Page 19

Chapter Seventeen

Joe and Susan Kany had found Spike Rankin’s pickup off an unmaintained Forest Service road in a pocket of aspen about a quarter of the way up the east side of Battle Mountain. The location had been provided by Sheriff Haswell’s office, and they’d pinpointed it using the onX Hunt GPS app on Kany’s phone. Kany parked short of the vehicle in a flat, grassy meadow that would allow her to turn her truck and the horse trailer around and head back without having to back up.

Joe glanced at his watch as they approached the gray Power Wagon on foot.

“We’ve got maybe an hour and a half of light left,” he said. Kany nodded and walked shoulder to shoulder with Joe. She’d left Ginger back at her state-owned home.

Kany glanced at her phone as they walked and said, “No cell signal.”

“Story of my life,” Joe replied.

The early evening was cool, and shadows from the standing aspen were growing long across the meadow and making the grass look like it was overlaid with jail bars. A slight breeze rattled the dry leaves on the stand and a few fluttered down onto a carpet of yellow.

The truck was just far enough off the main Forest Service road that it couldn’t be seen from it. A muddy Polaris RZR was strapped down on a platform that covered most of the bed.

“They must be on foot,” Joe said. He approached the driver’s side from the back of the pickup and Kany split off to look into the cab from the passenger side.

“It’s unlocked,” she said with surprise as she pulled the door open. Joe did the same on the driver’s side and he leaned into the cab. The interior was cluttered with maps, insulated coffee mugs in their holders, blaze-orange caps and neck gaiters wadded up on the top of the dashboard, and an empty binocular case tucked in between the two front seats. The back section of the cab was piled high with clothing, boots, ropes, saddlebags, and canvas panniers. He thought it looked a lot like his pickup: a working office on wheels.

Joe moved out of the doorway and leaned down next to the rear tire. The key fob for the truck had been placed on top of it, just behind the bumper. It wasn’t a surprise to find it, since most fishing guides and outfitters Joe knew always left the key with the vehicle to avoid the possibility of losing it or getting it damaged out in the field or in a river. That Rankin had left the truck unlocked and the key with it said to Joe that the outfitter was confident no one would come by the vehicle while it sat there.

Kany ducked out of the cab and found a small soft-sided Yeti cooler in the bed of the Power Wagon. She brought it to Joe and they opened it up. It was filled with bottled water, several cans of beer, and white-bread sandwiches sealed up in a quart-sized Ziploc bag. There was a bed of partially melted ice in the bottom of the cooler.

“They didn’t take their lunch,” she said. “That tells me they planned to come right back to the truck.”

“I agree.”

“It also means they’re probably within eight to ten miles from here at most, since they didn’t take their horses or the ATV.”

Joe nodded his agreement with that as well, then backed away from the truck to get a good view of the mountain terrain. It was vast. Battle Mountain loomed to the southwest and filled up the entire horizon. It was densely wooded, except for a few granite knuckle-like promontories that poked out of the sea of dark green. The top of the mountain was bald and already dusted with snow.

“That’s a lot of country,” he said. “Are there any roads on this side?”

“Not really,” Kany said. “There are a few old logging roads to the south, but they’re all but impossible to use. Dead trees have fallen over the tracks and the Forest Service doesn’t maintain them anymore.

“I tried to go up there last spring just to get more familiar with this area,” she said. “There’s an old mining town up there called Summit I wanted to check out. But I gave up after a few miles because I was tired of getting out of the truck to move dead trees.”

“What about the other side?” Joe asked, gesturing toward the summit.

“That’s where the B-Lazy-U Ranch is located, in a valley on the other side of Battle Mountain. That’s the ranch I was telling you about earlier. But as far as I know, none of the ranch roads come over the top to this side.”

“It looks like good elk country,” Joe said.

“It is,” Kany responded. “But there’s so much black timber that it’s hard work to get up in there. That’s why it isn’t hunted all that much, even though most of it is public. I remember one guy telling me the only way to get an elk down from the top of Battle Mountain is to quarter it and pack it out on foot or horseback. Either that, or stay up there a few weeks and eat it one meal at a time.”

“No wonder Rankin hunts here,” Joe said. “He knows he doesn’t have to share it with a bunch of local road hunters.”

“True,” she said. Then: “We had better saddle up before we lose our light.”

—

Kany rode a red roan gelding named Badger and Joe followed her on Henry, a wide-backed mule. Henry was laconic but sure-footed, and he was lazy enough that Joe constantly clicked his tongue and prompted the animal to keep going. He’d tied his field gear bag to the back of his saddle and his shotgun filled the saddle scabbard.

