by David Knop
No fucking keys. No tools to hotwire the truck. No driver. No time.
“I’ll tell you one more time, Deputy Lettau, Romero is in federal custody at a place I will not disclose,” said No Name. His voice came from just outside the truck. I lay on my stomach, trying to melt into the seat.
“We have a warrant for Romero,” said Lettau. “For murder of a law enforcement officer.” He had raised his voice, playing the bully against No Name. This was getting interesting.
“This is reservation land. Federal jurisdiction is not—get that paper out of my face—your responsibility. Clean the shit out of your ears, Lettau.” I expected the next sound to be the crack of No Name’s fist against Lettau’s jaw.
“No need to get personal.” Lettau said.
“Get your hand off your weapon, deputy. Things gonna get a lot more personal if you don’t back off. Now get the fuck off the reservation before I take all three of you into custody.” No Name said.
I couldn’t help smiling and wished I could take a peek.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the loudspeakers blasted. “Please make your way towards the podium where representatives from the Centennial State, La Plata County, the City of Durango, and our hosts, the Southern Ute Tribe, will conduct the ceremony. The festivities will start in ten minutes.”
Ten minutes.
“You haven’t heard the end of this, Ponsford. I’m taking this to the DA,” Lettau said, voice fading away.
No Name laughed.
He opened the passenger door. “You still here?”
“No keys,” I said.
“Hotwire?”
“Maybe.”
No Name angled his head to one side. “Here,” he said, handing me his pocketknife, an all-in-one like mine still sitting in property-hold at the La Plata County jail.
Pulling my upper body under the steering column, I removed the cover on the steering column. I was not familiar with this truck, but I identified the battery, ignition, and starter wires among the bundles by color. I snipped, then separated them, fumbling with sweating fingers.
I stripped insulation from the end of the battery wires and twisted them together with the ignition wire. I poked my head up and could see that the dash lights had come alive. So far so good.
The starter wire was a charged wire. I held it tight, but it quivered in my hands. A spark in the wrong place could short the fuses and I would have a dead truck, a bomb-laden dead truck.
I touched it to the battery wires and used an elbow to depress the accelerator. The truck started with a cough and a rumble, then stopped. Fuck. I touched wires again and the truck restarted and rumbled rhythmically.
Squirming out from under the steering column, I slid on to the seat behind the wheel.
No Name hopped in. “Get this truck out of here.”
With slight pressure on the accelerator, I eased forward, honked the horn, to get people out of the way. Some just stared at me until No Name yelled at them. Some flipped the bird, strolled reluctantly out of the way. I had about one hundred yards to get to the road and clear the crowded ceremony grounds.
Honking and yelling, I eased through the crowd, turned left, then accelerated down the road. The route seemed clear all the way to the abandoned farmhouse at the end. The surface was recently graveled, but I kept the speed down. Riding on six sticks of explosives with 3500 gallons of liquid fuel behind me made me cautious. I concentrated on avoiding every rut and pothole.
“What the fuck?” No Name asked, voice pitched up.
“What?” I nearly jumped out of my seat.
“Look.” No Name said, pointing to the horizon. The sun was straight up, but the skyline showed a bright spot growing as it rose.
I could only stutter, “N-no.”
The ball glowed brighter than the sun. I looked away. “You think—”
“No shit.”
Pokoh’s asteroid. Fragments of Oumuamua at minutes to noon. “The son-of-a-bitch wasn’t lying after all.”
I hit a pothole. The entire truck shook.
“Hey!” No Name yelled. “You’re gonna kill us before the asteroid does!”
I corrected, paid attention to the road.
The fireball streaked overhead, and with it, intense volcanic heat. Contrails streamed behind the asteroid like those of a dozen jets.
A projectile’s buzz hurt my eardrums. I knew that sound too well. Shots fired.
“What the fu—?” I yelled.
“There!” No Name pointed to a man in the middle of the road. He held an automatic weapon, aimed straight at us and the truck-bomb.
