Page 23

Chapter Twenty-One

It was almost noon on the two-track trail through the timber when Joe heard the sat phone burr in his saddlebag. The day had turned out to be still and sunny, although the coolness of the encroaching fall seemed to emanate from low on the ground. He was riding Henry through a dense, ancient copse of lodgepole pine and he peered straight up to see if there was an opening to the sky in order to get the best reception possible.

Seeing there wasn’t, he nudged Henry to pick up his pace into an opening to the side where there was a small mountain meadow. Henry wasn’t one for picking up the pace, especially on the slow uphill grade, and he ambled off the trail in what seemed like slow motion.

When he was in the center of the meadow, Joe drew the phone out and activated it. As he raised the device to his mouth, he noted the dull blinking red light on its face, which indicated that the phone needed to be placed on a charger right away.

It was Marybeth.

“Joe, where are you?”

“Still on the mountain.”

Her words came tumbling out. “Sheriff Bishop pulled me over this morning and he wanted to abduct Kestrel. Sheridan saved the day, but there was no doubt what it was he wanted to do.”

Joe was stunned for a moment, and he reined Henry to a complete stop so he could concentrate. That was fine with Henry, who immediately dipped his head and munched meadow grass.

“Say that again.”

She did, and Joe asked, “Is Kestrel okay now? Are you?”

“She’s better than I am, that’s for sure. I’m not sure she was even aware of what was going on.”

“Where are you now?”

“In my office at the library,” she said. “It seemed safer than going home. There are too many people here for someone to try to take Kestrel again.”

“Smart move. Tell me about Sheridan.”

After she was through, Joe said, “Bishop is in the back of her car? Where is she taking him?”

“I don’t know. She doesn’t know. I just talked with her.”

“I’m not sure what to say. Did Bishop say why he was trying to take Kestrel?”

“It’s about Axel Soledad, Joe. Axel ordered him to do it.”

“ What? Why?”

“According to Sheridan, Axel wanted to distract Nate with this and make him come here to try to rescue his daughter. I don’t know why, and neither does Sheridan.”

“This is crazy ,” Joe said. “I’m glad you’re okay and Kestrel is okay, though. I need to talk with Sheridan—”

And with that, the satellite phone went dead.

Joe held it away from his face and shook it, hoping somehow that it would work again. But it didn’t.

Although he knew it was probably pointless, he pulled out his cell phone and powered it on. Maybe, he hoped, he was high enough in the mountains or at a lucky spot with reception. There was no signal.

Then he turned on the handheld radio Kany had given him.

“Can anyone out there read me?” he said as he keyed the mic. He repeated the message several times and waited, to no avail.

It was obvious to him that Marybeth was leading up to something when she’d called. He couldn’t even guess what it might be, other than “Come home as soon as you can.”

He sat on Henry and weighed his options. Given what had happened that morning, he knew he had to get back to Saddlestring as soon as possible. Marybeth needed him, and he needed her. Bishop had obviously gone off the rails, which confirmed the worst of the rumors they’d heard about him. And Sheridan was in a very precarious situation at the moment. She needed his help as well, and maybe a good criminal lawyer.

What else had Soledad put into motion that might affect his family and Kestrel? Were there others in Saddlestring who were allied with Bishop and who might try to finish the job? Did Nate have any clue what had just happened, or why?

Joe looked back over his shoulder at the two-track through the trees. By his estimation, he was about halfway to Summit. Maybe more. If he returned to the road and retreated down the mountain without clearing Summit, had he done his duty to the governor? What about Susan Kany’s efforts to mount a large-scale search and rescue operation?

If he could get to a place with cell phone reception, he could call Marybeth and brief Kany. Joe wished he was more familiar with the terrain. The kind of isolation he often craved—and sought out—was anathema to him now. In his own district, Joe knew of dozens of remote locations where, often inexplicably, he could catch a cell phone signal.

The ghost town of Summit, he recalled, was at nearly nine thousand feet in elevation. There might be an outcropping or promontory nearby where he could get a signal if he kept going. He knew for sure there wasn’t anything like that behind him.

So he pulled Henry’s head out of the grass and reined it over back to the road. Reluctantly, Henry began to move again.

Joe looked at his watch. He’d give it a few more hours of travel and, he hoped, he’d reach Summit.

“Let’s move it along, Henry,” he urged the mule.

—

Earlier, Nate and Geronimo sat across from Orr in a booth at a small diner on the bank of the North Platte River. All three had ordered coffee as well as biscuits and gravy with hash browns.

