23
Jim "Tall Bear" Pino hadn't been back up this way in a long, long time. As the bottom of the Cherokee dragged over the rocks, he remembered why. What qualified as a road up on this corner of the reservation would have been proud to be called a goat trail in other parts of the world. Last monsoon season's rains hadn’t improved them. The only reason he was here now was the dream.
Last night his grandmother had walked with him in his dream, and it was into this steep canyon country that she had led him. She had not spoken a word, and as Tall Bear had watched her move through the canyon, her long gray hair hanging over ceremonial buckskin garments, a great feeling of dread had consumed him.
Suddenly, the old woman had stopped, her arm sweeping out before her. Everywhere he had looked, the Navajo people he had known all his life lay naked, their hands and feet staked to the ground atop massive ant mounds. But the things that had crawled over their bodies and into long cuts that had been opened in their flesh weren't ants. They were something else, something that swarmed into the cuts by the thousands. And as those tiny things had burrowed deep inside their bodies, his people had screamed their lungs out.
Tall Bear had awakened soaked in sweat. He had little doubt about the nature of what he had seen in the dream. Those tiny crawling machines were the same things that his friend Dr. Eddy Oneta had showed him under the microscope when he had examined the Copenhagen can full of blood from the truck murder scene.
Most people would have thought the dream was only the result of that shocking revelation combined with news of the botched FBI raids yesterday in Los Alamos, but not Tall Bear. Over the years, he had been subjected to only a handful of such incredibly detailed dreams, and in every case, the special dreams had presaged some terrible event. He no longer ignored their warnings.
In the dream, his grandmother had been pointing to something in the distance beyond the screaming Navajos. He had awakened before he could identify what she was trying to show him, but the answer was out here in these rugged canyons. Of that, he was certain.
Across the distant hills to the southwest of the reservation, a huge plume of smoke rose up into the sky, the result of the forest fire that raged in the canyons near Los Alamos. Damn. Whoever the FBI had been after in Los Alamos had kicked their ass—big time.
CNN had run with the story around the clock, calling it the worst disaster in FBI history. By the end of the night, the extent of the damage had become all too clear. A total of twenty-two FBI and ATF agents had been killed with several others injured. A number of civilians had also been injured during the running gun battles that had started near Fuller Lodge and soon spread to the canyons beyond town. To top off the disaster, a major forest fire had been started intentionally by the fugitives during their escape.
Worse, from the FBI perspective, the killers had escaped, although one of them, a woman, had apparently been injured. Now, the largest domestic manhunt in US history was being seriously hampered by the rapidly spreading forest fire, which also posed a serious threat to the towns of Los Alamos and White Rock. The only law enforcement bright spot had been the success of the raid in Santa Fe, which had killed two more members of what was being called a team of rogue mercenary agents affiliated with the deceased former NSA director, Admiral Jonathan Riles.
As the Jeep Cherokee lurched around a bend in the steep trail, Tall Bear brought the vehicle to a complete stop. Ahead, a rockslide had obliterated the narrow track, making further progress by vehicle impossible. Oh well, he was going to have to walk sooner or later anyway. At its best, the jeep trail would have only taken him part way into the backcountry into which he was heading.
Killing the engine, Tall Bear climbed out, letting his ears accustom themselves to the sounds of his surroundings. Without the engine noise, the canyons almost seemed silent. It just took a while to purge his senses of the roaring machine noises, which had masked all other sounds.
The wind was up this morning and bound to get worse as the day progressed, bad news for the firefighters around Los Alamos. It was going to be a hot day too, with temperatures expected to rise into the nineties even above 7,000 feet. Tall Bear reached across the seat, grabbed his Winchester 30-30 rifle and canteen, set the parking brake, and slammed the door.
If his intuition was right, the rifle wasn't going to do him much good. It was a saddle gun, not a very accurate long-range weapon. But it was easy to carry, and he had a certain fondness for the way it rested across the crook in his arm.
Tall Bear moved off the trail, taking a more direct route through the rough country toward his destination than would have been possible in the vehicle, even if the jeep trail had been passable. Even taking this shortcut, he had a little over five miles to travel. And that just brought him to the dream spot. After that, who knew where the trail might take him.
