**South Dakota, James McMurty**
Lightening sizzled on the horizon as Burk handed his field glasses to Wolf, thankful once again that he had someone more experienced working on land with the team. They'd been driving west across South Dakota toward these storms all day and he hoped to hell they weren't about to encounter something serious. The heavy clouds seemed to press down with the promise of change in the air. He leaned against the hood of the dusty truck and pointed out over the snow dusted prairie rolling away in front of them. "west-northwest, maybe 2 kliks off. You think that's a fire?" He shuddered remembering the last time he'd gotten too close to a wildfire. Every sailor learned to fear fire early on in their training but for him it was his worst nightmare.
Wolf scanned the area until he saw a large dust cloud billowing up from the ground with no apparent source. Adjusting the focus on the glasses he zeroed in on the land surface and saw that there was probably a steep gully and whatever was making the dirty plume was probably down in it. "I don't think so. I've worked a few fires down in OZ. Looks like there's a wash or something down there and.." As he watched a few cattle scrambled up over the lip. "Someone's driving cattle along it."
Burk relaxed against the hood, thankful that it wasn't a storm or a fire. "Must be a lot of cows to make that much dust."
"Whoa cool! I want to see. I didn't know people herded cows in the Dakotas. I thought that was only way out west." Diaz called from where he was standing lookout behind their trucks.
From the front of the truck Miller scoffed. "Haven't you ever heard of an Omaha steak?"
"Naw mate. I think those are dairy cows." Wolf shook his head. "Why would they move the cows rather than just fill a truck with milk?"
Miller scoffed again and came around to Burk's side of the truck. Wolf passed the glasses over. "You don't drive dairy cows. You truck them. Too much moving around reduces the milk production." He peered through the lenses oblivious to the bemused glances around him. "But…I am wrong. Those are Holsteins."
"What's a holstein?" Diaz was leaning over the hood now too. Burk knew he ought to scold him for leaving his post but they were wide open on a major interstate in the flattest land he'd ever seen. If a car approached they'd all know it five minutes before it got there.
"It's a breed of cow. Dude, Florida has tons of cows. How do you not know this?" Miller rolled his eyes. He'd been flip flopping between playing big brother and playing Mr. Cool with Diaz ever since they left St. Louis. God these guys were young! Of course, Burk supposed Wolf might feel the same way about him. Half the time he felt ridiculous ordering the other man around given his comparative lack of experience. But Wolf never seemed offended and even seemed to relish the role of all around git-r-done guy.
"Lay off him Miller. I'm practically from Wisconsin and I know nothing about livestock. If you grew up in a city you probably wouldn't know a cow from a bull either."
Diaz gave Miller a chin bump. "That's right. In Miami the only way we like to see our beef is between two buns."
He failed to bite back his bark of laughter when Wolf gave an exaggerated wink and said, "Yeah, I've heard that about guys in Miami." Diaz paused as what he'd said sank in but then he laughed easily.
Red faced, Miller stepped back from Diaz. "Oh! Oh I thought you were into girls. Ah, well I guess I was wrong then." His eyes moved quickly from the truck to the horizon to Wolf and then the truck again, seeking anything but Diaz to look at.
"Since I'm pretty sure I'm the only one of our little party with a girlfriend right now, not counting Flickertail…" He gestured toward the truck where the Vice President was waiting patiently in the backseat. "…you don't have to worry. I'm not after your man-cherry Miller." Burk wondered if he had ever been so deliberately rude in his plebe days.
Miller had come a long way though. Instead of refusing to banter and leaving an awkward silence like he might have a few months ago, he stared Diaz down. "You do not have a girlfriend. We'd totally know."
Diaz's cheeks darkened. "Ok, Ok, she's not exactly officially a girlfriend in the will-you-go steady-with-me sense that you're thinking of but there's a girl that I have an understanding with."
"I have never seen you hanging out with any girls except Kat and…" Miller shot back. "Ohhhh." His eyes opened wide. "How did I not know? Did you know?" He turned to Wolf. "Did you Sir?"
