THE SKY WALKER

                                       Chapter 1   

Lone Wolf was not only the last passenger to arrive at the airplane; he rode out onto the tarmac in a golf cart and American Airlines drove rolling stairs to the plane so he could embark. For reasons still unknown, the father and daughter he covertly accompanied had switched flights at the last moment, leaving the other six bodyguards with tickets on the wrong flight. Only Lone Wolf had managed a ticket on the new departure and he alone now accompanied the duo.  

        He paused at the top step when blinding white flashes of lightning erupted inside a distant thunderhead. After the electricity scattered and dissipated, rolling thunder rumbled through which caused him to think back to his childhood days he had spent with his long ago deceased grandfather. When I was a child that Apache shaman told me to stay alert for signals in nature which might be messages from the spirit realm. Too bad the old healer died before he taught me how to interpret signs. How can I know what’s an omen and what’s not?  An energy show like that might mean something big is about to happen.

        He entered the airliner and immediately spotted his two charges in the first class section. They were easy to pick out of a crowd because four year old Jesse Sato stood on her aisle seat and danced while her father, Dr. Tai Sato, snoozed in the seat next to her. She wore little blue jeans with the cuffs turned up over white socks and red tennis shoes. Her white shirt was covered by a red, button-up sweater which she wore open. Her black hair parted in the middle except for bangs which had been chopped an inch above her eyes. The lowest hanging locks fell onto her sweater. A wire connected her ear to a MP3 player in her right hand as she jived to music only she could hear.

        As he approached her, Lone Wolf moved both of his carryon bags to his right hand, raised his left hand and said, “Give me five, little dancer.”

        She looked up, grinned, stepped up on the chair arm to look at him eye-to-eye and then she smacked his open left hand with her little left palm.

        “Now sake, mister,” she said and offered a hand so tiny he stuck out just two fingers – something small enough for her to grip. She grabbed them, shook twice and then hung on for stability as she took a little giant step back to her seat. First she peeked at her still sleeping father to see if he watched her, after which she released Lone Wolf’s fingers, waved goodbye and resumed dancing. He proceeded to the rear of the main passenger cabin smiling because the little extrovert amused him. He grinned all the way down the aisle until he saw his seat - between two other passengers in the row in front of the toilets.

        His current assignment was the result of a successful mission in Malaysia twelve years earlier, when he rescued twin four year old sisters even before a ransom had been demanded. After Malay authorities arrested the perpetrators, they discovered why the kidnappers never communicated a ransom demand for the children. They had planned to sell the girls to the lifelong enemy of Lone Wolf’s employer.  His boss, Hiroshi Kobayashi, was a Japanese x-patriot who lived in Singapore.  His mortal enemy, Katsumi Miura, still lived in Japan. Both men had been Yakusa Oyabans in their day, the Japanese equivalent of Mafioso Godfathers. After being defeated in their last gang war, Lone Wolf’s employer had fled Japan for Singapore where he purchased a high-rise building and turned it into a defensive bunker which he had not left in decades. Even though both adversaries were in their nineties today, Kobayashi and Miura’s hatred went back long before they established their leadership of crime families. It had begun when they were teenagers, yet their hatred endured to this day.

        Though Lone Wolf had been just one of a dozen men hired to try to find and rescue the hostages twelve years ago, luck had been with him. He remembered expecting a bonus for the successful rescue, and his shock at what he received instead. His crafty old Japanese boss had offered him two million dollars, twenty times what he had hoped for, but it wasn’t a bonus. The money came with one string attached.  It was a retainer for him to be on call if Miura ever attacked again.

        So here I am, he thought and returned to wondering why Dr. Tai Sato would switch flights and try to slip away from his own bodyguards. He and his daughter Jesse had been in Brazil for the funeral of Tai’s brother, who had recently been assassinated on a rural road leading to his farm. Lone Wolf had flown in on short notice and hired a Sao Paolo security company which provided the six bodyguards. He had personally monitored the funeral from a distance in the event suspicious vehicles or aircraft approached the Sato’s farm, but nothing happened. Lone Wolf had observed Tai and Jesse through long range binoculars, for almost a week in Brazil, and he had detected no threats at all until the airplane switch.

        Since the Sato’s new flight was sold out, Lone Wolf had paid a Brazilian student five thousand US dollars in cash for the young man’s seat. He even had to drag the ecstatic student to the airline counter with identification and then purchase another ticket for the newly available seat. Carrying cash paid off yesterday, he thought. I can’t wait to hear what the bill is for what the airlines refer to as concierge service. He had put that on a credit card with the amount to be filled in later by the airlines, depending on how many services they provided.

*  *  *

        Soon after they touched down in Los Angeles, Lone Wolf grabbed both his bags from the overhead compartment and hurried toward the front of the plane only to have an obese woman with a gigantic ass block the aisle. She carried the size butt that is charged two tickets to fly. The other isle was also jammed, so he waited.

