“No!” he responded to the taunting voice. “I’ll use it if I have to!”
At that moment a Jeep Cherokee slammed against the side of his truck and sent it careening onto the shoulder of the road. Sonny cursed and tightened his grip on the wheel, fighting to keep the truck from flipping into the ditch.
He hadn’t been aware of the Jeep bearing down on him, and the two men motioning angrily for him to pull over.
“Cabrones!” he cursed the men in the truck. Were they the bastards who had taken a shot at him?
“Pull over!” the man in the Cherokee shouted, waving a fist.
Sonny stepped on the brake and his truck went sliding on the gravel and came to a screeching stop in a cloud of dust. He started to reach for his pistol in the glove compartment, but the Cherokee had pulled alongside and the larger man was on him too quickly.
The big man shouted something as he opened the door and pulled Sonny out of the truck. Sonny struck at him, but his opponent was too strong. He swore and punched Sonny in the stomach, then hit him with a right cross. Within seconds he and his partner had Sonny pinned against the truck.
“Easy, Mike,” the driver cautioned.
“He was reaching for a pistol!” The man named Mike gestured to the open glove compartment. “Don’t ever pull a fucking pistol on me!” he cursed in anger.
Through watering eyes Sonny looked at the two men dressed in hunting fatigues and wearing black greasepaint to camouflage their faces.
“What the fuck were you doing at Raven’s place?” the man asked, frisking Sonny, reaching for his wallet and opening it.
“None of your business!” Sonny yelled.
“It is our business!” the man shouted back. “I’m agent Eddie Martinez, this is agent Mike Stevens.” He flashed his FBI badge in front of Sonny. “What the fuck are you doing up here?”
“I went to talk to Raven,” Sonny replied. FBI? Just what the hell was going on here?
“You a friend?” the agent asked, looking at Sonny’s driver’s license and identification.
“I’m not Raven’s friend.” Sonny shook his head and wiped at his bruised lip.
“Sonny Baca. Holy shit! A goddamned PI.”
The big man laughed. “Fucking dick thinks he’s a hero just because he and Manuel Lopez found the car dealer’s wife,” he said to his partner.
“Yeah.” Martinez sneered. “We heard the story. But that was child’s play. Now we’re talking about blowing up a truck full of junk from Los Alamos.”
Blowing up a truck full of nuclear waste? Sonny wondered. What the hell did he mean? Did the FBI think Raven was an environmental terrorist? Is that why they were up here, and apparently didn’t want anyone else to be?
“Listen,” Martinez said, angrily pointing a finger in Sonny’s face. “Stay away from Raven! Stay outta here!”
“Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?” Sonny lashed back, but Mike pushed him against the truck and held him while Martinez shouted the message in his face. “Stay away from Raven, Baca! You could get killed!” He slammed the wallet against Sonny’s chest. “You understand?”
Yeah, Sonny understood. What if it was an FBI marksman who had fired at him in the arroyo?
“Stupid dick,” Mike sneered as they backed away.
They climbed aboard the Cherokee and sped back up the mountain, leaving a cloud of dust in the thickening shadows of dusk.
Sonny shook his head and spit blood. “Cabrones!” he cursed, and gasped for breath. “Pinche FBI! I owe you one!” he shouted. “José Escobar! Where are you now? I need a drink!”
Then he remembered the bottle Escobar had thrown in his truck. He chuckled and felt the pain in his ribs. Bruised rib, maybe broken. He knew he was going to be sore for a long time. He tossed his wallet into the glove compartment and took out the whiskey. Just what I need, he thought and turned and walked into the forest.
He needed to think. He knew he had screwed up. Just who the hell was Raven, and what did he have to do with the nuclear waste shipment the DOE was planning on moving from Los Alamos to the WIPP site?
“I didn’t do my homework!” Sonny kicked at the ground. “Came running up here like a pendejo! What would Manuel Lopez say?”
Yeah, he didn’t know diddly about Raven and he had gone busting in. Yes, he could’ve been killed. Maybe by Raven. Maybe by the FBI.
