by Kris Lackey
Dayo Mission Road left a knot of ranch houses on its way north through pastureland. Before it made a hard right at the Fort Sill military reservation fence, Maytubby saw a lone mailbox at the head of a dirt driveway. The address Sulak gave was stenciled on the box. There was no gate or cattle guard, so no livestock. Distant artillery boomed on military ranges in the shadow of Mount Scott.
The drive split a stand of mesquite and disappeared over a rise. He donned his OU hat and drove over the rise.
A rusted windmill tower, missing its wind wheel, listed to the north. The tank it once fed was half buried in sand. Fifty yards away, an old residential propane tank nested in dead bluestem grass. No sign of a slab or chain wall. Wind had swept the earth clean of tracks.
Sulak may not have given his real address to the Department of Public Safety, but he could not have randomly matched the five digits on the mailbox. Maybe he owned the land; maybe he lived nearby and knew that the place was uninhabited. Back on the road, Maytubby drove through rolling grassland cut by small streams. A coyote loped parallel to the road, eyeing the pickup.
Maytubby noticed that a sodium streetlamp over a driveway gate had been shot out. This meant nothing except that it was the first damaged one he had seen today. Most of the traffic signs on country roads were slug-pocked. But the next streetlamp, a few hundred yards along, was shot out, and the ones after those two were not. There were no visible houses or buildings, only a double-strand electric fence on the north and a barbed-wire ranch fence, with milled wooden posts, on the south.
Maytubby made a three-point U-turn and drove slowly between the shattered lights, scanning the shallow ditches on both sides of the road. He reached the first light without seeing anything unusual, turned around, and drove more slowly, stopping every few feet. Halfway between the lights, looking south, he noticed a small stretch of fence that looked off. He stared at it for a couple of seconds. All four strands of barbed wire were less taut than the wire on either side. He looked all around to make sure he was alone, put on his camo ball cap. He left the truck with the keys in the ignition, screened from the field by a few mesquites, and walked through the dry ditch to take a closer look.
Nearer the ditch, he could see where tires had flattened the grass. Pinching the top strand of wire, he pulled it toward himself. The two nearest fence posts moved with the wire. They were not planted in the ground. Maytubby went to the first pole that stayed put and discovered that it was split vertically. Loops of baling wire at top and bottom bound the halves together and could be slid off to open the gate. This basic poor-man’s gate was common, but Maytubby had never seen one where there was no road or trail, and he had never seen one so painstakingly concealed.
The property was flat and treeless but uncultivated. There were no cow flops. He looked up and saw that there was no electric wire between the lamps. At each lamp, the wire paralleling the road continued perpendicular to the road and away from it. He tilted the half post, stepped through the space, and closed the gate, looping the top wire barely over the top of the post so he could get back through it fast. A quarter mile into the pasture, he found an orange wind sock flattened on the ground by stones. Its frame and short mast, as well as a fat flashlight, lay in a shallow trench next to it.
A few more steps revealed smudged divots cut by what the wind sock told him were the tires of planes landing toward the south, the prevailing wind in most of Oklahoma, though not on this winter day. He walked straight south, pacing off the ballpark landing distance for a Mooney Mustang—about three hundred yards. Then he stopped and parsed the field. Before his eye had traveled a half circle, it was arrested by an off-palette splotch. When he stood over it, he saw a pair of very large camouflage coveralls pinned to the ground with stones. He grabbed the crotch and yanked, spilling the rocks and exposing what looked like three plastic garbage can lids, each with six screws around the circumference. Maytubby knew he was looking at prepper hardware.
He took out his pocketknife and removed all the screws of the first, pulled on his winter gloves, and tugged at the lid. The sealer O-rings squeaked and then popped as he pulled the lid free. A desiccant pack lay on spools of Cordtex detonating cord that went down at least as far as the sunlight reached. He reattached the lid and opened the second ammo can. It was about half full of grenade hulls minus fuses.
