Authors: Christine Gentry
Tags: #Fiction / Mystery & Detective / General
Ansel stood as a sandy gust of air scoured her face and every hair on her body rose in atavistic alarm. Black blizzard, her mind screamed.
A dust storm.
“The pathway to glory is rough and many gloomy hours obscure it.”
Chief Black Hawk
The dilemma of what to do with Rusty pounded in Ansel's skull. Leave him to the dust storm or drag him with her, if she could, back to the shelter of the ravine? He might tell her where Cullen was.
However, the child inside her wailed for revenge. Let him rot as Dixie had decided the nearly drowned little girl deep inside her brain screamed. But there was a grown woman inside there, too. She heard her mother's voice as if her words of Blackfoot wisdom were being carried on the escalating prairie winds. Ansel wished she was wearing her Iniskim and listened.
“Obey the teachings of
iit-tsi-pa-tah-pii-op
, The Source of Life and the source of the teachings of the Grandfather and Grandmother Spirit. Love one another and help one another in all matters.”
Decision made, Ansel got the shotgun and ran toward Rusty, bent down, and shook him roughly. “Wake up. You've got to move. Now.”
To her surprise, Rusty's eyes opened, and he groaned angrily. “You. Leave me alone. I'm sick.”
“You'll be dead if you don't. There's a dust storm coming, and you've got radiation poisoning. Some of those fossils you handled were full of uranium. You need a doctor.” She rose and stepped back, gun pointed at him. “Stand up or I'll leave you.”
Rusty's eyes had widened into fearful emerald orbs. He looked at the far horizon and then down at the horrible blotches on his body. “You're lying. I've got the flu.”
Ansel shook her head. “I don't have time to convince you. If you can walk, get up. Try to hurt me, and you'll never reach a hospital, Rusty. I promise you that. You lead.”
He winced profusely as he managed to stand with a wobbly effort. “You stole my gun and my water,” he said, eyes dazed.
Ansel cocked the trigger. “Shut up and walk.”
Rusty shuffled slowly to the ravine entrance and Ansel glanced behind her. The immense sand cloud was closer and larger, but hadn't yet rolled over the tops of the box canyon. At this rate, they'd never get back to Parker before the storm hit and dumped tons of blinding, stinging sand on them. She couldn't warn Parker or make an impromptu shelter if she didn't get back in time. They all might succumb if that were the case.
“Hurry it up,” she ordered as they entered the ravine.
Rusty continued to be slow, not because he was stalling, but because he was truly weak and unsteady on his feet. As Ansel followed, the vision of this pathetic excuse for a man whittled away at her icy, unsympathetic resolve to keep him alive only for Reid to deal with later. She was actually beginning to feel sorry for him with every dragging step, feverish back glance, and grunt of pain.
Ansel couldn't imagine what was happening inside his irradiated body. What she knew about radiation sickness was minimal. It could cause damage to the intestines and lungs, as well as mess with white blood cells. In severe cases, it caused cancer. How long Cyrus had been exposed, how acutely, and how long ago would determine his rate of death. Combine the radiation with his drug-wracked body and the terminal possibilities were endless.
Suddenly Rusty collapsed to his hands and knees between the craggy bluff walls and began vomiting up bile and blood. Ansel stood back watching, her heart bucking in her chest. She was afraid to get too close. If he tried to jump her in the close confines, her ability to manipulate the gun effectively would be impossible. Still, the urge to rush to his aid was there, but she couldn't give into it.
When he was done gagging, Rusty laid on the ground panting. “I can't move,”he said in a hoarse whisper. “Help me.” He looked back at her, sallow death-face imploring. “I don't want to die in this ass crack. Those fuckers did this to me,” he wailed.
Even now, he'd take no responsibility for his own actions, Ansel thought. She released the shotgun trigger and leaned the weapon against the wall, then pulled the pre-packaged yellow poncho out of the purse from behind the folded puff balls.
“Rusty, you can't go on, but I have to. I'm going to leave you this poncho and hood. It will help keep the dust out of your face so your tongue and jaws won't get parched by hot air. Otherwise let the sand cover you. It will keep you cooler. I'll be back as soon as I can.”
“Man, don't leave me here alone. I never meant to hurt you. I was just joking at the pond. Don't do this to me.”
Strangely enough, the mention of the stock pond didn't upset her. She walked toward him and tossed the poncho pack. “It's not personal, Rusty. I just can't drag you all the way. I'm not feeling good either and I've got to hurry. You'll be all right between these bluff walls. Do you want some water before I leave?”
