by Bob Mayer
“You injuns are nuts,” the white man said. But he walked toward the truck.
Bluehorse hesitated, staring at Kinsman. “Elder.”
Kinsman faced him. Bluehorse put his canteen on the ground. “Take some water. I wish you peace, Elder.” He nodded, then followed the biker.
Kinsman continued the charade, but was watching out of the corner of his eye. They both got inside the truck. They were arguing. Then the truck drove away, toward Hole in the Rock.
Once they were out of sight, Kinsman stopped. He sheathed the knife, gathered his gear, saddled the horse. He re-applied the ash to his face, darkening it slightly but more importantly, reducing any chance of reflection from the rising moon.
Kinsman mounted up and moved out.
Kane had the Swedish K disassembled and was cleaning it. Three rounds didn’t exactly foul the gun, but it was habit, and habits were good. Caitlyn had found a perch on top of one of the stone pillars, scrambling up it with impressive dexterity. She was scanning the surrounding terrain with binoculars, catching the last of the light as the sun was almost completely down.
“It’s beautiful,” Caitlyn called out as she stood up and did one last three-sixty.
Kane refrained from telling her that she was silhouetting herself. He knew she knew that. They both also knew it was highly unlikely that any more bad guys would show up tonight. The two Hmong had driven from Escalante after being booted off the plane, which meant Crawford was making sure. It would be a while before they were overdue showing up and then it was a long road between Fiftymile Point and Escalante to check.
Caitlyn slung the rifle over her shoulder and climbed down. It was an M-21, basically the M-14 Kane had trained with at West Point. The major difference was that the stock was glazed into the receiver to reduce movement, the scope, and she was using match grade 7.62mm ammunition. She could reach out a long way with it.
Kane had gone back to the ambush site a half hour ago. Dragged the one body to the Defender and shoved it in the back seat. Pushed the driver over to the passenger seat. Then worked the vehicle back and forth so that it was aligned with the wash and driven forward until the twenty-foot-high walls closed in tight, scraping against both sides. He’d shut off the engine and exited via the back gate, locking it behind him.
Caitlyn hadn’t said a word when he got back. She’d climbed the rock and stayed up there until now.
“Preference on first watch?” she asked.
Kane shrugged. “Up to you.”
She checked the time. “I’ll do two hours, then wake you.”
Kane reached for the forty-five that should have been within inches of his left hand, but it wasn’t there. His other hand scrambled around his body for the knife in the center of his back, curling around the haft as a figure loomed over him. A finger touched his lips.
“Shhh!” Caitlyn whispered. “Shhh.”
Kane realized she was naked from the waist down. His first thought was she had to be cold, the temperature having dropped precipitously when the sun went down but his thinking was derailed as her hands deftly unbuckled his A7A belt buckle, opened his pants, and pulled them down. He wasn’t aware he was following her lead, but his body was as he lifted slightly. His pants only slid to his knees, but that was enough. She stroked him for a short while then her chilly hand roll a condom on him. She straddled his waist. Lowered herself as his body betrayed him and assisted her.
She slid him into her warmth, distanced slightly, but significantly to Kane, by the rubber. She moved slowly at first, then faster and faster. Kane was pinned to the ground, unable/unwilling to move, her hands on his shoulders. It was all Caitlyn as she took him.
Their breathing grew ragged. She was sliding against him, back and forth, pulling up slightly, then down. A rhythm that she knew and was adept at.
Kane tried to control himself but it was no use as he exploded inside the condom. She didn’t stop, going faster for another minute until she went rigid, back arching, head thrown back, eyes to the stars.
Then she put a hand on his chest, pushed herself off. Grabbed her pants and swiftly pulled them on, over her boots, helping explaining why they were over-sized. “Your shift.”
The white man was easy to locate in the darkness. He was walking back and forth, hands tucked into his armpits, and he was complaining loudly as if the land cared about his problems. “If I’d have known I’d be sitting out here in the middle of nowhere, I’d have brought my jacket from my bike bag.”
