by Jon Land
“No fuckin’ way, pal! This has gone far enough. I’m bringing this junk heap down at home in Portsmouth and putting her to bed. And I don’t care what you say or—”
McCracken didn’t say a word, didn’t even bother tempting the pilot with more money. He just froze him with a stare colder than the air outside the windshield.
“You’ll have to direct me,” the pilot relented.
“No problem.”
The plane headed north.
Blaine had pulled Sandy from the rubble of Terrell’s Arkansas headquarters a little before six that morning. Over two hours of walking and hitchhiking had brought them to Little Rock Airport, where they were able to book a nonstop to Boston. Blaine used his government issued credit card to get plenty of cash from an automatic dispenser in Logan Airport. It was typical, he reflected, that the CIA should wipe his existence off the books but forget to cancel his credit card. With some of the cash he bought winter coats and a change of clothes for himself and Sandy in airport shops, where he also learned that the entire New England coast had been put under a winter storm watch.
It was all rain when they left Boston, a drenching winter downpour. Blaine rented a car and started northward with a still-shaken Sandy in the passenger seat. By northern Massachusetts the rain had frozen to sleet, and before they reached the New Hampshire border, snow had taken over. There were already two inches on the ground, with the intensity increasing by the minute. Road crews struggled to keep up with the mess, but it was rapidly becoming too much for them. Blaine was forced to cut his speed back to forty-five, then forty, hands twitching nervously on the wheel. At this rate they might never reach the Muscongus Bay area in time to pull off what he was planning.
He had spent the flight east going over the bloodied map lifted from Terrell’s pocket. Horse Neck Island was located in the bay due east of Port Clyde. It was a small island close to an isolated peninsula that jutted out into the water. The island’s shape was indeed erratic and its coastline looked to be a dangerous mix of crags and crosscurrents. Even during daylight and in the best of weather, approach would be difficult. And Blaine would be going in at night into the teeth of a killer blizzard.
In the sketch the island was dominated by the fortress Terrell had spoken of. It was a spacious mansion built with its back to a steep, low mountain and its other three sides enclosed by a high stucco wall. A courtyard lay between the wall and the mansion, lots of ground to cover in an open assault. In this weather, and given the limitations of time, approach over the mountain was not feasible. That left getting into the complex over the wall. There would be lots of guards beyond the wall, on it, and within the courtyard itself. If even one of them saw him or suspected something and contacted the people inside the mansion, Blaine’s plan would be destroyed. Luckily, though, the weather would keep patrol boats from the shoreline and that should assure him a free approach.
If he made it safely past the rocks.
If he found a boat to begin with.
Blaine and Sandy had arrived at the private airstrip in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to find their pilot closing up shop. An absurd sum of money waved in his face led to his acceptance of the risk involved in making a run up the Maine coastline, specifically to an area twenty miles northeast of Boothbay Harbor. The pilot started complaining as soon as they were airborne, and Blaine was forced to raise his fee at regular intervals just to keep him quiet.
Now he would drop them at a small airfield near Stickney Corner, because getting there was the key element of Blaine’s plan. He could not possibly hope to take Horse Neck Island alone. He needed help.
There was help available in the woods around Stickney Corner.
Blaine had exchanged few words with Sandy Lister through the duration of the trip. She seemed tense around him, uneasy, not very trusting in spite of the fact that he had saved her life.
“I’ve got to ask you something,” she had said during the drive north.
“Go ahead.”
“Back in Arkansas you said that if I didn’t keep still, you’d kill me. Did you mean it?”
Blaine didn’t hesitate. “Absolutely not. But I had to get you quiet. It worked, didn’t it?” he added with a wink.
“You’ve killed before, though. I can tell that much.”
“It’s my job, lady. And mostly I do it better and cleaner than anyone else.”
“Cleaner?”
“No one innocent gets caught in the middle. I can’t stomach that. Unlike some of my colleagues, I don’t regard dead bystanders as acceptable losses.”
