Smoke Signals (A John Tall Wolf Novel Book 4) (6 page)

Watching from her hiding spot in the forest at the edge of the meadow, Valeria Batista saw Ernesto become a man completely unlike the one he showed to the rest of the world. He slipped past the tree line and dropped into the high grass leading up to the camp where she’d lived the past four months. In a heartbeat, he was out of sight. She watched for the grass to move, disturbed by the passage of his body. But the wind was blowing just hard enough to cause large swatches of the fine stalks, parched green fading to dull gold, to bend and rebound.

Somewhere out there, Ernesto was working with the wind to camouflage his own disturbance of the grasses. Her husband had left his assault rifle with her, after he was sure she’d understood the rudiments of using the weapon he’d demonstrated for her. He’d taken with him only a long, serrated edge knife she hadn’t even known he possessed.

He’d shown it to her and said, “This is a much quieter way to kill.”

A chill had run down her spine when she heard that, but it had passed quickly. Why had she married Ernesto? Not only because he’d saved her life, but also because he was kind to her. Because he let her lead their love-making, making her feel wonderfully powerful. But most of all because wherever they went he made her feel safe in a dangerous world.

Now, however, even with the rifle in her hands, she began thinking of the bear again. Both she and Ernesto had heard it as they’d made their way back to the camp from which they’d escaped. They’d planned to observe what was happening there and at least sneak into the tent where they’d slept and reclaim their pitiful few belongings and steal enough water and food to make it out of the mountains.

Ernesto also had his far grander plan: waylay one of the guards he was sure knew where Julián and Basilio kept their big stash of money. If the fellow cooperated, Ernesto would allow him to accompany them and give him a share of the money. If he resisted, Ernesto would slit his throat.

Valeria had suggested an alternative.

“What?” Ernesto asked.

“Besides saying you’ll give him some of the money? Tell him I have a sister.”

Ernesto laughed. “Yes, we know that one works.”

It wasn’t that Valeria objected to drastic measures. She just wanted to keep the blood on her husband’s hands to a minimum. He really was a good, kind man, and she didn’t want his conscience to persuade him otherwise.

Meanwhile, she couldn’t help but fear for herself. That damn bear was getting closer. She could feel it. She listened for its approach. Steeling herself, she turned her head to look back the way she and Ernesto had come. Maybe the damn thing was sneaking up behind her.

She strained her eyes to see the creature. It had to be big from the sounds they’d heard. How in the name of God could it hide so perfectly? A loud grunt finally gave its position away. The noise came not from behind her but from ahead. The beast had looped around her.

Valeria spun her head around, the assault rifle coming to her shoulder just as Ernesto had showed her. She looked down the barrel at the iron-framed sight-picture and … that’s when she saw the grasses move in a way not caused by the wind or Ernesto. Something very big pushed them aside, heading not toward her but in the direction of the camp.

The bear was going after Ernesto. Who had only a knife to defend himself.

Forgetting stealth and everything other than the terror she felt for the man she loved, Valeria stepped forward and yelled, “Ernesto! The bear is coming for you!”

As if in anger that its plan had been revealed, the huge animal stood on its hind legs and looked back at Valeria. All but telling her, “You’ll be my second meal today, after I eat your chubby husband.”

Valeria clicked the rifle’s shot selector to automatic and let fly with a long burst of fire.

The recoil was far greater than she had expected and most of the rounds flew harmlessly into the sky, but the first one must have found its mark in some measure. The bear crashed to the ground with a blood-chilling howl of pain, but it wasn’t dead. The tall grasses thrashed this way and that.

Valeria couldn’t tell if the beast would keep after Ernesto or come for her.

Worse, she’d emptied the entire clip of its ammunition.

She had another, but Ernesto had yet to show her how to reload.

The young guy with the camera extended a trembling hand and said, “Jesus, I hope you two are the good guys.”

John exchanged an impassive look with Rebecca.

She knew what to do. She took the young guy’s hand in both of hers and said, “Yeah, we are. Most days, anyhow.”

That reassurance proved less than entirely comforting so John added, “I’m a federal officer and the lady is a lieutenant with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.”

Rebecca let the kid’s hand go and gave him a salute.

He looked at John and asked, “You’re not kidding, are you?”

“Not at all. I’m with the Bureau of Indian Affairs.”

Still thinking he might be the victim of a joke, maybe a malicious one, the kid took a step backward. He stopped his retreat when both John and Rebecca produced their IDs. He peered at each of them, and asked, “What is this, some kind of joint operation?”