Kinsman lay on his stomach, ignoring the pain, scanning the darkness, trying to find the Navajo who’d called himself Bluehorse. Kinsman was on the large smooth rock bulge to the north of Hole in the Rock. A Defender was parked below him and to the right fifty yards away. The cleft that gave the place its name was to the left. The white man was between the two, but Kinsman couldn’t spot Bluehorse. Was he asleep in the vehicle? Was the white man talking to himself?
A lighter flickered as the white man fired up a cigarette. His pistol was tucked in his belt.
Kinsman waited.
“You ever fucking talk?” The white man demanded after ten minutes. “How about you give me the keys for the truck and I get some shuteye. We both can’t stay up all night. Where the fuck are you anyway?”
Kinsman sensed the movement to his right and rolled, drawing his Ka-bar. Bluehorse had a big knife against Kinsman’s throat as the old man completed the move, lying on his back, Bluehorse on top.
“You aren’t out here to die, are you, Elder?”
“Are you here to die?” Kinsman asked. In the starlight he could see the younger man’s face.
Bluehorse frowned. “What?”
Kinsman pressed the point of the Ka-bar into Bluehorse’s groin. “When I cut the artery, you bleed out. No tourniquet can work there. No bandage. I’ve seen men die like that.”
“But I can still slit your throat,” Bluehorse noted.
Kinsman shrugged. “We both die. I am ready. I am out here to die. But there’s something from the past I must correct before that. I’ve said my words to the spirits and the earth and sky. Have you said yours? Do you even know them? Crawford has corrupted you, son.”
Bluehorse relaxed the pressure of his blade. “What are you saying, Elder?”
“You’ve been misled. There is no such thing as blood debt among the People. And he has you dealing drugs? Working with the likes of that?” He jerked his head toward the white man who was in the truck now, searching for a spare key and cursing loudly.
“What are you doing out here, Elder?”
“Looking for a woman.” He pulled the Ka-bar back. “Can I sit? It hurts to lie on my back.
Bluehorse withdrew the knife and squatted, while Kinsman sat up. “Are you with Kane? Is he here?”
“Since when do brave men kidnap women?”
Bluehorse sheathed the knife but didn’t meet Kinsman’s eyes. “I do what Boss tells me.”
“Boss Crawford is a bad man.”
Bluehorse was silent. Finally he looked up and met Kinsman’s eyes. “I know. The lawyer said terrible things about Boss while being tortured. My brothers didn’t believe it, but I suspected for a long time. And a man in that situation tells the truth.”
Kinsman slid the Ka-bar into the sheath on his belt. “Then why do you follow him?”
“He, and my brothers, are all I have for family.”
“Having no family is better than that. I knew your father. You might not have immediate family but you have a tribe.”
Bluehorse’s eyes went wide. “You were a Code Talker in the war?”
“Yes. And I served with Yazzie’s father. Crawford killed him.”
“What! How?
Before Kinsman could answer, the white man shone a flashlight toward their vicinity. “You up there, injun? Who you talking to?”
“We’ll discuss it later,” Kinsman said to Bluehorse. “We need to deal with the white man and then you will give me information.”
“Why should I help
you?” Bluehorse asked, his tone a genuine question and not a challenge.
“We are of the People,” Kinsman said. “That man is not.”
“What do you propose?”
Kinsman got to his feet, grimacing with the effort. “You will take me to him.”
Bluehorse walked next to Kinsman as they approached the biker shivering inside the Defender. The biker opened the door, illuminating himself in the darkness.
“Where the fuck did he come from?” he demanded as he got out.
Bluehorse pointed. “He was wandering toward the cliffs. We need to get him some help.
“Screw him,” the biker said. “Put a round in his head. Nobody will ever find his body out here. We dump people all the time in the desert.”
“He is an Elder—” Bluehorse began but the biker reached for the pistol on his belt.
