Chapter Fifty-Six
I’d landed the plane on a small mid-western regional airport. Most of the runways were built to accommodate small planes like Beechcraft and Cessna with the exception of the one I’d come down on. That one was engineered for anything up to a DC-10. Most of the flights in and out were private planes and crop dusters, ranchers checking on their livestock and the occasional Search and Rescue helicopter.
The Lear looked out of place sitting in the hangar but not more so than the Cadillac Escalade parked with the engine running. Clouds of smoke from the exhaust reminded me that it was still winter. It was cold in the mountains; we were nearly a mile high even though we weren’t anywhere near Denver.
The windows slid down silently and I recognized the driver. He looked no more pleased to see me than the first time we’d met. Darren White Deer scowled and told me to get in the back. That was the extent of our conversation for the next two hours as we drove out of town onto the reservation. He drove recklessly through an increasingly vicious storm. At one point, I swore I saw green skies and horizontal rain, the precursors to tornadoes but our luck held in that we did not drive through one.
Lightning hammered the air; wind gusts shook the SUV and pushed the heavy vehicle sideways as if it weighed no more than a beetle. Visibility on the highway through the window where I sat was…at a good estimate…three feet. The rain came down so hard that the wipers couldn’t keep up and I wondered how White Deer could even see to drive let alone stay on the pavement.
Mike tried to hold a conversation but he couldn’t get a word out of the stone-faced sullen Indian. Eventually, he pulled off the Interstate onto a secondary road that was just visible enough to see the beginnings of a forest. A sign swung violently that I barely managed to read. Sandio River Sioux Reservation, San Juan National Sovereign Territory. Population, 15,456 and over one million acres. Considerably larger than the Wind River, the Sandio included parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado. It was more affluent than the Wind River. I knew it was where Otseno Pete had his summer home and was within 50 miles of his ranch. No Federal jurisdiction was allowed on the rez. So unless the feds came in illegally with SWAT, we were safe. Not that I expected them to guess where I was; I’d left small clues pointing in the completely opposite direction; Florida.
Darren pulled up in front of a larger BIA doublewide set on the corner of a small town complete with Circle K, grocery store, post office and health clinic. We’d passed a feed store and lumber yard with the Cherokee Nation sustained forest logo on the front and sides of a new Morton building. Most everything looked fairly prosperous and not rundown as I would have expected.
This doublewide was neat and cared for with a front lawn, flowers and a back yard that was fenced. There was a beautiful chocolate Lab getting drenched as he hung from the back gate and barked at us.
The front door on the porch opened and George Little Bear hurried out opening one of those huge golf umbrellas. He was followed by Otseno Pete who hollered at us to get in before we drowned. I opened the passenger door and ran for the porch as Mike galloped behind me. We shook hands and I spoke to both of them with rain water dripping down my face and curling creepy fingers of cold on my neck. White Deer followed more slowly, letting the rain drench him.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Pete. George. I miss her.” I swallowed and George hugged me. I was stiff with tension and suppressed emotion. I wasn’t sure if Darren was going to haul off and deck me and I wouldn’t have stopped him.
“Sorry, man. Rachel told me you two were close.” He didn’t look at White Deer.
“She wouldn’t let me come back for her,” I said and raised my eyes to Pete’s. “I’m sorry about your pickup. I’ll send you a new one.”
“Insurance already paid for another,” he shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. Come in and get out of those wet things. The rest of your party will be here by seven tonight if the storm doesn’t screw up any more air traffic. I can’t believe your pilot managed to fly through this. The weather people are calling it the worst of the century, a monster. Who is he?”
Mike came forward and introduced himself but forestalled Otseno by announcing that I was the pilot and that it was my first time flying.
I brushed past them and entered the house, ignoring the décor or that I was dripping rainwater on the wood floors as I headed for the fridge. Bottles of ice-cold water in a 24-pack took up the entire bottom shelf. I emptied a 24 oz. before I rummaged through the deli drawer to make myself a sandwich of meats and cheeses wrapped in a tomato/basil wrap.
I ate; searched for the bathroom and used it to dry off my hair and face before I stripped down to my underwear as I went looking for the spare bedroom with a dry towel tied around my waist. I could feel their eyes on me as I stretched out on the frilly spread of what I guessed had been Rachel’s room. “I’m good,” I answered their unspoken question. “We’re okay here until the rest of them join us or -.”
I pulled the quipp out of my clothes and tossed it to Mike. He caught it effortlessly. “If any texts come through like CKMT or K to CM, wake me.” I rolled over on my side and kicked off my shoes. I lay there waiting for sleep to claim me.
I was dreaming again. The sky above me was a blue so bright that it hurt my eyes and at the same time, I wanted to drown in it. There were movements in it that swirled and changed both tone and hue as if it were not sky at all but sea. I had never seen the sea in real life, only pictures, and TV.
Rachel was with me holding my hand; hers was warm but not that of living flesh. I held spirit and that blazed with the earth’s fire yet it did not burn me. When I looked at her, she glowed with a golden aura that a volcano’s heart could not match.
“Boy Who Thinks Too Much,” she smiled. “I have come back this one time more than I was allowed so that I may bid you farewell. I set your heart at ease.”