While he reattached the lid of the second can, he became aware of a distant droning. He opened the third can more quickly. It was stacked with AR-15 assault rifle receivers—the business part of the gun, which normally bore the serial number. Maytubby lifted one out and turned it over. No serial. A blank receiver, untraceable. He screwed down the lid and reanchored the coveralls.
The drone grew louder. Without standing, he found the plane, a single-engine wing-over Cessna, approaching into a stout north wind. It was not going far beyond the field, because the southern half of Fort Sill was restricted airspace. He stood and managed a brisk nonchalance as he walked straight north, in the middle of the dirt strip, toward his pickup. The plane couldn’t land without hitting him, and nobody shot through their own spinning prop. He took out his phone, switched it to selfie, and watched the plane descend behind him.
With his free hand, Maytubby took out his goober teeth and put them in. He watched the old Cessna slide east, off the glide path, and descend to maybe fifty feet as it approached him on the right. After photographing the plane, he spun in mock surprise, grinned, and waved like a thrilled child. The pilot wore a black hoodie and aviators. He didn’t wave back. He did throttle up, loudly. Maytubby figured he would ascend until he could safely bank back toward the strip.
The Cessna’s fuselage bore no tail number. It was as blank as the receivers. As the plane rose and pivoted, its wing top glared in the winter sun. Maytubby pocketed his phone and walked briskly, swinging his arms like a movie rube. Now, with a tailwind, the plane couldn’t land. It buzzed past on his left. He again took out his cell, kept swinging his free arm, and watched over his shoulder as the Cessna banked left and descended. This time, though, it lined up on the dirt strip, and there was plenty of strip for a landing. Maytubby decided that running would instantly give him away and that in any case, he couldn’t outrun the plane if it taxied off the strip and followed him into the rougher margins of the field.
The wheels chuffed when they struck the dirt, and the nose dipped as the pilot braked. The Cessna tacked slightly to the east as it approached Maytubby, who veered east himself to keep the prop between himself and the pilot. He pocketed his cell phone and waited until the plane was very close. As he expected, it pivoted on one braked wheel, and the fuselage came broadside to him. The parking brake clicked as the pilot’s door flew open.
Maytubby spun and ran toward the feathering prop. The pilot bailed out of the plane, holding a pistol in his left hand while doing a bandy-legged dance around the wing struts and away from the prop. Maytubby leaned into his sprint as the pilot stepped sideways, raised his pistol, and fired. The round sang past Maytubby’s head just as he dived to the left of the prop—keeping it in the pilot’s line of fire—and rolled under the fuselage. He scrambled into the pilot’s seat before the pilot could reverse course. He released the parking brake with his left hand, grabbed the throttle knob with his right. He barely nudged the throttle at first so the prop wouldn’t suck up pebbles before it created a full wash. As the pilot made a run for the door, Maytubby plunged the throttle to the panel face. A volley of dust swept the man off balance. Maytubby applied left pedal so the elevator wouldn’t hit him.
The Cessna thumped and lurched, shearing bluestem stalks as it covered the rough prairie between the strip and Maytubby’s pickup. He throttled back so the plane wouldn’t be lifted by the hard wind. Groping under the seats and in the door pockets, he came up with a mostly full box of 9mm Auto hollow-point cartridges and nothing else. No papers, no drugs. He emptied the ammo box out the window. Smears of dried adhesive showed him where the plane�
�s registration plate had been peeled off.
A row of ruby digits glowed on the navigation radio—109.4, the frequency of the nearest beacon, Lawton-Fort Sill. Maytubby clicked through the preset frequencies. He recognized those he had flown to and from in planes with old avionics. He memorized the strangers.
Near the fence, Maytubby cut the prop, set the brake, and tossed the ignition key into the ditch. He flicked up the wire loop on the fence and—still obeying his father—closed the gate behind him. The pilot ran well—very well, considering the pistol—but he was still more than a quarter mile from his plane when Maytubby drove away from the mesquite thicket. At the first section-line stop sign, he saw in his mirror a Lilliputian figure with its legs spread. A tiny burst of smoke vanished on the wind. The nine struck the Ford’s tailgate like a ball-peen hammer.
“Damn,” he said.
