Winterkill

PART THREE

Whiteout Twenty-five The telephone next to the bed burred at 5:05 A.M. and Joe picked it up on the first ring. It was County Attorney Robey Hersig.

"Did I wake you up?"

"It's okay," Joe said. "I've been awake most of the night." Marybeth had slept poorly again, tossing and turning and pining for April. Joe had tried to calm her, with partial success. After she went back to sleep, he replayed in his head the conversation he'd had with Nate Romanowski, playing "What if?" What if, he wondered, he told Romanowski he needed his help? What if he turned Romanowski loose?

"Joe, did anybody notify you about a meeting this morning at the Forest Service office?"

"Nope."

"I didn't think so. Anyway, Melinda Strickland and Sheriff Barnum have called a meeting for seven-thirty. All county law-enforcement personnel have been ordered to be there. They've requested that all state personnel be there as well, so I assume that means the state troopers and you."

Joe closed his eyes and breathed deeply. "What's going on?"

"Hell has broken loose." The coffee in his road cup tasted bitter and metallic as he drove toward Saddlestring. It was unusually dark out for seven, and it took him a moment to see that the cloud cover was so dense and far-reaching that it blocked out the rising sun. It was as if a sooty lid had been placed over the valley. The only gap in the lid was a razor-thin band of orange that paralleled the eastern sagebrush plains. That band was the only hard evidence that it was daylight.

Joe knew that a big storm was coming.

He remembered the feeling he'd had in the wooded bowl before hearing Lamar Gardiner's gunshots. It was the feeling of artillery being moved into place prior to a barrage. He felt it again-only this time, it was worse. Joe was shocked at the number of law-enforcement vehicles parked around the Forest Service office off Main Street. He parked half a block away and approached the building on a buckling concrete sidewalk. The air was still but seemed supercharged with rising humidity and low pressure. It was still unusually dark out, and Joe recalled the otherworldly half-light created by a solar eclipse the previous summer. He looked at his watch and saw that he was right on time for the meeting.

The reception and conference area had been completely transformed since his visit on New Year's Eve. The standard-issue government desks had been turned and shoved against the walls to create more space. Deputies, town police officers, and state troopers milled in the open area drinking coffee. Joe had never seen so many big guts straining against uniform shirt fabric in one place at one time. Although there was little talking this early in the morning, he heard the clump of heavy boots and the creak of leather from holsters and Sam Browne belts. Deputies McLanahan and Reed were missing from the room, and Joe guessed they were still on roadblock duty. He scanned the room for Robey Hersig and found him near the back to the side of the coffee urn.

"Thanks for calling," Joe said to Hersig. "I think."

Hersig looked anxious. "Joe, did you get a fax this morning?"

Joe said that the last fax he'd received from anybody was a list of food items that Elle Broxton-Howard didn't want to eat.

"You're one of the few, then." Hersig reached inside his blazer and handed Joe a folded sheaf of documents. The cover page of the fax was addressed to Robey, and the letterhead showed that it was from the Sovereign Citizens of the Rocky Mountains. After the cover was page after page of dense legalese. Statutes were cited throughout, including the Uniform Commercial Code. Joe was puzzled, and glanced up to Hersig.

"What is this?"

Hersig smiled sourly. "Two things, actually. The first is a subpoena to appear before their court to defend against the charge of impersonating a public official. The second is a lien against the county courthouse, the sheriff's office, and my home for $27.3 million dollars." "What?"

Hersig nodded, and swallowed dryly. "Subpoenas and liens were faxed all over the place during the middle of last night." He held his hand out-Joe noticed it was shaking slightly-and started counting off with his fingers. "The mayor, the town council, the county commissioners, the chief of police, the BLM director, Melinda Strickland, the governor of Wyoming…"

"Governor Budd got one?"

Hersig nodded and continued. "The Interior Secretary of the United States, the national Forest Service director, the director of the FBI, and I don't know who all else got them nationally. Those are just the phone calls we've received this morning. That's just the East Coast, which is two hours ahead of us. We don't know how many people in the West will call."

"What prompted this?" Joe had never seen Hersig so shaky.

Hersig's eyes narrowed. Joe thought Hersig was about to spit a name out when the likely bearer of the name walked into the room.

Melinda Strickland wore her Forest Service uniform, and her cocker spaniel trailed behind her on a leash. She strode purposefully to the front of the room and stationed herself behind a podium. Sheriff Barnum flanked her on one side, Dick Munker on the other. Munker sucked on a cigarette with the same intensity as an asthma victim using an inhaler.

"Thank you all so much for coming," Melinda Strickland said, her manner incongruously pleasant. Joe noted that her hair was a mousy brown color once again. "As you know, a situation developed yesterday that compounded during the night. I see Game Warden Joe Pickett in the back there-he somehow learned about this meeting-and we all have our friend Joe to thank for bringing at least one of the murderers to justice!"

Joe wished he could worm himself through the back wall, as officers, deputies, and troopers all turned and looked at him. His fellow state employees-the troopers-clapped sharply, but they were the only ones. Joe knew that the others, especially the deputies, probably felt they'd been shown up. His intuition was confirmed when he noticed how Barnum was glowering at him from the front of the room. Someday, Joe thought, he and I will need to have it out. There are scores to settle.

"The important thing…" Strickland shouted over nonexistent applause, as if trying to bring the silent room to heel, "The important thing is that we've been anticipating this situation for quite some time and we have everything completely and totally and awesomely under control. So now I'd like to turn the briefing over to Dick Munker of the FBI, who is heading up the operation on my behalf."

Munker extinguished his cigarette and turned to the podium, but Strickland thought of something and remained. She raised a thick stack of papers in the air and waved them. Joe recognized them as similar to what Hersig had showed him.

"I don't know how many of you got these during the night, but now you know the kind of twisted people we are dealing with here, ya know!"

Munker lit another cigarette and gave her a moment to leave the podium. When she did, he surveyed the room with amusement in his eyes before stepping forward. He wore a gray sweater over a black turtleneck, and a shoulder holster. A two-way radio was hanging in a case on his belt.

Munker began by nodding toward Joe. "A federal official is murdered while in his custody. The reason he gets murdered is because he manages to escape under the nose of our game warden here. Then our game warden, with a steering wheel handcuffed to his wrist, chases the escapee through the snow only to find him pinned to a tree by arrows." His tone was accusatory, his eyes cold and mocking. "This is the man who is now our little hero. Well done, Game Warden."

Joe felt as if he'd been slapped. Even the deputies who had withheld applause seemed surprised by Munker's nastiness, and they didn't turn around to further embarrass Joe. Only Barnum stared and smirked.

After a long, leisurely drag that allowed his comments to hang in the air even longer, Munker cocked his head to change the subject. "Gentlemen, we are at war, and this is now a war room." Portenson wheeled a large chalkboard into the room. On it was a large-scale diagram of the Sovereign Citizen compound in relation to the two roads that approached it.

"We've had entrance and exit roads blocked," Munker said, pointing at red X's on the map. "The only way out, or in, is via those roads or over the snow to nowhere. As soon as this meeting is over, the roadblocks will be manned again. The compound is currently quiet after a full night of audio Psy-Ops-psychological operations. We're waiting on a warrant being signed by the judge, and when we have it we can apply even more pressure. Unfortunately, the judge received one of those documents Ms. Strickland showed you earlier and he's a little shaken right now."

Munker smirked, and inhaled.

"These liens and subpoenas are old fucking news, gentlemen. The Montana Freemen invented the trick back in 1995. Those losers found out they could paralyze the local community and all of the goddamned 'officials' in the State of Montana by sending those things out. Nothing makes a politician crap his shorts faster than a threat of legal action. As some of you know, there are some dregs of the Freemen up there in that compound now, so they know how the scheme works."

Joe barely heard what Munker was saying. He was still stinging from the unprovoked attack that started the meeting. It seemed to have come from nowhere. Joe knew that it was calculated. Calculated to do exactly what, he wasn't sure. But it hurt.

When he glanced up, he realized that Elle Broxton-Howard was standing next to him. She looked at him with a mixture of false affection and pity. He hated that.

"… Sheriff, what can you tell us about Spud Cargill?" Munker asked, turning his head toward Barnum.

"Spud Cargill was thought to have been seen yesterday afternoon in a stolen vehicle driving like a bat out of hell up Battle Mountain Road," Barnum said, passing out copies of Cargill's photograph. Joe took one as the stack went by. It was a Saddlestring Roundup photo from two years ago, when Cargill caught a five-and-a-half-pound rainbow trout to win an ice-fishing tournament in Saratoga, Wyoming. "He was seen going up, and blew right through the roadblock, but he wasn't seen coming down. It's possible he came down between the shift change, but we have no information on that. There's too many old Forest Service roads up there to keep watch on all of them, but we've tightened up the security on the main roads as of today. Our assumption is that he is in the Sovereign compound, and the Sovereigns are harboring him. Last night, as many of you know, they refused to turn him over or even let us look for him. This leads us to believe that Cargill may have been in cahoots with them since the beginning."

"There's a leap of logic," Joe whispered to Hersig. Hersig pretended he hadn't heard.

"Cargill's partner, Rope Latham, is currently in custody. He's confessed to assisting Cargill with the murder as well as setting up the BLM employee."

"Has he confessed to being in cahoots with the Sovereigns?" Joe whispered, again for Hersig's benefit.

Hersig shot him an angry look that surprised Joe. Apparently, Hersig was more troubled by the lien and subpoena than Joe had realized. Hersig was dead serious this morning.

"What about the press?" Munker asked rhetorically, nodding toward Melinda Strickland.

She stepped forward as Barnum had. "We've been getting hammered with calls since last night, just hammered."

Joe stifled a smile.

"The Casper and Cheyenne newspapers, radio stations from all over the state, and network affiliates from Billings and Denver have been calling," she said, with a hint of pride. "CNN and Fox have contacted us as well. They're all trying to figure out where Saddlestring is and how they can get here with a satellite truck."

"Do they know about the storm?" a deputy asked.

Strickland nodded her head. "I told them about it, but most of them were already watching the weather. I guess this one's supposed to be huge, much worse than the Christmas storm."

Joe heard men mumble about the severe winter storm warning, and predictions of three to five feet of snow in the mountains.

"Which poses an opportunity, gentlemen," Munker interjected. "The last thing we want is for this to turn into a standoff that's the subject of every fucking twenty-four-hour news show in America. We cannot let these Sovereigns use the media to create sympathy, which they will do given the opportunity. They cannot be provided a forum for their twisted, antigovernment ravings. Believe me, I know. I was at Waco. I was at Ruby Ridge. I was in Garfield County, Montana, when the Freemen held out. If the press is here, we lose all tactical advantage. And there will be no possible way in hell for an efficient solution."

Munker's face was red and he was practically snarling. "I've been there, fellows. I've been there when dildo Freemen wearing hoods patrolled their ranch for the cameras, making us look like a bunch of wussy assholes. I was there when info-babes showed up while the fire was still burning at Waco to ask us if the force we used was unreasonable.

"This storm is supposed to last at least three days. It's likely the airstrip will be closed and the roads will be closed. If film crews can't get here, it means there isn't any news. That's how it works. So we have a short window of time to act. In the past, too many of these situations have degenerated into fucking situation comedies. We can't let that happen here, gentlemen. And lady," he said, deferring to Melinda Strickland.

"Ladies!" Elle Broxton-Howard shouted, raising her hand next to Joe. There was a titter of laughter. Most of the men who turned to look at Broxton-Howard were still looking at her when Melinda Strickland spoke again.

"When I came here, I said we were going to stand up to these antigovernment outlaws," Strickland said, looking to Broxton-Howard to make sure the reporter had her pad out. "Some mocked me. Some doubted the seriousness of the situation. Now we know just how serious this situation is!"

Robey Hersig's assistant, an ancient clerk named Bud Lipsey, wearing a gray Stetson and horn-rimmed glasses, blew into the room. He raised a manila folder.

"The search warrant has been signed by Judge Pennock," Lipsey announced.

Munker smiled. Joe saw it as a leer.

"Let's regroup at noon," he said. "The sheriff, Ms. Strickland, and I will set our strategy and make assignments." Joe leaned against the wall and rubbed his face with his hands. He couldn't believe what was happening. Law-enforcement personnel filed out of the building charged with a sense of purpose. There was back-slapping and shoulder-punching. A small army had been assembled, to be led by Munker, Strickland, and Barnum against the Sovereign compound. It all felt horribly wrong. The room was too hot. Somebody needed to turn the thermostat down or open a window.

When he opened his eyes, Elle Broxton-Howard was standing in front of him.

"Did you get my fax?" she asked.

Not now, he thought.

"We don't have any brown rice."

She smiled. "I can bring some. Or better yet, we don't do the interview at your house. I just need some quotes on how you trapped that bad guy. And I want to know more about what Mr. Munker was saying about the steering wheel. Is that true?"

Joe fought back an urge to shove her. "It's true."

She was joined by Melinda Strickland. Strickland was obviously concerned, which, to Joe, looked as patently false as all of her public emotions. It looked like she'd said to herself, "Now put on your frowny face."

"Joe, we really have to talk."

Joe looked up. Elle Broxton-Howard stepped to the side. Munker and Barnum were still at the podium, but they were both looking toward Joe and Melinda Strickland, awaiting the outcome of what no doubt had been previously discussed among the three of them.

"Joe, we all really appreciate what you did when you arrested Rope Latham, but there are some issues."

In his peripheral vision, he saw Broxton-Howard scribbling the sentence in her pad. So this was for her benefit, Joe realized.

"What issues?" he asked. He hated words like "issues."

"It's interesting that you didn't get one of the liens or subpoenas like all of the rest of us did," she said. "Or did you?"

He shook his head no.

"Joe, don't you feel that maybe you've got too many personal issues in this situation? Like with that little girl and all? Like maybe, you know, maybe you're a little too close to the Sovereigns up there, and that it would be best not to participate in the search and all?"

He stared at her. Broxton-Howard wrote.

"This whole sad affair started when, unfortunately, Lamar Gardiner escaped from you. The arrest of Rope Latham was good and all, but maybe you should sort of take a break and get some rest and leave it up to the professionals."

A hot surge began to crawl up Joe's neck as he looked at Melinda Strickland, and beyond her at Munker. The flush spread through his chest, ran down his arms, and settled behind his eyes. He stared at them both with blinders on, his rage coursing through him.

"I can see what's happening here," he said. His voice sounded strained, even to him. "It's a case of target fixation, just like when Lamar Gardiner saw more elk than he had ever seen in one place before. Like when he was reloading with cigarettes so he could shoot and kill some more."

