Page 26

Byrth had headed toward Lake Tawakoni, an hour’s drive east of Dallas. As he drove along Interstate Highway 30, the city gave way to suburbs, then that turned to large spreads of horse and cattle ranches, some of which were dotted with towering rigs drilling for natural gas in the vast shale. Exiting the freeway, he picked up two-lane farm-to-market roads, following them through country that became increasingly rugged and heavily wooded.

Near the lake, finding the entrance to the property had not proven a problem. It was just past a wide spot in the road—the tidy little town of Quinlan, population a thousand or two—and had a Hunt County Sheriff’s Office patrol car parked on the shoulder of the road. The white Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor, even with its emergency lights dark, stood out in the middle of nowhere.

A uniformed deputy sheriff, who looked to be maybe thirty and apparently hadn’t missed a meal in all those years, stood in the middle of the dirt road, his thumbs dug into the black leather Sam Browne gear belt just below his well-rounded gut.

Byrth hit his wig-wags and the enormous deputy, now recognizing the Tahoe as an unmarked vehicle, stepped aside.

“It’s a ways back, sir,” the deputy sheriff said with a pronounced drawl, after Byrth introduced himself. “But you sure as hell can’t miss it. And it is hell—I ain’t seen nothing like it. Ever.”

Limbs from bushes and trees scratched and thumped at the Tahoe’s sides as Byrth navigated the narrow dirt road. It was muddy and deeply rutted, and he was convinced the SUV might at any moment slide into one of the oak trees that edged the road.

He then passed open fields with barbed-wire fences. And, after a good ten minutes of bouncing down the road from rut to rut, the Tahoe bottoming out twice, the narrow road turned sharply.

Around the bend there was an iron pole, rusty and bent, pushed to the roadside. It had a sign wired to it, a wooden board crudely hand-painted PRIVATE! DONT ENTER!

He rolled past and saw that the road now widened, opening up onto a sleepy ramshackle property that looked to have been hacked out of the wild by hand.

The first thing he saw, also standing out in the middle of nowhere, was a white Ford F-150 four-door pickup truck with the same HUNT COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE markings as the Crown Vic. It was parked beside a beat-up Chevy Malibu and an old moss-covered fifth-wheel camper. The boxy aluminum-sided trailer, its four tires long ago gone flat, leaned sharply. To the right of it, ringed with barbed wire, was a small corral, at the back of which he could make out a two-stall stable that had been patched together with mismatched boarding.

Jim Byrth rolled to a stop beside the pickup and got out. He saw Sheriff Pabody, in his tan uniform, stepping out from behind the trailer.

Pushing sixty, Pabody was tall and fairly fit, with weathered skin and a bushy head of white hair. He had his right hand on the grip of an almost new matte black .30 caliber Springfield Armory M1 carbine. It hung by a black nylon sling from his right shoulder, next to the older Springfield Armory tactical 1911-A1 .45 ACP holstered on his hip. His left hand held a folded red bandanna over his nose and mouth.

As the two men approached each other, Byrth called out, “Glenn, I thought I told you that cutting out those greasy fried mountain oysters would stop that foul gassy problem of yours.”

Pabody grinned as he stuffed the bandanna in his back hip pocket. He let the carbine dangle, and held out his hand.

“Sure good to see you, Jim,” he said sincerely, meeting his eyes. He then nodded in the direction of the corral and added, “It’s pretty damn nasty back there.”

Byrth knew that Pabody, once an Army reserve major, had seen his share of gruesome scenes as a Green Beret fighting the Taliban. He recognized that for the understatement that it was, and nodded.

“So, what the hell do we have here? You said a game warden found it?”

Texas game wardens, like the state troopers under the Department of Public Safety, were peace officers with the power to enforce laws statewide, on and off the pavement.

Pabody nodded. “Luckily not just any game warden. I thought you knew Gerry Bailey.”

Byrth shook his head. “Should I?”

“There’s good guys in the business”—he pronounced it bidness—“and there’s really good guys.”

“Don’t tell me. Another of you Green Beanies?”

Pabody nodded. “Fifth Special Forces Group. Led assault sniper teams in Afghanistan and Iraq. Put in his twenty years, then figured he was pushing the odds of meeting his maker after four long tours in the Sandbox. Good ol’ country boy. Nothing makes him happier than hunting and fishing—and, okay, to hear him tell it, that and fucking.”

Byrth grunted and grinned.

“And now Bailey gets paid to be around it,” Pabody went on. “The hunting and fishing, that is.” He paused in thought, then went on, “I meant that crack about fucking as a joke, but maybe that, too. Man, this was the last thing that he—hell, any of us—expected to find out here.”

He sighed audibly, then went on: “Anyway, Bailey was making a routine patrol early this morning looking for poachers. He was on his all-terrain vehicle when he crested a hill not far from the lake and came across the guy. This Mexican was big and beefy, maybe thirty. He was dressed all in black and carrying a nice Mossberg pump, a twelve-gauge. He took off running. When Bailey ordered him to stop, then pursued him, the guy stopped and took two shots at him.”

“Hit him?”

Pabody nodded. “Got grazed by some pellets. Birdshot. Nothing bad. I made him go to the ER—he was able to drive himself.” He paused, shook his head, then added, “But wouldn’t that be a bitch? Do four years dodging raghead bullets and IEDs only to get blown away by an illegal Mezkin damn near in your own backyard?”

“Yeah, a real ironic bitch. Did Bailey bag him?”

Pabody nodded again. “So the guy takes off into the bush. Bailey gets off his fancy four-wheeler, grabs his Car14, and takes off after him. Bailey gains ground on him, shouts for him to stop. Fucking idiot then tries to take another shot—and it’s game over. Bailey says it wasn’t intentional—blames not hitting center mass on his heavy breathing, but that’s bullshit because he’s such a good shot he could drive nails at a hundred yards with a .22, and he had the selector on single, not full auto—he puts a round right above the bad guy’s right eye. Top of his head explodes like a ripe cantaloupe.”