by Sandy Nathan
“Sure.”
“When will you start?”
“Dawn.”
Reason walked up to him when he was putting the horses away. “Leroy, did you keep the snow off the arena and the people? And keep them warm?”
Leroy thought, looking around at the cleared arena and mounds of snow elsewhere. “I guess so. Must have.”
“And you made paths to everyone’s houses and cleared their driveways? And kept the driveway to the tobacco shop clear?”
He looked around, noticing that snow a foot deep had been cleared, making it easy for folks to get to their houses. “I guess I did.” Leroy frowned, perplexed.
Reason dropped his voice, to a low whisper, “Are you a spirit warrior, Leroy? And a weather-changer?”
His nod was barely perceptible. “I guess so. I’m good with rain, an’ I guess snow, too. Mostly I heal, but I can do other things if I need to. Don’t tell anyone.”
“Right, I won’t. But there were hundreds of people here today, Leroy. I expect that most of them noticed. Did you know that a hundred year snow hit the City Las Vegas today? Snowed for miles around.”
Leroy’s brows contracted. He sucked in a breath. That’s why he wasn’t going to be Grandfather’s successor. His power was unpredictable and sometimes made things worse.
He had the horses ready Friday. The tribe advanced him his entry fees. He intended to enter the palomino mare in tie-down roping and the pinto in bulldogging. Those suited the abilities they’d shown in training. Reason was collecting bids on the two horses. He’d keep the auction open until after the rodeo. If either horse won a championship, its price would skyrocket.
Reason Jimson smiled. Brother Leroy driving in with his camper was good for the whole Nation.
6
INCLEMENT WEATHER
Flakes of snow dusted the runway as they arrived. “Don’t worry. It never snows here,” Austin said, hustling his family to the car rental desk. “Is it going to snow very long?” he said to the desk clerk.
“No. I’ve lived in Vegas all my life. Most we get is a little sprinkle. This will melt in a few minutes.”
They had to wait for the car he’d ordered. He wouldn’t drive one of those tiny foreign jobs. Snow continued to fall as they waited. The parking lot was blanketed in white. Had to be four inches deep.
There was a four-wheel drive truck with an extended cab available, but Austin didn’t want to be jammed in and jolt around in a tank like that. Their car finally came in, a black car like they drove in the Bureau. Blacked out windows with the shape of a beetle.
“Oh, cool dad. The Mafia drive cars like this.” J was excited for the first time. “I bet it is a Mafia car. They run Las Vegas.”
“Do you have any snow chains?” he asked the attendant.
“No, sir, it never snows in Las Vegas. It will melt soon.”
As they left the airport, they could see dozens of people frolicking in the snow, throwing snowballs and making snowmen as though the snowfall was the best thing in the world. Austin scowled. Why did they come on Wednesday? By tomorrow, the snow would be melted. But they had a whole week in Las Vegas. Things would work out.
“Can’t you find it?” Austin barked at Sylvia. Miles of fresh white fluff surrounded the car, saguaro cacti poking up here and there. The road was empty.
“No, dear, I’m a brainless idiot.” She juggled a paper map. He had carefully marked their route in yellow marker. “It isn’t where the brochure says it is, Austin. Can’t you understand that?” She poked her finger at an intersection. “We passed Rin Tin Tin Road half an hour ago.”
The highway was a fucking mess. The windshield wipers did nothing. The snow kept falling. Austin made up his mind. Pulling carefully off of the road, he got out and approached the trunk. His feet immediately became wet––and then freezing. The cowboy boots he’d bought for the trip weren’t waterproof.
He lifted the heavy case out of the trunk, debating where to open it. He needed to open it, but he didn’t want his family to know what it held. An FBI man’s kit was as classified as they came. The snow fell. He shivered. His feet felt were soaked to the ankle. He got back in the car, turning up the heat.
“OK, everyone. I’m not supposed to show you this, so forget you saw it.” He opened the long briefcase.
“Oh, wow, dad! You’ve got guns! Can we shoot them?” J-man lit up.
“No, you cannot. Not these guns. We’ll find a range when we get there. I’ll teach you. Everyone should know how to shoot. It’s your right as an American.”