        Monday pedestrian traffic at LAX customs was heavy and he silently cursed when he did not see the Satos in the immigration lines. As soon as he set foot on U.S. territory, he raced to the American Airlines domestic desk, checked his bags, received his boarding pass to the flight to San Diego and dashed the length of their concourse, but he never saw the Satos. As he jogged back toward the terminal, he scanned inside every business he passed. Eventually he experienced relief when he spotted Jesse inside a cafeteria-style restaurant.

        He entered the eatery and watched the little girl again entertain people around her. This time she walked in slow motion, trying to not spill food or drink from a tray that was huge for her body size. She stepped slowly and deliberately, like a little gymnast practicing on a balance beam for the first time. When she approached her father, he grabbed her tray with one hand, pulled his body over their plastic bench seat with the other and somehow managed to help his daughter up without a third hand. That must take practice, Lone Wolf thought.

        Customers at booths and tables who had been watching Jesse cheered and applauded at her tray’s spill-free arrival.  She smiled and waved at them, obviously pleased with her success. A couple at the booth behind the Satos stood up to leave, so Lone Wolf picked up an empty tray, skipped the food line and claimed the still messy table. Even before he finished pushing clutter away from him, he felt three taps on his shoulder. He turned around and there stood Jesse at eye level again, facing backward while standing on her bench seat. She grinned and showed him a mouth full of white milk teeth.        

        “Don’t bother the man, Jesse,” her father said. “Let him eat his meal.”

        “I not bother his meal,” she argued. “He forgot to get food.”

        Lone Wolf offered her the same two fingers of his left hand as the night before. “Hi Jesse,” he said. “I’m Josh.”

        He used his Anglo name, the one on his passport, even though most everyone he knew called him the English translation of his Apache name, Lone Wolf.

        While Jesse vigorously shook his fingers, he looked to her father and explained, “I said hello to Jesse last night on the flight out of Sao Paolo while you snoozed. Since this booth opened up, I opted for conversation instead of breakfast.”

        “I remember you,” Jesse said and released his fingers.

        “Come join us, then,” Tai offered.  “At least our table is clean.  Jesse, you start to eat young lady. Our airplane will be boarding soon.”

        Lone Wolf heard Dr. Sato speak in Japanese to his daughter while he moved to sit opposite them. He offered a hand for Tai to shake and said,  “Josh Barnes, New York City.”

        “It’s nice to meet you, Josh. Tai Sato, San Diego.”

        “I Jesse Sato, San Diego. You speak good Englis for a Mexican.”

        Tai sighed and suggested, “That might not be a nice thing to say, Jesse.”

        She looked at her father with a curious expression and asked, “Why? I tell a Mexican his Englis is good. Why is dat not nice?”

        “He might not be Mexican, Honey.”

        “Everybody who looks like him in San Diego is Mexican,” she said.

        “I was born in this country, Jesse, so I’m American,” Lone Wolf told her. “My skin is dark because my ancestors are all Native Americans. Do you know what they are?”

        She shook her head as she chewed scrambled eggs.

         “I’m a full blooded Apache Indian.”

        Jesse’s eyes opened wide. She swallowed and asked, “Are you a real Indian?”

        “Yes.”

        “Do you live in a teepee?”

        Lone Wolf chuckled and said, “No. I live in an apartment.”

        “Can you speak Pachee?”

        “Yes.”

        “I can speak Englis, Spanis, Japnese and Portagese,” she proudly announced.

        “Jesse’s mother and I speak Japanese at home,” Tai explained. “Her nanny speaks Spanish with her and everybody speaks English outside our home.”

        “Does she speak little kid talk in her other languages?”

        “She does,” Tai said. “Her mother recently took her to a speech specialist because we correct her all the time but she ignores us and prefers baby-talk. Apparently children learning multiple languages won’t speak grammatically correct until they are about six.”

        “Did you learn to speak Portuguese in Brazil, Jesse?”

        She nodded as she chewed her food, so Tai answered for her. “We were only there a week. She had a lady with her day and night and seems to have picked up decent Portuguese, enough so she can argue with me in my native tongue at any rate. She does get through conversations with both parties understanding what she meant. I have to give her that.”

        “It’s easy,” Jesse said. “Portagese is like Spanis, only you sing it. Is Jos a Pachee name?”

        “No. My Apache, not Pachee, name is Da’faan Bacho. It means Lone Wolf in English.”

        “I like that name.” Jesse said. “Can I call you Lone Wolf?”

         “Jesse,” her father interrupted. “He said his name is Josh Barnes.”

         “I use both names,” Josh offered.  “I changed my legal name to Josh Barnes because people ask too many questions when I use my Apache name. White men’s names are more convenient. Anyway, I’m happy for you to call me, Lone Wolf, Jesse. I like that name too.

        She turned to face her father and announced, “I like this boy!”

        Lone Wolf felt his heart melt a little bit.

        “How old are you, Lone Wolf?” Jesse asked.

        “Almost forty-three.”

        She announced, “I fifty-three .  .  . months,” and then she chuckled at her joke.

        Lone Wolf’s eyes opened wide in surprise. “Do you know numbers already?”

        “Mmmmmm – hmmmmm,” she hummed as she nodded. “My Mommy teaches me numbers. I can count to a hunerd in ones, fives and tens. Want to hear?”