Out-of-range at first, we closed in fast when I stomped the pedal. Bullets pinged off the bumper, grill, and radiator. Steam geysered from the front of the truck. The engine began to miss and sputter. The shooter snapped in a new drum of ammo. Rounds shattered the windshield but missed both of us.
Bullets ricocheted off the LPG tank behind me. Some rounds penetrated the tank with a loud crack. I had visions of fire and a terminal explosion as cold jets of propane hissed like snakes through the bullet holes.
Clement Ouray Pokoh stood directly in our path, aimed in, pulled the trigger. The muzzle flashed full-automatic. Pokoh emptied the AK’s drum. The big tank rang like a mission bell as rounds glanced off the steel. My heart skipped at every peal, but I held the wheel straight at him. If Pokoh was human, he was going to die. Now.
No Name grunted. Blood blossomed above his collar bone. “Run that prick down,” he said, jamming a handkerchief against his wound.
Pokoh disappeared under the truck with a sickening thud of steel against flesh and bone. The truck’s rear wheels bounced with a sickening thud. Pokoh reappeared in the rearview, crumpled on the road. I jammed on the brakes. We skidded to a stop.
“One minute ‘til noon,” No Name said, his face white, pain written in a grimace.
I jumped out of the tanker, bolted to the passenger side, opened the door, pulled hard on No Name’s arm. He fell out, but I got my arms under his. Still, his lower half hit the ground hard. No Name’s big frame was limp. I dragged him across the dirt road toward a drainage ditch and threw myself over him and waited for an explosion to kill us all.
No Name choked words, “Cell phone.”
I glanced in Pokoh’s direction. The man, torn and broken, struggled, reached out toward a cell phone lying on the road with a palsied hand, red with blood. His pained determination emphasized the spirit’s evil.
I left No Name and ran thirty feet to the phone, kicked it away, and hit the deck. Time was up.
Pokoh lay on the road staring up at me with one eye, the man’s body a mishmash of broken flesh, blood and imbedded gravel. A leg and arm were bent at odd angles.
“You are a great disappointment, Romero,” he said.
“What?”
“This was our chance,” he said, coughing.
I walked over to the man. “Our chance?”
“To return to the old ways, you fool. Once the Utes were a great power, rulers of plains and mountains, mother of the Shoshone and Comanche. Now, our traditions are forgotten. Our ancestors have forsaken us. How long until we are all gone?”
I had no words. I glanced over to No Name. He had not moved and I feared the worst. A form emerged above No Name’s body, shapeless and ghost-like, and I knew. A hole ripped open deep in my chest. There was nothing I could do now except grieve, and that would have to wait. I returned my attention to Pokoh.
Pokoh looked up with lidded eyes, “You must never forget, old gods never die. They sleep in the deepest recesses of our minds. We need them. They give meaning to our souls. Where is your soul? Why do you think I picked you?”
“What are you talking about?” This man stood in front of my house a week ago with an AK-47 and an attitude.
“Your power. You can talk with the spirits, make things happen.” His voice sounded far away.
“I tested you with shinab, a challenge yo
u met well.” Pokoh coughed again. A pink spray misted, red drifted across his face. Blood ringed his lips and stained his teeth. The test, sending a pack of Senawahv’s children against me, proved to be Pokoh’s undoing as a spirit.
“I took you to your sacred place, where all of your people are born, die, and are reborn. I thought that would remind you of your heritage, but no. We could’ve done great things, you and I. We could have rid our earth of the invaders. I tried to tell you, Romero. Now it’s gone, everything is gone.” He tried a sweeping gesture with his arms, but the broken limb flailed pathetically. The evil this shattered man planned overwhelmed my empathy for him.
“You and Grizz?” I asked.
Pokoh grinned with red teeth. “Aggression of the predator is useful when fighting spiritual battles. It was given to me to drive away the degradation and pollution of the new, and to frighten cultural sickness away. As Grizz, I had great spiritual power and physical strength, enough to stop our spiritual rot. I could’ve saved us, Romero!” He retched blood. “Saved us, were it not for you and that fool Senawahv—” He spit. “There’s no future for us, now.”
