Force of Nature

13

Nate Romanowski reached the outskirts of Colorado Springs as the morning sun lit up the fresh snowfall on the western slope of the mountains in a brilliant green and white palette. There had been a light snowfall during the night that was melting away in the high-altitude sun, and wisps of steam wafted up from the asphalt. His tires hissed on the wet surface. It was Tuesday, October 23.

For the last seven and a half hours, he’d driven straight through the state of Wyoming from north to south on Interstate 25 and squeezed through Denver before the morning traffic approached its apex. Because he had no cell or satellite phone and he paid cash for food and fuel and therefore created no credit card receipts, his route and movements were untraceable.

The U.S. Air Force Academy glinted like a glass-and-steel castle fortress in the foothills to the west as the highway expanded to three, then four lanes. Cars and pickups streamed onto the highway from entrance ramps, drivers sipping coffee and dressed for work. An SUV shot by him, driven by an attractive fortyish woman applying lipstick in her rearview mirror and singing along with a song on the radio. Nate smiled to himself because he’d been away so long he’d almost forgotten what it was like to experience the morning rush of normal Americans going to work at normal jobs for normal hours. The pure dynamism and hurly-burly of the scene made him wistful.

Seeing the Academy brought back a flood of memories, several so powerful they made him wince. He recalled arriving there as a freshman just appointed by Montana senators, a tall and raw-boned middle linebacker with a buzz cut, still stinging from his goodbyes and from releasing his falcons to the wind. The upperclassman cadets jeered and confronted him, and he was paired with an older cadet named Vince Vincent who informed him that as of that moment he was his “dooley”—all freshmen were dooleys — and he had no past, no reputation, no rights, and no value as a human being. It was Nate’s responsibility, Vincent said, to start his life over at zero. And he could start by shining Vince Vincent’s boots. Nate gritted his teeth, said, “Yes, sir,” and dropped to his knees with a brush and jar of polish. Vincent stood there in the gleaming hallway with his hands on his hips and his chin in the air while other cadets walked by and laughed.

The humiliation continued. Between classes, orientation, and football practice, Nate fetched Vincent’s lunch and dinner, ironed and hung his uniform, and cleaned up after him. Nate was asked to stand at attention outside the bathroom stall while Vincent had his morning bowel movement, and to note on a pad the shape and number of excrement bits Vincent called out to him.

He spent days shadowing Vincent through the grounds so he was available do his bidding at any moment. The campus was numbered with similar relationships, and dooleys rolled their eyes at one another in shared humiliation as they passed in the hallways. But after a month, Nate observed that most of his classmates, although still designated dooleys, as they would be throughout the first year, spoke comfortably and freely with their assigned cadets. The pairs could be seen walking side by side on the campus, and the cadets became more like mentors and advisers. They even sat together in the cafeteria, where Nate was required to stand at attention beside his cadet in case Vincent dropped a napkin or fork and needed it retrieved immediately.

And Vince Vincent didn’t let up.

That lasted for forty-eight days, until Nate slipped into Vincent’s dorm room at three in the morning and crouched down next to the bed and hissed into the cadet’s ear: “I know how the game is played and I’ve played it without bitching. Your role is to break me down and build me back up. But you don’t know me, and you’ve let your power go to your head. My father is an Air Force technical sergeant who spent his life breaking me down. He’s a professional. Compared to him, you’re a bad joke and a fucking embarrassment to the uniform. You’ve had your fun, and I’ve taken it until now for your sake, not mine. I’ve been your dooley.”

As Vincent started to sit up, Nate reached over and placed his fingers around Vincent’s windpipe and pushed him back down. The cadet’s eyes pleaded to him to stop. Nate said, “I’m a falconer. I’ve spent more time outside than inside. I’m a student of violent death in nature. I could rip your throat out right now and it wouldn’t make me blink. You’d bleed out before you got to the door, and I’d step over your body on the way out to brush my teeth for the night.”

Nate tightened his grip. “We don’t have to be friends, and I don’t like you, anyway. But from this minute on, you’ll respect me and I’ll pretend to honor your rank. No one will have to know we’ve had this discussion. Do you understand?”

Vincent blinked his eyes to indicate he did. Nate’s life improved after that, and Vince Vincent went on living.

Discipline and routine at the Academy was nothing new to Nate; he’d grown up that way. His father was an Air Force lifer, and they’d lived all over the country and the world on military bases: Goodfellow in San Angelo, Texas; Edwards in Rosamond, California; McChord in Tacoma, Washington; Ellsworth in Rapid City, South Dakota; Incirlik in Adana, Turkey; Mountain Home, in Idaho; and Malmstrom in Great Falls, Montana.

He’d been a dooley all his life. Friendships with kids his age were fleeting and incomplete. Schools and teachers were temporary. Nate sought some kind of permanence and an anchor outside his family and found it outside. No matter where they were located there was hunting, fishing, camping, and wildlife. Sure, the weather and terrain varied. But outside the base housing and civilization, there was a whole world out there that was harsh, beautiful, tough — and didn’t judge him.

While they were still stationed in Montana, Nate’s mother died from lupus and his father doubled down on Nate because he didn’t know what else to do. He instilled in his son, through thought and deed, an ethos of loyalty, duty, and love of country. In his father’s mind, warriors held an exalted place in society and should be honored even if they weren’t in the modern world. According to Nate’s father, it was more important to serve than it was to be recognized or appreciated for it by those soft and ignorant ninnies who benefited from the warrior’s service. Every right the ninnies and sissies enjoyed had been protected over the years by the blood shed by American warriors, despite the contempt shown them as a result.

The message was pure and tough and noble, but Nate’s father was absent for long periods of time. And when he was gone, the worldview he described fascinated Nate, who wondered how much of it was true and how much of it was self-justification for a nomadic life and a dysfunctional family. To confirm or deny his father’s rationale, Nate sought out and found another ordered universe in the amoral world of nature. He found a place where the strong killed and ate the weak and the small. Nate came to realize the only difference between a warrior culture and the tooth-and-claw natural world were the values and compassion humans had but wild creatures didn’t. So to better understand the former, he became a student of the latter.

That’s when he got his first falcon.

When Nate was a junior in high school in Great Falls, his father was thrilled when his son was nominated by the Montana senators and accepted by the Air Force Academy, but it came with well-known caveats. As a lifer, he had very mixed feelings about college-bred officers, and he wasn’t shy about expressing them. When his father found himself in a situation that was chaotic, disorganized, or wholly screwed up, he described it as “worse than following a second lieutenant with a map.”

As Nate melded into the flow of traffic toward the center of town, he recalled standing in the end zone of the football stadium in uniform during a home game. He’d been in the Academy for a year and had been assigned a dooley of his own, whom he’d released the day before without humiliating him. The Air Force Academy Falcons were playing the Colorado State Rams. Because of a knee injury the year before, Nate was no longer on the team, but he’d been chosen for a role he relished even more: falconer for the school’s live mascots. It was an Academy tradition. The birds were released at the start of the game and at halftime, and they’d circle the stadium and return to fist.

It was two minutes until the half, and the Falcons were up 21–14, when an officer he’d never seen before approached him and stood a few feet away, studying him up and down with a flat, superior expression, as if he were about to bid on him in an auction. The officer looked hard, and there was a palpable sense of purpose, dark menace, and explosive action about him. Although he had the single silver bar that designated the officer as a lieutenant, he had a black patch sewn onto his uniform sleeve Nate didn’t recognize. The patch was in the shape of a badge and it had no words or numerals. Just a white embroidered profile of a falcon slashing through the air with both talons outstretched. And above the lieutenant’s breast pocket was a black metal pin with the roman numeral V, or five.

“This isn’t your first time handling falcons, is it cadet?” the lieutenant said.

“No, sir. I’ve flown birds all my life.”

“Name them.”

“Started with a prairie falcon, sir. I’ve worked with three prairies. But I’ve flown redtails and kestrels, and a gyr.”

The lieutenant cocked an eyebrow, but his mouth didn’t change. “A gyr? Isn’t that like flying a B-52 bomber?”

“A little. It was a challenge.”

“Ever hunt a peregrine?”

“No, sir. But that’s something I want to do someday.”

The lieutenant nodded knowingly. “Pound for pound, it’s the greatest hunter alive. Fastest, too.”

“Yes, sir.”

“How did you get all those birds?” the officer asked.

“Trapped them myself, sir.”

“Really?”

“Yes, sir.”

The officer extended his hand and Nate shook it. The man’s grip was dry and hard.

“I’m in command of a small Special Forces unit, and I’ve been looking for a couple of fellow falconers to round it out. The reason, I can’t disclose. Is that something you might be interested in?”

Nate shrugged. “I’m not sure, sir. But I’d be eager to learn more about it.”

“Our official team name is Mark V,” the officer said. “Informally, we’re known as The Five. But within the team, we call ourselves the Peregrines.”

Nate grinned.

That was the first time he met Lieutenant John Nemecek.

Nate slid into the right-hand lane and took the exit for Cimarron Street onto State Highway 24 west toward Cascade. It wasn’t long before the buzz of morning traffic was behind him. As he climbed into the foothills, he noted that the inch of snow from the night before still clung to the pine boughs of the trees and sparkled in the grass.

The gravel road he took to the right wasn’t marked with a sign. Within a few minutes, the canopy of trees closed above him, and for half a mile it was like driving through a tunnel.

The place he was looking for was a squat brick home nestled into a shaded alcove with a view of a sloping mountain meadow in front and the massive jagged horizon of Pikes Peak behind. A single stringy white cloud seemed to have snagged on the top of the peak like a plastic bag caught on a tree branch.

He pulled into the circular driveway and drove around it until his Jeep was adjacent to the porch and front door. There were no signs of life, but a rolled-up Colorado Springs Gazette on the top stair of the porch and an American flag flapping on a pole indicated someone was there.

Nate killed the motor and swung his legs out of the Jeep. He looked at the house through squinted eyes, trying to remember the last time he’d been there. And wondering why it seemed so lifeless. He slipped off his shoulder harness and holster, and bundled it under the front seat.

Before he reached the front steps, the interior door opened and Nate’s father stood behind the storm door with a scowl on his face.

All he said was, “You.”

“Hey, Tech Sarge,” Nate said, hesitating on the porch. “Are you going to let me in?”

Although his father was still tall and wide-shouldered, his body looked ravaged and sunken-in. His thin, pale hair was wispy, and his eyes looked out of deep sockets like dull chunks of basalt.

“I’m thinking,” his father said.

“Where’s Dalisay and the girls?” Nate asked, when his father finally stepped aside and let him enter.

“Around,” Technical Sergeant Gordon “Gordo” Romanowski growled.

“Is there coffee? I’ve been driving all night.”

“In the kitchen.”

Nate paused for a moment, then said, “It’s okay, I’ll get it myself.”

“You know where the cups are.”

The interior of the house hadn’t changed much, Nate noted. Despite the mountain location and the three-hundred-plus days of sunshine in Colorado, it was designed to be dark inside. The shaded windows were small, and the corners were lit with dim lamps. The wall of framed photographs of Gordo Romanowski in exotic locales was as it had always been, but there had been a few changes. As Nate poured a cup of coffee, he studied the photos.

Gordo, Nate’s mother, and five-year-old Nate in Turkey. Gordo with a forty-pound tuna off the coast of Baja, Mexico. Gordo in full dress in his tech sergeant’s uniform.

What was missing, Nate observed, was his Academy entrance photograph. And a shot of him with his first falcon. In their place were photos of Dalisay when Gordo first met her in the Philippines, and another of Gordo, Dalisay, and their two infant daughters. The girls were striking miniatures of Dalisay: petite, dark hair, big eyes, caramel skin. Because it was Colorado Springs and therefore a military town, Nate assumed Asian wives and children weren’t unusual at all in the community. But Nate had never met his stepmother or half sisters.

“You look fit,” Gordo said.

“Wild game meat and clean living,” Nate replied.

Gordo snorted with doubt and disapproval. “Why are you here, anyway? Why now, after all these years?”

Nate sipped the strong coffee and met the glare of his father with his own. “That’s why I called. I wanted to touch base.”

“What’s that mean?” His father was uncomfortable, and looked away.

“I wanted to see you one last time,” Nate said.

“Shit,” Gordo said, and groaned.

They sat in overstuffed chairs on opposite ends of the coffee table. Gordo seemed stiff and edgy. Nate put his cup down on a coaster and sat back.

