by Jon Land
The meeting of the Tribal Council had gone late that night, and Tails opened his truck window to the cold near the end of his private drive to better enjoy the scent of the night mixing with his burning hickory. Noticing as he pulled into his integral garage that the shades had been drawn over the section of windows that were never to be covered. Tails pushed through the fire door into his home, prepared to scold his children for choosing a glare-free television screen for their video games over any semblance of appreciation for the old ways of their people.
Tails stormed into the den and threw back the shades, revealing the reflections of three figures in the moonlit window glass. The chief swung, noticing old Charlie Charles seated in a chair flanked by a man and woman Tails had never seen before standing on either side of him.
“Good to see you’re still alive, Charlie.”
“Had a dream about your father the other day, Chief. He was brewing whiskey from an old still, same way he did back in the days I busted him on a regular basis. I remember when he was born. Bad to the bone from that very day.”
“He was eighty-five when he passed six years ago. How old does that make you?”
“Bet you wished I’d joined him already, Chief.”
“Who are your friends, Charlie?”
“They come from Texas with some business to discuss.”
“They capable of speaking for themselves?” Tails asked, his question directed at the two standing figures.
“I’m a Texas Ranger, Chief Tails,” Caitlin Strong said. “Business we have deals with some you’ve been conducting here on tribal lands, which I learned about when I was up here as part of a DEA task force.”
Tails stiffened, standing halfway between the exposed glass and his uninvited guests. “Well, they’ve got no authority on this land and neither do you.”
He was supremely confident of his own power here on land the federal government had no say in managing, the Mohawks being as close to a sovereign nation as it got. But something about the former tribal cop’s new pals had him on edge and measuring the distance to the nearest door. Old man just wouldn’t die, destined to be a pain in the ass well into the current century.
“We don’t recognize outside law enforcement authority here,” Tails said to Caitlin, noting her SIG as he reiterated his position. “That makes it illegal to carry firearms on tribal land. I could have you arrested.”
“No common courtesy, Chief?”
“You’re way out of your jurisdiction, Ranger.”
“Just like I was when I served on that task force. I heard it got disbanded after I shot it out with some Hells Angels in a marijuana grow house up in Quebec. You hear anything about that?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“Sure,” Caitlin said. “Don’t know why you would, unless the Mohawk had someone on the inside, one of your tribal cops maybe, who spilled the beans on what we were up to and wanted it shut down.”
“You tell a nice story, Ranger.”
“Know a man named Malcolm Arno?”
“I can’t say that I do.”
Cort Wesley looked about the big room, eyes lingering on its exposed beams and seeming to study the finish. “Nice spread, Chief, new too. What, maybe five years?”
“Four.”
Caitlin picked it up from there. “Coincides with the time Malcolm Arno received maybe a billion dollars stolen from the reconstruction effort in Iraq by men in lockstep with his point of view.”
Tails stood up a little straighter. “I have no idea what you’re talking about and I’d like to ask the three of you to leave.”
“Listen to her, Chief,” said Charlie Charles softly. “She’s got it in mind to save your soul.”
“From what?”
“Yourself.”
“I’m calling the tribal police,” Tails said, moving for the phone.
“I already did,” Charles told him. “They won’t be coming.”
“What do you want?” Tails asked, the question aimed at none of them in particular.
“I think you were the recipient of a good portion of that billion dollars, Chief,” Caitlin told him. “I think some of that money built the Dan Tails Cigarette Factory and that the rest fueled the rapid expansion of the drug smuggling efforts that use the ice bridge on your land like a private toll road. I think Malcolm Arno funneled the cash to the Mohawk to wash it and make even more to help him fund militia and right-wing extremist movements all over the United States that may be planning to kill lots of innocent people.”
“This isn’t Texas, Ranger,” Tails shot back at her, still sounding resilient. “It’s not even the United States really; it’s Mohawk land and, as such, I don’t have to listen to you or anything else the government you represent has to say. You can’t touch me here, nobody can. Just ask the assholes from immigration who keep poking their noses where they don’t belong. I’ve won restraining orders against them in federal court. You really want to push things with me?”
“That depends.”
“On what exactly?”
“How much you want to push things with me. I believe, Chief, that the federal government funds this and other Reservations to the tune of the twenty-six billion dollars in aid per year for schooling, medical services, broadband connections, and public transportation from coast to coast. But if those tribes are found to be in violation of federal felony statutes, drug dealing and distribution for example, that funding could get yanked across the board in a hurry until the guilty party can be tried and convicted. Of course, that could take a considerable stretch of time to get sorted out.”
Tails swallowed hard enough to force his pursed lips open. “You here representing the government now, Ranger?”
“No, sir. Just myself at the present time. But since the task force I was part of was federal, and the ramifications of this drug dealing stretch all the way to Texas, I imagine it wouldn’t be hard for the Rangers to make their case. You’d be well advised to consider that, sir. People tend to listen when we talk.”
“Besides,” Cort Wesley picked up, “you and the tribe have gotten plenty rich already off all this. Nobody’s interested in taking any of that away.”