When Senawahv had expelled the star-juggler from his council fires, Pokoh lost his spiritual status. As a mortal, he’d substituted the truck bomb for the asteroid.
“Save us through the killing of innocents?”
“It is the old way, the best way. You—”
I glanced up at the truck when it coughed and sputtered, then died. The hissing of the propane continued. I looked back down at Pokoh. His eyes had glassed over. I watched him breathe his last. Again.
Just before he died, Pokoh had said I had something special going with the spirits. I could talk to them, he’d said. We could have done some great things together. I tried to tell you, he had said. I never had the chance to ask what he meant. Perhaps he wanted my help to join him as he worked to reignite the Ute-Navajo war. Thank the gods, I never had the opportunity to refuse.
Chapter 39
Voices from a loudspeaker at the ceremony grounds drifted my way as I rushed over to No Name.
Special Agent Leslie Ponsford lay crumpled on the road, eyes open, face paled in death. Blood stained the gravel under his neck. I chanted a death song in Keresan. No verse had come to me when I faced my own death, but over my fallen friend, it bloomed from my heart.
Singing No Name’s eulogy did not relieve me of my guilt. Had I not talked with Pokoh after kicking the phone away, I might have saved him. I pressed my hands into my face, a gesture that allowed me the temporary self-deception of denial.
Selfishly, I hadn’t recognized what a friend he was. He’d taken a mauling—walked right into Grizz’s jaws—and saved me. His warning about the cell phone saved me again by disabling the truck-bomb detonator. His laconic advice, wise in its way, always set me straight. Now he’s gone. How sharp was the razor-thin line between life and death?
Marines do not leave our dead on the field. No Name was at least twice my size, but I would drag this man back to the ceremony site if it killed me. The propane in the tanker truck might, if I didn’t get out of here.
The big tank warned with a loud, propane hiss. The smell told me a volatile mixture was forming. Electrical wires crackled in the truck’s engine compartment. There was nothing more to do here but die.
I would never get my arms around No Name’s chest and lifting his limp bulk was beyond my strength. I slipped off my belt, then removed his. Buckled together, the two belts barely made it around his rib cage, but it gave me something to hold on to.
I pulled backwards with both hands gripping the belt to gain motion. One step at a time. Pull, rest. Pull, rest. I set a rhythm, progressed foot by foot. Pull, rest.
The air smelled of gunpowder and burning sulfur from the asteroid, but I’d heard no explosion. The ceremony continued on; life as usual. If Oumuamua-The Messenger Who Reaches Out From the Distant Past, had exploded, it was too far to hear. Proof enough Pokoh was not in control.
Pull. Catch air. Resting periods grew longer, my energy drained away like a desert creek. Pull. Not enough air at this altitude. I didn’t stop. My hands stung, my arms and legs burned, but never would I stop. By the time I dragged No Name to the edge of the site, the ceremony had concluded and much of the crowd had dispersed.
The FBI SWAT team had things under control. Camouflaged men surrounded the Chivingtons and Utes, automatic weapons at the ready. Some agents carried stubby M4 Commando rifles. Agents, not otherwise armed, packed .45 Colt pistols. Supervisors barked commands to everyone, detainees and arresting officers alike. A few moved from kneeled hostile to hostile, disarming and plasti-cuffing them while another aimed a shotgun at their head to encourage cooperation. A pile of confiscated weapons grew in the rear of a pickup.
With Pokoh dead, the principal players in custody, and the bomb-rigged truck immobilized, the Ute-Navajo feud could not reignite. I mourned the loss of No Name and would not forget him, but the fact that the ceremony had ended without greater loss of life brought me relief as well as overwhelming fatigue.
I sat, unable to speak or raise my arms to signal for help. Someone in the SWAT noticed me with No Name’s body and came running with a medic in tow. They asked me questions, but I gave them the minimum necessary. Anything I had to say would be to Jean Reel.
I wanted to go home. I would return Tommy Palafox’s retainer, rescue my Jeep from Wookie Gutierrez if I had to beat it out of him.
