Tribal Ways (14 page)

A half mile ahead, it rumbled along parallel to their jouncing, hurtling course, throwing up a big wave of yellow dust from the indifferently graded road.

“A hijacked gasoline tanker?” Annja said. Actually, she yelled it at Johnny Ten Bears’ back, trying to make herself heard above the singing of the wind and the snarling of the motorcycle’s big engine. “Don’t the Feds have some kind of security measures to prevent that?”

“They got a program,” Johnny called back. “More paperwork than implementation so far. But you have to know by now the Dogs have their snouts in the Federal trough somewhere, too. If there were safeguards, they circumvented them.”

At unquestionably unsafe speed they rode a dirt road southeast of Lawton. A dozen or so of the Iron Horse People charged behind them on their big stripped-down bikes. They’d gotten the tip from an old buddy of Billy White Bird’s. He was neither a member of the Iron Horse People nor an Indian, Annja gathered. Rather he was a participant in the underground-economic network, the establishing and maintaining of which seemed to be among the club’s main purposes.

“But how do we know it’s really been—oh, my God!” Annja’s question turned to startled outcry as she saw a swarm of bikes and a pickup truck following in the tanker’s dust. They immediately began to peel off to intercept the fast-closing Iron Horses. Some cut down a connecting dirt road to cross their path.

En route Johnny had shouted an explanation to Annja that this area had been grid-graded in preparation for an entire phantom subdivision—investment homes, products of the real-estate bubble now burst. The houses would never be built; the roads remained, turning gradually into arroyos from rain and wind.

Annja could make out the black-painted faces of the approaching riders. Most wore buckskin leggings and went bare chested despite the overcast cold. They were pretty seriously committed to this reenactment stuff.

Some raised hands toward the Horses. Thin gray smoke gouts were whipped away by passage wind as they opened fire. The bullets came nowhere near as far as Annja could tell. No spouts of dirt or miniature sonic booms of high-velocity projectiles passed by. Not surprising, given their terrible firing platforms.

“What do they think they’re reenacting,” Annja called,
“The Road Warrior?”

With a snarl of a big V-twin engine Billy White Bird pulled alongside them.

“Do you see that posse of posers?” he shouted. “They’re wearing feathers.”

Annja saw it was true. At the back of most of the enemy riders’ heads flapped an eagle feather. The missing ones, she suspected, had been plucked away by the breeze.

And leading the procession down the connecting road ahead, right in front of a pickup truck full of men with M-16s, rode a man on a motorbike who sported a full flowing Plains feather bonnet.

“What an asshole!” Johnny cried over his shoulder. His own long hair was tied in a ponytail and tucked down the back of the olive-drab T-shirt he wore beneath his colors, to prevent it flapping in Annja’s face. “You’re supposed to get awarded those feathers one by one for counting coup!”

“I think it’s a case of entitlement gone amok,” Billy shouted, “since if you look real close that’s little Georgie Abell wearing the tourist curio. The fat bastard’s been behind this all the fucking time!”

“Holy shit,” Johnny said. “You’re right.”

“We’ll clear the way,” Billy called. His grin widened and he wound out the throttle.

“Better haul out that piece we got you,” Johnny called over his shoulder to Annja. “You probably won’t hit anything with it, but you’ll give the bastards reason to stand back.”

“Already on it,” she called, pulling her Glock 23 from a holster at the small of her back.

She wished she dared pull back the slide enough to confirm a round was chambered—as she’d been rigorously taught to do whenever a firearm came into her hands, to confirm its status as loaded or empty, and regardless of whether she’d just watched someone else do it. She’d reaffirmed the handgun was loaded several times already; the impulse was pure habit. But it was a good habit.

Dog Soldiers on dirt bikes had cut cross-country. They began passing through the Horse column, firing handguns and even CAR-4 full-auto carbines one-handed. Annja blazed away at a couple, missing as Johnny had predicted. Well, she’d expected it, too. Hitting a fast-moving target from a platform that was also moving, and moreover bouncing all the hell over the rutted road, was basically impossible save by mad accident. And indeed when the Dogs began swirling around in the field beyond for another pass, a quick look around showed no Horses had fallen.

“Told you!” Johnny called.

“But they’re on dirt bikes!” she cried. No motorcycle expert, she did know the smaller machines were more agile, far better cross-country than the burly Horse choppers, which were optimized for long-distance highway cruising.

“Yeah, but our target’s bound tighter to the road than we are,” Johnny called back. “And these Dogs don’t live to ride, the way we do. Buncha dilettantes.”