"Joe…"

"You see a chance to crush people like you've always wanted to do. You've found a situation where you think you're justified in doing it. You people hate so much you forget to think. There are big problems here. The first is that you've brought in a psychopath to run things." He nodded toward Munker. "The second is that I have a child up there in that compound. As you know."

From the front of the room, Dick Munker scoffed. He had been listening all along. "From what I understand she's not even yours."

Rage all but consumed him. He despised the fact that Munker and Strickland had discussed Joe and Marybeth's situation with April as freely as they had. Although the matter was not private, given the circumstances, he thought it should be treated that way. When he closed his eyes, spangles of red cascaded like fireworks down the insides of his eyelids. He felt someone grip his arm-Hersig-and he ripped his arm away.

It's not about children as property, he shouted to himself, or who belongs to whom. It's not about that. It's about bringing up kids who become good human beings, so they won't turn out like the people standing in front of me.

"Joe?" Hersig asked. Joe hadn't realized Robey was so close to him.

Joe opened his eyes. Melinda Strickland had stepped back, as had Elle Broxton-Howard. They had inadvertently cleared a path across the room to Dick Munker, who lit a cigarette behind the podium.

"Munker." His voice was hoarse.

Munker raised an eyebrow in response.

"If you do anything that hurts April even further, I'm going to paint the trees with your blood."

"My God!" Melinda Strickland said, looking to Broxton-Howard with alarm so her reaction would be noted.

"That goes for you, too," Joe said, shooting his eyes to Melinda Strickland. "You wanted a war and now you're going to get your wish."

"Joe, goddammit, go home," Hersig hissed into his ear. "Go home before Munker swears out a warrant on you for that threat that we all heard."

The silence in the room was conspicuous.

Joe let himself be led toward the door by Robey Hersig, who stepped outside with him.

"You were way out of line in there," Hersig said, shaking his head. "What are you doing, Joe?"

Joe set his jaw to argue, but the red shroud of rage began to pull back from his eyes. "Maybe I don't know what I'm doing, Robey."

"Go home. Keep out of this."

"April is up there."

"So is Spud Cargill."

"I don't know that. I honestly don't believe that. It doesn't make sense."

"Joe…"

"We're taking McLanahan's word that he might have seen a guy who might have been Cargill driving past him yesterday afternoon. Based on that, all hell is breaking loose, to use your phrase."

"I know, I know," Hersig said wearily.

"Are we just going to let it happen?" Joe asked.

Hersig started to speak, then stopped. "Maybe it won't be so bad, Joe. That isn't exactly the cream of all mankind up there."

Joe's eyes flared. "Get the hell away from me, Robey."

Joe turned and stomped across the snow, knowing that if he didn't leave now, things were going to get much worse very quickly. Joe cleared Saddlestring toward the mountains en route to… where? He didn't know. He felt as if he were under water. His thoughts and movements seemed sluggish. They were someone else's thoughts.

He pulled over. Huge white flakes lit on his windshield, turning instantly into beaded stars against the glass. It was snowing hard. He opened his window and stuck his head out. The snow descended on his face. It felt cool against his skin.

He stared wide-eyed into the sky. Snowflakes swirled as far as he could see. A few stung his eyes. He tried not to blink. Twenty-six The snow was now falling at an overwhelming volume. As Joe drove toward Saddlestring with his defroster and windshield wipers on high, he fought a rising sense of desperation. The fresh snow crunched beneath his tires, and the tracks in the snow he had made on the way out of town were already filled in and covered over. Deer, passing shadows in the snowfall, silently climbed from the plains and draws into the timber of the foothills. Geese on the river found overhangs and brush. The looming, wide shoulders of the Bighorn Mountains that provided the constant, dependable horizon had vanished behind a curtain of deathly white. If it weren't for the dark metal delineator posts that bordered the two-lane highway, he would not have been able to see where the road was located.

He tried to think, tried to put things into perspective, tried to fight the bile that was rising in his throat. He had cooled down enough to feel ashamed of what he'd said at the Forest Service office. He had lost it, which was unusual for him. The weakness he had showed to Strickland and Munker, and things he had said could come back to haunt him. Strickland, Munker, or even Robey could file a complaint with his supervisors. They could have him arrested. Jeannie Keeley could use the outburst against him when Joe tried to make the case that April would be better off with him and Marybeth.

Joe cursed, and thumped the dashboard with the heel of his hand. Think. Calm down and think.

Strickland and Munker were mounting an assault on the Sovereign Citizen compound because Spud Cargill was allegedly there. The judge had signed a search warrant based on probable cause. Joe couldn't imagine a scenario where Wade Brockius and the other Sovereigns simply stood aside while the agents ransacked their "sovereign nation." The Sovereigns would defend their compound and from there, it would likely get out of control.

Spud Cargill was the key. If Joe could find him, arrest him, or somehow prove that he wasn't in the compound-the assault could be delayed until Munker found another excuse. By then, possibly, enough time could pass to once again defuse the situation. Maybe by then the storm would let up. Exposing the situation to the light of day, with the possible help and/or interference of the media, could delay or spoil Munker's immediate plans. Maybe the Sovereigns would pack up and move on, taking their problems and their decades of miserable, irrational, and violent emotional baggage with them. Then they would be someone else's problem. The idea appealed to Joe, although he suffered a pang of guilt as well.

But Spud Cargill was the key. The only way to keep April out of danger, to delay things long enough for the courts to work, was to find Spud Cargill.

To do this, Joe would need help.

He drove through one of the three red lights in Saddlestring without seeing it. The parking lot at the Twelve Sleep County Municipal Library was empty except for four cars already topped with eight inches of snow. Marybeth's van was one of them.

Joe pulled beside it and jumped out. He left his pickup running.

The library was locked, and a hand-lettered sign had been taped to the double doors saying that they had closed for the day due to the weather. Joe pressed his face to the glass and knocked loudly on the door. The lights inside had already been dimmed. A woman inside, one of Marybeth's co-workers, saw him and squinted. She started to shoo him away when Marybeth joined her, smiled, and approached the door with a set of keys.

"The librarian is sending everyone home," Marybeth said, letting him in. "They've released the kids from school, and I guess the roads and airport are already closed."

Joe entered after shaking snow from his coat and hat. He nodded hello to the other employees, who were gathering their coats and gloves to go home.

"Marybeth, we need to talk."

Her face showed instant concern. There was a sadness in her eyes that quickly emerged. It was a sadness that had not been very far from the surface since April had been taken.

Aware that the other library employees were hovering, Marybeth led Joe to a small, dark conference room. She told the others to go ahead and leave, and that she would lock up.

When she closed the door, he told her what had happened at the meeting.

"You said that? Joe!"

"I know," he said. "But I could smell blood in that room, Marybeth. It got to me."

Marybeth sighed and leaned back against a table, studying him, waiting for what would come next. He was taken by her profound sadness. It hurt him that she felt this way. Which meant he had to do something about it. It was his duty to fix it.

"I'm here for your permission," he said.

"For what?"

"To do what I think best."

"What? You don't need my permission for that."

Joe shook his head. "I've been giving this a lot of thought. For the past month, it's been eating at me."

She didn't understand.

"Marybeth, I've been a bad husband and father. I haven't protected April, or you, or our family. I've let lawyers do it. I've asked Robey about it, hoping he would do something. I've gone the easy, legal route."

"But Joe…"

"Nobody cares for April like we do. The judge doesn't care, the lawyers don't care. To them, it's just more paperwork, another case. Robey tries to care, but he's busy. Now there are things happening where lawyers aren't going to help us."

Joe stepped forward and gently grasped Marybeth by her shoulders. "I'm not sure I can do any good, honey. But I can try."

Marybeth was silent for a moment. Then she spoke gently. "You haven't been a bad father or husband, Joe."

He was pleased that she said it, but not sure he agreed with her. "The most important thing is that April is safe," he said. "It doesn't matter if she's with us or that awful woman. Those things can be sorted out later. For now, we need to see that she's safe."

Marybeth's eyes softened. "I agree," she whispered.

"We can't rely on the sheriff or the lawyers for this. We can't rely on anybody."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm not sure yet," he confessed. "But I know that the reason Melinda Strickland and her stormtroopers are going to confront the Sovereigns is because they think Spud Cargill is up there. If I can get to him first, or prove he isn't really up there, there's no reason for them to do it."

"I trust you," she said. "I trust you more than anyone I've ever known. Do what you have to do."

"Are you sure? I'm not sure that I trust myself."

"Go, Joe."

He kissed her, and they left the library together. While she started her car, he brushed the snow off her windshield and made sure she had traction to pull away. He told her to keep her cell phone on and call him if she had any trouble getting home.

As she started to leave the parking lot, he ran through the snow to stop her. She rolled the window down. He reached in and squeezed her hand.

"Marybeth…" He had trouble finding the words.

"Say it, Joe."

"Marybeth, I can't promise I can save her." Marybeth left the parking lot and turned onto the unplowed street, and Joe watched until the snowfall absorbed her taillights.

He could never remember Saddlestring being as quiet as it was now. The only thing he could hear was the low burbling of the exhaust pipe of his pickup.

Residents had retreated to their houses and woodstoves. Stores, schools, and offices had closed. The snow absorbed all sound, and stilled all motion. There was no traffic.

Joe fought back a horrendous feeling of inevitable doom.

Then he climbed into his pickup and roared out of the parking lot. Twenty-seven

Think.

Joe had no clear idea where he should go or how he should proceed. He drove through Saddlestring on streets that were becoming more impassable by the minute. It was the kind of once-every-fifty-years storm where sending the plows out was pointless until it was over.

He drove by Bighorn Roofing to confirm that it was dark and locked. The same with Spud Cargill's home. He knew he was treading old ground.

He thought of interviewing Mrs. Gardiner again, just to see if she could provide anything new, but dismissed the idea as useless. He wasn't sure she was still in town and not en route to Nebraska.

Rope Latham might know something, he thought. Latham might reveal where his friend was likely to run. No doubt Barnum and Munker had asked Rope about his partner, but if he had said anything to them, it hadn't resulted in anything. Now Latham was in jail, in the county building, guarded by sheriff's deputies. Barnum's crew might not let Joe in to see him, or might delay a meeting throughout the day. Joe didn't think he had the time to waste right now. Also, Rope Latham wouldn't exactly have special feelings for the man who had arrested him, and if he was going to talk, it probably wasn't going to be to him.

Using his cell phone, Joe made sure Marybeth had made it home. She was there, but said the county had closed the road in back of her. And her van was stuck in the driveway.

On a chance, he tried another number.

"County attorney's office."

"Robey? You're there."

"Ah, Joe…" he said it in a way that suggested he wished it was just about anybody else who was calling him.

"Robey, you need to help me."

Silence.

"Robey?"

"I shouldn't even be talking to you, Joe, after what you said this morning. How you treated me. I'll just assume that you're a little off your rocker right now. Can I assume that?"

Joe nodded, even though Hersig couldn't see it. "I guess you can assume that. I guess I get that way when I see a blood-bath coming."

"Oh, for Christ's sake, Joe…"

"Robey." "What?"

"Are Strickland and Munker still gathering the troops? Considering the weather, I mean?"

"You are to stay away from that meeting, Joe. You're likely to be arrested if you even show up."

"So that's a yes."

"Yes!"

Joe slowed to a stop in the middle of the street. There was no traffic to impede. "How are they going to get up the mountain? I just talked with Marybeth, and she said Bighorn Road is already closed."

"I don't know all the details, Joe. This isn't exactly my department. But I heard Barnum put in a request for those Sno-Cats again. And the sheriff's department has snowmobiles of their own. My understanding is that they'll roll as soon as they can get enough vehicles."

Think.

The first place Joe had ever noticed Rope Latham and Spud Cargill together was during the Christmas Eve service at the First Alpine Church of Saddlestring. He'd been concerned with the presence of the Sovereigns at the time, and hadn't given it much consideration until now.

Two single men, business partners, had gone to church together. That was a bit unusual in itself. And although he didn't know either man well, he couldn't say that the roofers showed any outward signs of deep religiosity. One never knew for sure about such things, he thought, but neither seemed to approach business or life in a very God-fearing way. Unprovoked murder and assault for unpaid bills weren't exactly Christian acts.

But the First Alpine Church was more than just another denomination. It was "unconventional." Joe had heard that the weekly sermons by the Reverend B. J. Cobb were equal parts Gospel and God Damn the Government. It was the latter part, he surmised, that had drawn Spud Cargill.

Joe flipped a U-turn in the middle of the empty street and felt the back end of the truck fishtail in the snow. When it gripped, he gunned the truck eastward toward the edge of town. One of the advantages of the storm, Joe thought, was that it drove everyone home and indoors. In normal circumstances, a search for the Reverend B. J. Cobb would have consisted of visiting various work sites where his contract welding unit might be set up. But today, Cobb would likely be home like everybody else. Home was a double-wide trailer behind the church.

Joe parked in front of the church and waded through the snow toward the double-wide. There were no fresh tracks of any kind around either structure. A snowmobile had been driven out from the garage and parked near the road, a wise precaution if an emergency came up.

He banged on the metal door and waited.

B. J. Cobb opened it wearing a ratty terrycloth bathrobe over a sweatshirt and stained white painter's pants. He was unshaven. The odor of simmering chili wafted out of the door.

"Hello, sir," Cobb said, not unfriendly.

Joe nodded and said he didn't mean to bother him at home. "Can I ask you some questions?"

Cobb smiled and looked up over Joe's head at the falling snow. "It seems like today you should be home with your family, waiting this out, instead of standing in it."

"If you let me in, I wouldn't be standing in it," Joe said.

Cobb looked down. He didn't invite Joe inside, which annoyed Joe slightly.

"What can I help you with?"

"Spud Cargill. He was a member of your church. I saw him there Christmas Eve."

Cobb nodded, and pulled his bathrobe together across his chest.

"B.J., would you please close that door?" Mrs. Eunice Cobb implored from somewhere inside the trailer. "You're letting all the heat out!"

"The game warden is here," Cobb called over his shoulder. "He's got questions about Spud."

That silenced Mrs. Cobb, and she did not reply. Cobb turned back.

"Yes, Spud was a member of the congregation. He faithfully attended church about two times a year, three in good years. He wasn't exactly a deacon in our church. You know, Mr. Pickett, I already answered these questions for the sheriff."

Joe nodded. "Did the sheriff ask you if you knew where Spud might hide out?"

"Of course he did."

"And your answer was…"

"My answer was that it was none of his damned business."

Joe grunted and looked away. What a storm, he thought.

"You know that Spud murdered a man."