“Nothing so formal,” John said.

Rebecca added, “We’re engaged to be married.”

“I’m working a case and my fiancée is helping out. A working vacation you might say.”

Another look of doubt creased the kid’s face but a second look at their credentials allayed that. “Well, that’s cool, I guess.”

The kid introduced himself as Bruno Bandi. “But everyone calls me Beebs.”

“And you’re a photographer,” Rebecca said.

“Yeah.”

John took a closer look at Beebs’ camera and the equipment bag dangling from his shoulder to his hip. He asked, “Your camera have Wi-Fi?”

“Sure does,” Beebs said.

“You got a long lens in your bag?” John asked.

“Uh-huh.”

Rebecca saw what John was getting at.

She asked Beebs, “Did you take a long-distance picture of my sweetie and me and send it off to a cloud somewhere?”

“Several pictures,” Beebs admitted.

Rebecca looked back at John. “Kid’s pretty slick. If we were bad guys, he’d have sent pictures of his killers off to be retrieved later.”

“I almost wet myself walking over here. Those IDs are real, aren’t they?”

A slight quaver in Beebs’ voice gave the question a tremolo quality.

“Yes, they are,” John told Beebs with a pat on his shoulder. “Why don’t you tell us what you’re doing up here, and maybe we’ll tell you a bit about our mission.”

Beebs said he was working for Freddie Strait Arrow, doing location photography for a project the “rich dude” had planned. He didn’t think he was supposed to talk about that, but he did tell John and Rebecca about the guy who shot at him, and how he’d responded.

“Mexican, you say?” John asked. “Any chance he could have been Native American?”

Beebs thought about that. “Might’ve been, partly, but to me he looked like a lot of people I’ve seen down on Olvera Street in L.A. New to the country. Hadn’t had much time to assimilate. No tats that I could see and his clothes didn’t look American.”

“Okay, that’s a pretty good eye you had for someone under fire,” John said.

Beebs shrugged. “A good eye is the first thing you need to shoot good pictures.”

“But the guy who was shooting at you, his eye wasn’t so good?” Rebecca asked.

Beebs took a moment to answer. “I’ve been thinking about that. He probably wasn’t all that far away when he took his first shot. It was almost like he missed on purpose, but I can’t think why he’d do that, if he was going to shoot at all.”

John said, “Maybe he only wanted to scare you.”

“At least until you stink-bombed him,” Rebecca added.

Beebs nodded. “Yeah, I tried not to give him another chance after that.”

“Are we the first people you’ve had contact with?” John asked.

“Yeah, to talk to. I lost my phone in the woods, but I wrote a message on a blackboard in the house I’ve been using. Took a photo and sent it off to the cloud.”

“That’s good thinking,” John said.

He was about to ask another question when he heard something in the distance. He turned and looked at Rebecca. She nodded. “I heard it, too.”

Beebs said, “That was gunfire.” Certainty in his voice.

“Was that what the rifle firing at you sounded like?” John asked.

“Yeah, but a lot louder and one at a time, not all in a bunch at once. What the hell is going on around here?”

“Without giving away any secrets,” John said, “that’s what we’re here to find out. You know if there’s a place we can put our car? Somewhere off the street.”

Beebs nodded. “The garage behind the house I’m using has an extra slot.”

Freddie Strait Arrow and Marlene Flower Moon rode in the back of his limo on their way to Washington Dulles International Airport. Freddie had read the chalkboard message Beebs had sent to his private online message board. The poor guy had been shot at and almost killed? Jeez. Freddie had never imagined things would get that scary.

Yeah, sure, he’d sent Beebs out into the woods where, he’d been told, people were growing weed on his land but, damn, wasn’t marijuana supped to make you mellow? Laid back and laughing at the world. That’s what he’d always heard. He’d never used the stuff, not even in brownies or candy. Hadn’t ever done any drugs at all, not even alcohol.

Mom and Dad had warned him about that, having a possible genetic predisposition to not handle booze well at all. He’d heeded their warning. Didn’t really need any pharmaceuticals to get him off. Freddie got high on math. Making numbers dance to the tune he called was his thing.

That and now sex with Marlene.

After reading the message from Beebs over Freddie’s shoulder, Marlene had said, “That’s not good, but Tall Wolf will take care of it.”

“Me, too,” Freddie replied, getting to his feet.

“You want to go where there’s gunfire?”

She wasn’t criticizing him, merely searching his eyes to see if she’d overlooked a building block of his character.