In the bag were items he’d assembled and collected over the years to be of use in practically any situation: extra layers of clothes, dry socks, a compact one-man tent, a compressed down sleeping bag, a first-aid kit, matches and a fire starter, a tin plate and utensils, toilet paper, insect spray, shells for his shotgun and .40 rounds for his Glock, parachute cord, a headlamp, a water purifier within a Nalgene bottle, and several MREs that he hoped he’d never have to try and eat.

They took a well-trodden game trail through the trees that meandered up the mountain. The elk and deer that used the trail chose a route that avoided overhanging branches for the most part, but Kany and Joe had to bend forward several times and dismount once to keep going.

As they rode, the forest got darker. Unseen squirrels high in the trees announced their presence by chattering relay-style up the mountain. Badger spooked a small flock of pine grouse where it got wide on the trail and the horse crow-hopped and backed up into Henry—but he didn’t bolt. Henry took the flight of grouse and Badger’s reaction to it in stride and later turned his head to look back at Joe as if to say, Flighty damned horses, right?

—

There was no sign of Spike Rankin or Mark Eisele. The game trail was too hard-packed to reveal boot prints, and neither man had shed clothing to be retrieved later or dropped any objects that would confirm that they’d been there. Joe knew he was flying blind, hoping against hope that they’d locate the men. But Rankin and Eisele had been missing for three days now. Although it was conceivable that they’d pitched an overnight camp while scouting in the remote wilderness terrain, there had been no evidence at the elk camp or at Rankin’s vehicle that they’d packed enough gear to carry on their backs to survive.

And that uneaten lunch indicated that they had planned to return on the day they left.

Multiple scenarios ran through Joe’s mind as they rode, and almost all of them had bad endings. Rankin and Eisele had been attacked and killed by a grizzly bear, or fallen off a precipice, or been brained by a falling tree, or they had surprised someone—a poacher or a lunatic survivalist, perhaps—who kidnapped or murdered them.

“This doesn’t bode well,” Joe said aloud to Kany.

“No, it doesn’t,” she agreed as she pulled Badger to a stop and turned him toward Joe. “And if we keep going, it’ll get too dark to go back down.”

—

They sat side by side, facing opposite directions, and discussed the situation.

“What do you mean you’ll stay up here?” Kany asked Joe with alarm. “That’s nuts.”

“Who knows?” Joe said. “I might spot a campfire somewhere on the side of the mountain, or I might hear something that’ll give us a jump on them in the morning.”

They agreed that Kany would return to Warm Springs that night and start the process of informing Haswell, coordinating the local search and rescue team, and requesting spotter aircraft from Game and Fish headquarters in Cheyenne, as well as the Civil Air Patrol. Kany said she’d return with the search team as soon as she could the next day, unless she heard differently from Joe.

She dug into her saddlebags and handed Joe a handheld radio, as well as a black plastic case containing a satellite phone.

“The batteries are charged up a hundred percent,” she said. “I took them off the charger this afternoon.”

“Good for you,” Joe said. “I usually forget.”

“Keep the phone on tonight,” she said. “And make sure you turn the radio on in the morning. I’ll get in touch when I arrive with the cavalry.”

“Will do.” Then: “Rulon is going to be upset when he hears we’re mounting an all-out search for his son-in-law, but it can’t be helped. We’ve done all we can do on our own, and we can’t spend another day out here fumbling around. This mountain is too big and isolated.”

“Agreed. It’s something we should have started two days ago, if I’d known.”

Joe winced. He knew she was right.

“Can you do me a favor when you get home?” he asked. “Please call Marybeth and let her know what’s going on. I try to call her every night, and I will if I can get a satellite signal, but just in case…”

“Sure. Text me her number.”

“Our cell phones don’t work, remember?”

“Oh, that’s right.” She seemed flummoxed for a moment.

He scribbled out Marybeth’s number on a sheet in his pocket notebook and tore it out and handed it to her. “We used to call this ‘writing’ back in the day,” he said.

“Thanks, Dad,” she said with sarcasm.

Joe thought she sounded, once again, just like one of his daughters.

He watched her ride Badger through the openings of the dark tree trunks back down the mountain, until he could see her no longer. Then he turned Henry back onto the trail and goosed him to make him resume the climb solo.

—

Several hours later, under a moonless sky awash with endless clouds of stars, Joe winced as he finished eating a package of “Chicken, Noodles, and Vegetables in Sauce” and several “Peppermint Candy Rings” that had been among the MREs in his gear bag. They’d both been in there for a while. Both were “Warfighter Recommended, Warfighter Tested, Warfighter Approved,” according to the packaging. Both had also expired the previous year, which is something he wished he had checked at some point.