"Not my business." What could he say. He'd assumed it was the case but he really had no idea. Neither did he want to have an idea what the young guys got up to in their free time. If they wanted to call it friends with benefits or an understanding or whatever, what did he care?
"So you and Kat…"
"You'll have to get your own girlfriend to figure out how it all works Miller, but yeah, I'm most definitely not interested in anyone else."
"Hummph." Miller pulled the glasses back up to his eyes, effectively ending the exchange. "Looks like they are headed the same way we are, toward Williston Sir."
Wolf flattened a map against the hood of the car. "We're about half a day away. I guess if other people are traveling in that direction then that's a good sign that it won't be like Sioux City." There was a collective shudder as they remembered the sight that had greeted them when the Rio Grande sailed into Sioux City. Wolf jerked a thumb toward the VP. "You want me to give him an update on the plan?"
Burk nodded, once again glad to have such an experienced member on the team. "Yeah, I suppose we ought to. Remind him how important it is to stay in the car until we can determine if the MCF is active in the area. We don't want him being recognized and drawing attention to us before we figure out the lay of the land." The Vice President had already proven to be less obedient than the President. He always insisted on being in the think of things, even when that put himself in danger.
Twenty miles down the road, where it was just beginning to rain lightly, they came to a road block made out of chain link fences and trucks. Despite the cure making it's way west on it's own, people were still suspicious of outsiders and trying to isolate themselves. This one wasn't the first or the most elaborate barrier they'd seen in the last few days but almost twenty men, some of them mounted on painted ponies, milled about. There were ruts worn in the mud and snow where cars had crossed the median to head back the other way. Dozens of colorful flags that Carlton had never seen before were tied on to the fence while poles elevated two larger flags above the rest. A man with his arms crossed underneath a white flag with a kind of rainbow pattern on it. On the other side an equally fierce man stood under a light blue flag with a ring on it. It took him a minute to realize it wasn't a sunshine, but a ring of white tents around a smaller yellow circle in the middle of the flag. Both were wearing blue medical gloves and face masks.
Burk slowed the truck and nodded to Diaz who slid his sidearm down into the space between the door and seat. He glanced in the rear view to see Miller and Wolf cleaning up the cab of the SUV behind him.
"We're going with the same story?" Diaz asked, low under his breath. The kid had good instincts to recognize that there was something different about this stop.
"Yeah, let me do as much of the talking as possible." He stopped fully but waited for someone to approach before rolling down the window. The cold air smelled of damp fields and a smoky fire.
A tall man in a sheepskin lined denim jacket pushed up a pair of mirrored sunglasses to hold back his long dark hair. He felt the man's dark eyes sweep over him and the interior of the truck and noted that he was careful to stand out of arm's reach. "Have you had the cure today?"
Had he had it today? He was cured. But something that Ray and Danny had reported from the prison jogged his memory. "Yeah, back in Sioux City."
"We don't have the cure here so you cannot stay."
OK, so not the friendliest bunch then. Two men immediately split off to the back and he saw three more with the group behind them. Time to ramp up his best Sunday school charm. "Hi there." He gave his warmest smile. "How are you today? Me and my buddies are trying to get up to Williston."
"Can't get to Williston from here." The man crossed his rifle over his chest and stared at Burk.
As they had done a few other times, Ray leaned forward and handed Burk a map. "Dios! I told you I was bad with maps. I hope there are still jobs available when we get there." He laid on the accent thick and scowled petulantly. Every other time the guards had corrected Ray and told him how this was ordinarily the right way to go. Then they would play up a story about how they were racing to get up there and get jobs before all the other out of work oil laborers in Louisiana and Texas heard about it and took all the jobs. By the time they promised not to get out of the car the guards would ease up and let them through.
But this time Burk had a feeling that story wasn't going to be enough. He ignored the man's direction to turn around. "When the old man finally made contact with his mother and she said there was work up 'round his home in Williston, we got organized and headed this way. You know anything about that? We've come all the way from Louisiana hoping to find jobs in the patch."
