Breaking Point

19

“Is he on?” Butch Roberson asked Julio Batista. McLanahan’s satellite phone was pressed tightly to his face. Farkus noted Butch’s fingers gripped the handset so tightly they were nearly translucent white. And he noted the line of perspiration beads under Butch’s scalp. Since the sun was sliding toward dusk and it had cooled a quick twenty degrees in the past hour, he knew Butch wasn’t sweating because of the heat.

“We’re waiting,” Batista said. “Hold on-it’s a technical thing. We’ve got some guys trying to patch us all on together.”

Farkus could hear both sides of the conversation clearly. It was still and quiet, and Butch hadn’t turned down the volume of the speaker because he likely wasn’t familiar with the phone. Butch was nervous and twitchy, and his eyes burned red from exhaustion.

“If you don’t get him on. . where in the hell is he?” Butch asked.

“In the field,” Batista said calmly. “It’s taking a while to bring all the parties together, so please be patient.”

“Get him on,” Butch said.

Earlier, after ordering McLanahan, Farkus, and Sollis to dismount and disarm, Butch Roberson had emerged from the shadowed stand of timber on the west slope. Farkus hadn’t seen Butch since he’d quit his job, and he was surprised how he looked: thinner, slightly stooped when he walked, with furrowed lines in his face and tired eyes. He looked like he’d aged ten years, and Farkus knew it wasn’t just from being on the run in the mountains for the past two days. Something had happened to Butch Roberson in the last year that had changed him physically.

Butch held a semiautomatic rifle with an extended magazine and a tactical scope mounted on it, and used the muzzle to signal that they should walk away from the camp into a grassy clearing to the south of the alcove.

“What about the horses?” McLanahan had asked.

“Let them go. All except the packhorse. I want to see what you brought me.”

McLanahan protested, but Butch didn’t care. He circled the three men in the clearing and unbuckled the cinch strap on Dreadnaught’s saddle and did the same with the other two saddled horses. Then he slapped him on his flank. Dreadnaught took off as if the bell had rung and summer vacation had begun. McLanahan and Sollis’s horse and the spare followed, leaving only the packhorse and three crumpled saddles on the ground.

“How in the hell do you expect us to get back?” McLanahan asked plaintively.

“Who says you’re going back?” Butch asked.

Butch had them all sit down in the grass after he patted them down and made sure they had no more weapons. When he ran his hand over Farkus’s clothing, he said, “Dave Farkus, I’m kinda surprised to see what kind of company you’re keeping.”

“Me, too,” Farkus had said.

When Butch got to Sollis, he said: “Hell of a shot. Did you think it was me?”

Sollis nodded. Butch shook his head in disgust and moved to McLanahan.

“So you decided to freelance, huh?” Butch asked McLanahan.

“In a matter of speaking.”

“Tell me what they’re saying about me in town.”

McLanahan cleared his throat. “Every Fed in the mountain west is either here or on their way. They want you for the murder of the two EPA agents. It’s a clusterfuck of industrial proportion.”

Farkus watched Butch carefully and noted no reaction.

“So why are you three here killing innocent elk hunters?” Butch asked.

Farkus said, “There’s a big reward out for you.”

Butch took that in, nodded, and said, “How much?”

Farkus looked to McLanahan with disdain and said, “I’d like to know that myself. All I’ve been told is that it’s a big-ass reward.”

“And you were hired to guide?” Butch asked Farkus.

“Yes, Butch.”

“The sheriff. . ex-sheriff. . hired you?”

“Yes.”

Butch said, “Remind me never to take you hunting with me again.”

Farkus swallowed hard and studied the top of his boots.

Butch turned back to McLanahan. Farkus noted a desperate and sad cast in Butch’s eyes, a look he’d never seen before.

Butch said to McLanahan, “Doesn’t take much for you to turn on your own, does it?”

McLanahan started to defend himself, but something in Butch’s expression convinced him, for once, to hold his tongue.

“Sit down, all of you,” Butch said, backing away toward the packhorse. “I don’t want to have to hurt anyone. I just want to see what goodies you brought me.”

Roberson grinned as he pulled gear and equipment out of the panniers. Most he discarded to the side. Farkus watched as Butch found a.45 pistol, checked the loads, and put it in his pack. He also kept two satellite phones.

With one of the satellite phones clipped on his belt and three plastic double-loop flex-cuff restraints sticking out of his cargo pants’ thigh pocket for later, Butch Roberson had directed them to bury the body of the poor gut-shot hunter. He said, “I don’t know who he was, but he deserves better than to leave him to the predators.”

