Force of Nature (6 page)

He agreed. After they’d disconnected, he made sure the coast was clear in all directions—Brueggemann was still recovering, and Schalk wasn’t back with her vest—before he stepped behind his pickup and called Nate’s number.

There was no answer.

“THIS REMINDS ME
a lot of the first time I ever met Nate Romanowski,” Joe said to Dulcie as they sped down the state highway in the midst of the sheriff’s department caravan of SUVs. “Nine years ago, different sheriff, similar situation.”

Joe recounted how Nate had been arrested for murder, beaten, and jailed. The former sheriff considered it a slam-dunk case, but Joe was able to prove Nate’s innocence, and the outlaw falconer had pledged to protect Joe and his family.

“Over the years,” Joe said, “we’ve been through a lot and he’s never broken his word. We’ve had our disagreements, and I don’t want to get into all the details, but he’s been there for us. So I hope you understand that it isn’t an easy thing to turn him over to the Feds. That’s where he comes from, and we’re not sure he’d make it out alive.”

Dulcie recoiled. “What do you mean, he might not make it out alive? This is our government you’re talking about, Joe.”

He nodded. Luke Brueggemann was in the caravan as well, his pickup hovering in Joe’s rearview mirror.

Joe recalled other incidents over the years, things he’d stored in his memory drawer but never reopened. When they’d first met Nate he
mentioned he’d just come from Montana. Because of Nate’s sudden violent appearance and the way he’d said it, Marybeth was curious and did some research on the library computers, and keyed on a headline from the
Great Falls Tribune
that read “Two Dead in U.S. 87 Rollover.” The story said that a damaged vehicle with out-of-state plates had been called in to the Montana Highway Patrol twenty-one miles north of town near Fort Benton. The identities of the occupants were unknown at the time, but authorities were investigating.

On the next page, a smaller story identified the victims of a multiple-rollover accident as two men, aged thirty-two and thirty-seven, from Arlington, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., respectively. Both were killed on impact. The highway patrol suggested that judging by the skid marks, it was possible that the engine to the late-model SUV had lost power or died as the vehicle approached a sharp grade with several turns, and that the driver was unable to negotiate the sharpest of the turns and blew through a guardrail and rolled to the bottom of the canyon, flipping at least seven times. The passenger was thrown from the vehicle, and the driver was crushed behind the wheel.

“Witness Sought in Rollover Investigation,” the third, and smallest, headline read. In the story, the highway patrol reported that they were seeking a potential witness to the rollover on U.S. 87 that killed two men from out of state. Specifically, they were looking for the driver of an older-model Jeep with Montana plates that was seen passing a speed checkpoint near Great Falls. The authorities estimated that the Jeep may have been in the vicinity of the rollover near the time it occurred, and that the driver could have seen the accident happen.

Joe later learned that Nate drove a Jeep, and that his preferred weapon at the time, a five-shot .454 Casull manufactured by Freedom Arms, in Freedom, Wyoming, was the only handgun designated
a “car killer” by the U.S. Secret Service because the bullets had the power to penetrate the engine block of a vehicle and render it useless.

Several years later, a man named Randan Bello arrived in Saddlestring from Virginia and started asking around about Nate Romanowski. He found a source in the former sheriff, Bud Barnum, and the two became fast friends. One particular fall morning, a housekeeping employee at the Holiday Inn observed Barnum arriving at the hotel and waiting for Bello to join him in his SUV. The two left together and didn’t come back. The sheriff’s vehicle was never located, although two years later a couple of elk hunters reported that they’d seen wreckage deep in the bottom of Savage Run Canyon. Joe had investigated, but their directions were poor and he’d never spotted anything.

He remembered Large Merle, a restaurant owner who lived on the road that led to Outlaw Canyon, where Nate had relocated after federal warrants were issued for him, asking Joe, “Did Nate ever tell you about that time in Haiti? When the four drugged-out rebels jumped him?”

“No.”

Merle shook his head and chuckled, the fat jiggling under his arms and under his chin. “Quite a story,” Merle said. “Especially the part about guts strung through the trees like popcorn strings. Ask him about that one sometime!”

