Changing Woman (41 page)

While the others took sentry positions Ella stuck with Clyde. This wasn’t the man she’d known, taking the role of a terrorist bomber. He moved toward the first athletic bag, which was positioned beside one of the massive electric motors that powered the largest conveyor belt.

As he crouched down with a small penlight she stepped closer, silently watching, trying to
decide when to make her move. To her surprise, Clyde took a pocketknife and cut the safety fuse away from the detonator assembly instead of inserting it into one of the explosive sticks. But he must have heard her breathing, because he suddenly spun around and slammed her against the wall, his arm pressed to her neck.

“Ease up, Clyde. It’s me, Ella. If I’d have known you were going to remove
the fuses from the detonators instead of placing them in the explosives, I wouldn’t have come up so close behind you,” she said, then quickly added, “Blalock, tell Justine not to shoot him, it’s okay.”

It took Clyde a few seconds to get up to speed, but finally he released her.

“Ella, what the hell are you doing here, and how did you get in? And who are you talking to? You wearing a microphone?”

“There’s no time for explanations now. Let me help you finish what you’ve started now that I know what you really stand for.” She looked around, worried someone had seen what had just happened. “Give me the detonators, but be careful. We don’t want anyone else to know what we’re doing.”

“Okay, let’s work fast,” he said, handing her the small cigarette-sized blasting caps that had safety fuses
attached at one end. “But I’ll have to connect the one in the road so Gary can carry out his little demonstration. If it doesn’t go off, he’ll know something is wrong and order the others to start shooting.”

“Do you think it’s likely he’ll get someone else to
come out and attach new detonators and fuses, if necessary?”

“No. We don’t have any extra. We had to leave half of our explosives behind
because of that.”

Moving from athletic bag to athletic bag positioned on coal piles or under pieces of machinery, they pretended to connect the detonators while Ella secretly pocketed the devices instead. As she studied the ducttaped bundles of high explosives, she noted that they appeared to be the same brand and batch that she’d run into before.

The one in the road was the last. Clyde had
to use some force to insert the detonator into the normally soft explosives because the cold had hardened the mix, and Ella cringed, realizing that if it went off by accident, she’d end up all over the facility.

“Okay, Ella. Now what? I’ve got to go tell Gary I’m done. Then he’s going to set this one off himself.”

“I’ll go back inside with you, and stay near the door as if I’ve been watching
your back. Once you tell Gary you’ve finished, let him know how cold you are and tell him you’re going to relieve those two guarding the hostages. I’ll join you there once Gary and the others are all outside. We can use the diversion of the explosion in the road to take the hostages out the side door underneath the conveyer tower. There’s a place I found where we can get them under the fence and
to safety.”

“All right,” Clyde said with a nod. “But you’d better go with them, Ella. If Gary or some of the other diehard troublemakers catch you, they’ll have all the detonators back. I’ve cut the fuses off, but they can be reinserted.”

“I plan to make my own escape as soon as the hostages are clear, but you can’t stay either. If any of them check and notice the detonators and fuses are gone
they’ll turn on you and have another hostage, or worse.”

Clyde nodded. “One thing at a time. I’ve got to go check with Gary before he starts to worry.”

Ella followed silently, carrying the rifle she’d liberated as if she were providing security for Clyde. Gary grunted when Clyde told him everything was set and handed him the penlight, then nodded when Clyde asked for a few minutes inside to
warm up.

Ella followed Clyde, watching Gary out of the corner of her eye as he walked outside. The leader stopped, looked back at Ella for a moment, then gave her the thumbs-up and laughed. She returned the gesture, but remained silent, fearing that at the last minute he’d recognize something about her that didn’t fit.

Five minutes later Ella was keeping watch while Clyde crawled under the fence,
handing his rifle to Blalock while another officer led the freed hostages toward a van. The blast in the road had made her jump although she’d known it was coming, but thanks to the warning Blalock and the others had received, nobody overreacted. Payestewa, she hoped, was on the phone now acting concerned and indignant about the blast, and relating his fears about the safety of the hostages.
The rest of the
Hasih
were still shouting and whooping like Hollywood Indians, believing they still held a winning hand.

