Heart of the Storm

by Lindsay McKenna

  “I’m ex-army. I was a captain,” he told her. “I went to West Point when I was eighteen and graduated four years later. I put in my promised eight years afterward and here I am. Back on the res.”

  Raising her brows, Dana asked, “That’s all you’re going to tell me?”

  “It’s all you need to know.”

  “That’s crap. You’re from a medicine family, the Iron Hands. Are you trained in ceremony?”

  “What do you think?” Chase popped the last of the cornbread into his mouth, savoring the flavors. Dana looked angry. Good.

  “I think you are.”

  “You’re right. My father taught me everything I needed to know before he died.”

  “You’re a pipe carrier?”

  “Of course. Personal, only.”

  That made Dana feel slightly better. Pipe carriers, personal or ceremonial, were supposed to be role models, having good morals, values and work ethics. Dana saw the parallel to the knights of King Arthur’s time. They were supposed to be honest, and never lie, steal, cheat or do anything to harm others. They were there to protect anyone vulnerable. It was the same maxim for a pipe carrier, who was expected to utilize the pipe for the good of all their relations. A ceremonial pipe carrier had an even weightier responsibility: that of caring for the nation he or she belonged to.

  “Enough about me,” Chase said. “Here’s your training schedule for the next five weeks. I’m waking you at 0400 tomorrow morning. You’ll get on those boots and you’ll run for five miles. I’ll time you. When you return to the hogan, I’ll make you a big breakfast, and you’re going to eat all of it because food is fuel for strength. After breakfast, you’re going to start lifting stones that I’ll have waiting for you. Your shoulders and arms are weak. You need to build them up. The rocks will be of various weights, designed to do that. After an hour’s workout, you’ll go to the cliff wall and climb. You’ll make it up to the top and rappel back down. I’ll time you on that, too. At lunch, we’ll come back here and you’ll eat heavy. You’ll rest for an hour after that, sleep if you can. Then you’ll do a second five-mile run in the heat. When you return, you’ll chop wood for the stove and then you’ll make us dinner. By that time, you’ll be exhausted.”

  “I’ll be dead. I can’t run five miles, much less ten.”

  Shrugging, Chase pushed away from the wooden table. He went over to the potbellied stove and picked up the coffeepot. Getting two mugs, he set them on the table and poured the boiling-hot coffee. “You will or die trying. I have five weeks to get you in shape for this gig.”

  The coffee smelled wonderful, but Dana’s gut churned as she watched Chase put the pot back on the stove, away from the main heat. It was hot in the hogan, even with the door open, and dusk was falling. “I’ll do my best,” she muttered, defiantly.

  Chase reached for some matches and lit the few kerosene lamps sitting on shelves nearby. The glow chased away the gathering darkness. The smell of kerosene was faint but present, so he opened a window to get rid of the odor. Electricity and phones didn’t exist out here, nor any other modern amenities. Turning, Chase dropped the spent wooden matches into the stove, then grabbed the honey from the counter and brought it to the table.

  As he sat, he noticed the open defiance on Dana’s face. Spooning some honey into his steaming coffee, he smiled thinly. “You will stick to this schedule. It’s real simple. And after the day’s routine, we’ll spend time each evening working with your psychic development, to strengthen your protective walls so Rogan and his team don’t feel you coming.” Chase slowly stirred his coffee. “You don’t have a choice. You have to do everything I demand of you or you won’t be ready to steal the Storm Pipe back before Rogan uses it to kill someone else.

  “Right now, I’m sure everyone in the government is turning over every scrap of evidence to try and figure out what killed the vice president. Sooner or later, we can expect they’ll figure out it wasn’t laser-weapons created by Russia or some terrorist organization. I’m hoping we’ll have five weeks of peace and quiet to get this mission completed. That way, we won’t have the FBI snooping around on Indian land, or sticking their nose into our pipe ceremonies and other medicine.”

  Nodding, Dana sipped her coffee. “I don’t want them nosing around, either. White men don’t understand our world, our beliefs or our practices.”

