White Wolf McLeod Page 16

  “Which one should I take?”

  “That is not my decision,” his Grandfather told him impassively.

  “No, I mean, which is which?” White Wolf pressed. “Which will take me to the Happy Hunting Ground, and which will take me back to the life I am now living?”

  “I do not know, my Grandson. Yet, you must still choose and walk the path you have chosen its full length. Once you have chosen, you must not regret having made the choice.”

  “Thank you, Grandfather.”

  His elder sire nodded, his eyes revealing the only emotions he held in his heart: pride and love for his Grandson. Then he faded away, returning to where he had originated. Later, when White Wolf recalled this episode as a dream or vision, he could not completely understand the concept of being both in the spirit and in the flesh at the same time. He also did not ask his Grandfather about this, for he probably would not have been able to explain it either.

  “Great Spirit,” White Wolf prayed as he stood before the fork prior to making his decision. “Help me make the right decision.” Then without hesitation, he started down the right hand path, which brought him to a black curtain that had no top, bottom, or sides by which he could bypass. He stretched out his hand and saw it penetrate this curtain, and he decided to pass through. He soon found himself back in the hospital room and heard Nurse Hirose announce: “He has a pulse, and it is getting stronger.”

  White Wolf surprised himself as his spirit experienced an emotion of satisfaction. This body that gave him movement in the physical world was going to survive. That also meant that he had not completed his assigned tasks in this life or experienced future lessons that would teach his soul to become perfect. He saw Nurse Hirose return to her seat, and his spirit was moved to approach her. He kneeled down before her and placed his head in her lap. She felt extremely comforting, and he felt her own spirit reach out to him and hold him like a mother consoling her child.

  Towards morning, White Wolf’s eyes opened, and he tried to sit up from the pillow where he had lain for the last twelve hours. The younger nurse yelped in both surprise and fear, as she had been certain of his death. “I’m hungry,” he told her.

  Nurse Hirose calmly walked over to him and took his wrist. “His blood pressure, please,” she told the shocked younger nurse, reminding her of her duties.

  “It’s normal!” she exclaimed. “But how?”

  Nurse Hirose released her hold on his wrist and laid it gently down on the bed. “He’s a Buddhist,” she declared, meaning that there was no need for further explanation. To White Wolf, she asked, “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m hungry,” he repeated.

  “You should only drink water for the time being.”

  “I don’t think so,” he contradicted. “I need some real food to get my strength back.”

  She looked at him with some skepticism, but then she ordered him some solid food, which he ate and demanded more.

  “I’ve been thinking about why I got so sick,” he began talking to Nurse Kim. Seeing her interest, he continued, “The only reason I can think of is that I must have eaten something my body thought was poison. When I was a kid, I accidentally swallowed some poison my mother had lying around the house. She took me right away to the doctor, although I had already thrown it all back up. The doctor thought I was an interesting case, and he started giving me small doses of other poisons. I threw them all up, too. He then announced that I could never be poisoned, for my body would immediately reject it.”

  “Well, I believe the doctor is going to write this up as something simpler than that,” she said. “But I think you have a powerful medicine.”

  The doctor was amazed as well, especially since he had already filled out the death certificate, omitting only the time of expiration. To a religious man, White Wolf’s recovery would have been a miracle, but to the man of science the sudden reversal of his medical condition was simply unexplainable. The following day, he was forced to release White Wolf with the diagnosis of acute gastroenteritis.

  WHEN MCLEOD REALIZED that he had inhaled a poison that had laced the tobacco, his body and mind had begun a similar shutdown of his bodily functions to isolate and rid his tissues of the lethal substance. When consciousness returned, his half-opened eyes registered a small room exuding a strong smell of polluted water and fish. He realized that he was lying on the floor atop a large piece of tarpaulin, probably to be used as his burial shroud. There were two men in the room with him, and one of them was approaching him with a long serrated gutting knife.

  “This guy’s taking too long to die,” the goon declared with impatience. “I’m going to gut him and see what the insides of an Indian are like.”

  McLeod waited for the man to kneel down on his right knee and position the knife just above his breastbone. Then, the Marshal seized the man’s right wrist with his own left hand and held it like a vise. [Several years ago, he had broken his arm, and again, the doctors thought that he would never regain the full use of his arm and hand. But he had proved them wrong; in fact, due to the damaged nerves, his grip had become even stronger, as if he did not actually know his true strength.] He twisted the goon’s wrist while applying even greater pressure. A sickening snap cracked the bones of the wrist, and the knife fell harmlessly out of the nerveless fingers. McLeod’s right hand deftly caught the falling knife, and before his assailant could utter a cry it shoved the six-inch blade clean through the man’s throat. All of these actions had taken less than ten seconds to happen.

  McLeod catapulted himself to his feet, knocking the dead man aside. The second goon took too long to register what was happening before reaching for his shoulder-holstered weapon. McLeod’s feet never hit the ground after he jumped towards the other man, his left foot knocking the weapon out of his hand and sending it clattering across the boathouse floor, his right foot smashing into the man’s solar plexus. Then, he rolled easily onto the floor and stood up with the discarded weapon in his own hand.

