“And this is going to cost me . . . ?” Sam said.
“Two things,” I replied. “Number one, delay your departure for an hour and fill us in on exactly what the heck is going on.”
“And number two?”
“When you leave, take that joker in the back of the Tahoe with you,” I replied dryly.
Sam seemed to ponder the alternatives for a few seconds before answering, “I do believe I’d be willing to make that deal, if your uncle here will agree to those terms as well, but I’ve got to tell you, the way things have been going, the best I’m gonna be able to do with your perp, since he hasn’t actually hurt anybody, is to drop his ass off in the next town that has a still functioning jail. Where that may be though, I don’t have a clue, so he may end up being a semi-permanent resident in the back seat of my Crown Vic.”
“Works for me,” said Uncle Andy.
Sam, Michelle, and I walked back to his car. Michelle got in to steer while Sam and I pushed. We had to back Uncle Andy’s truck out of the spot it was in so that transfer tank hose would reach. Forty gallons later we had filled up Sam’s tank, and then we moved all of our vehicles and parked them in front of the window to Walter’s office where we could keep an eye on them. Marty, who was outside watching the refueling process asked me why we didn’t just drive the truck over to the car. Before I could answer, Francis cut in with a high, squeaky voice that sounded like it belonged on the Muppet show.
“Because if they did that everyone driving by would be able to see, and the next thing you know they’d all be lined up behind the trooper’s vehicle to get gas.” Marty didn’t reply.
I spent the next few minutes reintroducing Max to everybody there. I’ve learned to do it gradually. And carefully. When it comes to Max and me, he knows that I’m the Alpha of the pack. But truth be told, it usually seems that the way we work together is more like two separate halves of one Alpha. He’ll tolerate being in the proximity of others, as long as they don’t get too close to him without my direct involvement. If I personally walk somebody over to him, he’ll consent to a brief pat on the head after some cursory smells. Most people don’t want to get that close, however. They see this giant shaggy creature, almost jet black with sprinkles of silver along his chest, and that brings most of them to a screeching halt. Then they notice his eyes. Luminous gold and flecked with bits of black and platinum. That stops the rest of them. When he curls his lips back and snarls, you better be moving in the opposite direction. Fast. Anyway, I let him become familiar with the new smells and he was doing OK until it came to Michelle. I swear his tail swished back and forth about ninety miles an hour when Michelle leaned down and hugged on him and started doing the baby talk like “Hi there Maxy boy, did you miss me . . . I remember when you were just a widdle puppy . . . do you still like your tummy wubbed . . .” Holy crap, I think I developed diabetes just listening to it. And then the big ol’ turdball flopped onto his back and let Michelle rub his tummy.
After the introductions were over, Walter picked up the radio on his belt and called out, “Bernice, is lunch about ready?” His question thundered out of the radios that Uncle Andy, Michelle and I still had cranked up. We simultaneously reached for our radios to turn them off. A minute or so later Walter repeated his call. It was answered by a gruff voice, feminine, but only marginally so.
“It’s coming, just hold your dang horses . . . and send that boy up here to help me carry it.”
Walter reached up to the wall beside his desk and withdrew a set of keys from the hook and pegboard organizer that was mounted there. “Take the Mule, it’s parked around the side by the maintenance shed, and tell Bernice we need an extra plate as well.” Marty nodded his head and left without saying anything.
“Trooper Ironfeather,” Walter said.
“Call me Sam,” the trooper replied.
“Sam it is then. I hope you don’t mind if we feed you a bit before we hear your story.”
“The last time I ate was breakfast . . . yesterday,” Sam said. “So I think I can oblige you there.”
A few minutes of small talk later, Walter’s radio came to life. “Wally, you got enough chairs down there, or do I need to send some more with the boy?”
“Nah, we got plenty; figured we’d eat in the conference room, you joining us?” He replied.
“No, I got stuff in the oven that I got to watch on account of the power going off and messing up my timer.” Bernice answered.
I hadn’t noticed when, but it looked like the main power was back on line. “Ladies, gentlemen,” and after a short pause, Walter added “and Andy . . . would you care to join me in the executive conference room?”
We walked through a door on the back of Walter’s office, down a short hallway and passed through another door on the right. The room we entered was about fifteen by twenty, garage door on one side and the door we came through on the other. The floor was covered with about three inches of wood shavings, sloping up toward a foot or more along the walls. The sole piece of furniture was a picnic table about twelve feet long made of split aspen logs. Benches were built into the table, and the whole project had been roughly hand planed and assembled with pegs and glue—there wasn’t a nail or screw anywhere in it. I know because I helped to build it a few years ago. A laundry-style deep sink was mounted in one corner of the room.
