Force of Nature (39 page)

Joe said, “You let her go?”

“No reason to keep her, Joe. That’s what I’m telling you. She was upset and blubbering, and she had no idea why we were there. This whole trip over the mountain was a snafu of the highest order, thanks to you.”

“You’re sure?” Joe asked, feeling his stomach clench. “You’re absolutely positive she’s clean and her identity is solid?”

“As absolutely sure as I’ve ever been in my life,” Coon said, his voice rising. “You’ve wasted my time and used up your last favor.”

Joe sat back and looked at the phone in his hand. He was relieved his suspicions were incorrect and Sheridan was safe but disconcerted about how he’d been so wrong and so paranoid.

“Oh,” Coon said, “your daughter isn’t real happy with you right now, either. In fact, I’d call her, um,
hopping mad
.”

Joe could hear someone, another agent in Coon’s vehicle, laughing at that.

“Man, I’m sorry,” Joe said. “But it means there is someone still out there. Another female operator.”

“At this point,” Coon sighed, “it means this conversation is over.”

“Hold it,” Joe said, sitting forward again. “Did McLanahan request assistance from you? Is your team on the way?”

“Just a second,” Coon said, and Joe could envision Agent Coon covering the speaker while he asked somebody. When he came back, he said, “No word from your sheriff. Nothing. Nada.”

Joe let the words sink in.

“Where are you right now?” Coon asked. “The reception is terrible.”

Joe slumped to the side. It was getting colder inside the cab, and he could feel a tiny tongue of icy wind lick his earlobe from a gap in the doorframe.

“I’m stuck on top of a mountain with no backup and no plan,” Joe said sullenly. “And in the valley below is John Nemecek.”

NATE HAD CAUGHT
two quick glimpses of a vehicle coming up the mountain behind them in his side mirrors. Each look was fleeting: a dark pickup rounding a switchback turn maybe a mile away, a glint of reflected sunlight on glass and chrome. But he’d seen enough to know the pursuing vehicle wasn’t just driving up the mountain—but
flying
.

“Who is it?” Haley asked, placing her hand on the rifle next to her on the seat.

“Don’t know.”

“Could it be just a local? A hunter or something like that?”

“Maybe,” Nate said, increasing the speed of the Tahoe. “But he’s in a hell of a hurry.”

“Do you think local law enforcement? Maybe that car dealer called on us?”

“I said I don’t know,” Nate said.

He made a switchback turn to the right that leaned into a quarter-mile straightaway climb. He roared up the stretch, noting that Haley was instinctively bracing herself by clutching the handhold above her
shoulder in a white-knuckle grip. He appreciated that she wasn’t a backseat driver.

There was another switchback turn to the left, and he slowed to take it. He hoped he’d put a few more seconds of distance between them and the oncoming vehicle. He’d need them. There were a few old roads leading off the asphalt, but they were few and far between on the climb up the mountain. The campgrounds and logging roads didn’t appear until they crested the top.

Three-quarters of the way up the second straightaway, he said, “Is that an opening in the trees up ahead?”

“Looks like it, but I can’t tell what it is.”

“It’ll have to be good enough,” he said, slowing down.

As they passed it, he took its measure: it
had
been a road into the timber at one time, likely a Forest Service road, but a hundred feet in they’d used an earthmover to create a berm that would be impassable. It was one of the more annoying Forest Service tricks of the last few decades: blocking access roads to the public while purportedly serving the public. But it was good enough for what he was looking for.

“Hold on,” he said, hitting the brakes.

When the Tahoe was stopped, he quickly reversed and backed into the opening and kept going until his rear bumper rested against the berm. Ahead of them was a narrow opening slot through the trees where they could see fifty feet of the road and the rock wall beyond it.

He turned to her and said urgently, “If he sees our tracks, he might stop and block us in, but I’m hoping he’ll drive right by. Jump out with that rifle so you’re clear to fire if necessary. If he makes any moves that seem hinky, don’t overthink it. Just aim and fire.”

“Pumpkin on a post,” she said with a wink.

“Go,” he said, and bailed out the driver’s-side door.