        “Later, Jesse.” Tai said. “You keep eating. What took you to Brazil, Josh?”

        “Iterent construction work.”

        “Really? I would have thought relatively low wages would keep American workers at home, unless you have a specialty they need and are willing to pay for.”

        “I bolt the steel skeletons of sky scrapers together.”

        “Are you what they call a sky walker?”

        “I am.”

        “How do you walk in the sky?” Jesse asked.

        Tai explained; “Josh is one of the men who build tall buildings, Jesse. When we are on the street and he is way up high, walking on the steel frame, it looks like he’s walking in the sky. It’s windy up there and sky walkers have to keep their balance to not fall off.”

        He then looked at Josh and said, “I once saw a TV documentary about the first sky walkers. They were from the Mohawk tribe. The story-line hinted at there being mystical attributes that allow Native Americans to be immune to vertigo. Is there any truth to that tale?”

        “Mohawks were the first sky walkers,” Lone Wolf said. “They built the railroad trestles for the train tracks to cross the rivers and gorges between New York and California.”

        “So the TV show said, but tell me about the mystical nature of the profession.”

        “I can tell you at first I practiced on beams on the ground while I apprenticed, so freedom from vertigo is not innate to Native Americans. Sky walkers all do the same job the world over, so I think the ability to maintain balance at heights is a learned skill.”

        “Well, the TV show claimed the percentage of Native Americans who sky walk is huge compared to the general population.”

        “That is still true. Back when the railroads were built, white Americans couldn’t build the trestles at all and many men died. The Mohawks had no trouble getting the job done, so the answer to your question is maybe. Keep in mind most Native Americans are poor and sky walkers earn a good wage because they do hazardous work. That’s why I chose this vocation.

        “You never fall down?” Jesse asked.

        “Nope.”

        “Maybe Indians are like cats,” she said. “They never fall down.”

        “That’s as good an explanation as any other,” Lone Wolf told her. “What is important when we work up high is to stay awake and pay attention to what we are supposed to be doing. Day dreamers fall off.”

        “I awake all the time,” Jesse said, “except when I sleep.”

        “Well explained, Josh,” Tai added. “She understood, I think. So you travel to different countries and take sky walking jobs?”

        “Yes. I enjoy experiencing other cultures as a worker. It allows me to see countries from the inside. Travelers only see them from the outside. Besides, I earn money while I travel. Tourists only spend it.”

        “Can you find work easily, even in foreign countries where you lack the necessary language skills?”

        “Yes and no. Native American sky walkers are legendary because they invented the vocation. Builders all over the world will hire us just to have one of us on their job site. I usually have a choice of countries to work in, but I find I do need local language skills.  I speak Spanish and Portuguese, so I work in South America a lot. On big projects with international crews, they segregate us into teams which all speak the same language.”

        “What’s the biggest building you’ve worked on?”

        “One of the PETRONAS twin towers in Kuala Lumpur is the highest. They’re twelve hundred and forty-one feet above ground if you don’t count the spires at the top.

        “Might we be speaking to a legend and not know it?”

        “No.”

        “Have you ever survived a close call?” Tai asked.

        “Rogue winds do hit sky scrapers. Once, in Argentina, I was walking on a beam about four hundred feet above ground without a tether when a strong gust tipped me over. I rolled over to fall face first, caught myself on a lower beam and climbed back up. I wasn’t hurt, but that was a close call.”

        “How long have you been sky walking?”

        “Almost twenty years. I did six years of military service after high school and started sky walking when that ended. ”

        “Two decades at anything is a good run,” Tai said. “It must have been great to have thrilling work. Did you do anything exciting in the military?”

        “I was a paratrooper and I made the Army’s Star Parachute Team for two years.  We did exhibition jumps all over the world, which turned me into a global wanderer with a skydiving addiction. It’s a rather expensive sport, but one I will love to do until the day I die.”

        “What made you move on?” Tai asked. “Why not stay in the army?”

        “I disliked the authority thing. I stayed as long as I did because, after a jump, all I want to do was go up again. My spirit soars when I’m falling from the sky, pretending I can fly.”

        “I want to learn how to parasute,” Jesse said.

        “You have to grow up first,” Tai kidded her. “They don’t make tiny parachutes.” She crossed her arms over her chest and made a funny face in silent protest.

        “What do you do, Tai?” Lone Wolf asked.

        “He looks at stars,” Jesse answered.

        “I’m an astronomer at the Palomar Observatory, meaning I work for Cal Tech.”

        “Mommy is a maticin and sees in Japan.”

        “What do maticians do?” Lone Wolf asked.

        “Jesse’s mother holds a PHD in mathematics,” Tai said. “She worked at NASA for years, calculating trajectories, masses, velocities, orbits, force fields and energy levels. Six years ago she heard her biological clock ticking, quit, married me and moved back to San Diego. She grew up there. After Jesse turned two, Maggie found a job working with mathematicians at Cal Tech.  Most recently, Japanese scientists say they found neutrinos which they think shed energy and morph into muons, but they can’t figure out how to measure the energy loss. My wife is interviewing for that job.  She’s hoping it might bring her scientific recognition, something which escaped her when she was a mere rocket scientist in Houston.”