Rusty shook his head. “I can't keep it down. You take it.”
“You're sure?”
“Yeah,” he whimpered, head on the ground. “Just get out.”
Ansel stared down at him. “Before I go, I want to know what happened to Cullen.”
Cyrus looked up at her, bright, greasy red hair flopping away from his once boyishly handsome features. He looked a hundred years old. “I killed him,” he said. “At my house.”
A lump fell into Ansel's nauseous stomach like a boulder. Her father had been right. “Where's his body?”
“Put him in the steel room at my house with the bones I've been watching for months.”
“You killed your uncle because he found the bones?”
“Nah, he saw the dinosaur claw,” Rusty babbled feverishly. “With the numbers.”
Confusion danced through Ansel's heat-exhausted brain. “What dinosaur claw?”
“One I lifted from Yancy.
“Hillard Yancy?”
Rusty managed to nod, then collapsed again, his breath wheezing in and out like a dying animal.
Ansel picked up the shotgun. Cullen hadn't deserved a death like that, and the urge to shoot Rusty was a rampaging bull inside her aching head. She could do it, and no one would know the difference if she claimed it was self defense. Would it be a mercy killing or murder? She fingered the cold steel trigger with cold calculation. She knew she could do it without hesitation.
Instead she stepped over the man and said, “Rusty, whatever happens, I forgive you for trying to kill me twice.”
Then she forced her prickling limbs to jog through the ravine toward Parker, praying that he wasn't already dead.
***
Parker was unconscious when Ansel finally got up the ladder and back over the boulder to reach him. By that time, the wind had started whipping through the ravine behind her as a moaning gust that sent loose dirt, leaves, and branches flying. The sky as seen through the crack overhead was gray-brown. The dust storm wouldn't be far behind.
Parker laid on his back, legs spread. She bent over him, yanking the canteen off her shoulder at the same time. “Parker, I've got water.” When he didn't stir, she surveyed his bandages. They were awash in blood which pooled between his legs upon the dusty ground. She pressed the canteen to his cracked lips. “Drink,” she ordered roughly as the water tumbled across his face, none of it getting into his mouth. He was out cold.
“Damn.”
At least his head was cool. No fever. Abandoning the effort to hydrate him, Ansel took some of the water herself. It was better to drink when she needed to. Rationing water was a fallacy. More water inside you from the beginning gave you the resilience to stay alive longer. When she felt somewhat quenched, she tightened the tourniquet again and went about the job of stripping off the bloody bandages. The wound looked puffy and ragged. A four-inch hole peppered with pellet shots around the edges.
She methodically pulled out the four puffballs from her purse, opened them and scooped out handfuls of smokey, microscopic yellow-brown spores, then dumped them into the open wound. Hopefully they would clot the blood that Parker hadn't already lost. Last she tossed the soaked gauze away and simply re-wound the elastic bandage back around the spore-laden wound and loosened the tourniquet.
It took her fifteen full minutes to drag Parker's dead weight against the boulder. She then placed the ladder at a cross angle above him and against the ravine walls so that she could tie clothes from the duffel to the forward side railing. The impromptu roof with side panels might help reduce abrading dust after the storm hit full force. She carried the second poncho with her inside the grossly inadequate shelter. They'd need it to cover their faces.
Ansel settled with her back against the boulder and with Parker squeezed right next to her between the cliff walls. Her last effort to prepare herself to ride out a dust storm was to break apart the smaller white puffball she'd brought back and to eat some of the inner layer of soft white meat. The mushroom's outer flesh was dry and bland, but her stomach welcomed it and the few sips of water used to wash the food down.
She finished the meal just as the sky above her turned a menacing earthen tone and a blustering wind howled through the ravine carrying a blast of dust so fine that it coated everything it passed upon first touch. Ansel closed her purse and readied the poncho to be held over her and Parker's heads. Dust began to fall from everywhere; above, behind them, and in front of them.
Sand, rocks, and grit funneled into the ravine as a howling monster that could not only be heard but seen and felt. Ansel pulled the poncho over their faces and held onto it with all her strength, legs pulled against her into a tight ball. Parker didn't stir and she envied his oblivion. For her, each minute would be a torture of blinding dust, coughing fits, tear-stained eyes, gasping breaths, scoured skin, and straining muscles until the storm passed. Who knew how long that would be.