After the waitress left with their order, Orr said, “You boys came out of that motel room with a lot of hardware. What is it you’re planning to do?”

“Are we under arrest?” Nate asked in response.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Orr said, turning to Nate. “But I would say you have some things to answer for, starting with the discovery of three bodies at a burned-out cabin in Sublette County a while back. What do you know about that?”

“Who were they?” Nate asked.

Orr’s eyes narrowed. “They were identified as anti-government political activists. Two were from Denver, one from Portland. They were associated with a man named Axel Soledad.”

“Just three of them?” Nate asked. “It sounds like a good start to me.”

Nate could feel Geronimo cringe next to him as he said it.

“I know how this works,” Nate said to Orr. “You ask me provocative questions and later you submit a report saying I lied to you or misled you on material facts. Then they come and get me and prosecute me for lying to an FBI agent in a show trial. Agent Orr, I’m not going to participate in this unless you arrest me or charge me with something. I’d already be gone, except I’m looking forward to my biscuits and gravy. I hear they make the best in the valley here.”

Orr reacted in a way that surprised Nate. He smiled.

“That’s not why I’m here,” he said. “I’m not here to hassle you, although I’ve been following your exploits from afar for years.”

“From D.C. headquarters?” Nate asked.

Orr nodded. “I’ve been involved in a domestic counterterrorism unit for a million years. I’ve been on the scene of dozens of cases, all the way back to Randy Weaver in Idaho and Waco and the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge siege in Oregon. And to make a long story short, I’ve seen a lot of deception and malfeasance from our side on the ground. It sickened me, to be honest.

“If I wasn’t a year from retirement now, I’m pretty sure they’d figure out a way to kick me to the curb for the questions I kept asking my superiors and the commanders in charge of those operations. Instead, they’ve dismantled my unit, and they just ignore me entirely. So, they just sort of let me do my own thing now.”

“You’ve gone rogue?” Geronimo asked.

“That’s probably how they’d describe it,” Orr said.

“Anyway, Axel Soledad came on my radar four years ago. His name kept coming up associated with urban and campus encampments and riots all over the country. Although we couldn’t get enough evidence to bring him in, it appeared to me that he was fomenting and financing domestic violence and acts of terrorism. But he knew how to do it at arm’s length so he could never be directly implicated. I took my suspicions to my betters, but they blew me off.”

“Imagine that,” Nate said. He sat back and studied Orr’s face. The man seemed to be sincere. Either that, or he was baiting them into saying something that could land them in federal prison. For Nate, it wouldn’t be the first time.

“So why are you here?” Geronimo asked.

Orr looked down at his mug of coffee for a moment, then back up at the two of them.

“I want to stop Axel Soledad before he does something momentous. I think you two want to do the same thing.”

“With us, it’s personal,” Nate said.

“I get that.” To Nate, he said, “I know what happened to your wife.” To Geronimo, he said, “I know what happened to your home.”

“Then why didn’t you try to stop it?” Geronimo asked. “Isn’t that what the FBI is supposed to do?”

“Back in the day, yes,” Orr said. “But now it seems we have different priorities.”

“What makes you different?” Geronimo asked.

Nate noticed that Orr’s neck was flushed. He looked at a spot over their heads. “I guess I want to enforce the law and protect our country from bad guys, no matter what they represent.”

Their food arrived. Orr picked at his breakfast, while both Nate and Geronimo wolfed theirs down. When they were done, Nate said to Orr, “So are we free to go?”

Orr was silent. Nate thought he read disappointment in Orr’s reaction.

Finally, the man said, “I can’t hold you. I guess I was just hoping you’d cooperate with me, since we share a common goal.”

Nate could feel Geronimo’s eyes on the side of his head. His friend was pleading with him to be reasonable.

“Can you at least tell me what you think Soledad is planning?” Orr asked. “If it’s solid information, I might still have the juice back at headquarters to get a full-fledged investigation going. But it has to be airtight, and I have to bring receipts.”

Nate looked up at him. “We suspect that Axel might be plotting to wipe out the heads of the U.S. military-industrial complex in one fell swoop. And we think he might be planning to do it today or tonight.”

Orr’s mouth dropped open and his eyes widened. He was speechless for a moment. Then he whispered, “When? Where?”

“Come with us,” Nate said. “If we can confirm our suspicions, you can be a big hero. But not before we take out Axel Soledad first.”

