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Chapter Twenty-Three

Joe was following the recently trodden path down from the summit in the near-dark when he heard what he recognized instantly as distant gunshots farther down the mountain. He stopped for a moment to listen. The popping continued, but it was punctuated with several throaty BOOM s that were unmistakable concussions from a .454 Casull.

It was getting dark, so he fitted his headlamp over his hat, turned it on, and picked up his pace.

There was no doubt that the people who had inhabited Summit had used the same trail he was on. He saw distinctive boot prints where the soil was soft, as well as three parallel knobby tire tracks from an ATV. He had no idea how long it would take for him to get to the ridge he’d seen on the aerial photo in the lobby, but judging from the sound of the gunshots, the ridge was still several miles away. He knew from experience that it was all but impossible to judge the distance of gunshots in the mountains, where their sound could carry for miles and bounce around and echo across the terrain.

Joe took a deep breath before trudging on. His hope had been to somehow get to the B-Lazy-U before the gunmen did. Now he knew he was too late.

—

He’d left Eisele at Summit with Henry two hours before. He’d also left his Glock with Eisele, after telling the man to not hesitate to use deadly force to defend himself if any of Soledad’s people came back unexpectedly. They’d located two handheld radios in the comms room and Joe took one and kept the satellite phone. That way, Eisele could communicate with him if necessary as Joe marched up and over the mountain toward the ranch.

Before departing, Joe had called Kany in Warm Springs to explain the situation. She’d been absolutely stunned to hear what he had to say.

“Call off the search,” Joe had said. “At this point we no longer need it. But let Sheriff Haswell know what’s going on and ask him to put out the word to every LEO in a hundred-mile radius that they need to get here as fast as they can. We need bodies that are armed and briefed on the situation, and we need them there fast. I don’t know if we can prevent what’s about to happen, but we have to try. Do you have any contacts on the ranch itself?”

She’d said, “I’ve met the manager and I know a couple of the fishing guides. Do you want me to call them and warn them?”

Joe hadn’t responded immediately because he wanted to think it through. Would alerting the ranch management create a panic and make the situation worse? Would they even believe her? He wasn’t sure.

Then he’d said, “Yup, let them know and make sure the head Centurion, whoever that is, is fully briefed. They may have an emergency plan of some kind in place. Let’s hope so, at least.”

Kany said, “I’m calling them now,” and had disconnected the call.

The new satellite phone lit up several minutes later. “They didn’t pick up,” she’d said. “I tried the business office first, and then the cell number I have for the manager. They’re probably busy with the ceremony I told you about, and cell phone coverage is bad out there. But I can keep trying.”

“Keep trying,” Joe had said. “I’ll contact the governor.”

Which he had. As usual, Ann Byrnes had taken the call, since it came from a number she didn’t recognize, so she could screen it.

“I found Mark,” Joe had said. “He’s injured but alive. Spike Rankin was murdered by a pack of domestic terrorists who are about to unleash hell on the Centurion confab at the B-Lazy-U Ranch.”

For the first time since he’d met her, Byrnes was speechless.

Finally, she said, “We got a call an hour ago from the supervisor of the Wyoming FBI office. He said he’d talked to an agent out of D.C. who is on the ground there. This agent, Rick Orr, claimed the same thing you just told me. They’re in the process of putting together an attack team and they requested the use of three of our National Guard helicopters. The governor was skeptical, but he authorized their use.”

“When will they get here?” Joe had asked.

“I don’t know,” she’d said. “At least a couple of hours, I’d guess.”

“I hope that’s not too late.”

“Joe, the governor will be so grateful to hear that Mark is okay. Maybe he can move back into the mansion now.”

Joe had grunted before disconnecting the call. Rulon moving back in with his wife and reconciling with his daughter was now the last thing on his mind.

Marybeth had answered on the first ring.

“I’m okay and I found Mark Eisele alive,” Joe had said. “But now I’ve got much bigger problems.”

“You need to find Nate,” Marybeth had responded. “He’s down there, you know.”

Joe hadn’t been surprised that his wife’s first thought was to team up with Nate. That was always her first response.

And now, after hearing the heavy BOOM s farther down the mountain, he surmised that finding Nate might be in the cards after all.

—

A half hour before, Nate and Geronimo had covered enough terrain that they were in sight of the ridge. They could see it from the steep side of an adjoining slope through a gap in the heavy timber.

The granite outcropping was horizontal and pale against the dark timber of the next mountain. It stretched for nearly a mile across the face of the slope. Geronimo dug a pair of binoculars from his pack and steadied himself by leaning into a cedar trunk.

After twenty seconds, he said, “I see movement.”

“What do you see?” asked Nate.

“Not much. But a couple of them have walked behind an open crack in the rock. They’re all hunkered down behind that wall. I see them wearing combat fatigues and carrying rifles.”