“My God, what kind of world do you live in?”
“The same one you do, lady, only I see it more for what it really is. You’ve seen enough these past few days to understand what I mean. They tried to kill you, didn’t they? And you killed to save your own life. It didn’t feel good, but you did it and I’d bet you didn’t feel any guilt afterward.”
“The difference is, you enjoy it.”
“You really think that?” Blaine asked in disbelief. “Let me tell you, lady, I do what I believe I have to because believing is all I’ve got. There are things greater than you, or me, or all the people I’ve killed.”
“Like the country, for instance, right?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. Sounds trite, doesn’t it? Well, maybe it is. The United States has a lot more enemies out there than she’s got friends. Somebody’s got to do something about the balance.”
A few long minutes passed before Sandy spoke again.
“You said we were meeting someone in Maine. Who is it?”
“Wareagle.”
“Not where, who?”
“Wareagle is a who, Johnny Wareagle. A bad-ass Indian who makes me look like a Sunday school preacher. We worked together in ’Nam for a while. Johnny did four tours, got himself decorated three times, and won two Purple Hearts. Came back home and life just fucked him sideways. When it got too bad, he pulled out altogether and went to live in the woods. Took a few of his Indian soldier friends with him. They live off the land. No power, no telephone. A kind of reservation for battered Vietnam vets.”
“And you think they’ll help us?”
“They might, if they don’t kill us first. Johnny and his boys aren’t too fond of outsiders. I was up here last about eight years ago. Wareagle barely recognized me. He was too busy quoting his Indian philosophy to remember old times. But he’s almost seven feet tall and, between you and me, he’s the only man I ever met who scares me shitless. The guys with him aren’t much different. If anyone can get us onto Horse Neck Island and into that fortress, it’s them.”
“That’s the airfield down there,” Blaine said, directing the pilot with a thrust of his finger.
“It’s not even plowed, goddammit!” the pilot protested. “You’re crazy if you think I’m settin’ this junk heap down on that.”
“We’ve already established the fact that I’m crazy, so don’t push it. Do as I say or your tip will be a bullet in the head.”
The pilot gulped hard and swung into his descent. “I might not be able to make it back up again,” he persisted.
“Then we’ll cover your plane and wait till spring, when the thaw comes. Understand?”
“Asshole,” the pilot muttered under his breath.
The landing came with surprising softness, the plane cushioned by the thickening blanket of snow. The only uneasy time was when application of the brakes caused a skid. The pilot fought with the wheel and managed to keep the plane from pitching off the narrow airstrip into the woods. Blaine checked his watch. It was just after four o’clock; five hours until Sahhan’s troops would begin their assault and less than four to send out the abort signal.
The pilot kept the engine running as Blaine helped Sandy down from the cabin.
“Next time you’re in Portsmouth, don’t look me up,” he called out.
Blaine flipped him an extra pair of hundred-dollar bills. “Buy yourself a new personality.” Then he led Sandy off the snow-co
vered field into the woods.
“I hope you know where you’re going,” she sighed a few hundred yards of heavy walking later.
“It’s been a while,” Blaine told her, “but things in these parts don’t change much.”
“What about people? Johnny Wareagle could have moved on for greener pastures.”
“He was determined to be buried in these woods last time I saw him. The Indian spirits foresaw it, and he didn’t want to insult their vision. Be a while before it happens, though. This bastard is indestructible. Even the spirits are probably scared of him.”
Another hundred yards passed and the woods thinned out a bit. Trees were missing, cut to their stumps, the work obviously done by man. Sandy caught the bubbling sound of a fast brook and was searching for it when McCracken grasped her arm to restrain her. She looked up at him and saw a finger pressed over his lips to indicate quiet. His eyes glanced up and to the right, and Sandy looked in the same direction.