And indeed Annja saw several of the Horses vault defiantly from the saddles of their bikes to stand one-footed on a side peg, before hooting and resuming their seats. The Comanches had always been reputed among the very best horsemen among the horse-worshiping Plains nations; apparently her comrades took the whole Iron Horse thing literally.

“Impressive. But what about the pickup with all the guys with guns?”

“Watch Billy,” Johnny shouted.

The crossroad still lay a quarter mile ahead.

Bent low over his handlebars Billy rode straight at the big pickup truck. The Dog Soldiers in the back were firing furiously over the top of the cab with full-size M-16s and obviously missing. Billy leaped up to stand on his seat, giving them a double-barreled finger as his machine slowed with his hand off the throttle. The bike wobbled. He jumped back down to the saddle as lightly as a gymnast, grabbed the bars and veered off into the grass as the truck roared past.

The road had a drainage ditch running alongside it. Drawing his pistol, Billy circled back around and into the dry, weed-choked ditch, following the big truck.

The Dog Soldiers in the back had jostled one another all out of any order when he went past the first time. Some grabbed for handholds in case the massive Harley slammed head-on into the truck. Others swung around shooting, hoping with wild optimism to hit him.

They were still untangling themselves when he rolled up the inner bank onto the road next to the truck, almost inside arm’s reach. He pushed out the chunky revolver until its four-inch barrel was almost pressed to the front tire, then blasted off two shots. He yanked his front wheel right, hard, putting a boot down and taking off at a right angle to the road.

“Yeah!” Johnny crowed. “Classic buffalo-hunter move!”

The tire blew. Before the driver could do much about it the truck veered into the ditch. The truck slammed onto its side, bounding over the winter-tan grass. Dog Soldiers and their long black rifles spilled out.

They were picking themselves up and helping one another to their feet as Johnny whipped past them up the crossroad in pursuit of the runaway tanker. Though she had no way to be certain Annja thought none seemed badly injured. They were certainly hard core, these Dogs, dilettantes or no. And she already knew they were deadly dangerous.

A swirling battle had developed. Or rather the Dogs on their more agile machines swirled around the Horses, who charged on single-mindedly after their quarry. Both sides shot at each other but if anybody went down Annja didn’t see.

Annja leaned forward into Johnny’s back. Conscientiously she kept the Glock pointed skyward with her trigger finger braced on the frame instead of inside the guard. “What’s the plan?” she shouted.

“I’m open!” Johnny said. He sounded as if he were totally enjoying himself. As if he’d enjoy it, live or die.

“Get in close to the tanker’s rear,” Annja said. “I’ll climb up the back and go for the cab. Take out the driver.”

Johnny turned his head briefly to blink back at her through his aviator shades. Mirrored in his eyes she saw the very question she was asking herself. Did I actually just
say
that?

“You’re crazy!” he shouted.

“Of course I’m crazy. Look, I can do it. It’s the only way. Unless you trust me to drive the bike while you climb up.”

By the tensing of his shoulders she could tell what he thought of
that.
About the same as she did, actually.

But it was true. They weren’t going to be able to shoot out enough of the big rig’s eighteen tires to slow it down. And there were three bad boys riding up top the tank itself, armed with full-length M-16s, lying down and aiming, at least sort of. They’d likely pick off any Horses who got close enough to take a moving shot at the driver in his high cab. And as Johnny turned onto the road behind the tanker Annja saw yet another long black barrel sticking out the passenger’s side window of the cab.

“You mean it?” Johnny called.

“Just do it, before I come to my senses!”

“I’ll call the club to give you fire support.”

“Wait! On a tanker full of gasoline?”

“Tank’ll probably self-seal, if our bullets can even punch through,” Johnny shouted. “Those puppies’re tougher than you think. Anyway, bullets don’t start fires for shit. Even in gas. Believe it—I know.”

“Go for it,” she said. She heard him speaking for the benefit of the microphone on the radio headset he and the other Horses wore. She couldn’t make out the words. Since they were doubtless in Comanche she knew it didn’t matter.

With a full-throat snarl a bike pulled up beside them. Snake was riding it. She caught Annja’s eye, gave her a thin smile and a salute with her .45. Then she swerved off the road and gunned ahead to shoot at the gunmen atop the stolen tanker.

The rear gunner man lay on his bare belly shooting single shots. That metal must be cold, Annja thought. A shift in the flow of movement caught her eye. She looked aside in time to see a riderless Horse motorcycle bounce across the prairie for twenty yards before veering to one side and toppling in a cloud of dirt and bits of dried grass. She grimaced. She wondered who it was, hoped he hadn’t been badly hurt.

