48
M
oose had been fifteen years younger and eighty pounds lighter the last time he’d met a two-legged creature in battle, but he still had his good eyesight and had kept his skills sharp. Hunting had fed his family during some lean years, and it was still a great matter of pride that kept him in the woods for a large part of the year. It wasn’t sport. It was ritual, a sacred tradition, nurtured by a respect for the animals the Great Creator had provided for the Original People.
He’d done some guide work for the lodge over the years, but no more. Better to live off the land than assist incompetent once-a-year white hunters in the torture of gentle spirits who populated the earth. Bow-hunting season had turned him against the well-paid guide positions the lodge offered. He’d never understood the appeal of this most challenging form of hunting to Chimooks who knew nothing of its history.
Bow season starts earlier,
Chief had once explained to him.
And it enhances their self-image of machismo even when they do it poorly.
But Moose hadn’t been able to watch the heedlessness of unskilled hunters, shooting their expensive compound bows with their manufactured arrows into the hips or stomachs of gallant bucks who ran for miles in insufferable pain before collapsing and dying from their wounds.
Moose took a deep breath and tried to push that from his mind and concentrate on what was to come. The world, as far as Native American tradition was concerned, was divided into two parts: those who respected all life and those who did not. Apparently, the enemy now intruding on the reservation were those who did not revere life, and for that he was grateful. It made them undeserving of life, and it was permitted to kill them.
He looked out over the frosty forest beneath his tree stand, then sank cross-legged to the plank floor and stroked the smooth arch of the bow his great-grandfather had made by hand nearly a hundred years ago. Moose made his own arrows, laboring over them until they were perfect. The flight had to be true, the arrowhead sharp and clean, because only a heart shot was acceptable. Death had to be instantaneous and as painless as possible to be a good death. In all his years, Moose had never wounded an animal or a man, even in war. His shot, whether from rifle or bow, had always flown true, and he was proud of that.
After hours motionless in the chill of dusk, his legs began to complain. He rose slowly, painstakingly to his feet, his movement almost indiscernible. After another half hour of standing motionless, he saw a movement out of the corner of his eye. A last errant ray of the setting sun glinted off the short barrel of an AK-47.
He could see the shadow-man form moving now, hear the crunch of heavy boots against the skim of ice on the forest floor. A true warrior would never allow his movement to be seen so clearly; would never take regular steps that announced the presence of a man walking. If noise came from your footstep, you stopped and waited endlessly, patiently, so your prey or your enemy would dismiss the sound instead of focusing on it.
The Chief’s words came back to him.
This is a police action. Capture, do not fire unless you are fired upon, is that clear?
He loved the Chief and respected him, but sometimes he wondered if the old man hadn’t spent too many years following the laws of the FBI, forgetting his own heritage.
He was perfectly still on his perch twenty feet above the ground, and therefore invisible. The man walking below him had no idea he was there and consequently would never fire upon him.
Moose went down on one knee to steady himself and pulled the bow taut, arrow ready to fly. Stupid man never looked up. Desert training camps, Moose thought with contempt. No trees in that desolate land that the Great Creator had never blessed, so he had no sense of danger from above. He would just keep walking toward the cabin.
It irked Moose that his purpose here was to protect foolish white people. In his heart, he hated all of them, but he hated the Somalis more. He’d lost a niece to the sex trade the Somalis exploited to fund overseas terrorist groups, and there was a debt to be repaid, an honor to be upheld. He remembered Chief’s admonishment to fire only in self-defense, but he also remembered the Chief saying that some of these intruders would certainly be Somali.
He pulled the bowstring that critical last inch while a smile tugged at the corner of his compressed lips.
Turn around.
He sent a mental command to the man moving ever farther away, but the man didn’t respond.
Moose deliberately moved his deerskin boot against the plank floor of the tree stand, making a scratching noise as dried pine needles crackled underfoot and rained down from the stand. The man-shadow spun in place and raised his weapon, but didn’t fire. Stupid, Moose thought, rubbing his foot against the floor again so the idiot could at least guess at a target location. The man fired at the treetops, shattering with branches with a volley from his AK-47, startling an owl. Moose nodded reverently to the departing owl, then released his arrow.
Thwuunk!
His arrow pierced the man’s heart, and he crumpled instantly, spilling blood into the snow.