“So Dalisay and your girls … they’re still with you, right?”

Gordo nodded.

“What, they’re at school? Dalisay is working?”

“Let’s not talk about them.”

Nate shook his head, puzzled. He swiveled his head around. A stack of children’s books was on the floor by the bookcase next to a plastic milk crate of Barbie dolls and accessories. The refrigerator in the kitchen was cluttered with school photos and a Polaroid shot of a grinning seven-year-old girl labeled “Melia’s first checkup: no cavities!” It was dated from August, two months prior. In the photo, Melia boasted a perfectly symmetric row of Chiclets-like teeth.

“Why in the hell did you come here?” Gordo asked, pain in his face.

“I told you.”

His father said, “Do you know how many times men have come to this house asking if I’d heard from you? Special agents from the FBI? Pentagon brass? Even detectives from the Montana and Wyoming DCI?”

Nate hadn’t thought about it, but it made sense.

“I had to tell them I hadn’t heard a damned word from you in twelve years. That the last time we talked, you called me from who-the-fuck-knows-where saying you’d left the service and had decided to drop out of the world and become a fucking anarchist.”

“I don’t think I said that, exactly,” Nate said.

“You might as well have.” Gordo leaned forward in his chair and gripped his knees as if to squeeze the life out of them. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to live in a patriotic military town when your only son is a goddamned traitor to his country?” The last words were shouted out.

Nate said, “I’m no traitor. Who told you that?”

“Nobody in so many words,” Gordo said. “But I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. I looked it up: you didn’t get a proper discharge back in 2001. You just fucking left. That’s AWOL in my book, son. And when you just vanish and all I know about it is that officers and federal agents come here asking about you, it ain’t too hard to figure out.

“And if there’s another story,” his father said, “it hasn’t come to light. I just figure you’re ashamed of yourself, and you ought to be. Because you brought shame on the uniform and the country. And you brought shame on me.”

Nate let the words hang there for a minute without responding. Then he said, “There’s another story. Or at least a different version.”

“Well, then spill it out,” Gordo croaked.

Nate stood up slowly, taking in his father. The man was exercised, and tiny beads of sweat dotted his upper lip. His eyes were haunted. Then he looked again at the children’s books, the photos on the refrigerator, the small stack of unopened mail on the kitchen counter.

He said, “When was the last time you saw Dalisay and the girls? I’m guessing two or three days, judging by the mail.”

Gordo’s face twitched as if slapped. It wasn’t a reaction Nate had seen much in his life growing up with his father.

“They’ve taken them, haven’t they?” Nate said. “They’ve got them somewhere. And they told you that if I showed up, you should let them know right away or you won’t see them again. Is that about right, Dad?”

His father sat as if frozen, but his tortured eyes gave Nate the answer he sought.

“Did you call them when you saw me outside? Are they on their way now?”

Gordo’s eyes flashed with defiance. “No.”

“To do this to a man like you,” Nate said, shaking his head, feeling his stomach clench. “A man who spent his life serving his country. That should tell you all you need to know about who I’m dealing with.”

Gordo Romanowski’s face twitched again.

“If I told you what happened,” Nate said, “it would be like putting a death sentence on you, like the one that’s on me. So I’m not saying another word.

“What you need to know, Dad, is I haven’t been in contact because I wanted to protect you and your new family. I don’t care if you believe me right now, but I think if you dig deep, you will.”

Nate took his cup to the sink, returned and gripped his father on the shoulder, and said, “Take care of Dalisay and those girls. Tell them not to be too ashamed of their older half brother. I’m out of here.”

As he opened the front door, Gordo asked softly, “Where are you going?”

Nate turned. “That’s what they want to know, isn’t it? Tell them I wouldn’t tell you. Which I won’t.”

Gordo blinked slowly. Nate could only imagine the torture he was in.

“Give me ten minutes to get back to the highway,” Nate said. “Then do what you need to do to get them back.”

Nate roared away from the house, eyes wide open, weapon on his lap. But when he cleared the tunnel of trees, he didn’t turn left toward town and the highway. If they were on their way, they’d see his Jeep.

Instead, he cranked the wheel to the right and floored it. The movement made his wounded left shoulder pulse with pain. He headed straight west toward the wall of mountains.

Nevertheless, he had no doubt that whoever was holding Dalisay and the girls would be right behind him.

14

As Nate climbed the mountain toward Pikes Peak and the road began to curve upward and he approached a devilish series of switchbacks, he shot glances into his rear and side mirrors. He eased slightly on the gas as if riding a motorcycle when he leaned into the steep turns, so he could hang his head out the window to survey the bends of the two-lane far below and behind him. He’d passed a couple of small rental cars — tourists, with children in the backseats, wide-eyed mothers in the front, and fathers with death grips on the steering wheel — and grumbled “Flatlanders” when he blasted around them. The short wheelbase and all-terrain tires of the Jeep were made for this kind of driving: tight, fast, and full of sprints and sharp turns.

He didn’t know the area or the road system well, but he knew the general direction he wanted to go: over the mountains and on to Rexburg, Idaho, seven hundred miles to the northwest. So like he’d done so many times in the wilds of Wyoming and Montana, he navigated not by GPS or maps but by studying the terrain and geography in the direction where he wanted to go and trusting there would be two-tracks, old logging or ranch roads, or even dry streambeds he could take to get him there. One thing he was sure of was that he needed to get off the state highway as soon as possible. If operators of The Five were coming after him, they’d by now ruled out his presence on the main road to town and to the interstate, which meant he could have only gone the opposite way from Gordon’s home. Given that, it would be a matter of time and determination to pin him down. The Five was known for its determination.

The route he’d taken narrowed and went straight up the mountain. In a few miles, the pavement would end, and from there on the road climbed an additional nineteen harrowing miles to the top of 14,100-foot Pikes Peak. He’d been up there once. On top, there was a developed parking area, views of blue waves of mountains to the west and the foothills and plains of Colorado all the way to the Kansas border. But it wasn’t a place to make a stand: too open, too many civilians, and only one escape route, which was back down the road he was on.

Nate was disconcerted after seeing his father. The old man had been rattled and scared. He wasn’t the man Nate remembered, and it made him angry. The Gordon Romanowski he’d grown up with had been fearless and tough. He was the guy you wanted near you in a fight, a man so hard and set in his ways, so without nuance, that despite his intractability, there was comfort in his pure stubborn black-and-white worldview. Whoever had gotten to this tough old man in such a personal way … well, something bad should happen to them, Nate concluded.

Nate assumed Gordon had made the call he had to make and the operations team was on its way. Nate wondered about the numbers and the makeup of Nemecek’s force. He doubted locals had been recruited in Colorado and had to assume the team had come with Nemecek. Trusting locals to hold a family hostage and respond with lethality when called upon was too much of a stretch. But how many operators would agree to deploy domestically, and what had Nemecek told them about their mission? Surely, Nemecek had lied, and that likelihood put Nate in a quiet rage. Operators of The Five that Nate had known and fought beside were good men: loyal, patriotic, and tough as nails. They wouldn’t simply do the bidding of a superior officer without being convinced of the righteousness and morality of the mission. These men, like Nate himself back then, were well trained and efficient but not automatons. They’d do anything asked of them if they thought it would save lives and protect their country. Kidnapping Gordon’s family and setting a trap for Nate would happen only if Nemecek had fed them lies, and he hated his old superior for taking such craven advantage of good men.

Good men, Nate thought, who would kill him in an instant, because that’s why The Five existed. In other circumstances, these were the kind of men he’d fight beside and lay down his life for. But because of Nemecek and Nate’s secret history, and Nemecek’s willingness to lie to subordinates, some warriors would likely die. Nate hoped he wouldn’t be among the first. Not until he did everything he could to cut the depraved head off the snake.

He was a little surprised surveillance hadn’t been set up near his father’s home. It heartened him that whoever was in charge of this phase of the operation — surely not Nemecek himself — had allowed such a lapse. If they’d been stationed in the trees when Nate had arrived, the game would be over by now. But sloppiness or some kind of anomaly had prevented that. And he knew it wasn’t unusual. Things just happened — machinery broke down, people got sick or injured, gaps appeared in surveillance because someone read their watch wrong or misheard the schedule — no matter how much time had been spent on the plan. He’d been involved in so many intricate operations, he knew that when things got hot, plans evaporated and instincts and training took over. He could only hope whoever might be after him hadn’t been in the same kind of crazed and chaotic balls-to-the-wall combat he’d encountered. If not, he might have an edge on them.

Nate took a sharp turn to the right onto another steep switchback. Dark pine trees climbed up the right-hand slope of the road, but to the left there was open air all the way down to Colorado Springs, which glittered in the distance in the mid-morning sun. It was the kind of vast, achingly clear view rarely seen from anywhere except an airliner as it broke from the clouds. He swallowed hard several times to clear his ears of building pressure from the altitude of the climb. Judging by the thinness of the air and the looming snow-covered monolith of the peak to his south, he guessed he’d broken ten thousand feet.

That was another advantage, he thought. If his pursuers weren’t acclimated to the altitude, they’d find their mental and physical reactions slowed down. Altitude sickness produced foggy thinking and rapid exhaustion.

Around the corner was a small gravel turnout on the other side of the road, with barely enough space for a single vehicle. The turnout existed so descending drivers could pull over and let their brakes cool before making the rest of the drive. He whipped the Jeep across the center line of the road and into the turnout. He parked parallel to the guardrail and stomped on his emergency brake and kept his engine running.

Slowly, he looked around and took measure of the situation he was in.

The highway ahead of him continued ascending for about five hundred feet and then vanished to the right in a blind corner for what was no doubt the start of another switchback up the mountain. But from where he parked, it seemed as though the road simply disappeared from view. He looked up the side of the right-hand slope, but trees blocked him from seeing any flashes of the higher switchbacks up above him.

From the perch, he’d be able to see if a vehicle was coming. Because the road was carved along the vertical rise of the mountain itself, only a two-foot-high guardrail on the east side of each turn separated the ribbon of asphalt from a sheer drop of more than a thousand feet. It was the kind of aerie that terrified some visitors, and he could imagine — and understand — the swoon of vertigo the view could bring on. But because he’d spent so many hours rappelling down cliff faces to trap falcons, height — or being suspended in air — didn’t bother him.

From his vantage point, he could see the bends of four switchbacks below him on the mountain. It was as if he were nearly on the top of a tiered wedding cake. There were glimpses of the outer edges of the tiers below him. But from those lower tiers, it would be difficult to look straight up and keep the car on the road at the same time.

Across the road from where the turnout was carved into the mountain face was a narrow clearing in the trees about the width of a vehicle. Sure enough, there appeared to be an old overgrown two-track Jeep trail coming down from high in the mountains. The entrance to the road was partially blocked by four steel T-posts that had been driven into the rocky ground. There were no fresh tracks on the trail. He didn’t know where the trail came from or where it went, but it was pointed in the right direction: northwest. He nodded and turned back to the panoramic view of the switchbacks out of his driver’s window.

There was the metallic flash of reflected sun off a windshield four switchbacks down. Nate narrowed his eyes and homed in, but he saw the vehicle was one of the four-door rentals he’d already passed creeping around the corner. Before he could grumble “Flatlanders” again, a white SUV with smoked windows barreled around the turn, overtook the rental as if it were standing still, and shot back out of view into the trees as it cleared the turn.

Grunting aloud from pain because he kept forgetting about his injured shoulder, he slipped the .500 revolver out of its holster and extended it out the window. He trained the scope on the widest part of the third switchback down and waited, giving the SUV a minute and thirty seconds to appear. It did, and it filled the scope.

The SUV was a new model Chevy Tahoe with green-and-white Colorado plates. No doubt a rental, Nate guessed. Whoever was driving was going too fast, barely keeping the big unit under control. Unfortunately, though, because of the fleeting glimpse of the SUV and Nate’s angled view of the darkened windows, he couldn’t see the faces or outlines of who was driving or how many others were inside.

His instincts told him whoever was driving the Tahoe was after him. That they were hurtling up the mountain because his father had been coerced into placing a call.

They’d appeared behind him so quickly he got another thought that sent a chill through him: Dalisay and the girls could be inside. It was possible whoever was holding them had responded quickly to the call and had brought them along for the ride.

Nate thought: Melia’s first checkup: no cavities!

He pulled his weapon inside the cab of the Jeep and laid it across his lap. Then he weighed his options.