        “Do you have a specialty, Tai?”        

        “I head a team which looks back in time, searching for the birth of our universe.”

        “Are you a Big Bang theorist?”

        “I am until someone comes up with a better theory than our standard model. My quest is to understand the nature, purpose and origin of everything.”

        “What took you to Brazil?” Lone Wolf asked, feeling guilty asking a question he knew the answer to, but he wanted to steer the conversation to Tai’s security problem.         

        “We Bazilians,” Jesse announced, “except for Mommy.”

        “I was born in Brazil,” Tai said. “My father emigrated from Japan a decade after World War Two. He married the daughter of earlier Japanese immigrants so I grew up speaking Japanese at home. Eight years ago I became a naturalized American. The purpose of our trip was to attend my brother’s funeral, but I think you already know all about that. Don’t you?”

        “Is he who you said he was?” Jesse asked her father. Tai nodded.

        “You’re busted, Lone Wolf,” Jesse announced.

        He laughed at her and said, “I apologize for not be up front and honest. What blew my cover?”

        Tai said, “As soon as our flight arrived in Sao Paolo, my wife called and warned us of possible Yakusa contracts on my brother, Jesse and me. That made me vigilant. I saw you communicating with our obnoxious Brazilian bodyguards with head and hand signals. I’m betting you’re some sort of security supervisor.”

        “You are correct. Your grandfather hired me to procure and oversee local security wherever you go, until your safety is a hundred percent guaranteed. I’m afraid the Yakusa contracts are real and you might have to get used to me for awhile.”        

        “I don’t buy that story,” Tai said. “Who do you really work for?”

        “It’s true. Why don’t you believe it?”

        “Relatives usually find a way to communicate. I’ve never heard of or from him.”

        “His name is Hiroshi Kobayashi of Singapore. If you want, I’ll call him when we arrive at your home in San Diego. Maybe it is time for you to start communicating.”        

         “By the way,” Tai asked, “how did you get on our flight? After I bought the last two first class tickets, the airline lady said the flight was one hundred percent sold out.”

        “I bribed a college kid who sold me his seat.”        

        “Is the sky walking bit true?”

        “It is, but I wasn’t sky walking in Brazil. Your grandfather is real and the threat against your family is too. Your brother’s murder proves it. Do we have time for me to explain?”

        “No. You can tell me everything when we get to San Diego. For the time being, do you mind staying back at least a hundred feet?”

        Tai looked to Jesse. “Finish eating, Honey. We have to go through security.”

        “Dat’s where dey make us take our soos off,” Jesse said.

        While she finished her breakfast, Tai asked, “Are you Lone Wolf or Josh today?”

        “Today I’m Lone Wolf,” he said and stood up.

        After they shook hands, he squatted to look at Jesse at her eye level and offered her two fingers from his left hand again. She beamed a smile at him, grabbed his fingers and enthusiastically shook them. “Bye bye, Lone Wolf.”

         “Guess what, Jesse?”

        “What?”

        “Apaches never say goodbye. We don’t even have a word for it.”

        “No? So what do you say when someone goes away?”

        “We say anouthris. It means, until we next meet. Apaches don’t part thinking they will never see the other people again. It’s just not how we do things. So, anouthris, Jesse.”

        “I like that,” she proclaimed and tried to say it in Apache. “Anoutis, Da’fa…until we next meet, Lone Wolf.”

        As he watched Tai and Jesse walk away holding hands, he heard her say, “I speak Englis, Japnese, Spanis, Portagese and now I know some Apache.”

        “Walk faster, Sweetheart,” Tai said and she began to skip.

* * *

        As soon as Tai and Jesse entered into the airport terminal area, Lone Wolf hurried to the eatery’s exit. When they were thirty yards away from him, a brown haired woman dressed for the business world stopped, waved and called out, “Dr. Sato.”

        She walked forward extending her hand for Tai to shake, only their hands never met. Hers disappeared inside Tai’s jacket and Lone Wolf began to sprint, but he stopped when out-of-place rumbling sounds grew into a stereo roar.  He remained motionless, searching for the source of the odd noises. Soon he spotted two airport maintenance men running fast while pushing big, two-wheeled plastic trash cans over the glazed concrete. They dressed in blue jumpsuit overalls with Airport ID’s flapping. Their trash cans created quite a loud clamor.

        Tai hopped back a step and pulled Jesse into his arms. He held her away from the woman, who gave a hand-signal and the rumbling noises ceased. Both maintenance men stopped, flipped open their trash can lids and pulled out Colt M4 assault rifles. Each knelt behind their trash cans, aiming away from Jesse and Tai.

        Defense perimeter, Lone Wolf realized; they’re professionals.

        When Tai’s assailant closed in on him a second time, he stepped away again and raised his free hand, as if to shield Jesse’s face. His hand movement turned out to be a ruse though. When the woman took another step closer, Tai snapped a fingertip karate strike into the woman’s throat. As she staggered back holding her esophagus in her left hand, her jacket sleeves receded and Lone Wolf saw spring-loaded metal frames holding two knives strapped to each arm. The gunman closest to Jesse swerved, aimed and fired a single shot. Blood and brains blew out of one side of Tai’s head and his body collapsed.