“I want to see Beebs, tell him I’m sorry about what happened, find a way to show my gratitude that he’s all right. See if there’s a spot in my company for him, if he’s interested. I mean, it was pretty damn cool, a guy using a stink bomb to fight off a bastard with a rifle.”

Marlene conceded the point. “That was imaginative, but you’re thinking about more than a lucky photographer. The situation has become personal for you.”

Besides the physical pleasure she brought him, Freddie delighted in how well Marlene could read him. Like many math and science guys, understanding his fellow man — or woman — was not his strong suit. Sometimes she had a fix on his emotions before he did.

That could be scary but it was also kind of comforting, as long as they were happy with each other. The situation being conditional was something even he understood.

“Yeah, you’re right.”

Marlene told him, “You’ve seen the scar on my chest.”

Freddie had but he’d had neither the nerve nor the bad manners to ask about it.

He only nodded now.

Marlene told him, “It came from a bullet shot from a rifle. I was very lucky. Not many people would have survived my kind of wound.”

To his unspoken shame, Freddie found her fortitude sexy.

That a woman who could spit in death’s eye had chosen him.

“I’m glad you did,” he said.

Marlene caressed his cheek, but stayed on point. “What I’m saying is
you
might not survive such a trauma.”

Freddie had to stop and think about that. Which he did at his usual warp speed. The idea of dying had already occurred to him, of course, and was quickly tossed away like a gum wrapper, the way any healthy guy in his twenties would discard it. Freddie knew, with his new microchip design, he had already left a positive and significant mark on the world.

The papers in his vault, in and of themselves, would contribute to further advances.

So in terms of creating a personal memorial he was good.

His name and his work would be remembered.

Only with the arrival of Marlene did he pause to consider that there might be a whole lot of new people out there in the world he’d like to meet. That would require staying alive, but winning the approval of such people, gaining their friendship and maybe even their love, that wouldn’t happen if he lived his life meekly. Taking the safer path whenever the road branched wouldn’t get him to where he wanted to go.

So Freddie told Marlene, “I won’t make Ronald Reagan’s mistake.”

“What?” Marlene asked.

“I won’t forget to duck,” he told her.

And with that they were off to the airport.

Having lent his personal aircraft to John Tall Wolf, he’d had to call ahead and arrange for another plane to carry Marlene and him to Washington State. The discussion between Freddie and the person he’d described as his fix-it guy hadn’t taken a minute. No run-of-the-mill executive jet had been available on such short notice, but a customized Boeing 737 was on hand for what Freddie had described as “a few more bucks.”

Marlene was impressed that Freddie never preened about his ability to throw huge sums of money around like they were pocket change. His ego didn’t rest on his money. He exulted in his ability to solve problems that defeated other computer engineers and scientists. He also took a deep and newfound interest in the erotic possibilities two people might explore.

That would pale eventually, Marlene knew, but in the meantime she intended to create a wellspring of enduring affection for her in Freddie’s heart. Whenever she needed him, he would be there for her. Whether she needed money or something else.

What that meant, of course, was Marlene would have to keep Freddie alive.

If, or more likely when, any hostilities began.

Valeria Batista stood her ground as the creature charged through the tall grass in her direction. Not knowing how to reload the rifle, she had no recourse other than to seize the weapon’s stubby barrel in both hands and hold it like a baseball bat. She would have laughed, had she seen anyone else do this. As a gesture of futility, she couldn’t imagine anything more ridiculous.

Nonetheless, if she was about to die she would do so fighting until the end. Before some monstrous agony was inflicted upon her, she would do her best to mete out a measure of pain to the beast she was sure would tear her limb from limb. If she got really lucky, she might slam the rifle’s butt into one of the bear’s eyes. Send him careening in another direction, never knowing how he’d become the one to suffer, but not daring to take another chance of worse to come.

Valeria began taking deep breaths, charging her muscles for the literal fight of her life. She heard the bear’s furious growls grow louder as it sprinted closer. She forced her knees not to buckle … and then she heard another blood-curdling sound. This new uproar also held the note of a growl but it was far more than that. Mixed with the blast of immense fury was a chain of keening distress.

The bear broke from the grass no more than twenty feet from Valeria. The animal was bleeding freely from the top of its front left leg. It glared with rage at Valeria, as if it understood who had caused its pain. But the bear, a huge grizzly she could now see, came to an abrupt stop and turned its head toward the sound of the howling thing coming up fast behind it.

It had no frame of reference for any creature acting as an aggressor.

