Page 13

Chapter Twelve

“This is Tie Siding?” Geronimo said with amazement at the two rambling structures on the west side of US 287 south of Laramie. The buildings were boarded up and appeared abandoned.

“Affirmative,” Nate said from the passenger seat.

“It’s not even a town.”

“Think of it as a location.”

One of the buildings was a large A-frame with the words Flea Market painted on the side shingles, and the other, according to a hand-lettered sign in front, was a former post office and general store. Several junked cars and pickups sat on flattened tires between the structures.

“Who could live here?” Geronimo said as he slowed and took the exit.

The wind had picked up and the buffeting waves of it shook the Suburban on its springs.

“You’d be surprised,” Nate said, gesturing toward tree-covered mountains looming on the western horizon.

They passed through an open ranch gate, under power lines, and over railroad tracks. In front of them was a long gravel straightaway bordered by yellowed grass and gray sagebrush that stretched as far as they could see through the windshield. The sky was huge and broken up by long parallel strands of cirrus clouds that looked scratched into the blue by cougar claws.

“We should have gotten something to eat in Laramie,” Geronimo said. “There’s no place to get food around here and I’m hungry.”

“You’re always hungry,” Nate said.

—

Russ and Jolene Anthony lived on a loop of road cleared in the trees on the top of a wooded mountain. There were a dozen other high-end homes within the enclave, all with views of the plains on the valley floor that stretched for thirty miles to the east. The homes were too far from the highway to be seen from below. It was a horsey mountain getaway location that had been carved out of a vast ranch holding, and it had obviously been designed for people who didn’t want to be stumbled upon. Geronimo pulled into the circular driveway of 103 Cherokee Creek Trail and shut off the engine.

A towering flagpole boasted three flags snapping furiously in the wind: the U.S. flag on top, the State of Wyoming’s in the middle, and a red U.S. Marine Corps flag on the bottom.

An attractive, outdoorsy woman in her fifties was watching for them, and she greeted them at her front door.

“You must be Jolene,” Geronimo said.

“You must be Geronimo and Nate,” she said with a nervous smile. “We don’t get a lot of visitors by design. Our attorney in Cheyenne let us know you were coming.”

Jolene stepped aside and let them in. Nate acknowledged her as he went by.

“I have coffee, tea, and water,” she said. “Russ no longer drinks alcohol, so we don’t have any in the house.”

“I’m fine, thank you,” Nate said. He knew that Geronimo was probably hoping she’d offer them some food. To Geronimo’s credit, he didn’t make a fuss when she didn’t.

The home was spectacular, with a massive elk-antler chandelier in the great room and furniture crafted from more antlers and steer hides. It was built so solidly that the sound of the howling wind outside was squelched into silence the second she closed the heavy door.

“Russ is in the study,” she said. “We thought that would be the best place to talk.” Then: “I hope you can help us rescue Allison.”

As they followed her across the great room into a book-lined office with leather-covered padded chairs surrounding a desk, Nate and Geronimo shared a glance.

“ Rescue Allison? ” Geronimo mouthed. “ What? ”

Nate had no response.

—

After introductions and extra-firm handshakes, Russ Anthony took his place behind the desk and motioned for Geronimo and Nate to sit. They did. Jolene perched on the arm of a chair next to the desk and leaned forward, as if she didn’t want to miss a single word that was spoken.

“Let’s get right down to business,” Russ said as he settled in and leaned back in his chair. “I don’t like to beat around the bush, especially where our daughter is concerned.”

Russ was older than Jolene by at least a decade. He had dark brown eyes, a silver crew cut, and a square jaw. He wore a sweater over a button-down shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots. His manner said ex-military, Nate thought.

That presumption was confirmed when Nate studied the photos and plaques on the walls surrounding Russ Anthony. Half of them were of Anthony with groups of fellow soldiers in tropical, desert, and arctic conditions. The other half of the photos were of a dark-eyed younger female in a contemporary dress uniform as well as military fatigues. She smiled brightly in one surrounded by fellow Marines posing in front of a bunker built with sandbags. Her no-nonsense countenance in most of the shots must have come from her father, Nate thought.

“Let’s talk about your daughter,” Geronimo said. “And then we’ll let you know why we’re here and how we might be able to help each other.”

Russ’s eyes got large and he said, “Didn’t Cheryl brief you before you left Cheyenne?”

“Not really,” Geronimo said, “except to say that you might be able to help us locate a man named Axel Soledad.”