Joe never did. But he’d heard that Merle was missing as well. He’d simply not shown up to open his little restaurant in Kaycee one morning a month before.

JOE SAID
, “I’ve never gotten the whole story from Nate, and I’ve never wanted to hear it. He’s tried to tell me a few times, but I shut
him down because I don’t want to know. But it involves something he did in Special Forces. It’s one of the reasons he moved out here—to get away.”

Dulcie asked about Nate’s age and background.

“Late thirties, early forties,” Joe said. “I don’t know his birthday or where he grew up, but I’ve always been under the impression he was familiar with Wyoming and Montana from his youth because he seems to know his way around. He’s also familiar with Idaho.” Joe let that just hang there and hoped she wouldn’t ask about Idaho in
particular.

She didn’t, but she asked how Nate supported himself. “From what you say, he seems to have no problem getting weapons and equipment.”

Joe shrugged. “I don’t think it’s criminal, but I wouldn’t swear to it. All I know is he’s never seemed to be hurting for money. He’s tried to tell me some things, but I wouldn’t listen.”

“You have a strange relationship,” she said.

“Yup.”

“Do you think he’s capable of something like what we saw back there in the garage?”

Joe didn’t hesitate. “Nate is capable of anything, but he’s not random. That’s the thing about him. He has his own code and he can be ruthless and cold, but he doesn’t do things like that unless provoked. Unless they drew down on him first. And presuming the sheriff is right, why would three low-rent characters like Connelly and the Kellys even want to tangle with someone like Nate? That’s why this doesn’t make any sense.”

She shrugged. “Maybe they were involved with him in some way? In the way he makes his mysterious money?”

“Not possible,” Joe said. “He wouldn’t associate with people like
that. Not to say he doesn’t know some unsavory types—he does. But he operates on a whole different level.”

“Maybe they were after his money?”

Joe said, “In that case, they were even stupider than I thought. But as soon as we get clear of this, I’m going to go out to the Kelly place and talk to Paul’s wife and Stumpy’s mother. Pam is her name, I believe. She might know something, and I don’t trust the sheriff to follow up with her.”

Dulcie rubbed her chin. “Was there a federal reward out for him?”

“If there was, this is the first I’ve heard of it,” he said, tumbling that idea over in his mind.

She said, “And even if there wasn’t, one or all of these three might have trouble with the Feds over something or other. It’s possible they went after Nate as a bargaining chip.”

“It’s a possibility,” Joe said. “I never thought of that.”

“Let’s keep an open mind,” she said.

Joe eyed her skeptically and held his tongue.

“I learned a few things in Missy’s murder trial,” she said defensively. “One is never to fully trust McLanahan’s theories or judgment. The other is never to underestimate the depth of depravity of the criminal mind.”

“You’re being a little rough on yourself, Dulcie,” he said after a beat. “You’re young. Don’t get too hard.”

She looked over at him, puzzled.

“When it comes to folks, I always try to err on the side of goodwill,” Joe said. Then: “It’s gotten me in a lot of hot water, but it’s better that way.”

She laughed, surprised, and asked, “How is that?”

Joe said, “I’ve never tried to find out what terrible thing Nate was involved in that drove him out here. I just take him at face value.
From what he’s shown me and what he’s done for my family, that’s good enough. That was what I meant earlier about not always needing to know everything. When a man wants a whole new life, I guess I’m okay with that.”

A minute later, she said, “And Marybeth—she’s okay with you knowing him? From what you’ve told me I don’t think I’d want him around my children, provided I had any.”

Joe looked ahead. Deputy Sollis was in the lead, followed by two other deputies, Mike Reed, and Sheriff McLanahan. It was less than four miles to the turnoff to Nate’s place on the bank of the river.

“We’re both comfortable with him,” Joe said. “In fact, he’s been the master falconer to my daughter Sheridan, who is his apprentice. Marybeth and Nate, well, let’s just say they have a special friendship.”

“Explain.”
Her eyes sparkled wickedly, Joe thought.

He tried to think of the right words. He decided on, “Marybeth and I have a marriage based on trust. But if we didn’t …”

She grinned. “So he’s hot.”

“So they tell me,” Joe sighed.

“I’ll have to ask her about him the next time we go riding,” she said.