That was when Valeria finally recognized the call of the pursuing stalker. It was Ernesto’s voice, given the power and ferocity of a man racing to sacrifice his own life to save hers. That left only one thing for her to do. She glared at the animal, bent forward at the waist, thrust her head out farther still, bared her teeth and screamed with all the strength in her body.

The bear turned to look at her and then looked back to see whatever was coming up from behind. Valeria managed to raise the volume of her own furious scream. The bear became confused over which threat to confront first. In the end, it acted on instinct.

It ran toward Valeria and when it was ten feet from her it broke sharply to its right and ran into the woods. Its former prey also reacted instinctively. Valeria found a stone at her feet, scooped it up and hurled it at the retreating animal. The projectile caught the bear on its hindquarters, spurring it to a howl of pain and greater speed.

When Valeria turned to look for Ernesto, he was right there, not six inches from her, his knife in his right hand and somehow the rifle he’d already taken from her in his left. He put the knife away and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “You are unharmed?”

Unable to find her voice, she only nodded. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

“Thank you for calling out your warning to me,” Ernesto said. “That was a very brave thing to do. Did you hit the animal at all with your gunfire?”

She nodded again and her chin firmed up. “I did. Just once, I think.”

“That was enough for now. May I have the other magazine, please?”

She reached into a pocket and handed it to him.

He ejected the empty clip and seated the full one in the weapon. They were rearmed.

Ernesto told her, “We will have to be careful. The bear is frightened but not yet dead.” Before Valeria could dwell on that, he added, “Come, let me show you what I’ve found in the camp.”

John and Rebecca heard the growl of a large, fast approaching animal.

“Bear,” Rebecca said.

John nodded. “Big one. Probably a grizzly. Go with the MK14, not the bow.”

“Yeah, my thought, too.”

For his part, John raised the barrel of the H&K MP5 submachine gun. Instinctively, they stood back to back, giving themselves a 360-degree field of fire. Except for all the damn trees in the way. When you were making your way up the slope of a forested mountain, having trees as obstacles was just part of the challenge. The situation became considerably more difficult, though, when an apex predator, possibly weighing as much as 800 pounds, was darting between the conifers and maples, maybe coming right your way. It made for a hair-raising circumstance.

Especially when the clamor of the charging animal had been preceded by a burst of fire from an automatic weapon and punctuated by an animal bellow of pain. All of which had happened fairly damn close. With the animal getting closer by the second.

“Someone shot the bear?” Rebecca asked.

“Sounded like it,” John answered. “Maybe with an AR-15. Doesn’t seem to have slowed it down much, though.”

Further speculation about the bear was cut off by two human voices, male and female, their voices clearly cutting through the trees and speaking Spanish.

“You’ve got some strange damn campers in this country,” Rebecca told John.

“Place hasn’t been the same since 1492,” he admitted.

There was no time for further wisecracks as something massive and brown flashed past them, never bothering to spare them a glance. John and Rebecca scarcely had the time to turn their heads and see it. A collective chill ran down the spines they pressed closer together.

“Damn, that thing was big, and fast as hell,” Rebecca said.

“Faster than a race horse for a short burst is what I’ve been told,” John replied, “and that specimen was running on a bum leg.”

“What?”

“You didn’t see it? It was bleeding from its front left leg, up near where the leg joins the scapula. At least one of the shots we heard must have hit it.”

“Great. So now we have a
wounded
grizzly wandering around nearby.”

“Looks like it. The beast might take out its hard feelings on anyone who’s handy, too, not just the SOB who shot it. Speaking of which, we’ve got another worry: Someone else in the woods is also packing an automatic weapon.”

“Yeah, shit, and I thought I was in trouble back home.”

“So you don’t think we’ll look back on this and laugh, tell our kids how tough Mom and Dad are?”

“Maybe if the bear bleeds out and we turn him into a rug.”

John smiled. You had to admire a woman who could keep her sense of humor in a tough spot. He did anyway. “I think brother bear is probably still putting distance between us and him. We ought to move on. Avoid the Spanish-speaking bear hunters for the time being and see what’s happening at the coordinates Marlene gave me.”

“Really? You don’t want to call for backup?”

“We’ll be careful. If it’s just human beings with firearms up ahead, well, hell, that’s not going to daunt a Mountie, is it?”

“You never know,” Rebecca said, “I might get my walking papers at the worst possible moment.”

John nodded. “Could happen that way. Then we’ll just have to see what
I’m
made of.”