Sam admired the table and the converted garage it was sitting in. “Nice conference room.” He said it with a smile, but I could tell he meant it. Personally, I felt much more comfortable here than I would have sitting around a perfectly smooth mahogany table in the conference room of some glass enshrouded high-rise.
“Built her myself, I did,” said Walter.
“Oh, you did not, you lying skunk,” snarled Uncle Andy. “I take that back, because that would imply that you were on the same level as a skunk, which now that I think about it is an insult . . . to skunks.”
“Well, as I recall it now, you and Eric may have been present during a very tiny fraction of the building process, but Eric was the only one to actually lift a finger to help me. The only thing you lifted were about nine dozen of my beers that you drank while watching Eric and I work.”
Sam was hunkered down to get a closer look at the construction of the table, shaking his head and smiling during the exchange between Walter and Uncle Andy. We were all saved by the sound of an approaching engine. Walter walked over to a button on the side of the garage door and mashed it down with his thumb. The bay door rolled up into the ceiling revealing the red Kawasaki Mule and Marty. The back of the Mule was covered with various boxes and baskets which we all wasted no time in unloading and arranging on the table. Walter hit another button and the bay door closed, then he walked over beside the door leading to the hallway and turned a switch, causing a large forced air heater mounted in the upper corner of the ceiling to kick on. A few minutes later, the room was toasty and warm. Bernice had not only reheated the venison roast that Uncle Andy had brought, she had also sent along a heaping pile of garlic mashed potatoes; homemade gravy; four large, whole walleyes baked in olive oil—covered with slices of oranges and sprinkled with dill—a fresh romaine salad large enough to feed a herd of goats; and what appeared to be about nineteen pounds of fresh baked rolls. I went to look underneath the foil wrapper of the final tray, but Walter stopped me.
“I know that the only thing my Bernice uses that particular tray for is a special dessert. Now I imagine she sent enough for everyone, but between you and me, I plan on eating Andy’s portion, just don’t tell him,” he said in a voice loud enough to be heard in the neighboring zip code.
“Speaking of Bernice,” Uncle Andy said, “does she still have that sexy Victoria’s Secret lingerie I bought her last year?”
Without missing a beat Walter pounced, “Yep, she wears it for me every night—said she thought about sending it back to you but she was sure that it was much too small to fit on whatever heifer you were paying to sleep with you.” Even Uncle Andy laughed at Walte
r’s reply.
We all sat down around the table except Walter, who remained standing while he asked the blessing. “Dear Lord, we ask Your blessing on this food, the hands that prepared it, and our family and friends that are not here to share it with us. Please guide us in our daily life and give us wisdom and strength to deal with whatever obstacles may be in our future. We ask this in the name of Your Son Jesus, amen.”
Michelle excused herself from the table and returned a few minutes later with the coffee maker and a folding chair from Walter’s office. She plugged the coffee maker into an outlet and set it up on the chair, then filled the pot at the sink, emptied it into the machine and hit the start button, causing it to glow orange. She disappeared again and returned a short time later with a sleeve of Styrofoam cups, and a handful of various sugars and creams. Most of the meal was eaten in silence, the occasional grunt indicating a requested pass of some item. You don’t really realize how hungry you are until you start packing it away. Max was laying down behind me, watching the feast take place in front of his eyes. I looked at the remaining venison in the pan. There was still over half of it left, so I cut off a chunk about the size of a baseball and tossed it to him. Walter saw me do that and took a roll from the basket and lobbed it over as well. Max ignored it.
“Doesn’t he like bread?” Walter asked.
“He loves it . . . he just don’t like you,” Uncle Andy said.
“Oh yeah, watch this,” said Walter as he cut another big chunk off the venison and tossed it to Max.
The chunk of meat landed about six inches in front of Max, who looked at it but didn’t eat. Uncle Andy reached down and picked up the venison, turned to smile at Walter and said, “Watch this . . . eat the deer Max, eat the deer.”
Max snapped the chunk of meat out of my uncle’s hand and it was gone two seconds later. Walter’s eyebrows raised as Uncle Andy said, “Just be glad I didn’t tell him to eat you.” I turned my head to look the other way so Walter didn’t see me smile. I didn’t have the heart or the inclination to tell him that the only people who could feed Max were Uncle Andy and me. I never specifically trained him to do that, that’s just the way it’s always been.