        Hollow point ordinance, Lone Wolf realized as he chose a target to attack. 

        The woman recovered quickly. She released her throat and snatched Jesse away from her fallen father, but the child did not come quietly. She came at the woman kicking, scratching and screaming at the top of her lungs. Her high-pitched keen cut through the growing din of travelers around them who hollered as they ran away in every direction. The disharmonious sounds of chaos swelled exponentially until a living roar of terror infected even those travelers who had no idea what had transpired. Jesse’s high-pitched cries continued as she tried to scratch out her captor’s eyes, but the woman held her away from her body.

        Lone Wolf knew he had to take out one gunman and shoot the other. He chose the man who had shot Tai because he had turned his back on him. As soon as he took his first step; the woman holding Jesse sounded a warning. Three steps into his charge his target swerved and aimed at him. Lone Wolf head-faked to his right, surged hard left and accelerated toward the other gunman.

        Half way to his new target he heard a three shot burst of automatic fire, but he felt nothing and sprinted on. The other gunman turned his head to see who his partner had shot at. He spotted Lone Wolf, wildly spun around trying to point his gun in the right direction and Lone Wolf launched himself airborne. He flew with hands outstretched until both his fists clenched onto the assault rifle, at which point he snapped his head forward. All the kinetic energy of a hundred and seventy-five pound man in flight impacted one point on the side of the man’s skull and Lone Wolf knew his first target had died instantly.

        He landed sprawled on top of his adversary and jerked hard on the weapon, only to find the assassin had died with a death-grip on it. Lone Wolf desperately pulled on the gun and the corpse came with it. More shots sounded and he felt them impact the dead body which now shielded him. Two more short bursts of gunfire thudded into the back of the stiff by the time Lone Wolf pried enough of the dead man’s fingers off his weapon to twist the gun free.

        He hid behind the corpse, held the gun with one hand like it was a pistol, aimed at the other trash can and pulled the trigger. The ColtM4 had been set on automatic and more than ten bullets penetrated the blue barrier hiding the other rifleman. Soon a stream of bullets from his target’s assault rifle shot up the airport ceiling until his target’s gun fell silent.

        Lone Wolf knew he must have hit the man. He straight-armed the dead man off of him, stood up and found himself confronted with a life or death decision.  He could not see the man he had just shot so he had no idea if he was dead or only wounded. The woman holding Jesse only had knives, so Lone Wolf aimed toward Tai’s assassin and started a march toward that enemy until Jesse’s captor surprised him.  Instead of running away with her hostage or holding Jesse and threatening her with a knife, the woman pitched the still kicking, screaming kid onto Tai’s body, stepped toward Lone Wolf and hurled a knife at him.

        He jumped from his crouch and tried to turn in the air and aim his gun at the same time, but the blade sliced the air and stuck in his right thigh. Jesse, on her father’s body, stopped screaming and now wept as she clutched her father’s clothes. Lone Wolf was amazed that he felt so little pain. Another blade appeared in the woman’s hand. She took a quick step toward him while raising her arm and Lone Wolf pulled the trigger.

        His gun popped like four little firecrackers going off in rapid sequence and a line of red splotches tore into the woman’s chest. The impacts knocked her off her feet. She landed flat on her back and stopped as her knife continued to skid harmlessly along the cement floor.

        Lone Wolf, gun still ready, scanned the area for another attacker, but no one was close anymore. Distant sirens sounded and he realized police squad cars and ambulances must have been stationed at the airport. Seeing no further danger, he set the assault rifle on safety, released it and heard it clatter onto the cement floor. He didn’t see it fall because the black-handled throwing knife buried in his leg dominated his attention. Now it hurt.

        He gripped the hilt, but surging pain beyond his tolerance threshold caused him to release it.

        “Jesse,” he called out. She didn’t respond. She just clutched her father’s clothes and spoke to him in Japanese. Lone Wolf didn’t understand her words, but he knew the little girl begged her father to come back to life.

        “Jesse,” he yelled louder, but received no response.

        He started to limp to her, only to discover his right leg didn’t work at all. He had to use one hand to tug on his bloody blue jeans to make his leg budge. It tolerated no weight. He hopped toward Jesse on his good leg and hand-carried his wounded leg along. The dark red trail that followed him made him think, Oh, shit. 

        He collapsed next to Tai’s body and said, “Jesse, come to the hospital with me until your mother arrives.”

        An LA airport cop rushed up with his pistol drawn. He didn’t speak or approach them at first, but just looked all around and seemed bewildered.  When Lone Wolf heard the policeman speak Portuguese into a radio clipped to one epaulette, alarm bells went off in his head. Sirens wailed louder and then dimmed every time the automatic doors closed half the noise outside, but they soon howled inside again when the doors reopened. He heard a distant male voice from the direction of the sirens shout, “Make way. Everybody out of the way.”  

