by Ethan Cross
So, instead of merely disarming and dispatching the young cartel member, Marcus had other plans for him. He grabbed the disoriented man around the neck and then, throwing his weight forward, he pulled the disoriented thug down to the ground with them. Holding him in place with a chokehold, Marcus rolled his new human shield over.
The woman who had provided him with the C-4, at the Director’s request, had told him the bombs were shaped charges that would blow straight out, meaning that the bombs should cause more confusion and distraction than destruction. Still, Marcus knew the power of such devices, and most of the small buried packages were now resting beneath the vehicles of Canyon’s blockade.
He was still in the process of rolling the cartel thug over when the bombs detonated. The concussion wave took his breath away. The heat was overwhelming. Dust and smoke consumed the air. He heard the sounds of screeching metal as vehicles were torn apart, exploded, flipped, and crunched into one another. Then he heard nothing but a high-pitched ringing. The sand and grit assaulted his eyes, and so he couldn’t see all of the destruction, but he could hear the screams. The air was filled with an acrid smoke that smelled of burning plastic and gasoline.
Unfortunately, most of his equipment was back in Yazzie’s patrol vehicle, and so he didn’t have the mask and breathing apparatus that he had planned to wear during this part of the plan. Nevertheless, he would have to make do. Despite the ringing in his ears, the spinning of the world around him, and the disorientation that he felt, he knew that he had to act. This was their chance.
He knew that using a gun within this haze would be firing blindly, and so he instead opted for the pair of brass knuckles that had belonged to his father and had been shoved into the pants pockets of the young cartel member. Retrieving his weapons, he shoved his bleeding captor off and pushed himself to his feet. He stumbled at first, but soon found his footing and began his search for Captain Xavier Yazzie.
83
Two days ago…
Before tossing her into the pit of bones, Yazzie had graciously provided her with two items: a watch and a wind-up flashlight. One to see how much time she had left and one to illuminate her nightmare surroundings. After awakening in the pit, Maggie had used the flashlight to search every inch of what Yazzie had called a “Kiva” and concluded that there was no way out. Then she had set to work on a weapon, which hadn’t taken long. There was already a piece of bone from a recent victim that had snapped from the fall and was almost knife-like to begin with. She had sharpened it on other larger bones in order to hone its edge.
After some time, she had grown accustomed to the smell, but the sound of the beetles that would soon be devouring her was impossible to tune out. She knew that her only hope now was to preserve her energy and wait for rescue, or for Yazzie to get tired of this game and want to play another.
With that in mind, she had done little more than sleep and project thoughts into the darkness for days now. Winding the flashlight or looking at the time wasn’t worth her energy and only served to erode her confidence and nurture her despair.
When light flooded the tear-shaped kiva of death, it stung Maggie’s eyes, and she raised an arm to protect herself against the glare. She heard the woman falling before she saw her. The woman’s screams filled the pit until she smashed into the pile of bones below. Then she started rolling back and forth and crying in anguish. The newcomer wore a tight-fitting cocktail dress and too much makeup. Maggie wondered if the woman was a prostitute—a typical victim of Yazzie’s, and serial killers the world over.
As Maggie’s eyes adjusted to the new light source, she saw Yazzie standing over them in the ring of the kiva’s entrance. He said, “I found you a playmate, little girl.”
Maggie found the energy to go to the woman and check her for wounds, but she was surprised to find that the working girl was relatively unscathed. Still, the pit’s newest occupant appeared in a daze, as if she were highly sedated.
Leaning down to the woman, Maggie said, “I’m a federal agent. Don’t worry. I’m going to get you out of here. Everything’s going to be okay.”
From above, Yazzie laughed and sat down with his feet dangling into the opening. “Let me tell you a story, little girl. This one goes back to when I was young. I discovered this place and decided I would make some money by looting the Old Ones, but He Who Devours had other plans for me. An associate and I fell into this very kiva, and during our time there, He Who Devours came to me in a vision and supplied me with the strength to survive. The strength to work for him and help him to rise again.”
Maggie wondered if there was a point to the story other than displaying his madness to people who were already judging him and couldn’t do anything about it. But she didn’t waste the energy on a smartass comment.
He continued, “The only way I survived was that I had the strength to kill my friend and to drink his blood and consume his flesh. In that way, I was able to sustain myself until they were able to rescue me. So, I figured that it was only fair that I give you the same opportunity. If you choose to drink Carol here—who as I’m sure you deduced is a prostitute and drug addict, a drain on your belegana society—you’ll survive long enough to make it out of this pit.”
Maggie asked, “What does your insane god want from us?”
Yazzie laughed as he slid the metal cover over his personal pit of death. As a parting gift, he called out, “And Carol, if you can hear me, this offer also goes to you. If you kill Maggie and drink her, then you should have the reserves to survive as well.”
She heard him chuckling as darkness consumed the pit once again.
Using the wind-up flashlight to fill the macabre kiva with light, she attempted to further examine the woman, Carol. But her new companion still appeared to be mostly out of her head. She looked up at Maggie with tears in her eyes.