  “Well, then,” Chase rumbled, “at least we agree on one thing—we want white men to butt out of this mission. Let’s hope like hell that the feds don’t get wind of what really killed the vice president. If they do, it will only complicate what we’re trying to pull off.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “YOU’VE GOT TO BE JOKING,” David Colby said. He sat behind his desk at FBI headquarters and stared at the woman who’d just stunned him.

  In her early forties, Annie Ballard was dressed in a conservative beige linen suit. She seemed the consummate professional.

  “I told my superiors, Agent Colby, that you would have this kind of reaction to me.” Annie smiled slightly. “Let me repeat—I’m a CIA agent assigned to the nonexistent Remote Viewing Department. If you take a look at my orders, you’ll see that I’m a psychic and I’ve been working on behalf of our country for fifteen years.” She handed him the paperwork.

  Controlling his reaction, Colby took the papers and quickly read them. A psychic, of all things! It had been three weeks since the vice president had been murdered, and no clear enemy had been found. The Russians denied any responsibility, and even though they’d had optical and laser technology stolen, no Islamic terrorist group had come forward to claim the heinous act.

  As he sat up in his chair and set the papers on his desk, Colby had no explanation for the murder, not the slightest clue. Which wasn’t making anyone in government happy. The military was jumpy. The law enforcement sector was on high alert. The president remained in hiding and had not come back to the White House. Now, because there were no leads, they were sending him a psychic?

  He tightened his jaw in disbelief. “Have a seat, Agent Ballard.”

  “Call me Annie. I’ll call you David unless you tell me otherwise.” She turned and shut the door to his small, neatly kept office. The opened venetian blind behind him allowed in light and showed a July-blue sky, a strip of grass and some white granite buildings nearby.

  “Okay,” Colby muttered unhappily, watching as she sat on the small leather couch to the left of his desk.

  Opening a black briefcase, Annie pulled out a number of sketches. She set them on his desk. “These are impressions of the man who killed the vice president.” With a long, thin finger, she tapped the corner of one. “My job over at the lab is more wide ranging than just remote viewing activity. I’m sure you’re aware of our department?”

  “Vaguely,” Colby said, looking down at the top sketch. “You’re quite an artist. Or did you have one of our FBI artists render this for you?”

  She shook her head, her dishwater-blond hair sliding across her shoulders. “No, I did it. My mother is an artist. I think I got some of her genes.”

  “I don’t believe in psychics and all that mumbo jumbo.” Colby sat back and stared into her large blue eyes. She was about five foot six inches tall, rail thin, with triangular features. She was pretty in her own way, and Colby saw a wedding ring on her left hand. She didn’t look like a psychic, more like an average working woman with all her ducks in a row.

  “This isn’t about you or me, David. The FBI has failed to come up with leads on the killer. My boss asked me to get involved. This is the face I kept seeing when I went into meditation. Does he look at all familiar to you?”

  Shaking his head, Colby said, “No. But I’ll run the sketch and we’ll see if we get a hit.”

  “Whoever this is, he’s very dangerous. He’s a natural born killer,” she said grimly. Showing him another sketch, she added, “I did remote viewing, and this is what came up. This guy is in or around the Carson City, Nevada, area. You need to run this against local crimina
ls out there.”

  “Okay…” he muttered, looking at the sketch. How the hell could she get this kind of info? Colby didn’t ask, because he didn’t believe. It was all hocus-pocus to him. What they needed to break open this case was cold, hard, detailed work. Uncover the details and the puzzle would explain itself.

  Annie pulled a third paper from the group and laid it on top. She leaned over Colby. “This last sketch is the impression of the weapon that was used to kill the vice president.”

  Frowning, Colby studied the L-shaped object—a long, vertical shaft with a much shorter piece jutting off at a perpendicular angle at the bottom. “Doesn’t look like a laser to me.”

  “You’re not a laser specialist.”

  Stinging beneath her softly spoken reply, Colby said, “That’s true. So what is this? Do the science guys know?”

