Tribal Ways (10 page)

“You’ll take me?” she asked.

“Yeah. Shit, yeah. Show you the way in. I’m not going in myself—no way. But I’ll point it out, and if you’re bat-shit-crazy enough to spy on these Dog warriors, knock yourself out.”

“I’ll do that thing,” she said.

He started walking toward the gate. Since there were no cars in the derelict lot he correctly assumed she’d parked outside the graffiti-clad walls.

“Wait,” she said.

He turned and tapped a pointy, impatient toe on the gravel.

“What’s in it for you?” she asked.

“Heh. Payback’s a bitch, man. The Dogs make me do their shit work. Treat me like I’m nothing!

“I take you there,” he said. “You get what you want. And then you screw those Dog Society warriors. Smash them to pieces.”

Annja shrugged. “That’s the plan,” she said.

Two Hatchets guided Annja north of Lawton and east of Sill on Interstate 44. He had her turn off at an exit that led to a strip mall east of the road. Like the drive-in it was abandoned. Big plywood sheets covered all the windows. Instead of public taste passing it by, though, it had fallen victim to a bubble that had burst.

“Turn off your lights and go around the right side,” the informant directed her.

Annja did as he said. Built in a sort of bowl its drainage either had been poorly designed or was degrading from lack of maintenance. Parts of the parking lot were pools of scummy-looking water.

“Desolate,” she said to her passenger. She wished it wasn’t too cold to roll the windows down. Two Hatchets smelled as if he lived in his clothes.

“So they’re meeting here?” she asked him, disbelieving.

“What? Are you stupid or what? You think I’d just have you drive in, just like that, if they were? They’d spot us and kill us both, they would.”

“Okay,” she said, drawing it out. “I thought you might have me do just that, if you were trying something funny.”

He laughed. “Everything I do is funny. So funny I forgot to laugh.”

Leaving her to digest that odd rendition of the half-forgotten playground saying, her guide pointed. “Park here. South side. Don’t go no farther! Park here, here!”

She guided the car against the side of the southernmost wall of the strip mall and stopped. “Now what?”

He grinned. “Now we walk.”

As he got out of the car Annja frowned. Two Hatchets didn’t look like someone who walked a whole bunch. He was dancing around in a little circle, puffing condensation like a steam engine.

“Follow me, follow me,” he said.

He peered around the corner of the building, then sidled around. She followed deliberately. She didn’t trust him entirely and wasn’t going to. But given that Johnny had sent him to her, she had to take seriously the prospect he might have useful information to convey.

Two Hatchets crouched on the side of the small mall away from the highway, where the early-evening traffic continued to hiss by. He seemed to be peering intently to the northeast, past the loading docks for the stores that no longer existed.

“What are we looking for?” she asked.

He pointed. “There.”

She squinted. In a rising moon’s light she saw a black sprawl of what looked like a structure perhaps a thousand yards away.

“What’s that?”

“Holly Hills Training Center.”

“Training for what?”

“Who knows, who cares? Company building it went tits-up right before it got finished. Contractors cratered, too. Everybody just walked away, left it empty.”

“The Dog Society’s meeting there?” she asked.

He bobbed his head. “Place is built behind a ridge there, hides it from the highway. Company wanted privacy. Wanted to block some of the interstate noise.”

“What about lookouts?”

He laughed and shook his head. “No. Not this way. They’re watching the road that leads from the west. Probably watch the back door, east side, just because. Otherwise, zip. Nobody ever comes here, nobody ever goes there. So why bother? Not like they think anything can touch ’em, anyway.”

She nodded and blew out a long breath. “Looks as if we’re in for a hike.”

“
You
are,” Two Hatchets said. “Not me. Not me. No how, no way. I brought you here. I pointed you in the right direction. You take it from here. This is where I get off.”

“All right, I guess,” she said, trying not to sound as eager to be rid of him as she felt. “I can handle it from here. Thanks.”

“You be sure to tell Johnny I did this for you,” he said. “You be sure. Tell him.”

“I’ll do that,” Annja promised.

T
WENTY MINUTES LATER
Annja was hunkered down in brush growing beneath a wood of small trees that stood along a creek running from the east down toward the highway. The south wing of the Holly Hills Training Center stood a hundred yards away. A drainage ditch with low grass-covered banks ran around its parking lot. It apparently emptied into the little creek through a small culvert thirty yards to Annja’s left.