Cobb chuckled. "You mean Elmer Fedd?"

"Lamar Gardiner," Joe corrected, his voice flat.

"So I've heard," Cobb said, while finding the ties to his robe and making a loose knot. "Now, Mr. Pickett, I don't mean to be obtuse. I admire your tenacity, and I've heard you are an honest man. That's rare. But I have strong feelings about state interference in people's lives. It's not my obligation to help out the state. It's the state's obligation to provide services for me, the taxpayer and citizen. I object to the kind of power the federal agencies wield here."

"Still doesn't mean Lamar Gardiner should have been murdered," Joe said.

Cobb considered that. "You're probably right."

"And you know what?" Joe asked, shaking the snow off his coat. He raised his head and fixed his eyes on Cobb's. "I'm not really here to debate this question with you, Mr. Cobb. I don't really care all that much about Spud Cargill, either, if you want to know the truth. I'm here because I've got a little girl up there in that compound who might get hurt if the FBI and the Forest Service people have their way and raid it because they think he's there. So if I can find out where Spud is-or isn't-I might be able to help my little girl."

Cobb's expression changed. There was now a hint of confusion, as if he were weighing a dilemma. He searched Joe's face, then returned to his eyes.

"I didn't know that," Cobb said softly.

"Don't get me wrong," Joe said. "We don't think the same way, you and me. But in this case, I want to stop the Feds as much as you do. Just for a different reason."

Cobb seemed to be considering something.

"Honey…" Mrs. Cobb said softly from inside. "I'm sorry, but I'm freezing."

Cobb started to speak, then stopped. Then he set his mouth hard and rubbed his buzz-cut hair with the palm of his hand.

"Is he up there, Mr. Cobb?" Joe asked.

Cobb stepped back and felt for the handle of the door. Is he going to shut it in my face? Joe wondered.

"You are a man of God," Joe said. "Convince Spud to turn himself in."

"I am and he won't."

Joe tried to hide his elation. This meant that Cobb was-or had been-in contact with Spud Cargill. It also meant that Cobb could be arrested for assisting a fugitive. Both men knew that.

"It's called sanctuary, Mr. Pickett," Cobb said. "Spud believes in it. So do I. And I can't help you any further."

"So he's here," Joe said softly.

Cobb shook his head. "He was here. But he's not anymore."

Before Cobb closed the door and Joe heard a lock snap shut, Cobb raised his eyes and looked over Joe's shoulder in the direction of the mountains. The road to Nate Romanowski's cabin was almost impenetrable, even though Joe had put chains on his tires before trying it. Four times, he got stuck. What should have taken an hour had taken three. It was midafternoon, although he couldn't tell that by the sun or the sky. It was just as dark, and the snow was coming down just as hard, as it had been all day.

Joe had tried to call ahead but got a message that Nate's phone was out of service. He remembered belatedly that the telephone had been damaged during the search of the cabin, that pieces of it had been scattered across the kitchen counter. He cursed while he dug under the front axle with a shovel to clear the packed snow that had once again stopped him. He hated to waste the time it took to dig himself out. Every hour that went by was an hour closer to the assembling of Munker and Strickland's assault team in town.

Joe's plan, formed as he left Cobb's trailer, was to ask Nate if he would go up to the compound with him. Joe had learned through experience that backup in volatile situations was essential. Not having backup at Savage Run had nearly killed him, and it had resulted in the deaths of others. He had vowed never to approach a predicament like that again without help. And Nate and his big gun might provide help.

Finally, Joe was able to rock the pickup and break through the snowbank and over the rise to the river.

Nate's cabin was dark and socked in, and his Jeep was gone. The complete absence of tracks suggested that Nate had been gone for at least a day.

Joe cursed again and thumped the truck seat with his hand. Pulling the evidence notebook from his pocket, he wrote out a note to Nate and attached it to the front door with a rusty penknife he found in his glove box. He also pinned a business card with his cell and home telephone numbers on it. Nate: You offered help. I need it now. Joe Pickett

"Thanks for everything, Nate," he growled, turning the pickup around. He drove back out in his own tracks. Twenty-eight For Sheridan Pickett, there was usually nothing more invigorating, or liberating, than having school let out because of snow. The announcement over the intercom had been received with unabashed cheers and whistles, and was followed by a mad scramble of books and uneaten lunches being thrown into backpacks.

Sheridan couldn't share in the enthusiasm, though. A snow day meant nothing with her sister April gone.

Outside, the small fleet of buses had been lined up on the street, their engines idling, great clouds of exhaust rising up to meet the heavy snow.

Now she was home, safe and warm, curled up on the couch in her sweats reading an introductory book about falconry that had appeared in their mailbox the day before in an envelope addressed to her. Paper-clipped to the book jacket was a note written on the back of a beer coaster with foreign printing on it. Sheridan: People don't choose the art of falconry like they choose a sport or a hobby. Falconry chooses them. After meeting you, I think you might be chosen. Please read this book carefully, and if you're still interested I can teach you. Nate Romanowski She raised the coaster to her nose for the fourth time that afternoon and sniffed it. It still smelled faintly of beer. She tried to imagine where he'd gotten it. The printing on the coaster was in English and Arabic.

She opened the battered old book and looked at the photo plates of falcons, hawks, and eagles. The birds captivated her.

When the telephone rang, Missy appeared from the hallway and took it off the hook as Sheridan was reaching for it. Sheridan watched her grandmother with annoyance.

Missy handed the telephone toward Sheridan. "It's some little girl for you."

As Sheridan took the receiver, Missy bent down near her. "I'm expecting a call from Bud Longbrake, so don't be long."

Sheridan made a face and turned away from Missy.

"Sherry?"

Sheridan felt a jolt shoot through her body. She immediately recognized the tiny, distant voice, where Missy had not.

"April?"

"Hi."

"I don't know what to say!" Sheridan looked around the room. She remembered her mother had said something about going outside to take care of their horses. Lucy was in their room, putting on makeup in front of a mirror just for fun.

"How are you guys doing?" April asked. "I miss you guys."

"We all miss you, too. Where are you?"

"Up here. Up here in the snow. It's really cold."

"Then come home!" Sheridan laughed nervously.

April sighed. "I wish I could." There was a beat of silence, and Sheridan could hear static growing. It was a poor connection.

"I'm not supposed to use the phone. My mom will really get mad if she finds out I'm talking to you."

"Where is she?"

"Oh, everybody is at a meeting. Mom, Clem…"

"Who's Clem?"

"A guy who lives with us. I don't like him much, but he's the only person who knows how to keep the heater running."

Sheridan noticed that April's Southern accent was coming back. Sheridan had forgotten that April had had it when she first moved in with them.

"I miss you guys a lot." She sounded pathetic.

"April, are you coming home?"

April sighed. "I really do want to. I cry a lot. I like my mom and all, but…"

"What's it like there?" Sheridan asked. She was in the kitchen now, parting the curtains. The snow was coming down so hard that the corral and shelter were smudges in the snow. She couldn't see her mother.

"It's cold up here. Really cold. I just stay inside all day. Last night, there were awful sounds outside that kept everybody awake. Clem said it was rabbits being skinned alive."

"You're kidding!"

"No. How's Lucy?"

Sheridan tried to picture April as she talked. She pictured her in a corner, wearing rags. For some reason, Sheridan couldn't see April's face, just her tangled blond hair. The image of April without a face made Sheridan shiver.

"Lucy's fine. Goofy as always. She's been dressing up with Grandmother Missy and going to town. Right now she's in our room putting on makeup."

April laughed a little. "She's our little girlie-girl, isn't she?"

Sheridan felt tears welling in her eyes. April seemed so close, but she wasn't.

"Do you want me to go get her? Do you want to talk to her?"

Over the phone, Sheridan heard the sounds of adults talking in the background. Their voices were muffled.

"Uh-oh, somebody's coming," April said frantically, her voice climbing in register. " 'Bye, Sherry. Tell Lucy I miss her. TellMomandDadIlovethem…"

The phone disconnected, and Sheridan stood there, tears rolling down her cheeks.

"Good-bye, April," she said to the dead telephone. Sheridan heard the high whining sound of a snowmobile outside. She ran across the living room and saw out the window that her dad was home. His pickup was in the driveway, and he was driving his snow machine from the garage up a ramp into the bed of the truck.

Without putting on her coat or boots, she stepped outside on the front porch in the deep snow. Even though she was wearing only socks, she couldn't feel the cold.

Her dad saw her and killed the engine of the machine. He stood up in the back of his truck, looking at her like she was crazy.

"You need to get inside and close the door, Sheridan," he said. "What's going on?"

"Dad, I just talked with April."

"You what?"

"You've got to save her, Dad. You've got to." Twenty-nine Joe Pickett moved silently through the trees in the dark. Although the moon was obscured by the storm clouds, there was enough ambient light that the virgin snow appeared a dark blue. The trunks of trees rose from it and the branches melded into the night sky. The snow had decreased in its fury, although it had not stopped. It sifted dust-like through the branches, so powdery that it sometimes hung suspended in the air. The temperature had dropped into the low teens, cold enough to evince an occasional pop or moan from freezing timber.

He was on Battle Mountain, approaching the Sovereign Citizen compound on foot from the north. He was not yet close enough to see lights or hear voices. He was there to arrest Spud or save April, or both. He was not thinking clearly.

Joe had been prevented from reaching the compound via Bighorn Road by two things. The first was the snow, which had literally rendered the road impassable. The second was the sheriff's Blazer, belonging to Deputy McLanahan, parked at the beginning of the summit. They had relocated the roadblocks farther down the mountain, but they were roadblocks nevertheless. Joe wasn't sure he could talk his way through it, or that he even wanted to try. It was obvious that the assault would be at least a day away, given the conditions. Even Munker wouldn't be hot-blooded enough to confront the camp in the dark, Joe reasoned. The Sno-Cats they would use in the morning had been assembled, and were parked shoulder to shoulder near the Blazer. Joe had seen them through his binoculars, and had seen both Munker and Portenson checking out the Sno-Cats from the backs of borrowed Forest Service snowmobiles. Joe had driven away, hoping he hadn't been seen, and had taken the other road.

As it darkened, Joe had driven as far as he could up Timberline Road until the snow got so deep that he almost got stuck again. Rather than try to go any farther with the night coming on, he pulled out the ramps and backed his snowmobile out of the pickup. Then he mounted the snowmobile and roared into the black timber. He cut through the forest rather than go around it, through a huge, dark, wooded wilderness that had been declared officially closed by Lamar Gardiner's Forest Service. The sledding had been a challenge. The snow was untracked, and so fresh and deep that at times the machine bogged down in it, the rear tracks digging down into the snow rather than hurling him over the top of it. The snout of the machine would raise and point to the sky as the snowmobile foundered in the powder. When this happened, Joe's adrenaline rushed through him and he threw his weight forward or back with controlled violence, levering himself free and allowing the track to grip and hurl him forward. He knew that if he got stuck in snow this deep, in temperatures this low, he might never get out alive. No one knew where he was, and the Sovereigns certainly weren't expecting him.

If I get stuck, Joe said to himself in a mantra, I die.

And he could not slow down, because when he did, sometimes involuntarily as a result of trying to pick his route through dark timber with the single headlight, he could feel the machine start to sink and settle into the four-foot-thick powder. The only way to keep moving and not get stuck was to keep the machine hurtling forward over the top. So he had run the engine much faster than he was comfortable with, keeping the headlight pointing south, sometimes clipping trees so closely that he was showered with bark and snow from their branches.

Miraculously, he had made it through the timber and out the other side. The machine's engine was loud, however, and he didn't want the Sovereigns to hear him coming, so he had shut it down near the top of the mountain beneath a granite outcropping that had shielded the ground from much of the snowfall. Before leaving it, he had filled the tank with gasoline from a can he'd strapped on the back of the machine earlier. Buckling on oval snowshoes, he had left the snowmobile and its loud engine and worked his way south in silence. A thin sheen of sweat served as the first layer between his skin and his polypropylene underwear. Walking on snowshoes in deep powder snow was hard work. He tried to control his temperature by zipping and unzipping his parka as he walked. The cold wasn't a problem as long as he was moving but once he stopped, it might be.

He felt more than saw a dark presence in front of him in the trees, and he froze. He thought immediately about his weapon, which was secured and zipped up under his parka. It would be hard to get at. His eyes strained in the quarter-light and he saw movement and heard a footfall. His scalp crawled under his hat. Then the huge cow moose turned broadside across his field of vision, daintily high-stepping through the snow with her long legs that were perfect for these conditions.

He exhaled, and unclenched. He hadn't even realized he was holding his breath. His intention was to get close enough to the compound to discern whether or not Spud Cargill was there. He even considered knocking on Wade Brockius's trailer door and asking outright. He struggled with what he should and shouldn't tell the Sovereigns about the impending raid, or if he should tell them anything at all. Joe knew that if he tipped the Sovereigns off about the raid and Cargill escaped, Munker would undoubtedly see to it that Joe went to prison. Maybe I would deserve to, Joe thought.

Damn that Nate Romanowski, he cursed. THIS is the kind of thing I could have used some help with!

He thought about the telephone call Sheridan had received from April. It had broken his heart to see Sheridan's face. For his daughter to tell him "You've got to save her, Dad," tore him up inside. Sheridan, like Marybeth, trusted him completely. But Marybeth was more realistic about her expectations. Sheridan was his daughter, and they had a special bond. She was confident that he could save April. After all, he was her dad. He winced, and sighed. He had always tried to live up to her expectations but this time, he wasn't sure he could.

Ahead of him there was a low muffled voice, and Joe sunk to his haunches in the deep snow. He was suddenly alert. He stayed still until his heart slowed and his breath evened out from the exertion. As gently as he could, he eased the zipper of his parka down and reached into his jacket for his service-issue.40 Beretta, unsnapped it from his holster, and withdrew it. Using his clothing to mute the sounds, he jacked a cartridge into the chamber and eased the hammer back down. He slipped the Beretta into his front parka pocket, where it would be easier to get at than in the holster under his coat, and stood back up. He stuffed his mittens into his other pocket, leaving only his thin liner gloves on his hands. If the Sovereigns knew what a poor pistol shot he was, he thought wryly, they would know they had nothing at all to worry about.

His breath billowed as he approached the compound. He could now make out squares of yellow light from windows through the trees. The light wasn't bright, though, like electric lights would be. They must be using lanterns and propane, he thought. Then he remembered that Munker had cut off their electricity.

