Immune (The Rho Agenda #2)(75)
“Ya’at’eeh.”
The Navajo greeting turned Janet toward Tall Bear as he stepped out of the juniper thicket some thirty feet east of the hut. Over his shoulder, he carried a large burlap bag.
“Tall Bear. It’s good to see you.” Janet smiled as she moved toward him. She doubted if anyone else besides Jack could slip up on her unnoticed the way Tall Bear could.
“I figured you would be getting low on groceries,” he said, pausing just long enough to return her hug before ducking into the hogan to set down the heavy bag. Straightening once again, Tall Bear nodded. “I like what you’ve done with the place.”
Janet’s laugh brought the hint of a smile to his lips.
It had become a standard joke on these delivery visits. The hogan was a typical eight-sided female hogan with log walls, dirt-covered roof, dirt floor, and no windows. Its single door opened to the east in order to welcome the dawning of the new day. At one time, it had been the principal type of Navajo family abode, and although still common, they were rarely used for housing anymore. This far back on the reservation, the old building, the accompanying small mud sweat lodge, windmill, outdoor mud oven, and water trough might as well have been invisible, so well did they blend with the rugged canyon country that surrounded it.
The only furniture was the small square table, four wooden chairs, and a wood-post double bed. Janet had taken a couple of the tanned deer hides from the walls and spread them out as rugs. She had also fashioned a lampshade of sorts for the bare bulb, which dangled on a cord from the ceiling. A large pottery water basin and pitcher sat atop a crate against the north wall, the closest thing this place had ever seen to running water.
A refrigerator was out of the question. Even a small one would drain too much of the precious electrical supply that the windmill generator could produce. That was dedicated to her laptop, the single light bulb, and her one luxury, a small oscillating fan.
“So what goodies have you brought me today?”
“Well, let’s see.” Tall bear dumped the contents of the sack onto the floor.
“Hmmm. Meals ready to eat. Beans. Freeze-dried entrees. The works.”
“Don’t forget the toiletries. You know the elders didn’t have the luxury of those things.”
Janet raised an eyebrow. “Much as I love roughing it, TP is high on my priority list. But where are my manners? Thanks again for hauling all these supplies up here. Have a seat while I get you some water.”
Tall Bear slid onto one of the chairs as Janet grabbed the pitcher, filling a tin cup and setting it on the table in front of her friend. It was odd to think of him that way, but that was exactly what he had become. The tall Navajo cop, with his long raven hair hanging below his shoulders, had proven his reliability time and again. Not only had he guided them to this remote hideaway, but he had been their only means of getting critical supplies from town. While she and Jack were capable of sustaining themselves off the land indefinitely, Tall Bear’s help had given them a base of operation.
Besides that, Jack trusted the man, and Jack’s intuition about such things was never wrong.
“So what’s the news from civilization?” Janet asked, sliding into a chair across from him.
“Internet down?”
“You know what I mean. What’s the local gossip?”
Although she had access to all the news sites, Janet had found the Navajo a font of information. For one thing, he was a cop and a damn good one. More importantly, he was privy to a network of sources that stretched across the country and beyond, a web of communication links between native communities dotting North, Central, and South America. Despite all her years working with the CIA, DIA, and NSA, Janet was stunned by the true reach and capabilities of that network. As tightly secretive as was the cell structure within Al Qaeda and its affiliates, the cellular nature of these native communities put that to shame. And, invariably, within each grouping of native people there was a subgroup in which the old longing for independence ran deep.
Tall Bear leaned back in his chair, rocking it back until it balanced precariously on two legs, his hand interlaced in his long, black hair.
“It’s not good. This nanite goo is the new meth, only the world is addicted to this stuff even before they’ve taken a hit. Shit. Everybody wants it.”
Janet nodded. “From what I see on the net, the UN is pushing pretty damn hard to speed the public release. Luckily the president seems to have had a change of heart on how fast he wants to push it out the door.”
“Only because some of his right-wing base is in rebellion. But he won’t be able to hold back too long. There are whispers about a new black market source for the stuff, distribution through the drug cartels, that sort of thing.”
“It’s gonna get ugly.”
“Already is. Beheading has become the preferred gangland method of execution. They don’t know who’s on the juice, and they just aren’t taking chances.”
“So is the new source real?”
“Hard to say for sure. At first, the stuff was only available from the blood of someone who had undergone the treatment. But it seems like there is just too much available on the market. Of course, a lot of the stuff is probably fake.”
“It’s pretty easy to check whether someone got the real stuff or not. Just stick a knife in them.”
“And that’s the trouble. There are way too many reports of freak healers to think they are all false. For there to be a second source, someone might have reverse engineered the formula.”