Smoke Signals (A John Tall Wolf Novel Book 4) Read online

  The bear chose not to bother them, but their empty stomachs growled.

  If the bear should make an appearance, maybe they’d eat him.

  Chapter 13

  Saturday, October 17, 2015, The Cascade Loop — Washington State

  State Route 20, also known as the Cascade Loop, was a scenic drive that began north of Seattle in Everett, traveled east into the Cascade Mountains and continued into the Columbia River Valley, a district of vineyards and apple groves. John and Rebecca weren’t going as far as wine country in their rental Jeep Cherokee, and Rebecca passed up the opportunity to make a joke about John driving a vehicle with a Native American name.

  She did, however, make note of a road sign in case John had missed it.

  “Cascade Highway 20 closed November to May.”

  “Yeah, I saw that,” John said. “We’re on the southern arc of the Loop, but I imagine it can snow pretty hard here, too. Still, we’ve got two weeks until they close the road.”

  “Snow never comes early down here in the States?” Rebecca asked.

  “I suspect it does, but I’ve only visited this particular state, never stayed for a prolonged time.”

  Rebecca glanced out her window. The sky was cloudless, and the thermometer on the dash board reported the outside temperature as being 55 degrees. Neither meteorological condition, the clear sky nor the mild temperature, was particularly comforting. Where she came from, the weather could change dramatically in a matter of minutes.

  As if he could read her mind, John said, “Forecast for the rest of the day is okay. After that, things could get a little spotty. A bit of rain, nothing more. No big storm on the horizon.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Rebecca’s tone implied that weather forecasts were about as trustworthy as emails from Nigeria.

  John didn’t miss the skepticism. “Okay, nobody knows what the weather will do, but you’ll agree we’re pretty well prepared otherwise.”

  “Well, we certainly have enough firepower,” she conceded.

  Before heading out of town, they’d stopped at the FBI field office in Seattle to “pick up a rifle or two,” as John put it. He’d previously said Rebecca could carry his sidearm.

  John introduced his fiancée to Don Mulgrew, the special agent he’d been told to contact. He was happy when Mulgrew extended a hand across the border, so to speak, and told Rebecca, “Always a pleasure to meet someone from an allied service, Lieutenant, especially one of our good friends from Canada.”

  Rebecca shook his hand and smiled. “Thank you. You’re a smooth one, Special Agent.”

  “My mom and dad raised me right, and my wife keeps me in line.”

  With the pleasantries concluded, Mulgrew showed John and Rebecca to the armory. It was far larger and better stocked than Rebecca had imagined. The Americans might not have been concerned about hostilities with their northern neighbors, but the FBI was clearly ready to fight off just about anyone else. Even John looked impressed by the array of armaments.

  Mulgrew told them, “Word came from DC to give you anything you want in the way of weapons or other necessities.”

  “From the Acting Secretary of the Interior?” John asked.

  Mulgrew nodded. “Her and Vice President Morrissey’s chief of staff. You’ve got important people taking a big interest in you, Mr. Director.”

  With Marlene’s nomination to the cabinet post, John’s title had lost its “co-” prefix. He’d also gotten a nice bump in pay. He’d kept the same office since his had a better view than Marlene’s old one.

  “So what kind of firepower are you looking for, sir?” Mulgrew asked.

  John had been asking himself that question since waking that morning.

  “I’m thinking something that can suppress enemy fire.”

  Mulgrew nodded. “Make the fuckers keep their heads down.”

  “Exactly.”

  “We can provide an H&K MP5 submachine gun. You ever use one?”

  “Back in training at Glynco.”

  “That’ll do, it’s one of those things you never forget. Especially when your instruction is first rate. Anything else?”

  “A sniper rifle.”

  Mulgrew said, “I was told to ask no questions, so I’ll just say if you’re going up into the mountains, I’d recommend an MK14, effective range of 800 yards and rugged as hell.”

  “Sounds good.”

  The FBI also outfitted John with ammunition, binoculars, a satellite phone, and a communications package for Rebecca and him including earpieces, microphones and transmitters. The final goodie in the grab-bag was a Buck Rogers night-vision system. Rebecca was surprised by the length and nature of John’s shopping list. He’d told her they might encounter bad guys, but now she wondered if she’d signed up for a combat assault unit.

  When Mulgrew was done providing John’s requests, he politely expressed his regrets to Rebecca. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant, but I wasn’t instructed to lend you any firearms. That is, if you wanted any.”

  Rebecca shook her head, but then had a second thought. “I don’t want a gun, but you know what I might like? A bow and a quiver of arrows.”

  John gave Rebecca a look; Mulgrew gave her a smile.

  Then the FBI special agent asked in a mock-serious voice, “Are you qualified on that weapon system, ma’am?”

  “I went bow-hunting with my dad for ten years.”

  “That’ll do just fine. I hunt with my father and I have just the thing for you, I think.”

