Savage Run

17

Thermopolis, Wyoming

July 1

Through billows of sulfur-smelling steam, the Old Man watched and waited for Charlie Tibbs. The Old Man reclined on the mineral-slick steps of a very hot pool and closed his eyes. He willed the muscles in his neck and back to begin to loosen up and untie what he imagined as a series of complicated, technical knots. He sighed heavily, and slid forward another step so the hot water lapped at his chin.

They were in the Central Wyoming town of Thermopolis, hard against the border of the Wind River Indian Reservation. Thermopolis claimed to have the “largest hot springs in the world,” a claim based not on the number of spas or facilities but on the volume of hot water that poured from the earth.

The Old Man slid forward on the step and leaned further back. His mouth was now under water, then his ears. Total submersion created a static whooshing sound. He breathed slowly through his nose. He was big and white and the hair on his legs and chest riffled beneath the water like a bed of kelp. In addition to helping his sore back, the Old Man hoped the water would somehow purge his wracked, tormented soul. But that was a lot to ask of Thermopolis.

It had been the Old Man’s idea to drive to Thermopolis and he had been mildly surprised that Charlie had agreed. The Old Man had limped from the pickup, rented a suit at the counter, and located the hottest and calmest water. In another part of the complex, children and families splashed and shrieked and funneled down a water slide. The pool he sat in was for old people. The Old Man’s only company was an ancient Shoshone woman with jet black eyes and droopy, chocolate-colored skin. Occasionally, she coughed wetly. After half an hour, she left the pool and the Old Man was alone.

From the corner of his eye, the Old Man saw the black Ford pickup come into view through the chain-link fence that surrounded the pools. The truck parked against the curb. Afternoon sunlight penetrated the smoked windows enough that the Old Man could see Charlie inside the cab talking on the cell phone. The Old Man had not expected that Charlie would join him and was relieved that he hadn’t. They had been spending too much time together and the Old Man couldn’t even imagine what Charlie would look like in a swimsuit. Charlie had said he would try to contact their employers, and apparently he had. The cell phone was a technologically advanced model that scrambled voices so that eavesdroppers, or innocents with FM-band radios, could not overhear the conversation.

The pickup truck was a wonder and a virtual weapon in itself. Although from the outside it simply looked like an intimidating late-model four-by-four, the truck had been customized to serve as a rolling armory capable of “taking on an entire police department if necessary,” as Charlie had put it. Even though the job was nearly finished and they had so far accomplished what they had set out to, they hadn’t used even one-tenth of their available firepower and equipment. Apparently, Charlie said, their employers had listened to him when he told them he believed strongly in the old Western maxim about never being caught outgunned. And they hadn’t been.

In addition to the pickup truck, they were also armed with shotguns and hundreds of rounds of double-ought buckshot shells, a MAC-70 machine pistol, plastic explosives with both altitude-sensitive and remote-control detonation devices, a 400-pound crossbow with telescopic sites, night-vision goggles and scopes, remote audio transceivers, nerve gas, and concussion grenades. Charlie Tibbs was especially proud of the custom-made, machine-tooled Remington Model 700.308 sniper’s rifle with the Leupold 4 x 14 scope. The rifle had been built to his specific demands and specifications. It used custom match.190 grain boattail bullets that were accurate beyond 1,000 yards, even after the slug began to flip end over end. The rifle could be steadied by bolting it to a special pole-mounted stand in the bed of the black Ford pickup. The stand itself was connected to a small atmospheric theodolite computer that gauged wind, altitude, trajectory, and distance to enable incredibly long-range shots.

Under hidden panels beneath the bed of the pickup was a shoulder-fired rocket launcher as well as an armored pod of pressure-sensitive and frequency-activated land mines.

The cab of the pickup had the scrambled cell phone, handheld wireless e-mail, and a pager, as well as an experimental computerized GPS directional mapping system loaded with American backroads and routes. They had only used the road-map computer once, and that was on the streets of Washington, D.C. Both the Old Man and Charlie Tibbs knew the Rocky Mountain region well enough that the computer was not necessary.

Their employers had supplied them with a lockbox of cash-thousands of dollars in used bills. Charlie kept track of their expenditures, but there was nothing they were prevented from buying at any time. They paid for everything with cash and cashiers often acted as if they didn’t know what to do when, for example, Charlie counted out $400 in bills to pay for hotel rooms. They left no paper trail, no credit card receipts anywhere in the United States.

