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Chapter Sixteen

A t the same time, back in the city of Cheyenne, Geronimo Jones sat behind the wheel of his idling SUV in an alley off Randall Avenue, waiting for Nate to return. Geronimo was alert and anxious, and he kept an eye out for vehicles or movement both in front of him and via the rearview mirrors. The houses on the street were single-family homes that were older and constructed with red brick. The block was tree-lined with old cottonwoods and Austrian pines that had held up over the years despite the notorious blizzards and summer windstorms in Cheyenne. He’d seen activity in at least two of the houses as people moved past windows. One older white woman in an apron appeared to be constructing a multitiered cake.

No one entered the alley while he sat and waited, but he knew it would be only a matter of time. Time they didn’t have.

They’d looked up the address for Joann Delaney on Geronimo’s phone, and had parked in the alley behind her house. The posted office hours for the Tuck-Smith Law Office went from nine a.m. to four p.m., so they’d hoped she’d come straight home, alone.

They hadn’t had to wait long for the receptionist to return home. She drove a blue compact Ford sedan, and both men had slunk down in their seats and watched her pull into her driveway, emerge with a white plastic sack of groceries, and go inside. Soon after, a pair of drapes were closed on a side bedroom window, followed by a light switching on in the kitchen at the back of the house. Nate had given her five minutes to put away her items and get settled inside before saying, “Keep it running. This shouldn’t take long.”

Which is what Geronimo was doing. He also spent the time mulling a plausible cover story just in case the Cheyenne PD descended on him because one of the residents on the block reported seeing a Black man in a military-looking type of vehicle with bullet strikes in the windshield loitering in their alley. He had yet to come up with one, especially one that explained the three hooded falcons perched behind him and the semiautomatic combat shotgun in the front seat.

To pass the time, Geronimo clicked on the dashboard radio and let it scan through local stations. There weren’t many. His anxiety increased when he heard a news broadcaster for a local AM radio station announcing that authorities had been called to the scene of what was described as an “alleged gun battle at a rural location west of Tie Siding, where three fatalities have been reported.”

That made him sit up and squirm in his seat. The broadcaster added that the Wyoming Highway Patrol could not yet confirm if the shootout was “gang- or drug-related” at this time.

“Stay tuned to KGAB for further updates,” the announcer said, before moving on with the news about a new grizzly bear sighting in the Bighorn Mountains.

“I’ll stay tuned, all right,” Geronimo said aloud. If law enforcement at the scene was looking for a specific vehicle or suspects seen leaving the area, it hadn’t been mentioned.

That was a relief. He and Nate hadn’t seen any other vehicles in or around Tie Siding as they exited the area, and the report seemed to indicate that. Still, it was possible that every trooper in the state of Wyoming was on the lookout for a matte-black Suburban with Colorado plates.

“Come on, Nate,” he whispered, looking at the back of Delaney’s house. “Move it along. What are you doing in there?”

—

The question was answered two minutes later, when Nate pushed through the back screen door of Delaney’s home. He made his way across the backyard toward the alley. His shoulder holster was exposed beneath his open jacket, and he carried something small in his right hand, held down low at his side. Geronimo leaned over and opened the passenger door as Nate closed the gate behind him and slid inside the vehicle. He held something oblong and translucent in his bloody right hand, and he flipped it on top of the dashboard, where it stuck.

“Holy mother of God,” Geronimo gasped. It was a human ear with a tiny diamond earring pierced through the lobe. Geronimo recalled last seeing it on Joann Delaney at her desk.

“It was Delaney who gave us up,” Nate said. “She’s a disciple of Axel Soledad.”

“You took her ear.”

“Just the one,” Nate said. Then: “Let’s get out of here, and don’t drive like your hair’s on fire. We don’t want to raise any alarm bells. The interstate is just a few blocks away, so take it easy. You’ll see the entrance to I-80 West right in front of us.”

“Her ear is in my car,” Geronimo cried.

“Just the one,” Nate repeated.

—

They were on I-80 near Lone Tree when Nate said, “She claimed she didn’t know that Axel would send gunmen after us, but I’m not sure I believe her.”

“Did she tell you this before or after you twisted her ear off?” Geronimo asked.

Moaning with annoyance, Nate leaned forward and grasped Joann Delaney’s ear by the lobe and flipped it out the open passenger window like a discarded cigarette butt.

“Happy now?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“After,” Nate said. “She wasn’t very cooperative before that. She could have made it a lot easier on herself, but she’s a true believer—the worst kind. I didn’t enjoy one second of it, but we needed the intel and she could have gotten us both killed.”

“What else did she tell you when you threatened to tear off other parts of her?”

“Axel’s been doing what Axel does,” Nate said. “Just like we thought—he’s been collecting people with grievances and molding them. Like he tried to recruit Reese in Montana and Cheryl Tuck-Smith. Axel’s got some kind of plan in place, but Delaney didn’t know what it was exactly and I believe her on that.”

“Who has he recruited? Did she tell you that?”

Nate indicated that she had. “He went back to the well and gathered up some of the antifa ‘activist’ types he used to fund and rub shoulders with, apparently. The ones who want to burn everything down—the real lunatic fringe. It seems Axel’s been training them in weapons and tactics.”