CHAPTER 25
The young man Bond pulled over for speeding on US 177 west of Mannsville had signed his ticket with a crude phallus. His cheeks were tattooed with scorpions. When she tore the citation off her pad and extended it to him, he gripped the steering wheel and glared straight ahead. She dropped it in his lap. He snatched it up, wadded it in a ball, and tossed it in the back seat.
She closed her citation holder and watched a scaup dunk between the ice crusts on Wolf Creek. Scorpion Guy tried to peel out, but his old Chevy Sonic stalled. Bond laid her citation holder on the cruiser’s windshield and stood until the gray-primered Sonic disappeared. High in the cold sky, horsetail cirrus clouds feathered south in advance of a norther.
Bond heard the cycle’s wail before it crested the creek riser. She glanced at her radar display. It leapt from 0 to 86. As she reached for the door handle, the bike’s pitch fell to a growl; its speed plummeted. The cruiser’s strobes still pulsed. Bond drew her hand back and watched the yellow dirt bike coast almost silently around the cruiser and stop on the shoulder. Its rider, wearing tan coveralls, a metallic silver helmet, and black leather gloves, balanced the bike with his right leg and kicked down the stand with his left. He pulled off his helmet, set it on the tank, and shook out his hair. Richard James pulled off his gloves, laid them on the helmet, put his hands back on the handlebars so Bond could see them. Mr. Manners.
Bond set her palm on the butt of her old Smith and Wesson, dropped her index finger alongside the holster. She walked slowly toward James and stopped just behind him. Without moving his hands, he turned a broad smile and bright lapis eyes on her. She instinctively let her hand slip off the pistol, then instantly brought it back. A disarming character. And he hadn’t said a word.
“Your license under your coveralls?” Bond said.
“Yes, Officer.”
“You can get off and get it.”
James held down his helmet and gloves while he dismounted. He faced Bond and unzipped his coveralls to below his waist. He was wearing a navy twill shirt, which looked ironed, and tight jeans. When he had jimmied his wallet out of his jeans, Bond stepped toward him to take his license with her left hand. She kept her right hand on the revolver. “My registration and insurance are in the left saddlebag.”
Bond nodded once. “You can get ’em out.” These she took with her left hand, also. “Now, sir, please zip up your coveralls and stand in front of your motorcycle, facing me.”
Oklahoma had not adopted the federal Real ID standards for driver’s licenses, so the one bearing James’ photo alongside the name Francis Klaus was technically valid. The address was on Goad Road in Bray. Bond said, “Bray. Let’s see. What’s that school’s mascot?”
“Donkey, ma’am,” James said.
“Mmmm,” she said. “I had a cousin lived close to this address on Goad.”
James cocked his head and grinned. “It’s a small world.”
Bond retrieved the citation holder and began writing the ticket. “People call you Francis?”
More than a second passed before James said, “Frank.”
Bond was looking at the last name on the license when he spoke. Somebody was lazy before they went into the DPS office. Klaus was an anagram of Sulak. She gave her citation pad the stink-eye as she copied all the bogus things. A box truck braked noisily as it topped the riser behind her. She saw the Sentinel logo and scowled as it passed. James’ eyes never flinched.
“Rough day, Officer?”
Bond continued to write as she talked to her hand. “Yeah. I lost that cousin a couple of days ago.” She looked up.
James pulled a frown and knitted his brow, looked into her eyes. “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“She lived in that little white frame house at the intersection of Goad and Farmer’s.” James was good. He never broke eye contact. “Next section over from you. West. Propane tank in the front yard?”
If you stood in the middle of that intersection, you couldn’t see a building for a mile in any direction.
James blinked but didn’t fall for it.
Bond finished the citation, held it out to James with his documents. As his face came closer, Bond lifted the papers so he would raise his eyes. “Her name was Alice Lang.”
This time, a fleeting squint, a brow tic. Not fear or anger, but skepticism. Bond got more than she angled for.
James quickly retrieved his solemnity. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know the lady. I’m sure she was a fine Christian and is walking with her sweet Jesus through the green fields of paradise.” His soul patch glistened.