Two firearms were nestled into fitted indentations in the bottom half of the briefcase: his standard issue, semi-automatic Glock 22 pistol and the M4A1 carbine. The M4A1 was only 30” with the stock retracted. Some might find it odd to take a fully automatic assault rifle used by SWAT teams on a family vacation, but Austin knew that situations could come up. He would be ready. Plus he loved the guns and hated to be without them. An FBI man could carry them legally.
“You’re going to really like what I’m going to do next.”
He set up the satellite-based GPS that was packed on the top of the case. In 1997, it was brand-new and state-of the-art, with its own miniature satellite dish, which he put on the car’s roof. “We can find out where we are anywhere on the globe with this. It’s top secret. Made by Numenon for the FBI. Have you heard of Numenon?”
“Oh, yeah. They make a killer phone. The NumoPhone.”
“You can take pictures of yourself with it and send them to your friends.”
Austin’s back went up. He’d heard of that. He’d heard of senators losing their seats because of pictures they sent to their friends. “Well, that’s a different branch of Numenon. They made this for the Bureau.”
He quickly established that the Yippee-I-O Ranch was twenty-five miles farther up the road. “They lied!” Austin was outraged. “This isn’t the outskirts of Las Vegas. It’s the middle of the sticks.”
Sylvia examined the Yippee-I-O Ranch’s brochure. “It says ‘map not to scale,’ Austin. It never was where you thought it was.”
His jaws convulsed. He wanted to explode with profane speech, but he never would, in front of the children or anywhere. He was a Bureau man. “I’ll see about that. Let’s see if we can get some help.”
He set up the system’s satellite phone. In three minutes he was talking to the Sheriff, William R. Rodriquez. He identified himself to the operator and was passed straight to Rodriquez. The speaker allowed everyone in the car to hear what was said.
“I have to insist, Sheriff …” “Call me Bill.” “… Bill, that you don’t mention my presence to anyone. I’m strictly below the radar.” Austin looked up to find his children staring at him with rapt attention. Sylvia seemed a little sick.
“I’m on a covert operation. Now, what can you tell me about the Yippee-I-O Ranch? I’m supposed to rendezvous there this afternoon.”
“That old place? Is it still open? It’s way out there. Old couple used to own it. I don’t know what became of them …”
“It’s habitable?”
“Far as I know.”
“What about all this snow? Can you send a snowplow out? I’ll give you our coordinates.”
“I’d love to special agent …” “Call me Austin.” “Austin. We don’t have a snowplow. It hasn’t snowed like this since 1949. There’s not a snow plow in the county.”
Austin felt himself deflating. Twenty-five more miles of this?
“How about if I sent a 4WD black and white out to pick y’all up? Take you to one of the hotels in town?”
Austin deflated farther. All his research. The wonderful ranch vacation. Gone for a gaudy strip motel and casino. Prostitutes wandering around, and drunken gamblers. That was no place for the kids. He looked up. Sylvia was frantically mouthing, “Yes! Yes! Take it!”
“I can get you into some pretty fancy places.” The sheriff’s bonhomie radiated over the phone. “I know you can’t be comped, but we can figure out a way.”
&n
bsp; This was different than what he was used to. “Thank you so much, Bill.” Sylvia kept up with the silent mouthing, “Do it. Take it.” He said, “I may take you up on it, but I’d better make that rendezvous at the Yippee-I-O.” He dropped his voice, so he’d sound like the rendezvous was top secret.
“Oh, yes, Austin, I know all about covert ops. You folks have anything to do with the Antiterrorism Force?”
Not unless we have to. “Yes, we collaborate all the time.”
“I see. Are you collaborating with the Antiterrorism Force now? They’ve got agents combing the town. Their lead officer checked in with me and said they had reason to suspect a terrorist attack was imminent.”
