Chapter 26

I got in touch with Linc and convinced him to take Gwina to ‘sniff’ around the mechanics at the Burnside North Airport Mechanical shed. There were only four guys working there, and they were going over some of the vehicles people routinely used. There wasn’t enough business for aircraft mechanics at an airport with only one plane, I guess.

Linc had dealt with lots of strange requests from me, over the years, so I guessed that taking a three-legged dog on his investigation didn’t surprise him.

Alex had come into my meditation room with me and connected with Gwina. He was pleased to be doing something useful.

I thought that we should assign dogs to come out for assignments and exercise with the guards. I mean – these dogs were used to having ‘jobs’. I needed to seriously apologize to them: merely guarding my hacienda wasn’t enough. They weren’t robots.

Alex was trying to link to the men that Gwina was meeting. The mechanics were all pleased to meet with him, and Linc was just acting as a handler, at this point. After a ‘once around’, Linc called the four men together.

“Men,” he started, “Lexi’s airplane was bombed while it was on the ground in the Shoshone Reservation, yesterday. I’m going to question you individually, since the Dassault was run thru this shop a few days ago. I don’t have any reason to think anyone here is responsible. It’s just a matter of routine.”

’Good dog, Gwina. I can smell it like you can.’ Alex sent to the dog. She didn’t use words, of course, but she could communicate the meaning. ’Mom. That third guy got very nervous when Linc said he was going to question them. I quickly got into his mind, through Gwina. He got a lot of money and placed some things in the engine compartment.’

I interrupted her. ‘Great Alex! I piggybacked on your link to that guy, which you got through Gwina ... He’s Ramon Blue Horse, a Navajo. I’m going to call Linc on the phone.’

Ring ... Ring.

“Linc here.”

“Hi, I was listening in as you questioned those four mechanics. One of them, a Navajo named Ramon Blue Horse, showed up as the guilty party.”

“Oh. Uh huh.”

“I take it you’re still standing near them,” I said.

“Right.”

“You should probably question all four, but you can concentrate on the one who did it. I got a vision of a blue horse. I thought that was strange: a bright blue horse. Anyway, the guy got paid a lot of money. See if you can find out his paymaster.”

“Yeah. Just what I was gonna do after dinner. Bye now.”

’Mom. There was flicker of a bad guy, off in the hills. He was looking through a telescope.’

’A. that’s a rifle sight,’ Jim threw in. ’Sorry, I just picked up what A. was seeing.’

I just passed over Jim’s comment, but I pushed Alex further. ’Alex, are you sure it’s a bad guy? Not a hunter or something? Maybe he was sighting in on an animal? I know you’re sensitive to animals. What was he looking at?’

’Yeah, Mom. It was far off, and I didn’t get a good reading. But he was definitely a bad guy. It was not a hunter. I’ve seen plenty of hunters. This guy was sighting in on a building. It was adobe, like the houses in Burnside North, and it was painted blue.’

Ring ... Ring.

“This is Linc.”

“Get to somewhere you can talk. Stay inside!”

“Yeah. I’m in the office. I was about to call in the supervisor. What’s up?”

“I got a brief vision. There’s a shooter in the hills. What color is the building you’re in?”

“Color? ... Uh. It’s got the Whirlwind logo on the garage doors, blue and white with black lettering. The other sides are blue.”

“The shooter was sighting in on an adobe building painted blue. Are there any other blue buildings in Burnside North? I think there are, if I remember right.”

“You sure about ... never mind. You wouldn’t call if you weren’t sure. Any way to get a better fix on him?” Linc said.

“You could take one of my Wokitas out with one of your scouts. Just be sure to tell them taikai teiku (pronounced teye-keye tee-ku). It’s Shoshone, and the only language they respond to. It means hunt quietly. And don’t put them on a leash. They’ll run off to maybe 10 feet to 50 yards. You won’t hear them until they find something, or they don’t find any people out there.

“Use their names. Like for Doyobi: doYObi TAIkai TEIku. When you want him or her to return to normal say doYObi pihYAamua. That means honeybee. We use that one so it wouldn’t be confused with anything you might normally say. The guards who watch the hacienda know most of the usual commands.

“That’s about all I can suggest.”

“Right.” There was the usual ten seconds of silence while Linc made plans. I watched mentally as he discarded several, and finally settled on one he liked.

Ring ... Ring.

“Hi, Linc. What’s up?”

“Wash, I’m at the Airport Maintenance shed, and Lexi just phoned me with her latest vision.”

“Oooooookay. That means more trouble.”

“Yeah,” Linc said. “She said there’s a shooter with what sounds like a sniper rifle somewhere in the hills. Not a real useful location for us to work with. She said he’s targeted on a blue adobe building. There must be several in BN, but I’m in one of them. How ‘bout you bring one of your trucks with a covered cargo hold in for ‘maintenance’ and plan on staying a half hour or so. Then pull out with three of our mechanics.”

“In the hills? That’s at least a half mile or so. Must be a good shot. Why do I think you’ve ID’d the bomber-mechanic?”

“You’d be right. Listen.” He relayed what I’d told him about using the dogs. “I’ll keep the villain here, and sit on him for some more information.” Linc was thinking that Lexi isn’t the only one who knows how to get info from somebody. I won’t even damage him – excessively. “Wash? Tell your scouts we want to take the shooter alive. I’m sure he’ll have some information for us.”

“Rog. I figure eight men for four dogs. The three-legged one won’t be much use trying to be quiet in the woods.”

“Haha. I’ve got Gwina here with me. He’s watching the mechanics now.”

...

The box truck arrived in about twenty minutes. They changed the oil, while Linc was interviewing Mr. Blue Horse. Before the questioning was done, the guy was in handcuffs and had a 150-pound dog staring him down. Linc went out to tell the other mechanics that they were going out in the back of the truck and that Blue Horse was staying behind in custody.

“Damn!” said one of the men. “He was a fuckin’ wizard with that airplane stuff.”

“Money. I bet he was in it for the moolah,” said another mechanic. “I know he liked to gamble. Mostly poker. He was in pretty deep to the guy who ran the table stakes game down in Burnside. His wife quit him ‘bout two, three months back, ‘cause he went through money faster’n a roadrunner chasin’ a snake.”

I had poured through Blue Horse’s memory while Linc was questioning him. A tall British guy had offered him $1 million to plant the three packages on the engines of the plane. One was a transmitter that was connected to the engine itself. He didn’t know exactly what it would transmit, but it would tell him when the plane was revving up to take off. The other two were some sort of explosives, hooked up to a pair of cell phones.

He didn’t like to kill the ‘boss lady’ – but that was a powerful lot of money. He’d get out of hock and take the rest to make some real money in Las Vegas. He got half, and was supposed to get the rest tonight.