Annja had picked her way cautiously across the darkened countryside.

Now she was looking at a loading dock. The center consisted of three main wings strung out south to north and connected by covered passageways. The windows of this wing were covered in plywood sheeting like the ones in the dead mall.

She contemplated how to get inside. She already took for granted the Dog Soldiers wouldn’t have enough people on hand to secure the whole facility.

Nor did she reckon the building contractors, stiffed and more than likely themselves insolvent, would have wasted much time and energy ensuring no one could get in the empty husk. It almost surprised her they’d bothered to put plywood over the windows.

A flare of white light off to her left made her hunker down instinctively. She saw the glow as a pair of headlights swung around the southern hip of the ridge that screened the center from the highway. She followed the vehicle’s progress.

The south wing quickly hid the lights from view. Annja remained crouched. She waited and watched.

At the center’s far end, several hundred yards off, she saw the headlights sweep across the grassland to the north. Then they cut off.

Somebody was coming in, she thought. Right through the front door, apparently. Good to know.

Annja slipped across the open space down into the drainage ditch. Smelling stagnant water, she leaped a marshy bottom, and ran quickly up the far side and toward the buildings. In the several minutes she’d spent watching she hadn’t seen any patrols. It seemed probable that any sentries were concentrated farther north, and doubtless paying more attention to the newcomers than unexpected, uninvited guests.

Annja ran through plots and plans to gain admittance. Could the upward-sliding door of the loading dock itself be unlocked? Maybe she could cut through a plywood window covering with her sword, although she knew from experience that would make a lot of noise.

On impulse she walked up the short flight of steps to the access door beside the main loading bay and tried the knob. It wasn’t locked.

“You never know,” she said softly, and went inside.

Annja froze.

She’d made her way blindly through the dark building until she’d heard voices.

The voices were raised and angry. She could make out no words.

Annja waited, pressed in the shadows as the voices moved from the front of the building toward the middle. They passed in front of her from left to right. There they seemed to stop moving. Other voices joined, and the disputants were gradually mollified.

Annja made her way carefully toward the sound of the voices. In short order she saw the glare of some kind of artificial light shining from her right.

She turned down a corridor. A few steps along, whitish-yellow light spilled onto the concrete floor from an open door. She crept up to it, crouched, then risked a three-second look around.

It was a small room, possibly a meeting or instruction room. A far doorway opened to a larger, central space. In that space lay a jumble of equipment the contractors must have left—ladders, boxes, tangles of utility cords. She was surprised anything at all of value remained.

White tarp or plastic sheeting—from the sheen, she quickly realized it was the latter—had been laid on the floor. A number of men sat on crates and folding chairs. She heard the rumble of voices.

She slipped into the small room adjoining the larger one. The light from the main room alerted her to obstacles inside. Office chairs had been stacked in a clumsy fashion, desks piled one upside-down atop another. She had no clue what they were doing there. Possibly samples delivered by a would-be vendor. Or maybe the company building the training center had gotten ahead of itself and ordered in furnishings before the place was even complete. She was gathering that rational planning had not been their strong suit.

The heaped furnishings made excellent cover. Bent low behind them Annja worked her way close to the door to the big room.

“I offer you, comrades, literally the opportunity of a lifetime,” a voice was saying. Its familiarity tickled Annja’s subconscious. But it didn’t belong to one of the men who’d accosted her in eastern New Mexico. She knew she’d recognize their voices instantly.

“Bottom line, what’re we talkin’ about here,
comrade
?” The second speaker had the accent of a North American-born Latino. His emphasis on the boilerplate socialist-revolutionary honorific had a distinctly skeptical ring.

“What we all dream of,” the first voice said. “Revolution. The end of the white capitalist hegemony. The chance for justice and peace.”

“How does that work, exactly?” Annja peered around a desk. The speaker was a black man; the accent was pure New Orleans.

“All we want’s a chance to make a stand and take us some payback,” another voice said.

Annja realized there were at least four factions gathered there. She couldn’t even see the Dog Soldiers, somewhere to her left, so she couldn’t say for sure there weren’t even more groups represented. She also made out, vaguely, shapes standing along the walls. She figured they were the security contingents for the various spokesmen.