He could hear the vehicle coming, tires sizzling through the slushy snow on the roadway. The vehicle was coming fast.

Nate looked through the Tahoe windows for Haley. She was leaning back on the SUV and raising the rifle. She had a calm and determined look on her face. That look made him want to run around the back of the Tahoe and kiss her.

Then he shook his head to clear it; thought,
Yarak
; and drew his heavy weapon from its shoulder holster.

The vehicle—a dark green pickup with an emblem on the door and a single occupant inside—flashed by the opening in the trees without slowing down. Nate listened as it sluiced up the mountain without slowing. The driver hadn’t so much as looked their way. His profile indicated he was leaning over the steering wheel, watching the road in front of him without a sideways glance, and very determined to get to where he was going.

“Whew,” Haley said, uncoiling. “False alarm, I guess.”

Nate squinted, a sour look on his face.

“What?” she said. “Did you know him?”

He shook his head. “I thought for a second it was my friend Joe, that he’d decided to stay. That would be like him: dumb and loyal. But it wasn’t him.”

“So who was it?”

Nate shrugged. “Game and Fish pickup, driver wearing a red uniform. But it wasn’t Joe. He’s the only game warden in this district, so I have no idea who it was.”

“I’m confused,” she said, climbing back into the Tahoe.

“You’re not the only one,” Nate said.

“Are you disappointed your friend didn’t stay to help you?” she asked.

“Of course not,” he snapped.

JOE’S HAND
was trembling when he returned McLanahan’s call. Even before the sheriff answered, he wished he could reach through his phone and throttle him.

“Yeah?” McLanahan answered.

Joe took a deep breath and tried to keep his anger in check. “Sheriff,” Joe said,
“I just talked to the FBI. They said you haven’t called for their help.”

There was a beat of silence, then: “Dang it, that plumb slipped my mind.”

“How could it slip your mind? Tell me how it could slip your mind? Tell me how that could happen?”

“Whoa, there,” McLanahan said, annoyed. “Change your tone or I’m hanging up. I’m up to my ass in alligators right now and I don’t have time for your attitude.”

Joe closed his eyes.

“You heard the bad news, right?” McLanahan asked.

“No.”

“Oh.”

“What happened, sheriff?” Joe finally asked.

“We had an incident this morning.”

Joe’s left hand was balled up into a fist, and his nails were cutting into the palm of his hand just to keep from shouting.

“And what would that be?” Joe asked.

“I sent Mike Reed and Deputy Sollis over to roust your trainee, just like you asked. But the son-of-a-bitch came out
shooting
. Sollis was killed in the line of duty, and Reed’s in critical condition in the hospital. Doctors say it’s touch-and-go at this point.”

“What?”

“This Luke Brueggemann character—your trainee—got away. We issued an APB for him, and as soon as I get you off the phone I’m calling the Feds for help.”

“I told you to send a SWAT team,” Joe said, struck dumb by the turn of events. Mike Reed in critical condition?

“I don’t like being told what to do, pardner,” McLanahan said.

“Is Mike going to make it?”

“Shot in the neck and the shoulder, from what we know. Might have paralyzed him. But those doctors, they can do all kinds of miracles these days.”

“You are such an idiot,” Joe said. “You sent those men to their death.” Thinking:
He sent his opponent.

“Whoa, there, buckaroo. There’s no call for that kind of talk.”

“I asked you to do
three things
,” Joe said, shouting into the phone, “
Three things.
You agreed. And you couldn’t even do the first thing right.”

“This call is over,” McLanahan said, feigning outrage, but it came across to Joe like naked fear.

“When I get down from here, you and I are going to have it out.”

McLanahan didn’t respond.

“Where was he last seen?” Joe shouted.

“Who?”

“Luke Brueggemann, you idiot!”

“Headed west in his pickup,” McLanahan said.

“Toward the mountains?” Joe asked, looking up through the windshield, remembering where he was again.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” McLanahan said. “But he should be easy to find in that Guts and Feathers rig you boys drive.” And with that he terminated the call.

