18

“Is this what you’ve been doing all this time?” Johnny Ten Bears asked her. “Running around the house buck naked? Sorry I’ve been away so much.”

Annja felt all too aware of his presence. His very male presence. He was a big, healthy, young masculine animal who smelled of outdoors and motor oil and a hint of sweat, dressed in his colors and olive drab T-shirt and faded jeans. He stood within her usual personal space for the simple reason that she’d all but walked into him when she came out of the bathroom. And he stood there smiling appreciatively at her and did not step back.

She felt a surge of fear. How well do I know this guy? she thought. I’m totally in his power. As far as he knows.

The sword’s constant absent presence was, as often, a comfort. But not a major one. He was strong and panther-quick, she knew. And well trained. She should never forget he’d been an Army Ranger in Afghanistan. At these close quarters he might well immobilize her before she could summon the sword, or even disarm her if she did.

As was her reflex when ambushed, she counterattacked. “A gentleman would look away,” she said tartly.

He laughed. “I’m not a gentleman. Not exactly part of my cultural heritage.”

Damn it, he is attractive, she thought. The European concept of gentleman may have been alien to his tradition, but his bearing was as beyond-confident assured as any medieval lord’s. She began to understand just why the Comanches had once been called Lords of the Plains.

She stomped past him down the hall and slammed the door to her room behind her.

Her philosophy was, if you crash your plane, you need to get back in the air as soon as possible. So within five minutes she was dressed in jeans, a T-shirt and a bulky man’s flannel shirt her hosts had lent her. She even put on socks and shoes, instead of going barefoot or in stocking feet as she usually did. Then she stalked out to the living room.

Johnny sat talking earnestly to some of his bikers. When one’s glance registered her, he looked back over his shoulder and grinned.

“Got all dressed, did you? Don’t feel obliged to do it on my account.”

“That’s precisely why I did it, Johnny.”

The others laughed. “You’re not afraid to stand up to anybody, are you?” Johnny asked. “In any circumstances.”

“I haven’t met everybody,” she said, “nor under every circumstance. So I can’t say for sure. But so far—no.”

They all laughed at that. Angel, who was on the couch, invited Annja to sit beside her. Annja did. It seemed safest all around.

More members came in as they discussed the difficulties they were having trying to earn a living, much less trying to track down their rival Dog Soldiers without getting picked off, either by the Dog Society or law enforcement.

“FBI’s living up to its reputation,” Ricky reported. “Basically they trample around alienating everybody.”

“Standard operating procedure for the Bureau,” his girlfriend, Angel, said.

“Bigger trouble is the Staties,” Ricky said, with a sidelong glance at Johnny, who was eating a pear.

“Because of my father,” he said.

Annja frowned. She felt a burning urge to argue the case with Johnny. It seemed vital to her for any number of reasons—not least the fact she found herself liking and respecting both men—to somehow find a way to get the two past their mutually interposed walls of pride and misunderstanding.

But it didn’t seem the sort of thing to discuss in front of the rest. It felt too personal. Besides, she was pretty sure that in front of his clan Johnny would feel especially challenged, and resist listening to anything she had to say.

“So we’re keeping out of the way of trouble,” Johnny said. “But that’s not getting anywhere. We can’t afford to play a waiting game for very much longer. Sooner or later they’ll start to run us down.”

“The good news is the Dogs haven’t stuck their ugly heads up much since they went on their killing spree a couple days ago,” Billy reported. The TV news had reported three more bodies found. “The bad news is, we can’t turn up any trace of them, either.”

“Maybe they’re afraid they overstretched and have shut it all down,” Ricky said, reaching for a handful of chips. Fruit and various snacks had begun appearing periodically as the discussion went on.

But Johnny, who for once had bound his hair back in a ponytail that hung well down his arrowhead-shaped back, shook his head. “We wish. They’re preparing. The casino opening’s tomorrow. They’re using their success in transferring the heat to us to get ready for their final move.”

“But what will that be?” Angel asked. She absently tousled Ricky’s hair, which he wore relatively short.

“That’s the bitch of it,” Johnny said. “The clock’s running on us. But all I can see to do now is sit tight and wait for their next move. And that truly sucks.”

He looked at Annja. “Unless somebody has a better idea?”

“I wish I did.”

“One thing on our side,” Billy said, sitting back in his chair and putting his hands behind his head.

“Do tell,” Johnny said.

“We may be running out of time, but what we don’t have is a definite deadline. The Dogs do.”

“The casino opening,” Annja said.

“Got it in one.”

“Well, we just have to hope that’s enough,” he said. “Now, who wants something serious to eat? I’m hungry.”

“SO ISN’T THAT A STRANGE activity for outlaw bikers to take up?” Annja asked, picking up a slice from one of the pizzas someone had brought and plopping it on her plate. Outside the windows, night had arrived. At least a dozen of the Iron Horse people had gathered in the safe house living room. Disregarded, the television flickered in the background. “Fostering a barter network among the Comanche and Kiowa communities—even whites, if I’m hearing you correctly?”