Ella hadn’t told Clyde, but she hadn’t wanted to send the detonators with him or the hostages just in case one of them was a decoy working with Gary or his Indian mafia group. Now that everyone was through, Ella made a split-second decision, gesturing to Blalock.

“Here are
the detonators and fuse cords.” She took off her outer jacket, the zippered pockets full of the devices.

“Hurry,” Blalock said, his voice hushed. “Someone’s coming out that side door now.”

Ella studied the hooded figure who emerged. “From his size and shape, I’m guessing that’s Gary.” She paused, then quickly added, “I’m going back. If I can get the drop on him and take him out, the others may
not continue the standoff once they’ve lost their leader.

Payestewa might be able to make a deal and get them to lay down their weapons without a problem then.”

“Be careful, Ella,” Blalock whispered.

She slipped away and ran toward the conveyor belt tower, staying in the deepest shadows. Then, moving quickly and silently, Ella ducked behind a big metal box that said Fire Emergency on the outside
and watched Gary pass by.

Ella followed him around the back of the building, noting that he wasn’t carrying his assault rifle. Seeing a
Hasih
sentry twenty feet away standing beside a white pickup, she stopped at the corner and watched, reluctant to move any farther out into the open.

“Watch where this guy goes, Justine,” she whispered, hoping that Blalock could relay her words in time.

Ella
wanted to narrow the gap between them, but before she could find another hiding place, the man walked over to the fence and took off his hood, placing it inside his jacket. Although she was twenty yards away, Ella could see the outline of a Navajo police officer just on the other side of the fence, dimly illuminated by the power plant fights, yet the
Hasih
man seemed completely unconcerned.

Then he signaled the officer by holding his right fist over his heart. The officer responded to the signal by imitating the gesture, but with his left fist, then came over and lifted up a section of the fence, allowing the man to slip beneath.

“We have a bad cop working with the
Hasih,”
Ella whispered. “I need someone to keep an eye on the
Hasih
member who just came out of the fenced area on the
north side. I’m pretty certain it’s Gary—and we need to find out which one of our cops let him through.”

Ella went back to the conveyor tower and waited until she was sure no sentry was watching her area. “I’m coming out. Someone meet me over there.”

As she reached the exit point, Blalock came out of the shadows. Grabbing her hand, he helped her crawl
out. “We’ve identified the bad cop,” he
whispered.

“Who is it?” Ella moved behind the cover of a police van.

“Lieutenant Manuelito,” Blalock mumbled.

Justine had identified Manuelito using the night-vision scope on her rifle, and had informed Blalock immediately. But locating the man who’d sneaked past the law enforcement perimeter with Manuelito’s help proved tougher.

Ella recognized one of the uniformed cops just coming out of the command center van and took him aside. She’d known Philip Cloud, one of Herman’s nephews, since
high school, and she trusted him.

“Keep an eye on Manuelito. Don’t turn your back on him or let him out of your sight,” she said, and told him about the lieutenant’s actions. “We need to see who he links up with.”

“You’ve got it. I never liked the SOB much anyway,” Philip said, and left for the perimeter just as Justine saw Ella and jogged over to join her.

“Have you heard if we’ve caught the
Hasih
member who left?” Ella asked immediately.

“No, he managed to leave the facility using a phony power plant ID to drive out past the checkpoints before his description got to those officers,” Justine said. “But the officer manning the roadblock does remember what the driver looked like, and his description matches that of the man we saw at the coffee shop.”

“That’s the one the
Hasih
called
Gary, and he was calling the shots inside,” Ella said.

“There’s our link to the syndicate, then,” Justine answered.

“Make sure the officers we trust keep a lookout for
him. Maybe one of our patrols still out on the highway can pull him over,” Ella said.

Heading to the command post, Ella and Justine joined Payestewa, who was now on the phone with one of the
Hasih
leaders. It was the man Payestewa
had first spoken to. Ella, listening in, verified that it wasn’t Gary.