As he got closer to the compound, he could hear the hiss of propane from two dozen metal tanks. He found a thick spruce with a jutting V-shaped branch that he could hide behind near the compound. Normally, the branch would have been too high for Joe to see over. But with the three feet of snow as a step stool, he rested his chest against the trunk and peered through the notch.

Joe couldn't see anyone outside their trailers and RVs. He noted the series of tramped-down paths that connected the units through the snow, and led to other facilities throughout the camp. He estimated that the paths were at least three feet in depth, although they could be deeper. A courtyard of sorts in the center of the compound where propane tanks were located had been crudely plowed. Only after studying the units within the camp for a while did Joe realize that there was at least one snowmobile, and sometimes two, parked near the entrance of each dwelling. Many of the snowmobiles were protected (or hidden) with blankets or tarps, which in turn were covered with at least a foot of fresh snowfall. So the Sovereigns could get away if they had to, he thought, even in these conditions. Interesting.

The metallic sound of a trailer door being opened carried across the camp. He heard it shut, then heard the crunch of snow beneath boots. The figure of a man moved across the squares of light, and he could see the profile of someone with a beard and broken nose. It wasn't Spud Cargill. The man walked through the center of camp toward a set of outdoor Forest Service toilets. After a few minutes, the man came back outside and returned to his trailer.

Okay, Joe thought. That's where everybody needs to go at some point tonight. Two hours went by and the cold settled in. Despite his heavy Sorel pak boots and two pairs of socks, his feet were starting to get cold. He worked his toes to keep the circulation going.

Twelve people, most of them men, had exited trailers or campers and trudged to the toilets. In the stillness, he heard them cough, hack, and make disgusting sounds in the toilets. None of them was Spud Cargill. None of them was Wade Brockius. None of them was April. Then she was there. Joe had almost fallen asleep despite the cold and his awkward stance. But when he saw the small woman, Jeannie Keeley, emerge from a trailer with a small blond girl, he knew it was April.

He watched and listened. Their footfalls weren't as percussive in the frozen snow as the men's had been. When they passed the nearest window, he ignored Jeannie and saw April's frail profile against the light. The glimpse didn't reveal much. He couldn't have seen bruises, if they were there, or pain on her face. She just seemed vacant, glassy-eyed. Her snowboots shuffled. Jeannie led her by the hand to the outdoor toilet.

April went inside and shut the door. Jeannie stood outside and waited, smoking a cigarette.

When April was through, Jeannie took her hand and they walked back together. April raised her face, which caught some light from a window, and said something to Jeannie. Jeannie laughed, and bent her head down to April and said something back, which caused April to laugh. The girl had a husky laugh, a belly laugh that Joe loved to hear. But the sound of it now filled him with violently mixed emotions.

They entered the trailer and shut the door, and April was gone.

Joe blinked.

If he wouldn't have known who they were, or what the circumstances were, he would have described the scene as heartwarming. The mother, Jeannie, obviously cared enough about the welfare of her daughter to walk her to and from the outhouse. They held hands, and April reached up for Jeannie's hand when she exited. The joke, whatever it was, was appreciated by her mother. And her mother bent down to share something that made both of them giggle.

Joe wasn't sure this is what he had wanted to see. He had envisioned a scenario where April, in tears, was dragged through the camp. If he'd seen that, he could also see himself running into the camp, throwing Jeannie aside, and rescuing April. He would carry her through the snow to the snowmobile and roar down the mountain. But that hadn't happened. Not at all.

He couldn't believe that April was in a better place. That was inconceivable. But unless he literally stormed into the trailer and took her-kidnapped her-there was little he could do.

He was freezing, and conflicted. There was nothing he could do here, and Joe shook snow from his parka and prepared to go back to his snowmobile. When "Danke Schoen" started up, Joe turned in surprise and dropped a glove in the snow. He had not been four feet from the tree he had been hiding in when the song blasted through the night and scared him. He stood and listened, stunned. Where was it coming from? Then he remembered the speakers he had seen when he last visited the compound.

From inside trailers, he heard shouted curses. Someone threw something heavy into a wall. If the intention of the song was to drive the Sovereigns crazy, Joe thought, it appeared to be working.

A door flew open and a man Joe didn't recognize stood framed in the light of his propane lamp. He swung an automatic rifle up across his body and leaned into it. A furious burst of fire lit up the night. Although the man was shooting at the speakers-and hitting them, judging by the sharp pings of metal-and not toward Joe, Joe sunk to his haunches and dug for his Beretta.

Another burst shredded the speakers with holes, but did little to stop the sound.

The song ended and, after a brief pause, started up again. Only this time it was louder.

Joe heard a sudden rustle close behind him, but he was too slow, and too cold, to react. He felt a heavy blow above his ear that sent him sprawling clumsily forward, snow filling his nose and mouth. He never actually lost consciousness, but the orange flashes that burst across his eyes and the thundering pulses of pain in his head prevented him from fighting back as he was dragged from his place in the trees into the compound.

Two men wearing oversized white fatigues and carrying scoped SKS rifles wrapped in white tape pulled him by his arms. Snow and ice jammed into his collar and into the top of his pants. One of them had taken his pistol.

Sliding easier now over the packed snow of the compound, Joe tried to twist away. They immediately let go of him, and kicked him in the ribs with their heavy winter boots.

The first kick was true, knocking the air out of him and leaving him writhing in the snow. He was suprisingly lucid, he realized. He knew what was going on around him as if he were watching it from somewhere else-he just couldn't do much about it. It wouldn't be that much of a surprise to him if someone pressed the cold muzzle of a shotgun to his neck and fired. Oddly, he didn't fear it. That just seemed like part of the deal.

"Stop, I think I know him." It was Wade Brockius. His voice was unmistakable.

Joe heard the crunching of snow from across the compound.

One of the men kicked him again, although not as effectively this time. Joe partially blocked it, and absorbed most of the blow in his forearms. "Asshole," the man spat.

Joe rolled and blinked as Brockius shined a flashlight in his eyes.

"Yeah, I know him. He's that game warden."

"We caught him at the edge of camp, bobbing and weaving when Clem shot at that speaker."

Joe suddenly realized that the music was still playing, and even louder. Still "Danke Schoen." But here was a hideous screaming along with it.

Joe started to sit up, but the pain in his head roared back and he sank down onto an elbow, waiting for his sudden nausea to recede. He kept his free arm up, wary of more kicks. Brockius knelt and wrapped a large arm around Joe and helped him to sit upright, to Joe's relief. Joe's mouth was full of hot blood and melting snow. He spit a dark stream out between his knees.

"Don't go anywhere quite yet, boys," Brockius said to the two men.

"Do you have to listen to that every night?" Joe asked, testing his voice. It sounded shaky.

"Since last night," Brockius said. "I think we're going to be serenaded by Wayne Newton every night now."

"Clem shot the hell out of those speakers," one of the men in white said. "But it didn't do any good."

"We'll cut the fucking wires," the other said.

Brockius nodded absently, but his eyes stayed on Joe.

"Mind if I come in?" Joe asked. "It's pretty cold out here."

Brockius considered it, then shook his head.

"You're the second person today who wouldn't invite me in," Joe said absently. "I don't know what to think about that."

Brockius showed a slight smile. "There are some things in my trailer I really don't want anyone to see."

Joe thought: weapons. The ATF had conducted raids for less. Either that, or Brockius's fax machine was loaded to broadcast more subpoenas and liens. Or both.

"What in the hell are you doing here?" Brockius asked.

Joe thought carefully before he spoke. The two men in white continued to crowd him. They blocked out the light where he sat.

"I wanted to see for myself if April was here and in good health."

"She is. I already told you that."

Joe looked up. "And I wanted to see if Spud Cargill was up here."

Brockius cursed, and shook his head. "Why does everybody think that man is up here, goddammit!"

"Because there was a report that he was," Joe said. "And because if he is up here, there will be… trouble."

"Trouble we can handle," one of the men in white said.

The other one chuckled at that.

"Look," Brockius said, his voice commanding as he leaned close to Joe. Joe could smell onions on his breath. "I'm going to tell you the truth, because I don't ever want you up here again. You could have gotten yourself killed real easily."

"That's right," the more obnoxious of the two men in white agreed. Again, the other chuckled.

"Spud. Cargill. Is. Not. Here."

Joe studied Brockius's face, looking into his soulful eyes.

"That man tried to join us last night. He did come here. I spoke with him, and I turned him away."

"Why didn't you tell the Feds that?"

Brockius rolled his eyes and roared, "I did tell them he wasn't here."

"They just didn't believe you," Joe said softly.

"How unlike them," Brockius spat.

"Where did Spud go when you told him to leave?"

Brockius shrugged. "To wherever he came from, I guess."

Joe felt a wave of exhaustion wash over him. He was no closer to finding Spud now than he had been when he started. The pain in his head had reduced to a steady thump in his right temple. Joe reached up with a bare hand and cleaned packed snow out of his ear.

"Did you hear me?" Brockius asked.

"Yes. And I believe you," Joe said.

"Jackbooted thugs," Obnoxious White growled. "People that hide behind their regulations and their badges while they're skinning a rabbit on a tape."

Yes, Joe realized. That was the horrible squealing sound he heard with "Danke Schoen."

There was a long minute where no one spoke. The screaming of the rabbit was like icy metal rubbing along Joe's spine. Finally, it stopped.

"It's going to start up again," Obnoxious White said. "Is it all right with you if I go cut that fucking wire?"

Brockius looked up. "Watch out for booby traps in the trees. I wouldn't put it past them to trip-wire the trees."

Obnoxious White snapped on a flashlight that was taped to the barrel of his SKS rifle and walked away toward the fence and the road.

"Do you mind if I say hello to April?" Joe asked. "I saw her earlier."

"You mean you spied on her."

Joe nodded. "Yes, I did."

"Did she seem happy to you?"

Joe hesitated. "She didn't seem unhappy."

"Then your question is answered. You can go now."

Brockius helped Joe to his feet. His legs felt weak. He had lost one of his snowshoes. While his head still pounded, the pain in his ribs hurt worse. He could feel a stabbing sensation with each deep breath.

"Your man broke my rib, I think."

"You're lucky it wasn't your head."

"He did a pretty good number on my head, too," Joe said, feeling slightly giddy for some reason.

Brockius walked Joe toward the edge of the compound where he had been dragged from. The other man in white stayed for a moment, then handed Joe's pistol to Brockius before going to help Obnoxious White cut the wires. Obviously, the wires hadn't been found yet, because the song started up again.

"Can you get back by yourself?" Brockius asked. "Are you okay to do that?"

"I think so," Joe said, wincing from the rib pain.

"The roads are blocked and guarded. There's no way we could take you down, even if we wanted to. This snow has trapped us here."

"Will you leave when it stops snowing?"

Brockius stopped. Joe looked at him. The man had a kindly face. Joe couldn't help liking him, despite himself.

"I think we might," Brockius said softly. "We had a meeting about that this afternoon. But I can't speak for everyone yet."

"It would be a good idea," Joe said, not wanting to tip off Brockius about Munker. This was as far as he would go.

But if the Sovereigns leave, Joe thought, April will be with them.

"My wife and I will still try to get April back," Joe said.

"I don't doubt that for a minute." Brockius smiled.

"My wife is a very determined woman," Joe added.

Brockius nodded, but said nothing, as he shined his flashlight on the snow where Joe had been dragged. He held the beam when it found Joe's missing snowshoe.

While he buckled it on, Joe said that one of the men in white had taken his weapon. "I need that back."

Brockius again shook his head.

"I can't hit anything with it anyway," Joe said, mumbling, and Brockius laughed.

"That was pretty ballsy of you to enter our camp the way you did. I'm impressed as hell. I never would have thought someone would come through the forest like that."

Joe shrugged.

Suddenly, the music stopped. Cheers went up from trailers and campers throughout the compound.

"Thank God for that," Brockius whistled.

Joe stood. Both snowshoes were secure. It seemed immensely quiet now. Snow still sifted through the trees, so fine that it cast halos around the lights.

"I really did think Spud Cargill was here," Joe said. "The Reverend Cobb in town said that he had provided Spud sanctuary. I think he was looking for sanctuary here, too."

Brockius looked puzzled for a moment. "This is not sanctuary."

"But he said…"

"A church is a sanctuary. This is not a church. This is a way station on the road to hell."

Instantly, Joe forgot the pain in his head and in his throbbing ribs, and the cold.

"I know where he is now," Joe said, his voice rising. "It's time to end this thing."

A slow, sad smile broke across Wade Brockius's face.

"Then you may need this," Brockius said, handing Joe his weapon back butt first.

Joe nodded his thanks, holstered the pistol, and turned back toward the dark timber he had come from. Thirty It was four-thirty in the morning when Joe had a moment of panic and realized he might be lost. He was in his pickup, working his way down the mountain, fixated on the barely perceptible tracks in the road. He thought he knew where he was and expected to see the scattered lights of Saddlestring on the valley floor through his windshield, but he saw nothing. Had he somehow taken the wrong road? His sense of direction was confounded by the snowstorm and the darkness and the messianic swirl of huge snowflakes in his headlights. Only when he glanced down at the dash-mounted GPS unit did he confirm that he was going in the right direction, and he sighed, his short-lived panic subsiding. The glow of the town lights had been sucked up by the snowfall, leaving only a faint smudge of off-color in a black-and-white night.

Joe was exhausted, frustrated, and injured. If it weren't for concentrating and driving precisely in the tracks he'd made previously when he went up the mountain, he wouldn't have had a chance of getting back down. He drove much faster than he was comfortable with, given the conditions and his impaired field of vision, but whenever he slowed he felt the tires digging too deeply into the snowpack. Even while driving fast and staying in his already-cut trail, he had gotten stuck twice. Both times he was high-centered. The first time he dug out, clearing hard-packed snow from beneath the front and back differentials, his head hummed with thoughts of having seen April, the pounding he had taken, and Spud Cargill. The second time, he was so exhausted he could barely lift the shovel out of the bed of the truck, and he seriously considered climbing back in with the engine running and the heater blowing and going to sleep for the rest of the night. But when he considered the rate of snowfall, he calculated that the exhaust pipe would be covered up within a few hours. Carbon monoxide fumes would overwhelm him while he slept, and that would be that. There was something slightly inviting in the thought, but he fought it. He slapped himself awake, wincing when he did it because of his broken rib (he was sure of it now), and he dug himself out once again.

Hours were going by. The assault team would be assembling. But conditions and circumstances kept slowing Joe down. It reminded him of dreams he'd had as a pre-teen on nights when his parents were drunk and fighting and he slept between bursts of angry accusations and crashing glass. In his dreams, he would be running, or swimming, or riding his bike as fast as he could-but he could make no progress. The harder he ran, swam, or pedaled, the closer he seemed to be to the house he was leaving. He would wake up in tears, seized by the sense of futility and frustration. He recalled that frustration now, only this time it was much worse than anything he had ever dreamed.

