen window Annja followed. She felt more than heard Snake come after.

  Holding his carbine across his chest Bully kicked at the back door. “Damn!” he yelled as his boot rebounded.

  Annja slid up to the side of the frame. Keeping the foot-thick wall at her back, she grabbed the knob and turned.

  The door opened.

  Billy kicked it again. It whipped inward. Annja heard an impact, a soft cry. Then Billy’s .44 Magnum roared.

  Snake slipped inside. Annja came right after. As she stepped left automatically to clear the doorway’s fatal funnel a yellow light and terrible noise filled the gloomy kitchen into which they had intruded.

  “Missed!” Snake shouted, racking her slide. She had shifted right on entering. She unleashed another head-burstingly loud blast into the far wall, hoping to blow through and nail the Dog who’d peeked out and then ducked to cover on the far side. But instead of lath-and-plaster or drywall the interior wall turned out to be adobe, too, when the pellets blew a divot of painted plaster off. Like the outer walls it would shrug off hits all day.

  Annja slipped forward around a wooden kitchen table set against the wall. A man lay on his back in the middle of the floor with his arms raised over his head and a pair of eagle feathers splayed out on the warped floorboards. He had obviously taken Billy’s bullet through the chest.

  Her head reeled. She put out an arm to steady herself against the nearest wall. Annja wasn’t squeamish. She wondered what would be making her feel so shaky.

  Snake fired another shot through the open doorway that led past the hall to the living room. Annja guessed it was to make the man who’d escaped her earlier keep his head down. The brutal noise in such enclosed quarters was making her head ache.

  Annja dropped the Mini-14’s magazine from the well and stuffed it in her jacket pocket. Then she jacked the action and caught the brass cartridge as it spun glittering from the receiver. She dropped that in a pants pocket. Kneeling, she set the unloaded Mini-14 down on the floor. Short and handy though it was, a handgun was even more effective in close quarters. And she was a lot more used to fighting at face-to-face range.

  From the front of the house came a mutter of voices. Louder voices barked questions at each other down the hallway that led right to where the bedrooms and bathroom presumably lay. Sallie was almost certainly down
there, as well—if she were indeed being held there.

  A hard choice faced her would-be rescuers. They could drive straight for Sallie and get shot in the back by the men in the living room. Or they could deal with them first, putting themselves in danger from whoever was lurking down that hall, and increasing Sallie’s exposure time to lethal danger.

  The plan could’ve been better, Annja thought. Then again, this wasn’t the plan. It was improvisation forced on them by the fact the Dogs were fully aware of their approach. And the original plan had been pretty ad hoc to start with, given they had no recon and no time, but had to trust the maps, their allies and their own resourcefulness to get in and save a captive child.

  “Cover my back from the dudes in the hall,” she muttered to her comrades.

  A shout and a shot erupted from the corridor as she raced past. Both missed. Then she burst into the living room like a hand grenade, her sword appearing in her free hand.

  The two Crazy Dogs kneeling by the windows to either side of the door pulled back from the windows where they had been trading shots with the Iron Horses, stood and begun swinging around to cover their backsides with their long black rifles.

  They were too late. The closer man had yellow lightning bolts painted on his cheeks. Annja launched a forehand stroke. The sword slashed across the painted face diagonally. The Crazy Dog toppled backward, clutching at a gush of blood with futile hands.

  Still running Annja brought the sword up and around, swung down and right. The second man, one half of his face painted black, the other white, was trying to bull-rush her, with his long black M-16 held transversely across his torso as if at port arms. The sword caught him at the juncture of thick neck and powerful shoulders. The blade bit at an angle deep into his chest.