  The goon struggled to rise and catch his breath all at the same time. “I’m going to kill you when I get up,” he threatened angrily.

  McLeod allowed his assailant to reach his feet and flail about with the notion of continuing the fight. With the injection of some colorful invectives, the goon repeated his threat. McLeod raised the weapon to shoulder height and pulled the trigger, ripping the back of the man’s head off his skull and knocking the body backwards against the wall. “I don’t think so,” he told the corpse. “Not today, anyway.”

  He shoved the .38 into his waistband and looked around the boathouse. He wondered if anyone near or in the house had heard the discharge sound of the bullet. In any event, he decided that to remain in the boathouse for too much longer was definitely not a wise idea. He saw a pair of snowshoes hanging on one of the walls and confiscated them. Apparently, this shed was used for storing a number of odds and ends besides those accouterments for enjoying the lake.

  He cautiously stepped outside, and for the first time since he had awakened he felt cold. He willed away the discomfort; there were things he had to do. He started walking up the road briskly, his ears picking up the sounds of the forest and concentrating on those that would be unnatural, which could only mean the presence of humans. About twenty minutes into his trek, he heard the sound of a car’s engine and knew that he had almost reached the mansion. He quickly donned the snowshoes and headed across the snow for the cover of the trees opposite the house. When he had come within view of the house, he saw Sandinista behind the wheel of Mary’s rented car and pulling out of the long driveway. Now, he was pretty certain that something had happened to his agent, for she should have seen him carried out of the house. She would also have attempted some kind of rescue if she was able or leave some kind of hint that she was available. He decided to investigate the area where she had been pulled down.

  The advantages of snowshoes were two: they allowed him to walk on top of the snow, and they did not leave any identifiable marks, at l
east not to an untrained eye. The Great Spirit must also have been watching, for at this moment it began to snow. McLeod thanked the Great Spirit for His thoughtfulness, because the new falling snow would quickly erase all signs of his passing through the area as he approached the site of Mary’s kidnapping. It would also aid him when the time arrived to assault the house.

  He located the place where Mary had parked her car, the tread from the tires deeply imprinted in the snow beside the road. He read that three people had traversed this area recently from the deep depressions in the snow and the way they had trampled the ground to reach a stand of trees. He moved to the spot where Mary had been intently watching the house and quickly inspected it. An impression where the bag that she had brought along with her was quickly being filled in by new flakes adding to the already thick blanket covering the land. There was a larger impression as well, which her body had made when it fell face down into the powdery white stuff. He knelt down and felt around the snow where he thought her upper torso had impacted and was soon rewarded with the radio and the attached earpiece.

  Standing up and facing the house, he placed the earpiece in his right ear and turned on the radio. When he had grabbed the chair in the inner sanctum, he had managed to affix a small listening device—courtesy of some of Tim’s “friends” a couple of years back—to the back of the upright part of the chair, and as it had been tinted black, it blended in with the upholstery to the casual eye. He listened in to a conversation between Michael and Kazinsky.

  “The Castanza’s are going to want an explanation,” Kazinsky stoically reminded his employer.

  “He had an accident,” Michael said, seeming to brush the problem away.

  “He was an Indian!” the lawyer pointed out stubbornly. “Indians aren’t supposed to have accidents in the woods.”

  “So? Some cowboy didn’t like Indians running around in the woods! We’ll think of something,” Michael tried to calm the man down. “Stop your worrying! Besides, we have more important things to worry about. If he knew about the connection between Prescott and Laughlin, then he probably knew a whole lot more about what’s going to go down soon enough. If he hadn’t been tailed by the law, we could have probably welcomed the Castanza’s help in our problems. But how do we know that he didn’t lead the Feds here to get some incriminating evidence against us? We need to start covering our tracks by backtracking over every detail we’ve made. If there’s a leak, I want it plugged. If our enemies are on to us, I need to know now, before any of our people get killed.”

  “We won’t know for sure now, will we?” Kazinsky declared mournfully. “The only man who could of told us precisely his side is now dead.”

  The door to the inner sanctum suddenly opening sounded loud to McLeod’s ears. “We’ve got a problem,” a new voice interjected. “Wolf’s gone, and Dirk and Brett are dead.”

  “What?” Michael exploded. “How did—?” There was a pause where no one spoke. McLeod could see Michael, in his mind’s eye, recomposing himself while putting his brain and not his emotions in action. “All right. Get some of the men together. Search the woods for him. He couldn’t have gone far. He’s sick. He doesn’t know the area.”

  “You forget that he’s an Indian,” Kazinsky repeated tiredly.

  Michael’s anger was redirected at the lawyer. “What difference does that make?” he exploded. “He’s a man, not a ghost, gawd-damn it! A man makes marks in the snow, and it doesn’t take a genius to follow those tracks until you’ve caught up with the man. Now, go! Find him!” There followed a sound of footsteps exiting the room when Michael added one more thought. “Oh, and put a couple men around the outside of the house just to keep Ronald here happy. I doubt that he’ll be able to make it this far without someone detecting him first, but let’s not be too overconfident.”