Originally recommended for this job by Charlie Tibbs himself, who had already been hired to oversee the field operations, the Old Man had been contacted late at night by a man who wouldn’t leave his name. When the Old Man stated that he was interested in hearing more, a meeting with Charlie Tibbs was arranged at a local Denny’s Restaurant to fill him in on the details. Tibbs told him that their employers had recommended at least six operatives, and possibly two different teams, but Charlie had convinced them that everything could be accomplished by two experienced men. Since then, only Charlie Tibbs had been in contact with their employers. The Old Man was not included in these conversations by design, to minimize the number of people involved in the planning of the operations. It was understood that Charlie would speak to the intermediary, who would then speak directly with their employers. The Old Man was kept in the dark except for the details of the operation most immediately at hand. The Old Man had agreed to this, but now wished he had a better idea, overall, of what was going on. Obviously, they were targeting high-profile environmentalists. But how many? And for how long? He had expected their work to take about two weeks going in, and they were now into their second month.

He had no idea what Charlie Tibbs had told their employers about him. He wondered if his recent doubts and complaints were being reported. Charlie could honestly say that the Old Man had recently shown more reluctance on the job. Would they relieve him if the complaints got too loud? Would they pay him off? Would they have Charlie Tibbs walk up behind him and put a bullet in the back of his head?

The Old Man had begun to question Charlie Tibbs’s sanity. One of the reasons for this was that Tibbs had recently insisted on replaying a CD of Oklahoma! over and over again while they drove. Tibbs sang along with full force. And even before Emily Betts crashed, Charlie seemed to like this job way too much. He enjoyed what they were doing. It was as if Charlie had been given the opportunity to vent a lifetime of rage, and he just got a big old kick out of it. Charlie was driven by something, and absolutely relentless. He believed in this cause even more, he said, than their employers believed in it. And he still did not sleep.

Charlie emerged from the pickup and signaled through the fence for the Old Man.

Grunting, and moving very slowly, the Old Man pulled himself out of the hot pool and trudged over to the fence where Charlie was waiting. He left wet splayed footprints on the pavement behind him. His skin had turned bright pink in the hot water. As he approached the fence, he bowed his wet head to listen.

Charlie spoke softly. “They’ve located the lawyer so we have to get going.”

“Please tell me he’s close,” the Old Man said, dreading another cross-country trip.

“Yellowstone,” Charlie said. “Very close.”

“In the park?”

Charlie nodded yes.

“Then we’re through?” the Old Man asked with hope.

“Not quite.”

The Old Man felt as if Charlie had reached through the fence and punched him in the side of the head. Charlie knew how the Old Man felt about this. He had told Charlie countless times in the last few days: he wanted this job to be over.

The Old Man shook his head. “I can’t see our luck holding out forever, Charlie. They can’t keep adding targets to the list. They just can’t.” His voice was anguished.

“Just one more after the lawyer,” Charlie said. “And please keep your voice down.”

The Old Man looked up. Charlie was staring at him coolly, evaluating him. Under this withering glare, the Old Man capitulated.

“But this will have to be the last one, Charlie. Any more, and so help me, I’ll quit. And you can tell our employers that. This is it.” The Old Man spat out the last word.

Charlie Tibbs was silent.

“So after the lawyer where do we have to go? Who is the target?”

Charlie hesitated. The Old Man understood why. This was violating their agreement not to discuss the details of more than one job at a time. It had probably been a good idea, the Old Man conceded, since he wouldn’t have stuck with it this long if he had known in advance how elaborate and twisted their mission would become. The Old Man wished he were stronger, more sure of himself and their cause-more like Charlie.

Charlie quickly looked left and right before speaking, and then leaned closer until his hat brim touched the fence.

“Our duty isn’t to question.” Charlie bit out the words. “We don’t know the reasons these targets were chosen and that’s good. All we know is that a lot of thought has gone into this and they’ve got the whole thing figured out. We just follow orders.”

“No one’s questioning anything,” the Old Man answered, his tone deliberate. He wondered why Charlie seemed so defensive.

Charlie sized up the Old Man again, his light blue eyes raking across the Old Man’s face like talons.

“Saddlestring, Wyoming,” Charlie spoke in a voice that was barely audible over the amplified swimming pool sounds from elsewhere in the complex. “That rumor about Stewie Woods isn’t going away. Now it’s that he-or somebody pretending to be Stewie Woods-is contacting his old colleagues.”

The Old Man felt a rush of anger. “That’s not possible. You know that’s not possible.”

Charlie nodded. “It’s probably one of his hangers-on trying to get something going. But we have to check it out.”

“It’s not possible,” the Old Man said again, shaking his head, trying unsuccessfully to come up with a scenario where Woods could have walked away from that explosion.

“And there’s something else,” Charlie said. “Because this guy, whoever he is, is pretending to be Stewie Woods, the local game warden in Saddlestring is snooping around. Other law enforcement might follow. That’s heat we don’t need. So we need to squash this pretender as quickly as possible.”

“Do they have any idea who the pretender is?” the Old Man asked.

“Not yet,” Charlie answered, narrowing his eyes. “But they expect they will shortly.”