He could simply wait where he was, parked in the only pull-out on the fifth switchback, and take out the driver as the Tahoe roared by. But if the girls were inside and the Chevy plunged off the road …

Or he could drive up ahead, keeping a protective cushion between them, and hope there would be a scenario where he could somehow get the Tahoe to stop and pull over so he could see who was inside and take action. But he knew he was close to the top of the tree line. Even if he got well ahead, he’d have no cover, and the occupants of the Tahoe would see him up ahead on the road and know he had nowhere to run.

Or he could barrel across the highway, mow down the T-posts, and four-wheel it up the Jeep trail and hope his pursuers didn’t notice the damage or the fresh tracks up through the grass as they blasted by. But even if he got away, he had no idea where the road went. He could be trapped in a situation where he didn’t have an escape route. The road might be impassable due to downed trees or a rockslide. Or, if they saw the bent posts and followed and the road opened up, he could be overrun by the Tahoe.

Nate wasn’t encouraged by his options.

He looked out his window to see the white Tahoe blast around the hairpin turn of the closest switchback. He knew at the rate the car was climbing, they’d be right on top of him in less than two minutes.

He took a deep breath. His choices of staying or trying to outrun them or outclimb them all had vicious downsides. And if Dalisay and the girls were inside the Tahoe, all the variables changed.

But he had his advantages. They didn’t know he was there or that he knew they were coming. And although the driver of the Tahoe was likely well trained in evasive driving, Nate owned these mountains. They were his Rocky Mountains, and he knew how to use their savage beauty and extreme character to his benefit.

He’d been in a similar situation once on a mountain road in Montana. At that time, he’d recalled something he’d once learned about counterinsurgency tactics from John Nemecek himself. Nemecek had said, “When you’re in the middle of a shitstorm and your back is to the wall and the only options that exist are fucking horrible, you need to think, that instant, about the last possible thing you want to see coming at you. Then do it to them.”

Nate looked around him and smiled. He released the parking brake and gunned the Jeep up toward the blind corner. In the thin, still mountain air, he could hear the building roar of the Tahoe coming.

Nate knew that for his tactic to succeed, timing was everything. While he roared up the road and careened around the blind corner, he tried to calculate the speed and distance of the closing Tahoe, and visualize where it would be on the highway when he pulled the trigger on his plan.

There were no cars on the stretch of road up ahead of him, and he thanked Providence for a clean palette. Then, out of sight from where he’d pulled over moments before, Nate stomped on his brakes and performed a quick three-point turn so the Jeep was headed back down the mountain. He paused for a few seconds, trying to anticipate the progress of the Tahoe, then tapped on the accelerator.

He coasted around the corner just as the grille of the Tahoe appeared a quarter of a mile below him. The SUV was coming fast. Because the angle of the sun illuminated the inside of the oncoming vehicle, Nate could now make out two forms inside: a driver and a passenger. Dalisay and the girls didn’t appear to be inside, but he couldn’t be sure of it. They might be bound or hunkered down in the backseat.

At the rate of speed the vehicles were nearing each other, he knew he’d have only a few seconds to make this work. At that instant, he eased the Jeep over to the left so it straddled the center line of the road. He took a quick intake of breath and held it, then gripped the wheel tight and locked his arms and floored it. There was now no way the two vehicles, if they stayed on their present path, could avoid a violent head-on collision.

The distance between Nate and the Tahoe melted away. He lowered his chin to his chest and braced himself, even though he knew that if the driver of the Tahoe didn’t veer away, it wouldn’t matter what he did to prepare for the impact. As he hurtled toward the SUV, Nate noted that the rear end of the Tahoe was suddenly fishtailing: the driver had hit his brakes. Nate didn’t slow down. He saw a pair of white palms flash up to the windshield of the Tahoe as the passenger panicked.

Nate bore down.

A second before he drove headlong into the front end of the Tahoe, it veered right. But not fast enough. The Jeep’s right front bumper clipped the rear quarter panel of the SUV and shattered the taillight. The collision had enough impact to wrench the steering wheel hard, but he fought to keep the Jeep on the road and he slammed on his brakes. Behind him, he heard an even louder crash of metal on metal and the crack of broken wood.

The driver of the Tahoe had taken the only available option other than hurtling off the mountain or heading for a fiery head-on collision: he’d shot into the same gravel pull-out Nate had used a few minutes before. But he’d done so recklessly due to the situation, and had flattened the guardrail and broken the posts that held it up. The two left tires of the Tahoe hung over the lip of the road and spun lazily, suspended in air.

When his Jeep finally stopped in a haze of burned tire smoke, Nate slammed the gearshift back and reversed. The side of the Tahoe filled his back plastic rear window and grew larger. But instead of ramming the Tahoe and sending it over the side, Nate jerked the wheel so he slid in next to the SUV with only inches between them. The two vehicles were side by side. Nate kept the motor running in his Jeep.

He bailed out of the cab and kept low. He’d stopped his Jeep so close to the Tahoe that the occupants were trapped inside. They wouldn’t be able to open the passenger door because his Jeep blocked it, and outside the driver’s side was nothing but thin air.

Nate crab-walked around the front of his Jeep with his .500 Wyoming Express drawn. He was still low enough that he couldn’t see the people inside, and therefore they couldn’t see him. The splinters from the exploded guardrail posts smelled of pine and creosote.

He squatted down by the bent rear bumper of the Tahoe. A deep male voice inside shouted, “Keep still! Don’t move or shift your weight!” As Nate reached up toward the back door handle, he knew why they were panicking. The SUV was literally balanced on the lip of the drop-off. He could feel the big vehicle shift slightly to the left, toward the abyss. It was a miracle it was even still up there.

Even though Nate was ninety-nine percent sure the occupants were operators from The Five, and Dalisay and the girls weren’t inside, he needed to make sure. He stood and threw open the back hatch and leveled his weapon.

“Raise your hands and press your palms to the roof liner!” he barked. “Both of you. Now.”

He didn’t recognize either of the men, but the sight of them jarred him, because they didn’t appear to be the righteous fresh-faced warriors he’d expected. They were older than he’d thought they’d be: late twenties, although ripped with lean muscle. The driver had a shaved head and a lantern jaw and wore a single diamond earring and wraparound sunglasses. He had scooted from behind the wheel toward the center of the Tahoe when he looked back. The passenger was dark-skinned and dark-eyed, and had a buzz cut. His shirtsleeves were rolled back to reveal a latticework of tattoos. He was pressed against the passenger door as if willing the vehicle to shift over to level. A stream of blood flowed down the side of the passenger’s nose from a cut he’d received in the crash.

“You’ve got to let us out of here, man,” the passenger said, pleading.

The bald driver didn’t move or speak, but Nate could feel his glare even though he couldn’t see his eyes.

“Nothing happens until you let me see your fucking hands.”

The passenger shot his arms up and did as he was told. The driver didn’t move.

“I’m not going to ask again …” Nate said, leveling his weapon at the driver’s head.

But before Nate could say another word there was the rapid crack-crack-crack of gunshots and the inside of the Tahoe was suddenly filled with swirling debris from the exploded cushioning from the bench seats. The driver was trying to put bullets into Nate by firing through the two sets of seats, and Nate dropped to the gravel. But he wasn’t hit. The steel framework and springs inside had stopped or diverted the rounds.

He rolled away back to his Jeep and clambered inside. He could hear the two men shouting inside the Tahoe. The passenger was screaming at the driver to stop firing, saying he’d seen the big blond man go down.

Behind the wheel of his Jeep, Nate cranked the front wheels and drove quickly out onto the road. Then he shoved the gearshift into reverse again and goosed it and T-boned the SUV. The spare tire mounted on the back of his Jeep hit the Tahoe squarely between the front and back doors on the exposed side. Nate’s head snapped back from the force of the collision, but the last thing he saw before the impact and pure blue sky was the muzzle of the driver’s weapon being raised toward the glass of the passenger window.

The Tahoe made an unholy racket as it rolled down the mountainside, snapping trees and breaking up in showers of glass and plastic and pine boughs until it settled upside down eight hundred feet below in a small rocky ravine.

In Nate’s mind, the faces of the two men — one of his brethren raising his weapon to try and take him out before the impact — hung suspended in the air. But something about them didn’t jibe. Unlike Nate’s fellow operators in The Five, these guys looked less like cool and efficient warriors than well-conditioned thugs. Either The Five were recruiting a different class of special operators, or he was so far away from his days in the unit that he remembered his brothers with murky nostalgia. He shook his head sharply, trying to make their faces and his thoughts go away.

He parked in the trees so his Jeep couldn’t be seen from the highway or from his father’s home. He kept in the timber as he skirted the clearing, getting just close enough to confirm there were fresh tracks in the drive from when the Tahoe had come and gone earlier. He suspected there was a third operator of The Five inside, possibly two, and prayed that Dalisay and the girls had been returned unharmed. The operators were no doubt waiting for the two men in the Tahoe to come back and pick them up after dispatching Nate.

He approached the house from the side, running from tree to tree, keeping low. He had to close a distance of eighty yards from the timber to the siding of the structure. The three windows on the side of the house went to the back bedrooms and the bathroom. All had curtains drawn, but as he made his last desperate sprint to the house over open lawn, he looked up and saw the curtains part on the bathroom window. Nate dropped to a squat and raised his weapon and cocked the hammer in a single move.

The crosshairs through his scope settled on the bridge of his father’s nose as the old man looked out. He was using the toilet and happened to part the curtains while he stood. Nate saw his Dad’s eyes widen in shock and surprise when he saw him.

Nate lowered the gun and raised a single finger to his lips to indicate “Sssshhh.”

His father nodded slightly before looking over his shoulder. Then, apparently satisfied no one was watching, he turned back.

Nate mouthed, “How many?”

His father mouthed, “One.”

“Front or back?”

“Front.”

“I’m going to ring the doorbell,” Nate mouthed, and illustrated by jabbing his pointer finger. He turned his finger on his Dad. “You answer the door.”

Gordo looked back at him blankly for a moment, then nodded that he understood.

Nate kept below the windows as he turned the corner from the side of the house. He approached the porch, then reached through the railing to press the doorbell. When the chime rang inside, he heard a series of sudden footfalls. Light and heavy steps. Meaning there were more inside than his father and the bad guy. Dalisay and the girls? He hoped so.

“Who the hell is that?” an unfamiliar man asked.

“I’ll get it,” he heard Gordon say.

“Stay where you are,” the other man said.

“Who’s here, Mom?” A small girl’s voice. Nate smiled to himself.

Nate heard and felt the sucking sound of the front door opening out. He pressed himself against the siding of the house with his weapon cocked and pointed up at a forty-five-degree angle.

A man’s head poked outside, squinting toward the circular drive. The operator was older than the two men in the Tahoe, but his features were just as hard and rough. Heavy brow, close-cropped hair, zipperlike scar on his cheek, and serious set to his mouth. Another thug. At Nate’s eye level, he recognized the blunt round snout of a flash suppressor mounted on the barrel of a semiautomatic long gun.

The operator sensed something wrong and his head rotated toward the big revolver.

Nate blew it off.

As he holstered his weapon and the shot rang in his ears along with shrieks from inside, he thought: Yarak.

15

The next morning, Wednesday, outside Saddlestring, Wyoming, Joe Pickett backed his pickup toward the tongue of his stock trailer in the muted dawn light. The glow of his taillights painted the front of the trailer light pink as he tried to inch into position so he could lower the trailer hitch onto the ball jutting out from beneath his rear bumper.

It was a cool fall day, with enough of a wind that the last clinging leaves on the cottonwoods were releasing their grip in yellow/gold waves. It had dropped below freezing during the night and he’d had to break through an inch of ice on the horse trough. Southbound high-altitude V’s of Canada geese punctuated the rosy day sky, making a racket.

He’d left a message on Luke Brueggemann’s cell phone that it was time to ride the circuit in the mountains and check on those elk camps they hadn’t gotten to earlier. While he bridled Toby to lead him over to the open trailer, he heard a vehicle rumbling up Bighorn Road from town. Hunters, he guessed, headed up into the mountains.

Gravel crunched in front of his house and a door slammed, and he leaned around the corner of the trailer to see who it was. It wouldn’t be unusual for a hunter to stop by to verify hunting area boundaries or make a complaint. But it wasn’t a hunter, it was a sheriff’s department vehicle. Joe caught his groan before it came out.