“Because I finally listened to you?” I grinned. She hit me on the arm and I yelped. It hurt, a spectral punch. “So, you were right. You get to say ‘I told you so’. But I still love you, Rachel. Only, it’s different now.”
“I know.” She kissed me and it filled my body and psyche to overflowing. We stopped walking as I felt an invisible barrier before me - what psychics and shamans called the Veil. She let go of my hand and squeezed forward, half of her disappearing into a thin crack. From behind her, rays of power poured through, not light. It would be closer to call it black lightning. Some of the particulates touched me and burned with an acid bite. I yelped and stepped further back.
She kept her eyes on me and that was the last thing I saw before she disappeared into the darkness on the other side. But she was smiling.
I
The Senator was at home in his office; he considered that home more than his residence. After all, he spent more hours in his Senate office than he did at home. This day was Thursday, one of the rare few that he had nearly nothing to do and was taking a well-deserved nap on the plush leather couch in the study. The odor of leather and books was one that brought back memories of his childhood, of town libraries in the small village in which he’d grown up and of his father’s own prized book collection. Prized not because they were rare and expensive but because they were classics and old, welcomed friends. One of his earliest memories was of his parents reading to him as he sat in their laps. His father had been a farmer and his mother a teacher, neither one particularly wealthy but his dad had given him a curiosity that extended to mechanical and electronic which he had crossed over to the new computer industry just beginning to ground floor. He bought into a small company called Apple and from that start, the Senator had built a stable platform that had launched his political career. Until the day when the stomach and back pains had gone beyond mere indigestion. The doctor had given him the diagnosis of Stage IV liver cancer.
Strange, he mused. I never drank nor did my parents. He rubbed his belly but all he felt was muscle and very little body fat. His metabolism although never sluggish, now was a veritable powerhouse. No matter what he ate, it didn’t wind up on his belly but burned off.
His phone rang and startled him. He looked over at his desk but a sudden vibration in his pocket told him that it was his cell, not the office line. Very few people had his personal number, his wife, and a few friends. Even his children were put through the Senate Switchboard.
Digging his cell out of his pants pocket, he held it up to read the name and number. OMIKAYO YOU, he read and instantly opened it.
“Lake,” he said warmly. “How are you? You’ve sure stirred up a hornet’s nest.”
Lake’s voice sounded tired. “The pawns are in play. The Bishop is advancing. The chess board is almost empty and I need some help from you.”
“Tell me.”
“I need your plane and a pilot to fly these people to Canada. Can you do that without jeopardizing yourself?”
“It doesn’t matter if I do, Lakan. I owe you more than a measly favor. When and where?”
“Tampico Springs. Florida. There’s a small private airport just out of town. I’ll give you the phone number and coordinates right before you leave for the airport. There will be about 10 to 15 people. Will your plane handle that many?”
“Yes. It’s a Gulfstream 40, it’ll hold twenty. Are you coming?”
“I’ll be there. Senator, thank you.” He disconnected before Lourdes could say anything.
II
Chase sat in front of his computer and cursed the blue screen that taunted him. An image of an Indian chief with his middle finger thrust up flickered across the screen. Occasionally, the face’s mouth opened in a gaping laugh and flipped the finger like a bird.
Cameron bolted in, his new laptop held open showing lines of data scrolling rapidly down the screen. “I’ve got something,” he spoke in a rush as he turned the laptop around. “Senator Lourdes just called his pilot and set up his Lear, filed a flight plan from Florida and out of the country to Canada.”
“Where?” Chase demanded.
“Tampico Springs to Canada, Toronto.”
He ordered his men to deploy a mission but Cameron stopped him. “Wait, Director.” Chase paused. “Strongbow isn’t stupid; he won’t make mistakes. If he let us find this flight plan, it’s because he wanted us to find it.”
He set the small tablet down on the director’s desk and ran a new program. One of the items it pulled up was an obscure mention of the sighting of Black River Pharmaceutical CEO’s son and his sudden interest in a small town near Philadelphia. Just where his father kept a Lear jet of his own.
“Send a team to both places just in case,” Chase decided. “Which one do you think is the real target, Dr. Cameron?”
“I’m not sure of anything with him, Director. He surprised me by coming here and even more so by getting inside. How he got out is a complete mystery to me considering all the security this place has. My God, just think what he could do if he wanted to break into a bank vault, or reach the President. He could topple regimes!”
“One person, a kid couldn’t change much,” Chase laughed.
“Don’t you see?” Cameron looked at the Director with pity. “He could if half the world believes he’s the Messiah. Look what Hitler did and he couldn’t do anything this kid can. Caesar. Alexander the Great. History is filled with men and women who changed the world. I hope you remember Einstein? He had half the intellect that this boy has access to.”
“Are you saying that he could make a nuclear bomb?”
Cameron snorted in disgust. “Jesus, any third rate college student could do that off the Internet. All he’d need was some refined uranium and that’s not so easy to get. Don’t underestimate Lakan is all I’m saying.”
“Surely you’re smarter than he is,” Chase pointed out.
“Older, wiser, more skilled in dirty tricks and subterfuge, maybe. In straight on intelligence, I’m not so sure. I couldn’t have come up with these computer advances that came out of Hamilton’s research labs.”
“I understand, Doctor.” Chase nodded as he stared at his blue screen and the middle finger.
“Well, at least he has a sense of humor,” Cameron returned.