Or she. Even Angel, who looked fourteen and, like her name, rode with the club to battle this morning. It wasn’t the traditional Plains way. It was the New Traditional Iron Horse way.

Yellow muzzle flames flared like suns, right toward Annja. Bullets cracked by her head so near she turtled down inside the borrowed leather jacket she wore.

Johnny whooped, put his head down between his handlebars and gunned the engine. Despite its double load the powerful vintage bike leaped ahead at crazy speed. It caromed high off the bumps and rattled as if coming to pieces. Annja wasn’t sure how he could possibly keep the machine on course. But he did.

She tucked her stubby Glock back in its holster and clung to him hard.

Gunfire crackled from close behind. Iron Horse People were closing in, firing at the tank-truck gunner as they came. Annja hoped they had the sense to aim high. It would really suck to take a round through the back of her head from her own guys.

The gasoline tank’s rear loomed before her like an oval silver cliff. The gunner up top winced as a bullet whanged off metal near him. He jumped up, trying to keep Johnny and Annja in his sights as they got close to the bumper.

The Horses loosed a rapid-fire volley at the Dog Soldier. Glancing around, Annja saw the head of Black Bull Jake, a Kiowa, snap back as he took a bullet through the forehead. Riding at his side Snake had to veer wildly off the road to keep from being knocked down by his out-of-control bike.

Then Johnny was up alongside the left end of the tanker’s big corrugated-metal rear bumper. Not letting herself think about it, Annja grabbed his shoulders. Using him to brace herself she clambered up onto her seat. Then she jumped for the bumper.

She got a foot down on it. And found herself falling forward helplessly.

Annja’s momentum carried her across the sheer face of the big silver-gleaming tank’s end. She got a hand on one of the steel rungs welded to the back of it and clung like a monkey. Her right leg flopped down off the bumper. The toe of her shoe kissed the road winding by below. She felt a terrible tug for a moment, then yanked her foot back up onto the bumper by sheer force of will.

She may not have had the upper-body strength of even a substantially smaller man, but Annja was still strong. She got her other hand on a rung and hauled herself upright.

Riding hard alongside the bumper’s left side, Johnny gave Annja a grin and a thumbs-up. And out of the grassland came George Abell, his ridiculous feather bonnet flapping behind him, straight into Johnny’s blind spot. Annja screamed and pointed.

Abell swung a hatchet in a gleaming silver arc. It struck Johnny on the back of his head. He fell off his bike, narrowly missing the tank-truck’s bumper, to roll over and over in the road.

Annja heard the Horses scream in rage. Abell accelerated rapidly away cross-country as bullets cracked around his feathers.

Annja saw Johnny stir, start to pick himself up. She hoped desperately he wasn’t badly hurt. But a crackle of full-auto gunfire from above told her she had no more time to spare him.

She swarmed up to the top of the tank twelve feet above the dirt road. Empty casings fell on her in a glittering cascade. A glittering
hot
cascade. One seared her cheek painfully, just glancing off.

The Dog gunman was standing straight up with legs braced right above her. But he was looking back, not down. The pack of Horses following close in the tanker’s dust cloud whooping vengefully and shooting at him seemed a far more credible threat than that some crazy white-eyes chick would actually jump onto the truck and come after him.

It flashed through Annja’s mind that he probably had a point.

But she wasn’t just
any
crazy white-eyes chick. She was Annja Creed. She reached up, grabbed his right ankle and yanked.

With a screech he flew off the tank and over her head. He struck the road sideways and rolled.

The Horses broke to either side of him to prevent being knocked over. Though he’d lost his rifle he was actually hard core enough to get right back up again with his back to the tanker.

And Snake, who’d fallen behind after being forced off the dirt road and was pushing hard to catch up, yanked the short front fork of her sled up into a wheelie. Spinning fast the front tire promptly came down again, catching the dismounted Dog Soldier full in the face like a combination of a tomahawk and a circular saw.

Annja looked away. And realized she was dangling one-handed from the back of a speeding hijacked tanker loaded with gasoline.

“Focus,” she said aloud. She got both hands and feet on the cold steel rungs. Then she peered over the upper rim.

Two Dog Soldiers crouched on the roof, one shooting left, one shooting right. Ducking down and taking another quick look around Annja realized that the Dog Solder bikers were pressing the Iron Horse People hard. The most her friends could do to help her with the tanker guards was keep scattering the occasional shot their way.

Fear for Johnny jabbed her hard. Annja felt a fondness for all the Iron Horses, even the intractable Snake, and a desperate desire they should all pull through unscathed. That was already impossible, she knew. Jake was certainly dead. She had exchanged perhaps a dozen words with him; she recalled he had a five-year-old daughter.