        The cop knelt next to Jesse. She still whimpered and gripped her father’s clothing tight. When the officer reached out to pick her up, she slapped his hand away, scrambled over her father’s body and grabbed hold of Lone Wolf’s jacket. Her little body trembled like she was shivering from extreme cold.

        The policeman stood up, walked around Tai’s body and squatted next to Jesse. In accented English he said, “I’m going take you to your mommy, young lady.”

        Lone Wolf started to claim her as his daughter, but two medics arrived with a bed on wheels. They moved in so fast the cop had to stand and step back.  The gurney halted and collapsed low to the floor amidst multiple clicking sounds. Both of the EMTs ignored the cop and lifted Lone Wolf and Jesse together onto the bed. One medic went to check the man who died from a flying head-butt as Lone Wolf heard the crunch sound of Velcro ripping open. Soon he felt one arm compress.

        “The child is my responsibility,” the cop announced.          

        “Not anymore,” a Hispanic accent said. The rising bed clicked into place and both EMTs began to push the gurney in the direction from which they had come.

        “L A P D,” the policeman yelled. “Stop or I’ll shoot.”

        “L A E M T, medical emergency,” the medic yelled back, mocking him.”

        The cop dashed ahead of them to block the exit, his pistol still drawn.

        “Out of the way,” the medic shouted, and Lone Wolf felt the bed accelerate.

        “I said stop or I will shoot, god-damnit,” the Cop yelled.

        “The gurney surged even faster and the airport officer lunged to one side to get out of the bed’s path. He lost his balance, crashed into the door and landed hard on is butt. Daylight interrupted by whirling yellow and red lights assaulted Lone Wolf’s eyes outside. The bed rolled to the back of the ambulance’s open doors, their gurney rose in the air and they seemed to be swallowed by the vehicle.

        “I-V” the medic who didn’t respect cops said. His silent companion finished strapping Jesse and Lone Wolf down for the ride and handed plastic bags of clear liquid to his partner who suspended them from a metal rack. Lone Wolf felt a needle penetrate his arm. He watched a hand with scissors slice his pant leg open and saw dark blood ooze from around the blade with every heart beat.”

        “Start driving,” the Medic in charge said. His partner exited and closed the back doors. Soon sirens blared again and their ambulance started moving.

        “My name is Ricardo,” the swarthy Hispanic medic said as he wiped blood from the wounded right leg with half a handful of cool feeling white gauze. When he turned his back to toss the bloody rags and reach for more swabs, Lone Wolf carefully gripped the knife again, not to pull it out but just to see if the pain still surged at his touch.

        Ricardo, who had turned around and saw Lone Wolf’s hand gripping the hilt, screamed, “Por la Madre de Deus, No Senor.”

        The same throbbing pain overwhelmed him again and Lone Wolf released the black handle.  He began to tremble like he was cold and Ricardo banged three times on the wall between their cabin and the driver’s cab. Their ambulance surged forward, moving faster.         “Taking the knife out is surgery, amigo.” Ricardo said as he tightened a tourniquet at Lone Wolf’s groin and a deeper throbbing ache enveloped the entire leg.

        “Too much pain?” The medic asked.

        Lone Wolf nodded.

        While standing up in an ambulance speeding through heavy traffic, Ricardo injected the contents of a syringe into the IV drip and Lone Wolf felt the searing agony of his wound diminish to a horrible hurt. He also felt loose, like he might be able to fly free of his body. The looseness returned his mind to a cloudless cold night in his childhood. He remembered sitting close to a campfire in New Mexico’s high desert, watching his grandfather’s hand cut a wide swath across the starry sky. He remembered him saying; “Sometimes I go out there when I sleep.”

         While Ricardo spoke into a hand-held radio, Jesse began to wiggle. She squeezed her body out of the seat belt and crawled up Lone Wolf’s good leg like she was shinnying up a tree. She grabbed two handfuls of his blue jeans jacket and pulled herself up to his shoulder. He wrapped an arm around her and held her tight, but she never said a word.

        Their journey ended under a portico. Two men outside opened the back doors and pulled the gurney out of the ambulance while Ricardo followed with the IV drip. A nurse pried Jesse away from him and he heard her say, “We’ll stay close to your daddy, Honey.”

        Their entourage moved inside until a man dressed like everyone else - green scrubs - announced, “I’m Dr. Perkins. Cut his clothes off and prep him for surgery. Type and cross-match him for four units of whole blood. Stat.”

        A younger green scrub guy walked away from their group until the doctor yelled, “Stat means run, goddamn it.” The walking man broke into a sprint.

        “Who brought the patient in?” Dr. Perkins asked.

        “That would be me,” Ricardo answered.

        Dr. Perkins and Ricardo talked as they walked beside the rolling gurney. “Situation?”

        “Bloodbath at LAX, Doc. I counted three dead men, one dead woman and blood all over the place. I got here ASAP. Our boy might have a severed femoral artery.”

        “Did you attend to the others?”

        “No.”

        “Why not?”

        “They were dead.”

        “How did you know they were dead if you didn’t attend to them?”