Jolene physically recoiled at the mention of his name, Nate noted.

“If you find Allison,” Russ said, “you’ll likely find Soledad. As far as we know, she’s with him.”

“Where are they?” Nate asked the couple.

“We’ll get to that,” Russ said with a wave of his open hand. “First let me tell you how Allison got in this situation and why it’s important to us that you bring her back.”

Nate winced, and he assumed Geronimo did so as well. “Bringing her back” was a complication neither man had anticipated when they arrived.

“Allison is our only daughter,” Jolene added.

“That’s her in those photos behind me,” Russ said without turning his head. “She followed me into the U.S. Marine Corps. We couldn’t be prouder of her, even though I have my issues with the Corps these days, and especially what our so-called ‘leaders’ are trying to do to it.”

When Anthony said the word “leaders,” he did air quotes around it.

“Not now, Russ,” Jolene said, cautioning him. Then to Geronimo and Nate: “When Russ gets going on what he thinks is happening to his beloved Marines, he really gets wound up. I don’t think we have the time right now.”

Geronimo nodded his head in agreement.

“Anyway,” Anthony said, “we’re a family of Marines. Four generations of ’em. Not former Marines—there is no such thing. Once a Marine, always a Marine.”

“Gotcha,” Geronimo said. “We understand.”

“Are you two special operators?” Anthony asked.

“Affirmative.”

“I could tell by the way you come across,” Anthony said. “Only special ops guys would be comfortable coming across as raggedy-assed as you two. Marines have a little more…decorum.”

“Please get on with it,” Jolene pleaded to her husband. She could tell that Geronimo reacted negatively to his comments about decorum. Nate, on the other hand, didn’t react at all.

“Allison was—is—a star,” Anthony said. “She always has been. She was a three-letter athlete in high school and she aced basic training even before they dumbed down the physical requirements to add more women. She was assigned to a unique unit called Sniper Team Reaper 2. She grew up with firearms, and she’s a deadly shot. She never gets flustered.”

Anthony went on to describe Allison’s deployment to Afghanistan in the waning months of the U.S. presence there, and that her job was to oversee units of Marines and to take out any threats to them.

“Her closest friend in the Corps was a female soldier named Brittany Newsome, who happened to be from Laramie, just down the road,” Anthony said. “They entered basic together, and those two were like this,” he said, crossing the first two fingers of his right hand. “Lance Corporal Brittany Newsome. She was a beauty both inside and out, just like our Allison. Both of them were in Kabul during the debacle of our sudden withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“Then we come to August 26, 2021,” Anthony intoned. “Abbey Gate at the Kabul Airport.”

The dramatic way he said it made Nate think the man had told the same story over and over.

Anthony said, “Allison was in a tower overlooking the chaos below as hundreds of Afghans were rushing the entrance gate, trying to get to the American aircraft landing at the airport to evacuate our people, as well as the few privileged Afghan nationals who had received permission from us to leave. It was a nightmare of bodies—entire families—pleading with Marines guarding the gate to let them through. You’ve seen the photos, I’m sure. Afghan mothers handing their babies to twenty-one-year-old Marines, people trampling old men and women underfoot—it was a clusterfuck, a total disaster.”

“It made me sick,” Geronimo said. “It made me ashamed.”

“You’re not the only one,” Anthony said. “All of the Marines there that day felt the same way you did, believe me. They didn’t enlist in the U.S. military to be tasked with the job of preventing innocent civilians from escaping certain death. A lot of those people trying to get out were our longtime friends, and they’d worked by our side for years. It was horrible the way we turned our backs on them.

“Anyway, Brittany was on the ground with her unit keeping those Afghans from accessing the airstrip. Those were her orders from Washington, from people who weren’t even there. Allison was up above her, in agony, trying to keep an eye on her friend and her fellow Marines.”

“That’s the day when a suicide bomber got through and killed thirteen Marines,” Geronimo said.

“It is,” Anthony said. “Thirteen brave Americans. Including Brittany Newsome.”

“Allison saw it happen,” Jolene added.

Nate grunted and looked away.

“That’s only the half of it,” Anthony said. “Most people don’t know the whole story of that day. Too many people, especially our so-called leaders, never want to hear it.”

“Go on,” Geronimo said.