I’d had it.
I found No Name’s sedan, fished the keys out from where he’d placed them under the seat, and headed off for Oso’s cabin.
The only thing I needed in this world right now was sleep.
Chapter 40
I woke with Jean Reel stroking my hair with her long fingers. I held her hand against my face and inhaled. Her soft skin reminded of fresh rain. Her scent enslaved me. Maybe I was dead in my final resting place, Shipap.
“You had me worried,” she said, “running off like that.”
“You fired me.” I rubbed my eyes.
“Ponsford didn’t make it,” she said, her voice trailing off. She looked into my eyes searching for pain to share.
“I know.” It was too painful to live my hurt. Too soon. Much too soon.
She said, “We’re holding the Utes and the Chivingtons on charges of conspiracy and inciting a riot. We’ve had wiretaps and informants for the last six months. Our evidence, bullet-proof.”
“What about Lettau and his hoods?”
“In custody. With your testimony, all three are good for felony murder, because it happened during their attempt to kill you,” she said. “They’re facing life-without-parole.”
“Lettau’s gonna say I shot Jones resisting arrest.”
“The last thing you have to worry about is Lettau’s veracity on the stand,” she said. “The case is solid. Had to pull teeth, but I gathered Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and Drug Enforcement Administration cases, as well. Got them all wrapped up in a nice package for the prosecution.”
“Have any luck finding Pokoh’s corpse?” I asked.
Jean started stroking my hair, again. Embarrassment heated my neck. I hadn’t bathed in a week. “My search party says no,” she said.
That answer kicked me out of my sluggishness. “Really? I ran over the son-of-a-bitch. Broke most of his bones, far as I could tell. No blood, scuffmarks, impressions in the dirt?
“Loads of physical evidence, but no corpse, Peter.”
So much for Pokoh being human.
“No AK?” I asked. I lifted my head off the pillow. She pushed me down, her palm cool on my forehead.
“We found the Kalashnikov and expended shells at the roadside once the LPG tank quit expelling gas. It took the fire department all afternoon before we could get near it. Fortunately, it didn’t explode.
“You know, I have to test you for gunshot residue, Peter.”
“I never fired a weapon.”
; “Procedure is procedure,” she said with affection in her voice. I saw it in her eyes, too.
“The asteroid?” I asked.
“Pris said fragments of Oumuamua passed high over Colorado and burned up in midair. No reported injuries.”
“You think Pokoh had something to do with the asteroid?” I asked.
“Peter…” she said in a tone of disbelief.
I didn’t have the energy to convince her.
Jean continued to stroke my hair and said, “You are the most dedicated man I know.” She smiled. “As long as I’ve known you, you’ve been willing to place yourself in danger to help others.”
My feelings were the same toward her. “I’ve always admired your strength. There’s nothing you can’t do,” I told her.
She smiled, kissed my forehead. “Flattery will get you everywhere with me.”
My lids weighed heavy and I had a hard time staying awake until I remembered how she’d kicked me out of her command center. The very thought alarmed me to the point I almost didn’t ask, “You ’n’ me. Is it over?”
Jean smiled, said, “You tell me.” She leaned forward and caressed my neck with a cool hand. When she kissed my cheek, shivers ran down my spine. She unbuttoned her blouse slowly. Too slowly.
We lay on Oso’s bed, lit by a window casting leaf shadows on the wall and floor. For the night, the cabin became our sanctuary from the rest of the world.
I slept until I heard Jean rummaging around in the kitchen. At the table, she placed a plate of breakfast burritos plump with eggs, meat, potatoes, and intense red chilé, followed by a mug of hot coffee. I inhaled the first serving and she made more.
“Where did you get this wonderful food?” I asked.
“I called the command center and they did some shopping for me last night.”
“I didn’t hear you call.”
“You were dead to the world,” she said.
We ate in silence as the sun rose behind the hills and painted the cabin in tones of red that changed to orange and gold. The soft, diffused color made the dilapidated cabin pleasant, even welcoming.