When the waitress returned with the check, Nate slid it across the table to Orr. “You get breakfast,” Nate said. “It’s time we actually got some return on our taxes from the government. That is, when I used to pay taxes, anyway.”

On the way out to the Suburban while Orr paid inside, Geronimo said, “What do you think? Can we trust him?”

“Not sure,” Nate replied. “But we can keep him close.”

“Uh-oh,” Geronimo said.

—

“You can’t just hold me here,” Sheriff Jackson Bishop said to Sheridan. “In case you’ve forgotten, I’m the duly elected sheriff of Twelve Sleep County.”

Bishop was seated in the dirt in the corner of the Yarak, Inc. pigeon coop on Nate’s property. His hands were cuffed behind his back. The ground was flecked with splashes of white pigeon excrement and errant feathers, and the two dozen birds housed in the coop had all moved en masse to elevated perches on the other side of the structure to distance themselves from him.

Sheridan was seated outside the coop within the open hatchback of her SUV, her feet dangling above the ground. She leaned forward and placed her chin in her hands and studied him through the chicken wire, pondering what to do.

“You’re going to find yourself in Lusk for this,” Bishop said, referring to the location of the Wyoming Women’s Center prison.

“I hope not,” Sheridan said.

“An attractive young woman such as yourself would have a very hard time there,” Bishop said.

Sheridan ignored him and asked, “Was this really all about the sovereign movement? Is that why you were going to take Kestrel?”

Bishop groaned loudly and looked up through the wire roof of the coop. “It’s complicated,” he said. “I wasn’t going to hurt her. I would never hurt a child.”

“So you were going to do what, exactly?” Sheridan asked.

“I was going to deliver her to social services and tell them her father had abandoned her, which is the truth, as you know. While they sorted things out, she would have been fed and looked after. She would never have been in any danger.”

“Kestrel was with my mom,” Sheridan said. “She couldn’t be in better hands, and you know it. This whole thing was done to try to smoke Nate out from wherever he is, right?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Bishop said. “I was just doing what I was asked to do. Romanowski was getting too close to a big operation in another part of the state. I don’t know the details, but I was told it would be a game changer. The guy in charge of the operation wanted to create a distraction and take Nate off the board. That’s all.”

Bishop was flailing, Sheridan thought. As she thought it, he came up with a new angle to try. “I would have probably saved Nate’s life by doing this. Now it might be too late for him. If something happens to him now, it’s on you.”

“Nice try,” Sheridan said. “So you take orders from someone other than the voters of your county?”

“It’s not like that, really.” Bishop paused, as if to collect his thoughts. Then he said, “Sometimes a patriot has to stand up and do things for the greater good. I think someday you’ll look back on this and regret it when you realize I was on the right side in this fight and you’re just a dupe for people who don’t care about you. But let’s put that aside for now and call it even. You let me go and I won’t arrest you for kidnapping and assault.”

“If I do that, do we pretend nothing ever happened?” Sheridan asked.

“Exactly.”

“And you go back to your office and continue to be our sheriff?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve got to really think about that,” she said.

“You can’t continue to hold me here,” Bishop said, his voice rising. “Every minute that goes by makes it worse for you. I mean, what are you going to do with me?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Sheridan said. “I didn’t exactly plan this out. My morning was going to be running errands, until you screwed it all up.”

—

An hour later, Henry’s ears perked up and rotated slightly toward something in front of them that Joe couldn’t yet see. He trusted Henry’s intuition and was instantly alert. The two-track curved ahead of them through the trees to the right and Joe couldn’t see beyond the turn. He listened for the sound of a vehicle coming, but there was no bass rumble or vibration through the ground.

Joe pulled Henry to a halt and leaned forward in the saddle. He saw a flash of dull white through a space between the tree trunks. Then another.

Something was moving down the two-track toward him.

He reached to his side and untied the leather thongs that held his shotgun firmly in the saddle scabbard. That’s when he heard labored breathing, and a pained grunt.

A figure staggered around the corner into full view. It was a young man wearing ragged oversized hospital scrubs. He had a gaunt face with haunted eyes and a half-open mouth.

Joe called, “Mark Eisele?”

The man stopped so abruptly that he nearly toppled over. He’d obviously not noticed Joe mounted on Henry in the middle of the shadowed road until Joe spoke to him.

“That’s me,” Eisele said. Then he took a step backward in obvious alarm.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Joe said. “I’m game warden Joe Pickett. I was sent here to find you.”