The guard frowned. "Don't sound like you're from Louisiana. How about you hand over some ID?" He held out a clear plastic bag so they dutifully dropped in their driver's licenses. The man signaled to his buddies behind him that the other car needed to show ID too. He stepped to the back corner of the truck Burk was driving and he had to strain his ears, but other than "The big guy's an Aussie." He couldn't make out what they were saying. Shit. He wasn't good at going with the flow and deviating from the plan the way Danny was and he wasn't able to see ten steps ahead the way Chandler did. He didn't have Tex's glib tongue either.
"Why the bag?" Ray whispered.
"I don't think they know about the contagious cure. That way they can read the ID's without touching them."
Unbidden he thought of Ravit. She would have excelled at something like this. Knowing her she'd have these guys eating out of her hand so well she'd be ten miles down the road before they figured out they had been taken in by a pretty face. A memory of her comments on board the Solace almost drew a snort from him. She probably would have just gunned it and taken off. But with two cars and no pretty face, there was no way they'd get away without someone getting hurt. Panic drilled away at his stomach, making it hard to sit still.
The guy in the sheepskin jacket approached the window again. Shit, shit, shit. He still had no idea what to say. "What would five guys from four different states and a foreign country be doin' in Louisiana?"
The fingers that were gripping the steering wheel tightened. He tried to channel his best Danny Green and just go with it. "I told you we were working in oil, didn't I? We were all on a team together. Rode out the flu on a rig. We're just trying to find work, somewhere, any where. We went to Texas but they aren't drilling there, just pumping."
"Why not stay in Louisiana? Now that the MCF is distributing the cure it should be safe there."
"Yeah but those Navy guys are making it hard to do business in the Gulf. A lot of platforms are still shut down. Too risky bringing ships in and out what with the chance of getting shot at by something from one of their boats. Lost a friend that way, decided to find something else." Sorry, sorry for using your memory this way; he silently apologized to Ravit as he let the grief show on his face.
The man studied him for a bit before finally relaxing the grip on his gun. "You know anything about the Navy stuff? We heard the President was in St. Louis. We were thinking of sending a party, to renegotiate our treaties while we can. But then we heard a ridiculous story about ships in the Mississippi river and realized we were better off staying put. By the time the US wants to mess with us again we'll be stronger anyway."
"I think the thing about the ships mught be true, The President is in Saint Louis. We came through that way on our way North." Burk leaned back so the guy could see Ray talking. The kid was much more convincing that he could ever be.
"Hrmph. Someone radio Yellowleaf and Ferguson. We'll escort these guys through." The lead guard called over his shoulder inciting a flurry of activity. Turning back to Burk he said, "The only work worth doing in Williston is for the MCF. No one else can get the cure there. They're looking for people with oil skills though, asked us to send them through our territory. So we'll bring you through."
The flapping of the flag behind him jogged a memory of something he'd seen in the news before they sailed from Norfolk. "Let us through where?"
"Our land." The man's firm reply suggested he shouldn't question it but still, it was a puzzle why the MCF was even interested in a place so far off the beaten path like South Dakota in the first place.
"Whose land?" as soon as he asked it dawned on him.
"The People's. This is the Cheyenne River Reservation boundary according to the 1846 treaty. After that the highway crosses through the Standing Rock Reservation. Since none of you are of the People, the Lakota Nation will permit you entry with appropriate escort only. Unless you can show that you are a member of one of our allied nations, that is."
"The USA isn't your ally?"
"Not right now they aren't. That new President hasn't even sent a single envoy to spread the cure to us. Now, we're used to being forgotten. But given that the MCF had a team here only a few days after the radio broadcast announcing the President's arrival in St. Louis and our First Nations friends tell us that their king had someone to them days before that event, we see where our allegiance should lie. The relationship with the US has always been tenuous and we're ready for a better offer. But, I suppose all that means nothing to you."