Around him the ponderosa pines rose tall and stately, a faint vanilla aroma exuding from their pores. A dry carpet of needles covered the ground beneath his feet. The forest was tinder dry. One careless match or a bolt out of a lightning storm and it would burn. Smokey the Bear would have to be alert. Just as the rest of the animals of the forest were alert. He felt their presence as he held his bruised rib and walked up the slope through the scrub oak until he found a protective spot under a massive granite outcropping. He guessed it was a den of a pack of coyotes. The smell was strong in the air, their pee and scent in the trees around the place, marking their home. They had heard him come, probably heard the noise of the fight down below on the road and moved out.
“Run, coyotes,” Sonny said to himself. He dropped gingerly to the ground, feeling the softness of the earth, resting his back against the cool boulder. He took the top off the bottle and drank, taking a long pull at the burning liquid.
“Ah.” He smacked his lips, grimacing, closing his eyes. “Bad stuff.”
He drank again and then took a deep breath, waiting for the bourbon to drive away the pain. The spot was ideal, away from the trails that hikers used. From here Sonny could look east through the pines and see the expanse of the Estancia Valley. The valley was the color of a lion in the afternoon sun.
He took another swig. He knew he had made a mistake by going to Raven’s place without checking around. Damn! Why had he run off half-cocked? He heard Gloria’s voice in the breeze that moaned among the trees. Gloria was drawing his strength. She wanted her revenge, but his mistakes might deny her that. And they might cost Sonny his life.
A raven called in the forest; the call went unchallenged. Around him the eyes in the forest were watching him. The coyotes weren’t hunting, they were waiting to see what move Sonny made. On the ground around him ants scurried in their search for food. He looked closely and saw a moth, then a mariposa, a king butterfly with tiger markings. He heard the shrill cry and saw the flash of a hummingbird. A brilliant Rufus. The mountain was full of hummingbirds.
Sonny grew still, and the animals began to move around him. A blue jay fluttered to the ground, then two. The forest had accepted his quiet presence and was returning to normal.
He drank again and closed his eyes. The pain in his ribs had subsided. The bourbon made him relax; he closed his eyes and slept. He saw images. Someone making a movie. Manuel Lopez sat at the director’s chair, motioned for Sonny to strap on the gun of his Bisabuelo. The credits rolled. “Solstice Day, starring Sonny Baca.” He saw himself walking slowly down the dusty main street of a village somewhere in New Mexico. Adobe huts, corrals, blacksmith shop, saloon. Cowering villagers watched from windows. He alone was to face the bad guy, who was dressed in a black outfit, looking birdlike in his movements. Laughing, calling like a crow. Raven!
Sonny reached for his pistol, but his hand froze to the handle. Four women appeared and spun a cord around him, immobilizing him. Cackling and crying they drew him toward the tall cottonwood that graced the middle of the dusty plaza. They were going to hang him! He tried to move, but couldn’t. He cried for help and the youngest of the women stepped forward. The knife she held sparkled with sunlight. She cut the cord that held him, and blood streamed from his navel.
Rita appeared, rifle in hand. No, it wasn’t a rifle, it was a cross. She held the cross up and the swarm of birds flew away. Rita rushed to him and placed a green herb over his wound. The blood stopped flowing. Rita had saved him, and now the townspeople, led by the schoolmistress, a lovely young blonde in a blue taffeta dress and blue bonnet, came out to congratulate them and pin the
star of sheriff on his chest.
But the ceremony was interrupted by the appearance of Gloria’s ghost, pale and wraithlike, beckoning to him. He turned and ran, and the ghost became a storm full of fury. Not even Rita could stop the spirit of the dead woman, which descended like a whirlwind. A ghostly devil within the whirlwind lunged at Sonny, cutting at him with the same scalpel Dorothy had given him. He ran in the dark, trying to hide, calling Rita’s name, and still the pale image of Gloria pursued him.
She cried to him: “Hiiiiii-jo,” and the cry was like the wind mourning through the pines. The forest had come alive with the spirits of animals, like it does during the peyote ceremony, foxes and coyotes crossed in front of his path, the trees swayed with life, a spirit animating everything.