“That sounds like the three we ran into,” Geronimo said. “But they had the weapons without the tactics.”

“I think you’re right. They were unfamiliar with combat of any kind, and they set themselves up to be taken down. I’m not real worried about the rest of them. But Delaney said Axel has also brought in some military vets—folks who are trained and very bitter. People like him, who want nothing more than to get revenge on the elites who sent them overseas and betrayed them.”

“Like Allison Anthony,” Geronimo said.

“Delaney didn’t say her name outright, but she’s the first person I thought of, too.”

“Man, that’s too bad.”

“It is.”

“Did Delaney know what Axel is up to? Or where he is?”

“No and yes,” Nate said. “She absolutely didn’t know Axel’s plan, other than in broad strokes: to strike a blow against the D.C. military-industrial establishment. Delaney is in favor of that as well. She lost a son in Iraq.”

“Oh,” Geronimo said. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Me too.”

“But you still twisted her ear off to get intel.”

“Yes,” Nate said, “I did. And I’d do it again to get the info we got.”

“Will she try and warn him?”

Nate took a beat before answering. “No,” he said. “She doesn’t want me to come back.”

—

As they shot by the Abraham Lincoln visage that marked the highest point in the nation on I-80 (which was once known as the “Lincoln Highway”) and plunged down the mountain canyon toward Laramie, Geronimo said, “On to Warm Springs?”

Nate nodded. Then: “Specifically a location called Battle Mountain. Delaney thought Axel has established a compound there to stage whatever it is he’s going to do. She heard him mention it once.”

“Battle Mountain,” Geronimo repeated. “That sounds familiar to me.”

“It does?” Nate asked.

Geronimo suddenly turned to Nate with his eyes wide as he drove.

“What?” Nate said.

“October, Warm Springs, Battle Mountain,” Geronimo said. “Did she mention the name of a specific dude ranch there?”

“No. Why? Keep your eyes on the road.”

Geronimo corrected his drift over to the shoulder of the road and said, “Have you ever heard of the Centurions?”

“No.”

Geronimo spoke as if everything were falling into place for him.

“I had a buddy once in special ops who was assigned to them,” he said. “The dude was flown to the Warm Springs airport in October to work security for a visiting four-star general at this big secret gathering of defense industry CEOs, Pentagon brass, and politicians. They call themselves the Centurions.

“My buddy said he’s never seen so many private jets in one place as he saw at that little airport,” Geronimo continued. “When the four-star arrived, they shipped him out to some old dude ranch in the mountains, where the Centurions have their annual gig. Dude said everyone was there: his boss’s boss’s boss. These Centurions play cowboy and have meetings to discuss who knows what. Then they all fly out together after the gig is done and come back the next year to plan the next stage in the future of the world.”

“You’re not kidding, are you?” Nate asked.

“I shit you not,” Geronimo said. “My buddy said it kind of blew his mind.”

“I’m surprised he told you anything,” Nate said.

“Yeah, well, you know how it is. We’re in some shithole pressure cooker overseas, and when we get sent back home for a little mission, we tend to loosen up and blow off steam. That was my buddy. He told me all this one night when we were clubbing in Tampa and he got into some potent weed he couldn’t handle. Basically, what he told me that night was that if someone were to drop a bomb on the Centurions, it would wipe out most of our military-industrial complex in one big bang. The next morning, he found me and told me to never repeat what he’d said.”

Nate sat back in the passenger seat and stared out the windshield with a blank expression on his face.

With a cold half grin that Geronimo couldn’t decide was serious or playful, Nate said, “It might not be such a bad idea, actually.”

“Nate, really,” Geronimo admonished him. He thumped the steering wheel a few times with the heel of his hand and said, “I mean, come on .”

“Think about it, though,” Nate said. “You’ve got all these patriotic kids from good families who volunteer to serve their country. They’re generally not the born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-their-mouths East Coast Ivy League types, they’re the kids from here, or the South, or from some farm or ranch.

“They go through all kinds of hell in basic, but they stay with it because they believe in America and what it supposedly stands for. Then people like the Centurions ship them off to Third World countries, where they see their buddies get maimed or killed—and for what? It’s not like we fight our wars to win anymore, because we don’t. Instead, we quit early and bugger out, leaving a lot of dead people and betrayed allies. Then it’s on to the next conflict somewhere, where we do it all over again. I can see where the anger and bitterness come from. I can see where Allison Anthony comes from.”

Geronimo said, “That’s the longest speech I’ve ever heard you make. I wish I could argue with you about it.”

“We were there,” Nate said. “We know what it’s like to risk our lives for nothing, for a country that forgets why we were ever there in the first place. We know what it’s like to accept losing, when every damned time we could have and should have won.”

“Stop,” Geronimo said. “You’ve made your point.”

—

As they entered the city limits of Laramie on I-80, Geronimo said, “We need to be cool around this town. I heard a report on the radio about a shootout near Tie Siding earlier today. The cops think it might be drug- or gang-related.”

“What’s this world coming to?” Nate asked. Then, gesturing toward an exit sign off the interstate to Wyoming State Highway 230, he said, “Take that one. There’s a gun store up ahead. We need to stock up on ammo before we get to Battle Mountain.”

“There’s my man,” Geronimo said with some relief. “We’re back in the hunt.”