Force of Nature (38 page)

The shooter got quiet when he finally realized they might be in trouble.

Joe said, “Chasing wildlife is a violation; so is hunting them from a moving vehicle. And if you think you’re still in Area Thirty-four, well, you left it about a mile back.”

The driver took a deep breath as if to challenge Joe, then thought better of it and said, “Well, we’re damned sorry if we fucked up.” He thought better of his language and said, “I mean,
screwed
up.”

Joe said, “Yup.”

The father sighed. “You gonna write us up?”

Joe didn’t answer directly. He asked, “How far did you two go up the road this morning?”

The father looked worried, as if he was trying to figure out if they’d committed additional violations that morning. Finally, he said, “Just a couple miles. That’s where we jumped the elk. They took off running down this road and we followed their tracks.”

Joe nodded. “You didn’t go up far enough to get to the top? To see
over into the river valley on the other side of the mountain? Where the outfitter camps are located?”

“Not today,” the shooter said quickly.

Joe thought he said it in a way that implied there was more to the story. “But you’ve been up that far this week?”

The father and son exchanged glances.

“What aren’t you telling me?” Joe asked amiably.

After a beat, the father turned back around and said, “Up until yesterday, we was hunting with my brother-in-law Richie. He said he had to go back last night to do some stuff at home. Richie is kind of a pain in the ass, but he knows this country up here like nobody else.”

“Anyway …” Joe prompted.

“Richie likes to hunt alone,” the father said. “He knows of some old miner cabin up there, and he likes to go up there by it and sit and glass the meadows with binoculars to see elk. He sits for hours up there, just looking around. He usually gets a nice bull that way. But something happened the last time he went up there. When he came back down, he looked fucking spooked. We asked him what happened or what he saw, but he just made up some bullshit about having to get home. He just packed up his gear and left us up here. We never could get him to tell us what happened.”

Joe felt a twinge in his scalp. “When was this?” he asked.

“Yesterday afternoon,” the father said. “He left last night before it started to snow. I’d normally say he’ll be back up soon because of this snow, but the way he left, I kind of wonder. It was just weird. Richie’s an elk-hunting fool, and I’ve never seen him just want to up and leave like that.”

Joe withdrew the notebook from his breast pocket and asked the father for Richie’s full name, address, and contact numbers. Neither the father nor the son knew much more than Richie’s last name and
the part of Powell, Wyoming, he lived in, but the driver said his wife had those details. Joe closed the notebook. He knew that, if necessary, it was enough information to find Richie in a state with as few people in it as Wyoming.

“You gonna call him?” the son asked Joe.

“Maybe.”

“Tell him he still owes me for that case and a half of Coors he drank up here.”

“I’ll try to remember that,” Joe said, sliding the notebook back into his uniform shirt.

He left the father and son wondering what was going to happen next and went back to his pickup. No cell signal. No radio reception. Joe dug a card out of the holder in his glove box and walked back to the hunters and handed it to the father.

He said, “If you’ll promise me something, you can consider this your lucky day, because I don’t have time to write you up right now and you’re both in clear violation. Tonight, if you haven’t seen me come back down the mountain, call nine-one-one. Tell the dispatcher we met and which road we’re on. Let her take it from there.”

The father asked, “That’s it? Just that we met you?”

“Yup.”

Joe said, “Get your vehicle out of the road and take it back into your designated hunting area and make that call tonight, and for now I’ll look the other way.”

After thanking him profusely and reversing the ATV into the brush so Joe could get by, the driver looked at the card and said, “So you’re Joe Pickett?”

Joe nodded.

“I’ve always heard you wouldn’t give a guy a break.”

“Like I said, it’s your lucky day.”

_______

AS HE LEFT THEM
, he glanced into his rearview mirror to see them talking excitedly to each other and gesturing toward where the elk had run. He had an inkling that once he was gone they’d ignore him and go after the elk and probably get stuck somewhere in pursuit.

He shook his head, vowed to look out for them and give them a ticket if he ran into them again, and ground up the road until they were out of view.