As it cleared, Kinsman brought up his forty-five and fired. The first round hit the biker in the shoulder, pivoting him three-hundred-and-sixty-degrees. Kinsman fired three more times, the heavy bullets punching the biker back. By the last one, he was a lifeless puppet, arms flung up in the air, falling backward onto the hard stone.
“He would not have agreed to surrendering,” Kinsman said. Both men’s ears were ringing from the loud reports of the gun and their vision momentarily impaired from the muzzle flashes.
Bluehorse and Kinsman stood over the body, avoiding the spreading pool of blood.
26
Tuesday Morning,
16 August 1977
DEVILS GARDEN,
GRAND ESCALANTE STAIRCASE, UTAH
As the eastern horizon tinted with a red dawn, Kane was in the midst of a kata, the formalized exercise of martial arts.
“Is that from your missing years?” Caitlyn asked as she walked toward him.
Kane didn’t look at her until he finished the entire maneuver of thirty-two separate movements. He brought his feet together, one fist cradled in the other and bowed slightly to the not-present Master Pak. Then he faced Caitlyn. “Have you seen my file? What does it say about those years?”
Caitlyn nodded. “I’ve seen the entire thing from a distance, but only read a highly redacted portion. Those years are a blank in what I was given.”
“The Cellar pulled my records?”
“I believe the Cellar always had your entire record,” Caitlyn said. “Mister—” she stopped herself before she mentioned the name. “My boss has a number of files of persons of interest to him.”
“What kind of person is that?” Kane asked.
Caitlyn ignored the question and indicated the Swedish K leaning against a stone close by. “There are more modern weapons. The Secret Service has upgraded to the Heckler & Koch MP-5. It has a selector for semi or auto. And it’s closed bolt”
“Fires the same round,” Kane pointed out. “With the K, the cyclic is so slow, you can control your firing mode with the trigger. Don’t have to play with a selector switch. Plus, the MP-5 is pretty much impractical for a left-handed shooter.”
Caitlyn nodded. “It didn’t sound like you were firing on automatic yesterday. A little too much time between each round.”
They both turned at the sound of a car engine to the southwest. Kane grabbed the K while Caitlyn picked up the M21.
“I’ll go high,” Caitlyn said, indicating the rock she’d climbed the previous day.
“Not much cover,” Kane noted.
“I can reach them before they can reach me,” she said as she slung the rifle, grabbed a small backpack, and headed for the rock.
Kane hurried to the draw where he’d ambushed the two Hmong the previous day. He went down into and then up the far side, just below the lip. He glanced back in time to see Caitlyn settle into position, lying flat on top of the rock. She pulled a ghillie suit out of the pack and slid it over her and just like that, she was part of the terrain.
Kane edged up and looked down the trail. A white Defender was moving fast along it. Directly toward his position. He waited for Caitlyn to fire since she had the range and the vector.
Nothing.
Kane glanced over his shoulder. She was up there, but waiting. He pulled the bolt back on the K, ensuring a round was in the chamber. Checked his ammo pouch for the spare mags.
He chanced a quick look. The Defender was less than two hundred meters away, cresting a bump in the road, a perfect target. There were two figures in it. Kane assumed that Caitlyn was going to wait until the truck was near his position so he could finish off whatever she couldn’t do. Not what he would have done, but a reasonable plan. He slid down and hid behind a boulder, waiting.
The Defender came over the edge of the wash and then down. Out of sight of Caitlyn. Kane tucked the stock of the Swedish K to his shoulder and stepped out just after it passed, ready to put rounds through the back window when he recognized the Stetson the driver was wearing. He lowered the submachinegun as the Defender rolled to a stop and Kinsman got out. Another Navajo exited the passenger side, hands away from his sides.
Kane checked the cargo compartment and back seat as he came up, making sure this wasn’t some sort of ambush. There was a dead body in the cargo bay dressed in leather pants and vest.
“Where is Caitlyn?” Kinsman asked as he turned upon hearing Kane’s approach.
“Who’s this?” Kane asked, although the Navajo looked familiar.