And Johnny—he was definitely not unscathed. Annja could only hope against hope that neither the hatchet blow—which had been hastily delivered, after all—nor the ensuing fall from his bike had done him irreparable damage.

But she couldn’t worry about that now, any more than she could ponder just why she felt such concern for Johnny Ten Bears. Instead, she flung herself up and over.

Suppressing the memory that she was on the back of a gasoline tank jouncing down a dirt road, Annja bull-rushed the nearer gunman. Focused on his weapon and his targets he didn’t even notice her in his peripheral vision until she was almost on him. Then it was too late.

He swung the long barrel of his rifle toward her. She put her shoulder down and slammed into him, hoping her unexpected momentum would knock him off balance and allow her to pitch him overboard.

But the Dog Soldier was a powerful man, built low to the ground—or in this case, the steel runway along the tanker’s spine. He held his ground. He might have quickly overpowered Annja, but she grabbed the ribbed plastic forearm of his M-16 and wrenched it. He refused to let go.

Instead, he started swinging his upper body from side to side, hoping to fling Annja away from him and off the truck. As he did she saw the other gunman, at the front of the tank, do a double take as he noticed their dance of death. Then he swung his rifle toward them.

The man grappling with Annja spun her counterclockwise. She quit resisting. That caught him by surprise. He swung her clear around, legs swinging dizzily over empty space, so that when her feet came down her back was toward the other rifleman.

Catching the M-16 with both hands, she used it like a trapeze and swung herself between the Dog’s wide-braced legs. As she did, his partner’s rifle opened up with a shattering noise. Her opponent grunted as the needlelike .22-caliber bullets lanced into his unprotected flesh.

Annja popped up on the far side of the Dog Soldier. Spinning, she caught him as his considerable weight slumped toward the runway. Leaning her shoulder into his bare back, which despite the chill was slick with sweat, and grabbing the waistband of his buckskin pants, she ran him toward his companion. Perhaps trying to keep himself from falling over the side, the wounded man stumbled through several paces. Screaming, his buddy pumped burst after three-round burst into his chest and belly.

Annja felt the man slump. Screeching her own hawk challenge back at the other man she charged him.

The Dog Soldier jumped back. His flinch yanked his rifle barrel up and off-line. Risking all, Annja vaulted the bullet-riddled man as he dropped onto his face on the ribbed steel of the runway.

The sword came into her hand.

The other man’s eyes went huge in his black-painted face as he saw the three-foot blade materialize in her hand out of thin air. Shock-slowed, he threw up the rifle before his face to protect himself. She started swinging the sword before her feet touched steel.

Shock ran from Annja’s hand up her sword arm. Annja swung the blade again. She struck him in the forehead.

He stared at her for a disbelieving moment. Then he slumped onto his face.

Annja let go of the sword, allowing it to vanish back into the otherwhere, rather than risk being dragged off the tanker with him as his body rolled down the gleaming steel flank and fell from view. She crouched, securing her balance as the immensely heavy tank-trailer jumped into the air over a particularly bad rut. Then she dashed forward the final few steps to leap over the gap between the gasoline tank’s front and the green roof of the tractor’s little overcab apartment.

All this time the rig had been driving arrow straight, north on the dirt road. Suddenly it swerved beneath Annja. The violent surprise direction change threw her off balance. She tumbled off the cab to her left.

Recalling the sword she reversed grip and plunged the blade down through the thin-gauge metal roof of the cab. Her legs swung wildly over space. Metal tore with a scream.

Tires grinding the packed and rutted dirt of the road, the tractor veered left. Annja was snapped onto her back on the overcab apartment. Momentum slid her across it on her rump until her heels thumped on the roof of the cab itself, in front of the raised apartment. She barely kept her grip on her sword’s hilt.

If she let go it would vanish again. It was the only thing keeping her from being thrown to the road in the tanker’s path.

The cab roof shuddered beneath Annja’s feet. Silver holes appeared in the green-painted metal, punching upward. The passenger was shooting blindly, hoping to hit her.

Frantically she yanked her feet back up onto the apartment roof. The driver cranked it right again. This time she felt the rig’s wheels rise all along the left side. The coupling between tractor and tank squealed in protest.

Annja’s breath caught in her throat. He’s willing to risk losing control to shake me off, she thought. Again the tractor swung left.

She released the sword and flung herself forward. As she did she recalled the mystic weapon yet again. She plunged its tip downward through the left side of the roof.

She heard a scream as it transfixed the driver from above.

Bullets stitched through the roof right beside her rib cage. Then the shooting stopped. The truck headed off the road to the left.