As the clothes canopy contracted, shuddered, and snapped, Ansel thought of Reid. By now he probably knew she hadn't arrived at the hospital and that the FBI chopper was missing, but he couldn't help her. Unless the copter emergency beacon had been received before the aircraft burned, the cavalry wasn't coming.
Soon the sun set and darkness swallowed the ravine like a dinosaur's maw. The dust was everything and it inhabited all available space as a swirling, choking miasma. Within two hours, it covered the landscape in a two inch deep layer of grainy, talcum-fine particles that didn't miss a seam, crack, or crease.
Despite the poncho, Ansel sucked in grit with every breath that scraped the inside of her mouth and tongue before burning down her esophagus into her lungs. Even Parker slept fitfully, coughing and sputtering but never reaching consciousness. The corners of her mouth and eyes, her nostrils, and her lips were caked with dust as well, and the feeling of suffocation was a constant companion as she huddled behind the hot, stiff protection of the plastic poncho. Parker's bandages were coated with dust, and she could only pray that the puffball pollen had protected the injury from infection.
Just holding the poncho over Parker's face was fatiguing her arms and shoulders, which screamed with muscle pain. She didn't know how much longer she could stand this. She was tired and physically exhausted. But there was no where to go. Wandering into the blinding maelstrom would be fatal.
The winds had reached incredible speed through the ravine and the sound of flying debris hitting the bluff walls and the boulder was an endless succession of smacks, slaps, and booming rock crashes. She imagined that everything from the bluff tops was breaking loose and falling into the channel above them.
A ray of hope sliced through Ansel's gloomy thoughts. If Dixie had been caught in the open by this storm, her chances of survival were slim. Maybe she was still close by, huddled within the ravine walls, riding out the storm. That meant that the briefcase was nearby and there was still a chance that she could get it back from the paleontologist.
At last, Ansel's lids closed, and the poncho slipped off her head. Sleep stole over her in seconds. She dreamed of Reid. He was telling her something, but she couldn't understand him. His words were garbled and broken up as if his voice were nothing but a static- ridden radio frequency.
“I'm coming,” the dream Reid finally said quite clearly.
Ansel smiled in her sleep. “I know,” she mumbled. “I'm waiting.”
“Seek the ways of the eagle, not the wren.”
Omaha
“I'm here to see Agent Broderick,” Reid Dorbandt said to the pretty blonde ranger standing behind the wooden counter at the Red Water station. Her name tag read P. EASTOVER, and Reid realized that she was the BLM station ranger who told Ansel about the fossil thefts in Glendive and Sidney. “Is he here?”
Something dark and fleeting rolled across Eastover's face. “Yes, he is. He expects you?”
“I doubt it.” Reid pulled the left side of his jacket aside and fully displayed his holster and sheriff's badge which hung from his shirt pocket. “Tell him Lieutenant Dorbandt wants to talk.”
“Just a minute.” Eastover left the counter and walked through a closed lefthand door.
Reid occupied his time surveying the room, which was nothing more than a tiny alcove with plaster walls, wood flooring, and square-beam trusses. The obligatory conservation and BLM guidelines for government land regulations filled the walls, tables, and rotating display stands throughout the tiny space. The whole place looked daunting and complicated. Uncle Sam in a box with too many instructions for the care and feeding, he thought as Eastover strode into the room looking annoyed.
“He can't see you. Would you like to make an appointment?”
Reid smiled and walked around the counter. “Yeah, I'll do it.” He marched past the barrier's corner.
“Sir, you shouldn't go through there,” Eastover said, without budging from her spot, “but I guess I can't stop you. Personally, I'd leave while I could.” She smiled weakly, signaling that her duty as far as she intended to perform it was finished.
Reid opened the door and grinned. “Thanks for the warning.”
He went down a hall leading to a quad of offices, one of which was occupied. Broderick shuffled papers from behind a desk. Reid hustled into the room, pleasure sparking at seeing the agent's surprised expression.
“Get out, Reid.”
Reid closed the door behind him. “We're going to talk.”
Broderick threw a sheaf of forms down on his gray metal desk. His eyes were bullets. “No,
we're
not, but you're going to get sacked for this stunt, Dorbandt.” He reached for the black phone on his desk.
“You'd better hear me out, Broderick, because I'm going to make you a hero whether you deserve it or not.”
The agent's scowl deepened, but his hand hovered above the device. “Oh, really? How's that?”