Joe played the scene with April and Jeannie over and over again in his mind. If only Jeannie had misbehaved, or if April had tried to resist or run, things could have been different. Now, his only hope was to extend the time it would take to find a resolution, and the only way to do that was to find Spud Cargill and force a cancellation of the raid.

He finally cleared the timber and the deepest snow and broke out into the foothills. The wall of trees receded in his rearview mirror. The sagebrush that carpeted the hills was completely covered with snow, and the lack of trees and brush created a spatial lack of perspective. Joe felt the tires dig down through the snow and grip actual frozen ground for the first time in hours, and he gained a sense of control. Still, though, it was wide-open country, and solid white for as far as he could see. Any wind at all would sweep the deep powder into high ridges and crests and make the going impossible.

In his fatigue, the dark form of the snow-covered Jeep that was stuck in the snow almost didn't register with him. It was only when he pulled alongside it and rolled down his window did he recognize the Jeep, and notice that it was running.

The plastic windows were steamed from the inside, and snow had accumulated on the top where there weren't holes or rips. Steam, looking like smoke from a chimney, rose from the top and dissipated into the cold night air. Joe rolled down the passenger window and leaned across his seat.

"Nate?" he called from his window, but there was no response. After a moment, Joe laid on his horn.

A gloved hand cleared steam from the inside of a plastic window in the Jeep, and was followed by two wide eyes that sleepily settled on Joe.

"Joe!" said a voice from inside the vehicle. "I didn't hear you. I was sleeping."

The door opened and Nate Romanowski grinned. An inch of snow, looking like frosting, crowned his watch cap. He held Joe's note in his big hand, and waved it at him.

"Got your note. I stopped at your house and your wife told me this is where you were. I was able to get this far before I got stuck. So," he said, "do you need help after all?"

"I do."

But Joe wasn't sure what help he needed, exactly, or what Nate's role should be. Whatever he was going to use Nate for, though, it would be better to have him in the truck with him.

"Why don't you get in my truck, then?" Joe called. "I've got all four tires chained up and I'm pointed downhill. I think I can make it to town. We can come back up and dig out your Jeep later."

Nate nodded once, then retrieved a daypack from his Jeep and waded through the thigh-high snow to climb into the cab.

"What in the hell happened to you?" Nate asked, looking Joe over.

"I got pounded on by a couple of the Sovereigns," he said. "I deserved it."

Joe slipped the pickup into gear and rolled forward to a dead stop in the deep snow.

"Uh-oh," Nate growled.

Not responding, Joe shoved the pickup into reverse and gunned the engine, backtracking a few feet. Then he rammed it back into drive and hit the snow again with jarring force. The truck broke through, and Joe kept going.

"I'm not stopping again," Joe said. "For anything." "Joe, I learned a lot about Melinda Strickland and Dick Munker in Idaho. None of it is good."

"That's where you went? Idaho?"

"I didn't know you needed me here," Nate said defensively. "You said as much. And yes, Idaho. Seventy percent of the state is federally owned and managed. If there's any place where the locals know about specific federal land managers, it's Idaho. I've got some friends there, and I was curious about Strickland and Munker." He paused for a moment.

"Go on," Joe said. He wanted to hear the story, but he also needed Nate to keep talking to help him stay awake and alert.

"I don't want to scare you, Joe, but the fact is you're going to need all the friends you've got against these two."

Joe grunted. That wasn't very encouraging.

"You want some hot coffee?" Nate asked, digging into his pack.

Joe nodded.

"Melinda Strickland is even worse than I thought," Nate said while he poured the steaming coffee into Joe's travel mug. "The people I talked to down there think she's evil and insane. What they don't know is if she started out evil and went insane, or started out insane so she doesn't realize what she's doing."

Joe gulped the coffee, not caring that it was scalding his tongue. His body ached and his back was stiffening. He wasn't sure how long he'd be able to tolerate the exertion it took him to keep the truck from bucking out of the tracks and off into a snowbank. He knew he should have asked Nate to drive, but it was too late for that; he wasn't going to stop and run the risk of getting stuck.

"Just give me facts, Nate, not analysis," Joe barked. "We don't need psychobabble. We don't have a lot of time, and I'm not sure I've decided how to play this yet."

Nate refilled Joe's cup and fitted it into the holder. As the cab finally began to warm up, he unzipped his parka.

"Melinda Strickland is the daughter of a senator from Oregon. She's a trust-fund kid," Nate said. "Her dad greased the skids for her to enter the federal government after she'd bounced around the Pacific Northwest and through various agencies in Washington, D.C. Apparently, she spent a few years in various institutions as well. Drug and alcohol problems. But the rumor is she's a card-carrying paranoid."

Joe shot a glance at Nate that he hoped reminded him to stick to facts.

"Even though she probably makes a good impression on some people at first, she's a classic loose cannon, not capable of working with people. In a nutshell, she's consistently treated her colleagues and co-workers like pieces of shit, saying things about them, playing one off of the other, and just general nastiness. She was involved in a bunch of lawsuits when she worked for the Department of Agriculture because of things she said and did to people. Her idea of management is to make subordinates cry. Oh, and she's a pathological liar."

Joe glanced over at Nate and could see that under his parka he was wearing his shoulder holster.

"Once she got into the Forest Service, she started bouncing all around the country. She left a mess everywhere she went. She's the type that creates chaos out of order. No one knows what deep-seated problems make her the way she is, but the way the Forest Service handled it is how they generally handle things in the big government agencies."

"Transferring her so she's somebody else's problem?" Joe asked. He knew how the game was played.

"Exactly," Nate said. He spoke in a low, rhythmic cadence and rarely raised his voice. "She was in Oregon, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, South Dakota, Idaho twice, and then somewhere in Colorado. You know how it works-we all do. Longtime federal employees-especially if they're middle-aged women and they like to threaten lawsuits and they're daughters of senators-just don't get fired very easily. Her big bosses are political appointees who know that if they can bury the problem for a while, the next administration will have to deal with it. Meanwhile, local communities are subjected to her and her ways."

"Specifically?" Joe asked.

"Well, in Nevada she became convinced that a couple of the local ranchers with grazing leases were out to kill her dog. So she had them followed twenty-four hours a day by Forest Service rangers. This was in a town of three hundred people, where there were, like, two places to eat. And everywhere these ranchers went, two uniformed Feds went with them. Finally, one of the ranchers got drunk and forced a shoot-out. Both ranchers went down, and one Fed."

Joe shook his head sadly, and instantly regretted it as a throbbing pain burned into the back of his skull.

"Finally," Nate said, "The Forest Service ran out of places to hide her, and they were going to bring her up on harassment charges-finally hold her accountable for something-because she called a Latino contractor a "fat spic" in front of witnesses. Then her daddy stepped in and they figured out this new job for her. They made it up just for her-a position with a nice title but no staff or budget. It was a perfect place to stick her where she couldn't do any damage. My contacts said that even that was a mistake, because when the administration changed, she convinced somebody to shuffle the budget and get her some funding. All of a sudden she's got a travel budget, and in her mind a star was finally born. By the time the agency figured out what she'd done in a vacuum, that Elle what's-her-name had latched onto her to do a profile and their hands were tied. They couldn't get rid of the woman while she was being lionized by a journalist, so they just sort of let it go."

"And now we've got her," Joe said. His eyes burned with lack of sleep, and he felt a heightened sense of tension rising in his chest as they neared Saddlestring.

"They take a woman who hates people and put her in charge of a task force to go after rednecks who hate the government," Nate said. "This is what I love about the Feds."

Joe asked Nate to give him a minute and quickly called Marybeth on his cell phone. When she picked up, she sounded as if she had been up all night.

"I'm off the mountain and I've got Nate with me," he said. "Yes, I'm fine," he lied. "Dick Munker, " Joe said. "What's his story?"

Nate whistled. "It would be a good thing," he said, "If Dick Munker went away."

"Meaning?"

"The guy is a bitter, sadistic asshole," Nate said. "They knew this guy real well in Idaho, because he's one of the FBI sharpshooters the state was trying to put in jail for Ruby Ridge. He was one of the triggermen. The first guy to shoot, it was alleged. Unfortunately, the case got dismissed because of jurisdictional problems. Munker did get demoted, and like Melinda Strickland he's been bounced around the country in the hope that he'd retire so they wouldn't have to take administrative action. The FBI hates to call attention to itself and its problem agents-especially these days-so they do everything they can to keep things quiet when they have a psycho on the payroll."

Nate shook his head. "Melinda Strickland and Dick Munker are made for each other."

Joe didn't respond. The fear that had clenched his stomach for the past few hours was gripping harder. He held tight to the steering wheel and pushed on through the spinning snow, praying that he wasn't already too late. He needed to come up with a plan and he didn't have much time. When they entered Saddlestring it was still dark, although there was now a gray morning glow in the eastern sky. The town was encased in snow and ice. The chains on the tires of Joe's truck were singing because there was so much packed snow in the wheel wells. Joe was amazed they had made it without getting stuck.

Joe briefed Nate on the situation as he saw it, and went over the plan he had come up with. He told Nate that he needed him there for support and backup only. Nate nodded and smiled slyly, leaving Joe with a queasy feeling.

He didn't go far into town. He turned off the road and into the parking lot of the First Alpine Church.

The church was sanctuary once again, Joe now knew, for Spud Cargill. Thirty-one As Joe pulled into the small parking area for the church and the Reverend B. J. Cobb's trailer, he pointed out to Nate that there was no wood smoke coming from the tin stovepipe atop the church.

"It's too cold," Joe said, thinking aloud, "for someone to be inside the church without a morning fire. So if Spud is here, he'll be in the double-wide."

Nate grunted his agreement.

As they pulled to a stop in front of the trailer, something bothered Joe, but he couldn't put his finger on it. Then he remembered.

"Yesterday when I was here," Joe said, "there was a snowmobile parked out by the road. It's not there now."

"You think Spud took it?" Nate asked, zipping up his parka and preparing to open the truck door.

"We'll find out, I guess," Joe said, jumping out of the truck into the snow. He left his.40 Beretta in his holster and pulled the only weapon that he was comfortable with, his twelve-gauge Remington WingMaster shotgun, out from behind the bench seat. Turning toward the trailer, he spun it upside down in his gloves to make sure it was loaded. The bright brass of a double-aught shell winked at him.

While Joe approached the front door of Cobb's trailer, Nate Romanowski pushed though the deep snow around the back where there was another door. Joe gave Nate a minute to get around before mounting the steps.

He knocked with enough force to send a line of icicles crashing from the eaves. Toward the back of the trailer, yellow light filled a curtained window. Joe assumed it was the bedroom. He stepped aside on the porch in case Cobb or Spud decided to fire through the door.

Joe heard heavy footfalls inside and watched the door handle turn. There was a kissing sound as it opened and broke through a thin seal of snow and ice. Joe raised the barrel of the shotgun, the butt firmly against his cheek, and aimed it at eye-level where he expected Cobb to stick his head out.

The door opened and the Reverend Cobb's cinder-block head jutted out into the half-light of dawn, his eyes squinting against the falling snow. The muzzle of Joe's shotgun was six inches away from Cobb's ear.

"Throw down your weapon if you have one," Joe said quietly, as Cobb's eyes swiveled toward the black mouth of the shotgun.

A nine-millimeter handgun dropped with a thud on the porch, vanishing into the snow but leaving a distinct profile outline.

"That's not necessary, Joe," Cobb said, keeping his voice even.

"Step outside where I can see you," Joe ordered. He did not trust Cobb not to have another weapon on him, or not to jump back and slam the door shut.

"You can't enter a man's house without probable cause, Joe," Cobb cautioned.

"I'm not," Joe said. "I'm asking you to come outside. And if you don't do it, we've got a problem."

Cobb gave a slight smile and briefly closed his eyes. His face was pink and warm from sleep, and snowflakes melted on his cheeks.

"Okay," Cobb said opening his eyes. "My hands are up and I'm coming out. Don't do anything stupid."

"No promises," Joe said, immensely relieved that Cobb was cooperating.

Cobb stepped out on the porch in his slippers. He wore the same bathrobe Joe had seen him in the day before. His hands were raised and his expression was calm, but tired. There was a hint of defeat in the way he slumped his shoulders.

"I was wondering what happened to you yesterday after we talked," Cobb said.

"I went up to the compund," Joe responded, a little defensively. "I was too late to find Spud. The Sovereigns had already refused him a place to hide out, and they sent him away."

Cobb nodded. "I figured they probably wouldn't let him in. I was conflicted about telling you too much, though. I don't approve of what he did. I don't even like Spud much. But I have a real problem with the way the Feds are conducting themselves. We don't need another Gestapo."

Joe repressed the urge to hit Cobb across the face with the butt of his shotgun.

"Goddamn you, Cobb, just put that antigovernment crap away for a few minutes," Joe hissed. "I know about all that, and I don't care about any of it. All that matters to me right now is my little girl. You've just wasted twelve hours of my time when you had a pretty good idea he was coming back here." Joe angrily racked his shotgun, and pressed the muzzle against Cobb's ear.

Cobb flinched away from the icy metal on his bare skin, and Joe saw his eyes bulge with fear. Joe didn't mind that at all.

"I've always liked you, B.J.," Joe said, pressing the muzzle even harder. "I'm not sure why. But if you don't start telling me the truth, and I mean every bit of it, things are going to get real Western real fast."

Cobb closed his eyes briefly and Joe heard a wracking breath. He pushed the shotgun forward, so that now the side of Cobb's head was pinned against the opposite doorjamb and his closest ear was cupped around the muzzle and misshapen.

"Okay, Joe," Cobb said softly.

Joe felt a rush of relief mixed with a whiff of shame for what he had just done to Cobb. He eased up on the pressure he had been using.

"Is he inside?" Joe asked.

Cobb shook his head, and rubbed his ear. "He was in the church for the past few days. But I haven't seen him since he left."

"Then he…" Joe started to ask when Nate shouted from the back of the trailer.

"Joe! There he is."

Turning, Joe looked through the heavy snowfall toward the church. A door was open, and a single shadowy form-Spud Cargill-was trying to run across an open field away from them. He had obviously been in the church when Joe and Nate arrived, huddling in the cold without a fire, and had just run out the back door behind the pulpit.

"Yes, there he is," Cobb said with resignation. "He must have known I wouldn't let him into my home."