On the right side of the room three African-American men sat, wearing what looked like a kind of civilian uniform—dark glasses, jackets and trousers of some heavy, dark fabric with a bit of sheen to it, over black shirts. They wore their hair cropped close and looked very businesslike. One of them was the man from New Orleans.

To their left sat three Latinos, all wiry and bearded. They wore flannel shirts and jeans. To their left sat three more African-Americans, two with shaven heads; the one in the middle had a medusan tangle of dreadlocks. Even sitting down he was enormously tall. Standing, Annja reckoned, he’d clear six and a half feet easy.

Finally, closest to Annja, sat three young white men—skinny, nervous, hunching forward uncomfortably on their chairs. One had his head shaved, one had long red hair and a beard on his vulpine face. Their central figure had dark blond dreadlocks and tribal tattoos encircling bare upper arms.

Most of these men carried guns, some stuffed improvidently into waistbands, others in holsters. Annja suspected the three identically clad black men were packing under their rather loose jackets.

“We provide the catalyst,” the Dog Society spokesman said. “More than that—the first strike. It will have aftershocks. I give you my word as a Plains warrior. And then it’s up to you to keep the blows coming until the empire crumbles.”

The immensely tall dreadlocked man waved a big hand. “Why you think you can down the empire now?”

“When has the time been better?” the Dog asked. “The oppressors fight dozens of wars, declared and otherwise, across the entire globe. Their enforcers are scattered to the four winds. Their warriors are exhausted. Even their most basic equipment is wearing out and not being replaced, while they pour billions of dollars into fantastic toys like stealth fighters and bombers that are no use to them in the wars they fight. The economy is a smoking wasteland. The pigs at home see their pension funds empty, their paychecks shrinking in value. The people groan for bread, yet there is no bread. Only trillions and trillions for the fat cats who oppress us all!

“The system is not just vulnerable to being toppled, my friends. It cries out for it! It requires only the impetus. The
push.
We, the Dog Society of the Numunu and their allies, will provide that push. Soon, the empire shall feel its foundation crack beneath it!”

“What do you want from us?” asked one of the semiuniformed men.

“Leverage,” the Dog spokesman said. “Force multipliers. Once we begin our campaign—and that day dawns soon—the more violent, and more widespread, the additional shocks applied to the system, the greater our chances of crashing it. You all represent sizable networks of fighters for revolutionary justice. If you are concerned with the risks entailed in direct action, you needn’t involve yourselves personally at all. I’m sure all of you are well acquainted with any number of hotheads you can persuade to take part in a rising tide of revolution.”

The man from New Orleans nodded. “That’s fine as far as it goes. But what’s in it for us? For
our
movement?”

“The chance to strike off the chains of oppression, of course.” The Dog Soldier sounded surprised. “To seize justice in your own way.”

“But wait,” the dreadlocked white guy said. “If we bring the government down, who’ll provide a social safety net?”

“I thought you boys were anarchists,” the dreadlocked black guy said, eyeing his white counterpart without favor. “Ain’t you all about bringing the government down?”

“Real anarchism calls for the right
kind
of government,” the red-bearded man said. “One that’s big enough to provide for the needs of the people without keeping them down, or hanging them up in all kinds of rules. And big enough to keep the capitalists from exploiting the people.”

“When we have broken the white-supremacist hegemony,” the Dog Soldier said, with a rasp of asperity creeping into his distant-thunder voice, “you and your communities will be able to define your own life-ways and walk them, as we Indians do.”

The Latino spokesman sneered. “So what you Indians are really saying is, you’re just looking to stop paying your taxes? How is the government gonna provide jobs for my people?”

Before anyone could respond commotion erupted from the front of the central building. Two burly men, Dog Soldiers with painted faces, strode into the circle of light.

Between them they dragged the slight form of Two Hatchets. He looked as if he’d been handled none too gently.

“We found
this
creeping around outside,” one of the guards said in a deep voice.

“Wait!” Two Hatchets said, wincing as his escorts thrust him forward into the light. “I only did what you Dogs told me to! I brought the spy Annja Creed right to you. She’s probably here now, listening to you talk!”