Bond set cold eyes on him. “Only thing I’m sure of is, she’s layin’ on an autopsy table in Oklahoma City. A nine through her brain.”
Folding his documents, James turned toward his bike. He stowed his registration and insurance in the saddlebag, faced Bond as he put away his billfold and zipped up his coveralls. “Manslayers and thieves. Defilers. Roaming this beautiful land like jackals.” The visor fell across his face. He snapped on his gloves and slowly drove west.
After his silhouette had sunk under the near horizon, Bond studied the empty road.
CHAPTER 26
Maytubby had parked on a dirt road paralleling the makeshift airstrip, about half a mile away.
The aged Cessna buzzed into the air more than thirty minutes later. Either Lefty had emptied all the prepper barrels into the Cessna’s seats, or Maytubby had pitched his keys too far. When Maytubby found the plane with his field glasses, it was banking east, toward his parking spot. It followed the military reservation boundary; flying low and slow, it passed just behind the pickup, then revved and made a turning climb to the southeast.
Laying the glasses on the seat, Maytubby picked up his phone and examined the list of navigation beacons he had made from the plane’s avionics and a digital aeronautical chart. A string of them led west—one in Altus, Oklahoma; one near Amarillo, Texas; and two in New Mexico: Tucumcari and Moriarty. Another string went the plane’s direction: Ardmore, Texoma—beacons he knew already—and Paris, Texas. He had driven through Paris but never flown there.
Maytubby switched from the list back to the aeronautical chart. A plane without tail numbers would attract attention at the Paris airport. He counted seven smaller fields within fifteen miles. Who knew how many unidentified strips there were like the one he had discovered.
The Mooney Mustang, which had flown west toward Altus, still bore its tail number. Did that mean it landed at towered fields, such as Amarillo, where traffic controllers would see it? Maytubby entered the number in the FAA Aircraft Registry. It belonged to a 1970 Piper Cherokee owned by David Fisk of Rolla, Missouri. He then searched the FAA Accident and Incident Data. The Cherokee had crashed and burned on a stormy approach to a rural Arkansas airstrip years ago. Its owner had died in the crash. The plane had never been deregistered, so its number lived on.
Maytubby dismissed the FAA site and called Lighthorse Dispatch in Ada.
“Hey, Bill’s cell.”
“Hey, Sheila.�
�
“You’re in that old truck, without your gadgets.”
“If things get hot, I have a flashing red light to stick on the roof.”
“More fun than all the gadgets, after all. Where are you?”
“Comanche country.”
“Want me to tell Chief Fox you drove the rustlers to ground?”
“I need something from NLETS, and even my gadgets won’t get me that. Only you, Sheila.”
“Must be some big-time rustlers. Hold on a sec while I log in.” Some prairie-grass stems tumbled across his hood. “Okay. Shoot.”
“Duncan Calls.”
Maytubby heard her typing. She didn’t ask about the spelling, because Calls was a Chickasaw name.
“You want dates and details?”
“Evil deeds and places is good.”
“The big ones are Laramie, Wyo … Sorry. Laramie, assault and battery. Moriarty, New Mexico, armed robbery.”
“Could you photograph his mug shot and send it to my cell?”
“Yessir.”
“Could you see if Calls is a registered citizen of the Nation?” An orange Kubota utility tractor rolled by, its gloved driver hunched into hooded khaki coveralls. It kicked up sand that crackled against the pickup’s fender.
“La-la-la-la-la … la. Duncan Calls. Looks like it. And this picture is clearer than the MLET mugs. Lemme get my cell out of my purse.” Maytubby heard some rummaging, then a shutter sound. “On its way. You need anything else?”
“That’s all. Thanks.”
Maytubby opened the message from Sheila. There he was, the Santa Fe handyman, the Sentinel counterman. He was much younger in the photo. But the same thin nose, strong cheekbones, long upper lip. The photo made his skin look more orange than wheat.
Maytubby saved the picture, used a photo editor to give Calls a baseball cap and sunglasses. In the ballpark, but hard to tell without the cockeyed teeth.