He took several sips from a half-pint of bourbon and screwed on the cap. The liquor warmed his mouth and belly.

Henry was picketed in a small meadow on the left side of his one-man tent, and Joe could hear the mule munching grass and occasionally letting loose with bouts of loud, percussive flatulence.

Joe let his small campfire burn down to coals before getting to his feet. He could feel his thigh muscles burn from the ride up, and his back was stiff. He stretched and moaned and he pulled on a thick wool Filson vest against the evening cold. He fitted the headlamp over the crown of his hat and twisted it on a quarter turn, which provided a soft yellow glow. It was enough light that he could gather up his shotgun, binoculars, and the satellite phone.

Then he tossed several gnarled lengths of pitchwood on the fire to build it up again so he could locate his camp when he returned.

—

After a fifteen-minute hike farther up the mountain, Joe found the granite promontory he’d seen earlier that towered above the tops of the trees. It had a graduated slope on its left side all the way to the top. He left the shotgun at the base and climbed it hand over hand, careful not to grasp or step on loose rocks that might result in a tumble back down.

He was breathing hard when he ascended to a lichen-covered table-like flat on the summit. Then he turned off the headlamp and sat cross-legged on the cool rock, letting his eyes gradually adjust to the near-total darkness. A gentle cold breeze wafted through the treetops below him from the east. It smelled sharply of pine.

When his breathing calmed, the starlight slowly revealed the terrain around him. Joe surveyed the undulations and folds in the mountainside on either side of him through the binoculars. He was looking for signs of a camp, if not a campfire. He saw neither. And he heard nothing, not even squirrels.

It took a while to notice, but he became aware of a slight glow over the mountains to the southwest. The glow, he surmised, was likely from the lights of the dude ranch Kany had told him about. It was so faint that even if there were a sliver of a moon in the sky it would have likely drowned it out. What was the name of that place? he asked himself.

The B-Lazy-U.

Then he had a thought. What if Rankin and Eisele had stumbled across the ranch boundary while scouting for elk? Given the high security and secrecy of the Centurion gathering, was it possible the two men were being detained there?

Joe’s speculation seemed implausible to him. If Rankin and Eisele had been caught on the ranch, wouldn’t they have the ability—and the facts—to talk themselves out of it? Especially when Eisele revealed his connection to the governor of Wyoming?

Still, stranger things had happened. Gung ho security personnel could overdo their assignment. Perhaps Joe could ask the sheriff or members of the search and rescue team to ask some questions of the ranch management the next day. Who knows, he thought, maybe someone had seen the two elk-hunting guides.

—

The satellite phone grabbed a strong signal very quickly, probably owing to the fact that there were no obstructions above him and a perfectly clear sky. He called Ann Byrnes on her cell phone and gave her the bad news.

“Oh, the governor isn’t going to like this,” she said softly. “Telling the sheriff was one thing, but this…”

“I realize that,” Joe said. “But it is what it is. This whole county will be mobilized tomorrow to help search for them. Word will get out.”

“I’ll let him know tonight so he can prepare for it.”

“You mean so he can let the First Lady and his daughter know,” Joe said.

“Yes. I wish you had better news.”

“So do I.”

“Where are you now? Warm Springs?”

He smiled to himself. “I’m in the dark on the side of a mountain with a flatulent mule.”

“What on earth?”

“I was hoping I could see a sign of Mark and Spike—maybe a tent or a campfire. But no such luck.”

“When the governor hears this, he might order you to stay there for the rest of your life,” she said.

He looked out over the dark timber sea and up at the brilliant, piercing stars. “I’ve been in worse places,” he said.

—

Then he called Marybeth. Before he could outline his location, she said, “Susan Kany just told me.” She didn’t sound pleased at all.

“Joe, I thought we talked about this. You assured me you wouldn’t do crazy things like this anymore—that you were older and wiser than you used to be.”

“I am, I think,” Joe said. “But this is an emergency, and I’m completely prepared. I was hoping I’d see or hear something that would help me find them. It was a shot in the dark.”

Joe heard Marybeth assure Sheridan that her father was okay after all, even though he was alone in the dark in unfamiliar mountains.

“He’s on a little camping adventure,” Marybeth said with more than a little disdain in her voice. He could hear Sheridan chuckle, which was good.

Joe was pleased Sheridan was still there at the house with Marybeth, especially given the curveball the FBI agent and Sheriff Bishop had thrown at her that day. Sheridan could help ease Marybeth’s anxiety from being alone at home with only Kestrel.

He asked, “Did you find anything out about—”

“Special Agent Rick Orr,” Marybeth said, completing his question. “Yes, I did, and it only compounds the mystery as to why he visited my office.”

