As Mike walked into the town hall, he saw Ruth, older but still attractive with her long silky black hair, now tinged with gray, in two braids over her native dress. Ruth was busy working on a computer and did not notice Mike enter.
“Hello, Ruth.”
Ruth was startled to hear the familiar voice.
“Mike!” Ruth said as she looked up. She got up from her chair and hurried over to give Mike a bone-crushing hug. “Here, let me call Richard,” said Ruth excitedly.
Richard hurried over from the MacLaren Insurance Company down Main Street from Town Hall. Grayer, but still the lean and athletic Navajo Mike had come to know and love like a brother, Richard shook Mike’s hand vigorously.
“Mike, I’m so glad you could come. Johnny would have missed you terribly if you hadn’t come to the ceremony. How many years has it been since your last visit? Must be at least ten years. You were an attorney then, now you’re a big maven on Wall Street.”
“You haven’t done so badly yourself. I understand that you were elected tribal chairman last year.”
“Yeah, can you imagine little Richie MacLaren, tribal chairman? Scary, isn’t it?” joked Richard. “Come down to my office, I’ve got something for you.”
Mike and Richard walked the few blocks down to the offices of the MacLaren Insurance Company. The offices were located in a modern looking building with vast expanses of glass and wood, a rare commodity in southwest New Mexico.
“Do you like it?” said Richard. “It was finished just this January. Getting the Holloman Air Force Base account really made MacLaren Insurance, Mike. We really appreciated the help.”
“I’m glad I could give you a hand.”
As Richard and Mike walked into the antiseptic but inviting lobby of the MacLaren Insurance Company, Richard announced loudly, “Everyone, come meet Mike Liu, Johnny’s and my friend.”
All the Navajo employees of MacLaren Insurance dropped what they were doing and came forward to shake hands with Mike. Mike was impressed by how well his old friend had done. After the introductions, Richard ushered Mike into his second story office.
The wood-paneled office was impressive. Richard’s large mahogany desk was counterbalanced by the bright Native American colors of the couch and the Southwest Native American art that hung on the walls. On one wall was the skull of a bison behind which were two lances, with eagle feathers and colorful tassels. Distinctive Anazai pottery sat in the bookcase and credenza behind Richard’s desk.
“Have a seat,” said Richard, reaching into his desk’s right hand drawer. He took a package, wrapped in a colorful cloth, from the drawer and put it on his desk.
“On his last day, Johnny said that I should give this to you when his spirit left this Earth.”
He tenderly opened the colorful cloth wrapper revealing a dusty packet covered by an old, tattered cloth.
Richard reverently handed the dust-caked packet to Mike, who realized its significance immediately.
“Richard, I can’t accept this. It’s the medicine man’s talisman, his sacred bundle.”
“Mike, you must. Johnny’s wishes were precise. He said that Cha-le-gai was to have this packet,” said Richard, invoking the name that Johnny Thapaha had given Mike decades ago on that lonely mesa top. “The tribal council was reluctant at first, but they respected my father-in-law’s wish. Johnny’s last words to me were that you would know what to do.”
Mike remained silent.
The moving Navajo ceremony had a cathartic effect on Mike. Just as Johnny Thapaha’s spirit was finally freed from its earthly bonds to fly with the hawks, Mike felt a rush of emotion freeing him from the bonds that had tied his own soul for so many years.
Much later that night, Mike sat in his motel room with Johnny Thapaha’s packet on the desk. Hesitantly, he opened the dusty packet. As he did, pieces of rotted cloth fell away. Finally, Mike was able to examine the contents of the packet. The contents were quite ordinary. Some eagle feathers, some bones of avian origin, a dried salamander, dried peyote buds, and a small cloth packet.
As Mike unwrapped the small cloth packet, he immediately noticed the sparkle of the object’s metallic surface. He picked up the strange thin, chrome-like plate and looked at it, turning it over and over again, wondering how something like this had come into Johnny Thapaha’s possession. The size of a credit card, the thin metallic plate had a luminous quality. There was, however, no writing or other marks to distinguish the plate.
Mike couldn’t see the significance of the metallic plate. It must have been some piece of metal that Johnny Thapaha found in the desert, maybe out in the glide path of the jets landing at Holloman Air Base. He thought that it was funny that Johnny Thapaha had never mentioned this to him, even after the old man had begun to trust the Chinese-American.
Mike experimented holding the plate in a variety of positions, the shiny plate of metal was simply just that — a shiny metallic plate. No matter how Mike held the plate, he could see nothing. Mike wondered what Johnny Thapaha saw in it.
Mike was about to put the curiosity away when he held the plate to the table lamp in a fashion so that the lamp’s light skipped over the surface of the plate like the rays of the rising sun. Out of its shiny metallic surface, an amazingly clear holographic image arose.
“Holy shit,” said Mike.
The white T-38 Talon taxied off the active runway and on to the special operations staging area. The screaming of its jet turbine engines abruptly died as the T-38 came to a stop inside the hangar. The hangar was guarded by two platoons of Marines in full combat gear, Kevlar helmets and vests. In their hands were AR-15 assault rifles with laser scopes.
The early evening night was punctured by the brilliant Klieg lighting inside the hangar, beacons piercing the night sky, and the red pencil thin beams of the laser scopes of Marines patrolling the hangar and its surroundings.
A Patriot missile launcher sat on the tarmac, its radar actively searching the sky for any hostile attack.
Overhead, the two flights of F-15Cs that had accompanied the T-38 from Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, made one final fly over of Andrews Air Force Base and screamed into the night.
The pilot of the T-38 popped open the two canopies of the airplane and Mike climbed out of the second seat.
Mike took off his flight helmet and saw six dark gray Suburbans waiting in the hangar just outside the glaring ring of light from the Klieg lights beamed at the T-38.
Chief Warrant Officer David Lee stepped up to the T-38, saluted and said, “Welcome back to Maryland, Commander Liu.”
“Thank you, Mr. Lee,” said Mike. “I see you’ve recovered.”
“Yes, sir.”
Mike looked beyond Lee at the six Suburbans lined up in the hangar.
Lee noticed the look. “Those just brought us here, Mr. Liu. The President has put CSAC on Priority One, Red, which as you know is tantamount to war status. We’re to transport you to the National Security Agency by helicopter.”
As Lee finished his comment, Mike could hear the thumping sounds of helicopters landing just outside the hangar. As Mike, with a briefcase handcuffed to his left wrist, walked toward the Bell Sea Ranger, Model 205, TH-57, he looked up into the sky to see six other helicopters, including four Sikorsky HH-53H Super Jolly Green Giants, floating in the air. Each of the Sikorsky’s was armed with General Electric GAU-2B/A 7.62 millimeter miniguns.
“Holy fuck,” said Mike. “It’s the Apocalypse.”
“We didn’t want anything to go wrong,” said Lieutenant Albert Twoomey, as he joined Mike and Lee.