JOE HAD
to throw his shoulder against the driver’s-side door to open it against the snow. It took four tries before there was enough space for him to crawl out. Strong icy wind blew into the vacant cab.

In the equipment box in the bed of his pickup, he pulled out his cold-weather gear. It didn’t seem like it’d been that long since he’d packed it, he thought. He sat on the bed wall and kicked off his cowboy boots and pulled on thermal knee-high Bogs. His hooded Carhartt parka cut the chilling wind, and he was grateful he’d left a pair of gloves in the pockets.

He filled a daypack with binoculars, his spotting scope, the handheld radio, a GPS unit, digital camera, Maglite, coiled rope, a hunting knife, and boxes of ammunition. It was heavy when he cinched it down on his back and climbed down into the snow.

He checked the cartridges in his scoped .270 Winchester and slung it over his shoulder, and loaded his twelve-gauge with five three-inch shells: two magnum slugs on each end and three double-ought magnum buckshots in between. A handful of extra twelve-gauge shells went into his right coat pocket along with a crumpled bandanna to keep them from rattling when he walked.

It was tough getting the door shut because snow had drifted in, but when he heard the click he turned and started trudging for the gravel bank.

_______

JOE WAS
breathing hard by the time he reached it, and he wiped melted snow and perspiration from his face with his sleeve. The gravel bank was on the edge of the summit, and from where he stood he could look down into the steep timbered valley below. The pitch was such that he couldn’t quite see the valley floor or any of the camps established along the branch of the river.

Before picking his way through the loose scree on the other side of the mountain toward the timber below, he looked up and caught a tiny series of sun glints twenty-five miles in the distance. Saddlestring, he thought, where Sheriff Kyle McLanahan preened and made incompetent decisions and poor Mike Reed fought for his life.

THE OLD
miner’s cabin had been built into the mountain slope itself on a spit of level ground twenty yards from the start of the timber. Whoever built it had burrowed back into the rocky ground to hollow out a single room and had fashioned eaves and a corrugated tin roof, now discolored, that extended out of the mountainside. It looked out on the valley floor and Joe caught a glimpse of a bend of the river far below as he approached the cabin from above. He could see why Richie had chosen the shelter of the cabin to look for elk. It was protected from the wind that howled over the summit and afforded unimpeded views of several meadows where wildlife likely would graze.

As he approached the cabin from the back, Joe thumbed the safety off his shotgun and tucked the stock under his arm. He tried to stay quiet and not dislodge small rocks from the scree that might tumble downhill, clicking along with the sound of pool balls striking one another.

When he was close enough to see the entire side of the small structure, he dropped to his haunches and simply listened. There was no sign of life from the old log shelter, and two of the four small panes of glass from the side window were broken out. In the rocks near the closed front door were dozens of filtered cigarette butts. Richie, Joe thought, must be a smoker. But what had he seen from this perch that spooked him off the mountain?

“Hello!” Joe shouted. “Anybody home?”

Silence from the cabin. But below in the trees, squirrels chattered to one another in their unique form of telegraph-pole gossip. They’d soon all know he was there, he thought.

He called out again, louder. If someone was inside, perhaps he’d see an eye looking out from one of the broken panes. But there was no movement.

For the first time, he noted a rough trail that emerged from the line of timber to the front door of the cabin. The trail was scarred on top, meaning it had been used recently. Maybe Richie had seen someone coming up on it? But why would that scare him?

Joe stood and slipped along the side wall of the cabin until he was underneath the window. He pressed his ear against a rough log and closed his eyes, trying to detect sounds of any movement inside. It was still.

He popped up quickly to the window and then dropped back down. No reaction, and all he’d seen inside was a shaft of light from a hole in the roof cutting through the gloom, illuminating what looked like three stout black logs on the packed-dirt floor.

Stout black logs?

THE HEAVY
front door wasn’t bolted, and it moaned as it swung inward on old leather hinges. Joe stood to the side, shotgun ready,
waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Nothing moved in reaction to the wide-open door.

He stepped inside. It was still and musty, but he caught a whiff of a sour metallic smell. The odor seemed to hang just above the floor.