  McLeod removed the earpiece and smiled. He had heard enough of the enemy’s plans to know what he had to and could do. He looked up at the sky and into the cascading fall of large, plump snowflakes; he figured he had about an hour’s worth of daylight left. Then he would make his attack against the encircled wagons of the White Man’s invasion on the land. If he was lucky, he would have all of their scalps on his belt before none of them were the wiser.

  Darkness found him squatting behind a tree, his mind alert to the sounds of his adversaries leaving the compound and fanning out towards the boathouse to try and find him. He felt cold and wet, but he had been colder and wetter in Korea, and through his Buddhist training he was able to dismiss the minor irritation from his mind. Besides, he told himself, he would have his overcoat back in due time, along with the documents that were promised him. He stood up, judging that the time was right to begin his assault, not bothering to dust off the accumulated snow on his clothes. It and the continuous curtain of falling snow would aid in camouflaging him.

  The designers of the compound had thought they had covered all the bases when it came to security, and they probably swore up and down to their employer that no one could approach the house undetected. But then again, they had not reckoned on the skill and the determination of an Indian. The first hurdle was a fair amount of open land between the first line of trees left intact from the original forest and the wall that completely surrounded the mansion grounds. With the onset of night, the entire area was bathed in lights set on the roof of the main house as well as the garage. McLeod realized that unless he tunneled under the snow—a few days’ feat at best—it was going to be pretty difficult to run across this open area and not be detected, even if he did appear somewhat like an oversized snow bunny. He would have to try something daring that would give cause for his enemy to think that he had done something stupid and at the same time confuse them. He removed the .38 from his waistband and carefully aimed at one of the lights on the roof. He fired, and the light exploded into darkness. He had already picked his second target, and this light, too, was extinguished.

  The bark of the pistol alerted the roving guards, and they began yelling at each other and warning the house. But McLeod was already running. He had grown up with snowshoes, and they did not hamper him in the least. If one of the henchmen had a brain, even if he thought of the possibility of subterfuge, he would naturally have placed more emphasis on watching the front gate for a frontal assault. McLeod counted on that kind of vigilance to further draw attention away from his true target. By the time two men had gained his previous position where he fired the weapon and started searching the area for the shooter, he had circled around the compound using the trees for cover, reached the opposite side of the compound, and scampered across the clearing. He doffed the snowshoes and scaled the second obstacle, the wall, still clutching them. He looked quickly about and noted the windows facing his position. There was no one present in the lighted room watching the wall, which he had prayed would happen, all attention given to the area that was now cast in shadow. He was soon over and, redonning the shoes, pressed flat against the house beside the window.

  The third obstacle was getting inside. Carefully, he slowly inched his way to the back corner of the house and heard the guard sniffling before he saw him. He had forgotten how easy it was to sneak up on a White Man as he peered cautiously around the corner. The adversary currently had his back to him and was preoccupied with his cigarette or stomping his feet against the cold. He went down without a sound, his neck neatly broken between McLeod’s strong, expert hands. The Marshal relieved the man of his sawed-off shotgun and put it under his left arm, the stock sticking forward so he could use it quickly, if necessary. He moved to the rear door and tried it. It was locked. He withdrew a picking tool and deftly opened the door a crack. The hinges were well oiled—a grave mistake in retrospect—and it did not make a sound.

  He listened for a moment, still standing outside, but all he heard were shouts of conversation from the men over the wall still looking for him. The snowshoes had left no traces for them to discover, and the falling snow had already covered any tracks an experienced hunter would
have found. Leaving his snowshoes outside and propped up against the wall, he crept into a darkened kitchen. Now his eyes focused to compensate; cat-eyes his Japanese friends used to say, attributing to his nickname “Nikko-san” for his cat-like reflexes and excellent night vision. He moved quickly and adroitly across the kitchen, avoiding one of those center countertops that appeared to be popular these days, to a closed door and listened for sounds beyond it. Then he slowly opened the door, which led to a lighted hallway into the interior of the house, but there was no one close by to challenge him.

  He had a fair idea of his approximate position inside the house, judging by the mansion’s size from the outside and knowing that his final objective was to be in the center of the house. If he did not find an alternate route to the inner sanctum, he knew that he could eventually reach the family room and retrace his steps when he was first escorted into the facility. He moved silently down the hall and tried two doors, one on each side. Each opened up to bedrooms, probably quarters for the hired help, he thought. At the end of the hallway it ended in a “T,” meaning that he had to walk either left or right. He reasoned that his objective was probably behind the wall in front of him.

  He heard footsteps. The intersecting hallway had other hallway branches that led to the other parts of the house. He determined that the person approaching was walking down one of these branches towards the right fork of this hallway. He decided to wait and let the person approach him. The footsteps entered the forked hallway and came closer. The goon with the oversized suit, who had been on hand to first greet him, was almost on top of McLeod when the Marshal made his lightning move. The man never saw him but fell heavily into McLeod’s arms, his neck snapped. McLeod dragged him back into the kitchen and laid him on the floor behind the center counter to partially hide the body should someone come into the kitchen while McLeod was still in the house. He did not want his only avenue of escape to be denied him when it was time to exit.