He stuffed his gloves into his back pocket and walked around the house to the front. Deputy Mike Reed was on his porch, fist raised, about to knock.

“Hey, Mike,” Joe said.

“Joe.”

“You’re out and about early.”

Reed sighed and crammed his hands into the pockets of his too-tight department jacket. “It seems late to me. I’ve been up most of the night.”

Joe frowned. “What’s up?”

“Hell is breaking loose. I was hoping you might offer me a cup of coffee.”

“Sure,” Joe said. “Just let me go inside and check around first. I’ve got one bathroom and three females in there getting ready for work and school in various stages of undress.”

Reed nodded. “I’ve got daughters. I remember what that’s like. I used the lilac bushes on the side of my house for eight years, I think. Maybe you could bring the coffee out here.”

“That would be a better idea,” Joe said, shouldering past the deputy.

They leaned their arms over the top rail of the corral at the opposite sides of the corner post. Each held a steaming cup of coffee and put a single boot up on the bottom rail. When they breathed or talked, small clouds of condensation puffed out and haloed their heads before dissipating.

“Like I said, long night,” Reed said.

“Seems like you want to tell me something.”

“That’s right, Joe.” There was gravity in Reed’s words.

“Then you’d best get to it,” Joe said. “I’ve got horses to load and a trainee to pick up, and if the sheriff or one of his spies sees us out here talking, he’ll think we’re plotting against him.”

Reed barked a laugh. “At this point, he’s probably already convinced of that. At least as far as I’m concerned.”

Joe sipped his coffee and waited.

“Since I’ve worked at the department,” Reed said, “I can’t remember more of a clusterfuck than we’ve got going right now. And the timing! Just a few weeks until the election. I should be kind of happy, I guess, but I almost feel sorry for that idiot of a sheriff right now.”

“Meaning what?” Joe asked.

“Well, the triple homicide, of course,” Reed said. “We’re not getting anywhere on that. We’ve notified the FBI, but we haven’t made a request for assistance. State DCI boys are bumping into each other in the office, but until something breaks, we’ve got nowhere to run with it. Ballistics is inconclusive, other than they were all shot with a big projectile that passed through their bodies and can’t be found. No one’s come forward to link them up, and nobody seems to know anything about why they were in that boat in the first place.”

Joe looked into the top of his coffee cup, because he couldn’t meet Reed’s eyes.

Reed said, “On top of all this, we get a call from Dr. Rhonda Eisenstein. She’s a psychologist from Winchester. You know her?”

Joe shook his head no.

“She’s … interesting. Anyway, this psychologist was in a house with a man named Bad Bob Whiteplume out on the res.”

“I know Bob,” Joe said, looking up.

“Anyway, according to this Dr. Rhonda Eisenstein, she was staying over with Bad Bob at his place Monday night and someone started honking their horn outside about three-thirty in the morning and wouldn’t stop. Bad Bob went outside to see what the problem was in his bathrobe and never came back. She thinks something might have happened to him and she’s raising hell with the sheriff to start a search.”

“Did she hear an argument or a fight?”

“No. She was in the back room.”

“She didn’t see anything?”

“No.”

“Why’d she wait two days to call?” Joe asked.

“Actually, she didn’t,” Reed said. “She called Tuesday. But with everything we’ve got going on, nobody got back to her. That really hacked her off.”

“I see,” Joe said.

“So when Bob didn’t show up later and nobody from the sheriff’s department came out, this doctor went on the warpath, so to speak.”

“So to speak,” Joe echoed.

“She started calling everybody. The newspaper, the radio station, all the television folks in Billings and Casper. Even the governor. She accused the department of racism because we didn’t respond quickly.”

Joe looked up. “Well …”

“I know,” Reed said, shaking his head. “But that sort of thing happens all the time on the res. We all know it. People just kind of come and go. We don’t get too worked up about it until we know someone’s really missing and the Feds give us the go-ahead since they’ve got primary jurisdiction.”

“Was this your decision not to call her back?” Joe asked.

Reed shook his head. “No, it was McLanahan’s. But it doesn’t reflect very well on any of us.”

“Probably shouldn’t,” Joe said.

“Anyway,” Reed said, “what happened happened. The result was the mayor and the city council called McLanahan in yesterday to demand some answers. Nobody likes it that we’ve got unsolved murders like this, but it’s even worse when the whole department is accused of racism. Nobody likes us making this kind of news, especially the sheriff. I almost feel sorry for him, and I didn’t think that was possible.”

Joe clucked his tongue. He thought he knew where this was going but didn’t want to encourage it.

“That’s not all,” Reed said. “About eleven last night, we got a call from the FBI in Cheyenne. They wanted to see if we could confirm the fact that our person of interest in the triple homicides, Nate Romanowski, was the son of one Gordon Romanowski of Colorado Springs, Colorado.”

Joe felt his throat go dry.

“Seems a body was found in the senior Romanowski’s place. No ID, but a massive head wound that sounds suspiciously like our three rubes from the boat.”

“No ID?” Joe asked.

“That’s what they said. We don’t have a lot more information on it yet, but they’re investigating. You know the Feds — they don’t share information. They just collect it and make their case and keep us in the dark pretty much.”

“Do they think the body was Gordon Romanowski?”

“No,” Reed said. “That they’re sure about. But they said it looks like Gordon and his family — a second wife and two little girls — have split the scene. No one can locate them.”

Joe’s head spun. He’d checked the falconry website that morning and there had been no new entries.

“I got the impression there were some other unexplained things going on down there in Colorado Springs,” Reed said. “They wouldn’t tell us what was going on, but maybe there were other bodies found. I don’t know.”

“Man oh man,” Joe said, and whistled.

“So because of this mess we’ve got,” Reed said, leaning forward on the rail so he could get closer to Joe, “McLanahan is personally leading the Whiteplume investigation, so he assigned me as lead investigator on the triple homicides. He called the mayor and the editor of the newspaper last night to let them know. He hung me out to dry and set me up to fail. It was a good move on his part, I’ll give that to him. This way, when the election comes around, the voters will have a choice of the racist incumbent who has been there for a while and the incompetent deputy who can’t solve a triple homicide. It evens the playing field, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yup.”

“I need to ask you something,” Reed said, his voice dropping. “I know we’re friends, but I’ve got a job to do.”

Here it comes, Joe thought.

“I know you’re close with Romanowski,” Reed said. “So I’ve got to ask you if you’ve been in contact with him the last couple of days. In any way.”

Joe looked up. “I talked to him a couple of nights ago.”

Reed’s face hardened.

“He told me he didn’t commit murder,” Joe said. “I believe him.”

“You knew we wanted to talk with him,” Reed said.

Joe nodded. “And there wasn’t — and isn’t — an arrest warrant. I could have asked him to voluntarily show up at your office for questioning, but he wouldn’t have done it.”

Reed said softly, “I appreciate you being straight with me.”

Joe looked away again.

“Now I’ve got to ask you if you’ve been in contact with him in any form the last couple of days.”

Joe said, “I haven’t.”

“But you’ll let me know, right? Now that our department and the Feds are wanting to talk to him?”

“The Feds have been wanting to talk to him for years,” Joe said. “That’s nothing new.”

“But a dead body in his father’s house is.”

Joe nodded.

“Do you know where he is?”

“No.”

“Do you know how we can reach him?”

“Don’t ask me that.”

Reed reacted as if slapped. “What are you saying?”

“I don’t want to lie to you,” Joe said. “So don’t ask me questions like that. Nate’s my friend. It’s possible he may reach out to me. I won’t betray him unless you can look me in the eye and say you know he’s done something bad.”

“It’s sure looking that way, isn’t it?” Reed asked. “The guy isn’t exactly stepping up to clear his name. And now this thing with his dad.”

“I honestly don’t know anything about that,” Joe said. “It does worry me, though.”

“That’s nice. You know, Joe, there are a few people who wonder about you. They wonder that when it comes to Nate Romanowski it’s a little questionable whose side you’re on.”

“Gee,” Joe said. “Who would those people be?”

Reed blew air out through his nose in a long sigh. “Jesus, Joe,” he said. “You’ve got to help me out here. Or I’ll start to wonder.”

Joe thought about it. His stomach was in knots. Reed was an honest cop and a friend as well. He might just be the next sheriff. Withholding information didn’t seem right.

Finally, Joe said, “Go out and talk to Pam Kelly. Sweat her if you have to.”

Reed looked up. “Did you interview her? Does she know something?”

“Go find out,” Joe said. He reached out for Reed’s empty cup and started for the house.

“Joe,” Reed said behind him.

Joe stopped.

“Tread lightly here,” Reed said. “Don’t get too tangled up in this. It isn’t your case. If it starts to seem like you’re playing games with us, well …”

“I know,” Joe said, and walked through the backyard to his house. While he was inside rinsing the cups, he heard the deputy’s vehicle start up and drive away.

Marybeth looked in on him in his office as he booted up his computer.

“If you’re trying to find John Nemecek, don’t waste your time,” she said.

He turned in his chair and raised his eyebrows. She stood there dressed only in flesh-colored panties and a matching bra.

“Good thing I didn’t invite Mike Reed in here for coffee,” he said, looking her over. “He might have been kind of distracted. I might have been kind of distracted.”

“How about you look me in the eye,” she commanded. “You’re not going to find what you’re looking for down there.”

He did so, reluctantly.

She said, “Unless you somehow got the name wrong, he doesn’t exist,” she said. “Nothing. Nada. He’s never been born.”

“I didn’t get the name wrong,” Joe said.

“Then he’s got some pretty powerful capabilities,” she said, glancing over her shoulder to make sure Lucy and April were out of earshot, “because no one can simply not exist on the Internet. It’s impossible. It takes some real juice to scrub a name off every search engine. The fact that he doesn’t exist at all in cyberspace says we’re dealing with someone with clout.”

“Interesting,” Joe said. “But I wasn’t actually going to look for him.”

“Leave that to me,” she said. “When I get to work I’m going to access the networks I’m not supposed to know about. I’ll find him.”

“Call me when you do,” Joe said.

She agreed with a wink. When she left the room to try and hurry up their girls, he opened the falconry site.

No new entries.

16

Luke Brueggemann tried not to show his obvious relief when Joe Pickett arrived at the hotel in his pickup without the horse trailer. Brueggemann tossed a small duffel bag of gear, clothing, and lunch into the bed of the vehicle and climbed in.

“Sorry I’m late,” Joe said, adjusting the volume down on the universal access channel of the radio. “It’s been another busy morning.”

“No problem,” Brueggemann said, buckling in. “What’s going on? Aren’t we going up to check on those elk camps?”

“Not today.”

“What’s going on?”

Joe chinned toward the radio. “Haven’t you been listening in? I thought you did that.”

Brueggemann’s face flushed red. “Girlfriend problems,” he said. “I’ve been on my phone all morning with my girl in Laramie.”

“Does she go to the university?” Joe asked, pulling out of the parking lot onto the street.

“Fifth-year senior. She kind of misses me, I guess. But she doesn’t have to make it so hard on me because I’m not there, you know? She’s used to being in contact with me twenty-four/seven.”

Joe grunted. He didn’t know, but he really wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the details. His mind was racing from what he’d heard from Deputy Reed that morning.

Brueggemann got the message that Joe didn’t want to hear about his personal life. He said, “So what’d I miss out on?”

“A guy from the reservation is missing,” Joe said, nodding toward the radio. “A well-known guy named Bad Bob Whiteplume. I know him a little, but I knew his sister very well.”

“You mean like he was kidnapped?”

“No. Missing.”

“Doesn’t that kind of thing happen all the time?” his trainee asked.

When Joe shot him a look, Brueggemann flushed again and said, “I didn’t mean anything by it. Sorry. I just meant I’ve heard those folks tend to come and go more than … others.”

“You sound like the sheriff’s department. Did you learn that growing up in Sundance?” Joe asked.

“You know what I mean,” Brueggemann stuttered.

Joe said, “It’s an odd deal. There’s all kinds on the res, just like there’s all kinds here in town. His sister, Alisha, was one of the best people I’ve ever met, God rest her soul.”

“She died?”

“Not that long ago,” Joe said. “It was an accident. The guys who killed her were after someone else and she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“This missing-persons case,” Brueggemann said. “What does it have to do with us?”