“Bluehorse,” Kinsman said. “He is with us now.”
All three men turned as Caitlyn rose up on top of the rock, shedding the ghillie suit and tossing it down. She slung the rifle and shimmied down the pillar to join them.
“Young Bluehorse, here,” Kinsman said, “knows the exact layout of the place where Crawford is holding Toni. Where the guards are. He is willing to help.”
They all turned as the radio in the Defender crackled and Yazzie’s voice queried in Navajo: “Hole in the Rock. Security check. Over.”
Bluehorse picked up the mike. “Rock all clear. Over.”
“What about the horseman Boss spotted? Over.”
“An Elder.” Bluehorse glanced at Kinsman. “He is on a spiritual journey. Dying of cancer. Over.”
“Crazy old fool. Keep your eyes clear. Kane is coming. Out.” The radio went quiet.
27
Tuesday Evening,
16 August 1977
GRAND ESCALANTE STAIRCASE,
UTAH
Kane drove the pickup truck with Caitlyn sitting next to him. Bluehorse drove the Defender. The biker’s body was secured in the passenger seat by the seat belt and rope around the chest. Kinsman lay in the cargo bay, his M-1 cradled in his arms.
When Kane reached the trail to Hole in the Rock, he turned right, toward the paved road they’d come in on and then on to the waiting C-130. Bluehorse turned left, toward Hole in the Rock and eventually the turn-off for Fiftymile Point.
Lying in the back, grimacing as the Defender bounced over the difficult trail, Kinsman spoke in Navajo. “Were you ever told coyote stories by Crawford?”
Bluehorse looked over his shoulder at the old man. “No.”
“You went to the white man’s schools?”
“Yes.”
“Let me tell you a story then. You must remember it. Word for word.”
Crawford and Yazzie had been going through Thomas Marcelle’s files all day while waiting for the radio to report that Kane had called from Escalante. No such call had come and the tension had been slowly ratcheting up all day.
Tsosie had been sent to replace Yazzie with one of the bikers on the northwest lookout, while Reed and the other biker remained on the northeast side of Fiftymile Point. The two Hmong mercenaries had unrolled sleeping pads near the tunnel exit and were currently cooking something that smelled awful over a small can stove. Yazzie and Crawford were talking in low voices in Navajo as they sifted through the material.
Toni had stopped checking her watch at noon, sliding into a timeless existence inside the cave. The low, constant light from the lights never changed. I
t was as if waiting for an execution, but one taking place in a world outside of here that she was beginning to lose touch with.
“Get over here,” Yazzie finally called out to her.
She got to her feet and walked over.
Crawford tapped the pile of documents, photos and microfiche. “What’s the key phrase? You’ve looked at this stuff. Don’t pretend you haven’t. Your father and Damon coded some of it. Five letter groupings.” He gestured at Yazzie, then himself. “We know about codes. The Navajo couldn’t be broken by an outsider not just because of the language but also because they made up terms for over six hundred things that were essential. The only other encryption that secure is a one-time code. Using a phrase that only both sides know. Someone else would have no way of breaking it. I’m figuring your father and Damon kept it simple.”
“You said it yourself,” Toni said. “It’s something only Damon and my father would have known.” Toni sat down on the other side of the table from Crawford and Yazzie. “I have no idea. There’s no upside for me to any of this. I know that. Even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you.”
“Darling,” Crawford said, “the upside is breathing. You get to keep living.”
“Why do you want Kane so badly?” Toni asked.
“He killed my boys,” Crawford said.
Toni took a long look around the cavern, taking in the pile of heroin, the weapons, the duffle bags of cash, and the two Hmong squatting by their stove. “Right. That’s your priority.”
Crawford smiled and leaned forward. “Girl, you got a smart mouth on you.” His hand darted like a snake, smacking her hard on the side of the face.
The Hmong stopped what they were doing to look, then went back to cooking.
Toni pressed her hands on the top of the table, a large red splotch on her cheek. “That’s real manly of you, Crawford.”