Joe looked back to Cobb. The Reverend was shaking his head sadly, still rubbing his ear, but slumping as if he had given up. There didn't seem to be any fight in him. Joe made a quick decision that Cobb would stay put and wouldn't be a threat, since he had, in effect, already given Spud's location away.

Joe lowered the shotgun and jumped off the porch, turning his back to Cobb.

"Go inside and stay put," Joe shouted over his shoulder. "You've got no part in this anymore."

"Don't hurt him," Cobb implored. "He's an idiot, but there's no reason to hurt him."

Joe said nothing. Nate met him in the yard between the trailer and the church, breathing hard from bulling his way through the deep snow. Joe crossed in front of Nate on his way to his pickup.

As Joe threw down the ramps and fired up his snowmobile, he squinted through the storm. Spud Cargill was getting far enough away that with the hard-falling snow he was little more than a shadow in the field.

"Spud Cargill, stop!" Joe shouted. "Don't make us come after you!"

Joe shouted several more times as he backed the machine out of the truck. Cargill didn't respond. He was struggling through the snow, high-stepping and stumbling. Several times, he pitched forward and vanished out of sight for an instant.

Joe idled the snowmobile alongside Nate.

"I can hit him from here," Nate said, sliding his.454 out of his shoulder holster.

"No!" Joe said. "I'm going to go get him."

"I could blow a leg off and shut him down."

"Nate!"

Nate smiled slightly and shrugged. "I'll cover you in case he's crabby."

"That's a deal."

As Joe roared by, he saw Nate out of the corner of his eye with his big pistol extended over a log, the sights, no doubt, on the back of Spud Cargill's head.

Joe quickly closed the gap between himself and Cargill. Joe drove one-handed, his right hand on the throttle and his left holding the shotgun. The snow was thigh-deep, and Spud Cargill was flushed and sweating. His eyes were wild. He didn't have gloves or a hat. Joe couldn't see if Spud had a weapon or not. Joe veered around him, cutting him off, then pointed the shotgun at Cargill's chest.

"That's enough," Joe said.

Cargill stopped, wheezing, his breath billowing from his nostrils like dual exhausts. Slowly, Cargill bent forward and grasped his knees in an effort to catch his breath.

"Turn around and head back."

Cargill's hand came up with a tiny double-barreled Derringer in it. Joe flopped back flat on his seat as the little pistol cracked and the bullet missed. Still on his back but grasping the hand grip, Joe buried the throttle with his thumb and the snowmobile howled and pounced forward. The collision with Spud Cargill smashed the plastic windshield and cracked the fiberglass hood. Joe felt Cargill's body thump beneath the tracks as the snowmobile passed over him.

Once Joe was clear, he sat back up and circled back.

A hand pushed its way out of the tracked snow, and then a knee. Joe drove up alongside and grabbed the hand. With tremendous effort, he pulled Spud Cargill from the snow. Cargill came up with his mouth, eyes, and ears packed with snow but his hands empty of little guns. The tracks of the snowmobile had shredded the front of his coat.

It wasn't until then that Joe realized how absolutely terrified he had been, and how instinctual and unplanned his reaction was.

While Spud coughed and sputtered, Joe reached up and grabbed Cargill's coat collar from the back. "Miranda rights!" Joe spat, not having the time, energy, or inclination to say more at the moment. Spud started to speak, but with a firm grasp of the coat, Joe gunned the snowmobile and rode it back to the church, dragging a flailing and screaming Spud Cargill alongside. As Joe rode back, he saw that Spud's pickup was on the side of the church, obscured from the road and covered by a tarp that was now heavy with snow.

Nate stepped away from the church as Joe rode up and let go of the coat. Cargill rolled twice in the snow, coming to rest facedown at Nate's feet.

"Damn nice work," Nate said, smiling.

"I thought you were going to cover me," Joe snapped, his adrenaline still on high.

"If I'd shot, I would have hit both of you," Nate said sourly. "You were right in my line of fire."

Joe started to argue, then realized Nate was right.

"Anyway…," Joe said.

"You got him," Nate said, finishing Joe's sentence. Nate stepped forward, rolled Spud Cargill over with his boot then bent down and expertly searched Cargill from his coat to his shoes. He found a folded Buck knife in a trouser pocket and a thin thowing knife in a sheath in Spud's boot. Nate put them both in his parka pocket.

"No more weapons."

"He's an idiot," Joe said. Then, to Spud: "You have caused me and my family more pain and heartache than you can ever imagine. I'm just real happy to see you, Spud."

"The hell you talking about?" Spud mumbled, genuinely confused. "Never went after you… or any of the state agencies."

Joe didn't have time to explain, and didn't think Spud was owed an explanation. They were still in the church parking lot. The three of them were wedged into the cab of Joe's pickup with Spud in the middle between Joe and Nate.

Spud Cargill was wet and ragged, and he complained to Joe that the handcuffs were too tight. Nate responded by elbowing Spud sharply in the mouth and snapping his head back.

"Shut up," Nate hissed. Cargill shut up. Joe glared at Nate, but said nothing.

The motor was running and the heat was on, and Joe breathed easier as he unhooked his radio mike from the cradle and called for dispatch.

There was now enough morning light to see… just about nothing. The snow was falling hard again, and the air was filled with nickel-sized flakes.

"Dispatch." It was Wendy, a longtime county employee and conspiracy buff.

"This is Game Warden Joe Pickett," he said. "Can you patch me through to Sheriff Barnum?"

"No can do."

Joe waited for more. There wasn't any.

"Excuse me?"

"No can do."

"Then patch me through to anybody. It doesn't have to be Barnum."

"No can do."

"Wendy, damn you…"

Another voice came on. Joe recognized it as Tony Portenson, Munker's partner.

"Call me back on a landline," Portenson said. Furious, Joe left Cargill with Nate in the pickup.

"Don't leave me with him!" Cargill pleaded as Joe slammed the door.

He knocked again on the trailer door and asked the Reverend Cobb if he could use his telephone.

"I see you found Spud," Cobb said, looking over Joe's shoulder toward the pickup.

"Yup."

Cobb stepped aside so Joe could enter. He was still obviously wary, and gave Joe a wider berth than necessary.

"You scared me a little out there, Joe," Cobb said, reaching again for his ear. Joe noted that the round imprint of the barrel could be seen on Cobb's earlobe.

"I'm sorry about that," Joe said earnestly.

Cobb shook his head, then nodded toward the window. "He tried to get the Sovereigns to shelter him, but they wouldn't. I don't blame them, but then I would have been rid of him."

"That's what they told me," Joe said. But something didn't fit. He thought of the porch steps he had come up when he approached the trailer that morning. They were completely untracked. How could Spud have told Cobb about what had happened? Joe had the impression that Spud had entered the church in secret. "Did Spud tell you that?"

Cobb shook his head.

"So you're in contact with the Sovereigns. How? By telephone?"

Cobb sipped from a mug of coffee. He nodded toward a PC in a darkened corner of the trailer. The computer was on, a screen-saver undulating on its monitor. "E-mail," Cobb said.

"With who? Wade Brockius?"

Cobb looked away. "Wade and I have corresponded for years. He's a brilliant man and a good friend."

"Are you the one who suggested they come to Twelve Sleep County?"

"Yes," Cobb said. "I thought they would be safe here. Now I wish to God they had never come."

Joe sighed. "You're not the only one."

Cobb handed Joe the telephone receiver and shuffled away in the direction of the computer to give Joe some privacy. Joe walked into the darkened kitchen, as far as the cord would allow him to go. He dialed the sheriff's office.

"Portenson."

"Joe Pickett. Can you tell me what's going on?"

Portenson's voice sounded tired. "All law-enforcement personnel in Twelve Sleep County are under orders to maintain radio silence."

Joe had never heard of this happening before. "Why?"

Portenson hesitated. "The assault team left this morning in the Sno-Cats. Agent Munker was afraid the Sovereigns had scanners up there and that they would overhear the chatter and know they were coming."

Joe felt his skin crawl. "They've already left?"

"They assembled at four this morning and rolled at five."

Joe did a quick calculation. The Sno-Cats, he determined, would be at the Sovereign compound within the hour.

"Portenson, can you reach them?"

"I told you, their radios are off."

Joe held the telephone away from his ear for a moment and looked at it. Then he jerked it back. "I'VE GOT SPUD CARGILL!" Joe shouted. "I arrested him at a church fifteen minutes ago. He's NOT at that compound."

"Oh, shit."

"Oh, shit is right," Joe said. "How can we reach them to call off the raid? Think!"

"Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit," Portenson repeated, his sense of alarm coming through the receiver.

"Hold it," Joe said suddenly. "Why aren't you with them?"

"I couldn't go."

"What do you mean."

"I mean I fucking couldn't make myself go!" Portenson cried. "I quit! I think this whole operation is a cluster-fuck in the making, just like Ruby Ridge and Waco. I insisted that we wait for approval from the director before moving on the compound, but the director's overseas and won't be back till Monday. Munker and Melinda Strickland refused to wait even three days because they're afraid the press will be here by then!"

Joe listened silently. Rage and desperation began to fill him again.

"Melinda Strickland, that nut, wouldn't even compromise with me and go on Saturday, you know why?"

Joe said nothing.

"Because she said she doesn't want to work on the weekend! Can you fucking believe it? She only kills people when she's on the clock! You should have seen her this morning, it was unbelievable. She was sitting in the backseat of the Sno-Cat all bundled in blankets like she was going on a fucking sleigh ride. And she had that damned dog with her. She's crazy, and so is Munker. I hate this operation. I hate this town. I hate this goddamned snow!"

Joe hung up on Portenson in mid-rant.

While he had raced down Timberline Road just a few hours before, the small convoy of Sno-Cats and snowmobiles had been rumbling up the mountain on Bighorn Road toward the compound. He had not only missed Cargill coming down, he had missed the assault team going up. He slammed the counter with the heel of his hand and made the coffeemaker dance.

Joe opened the front door and stood on the porch. Nate saw him through the windshield and lowered his window.

"They've already left for the compound," Joe said flatly.

If Nate registered any alarm, Joe couldn't see it in his face.

"Nate, will you please check to see if Spud has his wallet? I'm going to need his identification to prove to Munker and Strickland that we've actually got him in custody."

Nate nodded. "Are we going to try to head them off?"

"I'm going to try," Joe said. "You have even less credibility with those folks than I do. I need you to take Cargill to the county building and make sure he gets booked into jail. Just ask for Tony Portenson. I just talked with him; he's at the building."

Suddenly, there was a flurry inside the cab of the truck as Spud Cargill tried to cold-cock Nate while he was talking to Joe. Joe saw Nate's head jerk from a blow. But instead of panicking, Nate signaled to Joe that everything was okay and closed the window. Nate turned his attention to Spud Cargill.

Joe was amazed. "Warden?" It was B. J. Cobb from inside the trailer.

Joe turned, assuming Cobb was going to ask him to close the door.

"You need to come see this." Cobb's voice was deadly cold.

Joe stepped back in and walked with Cobb across the cluttered living room. Cobb sat down in front of his computer.

On the monitor, an e-mail program was fired up. In the "In-box" was a message from W. Brockius to B. J. Cobb.

The subject line of the e-mail was:

THEY'RE HERE.

The body of the message was short:

THEY'VE ESTABLISHED A PERIMETER. HELP US, MY LOVE.

Joe was just about to ask Cobb why the e-mail said "MY LOVE" when he heard a scream outside that set his teeth on edge. Joe left the trailer and shut the door, looking for the source of the scream. Nate Romanowski was now outside the pickup, rubbing his bare hands with snow.

"What was that?" Joe asked.

Nate gestured toward Joe's truck. Inside the cab, Spud Cargill was holding his hands to the sides of his head, his eyes white and wild, his mouth wide open. He looked like the painting by Edvard Munch. He screamed again.

"I got his wallet, but I didn't think that would be enough," Nate said. "Munker would just think you found his wallet in his house or workplace."

Oh no…, Joe thought. "Nate…"

Romanowski held his palm out. "So I got you his ear." Thirty-two Joe seethed as he attached his shotgun to the back of the snowmobile with bungee cords in the parking lot of the church. He could not believe that the assault team had launched in the bad weather, and he was furious that he had wasted so many hours chasing Spud up the mountain, down the mountain, and back to where he'd started in the first place.

Nate Romanowski declared that he should go to the compound as well. "You might need me," he said.

Still reeling from pocketing Spud's severed ear, Joe snarled at Nate. "You cut off his ear!"

"Hey, once you think about it you'll agree with me that it was a good idea. Hell, you took the ear, didn't you?" Nate said. "The little bastard deserved it. Think about everything he set in motion in this valley."

Joe breathed deeply and collected himself. Nate was right, but the whole episode-his own behavior and Nate's-still disturbed him. Joe pulled on his thick snowmobile suit and started zipping the sleeves and pant legs tight.

"Nate, I need you to take Spud to jail so we know where to find him. I can't spare the time it would take to book him in."

Nate began to protest, but Joe cut him off.

"Just sit Portenson down and tell him the whole story. Maybe he can figure out a way to intervene. Maybe he can contact his director, or talk some sense into Melinda Strickland or Munker."

"I'm not sure you know what you're dealing with here, Joe," Nate said.

Joe had no response, but pulled his black helmet on.

"Don't worry, Joe, I'll take him to jail. And I'll give Marybeth a call."

"Good," Joe said, turning the key in the ignition. "Thank you. You've been more than enough help already."

Nate saluted, and grinned crookedly. Joe wondered whether or not Spud Cargill would make it to jail in one piece. Actually, he conceded to himself, he didn't really care that much either way. On the snowmobile, Joe Pickett rocketed through Saddlestring and out the other side on unplowed streets with no traffic. Despite the protection of his helmet and Plexiglas shield, his face stung from the cold wind and the pinpricks of snow. The windscreen had been smashed by Spud Cargill. The crack in the snowmobile's hood concerned him, but there didn't seem to be any indication of engine damage. The tank was full, and Joe thought that would be enough gasoline to get him to the compound. In his parka pocket was Spud Cargill's wallet and driver's license, as well as his ear.

The Sno-Cats had groomed a packed and smooth trail up the mountain road, and Joe increased his speed. Dark trees flashed by on both sides. He shot a look at his speedometer: seventy miles per hour. Even in the summer, the speed limit for Bighorn Road in the forest was forty-five.

Help me save her, he prayed. Lord, he was tired.

The high, angry whine of the engine served as a soundtrack to his aching muscles, broken rib, and pounding head. He had not slept for twenty hours, and he rode right through spinning, improbable, multicolored hallucinations that wavered ahead of him in the dawn. More than once, he leaned into what he thought was a turn in the road only to realize, at the last possible second, that the road went the other way.

