Kage (15 page)

“Thank you, Sensei,” I said. “That was the sort of thing I

needed.”

“My pleasure, Dr. Burke,” he said, and sounded like he

meant it. He called the class to order and we began to line

up for the formal bow that would end the session. I started to

move down to the end of the line, but Hasegawa laid a gentle

hand upon my arm.

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Kage

“Oh, no.” He gestured beside him in the special spot

reserved for teachers. “You sit beside me here.”

When the students were seated, Hasegawa Sensei addressed

them. “I hope you were watching carefully this evening,” he

began. “It’s not often we get to see this sort of thing. Dr. Burke

will be with us for a short time. I hope that you use that time

to learn what you can from him.”

He called the group to attention, we bowed to the old man

in the wheelchair, then to each other. As the class broke up,

Hasegawa called to one of his senior students. “Keith, please

see whether we can rustle up a
hakama
to loan to Dr. Burke.” I

glanced over at the old man in the wheelchair. His eyes closed

slowly and he painfully, ever so slightly, inclined himself in my

direction.

As the week passed, I settled into a rhythm, sifting through

the papers at Westmann’s estate, working more eagerly with his

journals, and training with the Hasegawas in the evening. It

helped me feel a bit less adrift, more myself as I pursued what I

was coming to believe was a fruitless search for clues to a non-

existent crime related to Westmann’s death.

That night, after almost a week at the
dojo
I’d come out at

the end of a training session, still damp from the shower. The

street was a busy one, and if I expected a wash of stars across

the desert sky, I was disappointed—the city lights bled upward,

obscuring the heavens.

I was heading toward the car
.
Down the road an engine

roared into life. Cars whizzed past. I was loose and calm, with

the almost narcotic sense of well-being you get from a solid

workout. As I headed toward the car, a voice called my name.

I turned to see one of Hasegawa’s students, a burly guy with

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John Donohue

a military style haircut. He came up to me, casting a glance up

the street.

“Dr. Burke,” he repeated. I looked at him pleasantly, figur-

ing maybe he had a technical question. The expression on his

face was serious.

“Tony Villardi,” he said. “I’m with the Tucson P.D.”

“What can I do for you, Tony?”

He looked around again. “You know anyone in this town,

Dr. Burke?”

“No, not really. Why?”

“We tend to get out of the training hall at about the same

time every night. When I come out, I always look around, you

know?”

I nodded encouragingly.

“At first I thought it was just a coincidence, but I’ve been

watching all week.”

“Watching what, Tony?”

“Every night, there’s a car parked across the road. A couple

of guys are always in it. When you come out, they start up the

motor, wait for you to pull out, and follow you.”

So much for my powers of observation. “Did you run the

tags?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “It’s a different car every night. Different guys

for all I know. But it’s the same pattern. And I didn’t get a

good look, but it seems to me that these guys are sporting gang

colors.”

“Gangs?” I asked.

He nodded. “We got ‘em all over the area. They’re involved

in everything from dope to guns to border trafficking. You got

any reason to think you’ve run afoul of these people?”

“No,” I lied.

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Kage

He shrugged. “Maybe I’m imagining it, but I don’t think

so. You want to keep your eyes open, Dr. Burke. These guys are

not real smart, but they’re mean.”

I thanked him for the warning and drove back to the hotel.

My steering was a little wobbly because I kept trying to spot

gang members in my rearview mirror. My vigilance earned me

nothing except a few rude gestures from other drivers.

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7

Trackers

In the mesquite and dirt of the Tohono O’Odham reser-

vation, Oliver Jackson squatted, reading sign. The five other

members of his team waited patiently. They, too, could read

the significance in the boot prints they had discovered, but he

was the senior man and had been doing this for almost twenty

years. They waited out of respect, and because their trade

demanded it.

It was a time when infrared sensors and pilotless drones

were just a few of the hi-tech tools that Homeland Security

used along the Mexican border. But HSA was willing to use

almost any technique if it worked. And sometimes, the most

effective tools were the timeless use of men on the ground; men

who had been raised to read the subtle signs left in the desert,

and to track prey with a silent, dogged intensity.

All of Jackson’s men were Native Americans. They had

grown up in the outdoors hunting, tracking, and coming to

know the land in a way few people could. A Dineh, what most

people knew as Navaho, Jackson was stocky and compact, his

skin like leather from years in the desert sun. His short cropped

hair was just showing some silver in the tips. His dusty des-

ert camo uniform was rumpled, but his gear was meticulously

cared for and the CAR-15 slung across his back was well-oiled.

The Tohono O’Odham land stretches across southern Ari-

zona into Mexico, a vast area larger than the state of Connecti-

cut. Seventy-six miles of the border with Mexico are contained

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Kage

with the Tohono O’Odham territory. In the seventies, the

Tohono had agreed to let federal agents onto their land, but

only if they were Native Americans. It was the genesis of the

unit Jackson had served in for all these years.

Although the border was long and easily crossed, the best

routes combined terrain features that made crossings harder

to detect and also provided possible resting spots and water

sources. It narrowed down, somewhat, the choices for Jackson

and his men. They tracked smugglers through this remote land-

scape intercepting groups of men lugging sixty pound bales of

marijuana through the blasting heat of summer or the frigid

desert winter. And lately, the activity had been picking up.