“So you figure we’re not doing enough armed robberies, then?” Johnny asked.

She shook her head. “It’s not that at all. You’re just being difficult.”

Johnny held a piece of pizza in the air, tipped his head back like a hungry baby bird and bit off the dangling tip. “You expected something different?”

“Well, we ride bikes,” Billy said. “And we do things we think are right, whether or not they’re strictly legal. So I guess that makes us outlaws. So, outlaw bikers, huh?”

“Tell her about the project you and Snake cooked up, Billy,” Johnny said.

Annja craned around to look at Snake, who sat on a footstool off to one side with her tattooed arms crossed. The woman gave her a thin smile.

“It’s about getting people set up for small-scale power generation,” Billy said enthusiastically. Windmills, solar—there are some really exciting technologies coming up the pike, make localized and even household-level power generation more and more feasible. Snake there handles the technical aspects. She was a real black-program electronics whiz for some DARPA-connected company before quitting to go in the wind.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Not a bit of it.”

“Okay, here’s something else I don’t understand,” Annja said. “Aren’t you supposed to be big on restoring your native traditions? And yet here you are trying to promote some pretty high technology.”

“Them high-and-wide old days on the Plains,” Billy said, “they’re gone forever, Annja. And we wouldn’t bring them back if we could.”

“I’m officially confused now.”

“We’re exploring,” Johnny said. “Experimenting. Trying to find the proper balance. Even that’s not the right word. What we’re working on is finding and making use of the best of the old and the new.”

“So we’re looking to maximize our advantages,” Billy said.

Annja cocked a brow at him.

“Don’t mind Billy,” Johnny said, helping himself to another slice of pizza. “He got himself a degree in economics a couple years back. Pretty much the only dude in the OU program to do it while working full-time as a fleet mechanic for a local trucking firm.”

Annja looked around at the dark, cheerful faces. “Is this some kind of PhDs-only motorcycle club?” she asked.

“Well,” Johnny said, “we are a motorcycle club. We all love to ride—love the sense of freedom it gives you. And freedom’s what it’s all about for us. But you’re right—that isn’t all we are.”

He picked up a napkin and dabbed grease from his lips. “I didn’t start the Iron Horse People, see. That was Billy, years ago. He started—you’d call it networking now—getting together with some like-minded people. People interested in getting off the grid. People interested in trying to build a society that’d work without involving the government at all.”

“In some ways the luckiest thing ever happened to us Comanches and Kiowa was getting screwed out of our reservations by the government,” Billy said.

“Reservations were always just a nice name for concentration camps,” Snake said.

“That’s true,” Billy said. “And reservation Indians have always been wards of the state. Any crazy-ass bit of social engineering theory that came up, they got force-fed like laboratory guinea pigs. They basically have no control over their own destinies. Their own lives. One week the official policy is to wipe out Indian culture and force everybody to be a fake white man. Next week suddenly they’re trying to preserve traditional ways. Only those ‘traditions’ are what some bureaucratic hobbyist in Washington thinks they are.”

He shook his big round head. “No wonder people take to the bottle so much.”

“What about the income from casinos? That seems to be making a lot of money for a lot of tribes,” Annja said.

“Which mostly winds up lining the pockets of the tribal governments,” Johnny said, “and their cronies.”

“Is that why you’re opposed to the new casino opening tomorrow? I mean, I’m not sure how much power the Comanche Nation government has, since they don’t have a reservation to administer.”

“Increasing income to the Nation from casino receipts can only centralize wealth and power,” Billy said. “Encourage people to support a sort of top-down model—those up top bestow largesse on those below. Saps the independence of the people, too. Makes ’em dependent. The polar opposite of what we’re about.”

“So you think it represents voodoo economics?” Annja asked.

“I thought it was more the way socialism works,” Johnny said. “The notion that concentrating wealth and power and calling it ‘the state’ will somehow help the masses.”

Annja shook her head. “This is all pretty wild. Half the time you talk like total radicals. Half the time you sound like some kind of militia types out of the nineties.”

The Iron Horses looked at one another and laughed. “Looks like you’re starting to catch on,” Billy said, helping himself to pizza.

AS IT GOT LATE the Iron Horse People began to drift away to wherever they’d lie low for the night. Because of their strong comradeship, which Annja found so appealing, they were willing to risk bunching up for limited periods of time. But they understood the value of dispersal—a single bad break wouldn’t wind up with all of them dead or behind bars.

When the crowd had thinned Annja went into the kitchen, where she found Johnny Ten Bears elbow-deep in foamy water.

“What kind of biker lord does the dishes?” she asked, propping her rump against the edge of the kitchen table.

“The kind whose turn it is to do the dishes,” Johnny said. “Anyway, you already know we’re not exactly an orthodox motorcycle club. And besides, the word lord sure doesn’t apply to me. The concept’s not part of South Plains Indian culture. You should realize by now these particular misfits are the very last people on earth who’d submit to any kind of lord.”

“What are you, then?”