Joe cruised down Main Street, nodding hello to the few shoppers out on the sidewalk. “In normal circumstances, nothing,” he said. “But if you’ll recall, we had a triple homicide here a few days ago. Sheriff McLanahan has his hands full with that, and he’s apparently not getting anywhere finding the killer. He’s got FBI and DCI people here bumping into each other, and the voters are getting pretty antsy. And in the middle of all that, this doctor sets up camp and starts demanding a full-scale investigation to locate Bad Bob.”

Brueggemann shook his head, confused.

“If you haven’t noticed,” Joe said, “we don’t have a lot of law enforcement bodies around this county. When something major happens, everybody gets pressed into the effort. Highway patrol, local cops, brand inspectors. And game wardens.”

The trainee grinned. “So we’re gonna be part of the investigation?”

“Bet they didn’t tell you this part in game warden school,” Joe said.

“There isn’t any game warden school,” Brueggemann said.

“I know.”

It took forty minutes to get to Bad Bob’s Native American Outlet. On the way there, Brueggemann peppered Joe with questions about cases, investigative methods, Game and Fish violators, and landowner relations in Twelve Sleep County. They were the kinds of questions Joe had once asked of his mentor, Vern Dunnegan, when he’d been a trainee. While Vern loved to talk and tell long stories about the characters in the district, Joe kept his answers short and clipped. He didn’t have the paternalistic contempt for the locals Vern had.

While they drove, Joe noticed Brueggemann had his phone out and was furiously tapping keys. When his trainee saw Joe look with disapproval, he said as explanation: “Texting my girl.”

“Ah,” Joe said. “Maybe you can tell her you’re working. We’re at work.”

“I’ll do that,” Brueggemann said, his face flushed from being caught. After he pressed send, he slipped the phone back into his uniform pocket.

“You remind me of my daughters with your texting,” Joe said, realizing how old he sounded. And realizing how young Brueggemann was.

As they turned off the highway toward the reservation, there was a late-model black pickup off to the south in the middle of a sagebrush-covered swale. Joe instinctively pulled off the gravel road, put his truck into park, and raised his binoculars. After a full minute, he lowered them to the bench seat and pulled back on the road.

“Hunters?” Brueggemann asked.

“Yup.”

“Are we going to check them out?”

“Nope.”

“Can I ask why?”

“I know ’em,” Joe said. “The biology teacher at the high school and his son. They’ve got deer licenses and habitat stamps. I talked to them a few days ago, and I know they’re clean and legal. This is a general deer area, so they’re not trespassing. And they haven’t shot any game.”

Brueggemann shook his head. “How do you know they haven’t?”

“Clean truck,” Joe said. “No blood on it.”

“Oh,” Brueggemann said, obviously not entirely convinced.

“Like every newbie,” Joe said, “you want to roust somebody. I used to be like that. Most of these folks are solid citizens. They’re meat hunters out to fill their freezers. Most of them have been hunting for years, sometimes for generations. They pay our salaries, and the money from licenses goes to habitat management and conservation. Even the majority of the violators are just a little stupid about rules and regulations or trying to feed their families. Times are tough. Some of these men feel bad about being unemployed. They’d rather take their chances with the game warden than stand in line for government cheese. So I don’t roust ’em just to roust ’em.”

“That’s a question I have,” Brueggemann said. “What do you do when you catch someone red-handed with a poached deer and you know he was going to take it home to his family?”

“Are you asking if I ever use discretion?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Joe thought about how he should answer the question. Then: “Yeah, I do. But I never let them off entirely if they broke the law. I’ll give the guy a ticket for the poached deer, but I might look past other violations he committed at the same time. You can really build on the charges in just about every situation, and you’d be correct. Or you can make a point that one time and go a little easy on the guy. It’s different, though, if the violator is after a trophy or doesn’t have a starving family at home. In that situation, I lower the boom on ’em.”

Brueggemann smiled. “I heard you once issued the governor a ticket for fishing without a license. Is that just an urban legend, or what?”

Joe said, “Nope.”

“You really did that?”

“Of all people, he should have known better.”

“I can’t believe they let you keep your job.”

“Is that right?”

“Yeah,” his trainee said. “I think I’d have given the guy a warning or looked the other way. I mean, who cares if he pays a hundred-dollar fine? It wouldn’t mean anything in the end, anyway, and maybe I’d have a friend in high places.”

Joe looked over at Brueggemann for as long as he could before turning back to his driving. “Really?” Joe asked. “I think I should have lost my job if I didn’t give him a ticket.”

His trainee’s silence became uncomfortable. Finally, Brueggemann said, “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking when I said that.”

“No,” Joe said, “you weren’t. I’ve got a job to do out here, and I do it.” After a moment: “I know this will come across as old-school, but I hope you approach this job the right way. It’s easy to be cynical. That’s the way a lot of young people think about the world. I know that because I’ve got three kids of my own and I see glimpses of it from them at times. But I really do believe there’s nothing wrong with doing your best and doing the right thing. Just because you have a badge and a gun doesn’t mean you’re any better than these folks. If it weren’t for them, you wouldn’t have a job.

“I screw up sometimes,” he said, “but I’d rather screw up trying to do the right thing than looking the other way. And what good does it do you if your friend in high places knows firsthand that you’ll compromise your oath? Tell me that?”

“Jeez,” Brueggemann said, looking away. “You don’t need to get so hot about it. I said I was sorry.”

A few miles later, after minutes of silent tension, Brueggemann said, “I don’t want to get you all riled up again, but there’s something I’m curious about.”

“What’s that?” Joe said, tight-lipped. He was surprised at himself for getting angry so quickly, and he knew exactly why it had happened. He was also surprised that the reason for his outburst was the next thing to come out of Brueggemann’s mouth.

“This Nate Romanowski guy, the one the sheriff asked you about. Do you know him pretty well?”

“Well enough, I guess.”

“How? I mean, from what I heard yesterday at the garage, he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy you’d want to hang out with. He seems like the kind of guy you’d want to arrest.”

Joe knew he was boxed in. He said, “I’m not going to talk about it right now.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“No.”

“I’m just curious,” his trainee said.

“You can stay curious for a while,” Joe said so sharply that Brueggemann flinched.

A few minutes later, after he’d cooled down, Joe said, “It’s not just you I find so annoying. I’m trying to work some things out in my own mind right now.”

“I’m glad it’s not just me,” his trainee said, in a way that made Joe grin.

Joe nodded toward a low-slung building that emerged from the cottonwoods on the right. Two sheriff’s department vehicles were parked out front. “We’re here.”

Sheriff Kyle McLanahan looked distressed. Deputy Sollis stood next to him, his face a mask of deep feigned sympathy for his boss. Both looked up as Joe parked his truck and got out. Neither looked excited to see him.

“We’re in the middle of an investigation here,” Sollis called out.

“Looks like it,” Joe said, strolling up. Luke Brueggemann was a few feet behind Joe, hanging back. “Looks like you’ve got a lot going on by the way you’re standing around with purpose next to gas pumps.”

McLanahan said, “Unless you’ve got something you can tell us to help out, I’d suggest you move on down the road, Game Warden.”

“Deputy Reed filled me in on what was going on this morning,” Joe said. “I know you’re shorthanded until the state boys and the Feds show up.”

“He did, huh?” Sollis asked, as if Joe and Mike Reed’s conversation was proof of some kind of collusion.

Joe said, “Yup. You guys have a lot on your plate right now, and there’s two of us available.”

The sheriff snorted a response.

Joe ignored him and looked around. There was very little that stood out about the scene, Joe thought. The convenience store was still, the we’re closed sign propped in the window. Bad Bob’s blue Dodge pickup was parked on the side of the building where it always was, meaning he hadn’t driven it away. Two battered Dumpsters had been turned over behind the building and the contents inside scattered across the dirt. The concrete pad housing the gas pumps was dusty but not stained with blood.

Joe said, “I was wondering if you’d talked to the folks at the school. They seem to know everything that’s happening on the res.” He was thinking in particular of Alice Thunder, who had her finger on the pulse of the community and was supposed to be gone, according to Nate.

“We really don’t need your help with real police work,” Sollis said. “Aren’t there some fishermen you can go out and harass?”

“Not many,” Joe said. “Most folks are hunting by now.”

Joe was struck by McLanahan’s demeanor. He was usually blustery and sarcastic, roiling the calm with quaint and colorful cowboy sayings. But he looked gaunt, and the dark circles under his eyes were pronounced. This whole thing — the murders, the disappearance of Bad Bob, the upcoming election — was getting to him, Joe thought. There were many times in the past when Joe would have paid to see the sheriff in such pain. But for a reason he couldn’t put his finger on, this wasn’t one of them.

Joe said, “Bob is kind of a renegade. He might show up.”

“You think we don’t know that?” McLanahan said. “Do you think we want to …” But he caught himself before he finished the sentence.

“Get a move on, the both of you,” Sollis said. “We’re busy here, and you’re interfering with a crime scene.”

“A crime scene, is it?” Joe said.

“You heard him,” McLanahan growled. Joe noted that when the sheriff was truly angry, the West Virginia accent he once had and now suppressed poked through.

“Hey,” Luke Brueggemann said to the sheriff, gesturing toward Joe. “He’s just trying to help. He spends a hell of a lot more time out here than you people do, and he’s a lot more effective. Maybe you ought to listen to what he has to say.”

Joe raised his eyebrows in surprise. Sollis glared and squared his feet as if bracing for a fight. McLanahan turned his attention from Joe to the trainee.

“Who in the hell are you?”

“Name’s Luke Brueggemann.”

McLanahan let the name sit there. After a moment, he shook his head and said to Joe, “Get him out of here. He ain’t no older than my grandson, and even stupider, if possible.”

Joe hooked his thumbs through his belt loops and rocked on his boot heels. He nodded and said, “I guess you’re right. We’ve got fishermen to harass.”

He turned and put his hand on Brueggemann’s shoulder as he walked past. Brueggemann gave Sollis a belligerent nod and the sheriff an eye roll before turning and walking with Joe toward their truck.

“What was that about?” Joe whispered.

“They piss me off,” Brueggemann said. “They’ve got no good reason to act like that.”

“The county sheriff has jurisdiction in his county,” Joe said. “We can assist if asked, but he can say no.”

“That guy needs a lot of help, if you ask me. And I don’t even know what the hell I’m talking about.”

“Welcome to game warden school,” Joe said, a smile tugging on the corners of his mouth.

As he opened the door to his truck, McLanahan called after him, “And you can tell your friend Nate we’re going to find his ass and put him away.”

Joe and Luke Brueggemann stood in front of the counter in the principal’s office of Wyoming Indian High School, waiting for the principal, Ann Shoyo, to conclude a phone conversation. She held a slim finger in the air to indicate it would be only a few more seconds.

She was native, well dressed, and attractive, with a long mane of jet-black hair that curled over her shoulders. He noted the pin on her lapel, a horizontal piece that had a red wild rose on one side and a flag with parallel red and black bars on a field of white on the other side. The pin represented the two nations on the reservation: the rose was the symbol of the Eastern Shoshone, and the flag was the Northern Arapaho.

Ann Shoyo sat back and blew a stray strand of hair out of her face. “I’d like to talk to Alice myself,” she said. “But she hasn’t come in for two days. I would really like to talk to Alice.”

Joe quickly fished a card out of his pocket and handed it to her. “Please call me if she shows up or if you hear anything,” he said.

“Not good news,” Joe said to Brueggemann as they approached the pickup.

His cell phone burred and he retrieved it from his pocket. Deputy Mike Reed calling.

“Joe,” Reed said, “I’ve hit a brick wall. Pam Kelly isn’t here, and her stock is going crazy, kicking the fences all to hell and screaming at me.”

Joe could hear braying and anguished bleats in the background.

Reed said, “They act like they haven’t been fed for a couple of days.”

“Did you look inside the house?” Joe asked.

“I looked in through the windows, is all. I’ve got no probable cause for going in, although I might just make something up. I wonder if she did herself in, considering she lost her husband and her son?”

Joe paused for a moment, then said, “That doesn’t sound like her. She’s too mean.”

“I’ll keep looking,” Reed said. “I’ll let you know if I find her. But this place gives me the creeps, and I’ve got a real bad feeling about it.”

Joe understood. He felt the same way as they turned into the rough driveway off Black Coal Road that led to the back of Alice Thunder’s home. Her GMC wasn’t parked on the side, which gave him an ounce of hope.

“Give me a minute,” Joe said to Brueggemann as the trainee reached for his door handle. “I’ll be right back.”