Despite the icy wind in his face that made his eyes water and blurred his vision, Joe's mind raced.

He thought about the words on Cobb's computer screen: THEY'VE ESTABLISHED A PERIMETER. HELP US, MY LOVE. "My love"? Cobb had said he admired Brockius, but…

Joe shook it out of his mind. At this point he wasn't sure that it mattered. Maybe later, once April was safe. There was no time now.

If he could somehow buy an hour back, he thought, he would pay anything.

Spud's driver's license should do it, he thought. The ear definitely would, as unorthodox as it was. Even if Munker and Strickland didn't back off, surely Sheriff Barnum would move to retreat or delay the assault, wouldn't he? Not because he cared a whit about the Sovereigns, but because Barnum was politically sensitive and the next sheriff's election was a year away. Barnum didn't have as much invested in this thing as Strickland and Munker did. Barnum could come out looking good by putting his foot down, stopping the assault by pulling his deputies out of it. That was how Barnum operated, after all. He wanted to look good. Robey! Maybe Robey was up there, Joe hoped. Robey could shut things down in a hurry and threaten action against Melinda Strickland and Munker if they didn't back off. Although Strickland didn't care much about the law, she might listen if Robey convinced Barnum to pull his men out.

He hadn't really thought through what Romanowski had told him about Melinda Strickland and Dick Munker, but he knew they spelled trouble. The thought of Melinda Strickland sitting, as Tony Portenson had described her, bundled in blankets and cuddling her dog as she ordered her minions to ascend the mountain, made him coldly angry.

Because he wasn't paying attention, he almost missed a turn; he would have been launched over a bank into a deep slough. But he corrected himself at the last moment and leaned into the track of the road.

Think of something else, he pleaded to himself. Something better.

So he tried to imagine how he would feel coming back down this road in a little while with April bundled up in his lap. Under his helmet, he smiled. And he vowed to make that scenario real. A man on a snowmobile blocked the road that led to the compound, and Joe figured he'd probably heard him coming from miles away. The man wore a heavy black snowmobile suit and had an assault rifle clamped under his arm, and he waved his hand for Joe to stop. Joe slowed-his broken rib and the muscles in his back were screaming from riding so hard and so fast-and he unbent from his forward lean while the snowmobile wound down. Joe stopped a few feet in front of the man. Early-morning light filtered through the canopy of pine trees but was absorbed by the heavy snowfall, giving the morning a creamy gray cast.

"Turn it off," the man ordered, nodding at Joe's snowmobile, which sizzled and popped as it idled.

Joe ignored him and raised the shield on his helmet with a squeak that broke a film of ice from the hinges. Joe's breath billowed in the cold from the exertion of the ride.

"Oh, it's you," the man said. "I recognize you from the meeting at the Forest Service."

"Are they up there?" Joe asked anxiously.

The man nodded. Joe recognized him as Saddlestring police, but didn't know his name.

"Anything happening yet?"

"I haven't heard anything. No shots fired," the officer said. "Our radios are off, so I don't know if they're negotiating or what."

Joe exhaled deeply. Thank God, he thought, I'm not too late. "I've got an emergency message for Sheriff Barnum."

"I can't let you in," the officer said.

"I said it was an emergency, deputy." Joe's voice took on a mean edge that he didn't recognize. "No one has been able to reach him because all the radios are turned off."

The officer hesitated. "I can't exactly call ahead and ask about this."

"No, you can't," Joe said. "Which is why I'm going."

"Well…"

Joe flipped down his shield and roared around the officer and up the road. In his cracked rearview mirror, Joe saw the policeman throw up his hands and kick at the snow in frustration. The Sno-Cats were nose-to-tail on the road in front of the Sovereign compound, forming a glass-and-steel skirmish line, and snowmobiles were scattered at all angles behind them. Joe slowed and rose in his seat as he approached, trying to assess the situation as he squinted through watery eyes and snowfall so heavy that it obscured the scene like smoke.

As he approached the gathering of vehicles, he saw that the assault team all wore identical black snowmobile suits and black helmets, just like his own. Inside those suits were Highway Patrol troopers, Forest Service rangers, sheriff's deputies, Saddlestring P.D., maybe even more FBI-but he couldn't tell who was who. He wanted to start with local guys who might know and trust him, but he had no idea where to begin. Obscured by their suits and helmets, Joe thought, these men could be capable of anything.

Most of the men were huddled behind the steel wall of the Sno-Cats with their weapons pointed across the hoods of the vehicles toward the compound. Someone in a black snowmobile suit waved at him-he couldn't tell who-and another stepped away from the line and blocked his path.

"Who in the hell are you?" the man asked, and reached over and flipped Joe's shield up. Angrily, Joe leaned forward on the handlebars and reciprocated, and the man stepped back as if slapped. It was Deputy McLanahan. Joe could see his dumb, rodent eyes and the bruises on his face.

"Where is Barnum?"

"Why in the hell are you here?" McLanahan asked.

"I asked you a question, McLanahan."

McLanahan squared his shoulders as if he were about to charge.

Joe instinctively reached back for his shotgun, which was still attached to the seat with bungee cords. McLanahan hesitated.

"Knock it off, deputy," Joe said. "I need to talk to the sheriff NOW! Spud Cargill isn't up here. I can prove it."

Confusion overtook McLanahan's tough-guy face.

"What?"

"He was at the church all along. The First Alpine Church. He tried to come up here but they wouldn't let him in. I arrested him and he's in your jail. Now, step aside."

"Bullshit."

"I can prove it," Joe shouted, turning the handlebars so the front skis pointed right at McLanahan. Joe engaged the gears and raced the engine. McLanahan knew enough about snowmobiles to know that Joe was poised to run right over the top of him if he didn't answer. "Now, where's Barnum?"

McLanahan stepped aside and pointed. Joe should have noticed it earlier-a single Sno-Cat parked behind the skirmish line. That would be the one holding the leaders, the one out of fire, he thought. He revved his engine and covered the fifty yards in a flash.

Joe shut down his engine, leaped off, and ran around the Sno-Cat. Its exhaust burbled in the cold. Joe threw open the door and stuck his head inside, and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust.

Sheriff Barnum sat in the front seat, behind the wheel. Elle Broxton-Howard sat next to him in her faux fur-lined parka. Melinda Strickland took up the entire backseat, just as Portenson had described, her cocker spaniel snuggled into the blankets with her. She held a small two-way radio in her gloved hand. All of them were shocked to see him.

"You scared me!" Strickland said. "I wasn't expecting you, ya know?"

"Jesus, Pickett. What are you doing up here?" Barnum growled. "You've got no jurisdiction in an operation like this."

"Is Robey here anywhere?" Joe asked.

"Nope," Barnum said.

"Listen," Joe said, trying to calm himself, wishing he could have started this with Robey present. He was out of breath, and shaky from the ride up the mountain. "Spud Cargill is in the county jail. I arrested him about an hour and a half ago."

The three of them looked at each other in disbelief.

"We couldn't call you to let you know because you were running silent, for some stupid reason," Joe said, looking from Barnum to Strickland to gauge their reaction to the news.

Then Joe realized: Where was Dick Munker? Probably on the other end of Strickland's radio, he thought.

"You're not pulling our chain, are you?" Barnum asked.

Joe fought an urge to smash Barnum in the mouth. He shook it off and briefly looked away, before turning his focus back to Barnum. Someday, Joe said to himself, drilling Barnum with his eyes, you and I are going to go at it.

"No, he's in jail," Joe said. "Look. I can prove it." While he dug into his pocket, he told them about finding Cargill at the church and running him down.

Pulling the worn black wallet out of his pocket, he flipped it open to Cargill's Wyoming driver's license. "I took this off him."

Melinda Strickland reached for it and looked at the license with distaste. "I don't know what to think," she said. A hint of confusion that Joe welcomed clouded her features.

"Are you sure you didn't find that in his truck or at his house?" Barnum asked, raising his eyebrows as if he had just come upon a clever discovery.

Again, Joe had to hold himself back. Nate had been right.

With his glove, Joe reached into his parka. Cargill's ear felt like a thin, greasy slice of apple. He flipped it onto Barnum's lap like a poker chip.

"Here's his ear."

"Oh, my God!" Melinda Strickland cried.

"That is absolutely disgusting," Broxton-Howard said, hiding her face in her hands.

Barnum smiled sardonically, and shook his head in something like admiration. "Now, where's Munker?" Joe demanded.

Melinda Strickland looked to Sheriff Barnum for help.

"He's in a position to fire on the compound," Barnum said.

"Where?"

Barnum nodded vaguely toward the fence.

"Call him in," Joe said.

Again, Melinda Strickland looked to Barnum. Joe again saw her confused face. Barnum nodded, and she raised the two-way to her mouth. Why is she looking to Barnum, Joe wondered, if she's running this operation?

"Dick, can you hear me?" she asked. Joe noted that she used no official radio protocol.

Everyone in the Sno-Cat now watched her.

"Dick? Come in, Dick."

"He said he'd keep his radio on," Barnum muttered.

After a beat, there was a chirp from Strickland's radio.

"That means he can hear us but he doesn't want to talk," she explained to Joe. "He's in a position where they can't see him and he doesn't want to give himself away."

Joe nearly reached into the backseat and throttled her.

"Give me the radio," he said, reaching for it. Reluctantly, she handed it over.

Joe grabbed it and keyed the mike. "Munker, wherever you are, this is Joe Pickett. Your little show is over. Spud Cargill is in custody in Saddlestring with Agent Portenson. I repeat, Spud Cargill is NOT HERE." Joe spoke as clearly as he could, trying to keep the rage out.

Silence.

Joe withdrew his head from the Sno-Cat and looked over the hood of the next vehicle into the falling snow and distant shadows of the trailers in the compound. He stood behind the open door and felt warmth from the cab radiate out. The silence was remarkable. Even with the Sno-Cat's engine idling, the heavy snow hushed everything. Joe noticed that two members of the assault team-he couldn't tell who they were, of course-must have heard him talking to Munker, because they now looked back at him, and at each other. They're wondering what's going on, he thought, waiting to see if the raid's being called off.

Joe searched the shadowed trees and the meadow for a sign of Dick Munker. Between the Sno-Cats and the fence was a ditch.

Joe guessed that Munker would hide in that ditch so he could rest his sniper's rifle on the opposite bank and see into the compound. There was enough snow-covered brush to hide behind, Joe noticed, and Munker would likely be in all-white winter gear.

The two-way crackled to life. "This is Munker. They've got a hostage."

Joe stared at the radio in disbelief. What was this?

Then he raised it to his mouth, still scanning the silent meadow for Munker. "What are you talking about, Munker?"

"Give me back the radio," Strickland whined from inside, putting her dog aside so she could reach for it.

Joe turned his back to her.

"What hostage?" Joe asked.

Munker's voice was a whisper. Joe assumed Munker had it pressed against his lips to muffle his voice even further. "She's the wife of that crazy minister in Saddlestring. Mrs. Cobb. I can see her in the trailer."

Instantly, Joe understood, and his blood ran cold. He understood why Eunice Cobb hadn't been with B.J. in the morning. He understood "My Love." He understood where the Cobbs' missing snowmobile had gone. She had come to the compound the night before to warn them in person after Joe's visit, rather than e-mail. Maybe she had come up to assure the Sovereigns that they shouldn't harbor Spud. For whatever reason-the increasing storm, or the fact that a convoy of law-enforcement personnel were coming up the road-she'd been forced to stay the night. She was probably in Brockius's trailer when I came to the camp, he thought. She was the reason Brockius didn't invite me in.

"How do you know she's a hostage?" Joe asked. "How do you know she isn't just visiting?"

"You're one stupid motherfucker," Munker replied in his deep cigarette-coated voice.

"Give me that!" Melinda Strickland said, reaching around Joe and snatching the radio from his hand. She settled back into the rear of the Sno-Cat.

A hot, white veil of rage covered Joe's eyes, and it was all he could do to keep from launching himself into the cab. He sucked in a deep gulp of cold air and falling snow, forcing himself to stay in control of his actions. When he looked up, Barnum was eyeing him, as if waiting to see what Joe would do next. Panic flooded Joe as he looked into the cab and saw that Melinda Strickland was clutching the radio tightly to her chest. There was no way he was going to get it back without breaking her fingers.

Joe turned to Barnum.

"She's no hostage, for God's sake. Mrs. Cobb and her husband have been in contact with these Sovereigns since the beginning. They're all part of the black-helicopter crowd. It makes sense when you think about it."

Barnum raised his eyebrows and shrugged in a "Who knows?" gesture.

"Barnum, you need to call your deputies off," Joe said, glaring at Barnum's passive face. "Pull them off and they can't continue the raid."

"Hell, Joe, I don't even know which ones are mine and which ones ain't," Barnum said, staring back. "They all look alike to me out here."

Joe was too surprised to move for a moment.

"Besides," Barnum said, reaching for the handle of the door, "It'll be interesting to see how this thing plays out."

Barnum slammed the door shut before Joe could stop him and he heard the lock click. He couldn't fathom what was happening. He stood outside the cab of the Sno-Cat, furious, and depressingly alone.

Think.

Joe was beside himself. No matter what he did, it wasn't enough. He had never been in a situation that seemed so… inevitable. A sudden scratch of static ruptured the silence that had reclaimed the scene after Joe's outburst. Joe could hear the radio clearly through an open window in the Sno-Cat that had been cracked an inch to prevent the glass from steaming up inside.

"I can see Wade Brockius through the window of a trailer," Munker reported over the radio. "He's pacing."

"Can you see the hostage?" Strickland asked.

"Not for the last few minutes."

"If you took him out, could we rush the trailer and save her?"

"No. There are too many damned Sovereigns hidden in the trees."

Joe couldn't believe what he was hearing. He had been slumped against the outside of the command Sno-Cat, but he now stood up. He rubbed his face hard. He didn't know the procedure for a hostage situation-they didn't teach that to game wardens-but he knew this wasn't it. This was madness.

He reached into his suit and found his compact binoculars. Moving away from the Sno-Cat, he scanned the compound. The nose of Brockius's trailer faced the road. Through the thin curtains, he could see Brockius just as Munker had described.

Then he saw someone else.

Jeannie Keeley was now at the window, pulling the curtain aside to look out. Her face looked tense, and angry. Beneath her chin was another, smaller, paler face. April.

"Fire a warning shot," Melinda Strickland told Munker.