“I can’t talk about that, sir.” Cogs were turning in Austin’s mind. First, what was the Antiterrorism Force doing in Las Vegas? He and most of the FBI officers regarded the ATF as a bunch of overpaid fly-boys who stole the glory after the FBI had done the work. They worked differently than the Bureau. Rather than maintaining strict lines of command and discipline, the ATF opted for a guerilla warfare model. They blended in with the population, often being indistinguishable from––he didn’t want to think it, but it was true––the overweight, out-of-shape citizenry they protected. Except they weren’t: the ATF members were tough.
The rivalry between the two agencies began the moment the ATF was formed in 1996, a response to 1995’s Oklahoma City bombing. The Antiterrorism Force was an elite unit staffed by people even more talented and better trained than the FBI’s men. The ATF was funded by legislation more sacrosanct than the FBI’s. The nation considered them the Navy Seals of antiterrorism.
Like everyone else in the Bureau, Austin loathed the ATF agents to a man. And woman. They had lots of those. Were they usurping the Bureau’s––his––jurisdiction? His hackles went up. But they were good at what they did. If the ATF was in Las Vegas looking for terrorists, odds are there were terrorists in the city. And the Bureau didn’t know a thing about it. He was high enough up on the food chain to know that the FBI was unaware of a pending attack.
This gave him plan B. If the vacation didn’t save his family, he needed another way to keep them together. The ATF presence could be the career break that he was looking for. If he could bring in the terrorists, his bosses would notice him big time. He’d get that promotion and more pay. He could spend more time with his family. Maybe move out of DC. All he had to do was infiltrate the terrorist ring in a week, while pulling off a great family vacation.
The sheriff interrupted his ruminations. “Well, Austin, if there’s any problem out there at the Yippee-I-O, you give me a call. I’ll give you a police escort back to town and see you’re set up in the biggest suite in Vegas.”
“Thank you, sir. I’ll call if I need you.”
He hung up. J-man and H were staring at him like he was a rock star.
“Dad, are you a secret agent? Is that what you do when you’re gone? Catch terrorists?”
“I can’t tell you what I do, J …”
“Call me Jimmy, Dad.”
“Jimmy. It’s classified, but yes, I’m something like that.”
“Wow!” That was from both kids.
“How could you do that?” Sylvia snapped. “We could have had a nice suite. Instead of …”
“We have two cabins at the ranch. I ordered their best. They’ve got great western atmosphere. We’re going to have fun, Sylvia. I promise.”
She didn’t say a word the rest of the trip. The kids plied him with questions that he legally couldn’t answer. If he imbued his nods and grunts a little more intrigue than the job carried, he just wanted his children to love him. He wanted the admiration on their faces to stay. He wanted to be able to call them Jimmy and Hannah again.
“Is that it, dad?” Jimmy said. The boy pointed at low buildings barely visible through the loose snow blowing everywhere. The small distraction caused him to jiggle the steering wheel. The car fishtailed. They didn’t have snow tires. The snow had stopped, but the road had to be drifted a foot deep. He didn’t know how they had made it that far.
“I think that’s it, Jimmy. Sylvia, check the coordinates we got from the satellite again.”
“How can I tell?” she snapped. “All I’ve got is a bunch of numbers. There’s nothing out here. Not even a truck stop. Please, can’t we go back to town?”
When they got closer, the Yippee-I-O Ranch was far less than it appeared in that initial snowy glimpse. It was lumps in the snow with one light, over what must be the office. The sign with the rearing horse swung upside down, almost rusted through. The brochures were an outright fraud.
“Can we go back, dad? I don’t want to go to a dude ranch. It’s scary out here,” Hannah said, leaning her face into the back of his neck. He could feel damp air condensing above his collar. She was panting with fear.
Austin made a snap decision. “OK. We’ll try it for a night. If we don't like it, we’ll call the sheriff and go to a high rise in Las Vegas. We’ll boogie on the Strip.” It wouldn’t be a ranch vacation, but it would be better than the disaster shaping up. The rodeo would still be there; they’d be closer to it. Maybe they could meet some cowboys. Everyone would be happy.
He turned into the parking lot. Someone had plowed it; its blue-white surface was iced-over and slick as an Olympic skating ring. The car swung to the left, the front end following the driveway where he steered it. The rear end pivoted in a wide swath and kept going. The car spun once, and then again, before smashing its right rear quarter panel into a telephone pole in the middle of the lot.