Three of these spirits materialized in front of Sonny. Only their presence turned away Gloria’s ghost; only their presence made the dark wind subside. Peace returned to the forest, but when he looked back at the village, it was deserted. Rita, too, was gone. The three coyotes lay at his feet and awaited his instructions.
Sonny opened his eyes. Around him shadows filled the east side of the mountain. The sun was setting. He half expected to see the coyotes of the vision still sitting in front of him. He shivered, then rose slowly, feeling his cramped and aching muscles. The cool of the earth had seeped into his bones, and in spite of the images of the nightmare, he felt somewhat rested. He looked at his watch and realized he had slept late into the afternoon.
“Time to move,” he said to the animal spirits in the forest, making his way down to his truck. “Gracias.”
He slowly coaxed his truck back onto the road and down the hill toward the highway heading home. Once in Tijeras Canyon, he took a chance and called Sam Garcia, hoping to find out more about why the FBI was buzzing around Raven, and he got an earful.
“Sonny! You bastard!” the chief shouted. “I told you to keep your nose clean! Stay out of this case! You’re just getting in the way. Stay off that mountain! Stay away from Raven! The bureau just called me! You’ve blown their cover! Next time I’m going to let them haul you in, or let them feed you to Raven’s dogs! You got that, Sonny? Stay away! We know what we’re doing!”
“Blown what cover?” Sonny protested.
“Never mind! Keep away from that side of the mountains. I’m warning you, Sonny, I’ll let them throw you in jail!” Garcia’s phone slammed dead.
“Up yours!” Sonny shouted in anger and wished he could slam his cellular. Instead, he flipped the switch to off and cursed. “I’m a citizen! FBI can’t kick me around!”
So Garcia knew what the FBI was doing on the east side of the mountains. He dialed Howard. “Howard?”
“Hey compadre, you still alive?”
Sonny’s ribs ached, his mouth was bruised and puffing up, but he tried to keep his cool.
“Barely. Ran into some trouble at the nest of a weirdo named Raven.”
“He’s no weirdo,” Howard replied. There was a pause. “Is there a connection to Gloria?”
“I don’t know,” Sonny answered, “but it seems the FBI has his place covered. What do you know about him?”
“Raven isn’t really Raven, of course,” Howard answered. “Let me put it this way. He’s got a list of aliases a mile long. Sometimes he’s John Worthy, sometimes Worthy John. Sometimes he’s John Bearman, other times John Black Crow. But he’s very secretive, won’t allow himself to be photographed.”
“The tip came from the FBI guys, though. They said something about someone blowing up a truck from Los Alamos. I remember reading in the paper about an anti-WIPP group threatening to do something like that, but nobody took it seriously, did they?”
“Maybe,” Howard replied. “For years Los Alamos Labs has been telling the public that they’re only storing low-level waste. Contaminated gloves, boots, instruments, stuff like that. The environmental activists say they’re lying, that there’s a lot of high-level plutonium waste up there that the labs have kept secret. At one point they even built components for atomic bombs, but they kept it secret. Now the truth comes out, they do have a lot of high-level junk. Just like Pantex and Rocky Flats, and they need to get rid of it. So they’re going to run a truck down to the WIPP site. Congress is allowing the labs to send a truck carrying junk to make a test run.”
“When?”
“Next week. So the protesters are claiming Congress has reneged on the moratorium, and one run will open the gates of WIPP. The transportation of the nuclear waste material had been fought by every community in the state. Nobody wanted DOE trucks loaded with the radioactive junk passing through their backyards. But with Russia and the U.S. dismantling their nuclear warheads, the plutonium cores have to be stored somewhere. WIPP has a billion-dollar cave in the salt beds of Carlsbad ready to receive the junk. From low-level contaminated gloves used in laboratories to old nuclear power plant and nuclear submarine reactor cores, the amount of hot waste shipped to WIPP would grow in amounts never imagined by even the DOE experts.”
“And the protest has begun again,” Sonny said.
“Except now there’s been a series of anonymous threats to blow up the truck. They figure if they can create a nuclear catastrophe, it will focus attention on the issue. Don’t you read the papers?”
“I read about the threats, but I thought it was just the papers blowing things out of proportion.”
“Well, obviously the FBI is taking it seriously.”