Creeping slowly up the trail toward a small wooded clearing was the biggest man she’d ever seen. Wareagle’s bulging, bronzed arms were exposed through an animalskin vest, and his long black hair was tied off at the forehead by a colorfully designed bandanna. Sandy noticed his hair was worn in a traditional Indian ponytail. He approached the clearing and suddenly Sandy saw his target.
A deer, a young buck with a season’s growth of antlers, was picking over the ground for food, it haunches hollowed by the thin winter supply.
Wareagle crept closer. The buck raised its head and sniffed the air, as if aware of a presence it couldn’t quite grasp and didn’t feel threatened by.
Wareagle held his ground until the buck returned to the thin patch of frozen grass it had found. Then he started moving again, so slowly and steadily that his progress was virtually undetectable within the falling snow.
Sandy had to fight down the scream of warning that rose in her throat as the huge Indian drew to within arm’s distance. Her heart was thudding hard, the sight in the clearing held her mesmerized.
Wareagle’s hand came up suddenly. Sandy saw it was covered with a leather half-glove which left the fingers exposed. It looked like a club as it came down suddenly, hand slapping on the buck’s hindquarters and startling him into a mad dash forward from the clearing, legs into the snow up to his knee joints.
“It’s called thumping,” Blaine explained softly.
“Huh?” Sandy managed, lifted from her trance.
“An ancient Indian ritual meant to symbolize the unity of strength and stealth. Boys do it to challenge manhood and men do it to challenge themselves. Johnny tried to teach it to me once without much success. I guess it must be in the blood.”
Wareagle had knelt down in the very spot where the buck had been standing, as if to absorb whatever aura the majestic beast had left behind. His huge back was to them, but Sandy could tell that his hands were perched nimbly on his knees and he seemed to be meditating as flakes of snow collected on his hair.
Blaine held a hand up to indicate Sandy should stay where she was, and then he approached the small clearing. He stopped two yards from Wareagle, respecting the giant Indian’s privacy.
“Hello, Blainey,” Johnny said without turning.
“How’d you know it was me, Indian?”
“I felt you approaching from the woods. Your aura is distinct,” Johnny explained, still turned away, hands remaining poised on his knees. “And the spirits have warned me of your coming. They’ve carried your name on the wind.”
“It’s been a long time, Indian. Many moons, as you guys say.”
“And should have been many more.” Wareagle turned his upper body and faced him. “You bring blood in your shadow, Blainey. Your spirit disrupts the peace of the woods.”
“I need your help, Johnny.”
“You must learn to quell your violence, Blainey. The strongest bow does not have to fire an arrow to prove its strength.”
“You didn’t talk that way when you were saving me from a Cong ambush.”
“Karma, Blainey. A month before that you carried me through a mine field.”
“All three hundred goddamn pounds of you. I think the mines shrank away in fear.”
Wareagle smiled and rose to his feet. He stepped forward and grasped McCracken at the shoulders.
“It darkens my spirit to remember those times, Blainey, but I do seek not to forget them. We were many things back then, but mostly we were alive. Survival gave us purpose. Life was simple, so free of the complications that soil the spirit.” He backed off, his expression stiffening again. “I came here to escape those complications, Blainey. You are nothing but a reflection, a trick of the falling snow.”
“How many men have you got with you, Johnny?”
“Six souls in search of peace.”
“Are they good?”
“They are good at breathing, drinking the fresh water that runs clean through these hills, and smelling the air.”
“ ’Nam?”
Wareagle nodded. “The spirits from those days still haunt their sleep.”
“Mine too.”
“Why the questions, Blainey?”
“Because there’s another war on right now, Indian. The front’s about thirty miles from here, and it’s up to us to fight. Again.”
Wareagle nodded again, not seeming surprised. Fresh snowflakes danced around his face. “The spirits warned me of this, even before they warned me of your coming. They spoke of an evil that knows no rival set loose in the world and about to make its mark.”