He hated not doing his job properly, even given the circumstances. But if they made the call to dispatch as they’d agreed, at least someone would know where he was last seen.

And he thought about something Nate had said.

Recruit local tribesmen.

ALTHOUGH
he’d been to the top of this road only once many years ago, he thought he remembered where he could find the old miner’s cabin. What he didn’t know was what was up there that might spook a dedicated elk hunter off the mountain hours before the tracking snow had arrived.

“GOD, THE MOUNTAINS
are beautiful,” Haley said as Nate drove the white Tahoe toward the Bighorns, which were lit up with a full blast of morning sun that contrasted the fresh snow on the meadows and peaks against miles of dark timber. She said it as she reloaded the magazine, one by one, with 6.8-millimeter cartridges for the Mini-14.

Nate grunted. He noted that now that the mask was off, she showed a confident proficiency with weapons that she’d kept under wraps before.

“So this is where you live?” she asked, meaning the general area.

“Most of the time,” Nate said. “When I’m not living in a cave.”

“Do you realize how pathetic that just sounded?” she asked with a shy smile.

“Yes.”

“Maybe after this you won’t have to run anymore.”

Nate let that hang for a moment, then turned toward her. “There’s a difference between running and dropping out.”

“Sorry.”

_______

HE WASN’T SURE
how he wanted to play it, but the more he thought it through and ran different scenarios through his mind, he kept coming back to his original inclination. It had worked with the two operatives on the mountain in Colorado, on the highway outside of Jackson, and countless times over the years on special operations.

Nate said, “We’re going to go right at him.”

“Pardon?” she said.

“There are lots of ways to do this,” he said. “We could find a position and observe him—make sure he’s there and try to figure out how many guys he has with him, then make a plan. Strike at night, flank him, that sort of thing.”

She nodded.

“For all we know, though,” he said, “Nemecek has set up his usual electronic perimeter. He’s likely got sensors, cameras, and motion detectors at all the key points around his camp. He’ll know if someone is moving in on him, and he’s a master at dealing with those kinds of situations. Hell, he taught
me
. And in the worst-case scenario, he just drives away and we never get a crack at him. In that case, this could go on forever.”

Haley shook her head. “I can’t imagine trying to live a normal life and knowing he’s out there,” she said.

“Welcome to my world,” Nate said.

“So how are you going to confront him?” she asked. “We don’t know how many we’re up against or who they are.”

“We have an advantage, though,” Nate said. “We know how he thinks. He
trained
us. We know that anybody we encounter could be one of his. The only man in this valley I can absolutely trust just flew away on an airplane. Everyone else is a potential threat.”

The gravity of what he said seemed to make her withdraw from him as she considered the possibilities.

“But the longer we wait and plan, the longer he has to devise a countermove,” Nate said. “I’m thinking right now he’s confused. He doesn’t know we’re out here and he doesn’t know what exactly happened to the two operatives in Idaho. He thinks they’re coming to meet up with him—that’s what I made that guy back there tell him—but he’s been out of cell or radio contact with them since then. No doubt Nemecek is waiting to hear from them when they arrive, and he’s probably trying to raise them over the phone.”

“Will he be suspicious?” Haley asked.

“He’s always suspicious,” Nate said. “He’s probably even figured I got the upper hand on his boys somehow. But what he can’t know is that you’re with me. So when he sees you, he’ll be confused, at least momentarily.”

“I see,” Haley said. “I’m bait.”

Nate smiled a cruel smile. “You can still get out,” he said. “It isn’t too late.”

“No, that’s not what I meant,” she said. “I just want to know what you’re thinking, so I can do my job right.”

He thought that over for a moment, then methodically laid out his plan of attack.

YARAK
meant a condition of being hyperalert, he told her.

“Engage all your senses and push them out to their limits,” he said. “Don’t think—
react
. Don’t consider consequences or collateral damage. If you see me go down, don’t hesitate. If you hesitate, you’re dead.”

She shook her head, obviously doubting her ability to do it.

Then she asked, “And if I go down first?”

“I’ll miss the hell out of you,” Nate said. “But that’s after I’ve blown Nemecek’s head off.”