Reid pulled the fossil tooth from his coat pocket and set it, numbers side up, on the pile of forms. “With this. I'll also tell you everything you want to know about the FBI op.”
Broderick moved his hand back and picked up the crescent-shaped rock. “Talk fast.”
“I intend to.” Reid sat down in a gray fabric chair in front of the desk. “A lot has happened in the last forty-eight hours so I'll start from the beginning.”
It took him ten minutes to tell Broderick the abridged version about Ansel's cooperation in assisting Agent Outerbridge with the Operation Dragon sting, the Billings hotel shooting, the raid on Cyrus Flynn's house where Cullen's body was discovered along with irradiated fossils and, finally, the missing status of the FBI plane.
“So what has all this got to do with me?” Broderick demanded.
Reid took the fossil out of his hand. “This tooth belongs to Hillard Yancy from Earthly Pleasures in Sidney. I know because it's listed in his sale catalog. I assume you've talked to him regarding his store break-in during your own investigation into the attempted museum theft?”
Broderick leaned back in his chair. “Of course.”
“Then you know it wasn't one of the items Yancy lists as stolen.”
“True. Get to the point.”
“I found this at Cyrus Flynn's house. I think Yancy either gave it to him or Cyrus lifted it when he was at the store discussing their poaching plans together. It's no secret that Cyrus suffers from chronic light-fingers disease. Maybe this fossil is what got Cullen killed.”
The agent shrugged. “That's pretty thin, Dorbandt. Yancy's an odd duck, but that doesn't make him a poacher.”
“How about the fact that Yancy retired two years ago as a paleogeologist consultant for the Wonsits Valley Oil and Gas Field near Vernal, Utah? I did some digging of my own. His job was to test for naturally re-occurring radioactive materials in the oil and gas wells in the Morrison Formation so company excavators, preparators, and researchers wouldn't accidentally incur any health risks by handling hot rock. You think it's just a coincidence that a pile of uranium-laden, Vernal fossils got swiped and ended up in Cyrus's house? I don't.”
“How do you know the fossil cache inside Cyrus' house came from Vernal?”
“I saw the labels on the plaster jackets myself. They were stashed in a steel room built right into the house but disguised as a bedroom. A Geiger counter told me how hot they were. Shit, I'm surprised they didn't glow in the dark.. Yancy knew exactly where the Vernal fossils were so they could be heisted, and Cyrus babysat them. Right now Flynn is probably dying from radiation exposure and doesn't even know it. Who knows how many other people have been made sick. Yancy's up-scale gallery is nothing but a front for the sale of stolen bones to the mafia. I'd stake my reputation on it,” Reid insisted.
Broderick rubbed his beard thoughtfully. “You are staking your reputation. And mine, if I swallow this tainted bait whole. What do you want from me?”
Reid put the claw inside his pocket. “I need you to take me into the Badlands. According to the flight plan Outerbridge's pilot filed in Billings, the ERT was going to fly over the Hell Creek area. That's approximately where the satellite control center got a brief emergency beacon blip before it disappeared. Get me a helicopter, and I'll let you take all the glory for finding and saving the FBI team, plus cracking open the poaching ring through Yancy.”
Reid held his breath and tried to look pleased with the idea of handing the jerk his own case-breaking lead. He needed that chopper. Ansel was in trouble. He felt it in his gut. If the copter had crashed, Ansel could be lying injured somewhere without hope of medical care. He pushed away the unsettling and fleeting thought that Ansel could also be in the wilds with Parker Standback and enjoying every minute of it.
“Why don't you get a police copter?” Broderick fished.
“I don't have the time to push this through regular channels. We need to move on this.”
The agent stared at Dorbandt. “Is Ansel Phoenix on that chopper?”
“I don't have any idea.”
Broderick rolled forward in his chair, and it creaked mightily. “Bullshit. She is, all right. I can tell. You've got a real lightning bug up your butt over her, don't you? Well, I'm not as enamored of Miss Phoenix as you are, Dorbandt. I'm here to do my job. Something you've obviously lost your perspective about. You're pathetic.”
Reid allowed the insults to roll over his back like water. “Yancy's got a Class 1 commercial pilot's license. That means he's chopper qualified. He may have forced Outerbridge's aircraft down. I sent a Sidney cop over to check out Yancy's shop. It's locked up tight. He's gone. Check the facts if you don't believe me.”