  He pulled open a drawer beneath a rack of automatic rifles. “This is something I put in the purchase order for myself. When I was asked to justify the expense, I said, ‘If you need to take down a bad guy and there’s gas in the air, this baby won’t ignite it and cause an explosion.’ Besides that, the cost was only a few hundred bucks, so they humored me.”

  Mulgrew took out a black object two feet long and an inch-and-a-half wide. From the sides of the handle he extended two bow limbs made of black fiberglass. “Fully extended, the weapon is 59 inches long, a long bow. Maximum draw weight is 50 pounds. Average arrow speed is 170 feet per second. You put a shot into a living creature, he’s going to feel it at the very least. Score a hit in the right spot and you’ll have a kill. All that and it weighs just over two pounds.”

  He extended the weapon to Rebecca and she took it with grin. Mulgrew handed her the bowstring and nodded in approval as she strung the weapon intuitively in the correct manner and removed it as easily. He gave her three 29-inch carbon takedown arrows that each came in two parts and screwed together in the middle for shooting and unscrewed for easy carrying.

  He also threw in a knife with a six-inch blade that he said was suitable for filleting any creature that drew a breath. All the weaponry was stored tidily in the back of the Cherokee.

  As John pulled into the micro-town of Tesla, population 32, in season, he and Rebecca took notice of their immediate surroundings.

  “Cute,” she said, looking at the handful of restored Victorian homes and shops on the town’s single street, “but where are the locals.”

  The street was empty and the structures were dark.

  “Town’s open only part of the year, I was told,” John said, “late spring through early autumn. According to Marlene, anyway. She said back in the old days even the native tribe, the Skagits, just spent the summer up here.”

  “A long-time resort area, huh?” Rebecca asked with a grin.

  John nodded and said, “A dot on the map is more like it. I did a little reading while you were bathing last night. Learned that even though we’re not very far from Seattle, the terrain up here is so rugged it’s still mostly wilderness.”

  “And Freddie Strait Arrow owns this whole place?”

  “That’s what I was told, yeah. This hamlet and the two relatively small mountains and intervening valley behind it. The rest of the area is federal land all the way up to Canada.”

  “Huh,” Rebecca said, spotting something new, “so if the town is shut down, wh
ere’d that kid come from?” A young man with a camera looped over a shoulder was cautiously edging their way. “He looks a little nervous, doesn’t he?”

  John said, “Fearful even.”

  “Maybe I should get out of the car first,” Rebecca said.

  John replied, “Sure, I’ll cover you.”

  Chapter 14

  Sierra Madre Occidental — Mexico

  In another mountain range, this one south of the Rio Grande, Fausto Zara sat at the head of an ebony table that ran nearly the entire length of his modest home’s dining room. The dark wood gleamed; the surrounding walls, painted in a high gloss finish, reflected the light. The table and its equally splendid chairs looked like grandees visiting a poor neighborhood. In another room, a huge platform bed dressed in 1,800 thread count sheets stood as a rebuke to any suggestion of chastity.

  Walls had to be taken down to furnish the domicile, but the deluxe interior with the decrepit exterior was the way Zara wanted it. After breaking out of his country’s maximum security prison for a third time, having greased the right palms to make his getaway, of course, he had sworn he would never go back. The promise he’d made to himself was buttressed by the federal government’s unspoken determination that he would never be captured alive for a fourth time.

  Part of the deal for buying his freedom one last time was Zara’s promise that he would leave the country immediately and never again make the federal government look like the corrupt fools they were. Zara was supposed to move either south of the Panama Canal or out of the hemisphere entirely. To motivate him toward departing the country, the government had put a huge bounty on his head, if he was brought in dead, but would not pay a centavo to anyone who returned him alive. The meaning couldn’t have been more clear.

  For his part, to facilitate his escape, Zara had said, “Yes, I understand. My time has passed. I must go elsewhere.”

  Once free, though, he immediately headed for the mountains that were his home, the place he’d long supported with his drug money. Where the people were loyal to him not the government. He immediately began buying weapons in volume. Not just guns but heavy armaments. Surface-to-air missiles. Light anti-tank weapons and, so far, three tanks of his own. If the military came for him, he intended to meet them on equal terms. In truth, if he was able to carry out his plans, Mexico City would need to call in the yanquis to win the battle.

  That would, of course, paint the government as the puppets of Washington.

  And even if he died, his name would become immortal.

  Meanwhile, his home was as comfortable as possible and unable to be differentiated from its neighbors by any snooping cameras in the sky above.

  Zara smoked as he leafed through a three-ring notebook filled with photos and specs on American attack aircraft. There were so many sleek, deadly flying weapons, it was enough to inspire true awe. He thought if the yanquis had his ruthlessness to go with all their weapons they would rule the world. He would certainly be its king, if he could command their arsenal.