“Aw, dad,” his kids said in unison.
Austin got out of the car and looked the damage. Shit. Double shit. The quarter panel was smashed like a beer can at a ball game, with a piece of metal piercing the tire. No driving this one. He kicked the tire.
“What’s the matter with the weather people? It’s not supposed to snow in Las Vegas.” If the FBI ran the weather, there wouldn’t be snow where it wasn’t supposed to be. And who the hell plowed the lot? The Sheriff said there wasn’t a plow in the county. Why did this place have a plow? Why was its owner stupid enough to use it?
Austin turned toward the buildings and waved his arms over his head. “Is anyone there? Can you help us?”
A quad appeared over a mound in front of the low structures, its wheels oversized compared to its squat frame. It was getting dark. More snow gently drifted to the ground.
“I don’t have any clothes for cold weather, Austin. I would have brought clothes for snow if I knew there’d be snow.” Sylvia pulled her feet farther under herself. “I’m freezing.”
The kids ducked their heads and sat closer to each other; they stared at the Yippee-I-O like it was the Bates Motel. Sylvia sulked until the quad reached them.
“Hello. I am Niles,” the driver said. His eyes were so blue that Austin recoiled in surprise when he saw them. He looked at their battered car. “I am so sorry. I used the bucket on the tractor to clear the parking. I thought to make it better, not to do this.” He looked very contrite.
Austin heard himself saying, “Well, that’s OK. It’s the insurance company’s problem. We need to get inside. We’re freezing.”
Niles went around to the passenger side to help Sylvia. He did a double take when he saw her, an overdone ploy as far as Austin was concerned.
“Well, hello,” he said to Sylvia with some kind of Scandinavian accent. “How lucky we are to have such a nice lady for a guest. What is your name?”
“Uh. I’m Sylvia.” She seemed barely able to speak as she gazed at his sculpted face.
He raised his eyebrows and inhaled, as though testing a prime vintage.
“I need to call the car rental company.” Austin was not about to be charmed by a blue-eyed, Nordic god with blond hair down to his shoulders. He was the one with the gun and the badge.
“Yes, of course,” Niles said, taking in the beat up car and tssking. “Let me take Sylvia and the children inside and then we’ll deal with this.” H
e waved at the crumpled sedan as though he could magically make it disappear. “I never will know why they put that pole in the middle of the parking. Is good that it doesn’t snow more often.”
“Well, come with me.” Niles climbed on the quad. “Sit close to me so we fit, Sylvia. Pile on kids, we go for a ride.”
They drove off, leaving him with the luggage, feet and legs wet to the knee, shivering.
7
THE YIPPEE-I-O RANCH
“Oh. It’s really nice,”’ Sylvia said when Niles opened the door to their southwest style cottage. The place had rounded plaster everywhere, a crackling fire, and great western furniture. Atmosphere up the wazoo. The living room was as big as the one they had at home. A door on the other side led into the bedroom. It seemed to beckon to him, and wink.
A big mirror on the opposite wall showed Austin that his belly did not protrude as much as he thought it did, and his hair didn’t looked dyed at all. He looked good.
Sylvia went on and on about the suite, but no one was more surprised than Austin. Most of the resort seemed to be falling apart, but their two cabins and the main building looked newly renovated.
“Yah. I work for months to get this done. I always have to tell contractors what to do, so I end up doing it myself. Now I have to finish the rest.” Niles smiled, his face looking almost as crumpled as their car. “If I had known how this place was, I might not say yes when my grandparents ask me to come home and help. But here I am, working all the time.”
Niles’ unhappiness heartened Austin, but he wanted to make sure that no wrong-doing had occurred. Before leaving DC, he had researched the property, using the tax roles and assessor’s records. Nils Svanbäck owned it. The brochure said, “Welcome from your hosts, Greta and Alvar Ekstrom.” The couple in the photo waved at the camera. Nothing about Niles Pretty-Boy showed up anywhere. “Where are your grandparents, may I ask?” He could see that Niles was the sort who would knock off old people to steal their crumbling motel.