Sam looked over at Max and asked, “What’s that monster weigh . . . about ninety or so?”
“One hundred and seven the last time he was at the vet a couple months ago,” I replied.
“Holy crap, he’s a freaking werewolf! What’s he got in him?” said Sam.
“He’s seventy-five percent pure wolf, and as for the rest I can’t be totally sure, but it’s probably a mix of husky, shepherd or Akita, and a smattering of a few other things as well,” I answered.
“Yeah, other things like grizzly bear and wolverine,” said Uncle Andy. “That’s probably why he’s not really hungry right now, he ate half of that guy who tried to steal my truck.”
That comment brought a round of chuckles from the gathering. Even Marty, who I had barely heard speak, broke out into a huge chorus of laughter. After we had packed away all of the food we could hold, there wasn’t much left—the few chunks of venison, several rolls, about half of the salad and mashed potatoes, and nothing but the bones from the walleye. I took the remaining venison and mixed it with a few of the rolls and potatoes, and then gave it to Max. Apparently the grand theft auto suspect hadn’t filled him up after all.
Walter directed us all to leave everything on the table and head back into his office. Michelle and Uncle Andy took the coffee pot and chair back, and Walter brought up the rear carrying the mysterious foil covered pan. We arranged ourselves in Walter’s office, scattering to the various couches, chairs, and recliners throughout the room. There was a refrigerator positioned on a side wall, and we had our choice of hot coffee, cold beer, water, or various species of sodas. I went with a Dr. Pepper. Walter grabbed a roll of paper towels off of the dispenser mounted near the refrigerator, tore off several sheets and handed one to everybody. He then held the large round pan like a waiter delivering dinner for a table of five, and with a mock half bow, he said, “I present to you the world famous cinnamon buns ala’ de Sheldon.” Removing the foil with a flourish like a magician, he revealed a baker’s dozen of the largest sticky buns I had ever seen. Each spiral shaped treat was the size of a volleyball in diameter and was covered in gobs of a dark brown syrupy mixture, topped with melted cream cheese icing and sprinkled with crushed pecans. By the time I finished, my stomach was distended almost to the point of being uncomfortable . . . almost. I think the smile on everybody’s eyes conveyed what they thought of the cinnamon buns ala’ de Sheldon. We stood up, stretched a bit, and took turns using the small restroom off the side of Walter’s office. A few minutes later, when everyone had returned and sat down, Uncle Andy turned to Sam and said, “I know you’re probably in a hurry to get moving, but if you don’t mind we’d sure appreciate some information on what’s been going on.”
Sam took a big slug of coffee and said, “If I’d have known about the buffet you serve in the garage . . . I mean the executive conference room, I’d try and time it so I’d run out of gas all the time up here. I almost hate to ruin the flavor of those cinnamon buns, but as they say—pardon my French—there’s a shit storm coming.”
Chapter 6
Sam asked, “What do you know so far?” We spent the next several minutes telling him what we had heard.
“OK,” Sam said, “some of what I’m about to tell you was transmitted to my regional office by a secure downlink system that was put in by a Homeland Security after 9-11; other stuff is gonna be personal observations or directly relayed from other troopers. OK, the day before the president’s speech, when the public Internet was still working, national television also, we got several faxes marked ‘classified’ from Homeland Security. The general bend of those faxes were to expect an exponential increase in criminal activity over the next several weeks due to the ‘likelihood of general population panic’ with regards to what they were calling the Korean flu epidemic. Under direct orders from the president, all leave was immediately canceled and all military personnel, even the National Guard and reserves were moved to active duty status. That was the first round of faxes. The second round came several hours after the president’s speech. They were similar in nature, but focused more specifically on regional and state law enforcement. The public Internet was shut down again, but our link to Homeland was still active. The second round of faxes went so far as to hint that there might be more to this flu then just a typical virus. Several follow-up faxes indicated that federal law enforcement, including the National Guard and military personnel stationed in the U.S. may be assisting in riot control and ‘health and wellness’ sweeps, as they put it. The third and last round of faxes, at least that I was aware of at that time, specified that regional quarantine zones were in the process of being set up with the goal of eliminating infection transfer. I’m probably not saying this word for word, but that was the general idea. Keep in mind these were just the faxes that I was privy to, others came and went straight to the brass. With me so far? Good. OK, so now we have Homeland Security trying to take charge of what it appears that they really didn’t have a grip on themselves, and at the same time passing the buck to the state agencies. About eight hours after the president’s speech, our regional office got word that all civilian air traffic was grounded until further notice. Air traffic control was being taken over by the military and any aircraft not specifically authorized to be airborne would be shot out of the sky—no warnings, no questions asked. At that same meeting, our watch commander said that we should expect to be pulling double shifts at least, and that all patrols would be issued full riot gear. As he was telling us this the captain came in; his face was rather pale looking . . . that’s not an attempted joke relating to my obviously superior heritage.”