“You're certifiable.” Broderick rose from his chair and pointed to a map of Montana pegged to the stark white wall behind the desk. “Haven't you heard the news? There's a seventy mile an hour dust storm blowing over the Badlands as we speak.”
Dorbandt maintained his calm even though his mouth almost dropped open. “I've been busy.”
“It came down from Canada on the leading edge of a thunderstorm. Right now there's a cloud wall sweeping over Hell Creek carrying seven million tons of dust with it. Nobody's flying until it clears up. That could be a few hours or a few days.”
“The NOAA must have some idea when it will blow over. That's when we go in and find the helicopter.”
“If it crashed,” Broderick snorted. “Aircraft beacons go bad all the time, either from old batteries or electrical shorts. Hell, half the government planes never get overhauled and inspected when they should be, and equipment just disintegrates from overuse or neglect. It was a false alarm at best. Besides, it's a CAP job to search for crash survivors not the BLM's.”
“You're making a mistake. Something has happened to that plane. The FBI doesn't even know where it is. The Civil Air Patrol won't fly unless the Air Force Center tells them to. And they won't do that unless the satellite center says a beacon signal was primed. We've already lost five hours. People could be dying, Broderick. What are you going to do?”
“Me? I'm leaving. Tomorrow I fly back to the state office.” Broderick grinned and grabbed his spotless, Smoky hat from a rack beside the map. He carefully adjusted it on his bull-headed skull. “Your department has a face for the museum poacher, and it's only a matter of time before he's identified. I'll just let you mop up that mess while I take care of the Big Toe Museum footprints.”
Angry heat flushed Reid's cheeks. “That's what this refusal to help is about, huh? The fact that Sheriff Combs got a photo of the museum poacher out on the wires before you could nab him?”
“No, before you got the facial reconstruction done. You've spearheaded the whole poaching investigation with the help of your Indian scout, Phoenix. She's been spying and reporting back to you like a loyal pet. Both of you can crash and burn as far as I'm concerned.”
“But you're going to screw the museum, aren't you?” Reid growled. “Taking their fossils away will be your last vindictive act, won't it?”
Broderick walked past him. “Just adhering to BLM policies. And, Dorbandt, the next time I see you near this property, I'll arrest you for trespassing.” He exited the office in seconds.
Reid didn't move. He couldn't. He was tired and partly paralyzed by the implications of Broderick's departure. Going to Sheriff Combs and requesting a plane or helicopter from the department was his last and only hope of finding the FBI aircraft. And he knew that the chances of convincing Bucky to support such a speculative, dangerous, and expensive course of action would have no more effect than pouring water on a drowned rat. Still, he would try.
“You okay?”
Reid turned in his seat. Ranger Eastover stared at him inquiringly. “I'm on my way out.” He got up.
“You're a friend of Ansel Phoenix?” When he stared at her blankly, Eastover added, “I listened through the door. Couldn't help myself. He's such a prick.”
“Yes, Ranger Eastover. He is a prick, but Ansel's my good friend. I think she's in trouble.”
Eastover pulled a business card from her pants pocket and stared at it carefully. “She gave me this when I went with Broderick to interview her. I liked her. Sure would hate to see anything happen to her.” She fixed Reid with a cunning gaze.
Reid nodded. “Me, too. Any suggestions?”
“My brother, Adam, is a duster. Keeps his plane at the Swoln agricultural airstrip. He'd fly you to Hell Creek in a blizzard if I asked him to.” Eastover's face erupted into a broad grin. “Bet that would really piss Broderick off, don't you? Especially after he'd passed up the opportunity.”
“And especially if you solved the poaching case and saved the FBI team,” Reid added, eyes twinkling. “Can you stomach being a disobedient hero, Ranger Eastover?”
“Call me Pam. We're going to have one hell of a trip ahead of us if we're dodging a dust storm. Might as well be on familiar terms.”
“Right Pam. I'm Reid. You won't regret this. I promise.”
“Have you got a copy of the FBI route filed with the FAA? Gotta make a call and fill in Adam before we head to Swoln.”
“Sure. In my car. I'll go get it.” Reid started through the door, feeling a great weight lift from his chest.
Pam stepped aside to let him pass. “Oh, speaking of stomachs, bring your Dramamine. If we don't stall from dust clogging the engine intakes, we'll still have winds trying to knock us into the ground.”
Reid worried more about what would happen once they
were
on the ground rather than in the air. His return look was pensive as he spoke to the ranger.
“And you bring all the firepower you can. We won't have any back-up.”