Farkus and Sollis did most of the work using a collapsible camp shovel Butch had found in the panniers. It was tough going, lots of rocks an inch beneath the carpet of grass, and it took them nearly an hour to dig a shallow grave. McLanahan spent the time trying to convince Butch to give himself up, that it would be better for him and his family if he came back with them voluntarily. Butch ignored him and finally swung his rifle over until the muzzle was a foot from McLanahan’s nose.

“Say another word,” Butch warned the sheriff, “and they’ll be digging more graves. Did you forget you came up here to kill me? I haven’t.”

McLanahan’s beard stopped opening for a while.

After ordering the three of them to cover the shallow grave with big twists of pitch wood and football-sized rocks from the fire ring, Butch cinched the flex-cuffs on each of them with their wrists in front, then glared at Sollis for such a long time Farkus began to feel the hairs on the back of his neck twitch.

Butch said, “I hate to have to do this, but I can’t trust you guys.”

Farkus went first into the dark timber, followed by Sollis and the ex-sheriff.

Whenever Farkus paused, Butch prodded him on. He seemed to have a specific destination in mind, Farkus thought, although Butch didn’t reveal what it was.

They trudged past the crumpled remains of the predator drone Butch had shot down. It was shockingly white and clean but in dozens of sections on the forest floor. As they passed, Farkus could see intricate wiring through splits in the seams and smell fuel leaking out of the damaged tank. Farkus saw several well-placed bullet holes in the damaged nose of the aircraft. The crash of the drone had brought down several dead and dying trees, as well as shearing a gash in the overhead canopy.

“You’ve got to figure they know where it went down,” McLanahan told Butch.

“Which is why we’re going a long way from it,” Butch had said.

“How did you know it would go down?” Farkus asked.

“I didn’t,” Butch answered.

The light changed as the sun kissed the tops of the mountains when they emerged from the dense trees and into a small rocky clearing. For the first time since they’d left, Farkus could get a sense of where they were and how much country there was surrounding them. He could see the last rays of the sun light the snowcapped top of the range in front of them, and the ocean of forest undulating away in the other three directions. They weren’t far from the tree line, where it would be too high to sustain growth.

Butch said they could sit, which Farkus did quickly. There was a sheen of sweat beneath his clothing from the climb, and his thighs ached. McLanahan grunted an old-man grunt as he lowered himself to a boulder. Sweat streamed down his face from beneath his hatband.

Butch didn’t even seem out of breath. He plucked the satellite phone out of the holster, turned it on, and hit three numbers: 911.

When he connected with the emergency dispatcher in Saddlestring, he said, “This is Butch Roberson, the man everybody’s looking for. I’ve got Sheriff Kyle McLanahan and Dave Farkus, and some pudknocker named Sollis as hostages sitting right here in front of me. I need to talk to the man in charge of hunting me down, or these three aren’t gonna see another sunrise.”

After five minutes of scrambling on the other end, Butch said, “Julio Batista, you said?”

Farkus could hear the man named Batista making the case for Butch to turn himself in, to spare the hostages, to not make this difficult or dangerous to anyone else. He said he had the authority to make a deal, and the power to make sure justice was done.

“I know you,” Butch said, cutting off Batista. “You’re the director of Region Eight, aren’t you?”

“Have we met?”

Butch snorted. “No, we haven’t met. My wife and I left about twenty messages for you to call us over the past year, but we couldn’t get past your secretary. We sent you registered letters that were signed for, but no one responded. Now you want to talk?”

“You can trust me,” Batista said. Farkus thought he heard desperation.

Butch said, “I trust you about as far as I can throw you, you son of a bitch. Get Joe Pickett on the line. He’s the local game warden.”

Batista said: “I know who he is, but why can’t we keep this between us?”

“No way. Get Joe on the call or I’ll pop Farkus or Sollis first and the ex-sheriff second and it’ll be on you.”

Farkus looked up in alarm, but when he saw Butch’s face he knew the threat was hollow. But Batista wouldn’t know that, which was the point.

When Batista started to explain why it couldn’t be done, Butch said, “You have five minutes.”

Farkus realized his knees were shaking as he sat, so he cradled them between his arms. He blamed the hard climb, but he knew that wasn’t all it was. Butch had a hard set to his face, and when he checked his watch he then looked up to assess Farkus and McLanahan. Butch shifted his weight so his rifle swung up and Farkus could see the black O of the muzzle.

When Butch had made the threat, Farkus thought he was bluffing. Now he wasn’t sure it was a bluff. Not at all.