We all laughed anyway. North Dakota has a fairly high population of the Sioux, and Sam was obviously full blown Indian.
Sam continued, “Captain Reynolds had just returned via m
ilitary transport from Louisiana. He had been at a Homeland Security conference and told us that, ‘As of right now, the governor of North Dakota, following the example of at least thirty other governors, had declared a state of emergency. Restrictions on travel would be enforced until the situation was in hand, and all North Dakota National Guard troops were being tasked for law enforcement duties. A statewide curfew was also in effect.’ One of my guys asked him how we’re going to enforce the curfew when we couldn’t get the information about the curfew out to the general public. Captain Reynolds said he didn’t know for sure but whatever it took we needed to do that for the safety and security of the citizens of North Dakota, even if it came down to driving back and forth and using the PA system. He mentioned that new assignments, possibly anywhere in the state may be coming down and to expect them. He really wasn’t looking that good, and started mumbling something about quarantine zone failure, and then he collapsed—dropped like a rock right there. We all shot to our feet, some of the guys started CPR and others ran for the AED. It’s been awhile since I’ve had a refresher course and the other guys were closer so I wasn’t directly involved. Trying to call 911 was a joke as well; the lines had been down for I don’t know how long. Our radios still worked and somebody contacted EMS, but the response we got was something like ‘take a number’ and if you’re lucky we might get to you in the next forty-eight hours. One of the guys doing CPR stopped for a reassessment period; you know where after a couple minutes you recheck for vitals. They found that Captain Reynolds still had a pulse and was breathing. The AED—the electrode pads were already stuck to his chest—went into analysis mode and came back with ‘unshockable heart rhythm detected,’ whatever that means. The decision was made to put Captain Reynolds in what they call a ‘recovery position’ since he was still breathing and had a pulse. Ernesto Fernandez, a first year trooper, put him in that position and kept monitoring his ABC’s—you know, airway-breathing-circulation. We were kind of milling about, talking about the different crap that was going on, when trooper Fernandez screamed something in Spanish and stood up really fast, backing away from Captain Reynolds. I’m not really sure what happened next. One moment Captain Reynolds was on the ground, apparently barely alive, the next he was on his feet and launching toward the nearest person, which happened to be Trooper Evans. Several of us jumped on and managed to get some cuffs around Captain Reynolds—let me tell you he’s one strong SOB for an old guy—but he kept fighting us, even in cuffs, so we ended up using some leg irons as well. That was just to restrain him. The whole time he wouldn’t shut up, he wasn’t saying anything intelligible, a lot of groans and snarls. Somebody, I don’t know who, suggested that we move him to a more comfortable location so we took him into the holding cell for juveniles—it’s the only one with a mattress—and put him in. Trooper Fernandez went to the bathroom to wash his forearm. He had apparently been bit by the captain and the wound was still bleeding freely. Trooper Evans said she wasn’t injured. Since the call had already been placed to EMS, there wasn’t a whole lot else we could do but head out to our assignments. I spent most of the next twenty-four hours responding to a menagerie of issues. Accidents, looting, fights, gunshots—you name it, I was there—but very little of it came in via the local land lines. Most of it was just happening all around me. I made it back to the barracks a couple of times in that period for a quick shower and a few hours of sack time. The second time I was back, the on-duty sergeant, Alfred Ramey, took me aside to talk. He and I had been pretty tight a few years before when we worked an undercover sting against some bikers together. Anyhow, he took me back to the holding cells where Captain Reynolds was. Alfred stopped me about ten feet away by putting his hand on my chest. I looked at him to see if he was screwing around, he had always been a practical joker, but his eyes were deadly serious. He said, ‘I’m going to ask you two questions, don’t give me any crap, just answer them, OK?’ I looked down and saw that his hand was resting lightly on his sidearm. I slowly said, ‘OK.’
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