Maggie reiterated her earlier statements and, with a smile, added, “Don’t worry, I’m not going to eat you.”
Before she knew what was happening, Carol had grabbed a loose bone and was swinging it feebly up at her, screaming, “I’ll eat you, bitch!”
Maggie easily pulled the bone from Carol’s grasp and dropped her with a single blow. After Maggie landed the punch, she said, “I don’t see that happening, kitten, but I respect your life choices.”
Letting Carol rest where she had fallen among the dead, Maggie went back to her own bed of bones and waited for rescue.
84
Standing in the front room of the old trading post and looking out the now-broken front window, Liana watched the scene play out using the pair of field binoculars. She supposed that she should’ve been looking down the scope of the enormous black rifle, but the powerful machine scared her. She was, of course, qualified in handguns, assault rifles, and shotguns, but the power of a .50 BMG caliber sniper rifle was a whole other world than what she had experienced. The recoil of an AR-15 was almost nonexistent, but the Barrett kicked like a professional soccer player was practicing on her shoulder, almost dislocating it with her earlier shot. Still, with the situation escalating, the time was coming when she would have no choice but to slide in behind the scope.
As Frank moved closer to John Canyon, she had also moved closer to the Barrett rifle. She wondered if it was possible for this thing to tear her arm completely off. Could it break her collarbone? The concussion wave had given her a headache after one shot.
The rifle smelled of gun oil and the remnants of packing grease now cleaned away.
When, still looking through the binoculars, she saw Frank pull the pin on Tobias’s grenade and then leap to the side, Liana didn’t hesitate. She tucked the butt of the rifle tightly into her shoulder pocket and sighted down the scope. One of Canyon’s thugs was starting to head around the truck toward Frank. She sighted in on a place in front of the young man, and having no more time to consider broken collarbones or dislocated shoulders, she squeezed the trigger and unleashed one of the massive bullets into the truck bed just in front of the young thug
. He fell back in fear as the truck seemed to have been smote by the hand of God.
Then, within the blink of an eye, the spot where the blockade had stood became a rolling mushroom cloud of fire, smoke, and dust. Taking her eyes away from the scope, she saw vehicles flipping over as they were blown upward like they weighed nothing. As the dust settled, the fire gave way to clouds of smoke. She couldn’t see much of what was going on even when looking down the powerful scope.
A part of her was glad that she couldn’t see what was happening. Not only for the fact that she didn’t want to see Frank bleeding out or unconscious, but also because she really didn’t want to have to use the Barrett against anyone down there. They were mostly kids. Kids from her community.
But then she supposed that most of them were actually her age or older. She was certainly capable of making her own choices, and so were they. She thought about what Frank had told her regarding ghosts coming back to haunt you. The Diné people believed that, when a person died, all of the bad things they had done could be left behind in the form of what they called a chindi. It was a tragedy to have someone die in a home, as the hogan would need to be torn down, and most Diné were hesitant to be in the presence of a corpse under any circumstance. For fear of the chindi following them home.
She wondered if the ghosts Frank had warned her about were the chindi of all the people he had killed, following and tormenting him. She didn’t want that for herself, but she also wasn’t about to sit out this fight. This was as much her battle as it was Frank’s. Perhaps even more her battle. John Canyon might’ve done a lot of good for their community and created a lot of new jobs for the reservation, but he also corrupted and twisted people through the business he conducted, his real business, the transporting of drugs that would be a blight upon the youth of the belagana and the Diné alike. He was a criminal, and she was a cop. It was her responsibility to do something.
But what could she do. She scanned the area through the scope of the rifle, but she could only make out vague shapes moving within the fog.
She needed to do something. She needed to get down there. Frank could be hurt. He could be dying. But this was also the opportunity to turn the tide, and Frank and his brother needed all the help they could get. After a few seconds of trying to find a target through the scope and seeing nothing but a cloud of smoke that only seemed to be getting thicker, she screamed aloud in frustration. Dropping the rifle, she paced the floor a few times to get her brain working. Think Liana, she told herself. But in the end, all she could really come up with was to grab one of the AK-47s they had procured from Canyon’s men and run down the long drive as fast as she could. The more she thought of that idea, the more she didn’t like it. She would be exposed for a long time, and by the time she reached the blockade, the fight would have been over.
She needed a faster way to get down from the top of the bluff, where the old trading post sat, to the base, where Canyon had erected his barricade. She needed something that could traverse that distance fast, something with wheels.
85
As he pressed the red button with his right hand, Ackerman slipped the fireman’s mask over his face with the left. He knew that the mask was state-of-the-art technology for firefighters, having received a crash course on the device’s operation from his brother. It was a full-face respirator mask—minus the air tank that a true fireman would wear—and was equipped with a small camera on its side. The camera captured digital thermal images and then displayed the results through a nine-inch holographic projection on the inside of the glass face plate. The technology was called Sight, which made Ackerman think more of clairvoyance than thermal imaging, but to each their own. It basically allowed firefighters to see through the smoke, fire, and debris in order to find and rescue victims caught in the blaze.