        “Well, the woman was down with four bullet holes across her chest. She was a mess. No one could have survived that damage. They must have been shooting hollow points. A bald man with a bullet hole between his eyes took another six slugs here and there. My partner, Artio, did check the third man. He had so many bullet holes in his back Artio couldn’t count them. An Asian man was down with horrendous head damage.  He was gone. The little Asian girl might be in shock. She doesn’t speak. I brought them both despite a LAPD Cop who demanded the girl.”

        “Please don’t tell me you refused an order from a law enforcement officer?”

        “I sure did.”

        “Carranza that is a crime.”

         “No it isn’t.” Ricardo defended his approach to patient care. “I picked up a juvenile trauma victim and a dude bleeding profusely from a knife sticking out of one leg. Are you suggesting I should have handed a survivor suffering from shock to some jerk because he wears a uniform?  If so, I don’t agree. The little girl was scared shitless of that cop. You should have seen her hold onto our boy here. She knows him and wants to be with him so I brought them both. Besides, city and state ordinances do not apply in a medical emergency.”

        “You’re crazy, Carranza.”

        “No I’m not. I save lives. Cops kill people. I don’t take orders from them.”

        Their group stayed around the moving bed as it passed a second interior reception desk and turned right onto a corridor that looked just like the hallway they left behind.

        Dr. Perkins said, “Nurse, page Dr. Rene Rodriguez to operating room two.”

        “Yes, sir.”

        “Carranza” - Dr. Perkins rolled the double-r sound of the Hispanic last name - “Maybe you better tell me exactly what was said between you and the officer?”

        “He asked for the little girl. I refused and started to leave. He yelled ‘LAPD, stop or I’ll shoot.’ I ignored him. As we approached the exit, he ran in front of us to block the doorway, but it’s automatic so he only opened it. He had his revolver in his right hand and he shouted again, ‘Stop or I will shoot you, goddamnit.”

        “You’re lucky he didn’t kill you and Artio both. How will you justify your actions if a complaint is filed against you? You might lose your job over this.”

        “I guess you don’t want to hear how I almost ran him over. He was pretty agile to get out of the way and he didn’t land on his feet either.”

        Doors to the right of the gurney split open with a sucking sound and the bed made the turn into surgery room number two. Lone Wolf heard Dr. Perkins say, “Don’t repeat this story, Ricardo. You can be arrested for assault on a police officer as well as a host of other charges. You’re not thinking of claiming two patient saves are you?”

        “Why not? That dagger in our patient’s leg is a lethal weapon. Shock is a life-threatening injury, so I get two saves on my scorecard.”

         “I’ll agree to one, Ricardo. The little girl doesn’t have a scratch on her.”

        “I’m claiming two,” Ricardo demanded. “They’re both my saves so that puts me three-up on you, which means you’ll have to keep buying me beer until you catch up.”

        “We’re going to wait here, little one,” Jesse’s nurse said. “Do you speak English?”

        Silence.

        Dr. Perkins entered the surgical room followed by a hiss sound of compressed air being released.  “Where is the blood?” He yelled. “Where is Dr. Rodriguez?”

        “Scrubbing,” a female voice answered.

        Dr. Perkins walked to the bed and asked, “Do you feel much pain?”

        Lone Wolf nodded. The doctor signaled a nurse who squirted a clear liquid into his IV tube with a syringe. An advanced level of looseness returned, more pronounced than he had felt after Ricardo’s pain killer. Nurses stuck sensors here and there. He felt a prick when a doctor sitting next to a bank of machines injected something in his neck and the room suddenly looked as if he were seeing it from the saddle of a bucking bronco.

        “Nurse, antidote,” yelled the doctor who had just stuck his neck.

        Multiple hands tried to hold him to the bed. Lone Wolf thought he both heard and felt a loud crack at the base of his skull, like a big knuckle popping. After the pop, right where the cranium attaches to the spine, he experienced tranquility as he floated free of his body. The first thing he noticed was that he did not have to roll over and look down in order to see himself. Next was the realization he no longer had the use of any of his five senses. Another neck injection caused what looked similar to an epileptic fit to end.  Out of control muscle spasms reduced to tremors and is body became calm on the operating table.  He watched everyone in the room from the perspective of a spider on the ceiling.

        Lone Wolf tried to zoom in and fade back like a camera lens can do, and that worked. He thought; without a body, thinking is my transportation mode. Next he imagined a new point of observation and his point of view miraculously changed again.

        How do I perceive the scene without senses? He wondered. He could not hear, yet he could understand not only words, but also the speaker’s intent. That’s new. I hope that ability returns to my body with me. 

        Visual perception seemed to be an imaginative mental reconstruction of the scene. He had zero sense of sight, hearing, taste, smell or feel. Lone Wolf tried to visit Jesse. That happened, but not as he suspected it would. He didn’t zoom thru the wall to get to her. Instead, his area of perception expanded to encompass her, the wall, her nurse and the surgery room. He realized he had not moved from one place to another. His sphere of perception had just expanded.  Free will, he noted.

        A machine released a high-pitched squeal and a nurse yelled, “Flat line.”