“God, you can be so romantic,” she said.

“Shut up, Haley,” he said sharply, shocking her. “
Concentrate.
Remember what I just told you about being hyperalert until this is over.”

“Why are you yelling at me?”

He gritted his teeth, and said, “I’m trying to keep you alive. I’m trying to show you, but I don’t think you’re listening. For example, what do you know about our situation right now that is different than a few minutes ago?”

She started to say something flippant by her gesture, but stopped herself. Instead, she looked around the Tahoe and out through all the windows at the lodgepole pines that zipped by on both sides.

“What?” she asked. “We’re in a forest?”

“No,” he said. “We’re being followed.”

JOE CLEARED
the tree line of the summit in his pickup to find a barren field of blinding white punctuated by sharp blades of volcanic black scree. The sharp shards pierced upward through the thick scrim of snow, which was untracked and polished to a high-gloss sheen by wind and high-altitude sun. As he emerged from the trees, his radio came to life with a screech of static, and he checked his phone to find two messages: Chuck Coon and Sheriff Kyle McLanahan. Each had called within the past twenty minutes.

He slowed for a moment and reached for the mic, but as he did so he could feel the tires begin to sink into the snow. Since he couldn’t tell how deep it was and couldn’t risk getting stuck on top fully exposed, he grabbed the wheel again and goosed the accelerator. The snow was deeper than he would have guessed, but he knew if
he maintained his forward momentum across the top of it he had a chance of getting across it to a windswept bank of gravel on the horizon of the mountain. If he made it to the other side, he could return the calls and call in his position.

Although he couldn’t see clearly through the snow-covered windshield, he searched ahead for knobs of rock to steer toward so his tires
could grab them and propel him forward. He saw a rock and cranked the wheel toward it, but the back end swung around again and his progress stopped cold. He cursed as the pickup settled in, sinking a few more inches, snow crunching and the exhaust pipe suddenly burbling as it descended into the snow, and he knew he was stuck fast almost exactly in the center of the snowfield.

JOE SAT BACK
and gritted his teeth. Just a few more feet and he might have been able to gain purchase and maintain momentum enough to get to the gravel. But there was no point now but to reassess. It would take hours of digging to try and find the solid rock bottom of the snowfield. And even if he did, the only way he could safely get out was to reverse in his own tracks and end up back where he came from. He knew from being stuck many times and helping others that he needed a winch-truck to get the pickup out.

He cursed and slammed the top of the wheel with the heel of his hand. Wind buffeted the driver’s-side window. Out ahead of him, on the snowfield, small waves of gritty snow moved along the surface like sidewinder snakes.

The view was magnificent. As far as he could see ahead were the snowcapped ridges of wave upon wave of mountains. Stringy cirrus clouds unfurled like battered flags through the brilliant blue sky. There wasn’t an airplane or a power pole or a cell tower to be seen anywhere.

He felt incredibly lonely and frustrated, and when he caught a sharp whiff of carbon monoxide through his heating vents he reached down and killed the motor. The exhaust pipe was now buried deep in the snow and leaking back through the undercarriage. If he kept the pickup running, he risked asphyxiation.

Joe briefly closed his eyes and calmed himself, then checked his phone. He had a weak signal.

He called Chuck Coon first, and the agent came on after the second ring.

“We found her, this Maryland student,” Coon said. “Woke her up at her little off-campus apartment. After I swung by your daughter’s dormitory and woke her up. She’s fine, Joe.”

Joe felt a wave of relief. “Thank God.”

“But we have a problem,” Coon said, and Joe could hear the anger in his voice. “Or I should say
you
have a problem. In fact, a couple of them.”

“Yes?”

“This Maryland girl checks out, Joe. Her name is Jennifer Wellington—a blue-blood name if I ever heard one—and from what we can tell, she’s exactly who she says she is: an out-of-state student. Her record shows a straight line from high school to college. No gaps. No military service. Her parents check out, and right now they’re very angry with the FBI, and her old man threatened legal action unless we cut her loose, which we did.”