Ackerman, however, had different plans with the victims he located with the device.
He had just slipped the mask into place when the concussion wave knocked him off his feet. The force of the blast, and its proximity surprised him. Laying on the ground, the backpack full of grenades poking into his ribs, Ackerman turned back to the carnage just in time to see the truck next to which he had been hiding flipping end over end and coming straight down on him. Having no time to regain his feet, he rolled furiously, trying to get out of the way before he was crushed beneath several tons of metal and fiberglass.
He cleared the danger zone a second before the truck came smashing down beside him, but he was not completely unscathed. He felt the cauterization of his side wound pulling free with every movement.
As he caught his breath, Ackerman surveyed the damage. Unfortunately, he could hardly see a thing through the haze of smoke and dust. Still, he knew that the cover wouldn’t last long, and so he unloaded the rest of the smoke grenades that he held in the backpack into the center of the now-burning barricade of vehicles.
Then, he activated the thermal imaging technology equipped in his mask and, discarding the backpack, retrieved the push daggers from the bottom of the bag. The small daggers fit perfectly in his fists and protruded out between his ring and middle finger. The blades were only two inches long, but he knew that he could easily penetrate deep enough to kill with them. Although, he only planned to inflict debilitating but non-fatal wounds upon the men now coughing within of the smoke.
Before stepping into the fray and dispatching their would-be attackers, Ackerman was reminded of the Beretta 9mm that Liana had forced him take. It was still tucked into the back of his tactical cargo pants. He pulled it out now, examined the weapon, and dropped it onto the gravel of the driveway.
Then, looking toward the billowing clouds of smoke, where others would see nothing, he saw the shapes of targets within the thermal imaging of his helmet. He squeezed the push daggers tightly in each fist and poised his muscles to spring into action. Ackerman half-expected Thomas White’s voice to whisper something in his ear, but the old man was silent. That silence reminded him that, despite him now thinking of the delusion as a person of its own, the old man and his bloodlust were a part of him.
And he hated to admit it, even to himself, but he knew that he was going to enjoy what came next.
86
When Liana realized how she could get down the lane faster, she felt like a fool. Her patrol vehicle was only a few feet away and only needed the battery reconnected. On her way to the back door, she snatched up an AK-47. She was halfway down the back steps before she remembered that she would also need the battery. Feeling like a fool again, she ran back into the old trading post, retrieved the battery, and rushed over to the old shed.
Working as quickly as possible, Liana dropped the battery into the compartment, hooked up the cables, and threw open a rickety old garage door that seemed ready to fall in at any second.
Before climbing in behind the wheel, she readied the AK-47, checked her Glock, and pulled her tactical shotgun from its mount. Then, ready to go to war, she turned the key and was rewarded with a buzz and a click.
She screamed “No!” and punched the steering wheel before trying to turn the key again. This time the buzz and click were even weaker. Apparently, the electromagnet had completely drained the battery.
With a frustrated scream and a few curses under her breath, Liana grabbed her guns and prepared to find another way down to the battle.
87
Xavier Yazzie had been standing by the edge of where the road split between the lane, which led up to the open trading post, and another dirt road that wound its way up into the hills and eventually behind the trading post and down into the canyons. When the explosion rocked the world, Yazzie was thrown into the air and—for a few seconds—didn’t realize what had happened. But then, as he felt himself flying, time seemed to slow, and he realized that he had once again fallen into one of the brothers’ traps. He hoped it was merely the compression wave that had blown him off his feet, as opposed to discovering that he no longer had legs. He didn’t feel any pain in the lower extremities, but h
e also knew that, when sustaining devastating wounds, the body often shut down the flow of sensory information to the brain.
The dust cloud engulfed him. He felt himself falling. And then he felt a bone-crushing impact. He didn’t know where he was. He rolled around on the ground trying to get his bearings. His eyes were full of sand and smoke and only the spirits knew what else. He coughed and tried to clear his vision, but as his eyes regained focus, he could see little of what was happening back on the main roadway.
He found himself lying on the dirt road which led up into the hills. The smells of gasoline and burned debris were overwhelming. He felt like the dust had been blown into every pore of his body. He tried to sit up, but pain lanced through his thigh. Realizing that he still had both of his legs, Yazzie was almost hesitant to search for the source of the pain and the trauma.
When he finally worked up the courage to look, he discovered that the wound was due to a piece of metal, likely from one of the vehicles, that had imbedded itself into the meaty part of his thigh. It didn’t seem to be too deep, but there was always the fear that when he pulled it free, the wound would start spurting blood, having hit some vital blood flow tributary.
Yazzie, more worried about the two brothers who seemed to be possessed by some dark wind than he was worried about the metal having hit anything major, pulled the piece of shrapnel free and tossed it aside. Then he retrieved the tourniquet that he always carried when on duty from his TQ911 tourniquet holster and applied it to his wounded leg.