For a big man, the silent ease with which Tall Bear passed through the rough terrain seemed unnatural, even for a Navajo. It certainly wasn't a natural trait associated with his race. These days most of his people made enough noise hiking to startle a stampeding buffalo herd. But Tall Bear had spent a significant portion of his life learning the old ways, working to carry forward the knowledge of the elders. Now it was just second nature.
Out here, he was at home, many miles from the nearest human, only the plants and animals for company. And it wasn't just that this was reservation land that kept it free from people. This was New Mexico, a place where vast stretches of land were still paved highway and population free. Even the massive manhunt had not made its way in this direction, focused instead toward the Bandelier National Monument, in the rugged country southwest of Los Alamos and White Rock. After all, that had been the direction that the killer called Jack Gregory had been heading when the feds had lost the trail.
Tall Bear shook his head. Lost the trail indeed. From what he had heard, it sounded more like Jack Gregory had spent the night hunting federal agents and shooting them in the head. One reporter had said that things had gotten so bad that the search had been called off sometime after midnight so that the FBI could establish a defensive perimeter to avoid losing more agents in the dark. They had made matters worse by cordoning off the area and refusing to allow firefighters in to battle the blaze until it had gotten so large it could not be contained.
Something about the whole situation stunk of cover-up.
According to a government spokesman, Jack Gregory had set up a team of operatives in the Los Alamos area several months ago and had been trying to gain access to information that could be used to disrupt the governmental release of Rho Ship technologies. Gregory and his team had worked for Admiral Riles, forming a group that believed the Rho Project technologies should be kept solely for use by the US military and intelligence communities. Over time, that small group had become a rabidly violent militia, bent on the overthrow of the government. Yesterday, Gregory had gone on a killing rampage, shooting federal agents in the head, one after the other.
Tall Bear thought back on the scene of the truck ambush where he had been first on the scene. Those men had been shot in the head, then dragged from the truck cab and decapitated. But the blood spatter at the spot of decapitation meant they had still been alive when their heads were severed, despite having parts of their brains splattered around the inside of the truck.
And then there was the blood he had scooped into that Copenhagen can, the blood that had been laced with tiny machines he had seen through Dr. Oneta's microscope. There were other things too. The original 911 tape that Yolanda Martinez had played for him had implied that there was something about the blood that the federal government was hiding.
Combined with the recent news about the serial killings, Tall Bear arrived at a much more troubling conclusion. Something was going on at the Los Alamos National Laboratory that had driven a highly trained team of US operatives to commit treason to try to stop it. And from Admiral Riles on down, those operatives were now being purged.
The canyon wall pivoted, a long jagged crack etching its way into the edge of the high mesa to the west. Into this monstrous crack, Tall Bear's silent footsteps carried him, moving him across the spot he had walked in last night's dream. He almost expected to see his grandmother walking along before him, beckoning him to follow.
Already the sun had moved well past its zenith so that shadows walked outward from the high rock walls and jagged spires. The shade should have been welcome, but the reaching darkness seemed deeper than that of normal shadows. Tall Bear’s eyes swept the high cliffs along both sides of the rift, finally settling on the spot ahead where the trail flattened out and the canyon widened. No staked out, screaming natives. But there was another presence out there somewhere, just beyond his senses.
As Tall Bear moved out into the wider portion of the canyon, he almost missed it. He was about to bypass a thick stand of juniper when he saw the blood. It was just a dollop on the needles at the end of a small branch, almost looking like a paintbrush that had been dabbed with color from a painter’s palette. The blood had not been there more than a couple of hours.
Tall Bear moved in a slow spiral out from the spot, and as his eyes read the trail sign, the story it told sent a shiver up his back. A man had passed this way carrying someone. Had it not been for the extra weight the man was carrying, Tall Bear doubted that he could have seen any sign at all that anyone had passed this way. As it was, only the slightest of disturbances to the rocks and plants were evident between the occasional spots of blood. Whoever this was, it was someone who moved like nobody Tall Bear had ever seen.
The ghost trail led him up away from the bottom into the roughest part of the canyon, giving indications that the person had been moving quickly. The increase in blood sign told him why. The one being carried was in serious trouble.
Suddenly, Tall Bear froze, every sense attuned to his surroundings. Although he couldn’t see or hear anything, someone was out there, very close now.
Straightening, Tall Bear spoke in a voice that was clear and loud.
“Either squeeze that trigger or step out and talk to me.”