Moose released a held breath softly. It had been a good kill, respecting the taking of life from a fellow warrior, even if he was a fucking Somali. And best of all, it started the war.
• • •
Eugene Thunderhawk
was in a tree stand of his own, a quarter of a mile from Moose, when he heard the initial burst of fire, and then the scattered burst of automatic gunfire coming from many directions. Not braves. Braves never fired until their target was in the crosshairs, and then, seldom more than one shot. The automatic setting was for amateurs.
Eugene didn’t think a whole lot of guns. He had a scope rifle on the stand with him, but the sad truth was he was a piss-poor shot. He’d done a turn as a dead-eye sniper in Afghanistan right after 9/11, but returned home to hunker over computer printouts of ledger sheets and wasted years keeping the tribal books until macular degeneration started corrupting his vision. Now he trusted himself only with the knife.
In the shell of the very school where his ancestors had been forced to dress in white men’s constrictive clothing and forbidden to speak their native language, he had listened to a white teacher postulate that if man went back to hand-to-hand combat, wars would end. He’d never understood that. Indians faced their enemies in battle, paid respect to the sacrifice of life by looking into the eyes of the man they were killing. Otherwise there was no honor. It was unthinkable and cowardly to kill from a distance, and in Eugene’s case, now, with his failing eyesight, it was also irresponsible. He had to be very close to make sure he was killing his enemy and not his brother, thus the knife.
He wondered how many braves were crouched in tree stands with clean shots at the unwary who crept beneath them. It seemed a little unfair, like shooting unwitting fish in a barrel. Eugene wasn’t able or willing to do that. He would meet these despicable disrespecters of life face-to-face, and gently but gladly slit their throats.
He was a simple accountant, his glasses were thick and distorting, but his aim was true when he leaped down on the man beneath him and slit his throat. Blood spilled onto his hand in a rush of red. He picked up a handful of snow and wiped the liquid of death away. Less than a second later, he heard a burst of gunfire and felt a sharp heat penetrate his back through his shoulder blades.
As he was falling, with the last beat of a shattered heart, he gave himself up to what he would become, thinking it was much better than being an accountant.
49
I
t was a short volley. A good distance from the cabin, but the sound of it traveled across the stillness of the snow-muted forest with terrifying clarity.
Roadrunner, stationed in the kitchen at the back of the cabin, jerked to immediate attention with a force that threatened to snap his slender frame like a stick in the hands of a giant.
He’d spent most of the day in crushing anxiety, but the reality of the danger hadn’t hit him until he heard the gunfire. Now the terror was real, settling around his heart, squeezing with inexorable force.
He held a shotgun in both hands, its weight heavy and unfamiliar. He handled small arms very well and, surprisingly, never left a bull’s-eye untouched on the range. But that had been like a video game, his little .22 barely heavier than a joystick, and seemingly as nonlethal. The heft of the 12-gauge was a burden, the much longer barrel awkward, and the knowledge of its potential destruction profound.
Roadrunner closed his eyes and shuddered and, for the first time in his life, wished for a drug that would obliterate dread.
John had been in the Chief’s bedroom on the north side of the cabin, backed up next to the wide window, 9mm in his hand, safety off. He was no fighter, no superhero, much as he wanted to be. But this time the only people in his life he cared for were threatened, and he’d never felt steadier.
His heart sank when he heard the gunfire, but he didn’t tremble and he didn’t hesitate. It had come from the west side of the cabin, where Grace and Annie were stationed. In a flash, he saw the big windows, Annie in her silly feathered skirt trying to manhandle the shotgun Claude had placed in her hands; Grace, solid and strangely invincible with calm sureness that had killed two men in an instant on the boat.
His heart seemed to swell with his love for these people. It was such an alien feeling to carry this late in his sorry life, and it filled him with a quiet joy. He rushed out to the kitchen where Roadrunner stood trembling and very brave.
John smiled at him and put his hand on the thin man’s bony shoulder. “The gunfire came from the front, Roadrunner. Grace and Annie are alone in the living room. There’s no one in the world I would trust more than you to take care of them. I’ll watch the back.”
Roadrunner took a shallow breath and tried to find something to exhale. “I won’t let you down.”
“I know that.” John’s smile broadened, and something behind it made Roadrunner certain that everything was going to be all right.