“Two days before the terrorist attack, Allison’s unit received intel that they should prepare for an ISIS suicide bomber to show up at Abbey Gate. The intel specifically said for them to be on the lookout for a bomber posing as a cameraman arriving by motorcycle,” Anthony said, his voice rising. “Another intel report gave a detailed physical description of the suicide bomber. It even said the terrorist would be carrying a backpack with three yellow arrows embroidered on the material. I mean, this intel was really specific.

“And in the early evening of August 26, Allison spotted the terrorist approaching the crowd. She wasn’t the only one. Two other Marine snipers saw the guy who matched the description getting closer and closer to the people and Marines below them. He stuck out like a sore thumb. He appeared nervous and jumpy, and he wore a backpack with three yellow arrows on it.

“The rules of engagement that came from Washington were ridiculous,” Anthony said with disgust. “The rules of engagement didn’t allow well-trained Marines to be Marines. They couldn’t do anything without specific approval from the thumb-suckers inside the White House. Allison literally had this guy in her cross hairs as he entered the crowd. And when she asked for permission to take him out, you know what they said?”

“What?” Geronimo asked.

“They said, ‘Do not engage.’?”

He let that sit there for a moment. Then Anthony widened his eyes and repeated, “ Do not engage .

“So she asked again,” Anthony continued. “By now, she was starting to panic. The terrorist was walking straight toward the line of Marines at the gate, including Brittany. But Allison got no reply this time. Since the only thing she had been told was ‘Do not engage,’ there was nothing she could do. Then you know what happened next,” Anthony said.

“We find out later that the bomber was well known to us. He was a prisoner at the Bagram Airfield that had been built and run by the U.S. military until the weenies in Washington ordered them to evacuate it and leave all of the weapons and equipment to the bad guys. The terrorist just walked out when the Taliban took it over. And within days, he strapped on that suicide vest and blew it up at Abbey Gate, killing thirteen of our finest Marines.”

“It was not something Allison could shake off,” Jolene said. “When she came home, she was a different person than she was when she deployed. Allison felt responsible for Brittany’s death, as well as for the deaths of the other twelve Marines. She was bitter and despondent, as you can imagine. She railed against her superiors, the administration, and even the Corps itself.”

“It broke my heart,” Anthony said as his eyes suddenly filled with tears. He swiped them away with the back of his hand. “Allison was warned not to go public with what actually took place because the higher-ups were embarrassed. They’d let the future suicide bomber walk out of prison. And none of the officials who let it happen have been made accountable. Unlike Allison, they feel no shame or guilt. No one lost their jobs, much less ended up in prison, where they belong. And all of them are too cowardly to resign.”

“That’s where Axel Soledad comes in,” Nate said. He’d been so quiet that his voice seemed to startle Jolene.

“That’s where Soledad comes in,” Anthony intoned. “They met in town at the Buckhorn Bar. Allison was spending too much time there, and Soledad apparently sought her out. He was a shoulder to cry on, and he hated the military elites for his own reasons. Allison got sucked into his orbit very quickly, and you must believe me when I tell you that wasn’t typical of our girl. It was like Soledad cast a spell on her.”

“It’s like she joined a cult,” Jolene said sadly. “She did whatever he said. And then she was gone. They were both gone.”

“To where?” Geronimo asked.

They didn’t know, and Allison had contacted them by cell phone only once in the last two months. When she did, she said she was fine. In fact, she sounded calm and purposeful, just like the old Allison, Jolene said.

“But she didn’t mention where she was?” Geronimo asked.

“She said she’d tell us everything one of these days,” Jolene said. “But that she couldn’t tell us now.”

Anthony said that because he had a buddy in the Albany County Sheriff’s Office, they were able to make an official request to the phone companies to determine the location of Allison’s call. It was illegal to do so, because Allison wasn’t suspected of a crime and she’d left Tie Siding voluntarily, but that didn’t bother his buddy, he said. Marines did favors for other Marines.

“And where was she calling from?” Geronimo asked.

“Warm Springs,” Jolene said.

“That’s over the top of the Snowy Range to the west,” Anthony said, pointing vaguely in that direction.

“I know where it is,” Nate said to Geronimo.

“Not that we could find her there,” Jolene said. “We’ve been over there a dozen times in the last two months. We’ve asked people there about her, and we passed out her photo. No one knows her.”

“We’re guessing she called as she passed through Warm Springs on her way to someplace else,” Anthony said. “And since that call, she turned her phone off for good. My buddy says she hasn’t used it in over sixty days, so we can’t track her.”

