William Krueger: Red knife

Blessing spoke with Ortega and Estevez. He pointed to his watch and then to the plane and said something that made the others laugh. They talked quietly for another minute or so, then Blessing began to gesticulate fiercely and his voice rose, so that Cork could hear him.

“No. There’s no negotiation. You’re on Anishinaabe land. In Chicago, in L.A., things may be different, but here what the Anishinaabeg say goes. Here, we make the rules.”

In a blur of motion, Estevez had Blessing pinned to the warehouse. The sound of Blessing’s body slamming against the door exploded the stillness of the morning. Before Blessing could recover, the third man had his assault rifle inches from Blessing’s temple.

“Now?” Manypenny asked anxiously. His fingers were tight around his rifle and he gripped the radio fiercely. He held his body tense and his breathing was shallow and fast.

“Relax,” Kingbird said. “If we try anything now, they’ll kill him. And something about this is still off.”

Manypenny yanked his eyes from the scene in front of him and looked nervously toward Kingbird. “What do we do?”

Before Kingbird could reply, a familiar old voice hollered, “Boozhoo.”

George LeDuc had come from out of nowhere. While the attention was focused on Blessing, he’d opened the door of the Silverado and, using it as a shield, he’d laid his rifle through the open window and sighted on the men.

“What the hell does he think he’s doing?” Kingbird whispered.

“Go home, old man,” Ortega called out in a jovial tone. “Go home and take a nap.”

“I might do that,” LeDuc allowed. “After you let my young friend go.”

“Old man, you should choose your friends more wisely. This one, he won’t be your friend long.” Ortega squinted at LeDuc and grinned. “What is that you’re holding? Hell, that rifle’s as old and worthless as you.”

“The bite of an old bullet will hurt as much as a new one.”

“You’re outnumbered, jefe. ”

“There are only three of you. Target practice for me.”

“Only three?”

Ortega whistled and from the plane spilled three more men, all carrying assault rifles. They spread out quickly along the shoreline.

“The rear guard,” Kingbird said with satisfaction. “That’ll be all of them.”

“Old man, if I give the word, what’s left of your body won’t even feed the worms. Put the rifle down and we’ll talk.”

“Let my friend go and we’ll talk.”

Ortega shook his head slowly, as if he couldn’t quite believe this old man. “Cojones,” he said and laughed. He spoke to Estevez. “Let him go.”

Estevez released his hold on Blessing and stepped back. In that instant, Blessing tackled Ortega and threw him to the ground.

“Now!” Kingbird said.

“Fire!” Manypenny cried into his walkie-talkie, then took up his rifle.

Kingbird pulled off the first round. A red bloom appeared on the warehouse wall directly behind the man holding the assault rifle and he collapsed. From all sides of the woods enclosing the warehouse came the crackle of gunfire. The men on the shoreline staggered, and one by one they went down, their bodies rent by a hail of bullets and their weapons unfired. Estevez drew a huge handgun from a holster under his jacket, but Cork, who’d had the man in the sights of his Remington the whole time, put a round into his shoulder and Estevez spun to the ground.

“Go, go, go!” Kingbird yelled and leaped to his feet.

“Close in!” Manypenny hollered into his walkie-talkie.

They rushed the warehouse, sending up war whoops as they came, a sound to put ice in the blood of the fiercest enemy, and they enclosed the fallen Lords in a loose circle of readied weapons. Blessing still fought with Ortega on the ground. Ortega had produced a knife and was trying to wrench his hand free of Blessing’s grip in order to use it.

“That’s enough!” LeDuc shouted.

Suddenly aware of the situation that had developed around him, Ortega ceased his struggle. He let go of the knife and it fell to the dirt with a soft thud. Blessing pushed himself free of the man, stood up, and took his place with his comrades.

“Check the others,” Kingbird said, gesturing to Cork and Manypenny.

Cork checked two of the Lords who’d formed what Kingbird termed “the rear guard.” They’d each sustained multiple gunshot wounds and were stone dead. He waded through reddened lake water to where Elgin Manypenny stood over the third member of the rear guard. The youngest of the Red Boyz, a kid who shaved at most once a week, stared down into the face of another kid not much older than he. Incredibly, the Latin Lord was still breathing.

“What do we do?” Manypenny asked Cork.

Kingbird called to them, “Put a bullet in their heads to be sure.”

Manypenny put the muzzle of his rifle inches from the head of the kid in the water, then hesitated.

“I’ll do it,” Cork told his young companion.

“No,” Manypenny said. He fired point-blank and turned quickly away.

Cork took care of the other two, then called out, “It’s done.”

Though badly wounded, Estevez was still moving. He pressed a hand to his right shoulder, where his jacket was soaked with blood, and he tried to sit up.

“Help him.” LeDuc signaled to Gagnon and McDougall, who grabbed the wounded man and yanked him to his feet. Estevez’s tan, Latino face had gone white-loss of blood or shock or both-but he angrily shook off the hands of the Shinnobs who’d lifted him.

LeDuc loomed over Ortega. “Get up,” he ordered.

Ortega stood slowly. He looked at Blessing then LeDuc. “Going to scalp me?”

LeDuc said, “We’re going to give you a choice. You can fly out of here, or you can be burned alive along with the drugs in that warehouse.”

“You’re kidding.” He stared into LeDuc’s eyes and saw that the Ojibwe leader had spoken truly. “Hell, I’ll fly out of here.”

“There’s one thing you have to do first.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“Kill Estevez.”

“What?”

“This is the father of Alexander Kingbird,” LeDuc said, indicating Will. “He demands justice. It’s right that he should see this man die. Toss me his pistol.” LeDuc reached toward Neadeau, who’d picked up Estevez’s weapon. When LeDuc had the pistol, a nine-millimeter Beretta, he ejected the clip and emptied it of all but a single round. He slapped the clip back into place, worked the round into the chamber, and held the firearm out toward Ortega. “Kill him and you’re free.”

“We’re Latin Lords. We’re hermanos,” Ortega said defiantly.

“All right,” LeDuc said. “Then you burn with your brother. Tie him up,” he ordered.

“Wait,” Ortega said.

The smell of burnt powder lay heavy in the air. The sun, a fiery ball just risen, burned across the lake. The men stood waiting in the charged silence of the morning.

“All right,” Ortega finally said.

LeDuc handed him the weapon. “Everyone clear away.” LeDuc and the other Anishinaabeg retreated a few yards, leaving Ortega alone with Estevez.

The two hermanos faced each other, standing in sanguine sunlight, casting shadows that stretched across the ground three times as long as the men were tall. Ortega raised the pistol until the barrel was level with the other man’s eyes.

“Fuck you, puta, ” Estevez spit at his executioner.

No more than five feet separated the two men, but a long silence separated one moment from the next. Ortega stood as if cast from bronze, his arm outstretched. Then came the crack of the exploding cartridge powder. The bullet pierced Estevez’s forehead, slammed against the back of his skull, shattered the bone like a china plate, exited tumbling amid a bloody spray of fragmented brain, flattened itself against the tempered hasp of the lock on the warehouse door, and fell to the ground. The end of a journey, Henry Meloux might have said, that had been meant for it from the moment it was born out of molten lead.