“What we wanna do is stop any more of the drugs from coming in,” Caitlin told him. “Finish the job that drug task force started.”
“And how do you propose to do that exactly?” wondered Tails.
“That’s not your concern.”
“Excuse me?”
“What is your concern is what Mohawk tribal law says about proceeds from ill-gotten gains. Charlie?”
“Well,” the old tribal cop started, rubbing his chin with a pair of long, skeletal fingers, “we used to burn the homes of moonshiners who built them using their ill-gotten gains. I guess that passes for precedent.”
“The chief of the tribe back then one of them?”
“No, ma’am, but he was getting paid off to look the other way and keep the locals out, so we burned his house too.”
“Are you threatening me, Charlie?” Tails asked the old man.
“No, sir,” said Caitlin. “That’d be me. But look at this another way. You might be about to become a hero, Chief.” She let him wait before completing her thought. “For helping us put a stop to the drugs coming into the United States over your land.”
88
MIDLAND, TEXAS; THE PRESENT
Malcolm Arno was sticking pushpins in a wall map when the call came. He didn’t hear his private line buzzing at first, not with his attention rooted on the pattern that was emerging on the wall before him, adorned now with a clutter of multicolored denotations stretching from coast to coast. Concentrated in the parts where the true Americans lived.
That’s what his father had called them when explaining the purpose of the sanctuary he called the Church of the Redeemer. True Americans.
The ringing started once more, and this time Arno moved to his desk to answer the phone.
“Yes,” he said almost too quiet to hear.
<
br /> “What the fuck’s going on?” demanded Buck LaChance.
“Your language, sir—”
“Fuck my language. The ice up here has melted, if you catch my drift.”
“I don’t.”
“Then try this: we’ve got a traffic jam of char on what used to be our own private road to heaven.”
“Wait, slow down. You’re saying—”
“You heard what I said. They’re destroying our drugs.”
“Who, for God’s sake?”
“If I knew the answer to that, I wouldn’t be bothering to call because they’d already be dead.”
But Arno knew, knew it as soon as Caitlin Strong had left his office, because he’d seen it in her eyes. Not specifically the frozen river she was laying siege to, but a storm she was going to rain down on the world he had envisioned from the moment their eyes met for the first time.
“Someone’s taking the war to you,” LaChance said. “But I got thirty riders and twice that many guns ready to take it to them.”
“No, that’s what they want. They’ll know you’re coming. They’ll be expecting it.”
“Not the shit storm we’re gonna unleash, no. Your father ever give a sermon on the wrath of God?”
“I believe he did.”
“Then why don’t you come up here, Mr. Arno, and witness it firsthand?”
89
MOHAWK INDIAN RESERVATION; THE PRESENT
Caitlin watched the snowmobiles flying across the ice, three of them running abreast of each other. She was standing in the woods, shielded by branches sprouting leaves in spite of the still frigid temperatures of upstate New York. No need for binoculars, since the snowmobiles were coming so fast, the riders with no sense of what awaited them.
“Always knew I had one last war in me,” Charlie Charles said from between her and Cort Wesley, who was standing so still he looked more like a cardboard cutout of himself. “Just didn’t think it’d happen this way.”
“You should go home, Charlie,” Caitlin advised. “Let us handle the heavy lifting.”
His one good eye flashed her a look so deep that he appeared fifty years younger. “This is my home, Ranger. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t forget that.”
“I apologize if I did.”
“And I’m not going anywhere, since somebody needs to keep the two of you civil. Reasonably so, anyway.”
The Indian was wearing a gun belt so old and worn that the brown leather passed for barely beige, creased, and cracking. He had a .357 Magnum with a six-inch barrel tucked in the holster, Caitlin left trying to picture him hoisting it in hands the texture of parchment.
“My dad used to say the only fight worth fighting is the one you know you can win,” Caitlin told him.
Cort Wesley’s already stiff frame tensed even more, as the snowmobiles sped toward the line in the ice even with them. Their skis hit the oil he’d slicked all over the surface and they spun wildly out of control upon hitting it. They looked like bottle caps twirling on tabletops before going airborne and chucking their riders. Impact on their oversized backpacks spilled a multicolored assortment of aspirin-sized pills across the ice in all directions, the sound like that of hailstones pattering against a tin roof.
“Looks like a rainbow,” said Charlie Charles.
“With a street value of maybe a million bucks,” added Caitlin.
“Not anymore,” said Cort Wesley, advancing onto the frozen river in his ice boots.
MOHAWK INDIAN RESERVATION; THREE DAYS EARLIER
“What is it you want?” Chief Dan Tails had asked inside his big house on the shores of the man-made lake.
“You been looking the other way for those runners,” Caitlin told him. “Now we want you to look the other way for us.”
“Keep your tribal police from intervening,” Cort Wesley added.
“Intervening in what?”
“Better if you don’t know that, sir,” said Caitlin, “just like it’s better if Malcolm Arno never catches wind about this conversation taking place. What you gotta understand here is that we’re not out to arrest anybody. We’re not looking to issue subpoenas, make deals to turn state’s evidence for jury trials that go on forever and end up as a lead item on the cable networks’ screen scrawl. Nope, what we wanna do is shut off the spigot now that you’ve had ample time to fill up your jugs.”