She said she had to use several proprietary databases and a dark web channel to learn anything about him. “He’s simply not searchable on the internet,” she said. “That can only happen by design. He’s got zero social media presence, and Sheridan confirms it. Simply put, Orr doesn’t want to be looked up.”

“Interesting,” Joe said.

“Yeah. I had to get into the records at their headquarters in D.C. to find him listed. He’s nowhere in their public information. What I found is that Orr is the head of a task force called Special Investigations, Counter-Intelligence Unit. There’s no description of what exactly that is, and I couldn’t find any other names assigned to that group. It’s like he’s a one-man band.”

“I wonder why he’s asking about Nate, then?” Joe said.

“I don’t know, and I’m not sure I can even guess. But I can tell you something that intrigues me. I found it using an AI engine I’ve never used before. It turns out that FBI Agent Rick Orr has been on the scene of a lot of historic events dating back quite a while. Here, I wrote out the list.”

Joe listened as Marybeth said, “Ruby Ridge, 1992. Waco, 1993. He was at the Bundy standoff in Nevada in 2014, and the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge siege in 2016. And he was on-site for the January 6 riots or insurrection at the Capitol. Whenever there have been significant domestic extremist incidents, Rick Orr has been there.”

Joe didn’t respond. He wasn’t sure how.

“I don’t know what it means,” Marybeth said. “I’ll keep digging. So will Sheridan, she says. But it isn’t too much of a stretch to think that Orr is here because he thinks something big will happen. Either that, or he’s involved somehow. But I just don’t know.”

“Wow,” Joe said. “I don’t want to think that Nate has been using his time planning some kind of attack. I just don’t want to think that.”

“Me either,” she said solemnly.

Then, after a long pause, she said, “You love it right now, don’t you?” she asked. “You’re enjoying yourself.”

As usual, she could read his mind.

“I kind of do,” he confessed.

“Do I even need to tell you to be careful? To stay safe and to not do unwise things?”

“You don’t need to tell me that.”

“Well,” she said with a sigh, “please check in, in the morning. And keep your phone on tonight, like Susan advised you.”

“I’ll do both,” he said.

“Joe, promise me you’ll stay put until Susan and the search and rescue team reach you tomorrow. We don’t want three missing people in those mountains.”

“Not to worry,” he said. Then: “Good night. I love you.”

“I love you, too, you idiot.”

—

Joe somehow got turned around as he descended the promontory, and found himself searching for handholds and footholds that he hadn’t used on the way up. Finally, with his muscles trembling, he stepped down and felt soft earth beneath his boots.

“Made it,” he said to himself. Then: “Where is my shotgun?”

He circled around the base of the rock until he located it about fifty yards from where he’d come down. It was too easy to get confused about directions in the dark in a sea of trees, he admitted to himself.

Although he attempted to use the same trail to get back to the fire and his camp that he’d taken on the way up, he wasn’t sure at first that he was on it. Game trails looked the same under the light of his headlamp.

In fact, he realized ten minutes later, he’d taken the wrong trail. This one veered off and cut across the mountain, rather than descending to lead him back. He knew he’d need to backtrack to the promontory and start over.

And he’d need to remain calm.

That’s when he noticed an old logging road coursing through a meadow to his south. The starlight made the depressions of the two-track stand out as twin ribbons in the grass.

A road? he thought. Kany had said there weren’t any.

Before trudging back to the promontory, Joe walked out into the meadow for a closer look. After twisting the lens of his headlamp to bring it to full illumination, he was surprised to see that the grass in the tracks had been crushed down flat into the soil. There were recent tire tracks going in both directions based on the tread marks.

It was puzzling, he thought. They hadn’t seen a single other vehicle that afternoon, and the elk season in the area had yet to open. Yet the road had been recently traveled by multiple vehicles.

He was also surprised to see that someone had used a chain saw to clear downed trees where the road entered the forest on the other side of the meadow. There were yellow piles of sawdust on the grass where the trees had been cut, as well as fresh cuts on the remaining logs still resting in the timber.

Was this the road Kany had mentioned? he wondered. The road that went to Summit, the old mining town? The road that was impassible due to the fallen trees that blocked it?

He walked up the two-track into the trees for a hundred yards, seeing by the light of his headlamp. Not only had fallen trees been cleared along the surface, but green branches had been cut back on the sides of the road to allow vehicles to pass. Since it wasn’t an official Forest Service road, who had taken the time to open it up?

Joe stopped and stared ahead into the dark past the reach of his beam. Where did the road lead, and who had been using it?

“Hmmmmm,” he said aloud.