Burk thanked the man and waited to be waved through. A younger man pulled out in front of him in a dusty Ford Ranger. One tail light was out and there was a large crack running through the back window of the cab. "Guess we follow them?" Ray asked.
"Guess so." The leader waved them through the gate and they headed down the highway. The Ford Ranger seemed to top out at about 55 so pretty soon they were rolling along vast tracts of dried grass, broken occasionally with a patch of bare dirt, leftover snow, or a rundown trailer home.
About thirty miles in they passed through a small town. It was basically a row of trailers along the highway. There weren't yards in the proper sense, not like the neighborhood he grew up in back in Chicago. But the area around the trailers was strewn with broken washing machines, cars, and playground equipment like some kind of dirty cloud of the residents' past lives. Ray stared out the window, his brows knit tightly. A few pinto ponies were tethered in a corral at one end of the street, hay stomped into the muddy earth. An old bath tub served as a watering trough. "Are all reservations like this? There's nothing here!"
Carlton sighed. He supposed that until this trip the kid hadn't seen much outside of South Florida. "Yeah, all the ones I've ever seen are." The closest he'd ever been to something like this was a bachelor's party at an Indian casino in Wisconsin and it had at least had a few restaurants and an RV park.
"Hmmm." Ray turned in his seat watching as the little town faded in the background. He did the same at the next one. "Is it like this on the ones out west, like Utah and Nevada, and Colorado?"
"I don't know Ray. I have spent most of my adult life at sea. Why, were you thinking of moving there?"
Ray snorted. "No, but I know someone back in St. Louis who grew up outside of a Ute reservation in Nevada. I'm just wondering if it was like this."
Ute? He eyed Ray sharply. He hadn't been on the President's tour of the midwest so he couldn't be the traitor. He wondered who the friend was and began running down the list of people who had been on the trip. The only person who had been there that he could recall Ray spending time with was Miller, but he grew up in Iowa so he couldn't be the one either. He'd have to give this whole thing more thought. Somewhere quiet. Preferably with a beer and maybe a nice warm shower. As they rolled on out of the little village there were some fields of broken corn stalks. A tractor was left in the middle of the field, a trailer hitched to the back. He recalled similar sights back in the midwest and wondered if any new messages had been sent about the trips this time.
It wasn't until 10 PM that night when they finally reached Bismark. In the end, the guys who escorted them across the reservations had been pretty nice. They'd stopped at a tiny shack and fed them some kind of fish and wild rice thing for dinner and given some advice on where to go and what to say if they wanted to get into an oil crew up in Williston. The Vice President had done a good job keeping his identity secret by claiming he had worked his way up the ladder to vice president of a small wildcat company. He seemed to know an awful lot about the oil industry for a guy that worked in railroads. It gave him the freedom to ask a lot of good questions, questions someone like Chandler would have though of too, but which Burk couldn't ask under his guise as oil laborer. Things like how were they getting supplies, medical care, and fuel out here. It turned out that the MCF sent a truck on a predefined route everyday, stopping in the little villages on a schedule to deliver their version of the cure and supplies.
"Sounds like the way the old company stores used to provide everything a worker needed, for a price." Observed the vice president.
The young guy introduced himself as Johnny Yellowleaf. He proudly informed them that he was Seneca but had moved west to be closer to his wife's family after college. "I grew up in a totally apple family so it wasn't until I moved here that I really understood the way the US government treated us. For almost two hundred years they have boxed us into this land, told us the land was ours, but then as soon as they want to do something, or some company bribes them with enough money, they tell us we can't set our own limits or control it. So far, the Mexicali's have been better. They asked us to tell them what we wanted in the new treaty negotiations. We wanted the cure and we wanted true sovereignty, and they were willing to give it to us.
"But what do you give them in return?" This came from Wolf. "I've seen this kind of thing all over the world and there's always a cost."
"We're guarding this part of their border. When you cross back out you'll be crossing into future MCF territory. Eventually, everything west of the Mississippi will belong to them or us."
"Is that what you want?" The Vice President clasped his hands over his plate and leaned in on his elbows. "To be part of the MCF? It sounds like they want to spread into this part of the country for the oil. I thought that was a problem?"
