Force of Nature (14 page)

Nate grinned.

That was the first time he met Lieutenant John Nemecek.

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

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

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

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

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

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

All he said was,
“You.”

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

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

“I’m thinking,” his father said.

“WHERE’S DALISAY
and the girls?” Nate asked, when his father finally stepped aside and let him enter.

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

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

“In the kitchen.”

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

“You know where the cups are.”

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

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

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

“You look fit,” Gordo said.

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

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

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

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

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

“Shit,” Gordo said, and groaned.

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

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

Gordo nodded.

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

“Let’s not talk about them.”

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

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

“I told you.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gordo Romanowski’s face twitched again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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