Annie always surprised you. Her generous form was simply not made for speed and alacrity, and you couldn’t possibly look at that fashionista’s perfectly coiffed bob and meticulous makeup and imagine that her response to danger would be quick and certain. But when that first burst of fire sounded outside in the woods, she kicked off her pumps and dropped immediately to a crouch beneath the windowsill, feathered skirt be damned. Those harrowing days in the Wisconsin wilderness had honed her like a sharpening steel.
“Stay down, Annie,” Grace said, inching toward the heavy front door with its triptych of small windows toward the top.
“Duh,” Annie replied, racking the shotgun she held, careful not to compromise her manicure. “It wasn’t that close.”
“I know. Chief’s men are between us and the fire. They’re the target now.”
Annie dropped her head and Grace had the feeling she was praying for those courageous men out there protecting them, even though she’d never known Annie to be one for prayer of any kind.
They both turned when Roadrunner slinked into the room in a crouch. “John’s covering the back. He wanted me out here with you.”
Grace turned her head to again peer out the tiny windows in the door, her brow close to wrinkling in a frown. It didn’t make sense. The back of the cabin was relatively safe from the gunfire in the front. John should have come to the living room himself, leaving Roadrunner in the back. She thought about that for a second, then took a breath and dashed back to the kitchen.
Empty. Silent.
She looked out the window and saw a familiar form darting from tree to tree. John Smith, retired FBI, patriot . . .
“John,” she whispered, loving and hating him at the same time, because he didn’t know how to do this.
• • •
There had been
a lot of times in her life when Grace had felt her heart pounding against her chest like this, but all of those times had been fueled by fear for her own safety. This time it was different. This time it was fear for someone else, someone she loved, and that made all the difference.
She ran headlong into the icy forest, crystal-covered twigs snapping in her wake as she followed John’s tracks through the snow.
Too much noise, she thought, listening to the sound of her own heavy breathing sucking cold air into her lungs, to the pounding of her feet into snow where ice cracked beneath. This was not the old Grace MacBride, who crept breathlessly around corners, whose footfalls were soundless. She was not looking for potential danger, not even fearing it; she was just running heedlessly toward something important.
She heard the fire of an automatic gun ahead but never slowed, and just before a rise in the earth blocked her view from what was beyond, she saw John’s tracks scuffle long marks into the snow, and then the scarlet droplets piercing the white.
She hesitated for the first time, focusing on the droplets, thinking,
Cherries in the Snow.
Her mind flashed back to the dressing table of one of a long line of foster mothers, to the gold tube of lipstick with its colored cap that looked like a strawberry ice-cream cone. She hadn’t liked lipstick then, or even understood its purpose, but on the bottom of that tube, a white paper label identified the color as Cherries in the Snow and she had thought the name quite beautiful.
But it didn’t look so beautiful now. There was no more gunfire ahead, and maybe it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Grace was beyond external stimulation, lost in that place in her mind that had a clear sense, a horrible dread of what she would find over this tiny lift in the forest floor.
Funny, she thought, that her legs weren’t tired from her run through the trees—they were simply stiff—blocks of wood attached to her feet that showed no grace in their leaden movements.
One step, two, three, and then she was on top of the slight rise, looking down. She stood perfectly still for a second, two even, deep breaths moving in and out, as she felt the slow creep of frost come up from the snow, through her boots, inch by inch up her body to her face until all nerves were dead. There was a lot of blood. Too much to leave life behind.
I don’t have to go down there. I don’t have to see reality at close quarters to know it is reality.
But remarkably, her frozen legs moved against her will, taking her to what she didn’t want to see. John was facedown in the snow, recognizable only because of his clothes and his long gray ponytail slung sideways, soaking up the spilled blood as if to take it back into the body that was absolutely, deathly still.
Grace knelt automatically, ripped off her glove, and pressed two fingers into the neck where the carotid should answer. She waited a long time for a single pulse that would never beat again, and then stood up and looked down at the body one last time, her face stiff and expressionless, feeling so much, so intensely, that it was like feeling nothing.
In her memory, she saw John with his strong legs braced on the teak deck of the boat, squinting against the Caribbean sun as he lowered the flag, silly gray ponytail tossed by the evening wind.
That was John. That was what she remembered.