Brueggemann shrugged a whatever shrug.

Joe realized as he walked up Alice’s broken concrete path that something was amiss. It was when he rapped on her back door that he realized what it was: no dogs. Every time he’d ever been there, her little dogs put up a cacophony and she’d have to push them aside to get to the door.

She wasn’t home, and the dogs were silent.

He thought: Bad Bob, Pam Kelly, and now Alice Thunder. His chest tightened, and he took several deep breaths as he stepped back and pulled out his phone. He was surprised to see he had a message from Marybeth. Apparently, she’d called while he spoke to Mike Reed and he’d missed it.

He punched the button to retrieve it.

Her voice was tense. “I’m frustrated. I’ve looked everywhere — every database I have access to. John Nemecek doesn’t exist,” she said.

He thought: Yes, he does.

17

The next morning, in the long cold shadow of the sawtoothed Teton Range in the mountains outside of Victor, Idaho, Nate Romanowski smeared a tarry mixture of motor oil and road dirt below his eyes, across his forehead, and over his cheeks. The morning sun had not yet broken over the top of the mountains. Light frost coated the long grass in the meadows and the cold, thin air had a scalpel-like bite to it. Below him, through a descending march of spindly lodgepole pine trees that strung all the way to the valley floor, a single sodium pole light illuminated the center of a small complex of faded log structures. It was 7:40, Thursday, October 25.

He raised the field glasses. Below was a lodge and four smaller outbuildings in the complex: a garage, a sagging barn, a smokehouse, and what looked like a guest cabin. He focused in on the hoary metal roof of the lodge and noted several wet ovals on the surface, meaning there were sources of heat inside. That was confirmed when he shifted his view to the mouth of a galvanized chimney pipe that exhaled a thin plume of white woodsmoke.

When the wind shifted from east to west, he thought he caught the slight aroma of coffee and bacon from below. Breakfast, he thought. The place was occupied, but by whom?

He turned to his vehicle and slid the scoped Ruger Ranch rifle from beneath the front seat of his Jeep. It was the rifle he’d liberated from the old man in the boat. He checked the loads. The thirty-round magazine was packed full with red-tipped Hornady 6.8-millimeter SPC shells in 110 grain. Nate seated a live round in the chamber with the Garand breech bolt-action and slung the weapon over his shoulder. His .500 shoulder holster was buckled on over his hoodie and fleece for quick access. A pair of binoculars hung from a strap looped around his neck.

He was ready.

The trip from Colorado Springs to the compound in Idaho had taken slightly more than nineteen hours after the killing of the third operator.

Despite initial objections from Gordon, Nate had persuaded his father to take his family away. Nate gave him half a brick of cash and apologized to his stepmother and half sisters for meeting the way they did.

Nate didn’t leave the scene until 1:00 in the afternoon. No other operators arrived.

He’d debated himself how much evidence — if any — to leave behind. The body contained no legitimate identification. The man had a wallet in his pocket with $689 in it and a Colorado driver’s license. No credit cards, no receipts, no other cards of any kind. And when Nate studied the license, he recognized a professional forgery right away. The license was too new, stiff, and shiny. It was the kind of identification Nate had been given to use a hundred times in the past. There wasn’t a single thing wrong with it except the wrong name, Social Security number, address, and birthplace. Nate had nodded to himself in recognition. In the rare circumstance that the body of a member of The Five was left in a country they weren’t supposed to be in, there would be no means of identifying him. It rarely happened — they prided themselves on bringing everyone back every time — but it was standard operating procedure. This alone would send Nemecek a message.

Rather than backtrack through Colorado Springs and drive north on highly trafficked I-25, he took rural county roads for sixty miles until he merged onto I-70 west and on to Grand Junction, Colorado. The way north and west from there lost him five hours more than if he’d taken the other route, but he thought if anyone were looking for him, he’d escape their attention. It was evening when he hit the outskirts of Grand Junction and stopped to fill the tank and spare gas can before proceeding west into Utah, and then north toward Salt Lake City. He was never out of sight of the mountains, and he drove with his eyes wide open, noting every potential escape route toward those mountains if he encountered a roadblock or an enemy vehicle.

As he drove and lost his light, he replayed all the events of the morning, from meeting his father to sending his old man away from his own house with a wad of unmarked cash. He could only speculate on what faced him, based on his knowledge and experiences with John Nemecek. When he ran everything back through his mind, he concluded with more questions than answers.

Nate needed to know how many people were in the team with Nemecek. Once he knew for sure, he could tailor his strategy and defense. His mentor liked working with small strike forces of no more than eight, but it wasn’t a hard-and-fast prerogative. Nemecek liked eight because the number was perfect for a small footprint but an effective infiltration. Only one large vehicle or two midsized cars were necessary to move everyone into place on the ground. Eight could be broken up into the smaller units Nemecek favored: two killing squads of four each, including the team leader, a communications operative, and a jack-of-all-trades (JOAT) operator trained in emergency medical triage and whatever other special skills the particular mission required.

Assuming eight was the number, Nate could identify five so far. This included the three dead operators, and the mystery woman who’d killed Large Merle. That meant there were three other operators out there somewhere — maybe with Nemecek, maybe on an assignment of their own. In this case, Nate guessed the JOAT would be the woman. She was attractive and aggressive enough to turn Large Merle’s head and manipulate him into giving away Nate’s previous location as well as cold-blooded enough to kill his colleague when he was no longer useful to her. Women were rare in the ranks of Mark V, but not unheard of.

He didn’t count the three locals Nemecek had recruited to ambush him from the river.

And what if there were more? Nemecek knew Nate knew him. The number could be smaller, but Nate doubted that because of logistics. But it could very well be larger, maybe even double or more the size Nate anticipated. If that was the case, Nate would need help. And he knew there was only one place he could find it: Idaho.

Nate was still puzzled by the demeanor and physical appearance of the three dead operators in Colorado. The colleagues he had worked with years before were unique in looks and attitude in that they were fairly normal and didn’t stand out from the crowd: Nate and Large Merle being two exceptions to that rule. The Peregrines who made it through training weren’t the bodybuilders, or the ex-jocks, or the street fighters and ex-bouncers who volunteered for special ops. They weren’t the hard cases covered with tattoos and jewelry. The men who’d spent their young lives being ogled, brown-nosed, or feared by peers couldn’t handle what Mark V training threw at them. They didn’t have what it took when the mental part of the training took place, the weeks designed to humiliate and break down the recruits.

The ones who made it, like Nate, made it because of something different inside: a desire to succeed no matter what, a defined and accomplished hatred for their tormentors, and an almost pathological desire to be a member of one of the most elite special-operations units ever devised. The Peregrines who emerged had unbelievable mental toughness, what Nemecek called “high-tensile guts.” They weren’t necessarily the greatest physical specimens, or the tallest or biggest. The majority of them were fresh-faced and soft-spoken. Most came from places like Oklahoma, or Arkansas, or South Carolina, or Montana, or Wyoming. Many were raised on farms and ranches, and most were hunters and fishermen or mountain climbers or kayakers. Men who had grown up amid the cruelty and amorality of nature itself, where predators were predators and prey was prey.

Nate had always thought he had an advantage over the others in his class, and it was that thought that kept him going. He had since realized that perhaps it was a false advantage, but at the time it sustained him and drove him on. Nate thought at the time, during the training, that no one around him could possibly understand the single-minded dedication it took to be a falconer. The rigors and psychological suspense of logic and disbelief he’d encountered capturing and flying birds of prey had honed his disposition and dedication to a place none of his fellow operators could yet grasp. Nemecek got it, which is why he’d approached Nate in the first place.

The men who survived Peregrine training were highly intelligent, resourceful, entrepreneurial, apolitical but loyal to their country and their fellow operators — and capable of killing without second thought or remorse. Killing was considered part of living, a by-product of the job and nothing more or less. It had to be done, and there wasn’t anything particularly glorious about it. And those who were killed had it coming.

So the look of all three operators Nate had encountered ran counter to his experience. The two in the Tahoe looked like hyped-up gangbangers. The older one in the house looked like a middle-management thug.

It puzzled him. Either Nemecek’s standards had slipped or his current operators were harbingers of a new generation.

Now Nate picked his way down the mountainside toward the compound below. He moved from tree to tree, and paused often to look and listen. Despite what many people thought, mountain valleys didn’t awake in silence. Squirrels chattered warnings of his approach to their compadres. A single meadowlark perched on an errant strand of wire sang out its haunting chorus.

He moved within a hundred yards of the compound before he slid down to his haunches to observe. Although the outbuildings and guest cabin looked unoccupied, he could see the shadowed grille of an old Toyota Land Cruiser in the open garage. The vehicle was familiar. It was a stock SUV that had been retrofitted to accommodate a handicapped driver. But he wondered why there was only a single auto present when there should have been three or four.

Although he couldn’t yet figure it out, something was awry from how he remembered the place. His only proof was a sense of unease.

Through his binoculars, he swept the tree-lined slopes on the far side of the small valley. In the early-morning sun there was the chance of a glint from glass or metal. If there were operators up there in the trees watching the compound, he couldn’t pick them out.

The last four times he’d visited the compound there were five ex-operators who used it as a base camp and headquarters. Oscar Kennedy, who’d been a paraplegic since taking a bullet in the spine in Somalia, owned the compound and managed its operations. Kennedy was a contemporary of Nate’s in Mark V, and the man he knew best and trusted the most. Kennedy maintained close contacts with personnel in the Defense Department in Washington and operators within the Joint Special Operations Command, the small and secret agency that oversaw special ops for every branch of the military. When Nate needed to know what was going on, he asked Oscar Kennedy to make inquiries.

Oscar Kennedy was a man of God, and the reverend for a small wilderness church located off Highway 33 between Victor and Driggs. His congregation was small and diverse, including not only ex-military and isolated survivalists but counterculture diaspora from the resort areas over the Tetons in Jackson Hole. Nate had attended a couple of services over the years. The Reverend Kennedy preached self-reliance and self-determination, and shameless love for a tough and judgmental God. He worked in themes and lessons he’d learned in Special Forces with a twist, and spoke of the holy need for warriors, the moral authority of Christian soldiers, with special emphasis on Romans 13.

Other ex — special operators who had found their way to Idaho and the compound — dubbed Camp Oscar — were Jason Sweeney, Mike McCarthy, Gabriel Cohen, and Aldo Nunez. Only two of the men, Sweeney and Kennedy, had been operators for Mark V. The others had been members of other branches. Naturally, there was a built-in rivalry between them, but they had one thing in common: all had turned their backs on the government they had once worked for but considered themselves patriotic Americans. They were well armed, well trained, and absolutely out of the mainstream. Since Idaho and Camp Oscar offered refuge and common ground, they’d found their way there. Nate had told no one of the existence of Camp Oscar, including Joe Pickett. It was important to maintain the secrecy and integrity of the camp and its occupants.

Idaho was one of the few places in the country suited so well for such a compound of ex-operatives. The state was unique and its people independent, for the most part. Nate found Wyoming and Montana to have similar traits, but he understood why Kennedy had chosen Idaho.

There was a live-and-let-live mentality, Kennedy had explained to Nate, that allowed and even encouraged diversity of politics and opinions as long as neither were imposed on others. The ex-operatives were all libertarians of different degrees, although there were mighty political arguments among them. A couple of the men, including Gabriel Cohen and Jason Sweeney, considered the country already ruined. Cohen called it “the wimpification of America.” They were fully prepared to join a secessionist movement at the drop of a hat to help create a nation along the lines of what the Founders intended. Nunez and McCarthy weren’t yet ready to give up completely on Washington, D.C., but they simply wanted to be left alone. And if they weren’t left alone, they planned to push back. Oscar Kennedy kept his innermost feelings close to the vest, but Nate suspected Oscar would join with the secessionists if compelled to make a choice.

The one thing all the ex-operatives agreed on, though, was their solidarity. It was all for one and one for all, much like the credos of each branch of the Special Forces. But in this case, the enemy was likely to be the same government that had trained and selected them.

The year before, when Joe and Nate had found a missing woman named Diane Shober in the mountains of southern Wyoming, Joe had wanted to return her to her dysfunctional family because it was his duty to do so. After talking to her and assessing her views, Nate had disagreed and escorted her to Camp Oscar, where she’d thrived. And as far as he knew, she was inside the lodge.

But why no vehicles, except for Oscar Kennedy’s?