“You make it sound a lot simpler than it is, Ranger.”
“We’ll see about that.”
MOHAWK INDIAN RESERVATION; THE PRESENT
Charlie Charles held his Magnum on the injured snowmobile riders while Caitlin and Cort Wesley popped holes in the ice and swept the multicolored pills they’d been hauling down through them.
“You boys can get a move on now,” Caitlin told them.
The riders looked at each other, one of them with a knee so torn apart it looked like his lower leg wasn’t connected to the upper.
“Better help your friend,” she continued. “He drops, he dies.”
“We got bosses, you know. We tell them what happened, they’re gonna—”
“By all means, go ahead. And you can also tell them this route’s been closed. The Texas Rangers own it now.”
90
MIDLAND, TEXAS; THE PRESENT
Dylan Torres was being held in an unfinished slab of a building constructed over a mound of earth holding another of the complex’s septic systems to better disguise it. Problem was the stench from some water leaching beneath the ground proved impossible for even workmen to bear, so the building’s rooms were changed from offices to storage units. A floor of these units was then converted to a makeshift holding area upon Malcolm Arno’s realization that the Patriot Sun had made no such accommodation to house unruly members who might otherwise become a distraction. As the group’s numbers continued to swell, and the population on these grounds rose, the need for such a facility would become even more apparent. Besides the nursery, the building was the most isolated of any in the complex, out of step with the down-home aura evoked by the other structures with the ever-present smell certain to dissuade the curious from approaching.
Arno held his nose against the stink as he and Jed Kean entered the poorly ventilated building that sat roasting, unguarded by trees, in the midday sun. The stench wasn’t as bad as it was some days, especially when they reached the detention floor where a dedicated air exchanger had been added and new ductwork set into place.
A single guard on duty behind a desk on this floor rose at Arno’s approach, and Arno acknowledged him with a nod as he passed with Kean by his side. They came to the first room down on the left and Kean worked his key into the lock.
“I’ll do this, if you want.”
“That’s my job, Jed,” Arno said, pulling a pair of clippers, the kind used to tend rosebushes, from his belt. “And I’m actually looking forward to it.”
91
MOHAWK INDIAN RESERVATION; THE PRESENT
The first of the trucks came across the ice that night; two of them pickups with oversized cargo beds, one was a long-haul freight, and the fourth a U-Haul seventeen-foot moving truck. In each case, Cort Wesley had plucked their tires from a prone position in the woods with an old Remington rifle complete with telescopic scope leftover from Charlie Charles’s hunting days. But it was well maintained, freshly oiled, and the Indian had supplied a box of 30.06 cartridges for load.
The sounds of the tires exploding made Caitlin flinch each time. Each shot sent the trucks jerking wildly before dissolving into wild spins across the ice, not unlike the snowmobiles. They didn’t flip, coming to a halt as Caitlin and Cort Wesley trained old assault rifles, first generation M16s, Charlie Charles had never unpacked for the tribal police’s armory on the cabs.
From there, Caitlin did the very thing her grandfather Earl had done eighty years before upon confiscating the hauls of drug mules dragging marijuana and black tar heroine up from Mexico: she burned the contents of each truck in a fire pit built atop the thick ice by Charlie Ch
arles. She made the dealers, drivers, or whatever they were watch as the flames crackled and brightened, before heating the ice enough to melt it and causing the whole of the flaming contents to drop through the hole to send a mist of smoky steam flowing up into the air. By the next morning, the hole would have sealed, as if a patch of ice had been fitted exactly to its specifications, save for the lack of snow cover and chipping.
“They’re not gonna put up with this long, Ranger,” said Cort Wesley, as the fourth fire crashed through the ice and two men made their way back across the frozen river.
“Exactly what I’m counting on, Cort Wesley.”
“You and me both. My point was regarding the fact that you haven’t exactly explained your plan for dealing with it.”
Caitlin winked at him, her smile just visible in the night. “What makes you think I’ve got a plan?”
92
MIDLAND, TEXAS; THE PRESENT
“Tonight’s the night,” LaChance said over Malcolm Arno’s private line. “We’re saddling up and going old school.”
“I can’t decide whether you’re a fool or an idiot,” Arno told him.
“I’m supposed to wait around until you come up with a better response?”
“That’s the idea, yes.”
“Fuck that and fuck you too.”
“I’ll not have you take that tone with me, Mr. LaChance,” Arno said, his shoulders stiffening so fast a spasm shot through his neck.
“Who you think you’re talking to here, one of your robot followers? Uh-uh, only way I get my end, the Angels’ end, is on delivery of our product, and this Ranger has dumped or burned more than I can weigh so far.”
Arno remained silent, listening to LaChance breathing noisily on the other end of the line.
“Cat got your tongue, Reverend?”
“I’m not a minister. That was my father.”
“Sure, another fraud. From where I sit, you’re fixing to fight a civil war and you can’t even put down one Texas Ranger, a bitch no less.”