“That’s as good a way of describing the opposition as any. …”
“They spoke of men who thirst for the blood of power, men who wish to drink it until their bellies burst and then drink some more. Their evil has reached even these woods. I can feel it falling with the snow, scorching the ground.”
McCracken moved closer and brushed the snow from his brow. “The people I’m after—Wells is one of them. He’s on Horse Neck Island.”
The Indian was quiet for a long time and his eyes bore through Blaine’s, as if seeing not Blaine but the massacre at Bin Su and the man who directed it. When Blaine finally broke the silence, his words were barely a whisper. “Will you help me, Johnny?”
Wareagle’s eyes glanced far away. “My spirit died over there in the hellfire, Blainey. I came here to the woods to forge a new one. I was crippled inside, hurting, and the spirits said this was the place to seek healing. So I came. And the healing commenced. Spiritless, without existence, I began the forging process. I reshaped my soul. I kept forging and forging, a new man each day emerging, not better, but different. Then one day not far from this, the stream waters ran still and the spirits let me glimpse the new aura I had forged.” Wareagle paused, face challenging the wind. “It held the same shape as the old, Blainey. The spirits had taught me a valuable lesson: a man cannot change what a man is. One’s manitou is one’s manitou. Refined perhaps, but never altered, refined through the many tests the spirits place in our path.”
“This mission is the ultimate test.”
“Life is the ultimate test. ’Nam, Laos, Cambodia—just minor progressions along the way.”
“And now Maine, Indian.”
Chapter 28
“WHO IS THE WOMAN, Blainey?” Wareagle asked as they started toward Sandy, who stood restlessly beneath a tree that partially shielded her from the snow.
“Someone who’s been involved in this for as long as I have.”
Wareagle nodded understandingly. “Her spirit is disjointed, split apart by fear. She treads in new waters and does not fully control her strokes in even the calmest currents. Be patient with her.”
McCracken started a shrug which gave way to a smile. “I gotta tell ya, Indian, once in a while you really scare me. These words the spirits whisper to you are pretty close to the truth. Someday I’d like to learn how to hear those words. I’d be better at it than I was at thumping. Promise.”
Wareagle stared somberly at McCracken and stop
ped suddenly. “To hear, Blainey, first you have to listen. And then your manitou must act as a sponge and absorb all the meaning of the words. But your manitou is unyielding. It permits no challenge to the narrow scope it accepts.” The Indian looked far into the distance, beyond the white-frosted branches that crisscrossed the air. “That is how you have been able to stay out there for so long. I envy you for it in a way, for it allows you to endure life without questions. You accept, Blainey, and that is a greater gift than you can possibly know.”
They started walking again.
“Wells,” Wareagle said, as if the name tasted like dirt on his tongue. “His manitou was black and soiled. He had lost that which provides balance.”
“Well, since then he’s lost half his face too. He’ll be in charge of the enemy forces and, balanced or not, he’s a hell of a soldier. That doesn’t help our odds.”
“Odds mean nothing to the spirits, Blainey.”
When they reached Sandy, rapid greetings were exchanged. The giant Indian obviously made her even more uneasy, and Wareagle had been out of civilization too long to feel comfortable around strangers. They walked north about two hundred yards and Sandy caught the smell of a campfire. The Indian led the way into a clearing lined with seven small cabins.
In the center of the clearing another Indian stood tending a fire, spreading the kindling with a stick as he prepared to stack on larger pieces. Something seemed wrong about him, and as they drew closer to the small canopy under which he was sheltered, Sandy saw what it was.
The Indian was missing a hand.
He looked up, noticed Wareagle and the approaching strangers, and stiffened. Johnny moved on ahead and spoke briefly. The smaller Indian nodded and sped off.
“Running Deer will fetch the others,” Wareagle told McCracken. “They are spread through the woods. It will take time.”
Blaine frowned. “If they’re all missing pieces of themselves, Johnny, you might as well tell him not to bother.”