Yellowleaf shook his head. "What I want is impossible so it doesn't matter. They have shut off the pipelines crossing our sacred lands because it serves the US. This is good for us. Our people and the land cannot be separated. We are the People because of this land and this land is what it is because of us. Governments can't change that, but borders certainly can make it hard to live the lives we want."
At first he'd felt sad for Yellowleaf. He would never argue that the US had a great track record for treating people fairly or even for upholding what it actually said in the constitution about equality. After all, he'd grown up well aware that We the people might as well read We the white people with money. But now, after a few hours of contemplation along the dark road under his belt, he was angry: angry that the country he had loved despite its shortcomings was coming to disappoint him in so many ways, angry that the work he had to do might not help alleviate the injustices being committed by his very own government, and angry that it had taken something like the Red Flu to even know about this.
They were crowded into a hotel room for the night. Ray was already sound asleep on the floor; Wolf was in the shower; and Miller was playing solitaire as he waited for his turn. "Sir, I need to check in with Chandler. Do you want to join me?" He could care less if Findley joined him, but he was trying hard to give the guy a chance.
"Guess we gotta do it sometime." The Vice President frowned and began layering on winter-wear.
They trudged out into the frosty air of the truck and used the sat phone to call in. The ensign who answered informed him that Chandler was out viewing houses but Michener would like to talk to Findley instead. They waited while the President was transferred. It sounded like someone was physically carrying a wireless phone from Chandler's office in the East wing to Michener's in the West wing.
"Dennis, Lieutenant Burk, I trust everything is going OK?"
Findley cleared his throat and launched into a retelling of the day's events. When he described how the MCF was winning the loyalty of the locals and they in turn were blocking roadways Michener sighed heavily and the line fell silent for a few long moments afterward. "Like so many things, my hands are tied until we have a true legislative branch, which you well know we won't have until you round up some people to hold special elections in the states. But the sanctity of our borders is paramount I suppose." I suppose? What the heck had Carlton made a career doing if Michener was going to shrug and let pieces of their nation fall away so casually? "If you have any more run ins of that sort, let it be known that I will welcome their envoy in St. Louis at any time, but without a congress to ratify any treaties, they can not be validated."
Ever the consummate politician, Findley scowled but his tone remained agreeable. "I understand Sir. Yes, so far we've only been to two states and neither had anyone acting in a leadership capacity beyond the municipal level. We've been leaving that gingerbread trail to the Whitehouse so to speak. Hopefully it will pan out."
After he hung up Findley made no move to get out of the car. Carlton waited, wondering if he was expecting him to go around and open the door. The cold air outside was seeping into his bones, reminding him of the trip to the arctic only 8 months ago. Finally he sighed and made a move toward the door handle. The Vice President seemed to want more pomp and ceremony than the actual President did.
That was when Findley finally stabbed a finger into the dashboard. "Make no mistake, this new President has a lot to learn. Imagine if we negotiated with everyone the way he wants me to make concessions to the goddamn redskins!"
Carlton recoiled a if he had just been slapped. "Excuse me sir?"
"They've never shown one whit of gratitude for all that the government gives them. It's practically like giving aid to a foreign country, keeping these people living out here. And do you know why we do it? Because they aren't willing to move to where the jobs are. Could you do that, expect a check from the government to sit on your ass and contribute nothing to the economy?"
How the heck was he supposed to respond to that? This man was the Vice President for crying out loud. If anything happened to Michener he'd have to take orders from him. But his Mama's voice, telling him to always stand up for what was right, stuck in the back of his head. He might agree with Findley on the issue of welfare but he would never agree to different rights for different people. "You heard Yellowleaf, this land and these people are tied together. This isn't about the economy, it's about heritage."
"Heritage doesn't pay the bills son." And with that final patronizing word, Burk decided one thing; Michener may not be everything he'd hoped for in a president, but he would do everything in his power to keep him in office because this man would never be the leader his country deserved.