Abruptly it cranked right again. Held on the cab by her death grip on the sword’s hilt Annja realized the man riding shotgun had grabbed the wheel from the out-of-action driver and was hauling back clockwise to avert disaster. Except he was seriously overcorrecting.

She looked down. The road wasn’t moving all that fast below her. But she knew the burly tractor, and its massive load of liquid fire, had momentum.

Once more she released the sword. Then she jumped for the ditch.

Even as she flew through the chill morning air she heard a tremendous ripping noise behind her as the big rig jackknifed. The mass of the tanker and its thousands of gallons of gasoline was driving the tractor down the road sideways, stripping tires from rims.

Annja hit. Feeling flash gratitude for gymnastics training as well as some instruction in parachuting technique—specifically
landing
—she let her legs flex and went into a roll.

Her vectors were a little more complex than what she compensated for. What was intended as a forward roll turned into a weird sort of corkscrew, flopping her over and over across prickly bunchgrass and the hard earth beneath it. After what seemed a really long time Annja came to rest facedown in the dirt.

Annja raised her head to look toward the eighteen-wheeler in time to see it crash into the right-hand ditch. She saw the tanker split open like a sausage flexed violently in giant hands. Then a white spark.

She buried her face in her arms. With a colossal hollow
whoomp!
the load of gasoline ignited. A shock-wave rolled over her, stinging her bare wrists and the back of her neck like dragon’s breath.

But the laws of physics were on her side. She risked a glance over her arm. Its fine pale hairs were kinked by heat. The truck was crumpling, screaming, glittering steel and a vast yellow fireball that tumbled away from her across the prairie. With a sigh she collapsed back onto the ground, luxuriating in its cool embrace.

She was completely spent.

For a time she just lay there. She relished the sense of numbness that enveloped her. Too soon, she knew, it would give way to something a whole lot more like a full-body bruise. She’d been here before.

She heard a snarling of multiple motorcycle engines, forced herself to roll over and sit up, reaching for the Glock. It was still in her small-of-the-back holster, she knew. Its imprint, and that of its holster, had been embossed deeply into her flesh by her madcap roll across the landscape. That was the risk of wearing a holster there, although she was smart enough to wear it to the right of her spine to avoid serious damage.

To Annja’s surprise and double relief she saw Johnny Ten Bears. Beside him rode Billy White Bird; between them they steered an untenanted Iron Horse bike with one hand each on the handlebars. They came to a stop near her.

“Johnny!” she exclaimed. Despite the throbbing agony now starting to seep through her body she leaped up and ran to embrace him. He put his cheek to hers and hugged her.

“Not too tight,” he said. “I don’t reckon we’re either of us in shape to stand up to much punishment right now.”

She pushed him away to arm’s length—still being cautious to keep her finger off the Glock’s trigger, and not cover either man with the muzzle. “It’s so great to see you! You look awful!”

And he did. His handsome face was brutally bruised, one eye almost swollen shut. His jeans were torn, and the leather jacket he’d worn against the cold had little tufts of grass sticking out at random angles, as if indifferently sodded. His hair had escaped the ponytail; its left side had been turned into a lank, faintly rust-hued mat by the blood that had soaked it and begun to dry. A pressure bandage had been hastily taped to his head.

“I may not be much of a gentleman,” he said, laughing, “but my sense of self-preservation’s strong enough to keep me from commenting on your appearance.”

He pointed at his head. “That fat bastard Abell’s so hung up on his fantasy reenactor thing he tried to scalp me. Almost brought it off, too. Too bad for him he forgot to kill me first.”

He shook his head in annoyance. “Damn! Son of a bitch got the better of me
again.
”

“Not a bad bit of work there, Ms. Creed,” Billy said, holding the extra bike balanced. He nodded his chin toward the furious red blaze of the big rig and the thick column of black smoke that rose out of sight through the cloud cover. “Looked like you were swinging a pretty big blade up there up top that truck, the few times I had a chance to look over.”

“A machete,” she said with practiced ease. She hated to lie to a friend, especially one who was now a comrade in arms. But she had no choice. “Took it off the one dude before his buddy shot him.”

Billy’s cheeks rode up to turn his eyes into little narrow fingernail slices of skepticism. “That was one mighty big machete.”

“Isn’t that kind of a personal remark, Billy?” she asked sweetly. She laughed as his dark complexion flushed deep red.

She turned to Johnny. “I take it we won?”

His smile vanished. “We accomplished the mission,” he said in a flat tone. “By definition, that’s victory.”

“Once the truck blew, the rest of the Dogs ran off tail-high,” Billy said.