He shrugged. “Speaker. Guide. It’s all by consensus. Persuasion. Everything is voluntary. That’s a tradition we definitely want to keep. Nobody has power over anybody else. Nobody wants it—nobody’d consent to letting anyone have power over them.”

“I can see why your ancestors had such a hard time adjusting to the European-derived overculture.”

“Well, some of us adapted way too well.”

“So, Billy didn’t resent your taking over as—whatever you are?”

“Oh, hell, no. I do take responsibility for keeping us together and seeing everybody’s cared for. Road boss is probably the best term for what I actually do. Billy’s good at doing things, and he’s more than a bit of a dreamer. A hell of a dreamer. But he isn’t fond of responsibility.”

“So how’d you get tied up with the Iron Horse People, anyway?” Annja asked.

“Well,” he said, setting another dish in the rack to dry, “I’ve known Billy White Bird my whole life. You probably noticed my father and I don’t see eye to eye. It’s always been like that, ever since I was little. He wanted me to play GIs and Nazis—I wanted to play cowboys and Indians. And have the Indians win. Billy was an old war buddy of his who turned into something of a surrogate father to me.”

“Oh,” Annja said. She wanted to encourage him to open up, but didn’t feel she could say something like, “I see.” Because she wasn’t sure she did.

“When I got back from my second tour in the ’Stan I was pretty messed up. Not physically—I was lucky that way. Not even psychologically, like so many of the people I served with. That’s one place a lot of us Indian types have an advantage. Comanches are still a warrior culture. We know what we’re getting into.”

“So how were you messed up, then?”

He shrugged. “Morally, I guess. Let’s just say it turned out we weren’t fighting for what I and most of my buddies thought we were. And I began to see how that reflected a country that had turned into something other than what I thought it was. Except, as I started to study a little deeper, I came to see maybe there hadn’t been such a big change, after all—that the country wasn’t about things like freedom and opportunity and tolerance that we’d always been taught it was, and never had been. That it was all a bill of goods we were sold so we’d line up and turn into obedient little consumers and conscripts.”

“That seems like kind of an extreme reaction.”

He looked back at her. “I’m not asking you to agree with me. You asked a question. I’m trying to answer.”

“You’re not interested in persuading me?”

“Not really,” he said, turning back to the dishes. “We mostly look to help people who look to help themselves. Opinions don’t matter much one way or the other—actions do. Anyway, if people need to be talked into being free, what’s the point?”

“Hmm,” she said.

After a few moments she said, “You and your father should try to work things out. Seriously.”

He put the last dish in the rack, pulled the plug from the sink and, turning to face her, leaned back against the counter.

“Kind of ambitious given that he’s set on hunting me down.”

“But that’s all based on misunderstanding. The way—the way your whole relationship with him seems to be.”

He laughed. “Now you’re an authority on Ten Bears family politics?”

“I’ve met and spoken to you both,” she said. “I respect you both. And it doesn’t take any kind of expert to see what’s going on. It’s so obvious. Unless you’re too close to the situation to see it. And too blinkered by pride.”

“It’s not just pride. We’re, like, polar opposites, him and me. You know how I said earlier that some of us adapt too well to the white man’s ways? My father’s exhibit A. A classic case. Always making jokes and playing up to the white folks. Doing everything but tugging the forelock or strumming a banjo.”

“But your father uses his sense of humor, don’t you see? Whether it’s to fool suspects into underestimating him or showing up pompous whites without them even knowing it. It’s not any kind of self-abnegation. If anything it’s a kind of assertion of self.”

“Or passive-aggression,” he said mockingly, “or whichever shrink-speak catchphrase you care to use.”

“You’re both strong men,” she said. “You’re both looking for ways to face the future without losing your identity as individuals or as a culture. Your solutions aren’t all that different, really, if you just look at them. Even your political beliefs aren’t as far apart as you think.”

He gave her a skeptical look.

“Your father’s adopted the overculture’s ways,” she persisted, “but his outlook is wholly his own. Even his humor’s an Indian tradition itself. I don’t pretend to be an expert on Native American cultures any more than on your particular family. I do know enough Indians to know what kind of sense of humor so many share.”

“I’ve been a rebel all my life,” Johnny said. “I tried to fit in. That was part of what joining the Army was about. And what I learned from the Army was—I didn’t want to fit.”

“But you’re not a terrorist. I may not be onboard with everything you believe, or even do. But there’s no need for you and your father to be enemies or even at odds. It’s just such a waste.”

He shook his head. “No. We’re doomed to disappoint each other. That’s just the way it is. Good night, Annja. I’m going to bed.”

For a full minute she stayed alone in a kitchen dimly lit by the single fluorescent fixture over the sink.

“Why do I have this feeling,” she asked herself quietly, “that could have gone better?”

SUNLIGHT LIT UP the curtains of her bedroom and made a bright band across the top as a brisk, insistent knocking on the door roused her.

“Ms. Creed,” a feminine voice she didn’t recognize called. “You should probably come pretty quick. We got a situation.”