Free Astride a Pink Horse by Robert Greer Page A

thick, coal-black hair was now thinand gray. Her eyes were cloudy, and she’d lost a few pounds over the years.
    Ignoring Sarah’s stare, Kimiko quickly filled three cups with tea and, without asking Rikia or Sarah if they cared for any, offered the cups to them, sat back, and adjusted herself in her seat. Plopping two cubes of sugar into her tea, she asked, “How did things go during your interrogation at Warren this morning?”
    “Fine,” said Sarah, still upset that neither Kimiko nor Rikia had felt it necessary to take part in the Wheatland courthouse protest that Kimiko had helped organize. “Fine in spite of Buford’s injury, that is. Some overzealous air force officer, a woman, no less, kicked him in his privates during the protest. I was so angry about being hauled down to Warren from Wheatland and interrogated like a common criminal that I forgot to mention Buford’s injury when I called you earlier.”
    “Is Buford all right?” Kimiko asked.
    “He’s sore, but he is okay.”
    “A woman,” Rikia said, indignantly, straining to correctly enunciate his words. “Leave it to the U.S. military to turn a ballerina into a brute.”
    “You’re right there,” said Sarah.
    Sensing a need to move quickly past Rikia’s upset, Kimiko said, “I didn’t think there’d be as much television coverage as there has been about the protest. Especially since all we were really hoping for was to take advantage of the events at Tango-11 and enlighten people.”
    “Well, we ignited a bonfire,” said Rikia, beaming.
    “I’m not sure we did,” said Sarah. “But what’s selling is amurder, not our message. But for what it’s worth, we did have a dozen TV crews at the protest last night. Some from as far away as Denver and Salt Lake City.”
    Rikia rubbed his hands together excitedly and shouted, “Good! Good! Good!” An authoritative glance from Kimiko silenced him.
    “So where do we go from here?” Sarah asked, watching the rebuked-looking Rikia take a long sip of tea.
    “I’m not sure that we go anywhere,” said Kimiko. “We’ve made our point. At least for the moment.”
    “But there are hundreds of other missile-silo sites out there,” said Rikia, looking disappointed.
    “But none I’d wager with a dead man dangling on the grounds,” said Sarah.
    Rikia sat forward in his chair, prepared to offer a response, but the stern, intimidating, and unwavering look on Kimiko’s face told him that the best thing he could do right then was to remain silent. Looking pleased when he did, Kimiko smiled and offered Sarah more tea.
    Sarah watched the steaming tea flow into her cup. Nodding a thank-you to Kimiko, she took a sip of the lemony tea and relaxed back in her seat to think about where the three of them were headed from there.

Muscular and clean-shaven from the crown of his head to the tips of his toes, Silas Breen was a slow-thinking, freckle-faced, six-foot-nine-inch, twenty-four-year-old giant of a black man with a strong resemblance to Howdy Doody. A Gulliver among Lilliputians, he had once been a high school basketball star, clumsy but powerful enough to overwhelm his prep school counterparts for four years and earn himself a college athletic scholarship to Kansas State. But after a year of college ball, his coaches could see that smaller, quicker, and more thoughtful players would forever run circles around the chubby-cheeked Breen.
    With his scholarship gone and his academic skills weak, Breen dropped out of college after the first semester of his sophomore year to bump his way around the West for a couple of years, making stops in Santa Fe, Denver, Rapid City, and Bozeman before finding his niche.
    Eleven months earlier he’d bought a used twenty-six-foot U-Haul Super Mover truck at auction; put a set of illegally recapped tires on it; reconditioned the radiator, transmission, and rear end; painted the truck shamrock green except for its white cab and cargo-bay roof, in honor of his beloved