“She’s with Soledad,” Jolene said as her eyes filled with tears. “I’m worried about her. There’s something creepy about that man.”

Both Geronimo and Nate nodded in agreement.

“Please find her,” Jolene pleaded to them.

“We’ll do what we can,” Geronimo said. “But she’s a grown woman. If she doesn’t want to come back with us, we can’t force her.”

“Sure we can,” Nate said.

—

On their way back to the state highway, Geronimo whistled and said, “Man, I feel for those people. I really do. And it pisses me off all over again to hear what we did over there.”

“Agreed,” Nate said.

“This has gotten very complicated.”

“It has,” Nate said. “But we don’t need to let that distract us. Our target hasn’t changed. Our mission hasn’t changed.”

“I feel like we’re getting closer,” Geronimo said, thumping the steering wheel with the heel of his hand for emphasis. “We’ve finally got a legitimate lead on Soledad.”

After they’d cleared the trees, the gravel road rose sharply up a hill. As they neared the top, Nate shot his hand out and clamped hard on Geronimo’s arm.

“Stop,” Nate hissed.

“What?”

“Stop. Back up. Now .”

Geronimo did so.

Nate said, “I just got a glimpse of them, but there are two vehicles down below on the flat on either side of the road, pointing in our direction. Two SUVs that weren’t there when we drove in. They look like they’re waiting for us to come down the mountain.”

“An ambush?” Geronimo asked. “How did they know we’d be here?” Then: “Did that lawyer screw us?”

“I don’t think it was her,” Nate said. “I didn’t get that vibe from her at all.”

“The Anthonys?”

“No way.”

“So what are we going to do?” Geronimo asked. “I don’t know how we can get to the highway without driving right by them.”

Nate’s mouth spread in a cruel grin. “As my friend Joe Pickett would say, things are about to get Western.”

—

Five minutes later, Nate returned to the Suburban after crawling to the top of the rise to scope out the situation a half mile below them to the east. As he walked back to the vehicle, he placed the pair of binoculars into their chest harness and zipped his fatigue jacket over it.

“They haven’t moved,” he said to Geronimo while he opened the passenger door. Then he instinctively checked to make sure all five cylinders of his .454 were loaded. “I’m pretty sure they didn’t see us when we drove to the top and backed away. If they had, they would either have retreated to a better position or chased us. No, they’re still waiting for us down there.”

“How many subjects?” Geronimo asked. In Nate’s absence, he had reloaded his combat shotgun with alternating rounds of buckshot and slugs. Buckshot for human targets, slugs for disabling vehicles.

“Two men in the vehicle on the right, one in the SUV on the left.”

“Armed?”

“Too far away to confirm. But I think we should proceed as if they are.”

“Gotcha,” Geronimo said. “So what’s the plan?”

Nate said, “We can’t communicate, so we go old-school. Give me twenty-five minutes. That ought to give me enough time to get into position. If something goes wrong, like they see me coming, you’ll hear shots. If that happens, drive down that hill like your hair is on fire.”

“Copy that,” Geronimo said. Then he extended his huge right fist. “ Yarak .”

Nate fist-bumped Geronimo in silence.

“Say it,” Geronimo insisted.

“ Yarak ,” Nate said.

—

Nate’s route to the prairie floor was circuitous and tough going. He cut into the heavy pine forest to his right and waded through and over downed timber as he traversed the mountainside. It was tangled and dark in the trees, and the forest floor was littered with deer and elk scat. The smell of elk was pungent, and he kept an eye out for them. As he entered a shadowed alcove, a covey of pine grouse broke noisily from the cover and slashed through the low-hanging branches and he reached for his weapon in response. Following the grouse, he heard the heavy footfalls of a small herd of elk out ahead of him and saw brown and tan flashes of fur through the tightly spaced pine trunks. Then it was silent. After a few breaths, Nate continued.

He’d observed through his binoculars that a dry wash ran through the sagebrush from the side of the mountain they were on through the valley floor and beyond. The SUVs were parked on either side of the gravel road ahead of a culvert that accommodated the wash. Nate’s plan was to slip down the side of the mountain, using the heavy trees as cover, then duck into the wash and continue down it to the vehicles. The wash appeared to be deep enough—a jagged slash cut into the alkaline terrain by decades of flash floods—that he could approach the vehicles without being seen.