  The airplane that currently commanded his attention, though, was not a thing of lethal beauty but a heavily armored beast that could absorb much punishment and continue to destroy everything on the ground beneath it. The A-10 Thunderbolt was best known for its brutish appearance and nicknamed the Warthog.

  Zara liked that. The aircraft made no pretense to elegant valor. It was just a grunting, snarling creature that devoured everything it fell upon. He felt a kinship with it. The problem until recently was that the yanquis, varying from their usual practices, did not sell the Warthog far and wide. The few American allies who possessed them could all be trusted not to sell any out the back door.

  That should have been the end of Zara’s ambition to start his own air force, except the yanquis had decided to retire the Warthog in 2016 and use the savings to pay for yet another sleek new fighter aircraft. The USAF planned to mothball their fleet of A-10s in the American desert of the Southwest and let them slowly decay.

  Zara hated that idea the moment he learned of it: To let such magnificent engines of destruction go to waste would be a sin. Sin being a subject on which he was expert. He immediately thought that he must conceive a plan to steal as many Warthogs as he could. Then he was further enraged to learn the retired aircraft would be stripped of their weapons systems.

  Cabrónes. That would be like neutering a prize bull. Better to put the animal down.

  Then, as if the devil himself had come to Zara’s rescue, he learned that Boeing was talking to the Pentagon about buying the Warthogs the yanquis no longer had use for and selling them to countries that could appreciate them. The deal had yet to be approved, but Zara knew that in cases where both sides could make money, well, who would be fool enough to do otherwise?

  His people were already talking to defense ministers in half-a-dozen countries who would like to become wealthy by acting as purchasing agents for Zara. He could imagine assembling a squadron of A-10s. He was already thinking of where he might build a base for them.

  Somewhere out of the way, but within striking distance of Mexico City.

  He imagined strafing the presidential palace himself.

  Only to take it over soon thereafter.

  “You are thinking happy thoughts, jefe?”

  Zara refocused on the present and saw his second-in-command, Mateo Trujillo, had stepped into the room. Five of Zara’s top lieutenants had to lose weight to wedge their way through the over-furnished house. Not Mateo. He was as lean as a whip and as likely to leave scars. His cruelty, though, was functional not sadistic. He did whatever was necessary to complete a job and nothing more. The result was what mattered to him not the process.

  Mateo had been recruited from the Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional, Mexico’s national intelligence service. Part of his education had taken place at Camp Peary in Virginia, better known as The Farm, the CIA’s training facility.

  Zara nodded and said, “I was about to pray to the Virgin Mother that my airplanes, my Warthogs, get purchased without delay.”

  “Always good to have faith, jefe.”

  “You’re an atheist, Mateo. You told me so.”

  “I am, yes. Even so, we all have to place our trust somewhere.”

  Zara had wondered if Mateo might ever try to usurp him. Kill him, that was. Take over his business. He’d even voiced his suspicions to Mateo. His top lieutenant had handed him his gun and calmly said, “Shoot me now, if you are truly concerned.”

  The boss was about to do just that. Let it be an example to everyone else. Show them nobody lay beyond his judgment. Only Mateo was too damn valuable. He could be counted on to kill enemies who thought they were outside of Zara’s reach, and would have been without Mateo. Zara had handed the gun back to Mateo.

  “You don’t long for power, do you?” Zara had asked.

  Mateo had shaken his head. “Being jefe is as much a burden as a pleasure.”

  Looking at Mateo now, Zara saw that a further burden was about to be laid at his feet.

  The willingness to be fearlessly honest with him was another of Mateo’s virtues.

  “You have bad news,” Zara said.

  Mateo nodded. “Julián called from Washington State. He said he had to relocate the marijuana operation there, the one on the private landholding.”

  Hearing the details, the man with the camera, the guard who was incompetent with his shooting but nonetheless managed to escape with his wife and the need to uproot a productive operation, made Zara glower. He needed every dollar he could get these days.

  Even used, Warthogs were not cheap.

  Starting your own air force was a reach even for a drug lord.

  Worse, if the legalization of marijuana was just the beginning of a trend by the yanquis, cocaine, amphetamines and even heroin might follow. The fools in Washington, DC might finally start treating the use of drugs as a public health issue not as a crime. If soft drugs were legalized and hard ones were provided free in health clinics, hi
s cartel and all the others would soon be out of business.

  What would they do then? Use all their cash to open country clubs for yanqui golfers? Tell their killers to become caddies? He knew what he would do in a sicario’s place if such a day ever came — he’d shoot his jefe right between his eyes. Spit on his corpse as well.

  Maybe Mateo was right about not wanting to be the boss.

  Zara told his second-in-command, “Go north and make things right.”

  “At any cost, jefe?” Mateo asked.

  Zara nodded. “Sí.”

  Chapter 15

  Cascade Mountains — Washington State

  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.