Something was very wrong. And who was inside cooking breakfast?

After waiting for another hour and giving up on the idea that someone would come outside, Nate kept low and sprinted to the back of the lodge and leaned against the outside wall. He kept still and scanned the trees behind him for movement but saw nothing unusual. With his cheek and ear pressed against the rough surface of a log, he concentrated on trying to detect movement inside. Rapid footfalls could mean they knew he was there. But it was quiet.

Closed-circuit cameras were installed throughout the property and fed to several monitors inside, but they were mounted in trees and on poles, and they pointed away from the lodge, not back toward it. Motion detectors were set up along the approach road on the far side of the property, but Nate had come from the back, through the trees, where he assumed there were no electronics. He’d learned through experience that motion detectors in wildlife-heavy brush were virtually useless and generally ignored.

He assumed his arrival had been undetected, either by anyone watching the compound or by whoever was inside.

There was a dark door that led inside into a mudroom. The door was painted reinforced steel made to appear to be wood. Like the door, the lodge itself looked rustic, but it was a fortress. Oscar Kennedy had used family money as well as disability income to make sure of it. The windows were triple-paned and designed to be bulletproof. All the entrance doors were steel, set into steel frames. Inside, like so many spare pairs of reading glasses scattered around in a normal residence, were loaded weapons within easy grasp.

Still pressed against the outside wall and keeping his senses on full alert, he reached out and felt beneath a log on the left side of the back door until his fingertips brushed against metal buttons: the keypad.

He wondered if they’d changed the code since he was there last. If they had, his old entry numbers would signal them inside that someone was trying to gain access. And if they hadn’t, punching correct numbers would alert whoever was inside that he was coming in.

But he needed answers as much as he needed allies. And if his friends had been replaced by Nemecek’s men, he’d know very quickly and try to fight his way out. He was willing to take the chance. Nate slung the rifle over his shoulder and secured it. He didn’t think he’d be needing a long gun inside right away: too clumsy and cumbersome in a tight space.

With his .500 out and cocked, he reached under the log and found the keypad. The code always set his teeth on edge: 9-1-1.

The lock on the door released with a click, and he grasped the handle, threw the door open, and hurled himself inside.

18

Nate hit the floor of the mudroom and rolled a full rotation with his revolver extended in front of him. The door from the mudroom into the main lodge was propped open, and he could see clearly down a shadowed hallway all the way to a brightly lit corner of the kitchen itself. A slim woman stood at the stove, and she turned in his direction at the sound of the door opening.

She was young, mid-twenties, dark-haired, and obviously frightened. She held a cast-iron skillet aloft about six inches from the top of the range. In her other hand was a spatula. Her wide-open blue eyes were split down the middle by the front sight of his .500. Her mouth made a little O.

“Who’s there?” a male called out from inside the kitchen. Nate recognized the Reverend Oscar Kennedy’s voice.

“Me,” Nate said.

“Jesus,” the woman said, still holding the skillet and spatula in the air as if her limbs were frozen, “It’s him.” She had a pleasant Southern accent that made everything she said seem significant and earthy.

“Is it the infamous Nate Romanowski?” Kennedy boomed, then appeared on the threshold in his wheelchair. The woman stood motionless behind him.

“Oscar,” Nate said as a greeting, and stood up.

“You can put that thing away,” Kennedy said, wheeling down the hall toward him. “She’s on our side.”

“Maybe not his side,” the woman huffed, pronouncing it like sad and throwing a vicious evil eye toward Nate, and turned on her heel and vanished out of view.

Nate grunted, holstered his weapon, and leaned forward to give his old friend a greeting hug. They slapped each other on the back — Kennedy was surprisingly strong, and the slaps stung Nate’s injured shoulder — then released quickly.

“What’s her problem?” Nate asked.

“Haley? She’s all right. You scared her, is all.”

From out of view in the kitchen, Haley called out, “He didn’t scare me, and you know it. Now, make him go away.”

Oscar Kennedy waved his hand as if to suggest to Nate to pay her no mind. “Let me look at you,” Kennedy said, wheeling back a quarter-turn and squinting. Then: “You look not so good.”

“I’m fine,” Nate said, releasing the rifle sling and letting the weapon slide down his arm, where he caught it before the butt hit the floor. He crossed the room and propped it up in the corner.

“I guess the fact that you’re actually here and still with us is a miracle in itself,” Kennedy said.

Nate sighed. “So you know.”

“Some of it, anyway.”

“So where is everybody? Where’s Diane Shober?”

“Gone.”

“Where are the others?”

“Gone.”

“‘Gone’?”

“Nate, the purge is on. But for some reason the operators seem to have packed up and left. I’ve seen no sign of them since yesterday.”

“I might know why,” Nate said. Then: “‘The purge’?”

Kennedy nodded. He was dark and fleshy, his bulk straining the pearl buttons of his patterned cowboy shirt. His condition had made him resemble an upside-down pear: pumped-up upper body, shriveled legs. His big round head was shaved, and he had no facial hair save a smudge of silver-streaked black under his lower lip. Nate noted the holstered .45 semiauto strapped to the right side of his wheelchair within easy reach. The old-school operators still loved their 1911 Colts.

Oscar Kennedy narrowed his eyes. The look, Nate thought, was almost accusatory.

“They’re taking us all out,” Kennedy said. “And you’re the reason why.”

“So where did everybody go?” Nate asked Kennedy. He sat at the kitchen table. A bank of computer servers hummed in the next room. Somewhere above them on the top floor, Haley stomped around in a room. The reading room of the lodge, which had once been where hunters gathered after a day in the mountains, had been converted into a communications center. Large and small monitors were set up on old pine card tables. Wiring, like exposed entrails, hung down behind the electronics and pooled on the floor. Nate remembered the size of the generator in one of the outbuildings that supplied the compound with power. From this location, Oscar Kennedy could monitor events and communications across the globe via satellite Internet access. And because he didn’t draw from the local grid, he could do so without raising much attention.

Kennedy wheeled his chair up to the table and sighed. “This isn’t High Noon,” he said. “They didn’t desert you when you needed them most. It’s a lot worse than that.”

Nate cocked his eyebrows, waiting for more.

Kennedy said, “Sweeney and McCarthy were killed in a car accident two weeks ago. On that steep hill into Victor. The Idaho Highway Patrol said they lost control of their vehicle, but I think they were forced off the road.”

“Any proof of that?”

“None,” Kennedy said. “Other than they’d negotiated that stretch of highway hundreds of times. Yes, it can get treacherous in the snow and ice, but they were used to that. We had our first winter storm that morning, and they were going into town to get groceries. They never came back.”

Nate felt cold dread spreading through him. Jason Sweeney and Mike McCarthy were serious men. Sweeney was paranoid at times and scary when he got angry, but he was capable of locking his emotions down when the going got tough. McCarthy was an ex — Navy SEAL who was so silent it was easy to forget he was in the room.

“Two weeks,” Nate said. “That’s about the same time things started happening in Wyoming. You heard about Large Merle?”

Kennedy nodded and gestured toward the communications center.

“Any chatter about McCarthy and Sweeney from official channels?” Nate asked.

“None. Which told me everything I needed to know.” Kennedy smiled sadly. “Whenever one of our brothers passes on, there’s chatter. Guys email and post stories about the fallen warrior and let others in his unit know where to send flowers and donations and such. But in this case, there was nothing. Not a word. Not even a link to the write-up in the local paper. And when I sent a few emails out to their old unit, there were no replies. That means somebody put a lid on it.”

“How can that be?” Nate asked. “Nobody has the juice to tell ex-operators not to grieve. No one can tell them anything.”

“It’s not that,” Kennedy said. “The emails I sent never got there. And if anything was posted on the secure blogs and websites, it got deleted just as fast. Our guys in high places have that ability: to scrub digital communications. They’ve had it for years, but I’ve never encountered it personally. Somebody somewhere put out the word that there would be no mention of Sweeney and McCarthy. And because all communications go through conduits that we — our government, I mean — own, they can squelch anything they want to. They even have the ability to go back and ‘disappear’ items that were posted years ago. That’s a new capability, I think, but I’ve heard them talk about it unofficially.”

Nate shook his head. “You mean they can delete history?”

“Digital history, at least,” Kennedy said. “They have the ability, if they wanted, to scrub every story, article, post, or reference to the moon landing. They could make it appear that the event never took place. Or change the narrative.”

“Christ.”

“It’s a tremendous tool for counterinsurgency,” Kennedy said. “Think about it. The terrorists use email, websites, and social media to connect. If our guys can alter or delete their communications and history, they’re fucked.”

“But someone is doing it to us,” Nate said.

“I’m afraid so, yes.”

“Official or unofficial?”

“You tell me.”

As Oscar Kennedy talked, Haley reentered the room and studiously avoided eye contact with Nate. She padded over to the sink.

“Mind if I do the dishes now?” she asked Kennedy.

“It can wait,” he said.

She turned on him, and her eyes flared. “How about you do them when you feel the time is right, then? I’m not your maid.”

“Fine, then,” Kennedy said with a sigh. She did a shoulder roll away from him and turned on the taps.

She said, “Let me know when he’s gone, okay?”

Nate looked to Kennedy for an explanation.

“She came with Cohen,” Kennedy said. “They were an item.”

“‘Were’?”

Gabriel Cohen had been tall and rangy, with black curly hair. He was a talker and a charmer, and women fell for him. He was charismatic, passionate, and he drew people in. He’d looked Middle Eastern enough to be dropped inside the region into the hottest spots. Since he spoke Arabic and a smattering of Urdu, he could operate in several countries, including Pakistan.

Kennedy nodded. “He’s gone, too.”

“Jesus. What happened?”

“You happened,” Haley spat. She scrubbed the pots so violently, water splashed across the countertop.

“The cops said it was a bar fight,” Kennedy said, ignoring her. He chinned toward Haley. “Those two got in a big argument. It had to do with her staying here. Nunez didn’t like the idea of anyone bringing a stranger inside, and she overheard him telling Cohen. When Cohen didn’t defend her, she ripped into him. This place,” Kennedy said, “isn’t as big as you might think. There are lots of spats and arguments when you’ve got a bunch of people cooped up in here. Plus, there was the stress of Sweeney and McCarthy dying.”

“Anyway …” Nate prompted.

“Cohen left pissed-off ten days ago. It wasn’t the first time. I knew he’d likely just go down to Victor or over to Tetonia to get drunk and hash it out in his own mind. They found him beaten to death outside a bar in Tetonia. Blunt-force trauma. No suspects at all.”

“So they were waiting for him,” Nate said.

“That’s my theory.”

“They probably jumped him from behind,” Nate said. “Cohen was a tough guy, and you wouldn’t want to take him on from the front.”

“He was tough,” Kennedy said, shaking his head sadly. “But we’re all just flesh and blood. We’re all mortal. Even you.”

Haley reacted by throwing the dishrag into the sink with obvious disgust. When she turned on them, her eyes were filled with tears and her chin trembled. “You talk about Gabriel like I’m not in the room, Oscar.”

“Your choice.”

“But I’m not here by choice,” she said. Her Southern accent was honey-laced, Nate thought. But her voice built as she said, “I’m a prisoner. My man is gone, and the wolves are right outside the door. I’m doing my best, but I don’t have much left. So at least extend me the courtesy of not talking about him as if I wasn’t in the room, okay?”

Then she faked a slap at Kennedy’s head — he ducked — and again left the room. Nate watched her leave and was surprised to find his insides stir. She was fit and fiery, with that mane of jet-black hair and large blue eyes. She filled her tight jeans nicely and had a graceful way of moving — even when she was throwing a wet rag or stomping around — he found surprisingly attractive. He stanched the feeling. Alisha was still there with him — a braid of her hair on his weapon — and he instantly felt guilty about it.

When she was gone, Nate asked, “How long has she been here?”

“Three months, July,” he said. “We’re like an old married couple the way we fight all the time. She’s got a good heart, though. I’m fond of her, and it’s tough on her Cohen is gone. Really tough.”

Nate did a quick calculation in his head. She couldn’t be the vixen who lured Large Merle to his death if she’d been in Idaho for three months. But who was to say there was only one vixen?

“Have you checked her out?” Nate asked Kennedy softly.