Jackson’s team had been tracking a group of about ten

smugglers since before dawn. In places where they left tracks,

the team could see that their boot prints were deep and widely

spaced—a sure sign they were carrying heavy loads. The latest

imprints that Jackson looked at were clean ones, devoid of the

tracks of nocturnal animals or insects. He knew that the men

he was tracking were probably only a few hours ahead.

The smugglers were headed north, away from the border.

Jackson took out a map and laid it across his thighs. A thick

finger traced their route so far. He showed his team.

“Here,” he said. “They’re heading here.” The team nodded

in silent agreement. Smugglers would typically come across the

border and trundle their bales some forty miles north to little

used roads where they would be transferred to trucks. Today

was no exception.

The sun was high overhead, pounding down on the group as

they squatted amid the thorny scrub. One of the team noticed

a small piece of fabric clinging to a bush. He plucked it, bring-

ing it to his face and sniffed. He smiled and passed it on to

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John Donohue

Jackson, who cupped it in his hand and held it to his nose. The

scent of burlap. A smuggler had snagged his load on this bush,

leaving this thread in the passing.

“OK,” he said. “Huddle up.” The team clustered around

him. “Another hour or so and we should overtake these guys.”

He eyed his men: they squatted comfortably in the sun, eyes

invisible behind sunglasses. They drank quietly at camel-back

canteens; the small sips veterans take who know water disci-

pline. Nobody seemed tired. Everyone was eager for the hunt.

“When we start to get close, I want to hold up and get ourselves

set. The briefing last night said that the natives are restless.”

His men grinned at that: brief flashes of white teeth in dark

faces. They
were
the natives.

“Border Patrol units have been fired on recently. The num-

ber of incidents is increasing. And the armaments being used

are not your typical border guns.” Jackson scanned the jum-

bled terrain that stretched before them. “Something’s changing

out here. I can feel it. I don’t know what it is, but I don’t like

it…” He looked out into the far hills, straining to sense a clue

embedded in the gusting heat of the desert.

Jackson was a quiet man in the field. His team was used to

silence and comfortable with his quiet competence as a tracker.

But he was also a
hitaali,
a singer, among his people. He prac-

ticed the old ways of healing and the chantways of the Dineh.

There were times when his team members swore that his suc-

cess as a tracker was due to more than just skill.

Jackson was a legend, a man at home in the desert who

had an almost mystical link to the land. He could see min-

ute traces of a smuggler’s passing that nobody else noticed. He

could intuit a prey’s intention with almost no clues. It was said

he saw things on the wind.

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Kage

The team members looked at one another quizzically, but

made no sound. Their people knew of the power of the men

who could read signs in the air and see far distances. When

Jackson gazed off into the invisible world, it was best not to

rouse him. After a moment, Jackson stirred, returning to the

imminent. What was the lanky form he had seen, trotting

among the shimmering rocks?
A coyote. A bad sign.
He looked

down, taking a deep breath to shake off the sense of dread.

“When we get close, keep alert. Stay down and behind cover,

till I give the signal. I’ve got a feeling…”

He looked from one of his men to the other. They nodded

solemnly. “OK,” Jackson said, “let’s go.”

A sandy patch of open desert bore clear evidence of the

smugglers, a churned trail of boot prints leading to a dirt road

that was sketched in on Jackson’s map. The afternoon sun

began to take its toll, and even Jackson’s men began to tire.

Almost there,
he thought, checking his map. The others

sensed it too: Jackson could see the renewed eagerness of their

movement.
They love the hunt. But we’re tired. And eager. This is

when mistakes get made.

He held a hand up and waved it in a circle. The team col-

lected around him in the shadow of a sandstone rock that was

angled into the sand like a listing vessel. Jackson spread out the

map, pointing out terrain features and what seemed to him like

the likely route to the smugglers’ transfer point. He directed

individual members of the team to take up positions on high

ground overlooking the rendezvous site.

When he was sure that everyone knew their role, Jackson

unslung his rifle and pulled the charging handle back to load

it. His men did the same. Jackson paused and sniffed the wind.

He moved slowly up a rise, ears straining for sounds out of

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John Donohue

place. The land was too rough for clear line of sight and its

gnarled terrain created acoustic shadows that swallowed sound.

He knew that somewhere around this slope and downhill, the

road would come into view. But he was moving blind. And the

feeling of unease was growing stronger. He listened intently.

Wind. Birds calling in the distance. He sniffed the air: some-

times you could smell tobacco or the pungent aroma of the

marijuana bales. There was instead a faint oily scent, something

mechanical and deeply out of place.

He brought his weapon up and crept around the slope,

motioning his team into position with hand gestures. When

the road came into view, Jackson’s gut lurched.

The smugglers had reached the drop off point. But they

would never return. A late model Ford F-150 sagged, riddled

with bullet holes. He could see a body slumped over the wheel.

The smugglers’ bodies were scattered across the churned-up

sand of the rendezvous. The blood that had not seeped into

the dirt had thickened and grown black. Flies congregated and

birds were wheeling in anticipation.

Jackson and his men lurched warily down the slope and

checked for survivors. There were none: all the smugglers had

had their throats cut for good measure.
We were too
late, he

thought. The tire treads of multiple vehicles crisscrossed the

area. The marijuana bales were long gone.
Ambush.

“Bad medicine, Boss,” one of his men commented.