The
Hasih
spokesperson had a different tone now that they’d discovered one of their own bound and gagged in the ladies’ room and all their hostages missing. He was offering to have his men put down their weapons and leave the grounds peacefully if the Tribal Council was willing to publicly set the date for a final vote on
the gaming issue.

Payestewa agreed to contact the tribal president immediately, then hung up.

“That’s a long ways from their earlier demands, Ella. My guess is that they also discovered their explosives are pretty much useless. I’d shake your hand on a job well done, if you Navajos shook hands,” Payestewa joked. “Did Blalock tell you what the tribal president did while you were over there wandering
around in the dark?”

Ella looked at Blalock, who shrugged. “The tribal president called a special session of the Tribal Council for Monday on the gaming issue. Apparently, the so-called legitimate supporters of gambling used this take-over to force him to act. Payestewa will let the
Hasih
know about this development as soon as our reinforcements arrive. We have another fifty deputies en route
just to show the
Hasih
that a shootout would be a mistake. But, since it now appears that they’re going to be getting what they asked for, I don’t expect we’ll have much of a problem,” Blalock said.

“With no way to set off their explosives and no hostages, the only leverage they’ll have are their weapons, and they have only ten or so people left in there now. We currently have sixty men and women
on the perimeter
and will have a lot more shortly,” Payestewa explained.

“The next few hours should be quiet ones,” Big Ed Atcitty said, coming into the command post. He looked cold, but in a good mood. “I’ve got Manuelito being watched by a couple of officers. No wonder that weasel wasn’t having a crime problem in his district—he’s been working with the crooks.”

“We’ve got to keep him away
from any
Hasih
members we end up arresting here. I don’t want him passing them any more information,” Ella said.

“With luck he’ll lead us to the others,” Big Ed suggested. “I need someone to go in person to warn the skeleton crew at the station about Manuelito. Obviously we can’t use the radio because he’ll hear us. I’ve already spoken in person to a few key county people, including Sheriff Taylor.
But I need to make sure Manuelito doesn’t issue any orders and create more problems for us than he already has.”

Ella looked at Big Ed. “How about if I go back to Shiprock and have the watch commander send word via land line to the other stations, especially Window Rock? We should also have Dispatch monitor all his calls. Then, even if someone tries to tip him off letting him know we’re onto
him, Dispatch can alert us.”

“That should cover it,” Justine said.

“Not quite. We’ll also have to disable his cell phone,” Ella said.

“Not a problem. I’ll get it done,” Blalock nodded.

“Okay, then I’m off to the station. I’ll be back within the hour,” Ella said.

Ella walked back to her unit, put on her bulletproof vest again, pocketed her cell phone, which she’d left in the Jeep, then drove
past the checkpoints to the highway. It didn’t feel right to leave again before the operation was finished, but Manuelito could cause a lot of harm unless other officers out in the community were warned about his treachery.

By the time she pulled into the nearly deserted police station parking lot, tension was making her entire body ache. As she stepped out of her unit, she heard another vehicle
approaching. A beige sedan screeched around the corner, one of its front tires hopping the curb as the driver hurtled into the station parking lot, heading straight toward her.

Ella yelled, and, overcompensating, the driver swerved and slammed on the brakes. The car skidded and struck the concrete barrier at the front of a parking space, hopped it with a crunch, and came to rest straddling the
concrete rail.

Ella ran to the car and found the driver slumped over the steering wheel. As she threw the door open, and the dome light came on, she could see that the upholstery was soaked with blood. The seats began steaming slightly as the cold outside air hit the warm, wet fabric.

Ella pushed the driver back gently, trying to figure out who he was, but his features were covered in blood,
swollen and badly distorted from the results of a beating. There were slashes on his arms, some caked with blood, others still bleeding onto the car seat and onto his clothes. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen this much blood coming from someone still alive.

“Ella,” he whispered.

Her heart froze. The voice . . . she knew it. Seeing the watch commander coming toward her from the
entrance, she yelled for him to call an ambulance and the EMTs. With a quick nod, he turned and ran back inside.