Joe moaned. “He might not even be at his place. Nate has a habit of vanishing for weeks and then suddenly showing up where you don’t expect him to be. He might have been gone this whole time, and this entire deal we have going here might be a waste of time and effort.”

“I’m looking forward to meeting him,” she said, as if she hadn’t heard a word Joe said. Dulcie Schalk was attractive and unmarried, and he’d heard the local gossips having coffee at the Burg-O-Pardner restaurant speculate about her sexuality, but Joe had never doubted she liked men. As Marybeth had said, pickings were slim in Twelve Sleep County, Wyoming.

Sollis began to slow down on the highway. The two-track road that led three miles to Nate’s had no markings or signs. In the winter, it drifted over and was inaccessible.

Joe looked to the southwest. A lazy curl of black smoke rose from where the river coursed through the valley where Nate’s place was located.

“Trouble,” Joe said, chinning toward the smoke.

NATE ROMANOWSKI
watched the procession of vehicles stream down the two-track through binoculars. He counted seven of them—four look-alike sheriff’s department SUVs, the sheriff’s pickup, and two green pickups with decals on the doors bringing up the rear.

“Joe,”
he said aloud. He glanced down at his satellite phone. An hour before, Joe had tried to call him but he hadn’t picked up. Five minutes later, there had been another call from Marybeth Pickett that he declined to answer. But both calls coming so close to each other told him all he needed to know.

Nate was on his belly in a tangle of aspen high on the slope not far from where he’d hunted ducks the day before. His peregrine and prairie falcon were hooded a few feet behind him in the gold carpet of fallen leaves. The birds stood erect like still little sentinels, waiting to be unleashed.

For the hundredth time that day, he cursed his actions the evening before. He’d let himself be taken in by the three men in the boat simply because they were locals, and he hadn’t connected their presence with The Five, the Special Forces unit he’d been in. That had been his first mistake. His second was that in the pain from the arrow
through his shoulder, he’d let the boat simply float away downriver where it would eventually be found.

The two calls from Joe and Marybeth confirmed that it had.

So he’d been off his game. But an arrow in his flesh and the killing of three men had focused his mind, and he knew he was in the midst of a battle that might turn out to be his last. The rules hadn’t changed as much as they’d been adapted to his location and circumstances. And he hadn’t seen it coming.

THAT MORNING
, he’d made his plan. Through a haze of pain and with the use of only one arm, he’d sunk his boat, burned the mews to the ground, and gathered all his gear and clothing into piles on the floor of his house before torching that, too. He’d smashed his electronic gear into bite-sized pieces and thrown only a few of his possessions into an old military duffel bag, along with the last bricks of cash, to take with him.

On a gravel bar in the river, he’d found the carbine the old man Paul had aimed at him. The rifle was in good shape after he’d dried and cleaned it. It was an all-weather Ruger Mini-14 Ranch rifle chambered in 6.8-millimeter with a thirty-round clip and a scope. He’d decided to keep it because the weapon would be good for precision work and for laying down cover fire, if necessary. The stock was black synthetic. The rifle, along with his .500, would serve his needs, he thought.

NATE HAD KILLED
an antelope several days before and packed the carcass in ice in a dug-out icehouse fifty yards downriver. After cleaning his wounds with alcohol and taping on compresses, he’d sliced off the tenderloins and back straps and ate one of the back straps
whole after searing it and seasoning it with salt and pepper. The light and flavorful lean meat seemed to help speed the replenishing of his blood supply. It was pure protein from the wild, and he thought it had healing properties.

IN HIS CIRCUMSTANCES
, he’d decided to trim his life down to the bone. He’d taken only what he could carry. He’d eat only wild game and fish that he caught. And he’d get rid of his phone now that he’d made three calls on it; one to the Wind River Indian Reservation, the next to colleagues in the Idaho compound, and the third to a man in Colorado Springs.

IT HURT TO SHIFT
his position, even to follow the oncoming procession through his field glasses. His shoulder screamed at him, and he’d noticed that his skin was purplish near the entry wound, and the dark wine color was expanding out. He had no painkilling drugs available and had spent most of the previous night fighting back waves of delirium. He’d lost a lot of blood.