        Lone Wolf knew his heart had stopped. He thought, uh oh, and shrank his field of observation back to the operating table. Two big pouches of blood rolled up next to his body. The man who had let loose the bucking bronco inside of him started the dark liquid draining into his body with two lines. When that doctor returned to his stool next to his patient’s head, Lone Wolf realized that the man was the anesthesiologist. Dr. Perkins raised two electrodes high and yelled “Clear,” but the doors to the surgery room opened and another doctor rushed in holding two wet hands in the air. As two nurses chased after him with a rubber glove stretching for each of his hands, Jesse’s nurse bellowed from the still open doorway, “Come back here, kid.”

Three surgical assistants simultaneously yelled, “Hold.”

The little four year old girl ran through the open doors behind Dr. Rodriguez. She scrambled around legs and seemed to know where she was going. Dr. Perkins stood like a statue, motionless with both arms raised high. He held an electrode in each hand. Lone Wolf thought he looked like a giant green praying mantis about to finish him off.

Jesse squeezed in next to Dr. Perkins, reached high and grasped Lone Wolf’s left index and middle finger. With tears streaming down her cheeks she begged, “Peeze don’t leave me, Lone Wolf.”

 He sensed Jesse’s desperation and her love. She wanted to save him and was giving her method a go. The nurse who had announced him flat-lining shouted, “We have a strong pulse.”

“Sorry, Doctors,” Jesse’s nurse said in a sheepish tone of voice as she grabbed the little girl and quickly retreated.

“What the hell kind of CPR was that?” Dr. Rodriguez asked and stepped up to the patient’s bed.

“It worked, didn’t it?” Dr. Perkins said as he side-stepped away and handed both of his electrically charged weapons to an assistant.

“Connect him to life support,” Dr. Rodriguez ordered. “My friend, dying when vascular surgeon Rene Rodriguez is close at hand will not happen. Not on my watch you don’t.”

The anesthesiologist injected another drug into his neck. This time all his muscles relaxed. Tubes slithered into his nose.  A mask with larger tubes snaked through his mouth and into his lungs. Nurses secured it over his lips with tape. The vascular surgeon in one smooth motion lifted the knife out of his leg, handed it to a nurse, picked up a scalpel and enlarged the still profusely bleeding wound. Lone Wolf watched as air filled his lungs and was sucked out without him exhaling.

After Jesse and her nurse retreated, Lone Wolf wanted to be with his little friend again. He wanted her to know he loved her too and that he planned to be with her until she was safe and to tell her he would come back, even though he didn’t know how to get back inside his body. He willed his cone of perception to expand beyond whole room size to encompass the hallway where Jesse sat weeping in her nurse’s lap. He tried thought to communicate with her, but it didn’t work. Thinking worked for perception and transportation, but not for communication.

A masked hospital administration person tugged Dr. Perkins’ sleeve until she had led him outside the surgery room. “I am sorry to interrupt, Doctor, but serious infractions of ethics and state law have just been reported to me. I am told I need your authority to have the culprit arrested. He is on premises now, but will get away if I don’t act immediately. I’ll file the official complaint tomorrow. Do I have your permission to proceed?”

“Against who?” Dr. Perkins asked.

“Well, Ricardo Carranza, of course. The verbal report accused him of refusing to obey an order from an officer of the law, assault on a police officer and insubordination in an exchange with you. Those are serious charges.”

“Are you new here” - Dr. Perkins glanced at her name tag – “Ms. Stover?”

“I am, but that hardly means I am about to overlook criminal behavior.”

“Carranza’s not a criminal,” Dr. Perkins said. “He may seem like a mad man to you, Ms. Stover, but the loved ones of all the lives he has saved think the man’s an angel. And there are a lot of them. Was he insubordinate with me? No. Ricardo and I have a friendly competition over who saves the most lives. He spoke in jest with me today. There will be no complaints filed and tell your nosey spy to attend to medicine and forget being a busybody or I’ll track him or her down and see that they are disciplined.”

“Does Ricardo Carranza have a green card?”

“He does and that is enough of this conversation from you, Ms. Stover.”

“Yes sir.”

Dr. Perkins pulled on his face mask and returned to observe Dr. Rodriguez at work. Ms. Stover left via the hallway. Lone Wolf diminished his cone of perception and watched the operation from the top of the tallest cabinet - a top-down perspective. His body was well covered in green bed sheets except for his right leg. Clamps held his skin out of the way. The inside of his thigh was white, shocking pink, brilliant red and all the different shades glistened of moisture. Dr. Rodriguez didn’t sew the partially sliced femoral artery back together. He glued it.  

Lone Wolf became aware of something out of place. On top of a machine located behind the operating table, someone had taped an optical illusion of six lines of black electrical tape. Two long lines formed an X and four shorter lines closed the four open sides of that X to make a square with an X in it. Next he conjured up the image of four triangles, but that morphed into a four-sided pyramid from a top-down perspective, only to switch to a bottom-up pyramid from an interior point of view.  All observations were correct depending on the viewpoint the observer’s brain chose to look from.  Lone Wolf could relate to point-of-view changes. He marveled at being in a different dimension and wondered; how do I get back inside me?