“And they’re watching Raven because they think he’s behind it?”
“It’s just a hunch, after what you told me just now. Officially I haven’t heard anything.”
Sonny grunted. “How do you know so much about Raven?”
“I read the papers, bro. I try to keep informed—”
“Hey, I don’t need a lecture,” Sonny groaned. His ribs were aching, his nose was puffing up. All that time at the library reading about Morino and the cattle mutilations, and he’d missed the real news. He vowed not to flip so quickly to the sports pages to check the Dukes score in the future.
Sonny needed an aspirin, or a drink, maybe both. He touched his lip. It was cut and sore. Someday he was going to return the favor to Mike the FBI gorilla.
“The bureau boys must have something on him to be so uptight,” Sonny said.
“I figure they have an informant in the group, but that’s just an educated guess. They tell Garcia very little. You know how it is, FBI thinks they’re top shit and the local cops are yokels. Anyway, they have to take any suspicions about Raven seriously. He used to work in the mines in Grants. He’s an explosives expert.”
Sonny whistled long and low.
“Who else did you see up there?” Howard asked.
“Only four women. And the number one mama is the Dominics’ former housekeeper. Veronica.”
It was Howard’s turn to whistle. “Ah, it’s getting thick. Were there others in the cult?”
“Maybe, but they would’ve had to have been hiding in the woods—they weren’t at the compound. But someone took a shot at me. If it wasn’t the FBI—”
“Took a shot—” Howard paused. “That’s not good news.”
“I’m alive.”
“Yeah, well. You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m okay. Listen, why would Raven, or anybody fighting nuclear waste, blow up a truck? That’s just the kind of accident the environmentalists want to avoid. Blowing up a truck means a lot of contamination. What’s the point in causing the kind of accident you’re protesting?”
“That is the point. If he can create a mess, it will turn this country on its ass. If he has enough plastic explosives or dynamite to blow a dent in the truck’s barrel, he’ll contaminate a large area. It’s publicity he’s after, and if he can do any damage to the barrel, the country will be scared. Scared enough by a real disaster to stop any possibility of it happening again. Or something worse. Anyway, the guy’s crazy, they say. Really on the fringe.”
“He’ll need plastic explosives, and if the
bureau’s on his tail, he can’t buy any,” Sonny said.
“Mexican dynamite,” Howard replied. “We got wind there’s a lot coming in, but no shipments have been intercepted.”
Dynamite, Sonny thought, enough dynamite in the hands of an expert could blow up the World Trade Center. Much less would be needed to blow a hole through a WIPP container.
“So the FBI needs to catch him with the explosives in hand. In the meantime Sheriff Naranjo stumbles into Raven tending a patch of marijuana and hauls his ass in. The agency boys are already pissed off. Now whoever’s helping Raven goes deeper into the Sandias, and the explosives are really hidden. Then you show up and interrogate the wives. Now they’re afraid he might not even come back to the mountains.”
“And won’t lead them to the explosives.” Sonny grunted. “How the hell was I supposed to know? How did we get into this? I can’t be worried about crazy eco-terrorists when I’m trying to track down a murderer.”
He leaned back in his seat and let the truck hurl down I-40 into the city. “Por Dios Santo,” he heard himself say, an exclamation his father had often used.
He heard Gloria whisper the same words, looked up, and saw Gloria’s body superimposed on the valley of the Río Grande, which spread out before him. If he reached out, he could place his hand on her stomach, right over her navel, which was the bright, red sun setting in the western horizon.
His hand fitted perfectly into the Zia circle, and beneath the soft mound he felt the throb of life, the heartbeat of Gloria’s child, like a drumbeat. Calling to him. Revenge. Gloria’s soul could not rest. Her journey through life had been suddenly interrupted. That’s why her restless spirit pursued him.
“Sonny!” Howard’s voice called him back to earth.
“I’m here.”
“What I’m afraid of is that you have to worry about it. They’re the same case.”
Sonny felt a chill go through his aching body. Had Gloria met up with Raven in her environmental activities? Was she more than the usual wealthy well-intentioned activist? Or had Veronica gotten her mixed up in more than Gloria bargained for when she went looking for a healer?