  Annie stood and pushed her thin hair away from her face. “They don’t have a clue, either. It’s like nothing they’ve seen before. That’s all I got when I asked during meditation to see the weapon that killed the vice president.”

  “I’ll send a copy of this over to the laser specialist friend of mine here in the building. Maybe he’ll recognize it.”

  “I’ve already asked around the CIA, and my people say it’s not a weapon they’re familiar with.”

  Scratching his head, Colby took the papers. “Well, at least you came up with something, even if I don’t believe in your work.”

  Grinning, Annie sat back on the couch. She retrieved a clipboard and pen from her briefcase. “That’s okay, David. You don’t have to believe in what I do in order for me to get leads. I’m not interested in defending my abilities. I’m interested in finding the killer and stopping him from doing this again.”

  She was right. Colby called his secretarial assistant, Joan Stoneman, who quickly came and took the papers. They would be distributed to the proper people for analysis within the FBI. Colby privately figured no one else would come up with any hits or help, either.

  “Now,” Annie said brightly, “what lead have you developed?”

  Leaning back in his chair, Colby said, “Not a thing. I’m sure you know that.”

  “I know some of the information through my bosses,” Annie admitted. “But there are other things I wonder if you’ve analyzed or looked at.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, unusual things, you know? Things that are out of place for this time of year.”

  Rubbing his furrowed brow, Colby said, “We’ve done a lot of looking in the D.C. area and found nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “Can you swing your considerable assets to Carson City, Nevada? Take a look at any anomalies around there?”

  “Of course.” Colby decided that Annie Ballard, despite being a psychic, was pretty grounded and sharp. He’d expected a space cadet personality, but she was all-business. Brisk and efficient, even. Impressed, he picked up his mug and sipped the nearly cold coffee it contained, then said, “I’m going to bite. Do you recognize this man? Did you receive any other impressions about him?”

  Annie shook her head. “No. As you may or may not know, being psychic isn’t foolproof. I have good and bad days, which is par for the course for any emotional human being. I have good and bad reception, for whatever reasons. I can’t control what I get, the depth or breadth of information. No one is a perfect clairvoyant.” Annie shrugged and smiled. “We get puzzle pieces, as I like to call them. Hints. And hopefully, direction.”

  “I see….” Colby wondered about the L-shaped weapon.

  “My general level of accuracy is ninety-five percent, by the way. What I get is solid intel.”

  “And we’re all left to figure out what you’re getting, and to interpret it accurately, right?”

  “You got it. That’s the fly in this particular ointment.” She grinned.

  Leaning back and lacing his hands behind his head, David murmured, “Okay, our bad guy is in the U.S., so we figure he’s a U.S. citizen?”

  “Why? He could be a terrorist operating in a cell out in Carson City.”

  “You sketched him as being darker skinned. A black? Middle Eastern? Hispanic?”

  “I saw his skin as brownish, or deeply tanned. He had black hair, dark brown eyes. I don’t think he’s African-American. One of the other two, perhaps.”

  “Is he a terrorist?”

  “I felt a fanatical energy around him.”

  “And he’s operating out of the Carson City region.” Colby leaned forward to make a couple of phone calls. He would find out what terrorist suspects might be located in that part of the country.

  “We’ll find out pretty quickly what Homeland Security has,” Colby said, “about any cell activity.”

  “Good.”

  “So what’s your next plan of action? More meditation?” Colby figured he might as well go along with this charade. It wasn’t his nature to hurt anyone, and Annie Ballard seemed so genuine and caring that he really didn’t want her to know he considered her work a blind alley.

  “Well,” she said hesitantly, “I get intel at odd times, David. I might be having coffee at Star-bucks and I’ll get a flash of something. Or it’ll come through a dream. I have dreams that tell me a lot more than what I receive up here.” She tapped her temple. “I can’t control where, when or why the information comes to me. Sometimes it’s just a hunch or intuition. I follow up on it and then something synchronistic happens to verify it.” She opened her hands. “It’s a mishmash of information, like puzzle pieces most of the time. I have to try and put the images together into some coherent, understandable format.”