Nate was puzzled why the two vehicles had parked out in the open. It wasn’t the most optimal ambush location. In fact, the best place to get the drop on Geronimo and Nate would have been just on the other side of the rise in the road. That way, they could have parked in the trees without being seen until the Suburban cleared the top of the hill.

Which meant to Nate that the subjects were either amateurs—or professionals with a plan too clever for him to fathom at the moment.

Or, he thought with a grimace, the subjects on the road below them were civilians doing something that had nothing at all to do with Nate, Geronimo, or the Anthonys. Maybe a drug deal was going down. Or something completely innocent. If so, Nate could signal Geronimo to stand down as he approached.

He glanced at his wristwatch. He’d been away from Geronimo’s Suburban for seventeen minutes. He had eight minutes to move up the ditch and take a position with a clear view of the targets and cover to hide behind. Nate picked up his pace.

—

Nate kept low in the wash, scuttling through it without raising his head. There was no need. He knew where the SUVs were, and if he stood up and looked, they’d see him coming.

His thighs began to burn and his back ached as he pushed down the draw in a crabwalk. He noted mountain lion tracks in the soft sand of the wash, as well as rabbit pellets. Nate felt more than saw how close he’d gotten to the vehicles, and he dropped to his knees and bent forward to stay low. He grasped the grip of his .454 in the shoulder holster with his right hand and eased it out. Then he waited for less than a minute before he heard Geronimo’s Suburban approach.

He kept his head down.

Not until the roar of Geronimo’s engine was less than thirty yards away did Nate rise into a shooting stance with his weapon out in front of him. As he raised the .454, he thumbed back the hammer at the same time.

It all happened quickly, and he let his killer instincts—his sense of yarak— take over.

The two men in the vehicle closest to him scrambled out of the SUV, holding semiautomatic rifles. One of them yelled to the driver of the other vehicle to get out and arm up.

Nate observed in a second that the three subjects looked to be unfamiliar with their weapons, and one of them had banged the barrel of his rifle against the doorframe as he leapt out. Their actions ranged from the sheer panic of the driver of the nearest SUV, to what appeared to be frozen terror taking over the driver of the other vehicle, who stood motionless in the middle of the road with his rifle at his side as Geronimo sped toward them. The three of them looked young and hip and out of place, which was a surprise to Nate. The passenger of the nearest SUV sported a man bun and unseasonable river sandals over bare feet. He nervously bounced up and down while reaching to chamber a round in his weapon. None of the three had glanced over to the side to see Nate twenty feet away with his weapon aimed at them.

To be sure, Nate waited until the second driver unfroze, racked the slide of his rifle, and fired two quick shots in the general direction of the oncoming Suburban. One of the bullets smacked the windshield, leaving a white star-shaped impact on the darkened glass.

As soon as the shots were fired, Nate proceeded, because he was now sure of their intent.

BOOM. The second driver did a sideways flip when the round hit him in the left side of his neck.

BOOM. The passenger of the first vehicle turned his head toward the sound of the shot and never saw the bullet coming. He dropped away like a wet sock.

BOOM. The driver of the first SUV thought he could scramble and take cover on the other side of his vehicle, not realizing that the .454 round aimed at him would penetrate both the driver’s-side and the passenger door before blasting through his heart.

Two seconds later, Geronimo’s Suburban shot through the space between the two vehicles, and the right tires thumped over the dead body of the sprawled-out passenger. The Suburban came to a skidding halt twenty-five feet farther out, near the culvert.

Geronimo leaned over inside the cab and pushed open the passenger door. Nate holstered his revolver as he climbed back in. “Let’s go,” he said.

“Who were those guys?” Geronimo asked with amazement.

“Amateurs,” Nate said. “Two of ’em didn’t know which end of the rifle to point at you.”

“How does that make sense?”

“It doesn’t,” Nate said. “They looked more like unemployed graduate students than people Axel would recruit.”

He turned and checked out the license plates of the two vehicles before he could no longer see them. “Colorado and New Mexico,” Nate said. “Not locals.”

“Well, how are we going to find out who they are?” Geronimo asked, then corrected himself to say, “ Were .”

“We can’t,” Nate said. “We left three bodies in the middle of a public road in broad daylight. We can’t stick around to check IDs.” Then: “How did our birds fare?”

“No injuries, thanks to the bulletproof glass. That includes me, by the way.”

Geronimo gestured toward the west at the Snowy Range mountains that stretched across the horizon.

“On to Warm Springs?” he asked.

“Not yet,” Nate said. “We’ve got to make another stop first.”