"A warning shot?" Joe screamed. "What are you…"

Before Joe could react, he saw a movement in the ditch behind a knot of brush. The slim black barrel of a rifle slid out of blinding whiteness and swung slowly toward the trailer window. Joe screamed "NO!" as he involuntarily launched himself from the cover of the vehicles in the direction of the shooter. As he ran, he watched in absolute horror as the barrel stopped on a target and fired. The shot boomed across the mountain, jarring the dreamlike snowy morning violently awake.

Immediately after the shot, Joe realized what he had just done, how he had exposed himself completely in the open road with the assault team behind him and the hidden Sovereigns somewhere in front. Maybe the Sovereigns were as shocked as he was, he thought, since no one had fired back.

But within the hush of the snowfall and the faint returning echo of the shot, there was a high-pitched hiss. It took a moment for Joe to focus on the sound, and when he did, he realized that its origin was a newly severed pipe that had run between a large propane tank on the side of the trailer and the trailer itself. The thin copper tubing rose from the snow and bent toward the trailer like a rattlesnake ready to strike. He could clearly see an open space between the broken tip of the tubing and the fitting on the side of the trailer where the pipe should have been attached. High-pressure gas was shooting into the side vents of the trailer.

No! Joe thought. Munker couldn't have…

He looked up to see a flurry of movement behind the curtains inside the trailer a split-second before there was a sudden, sickening WHUMP that seemed to suck all the air off the mountain. The explosion came from inside the trailer, blowing out the window glass and instantly crushing two tires so the trailer rocked and heaved to one side like a wounded animal. The hissing gas from the severed pipe was now on fire, and it became a furious gout of flame aimed at the thin metal skin of the trailer.

Suddenly, a burning figure ran from the trailer, its gyrations framed by fire, and crumpled into the snow.

Joe stood transfixed, staring at the window where he had last seen April. It was now a blazing hole.

He did not move as the shouting started from both the compound in front of him and the assault team behind him, as Sovereigns who had been hiding behind trees and under the snow screamed curses, as several of them fired back, the rounds smashing through the windows or pinging against the thin metal skins of the Sno-Cats. He heard the sharp snap of bullets through the air around him.

The propane tanks near the burning trailer now flared and exploded, launching rolling orange fireballs veined with black smoke into the air. The trailer burned furiously, the wall consumed so fast that the black metal skeleton of the frame was already showing.

Joe's hands hung limply at his sides. Despite the distance, he could feel the warmth of the fire on his face. Tears streamed down his cheeks, mixed with melting snowflakes.

"Got 'em," he heard Munker say from somewhere in front of him in the snow.

Rage, vicious and hot, swept through Joe, and he started running straight ahead toward the compound, scanning the trees and ground in front of him for Munker. Joe plunged into the ditch, flailing through the snow, finally catching sight of Munker standing among thick trees on the other side of the ditch, with his back to the Sno-Cats. Munker was watching the Sovereign compound with his rifle by his side, smoking a cigarette.

Joe charged out of the ditch toward Munker when he suddenly felt something sharp against his legs, jerking him backwards into the snow. He looked down and realized he had run straight into the barbed wire the Sovereigns had strung around the perimeter of the compound. Joe knew he was cut-he could see the rips in his pants, could feel hot blood running down his leg-but oddly the pain didn't register. Scrambling to his feet, he grabbed the wire and threw it over his head as he mounted the ditch. A guttural sound that was completely unfamiliar to him came out of his throat.

Munker heard the roar and turned, his eyes widening at the sight of Joe crashing through the deep snow toward him. As Joe narrowed the distance, wondering if he'd have time to unzip his suit and pull his Beretta from its holster, Munker calmly tossed the cigarette aside and worked the bolt on his rifle while he raised it.

An ear-shattering concussion came from somewhere behind Joe, and something big hit the stand of trees around Munker. The impact rocked the big tree behind Munker, sending a small mountain of snow cascading through its branches that covered Munker and whited him out.

Joe turned, trying to grasp what had just happened. He could see someone standing atop a wooded rise behind the Sno-Cats, in an open area between two stands of dark spruce. The man wore a black snowmobile suit and helmet like everyone else, and he stood behind a snowmobile for cover. Despite the shroud of thickly falling snow, Joe caught a glimpse of the man sweeping a huge silver handgun across the chaos of the assault team diving for cover between Sno-Cats and behind snowmobiles on the skirmish line. The team was now shouting, trying to figure out who was attacking them and where the assault was coming from.

Holding the revolver with both hands, Nate Romanowski began firing methodically from the top of the hill. He was putting a bullet or two into the engine block of each of the Sno-Cats. The smashing impact rocked the vehicles, sending deputies who were hiding behind them diving into the snow. Joe watched as Romanowski speed-loaded, moved to the side, and started firing again.

Joe looked over his shoulder and saw that the Sovereigns were using the diversion to scramble as well, running for their vehicles in the compound.

"I see him!" one of the deputies shouted, sending a burst of automatic fire up through the trees. Joe heard bullets smacking frozen tree trunks and saw eruptions of heavy snow bloom from the branches and fall to the ground. Romanowski responded by shooting the hood of a snowmobile closest to the deputy, causing the machine to bounce a few inches into the air.

Joe didn't hear anything behind him until something clubbed his neck and sent him sprawling, and turned the world into exquisite aquamarine. He could hear gunshots, shouts, and motors being started somewhere in another world. He wasn't part of it anymore. There was a dull hum in both ears, and a stinging feeling in his face. When he opened his mouth to breathe, there was no air. He opened his eyes to beautiful, comforting light blue. Then his anger, and the pain, brought him back and he realized he was where Munker had left him-facedown, smothering in deep snow.

Joe thrashed in the snow, moaning, not sure for a moment where up was. As his senses surged back, he felt not only the dull roar at the base of his skull but also the searing bite of his broken rib, the barbed-wire slashes on his legs-and an overwhelming, almost physical hurt he felt over April. When Joe was able to sit up, Nate Romanowski was gone, but Joe could hear the whine of a snowmobile from where he had stood. And on the road, Dick Munker mounted an undamaged sheriff's department snowmobile and sped off toward the hill. Nate hadn't hit Munker with that first shot after all. Joe staggered through the deep snow until he reached the packed powder of the roadbed and climbed back up. The stench of the burning trailer filled his nose and mouth.

As he reached his snowmobile, Melinda Strickland and Elle Broxton-Howard ran toward him. Strickland's little dog leaped like a jackrabbit to keep up with her in the snow. Joe noted that Barnum was huddled over a disabled snowmobile and didn't look his way.

"Joe, I…," Strickland started to say, but Joe ignored her. He noticed that both Stickland and Broxton-Howard's clothing winked from bits of glass in the folds and creases. He guessed they had huddled on the floorboards of the Sno-Cat when the windows were shot out.

He pulled his shotgun from beneath the elastic cords on the back of his snowmobile and racked the pump. Strickland stopped, puzzled.

Fire a warning shot, she had told Munker. His eyes bored holes into her, but she looked back blankly.

"Get out of the way," Joe said, starting the engine. Both women quickly and clumsily stepped aside for him as he roared into the trees on Munker's tracks.

As he topped the rise where he had last seen Romanowski, he looked over his shoulder at the skirmish line and compound far below. Black-clad members of the assault team stood around their disabled vehicles, some gesturing, most still. In the compound, the big roll of black smoke obscured the remains of Wade Brockius's trailer. The rest of the compound was now empty of Sovereigns. Thirty-three Following the two snowmobiles through the trees was easy, and Joe did it through half-lidded eyes that were burning in their sockets and with a twelve-gauge shotgun across his lap. Munker had stayed exactly in Nate's tracks, packing the trail even harder, and Joe knew he would gain speed on both of them.

He had no helmet, and the wind and snow tore at his exposed face and ears and pasted his hair back. He paid no attention to it, concentrating instead on the track in front of him and anticipating the first sight of Munker ahead. He had no doubts about what to do when he caught up to him. Focus was not a problem now.

He followed the tracks across an open meadow and back into the dark timber on the other side. Because he couldn't hear anything but his own motor, he couldn't tell if Munker had Nate in his sights or if he, like Joe, was simply following the trail.

The trees got thicker, flashing by on each side, and Joe had to slow down to stay in the track and not to hurtle into the timber. Nate had obviously tried to shake Munker by diving into the deep woods, making hairpin turns around pine trees, and ducking under low-hanging branches. The trail zigzagged through the trees, sometimes banking sharply near trunks or outcroppings.

The single thought in Joe's mind was to find Dick Munker and kill him. He knew it would mean prison. He didn't care. Today Agent Dick Munker of the FBI needed to die by Joe's hand.

The terrain suddenly cleared, and the track went up the middle of a treeless hill. Joe hit his accelerator and the snowmobile whined, blindly surging up the rise.

He was going so fast, that he almost didn't see the tracks he was following split in two as he plunged down the hill's other side. One track had turned sharply to the right and the other plunged straight down the steep ridge into a dark and tangled mass of violently uprooted trees. Out of control, Joe rocketed down the slope, trying to avoid the trees while decelerating with one hand and crushing the handbrake with the other. He caught a glimpse of a smashed snowmobile below him, pieces of it scattered in the tangle of downed trees, and the black shape of a body in the snow. The body was sprawled out flat on its back, as if making a snow angel. When Joe's machine finally stopped, his left front ski was six inches from Dick Munker's head. Hanging in the air directly in front of him, where his windshield should have been, was the broken-off end of an upturned lodgepole pine that would have skewered Joe if he hadn't been able to stop.

Joe killed the engine and climbed off his snowmobile. He instantly sunk into the snow to his waist. Using a heavy-legged swimming motion, he approached Dick Munker.

It was clear from the two sets of tracks what had happened. Munker had followed Romanowski's trail over the ridge and plunged down into the maw of a violent forest blowdown. Trunks and branches had been wrenched and snapped, and were nakedly exposed. A stout branch had impaled the hood of Munker's snowmobile and thrown Munker into the blowdown. Romanowski had no doubt led him to this spot deliberately.

Munker's eyes were on Joe as he waded to him. Joe detected no movement from Munker other than in those eyes. Only when he was practically on top of Munker did Joe catch the ripe scent of hot blood and notice the steam wafting from the crotch of Munker's white camouflage suit. Joe stared. It was Munker's upper thigh, near his groin. A sharp branch had pierced Munker's suit.

"Didn't make the turn, huh?" Joe said dully, lowering the muzzle of his shotgun to Munker's forehead. Both heard the dull snap of the safety being thumbed off.

Munker started to say something, but decided against it. His sharp eyes moved from the muzzle to Joe's face. Joe noticed that a little clump of snow was packed into Munker's nostril.

"You murdered my daughter," Joe said. "No one in that compound needed to die."

"She wasn't even yours, was she?" Munker asked weakly. His eyes showed contempt.

Joe grimaced. This man wanted to die.

"Joe, don't do it."

It was Nate. He must have shut off his machine in the trees and struggled back through the snow on foot to check on Munker. Joe hadn't heard him coming.

"Why shouldn't I, Nate?" Joe said, feeling strangely giddy. He looked down to see if Munker was moving yet, trying to slap the shotgun away. But all that moved were Munker's sharp eyes.

Nate stopped to catch his breath. He leaned against one of the downed trees, puffing steam that billowed like a halo around his head.

"Because you're not scum like Munker. You don't murder people in cold blood."

"I do now," Joe said. God, his head hurt.

"You're a good guy, Joe. You don't do things like this."

Joe looked up. "I'm tired, Nate. I just lost a daughter."

Nate nodded. "If you shoot this guy, who will take care of Marybeth? What about Sheridan? And Lucy? Her name's Lucy, right?"

"Right." Joe thought Nate was being horribly unfair.

"Who will take care of them? They need their dad."

"Goddamn you, Nate."

Romanowski grinned slightly.

"Besides, I think Munker here severed an artery, and he's probably a few quarts low already. My guess is that he'll go naturally and quietly in your heroic attempt to rescue him."

Joe looked down, and knew that Nate was right. Munker's eyes blazed, but his face was ashen. His lips were already blue. The snow packed into his nose had not melted.

Joe cursed bitterly, raising the shotgun.

"Can you help me lift him up, please?" Joe asked Nate. As Joe roared away from the blowdown with Dick Munker slumped in the seat in front of him, he had second thoughts about Nate's idea. As far as Joe could tell, Munker's life was worth nothing. Joe couldn't think of any value that Munker had brought into the world. Nevertheless, he gunned the engine, hoping against hope that he could deliver the FBI agent to the skirmish line alive. It was more than acceptable if Munker died while Joe transported him, he thought. But he had to give it his all. He couldn't deliberately slow down and dawdle while Munker suffered. That went against his grain, as much as Joe hated the man. Joe knew it didn't make sense, but he would have rather blasted Munker with his shotgun than be responsible for his death because he'd driven back in a half-assed way.

But Dick Munker died before Joe even got him as far as the meadow they had crossed. Joe knew it the instant it happened, because Munker stiffened and then went limp and heavy and nearly fell off of Joe's snowmobile. Joe stopped, and used his bungee cords to secure the body before continuing on to the compound. Joe Pickett leaned against his snowmobile and watched the deputies load Munker's body into the back of the only Sno-Cat that was still operational. Across the fence, the compound was deserted. Joe watched a few of the assault team check out trailers and RVs that were now empty. Nate's intervention, and the chaos that resulted, had allowed the Sovereigns to proceed with a clearly well-rehearsed escape plan. They had vanished, leaving their belongings and vehicles. Nate's disabling of almost all of the sheriff's Sno-Cats and snowmobiles had prevented any attempt at chasing them down. All that was left were their deserted homes, dozens of exiting snowmobile tracks, and the smoking remains of Wade Brockius's trailer.

"You tried to save him," Elle Broxton-Howard said, putting her arm around Joe.

"Yup," he said. He hadn't been thinking about Dick Munker.

"Too bad about that little girl."

Joe shook her arm off and walked far away from her, far away from everybody. He couldn't even speak. He stared at the smoldering carcass of the trailer. It had scorched the snow and exposed the earth beneath it-dark earth and green grass that didn't belong here. Melted snow mixed with soot had cut miniature troughs, like spindly black fingers, down the hillside. When he stared at the black framework, all he could see was the face of April Keeley as he last saw her. She was looking out of the window, her head tucked under the chin of her mother. April's face had been emotionless, and haunted. April had always been haunted. She had never, it seemed, had much of a chance, no matter how hard he and Marybeth had tried. He had failed her, and as a result, she was gone. It tore his heart out.

Joe stood there as the snow swirled around him, then felt a wracking sob burst in his chest taking his remaining strength away. His knees buckled and his hands dropped to his sides and he sank down into the snow, hung his head, and cried.