  No kidding. But Colby kept that acidic thought to himself. The whole thing sounded harebrained. A wild-goose chase, for sure. “So, we just wait for the cosmos to contact you?”

  “No, I’m authorized to take you to Carson City.” Annie looked at the simple leather watch on her small wrist. “In fact, we’re taking a flight out from Reagan National Airport in five hours.” Looking up, obviously noting the surprise he felt. “Enough time for you to tidy up your business around here, go home and tell your wife you’re leaving, and then pack a suitcase.”

  “I’m divorced,” Colby said. “I live with a cat.”

  “Ah, that’s why I saw a gray, long-haired cat around you.”

  Stunned, Colby felt his eyes bulge momentarily. “Why…Murphy is a long-haired gray Persian. How did you know?”

  Chuckling, Annie wrote some notes on her clipboard. “I saw it. But I didn’t know the cat’s name. I knew it was a he.”

  “Neutered.”

  “Thanks for the confirmation. With you being FBI, and your buttoned-down look, I wouldn’t figure you for a cat man. Most men are dog people.”

  “I like cats because they’re independent.”

  “Makes two of us. My husband, Phil, and I have four of the curmudgeons. Oh, and we have a golden retriever named Rocky, too.”

  Scratching his head, Colby stood up and gave her an uneasy smile. “I guess you’re going to have to convince me that a psychic is what this case needs.”

  “I’m ready to do that. But we have to get out to Carson City, where I can get a whiff, I hope, of a stronger lead. The only way I can do it is to be there. And since you’re the special agent on this case, I need you along, too, in case we stumble onto something. The CIA wants this case solved just as quickly as the FBI does, for obvious reasons.”

  “You’re right about that,” Colby grumbled. He walked around his dark maple desk and opened the door. “I’ll talk to my assistant and get a lot of balls in the air. Leave the flight info on my desk. I’ll meet you at the gate, okay?”

  Annie pulled out two airline tickets. She stood and dropped one on his desk. “Done. See you shortly. By then, you should have some info back on any known terrorist cells in that area, and maybe a confirmation on that face sketch.” She crossed her fingers. “I hope we get lucky.”

  Smiling thinly, Colby stood aside as Agent Ballard walked out the door, briefcase
in hand. A psychic who hoped to get lucky…

  Shaking his head, he decided that doing something, even this, was better than sitting at his desk empty-handed. If the CIA had proved that psychics were useful enough to have their own department, who was he to sniff at the idea? Right now, his team had no leads, and he was hungry enough to grab at mumbo jumbo.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “IS THE PIPE STRONG enough yet?” Rogan demanded of Blue Wolf.

  It was before noon in the high Sierras, and they sat opposite each other in the cedar lodge. As he awaited her answer, he rubbed his hands together.

  A scowl settled on the woman’s face. Blue Wolf was Crow, a powerful medicine woman in her own right, which was why he’d chosen her. But Rogan didn’t like her arrogance, which was heightened by the fact that only she carried the ceremonial pipe among the twelve women he’d selected.

  “You know I work with the pipe at this time every day,” Blue Wolf growled. In a protective gesture, she placed her hand over the stone bowl. “I don’t like the fact that you come in here unannounced. You jar me out of my altered state. You cause stress on the pipe and me.”

  Shrugging, Rogan said, “I don’t have time to dally. I’ve got to drive down to Carson City and pick up supplies.” Who did Blue Wolf think she was? He was the leader, not her. Although, judging from the deep lines around her chocolate-colored eyes, she was truly angry over his intrusion.

  Blue Wolf shook her finger at him. “Next time, wait, Rogan. I couldn’t care less if you drive down the mountain to get food. That’s your responsibility.” She kept one hand over the pipe head, which rested in her other palm. Rogan’s gaze had never left it. Damn him! She didn’t like his careless disrespect toward the powerful object.

  Rogan scratched his head and gave her a lazy look. “So answer my question! When will the pipe be ready to use again?”

  “It’s only been four weeks. We’ve never done this before, so how do I know how long it will take to recharge?”