The man nodded. “Of course, or I wouldn’t have let her in the door with Cohen. In a nutshell, she’s a North Carolina girl, born and raised in Charlotte. Old Southern family. Went to the University of Montana, then moved to New York. She was some kind of prodigy at a big public-relations firm for a while, got married to a sharpie, then divorced. No kids. She wanted to move back home, and she bounced around for a while until she ran into Cohen at Sun Valley and he brought her back here. No gaps in her history, no likely interactions with bad guys. Most of all, no incentive to infiltrate our compound. She was crazy about Cohen, even though they fought all the time.”

Nate nodded. “Are you two …?”

“No,” Kennedy said flatly. “Not that I haven’t suggested it. But no.”

“And Nunez?” Nate asked.

Aldo Nunez was a wiry man of Hispanic origins with a cherubic face and the ability to insinuate himself into any group. Nate had met him only once but liked him immediately.

Kennedy said, “He went down to talk to the local cops to find out what they knew about Cohen’s beating a week ago. That’s the last we’ve seen of him. He just never came back. You didn’t know Nunez very well, but believe me, he’s not the type to bug out.”

Nate rubbed his face with his hands.

“Diane Shober went with him,” Kennedy said flatly.

“So she’s gone, too.”

“I’m afraid so. Collateral damage.”

“It’s worse than I could have guessed,” Nate said.

Kennedy simply nodded as he kept his eyes on Nate.

“She’s right,” Kennedy said, referring to what Haley had exclaimed. “We’ve been virtual prisoners here. Honestly, I’m not afraid to go out, but I understand the odds. So we haven’t left this place since Nunez vanished. I haven’t been able to go to the church to preach.”

He chinned toward the window above the sink. “We haven’t opened the curtains until just this morning. We’re locked down and I’d like to say we’re ready for anything, but it depends what they throw at us. As you know, this is a tough place to get into if you don’t know the keypad code. I can’t see them trying an all-out assault. Instead, they’ve been patient and they picked us off one by one.”

Nate said, “Why do you think they’re gone now?”

Kennedy shrugged. “Because we’re still alive, and God has a plan for me. He wants me to continue to do what I’m doing here.”

After a few moments, the Reverend Oscar Kennedy said, “You came here for help and information, Nate. I’m not sure I can provide information, and the men who could help you have been taken from us.”

“I understand,” Nate said. “I’m sorry.”

“It is what it is.”

“Do you know how many men Nemecek has on his team?” Nate asked. “Has there been any chatter about changes in tactics?”

“A little,” Kennedy said. “Obscure references. Some serious complaints. But I can’t recall seeing a number, and certainly not a list of operatives.”

“Damn.”

“Everything is locked down tight. Tighter than you can believe.”

“What do you mean when you say ‘serious complaints’?” Nate asked. “About what?”

“The quality of Nemecek’s team. There is some grumbling from ex — Five operators still in the business that quality control isn’t what it used to be when he’d been selecting men. I get the impression,” Kennedy said, “there is a feeling Nemecek has surrounded himself with a close group of men without strong character. Not that they aren’t well trained like we all were, but that he’d let the intangibles slip. There’s been some chatter that Nemecek prefers yes-men to patriots these days. That at least some of the Peregrines are there to serve John Nemecek instead of their country. He’s ambitious — we both know that. He likes power, and he always thinks he’s the smartest man in the room.”

Nate nodded. “So he’s surrounded himself with thugs.”

“That sums it up pretty well. But you know how it is. Ex — Five operators always think they had it tougher than the new recruits. It’s part of the game.”

“But in this case they may have a point,” Nate said. “The three men I saw in Colorado wouldn’t have been in Mark V ten years ago. They would have washed out, believe me.”

“Because you defeated them?” Kennedy asked.

“Because they weren’t that good,” Nate said. He looked around the small kitchen, at the thick window and the steel window frames. At the dishes undone in the sink.

“Maybe we should all get out of here,” Nate said.

Kennedy quickly shot that down. “Never. This is my home, and my church needs me. I owe them. I can’t just leave. My work has just started here, Nate. The word is starting to get out that people like us have a place to come and find fellowship and worship God.”

Nate didn’t argue. Kennedy was adamant.

“Can you print out some of the chatter you found?” Nate asked. “I might be able to decipher some of it. I need anything I can get.”

“I’ll find what I can,” Kennedy said, wheeling back from the table. “I’ll check to see if there’s anything new. Maybe we can find out what happened to our friends out there.”

“Thank you.”

Kennedy spun in his chair and propelled it toward the next room, where his computers hummed. But in the doorway he stopped suddenly, and turned a half turn so he could look at Nate.

“Are you finally going to tell me what this is all about? A lot of blood has been shed, and we’ve lost some really good men. I’d like to know why directly from you, because I’m not sure I can believe what I read on the Net anymore. I’m sure Nemecek has changed history.”

Nate said, “You know why.”

Kennedy’s face flushed with anger. “I know John Nemecek is your mortal enemy. But what I don’t know — and I deserve to know — is exactly what happened back in 1998 in the desert.”

“Nineteen ninety-nine,” Nate corrected.

“So be it,” Kennedy said. But his face was set and he wasn’t moving.

“Print out what you can,” Nate said, “and I’ll tell you if you really want to know.”

The Reverend Oscar Kennedy glared at Nate for a while until his expression finally softened. “Okay, then,” he said.

While Kennedy was in the computer room, Haley reentered and strode purposefully toward Nate and sat down at the table. There was no avoiding eye contact this time. She was all business.

“I want you to find the men who did it,” she said. “You owe it to me and to Gabriel. Not to mention the others.”

He stared back at her and again felt the little tug inside him as he looked into her wide blue eyes. He had always been a sucker for long black hair and blue eyes, especially if they belonged to intelligent women.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” she said. “At one point I really wanted to finally meet you and hear if what they said was true. But not under these circumstances. Now I just want you to go and find them.”

He remained quiet.

She said, “I’ve heard about the falcons and a little about what you were involved in years ago. Gabriel talked about that big gun you carry. He said you’d just show up from time to time without any notice. He also said if it came to a fight, he’d want you in his corner more than anyone else he knew. That’s saying something, you know.”

Nate had to look away because it seemed her eyes were reaching inside him.

“Diane Shober told me how you brought her here. She said you were good to her, but she couldn’t figure you out. She said she got the impression you were carrying a very heavy weight around with you, but you wouldn’t talk about it. I liked her, although she was very intense. We got along, and it was nice to have another woman in the place. I never had a sister, and she was like a sister to me. To think that they would hurt her, too … it makes me sick.”

Nate nodded.

“Oscar is a wonderful, gentle soul,” she said, her eyes shifting toward the computer room. “He really does want to help people, and he’s a true believer. I can’t really say I buy everything he says, but I know in my heart he’s sincere and kind. He almost makes me believe in God, to be around a man like that. If a man as tough and practical as Oscar becomes an evangelical, I almost have to concede that there is something out there bigger than what we see, you know? And after what’s happened to us here, I have no doubt there is true evil in the world. So doesn’t it make sense there would be true good? If nothing else, you need to do what you can to protect him. You need to eliminate the people depraved enough to try and hurt him.”

Before Nate could reply, she said, “I’m going to go pack. You can take us both out of here. Maybe someday Oscar can come back when it’s safe.”

With that, she reached out and patted the back of Nate’s hand and left the table to go upstairs and pack.

Nate took a chair next to Kennedy and opened a laptop.

“Do you mind?” Nate asked, gesturing to the computer.

“Feel free.”

“Is it a secure IP address?”

Kennedy said, “As secure as I can make it. But that’s no guarantee of anything with the capability they have.”

“Got it,” Nate said while the laptop booted up. If Nemecek had gotten to Gordon in Colorado and sent a team to the compound in Idaho, there was only one other target close to Nate: Joe Pickett. And his family. He prayed they weren’t under surveillance, or worse.

He called up the old falconry site and started a new thread:

Under it, he wrote:

“Thank you,” Nate said to Kennedy, closing the laptop.

“I’m finding some stuff,” his friend said. “I’ll be back with you in a minute.”

When Oscar Kennedy rolled back into the kitchen with a sheaf of printouts, he eyed Nate with suspicion.

“I hope Haley didn’t unload on you,” he said.

“She didn’t.”

“She can come on pretty strong.”

“I like that in her,” Nate said.

“Uh-oh, you’re smitten,” Kennedy said simply, shaking his head.

“She agrees with me that we should all leave now.”

“I’m not surprised,” Kennedy said. “But I’m not going anywhere. You can take her, though. Get her on a plane somewhere so she can fly back to her family.”

“Are you sure you won’t go?”

“I’m sure, and that’s that,” Kennedy said.

He handed the printouts to Nate. “I was able to locate most of the blog posts. But a few have been scrubbed since the last time I saw them.”

Nate took the stack and put it aside on the table for later. Upstairs, he could hear Haley shuffling around in her room, no doubt throwing clothing into a suitcase.

“Unburden yourself,” Kennedy said.

“We don’t have much time,” Nate said, gesturing toward the upstairs room.

“We have enough.”

Nate sat back, putting himself back in that place again. Recalling the heat and hot wind and dust, the smells of desert and cooking food. The elaborate tents and fifty four-by-four vehicles flown in just for the occasion. The flowing robes of the guests. And the dozens of falcons, hooded and still, roosting on their poles.

“Have you ever heard of the houbara bustard?” Nate asked Kennedy.

“No.”

It took Nate ten minutes to tell the story. As he did, Kennedy’s reaction changed from intense interest to seething outrage. Red bloomed on his cheeks, and beads of perspiration appeared across his forehead.

“Holy Mother of God,” Kennedy said, when Nate was done. “It’s worse than I imagined.”

“That’s who I’m dealing with,” Nate said. “And what I’ve been dealing with for all these years. I hate that all of you’ve been dragged into it.”

“Nate,” Kennedy asked, his tone softening. “How have you kept this to yourself?”

“No choice, because I’m responsible for what happened, too. And the result.”

Nate heard Haley descending the stairs heavily, likely with her suitcase. He rose to go help her, but Kennedy pushed his chair back and blocked his path.

“You can’t blame yourself, Nate.”

“I do,” he said, attempting to step around the chair. Kennedy was quick and rotated the wheels sharply and pushed back into the doorway. Mid-morning sun lit up his face from the window above the sink.

“Oscar, let me by.”

“We need to talk about this. No one can shoulder the burden of what you’ve just confessed.”

“I’m just going to give her a hand with her suitcase.”

“We need to talk—”

Oscar Kennedy didn’t finish his sentence because his head snapped back violently and his hands fell limply to his sides and there was a simultaneous crack-pock sound inside the kitchen. Blood and matter flecked the wall behind Kennedy from floor to ceiling, and Kennedy slumped in his chair.

Nate instinctively dropped into a squat and fought an urge to cover his head as he did so. He wheeled and saw the neat dime-sized hole in the glass of the window above the sink, then dived toward the chair to push his friend out of the view of the window.

From the stairwell, Haley called out, “Hey? What was that?”

Nate shouted, “Sniper! Get down now!”

On his hands and knees, he scrambled into the computer room, pushing Kennedy’s chair in front of him. Nate hoped to God the injury to his friend wasn’t as bad as he thought it might be.

But it was. When Nate rose to look he saw how much damage a .50 caliber armor-piercing sniper round could do to a man. Then he looked up and saw Haley in the stairwell, almost to the bottom of the threshold, clutching the handle of her suitcase with both hands. When Haley saw Kennedy’s splayed-out body in the chair, she dropped the suitcase and screamed, covering her face. The suitcase tumbled down the last four steps.

“I said, Get down!”

Still shrieking, she sat straight back on the stairs, her face still hidden by her hands.

Nate retrieved his rifle as he ran through the mudroom to the back door and then pressed the lock-release mechanism. Once he heard the click and the door was free, he kicked it open rather than fly through it into the grass.

Wondering if the shooter would anticipate his exit from the house and fire again. But there were no shots. Did the shooter even know he was in the house?

He kicked the door wide open a second time — no reaction — and followed it out on the third, hitting the ground and rolling until he could find cover behind a tree trunk.

When he raised the rifle to where he thought the shot had come from — a V in the brush on the northern horizon — he clearly heard a motor start up and a car roar away. Forty-five seconds later, it was gone.

He stood up, bracing himself against the tree. Only then did he realize he’d landed on his injured shoulder, and the pain screamed through him. But not as loud as the screaming from Haley inside the house.

Nate thought of Oscar Kennedy and spun around with pure rage and cried out: “Goddammit!”

Then: “Come on, Haley. We’re going after them.”