“Is Axel with them?”

“I haven’t seen him.”

Nate said, “I’m glad we got here before they attacked. But I have a feeling it could happen at any minute.”

Geronimo lowered the binoculars. “We need to outflank ’em,” he said. “Get behind them before they know we’re here.”

Nate nodded in agreement, then sank quickly into a cross-legged sitting position. He closed his eyes.

Geronimo now knew better than to say anything or interrupt his friend. Instead, he watched him in silence and then tilted his head skyward. The peregrine was doing a lazy loop far above them, a black speck moving across a fading cumulus cloud.

After a moment, Nate said, “The bulk of them are behind the ridge, but a few of them are out ahead, moving down toward the ranch. I’m guessing they’re the professionals. Soledad would want his best people out front, and I don’t blame him.”

“So how do we do this?”

Nate said, “We circle around behind them, like you said. I’ll come down from their right, and you come down from their left, and we move on them from two different directions in a pincer movement. If we do it right, they’ll be trapped with their backs to the rock wall.”

Geronimo nodded.

“We communicate with hand signals so they can’t hear us,” Nate said. “And we fire different weapons at intervals so they’ll think there are a lot more of us than there are.” Then: “I want Axel myself.”

“Maybe,” Geronimo said. “But if I get him in my sights first I won’t hesitate to kill him dead. And I won’t leave him lying there to bleed out like I did before. I want him extinguished this time.”

Rather than argue, Nate unslung his Ranch Rifle and racked a round from the fifteen-round magazine into the chamber. Out of habit, he also checked to make sure all five rounds in the cylinder of his .454 were filled.

“After we take them out,” Nate said, “we need to hustle down the mountain after those vets. They’re creeping down through the trees, so if we go all-out we should be able to engage them.”

“I told you I don’t like the idea of killing my brothers,” Geronimo said.

“You’ve made that clear. I don’t want to do it, either. Maybe we can convince them to turn around and go home.”

“Do you think that’s possible?”

Nate shrugged. “I hope it’s possible. But either way, after we’ve engaged the vets we need to book it to the ranch itself. Soledad has to have a couple of infiltrators down there. Whoever they are, they might be able to pull off the operation practically on their own if we don’t stop them.”

—

Fifteen minutes before Allison and Joe heard gunshots, Nate and Geronimo had approached the ridge from the side. They’d advanced taking cover from tree trunk to tree trunk, being careful not to expose themselves to anyone who might be looking in their direction. They moved stealthily, leapfrogging each other across the slope. While one moved, the other peered carefully around his tree for movement on the top of the ridge or through cracks in the rock wall.

When they reached the northern edge of the ridge near a field of loose scree, they paused for a moment and Nate nodded to Geronimo, meaning it was go time. Geronimo nodded back, and he cut straight up the mountainside until he vanished in the shadow-darkened trees. For such a big man, Nate thought, Geronimo Jones could move like a cat.

Nate approached their position in a low crouch, careful to keep a large boulder between him and the activists. When he reached the boulder, he pressed his back against it and held his rifle at port arms.

He gave Geronimo time to climb the hillside and loop around to the south. While he waited, he could hear the militants on the other side of the rock wall. He heard snatches of low talk and several scratchy radio transmissions. Several higher voices confirmed that at least some of the militants were women. Nate guessed that the person on the other end of those transmissions was Axel. But he couldn’t yet see him or sense where Axel was in relation to his ground force.

Other than the occasional murmuring from the other side of the wall, it was remarkably still and quiet. The evening had cooled at least twenty degrees since they’d set out, and it felt like fall in the high mountains. The air was thin, and every sound carried.

Someone, a male, said, “Look. What kind of bird is that?”

Nate looked straight up into the darkening sky to see his peregrine soaring above the mountain. The bird had caught a current that flowed north to south at a lower elevation than before, and the raptor was close enough that Nate could see its light-colored, mottled breast.

“Where is Axel?” he whispered to the peregrine.

But he received no answer, because all at once four things happened almost simultaneously. First, there was the throaty roar of a two-stroke engine starting up, followed by several rifle shots. Then there were three rapid-fire shotgun blasts. Then a scream.

Geronimo had begun the assault, and Nate scrambled into place by quickly climbing through the scree to a position above and to the left of the ridge. As he cleared the scree, he saw three camo-clothed figures to his right twenty yards away. They were turned with their backs to the wall, and one was pointing up the timbered slope to where he apparently thought the shots had come from.

Nate had hoped the militants would all be bunched together in a pack, but that wasn’t the case. There were groups of two, three, and four along the length of the wall. The closest group of three raised their rifles and two of them fired wildly uphill. He could see now that it was two men and a woman. They hadn’t spotted him because they were looking the other way, up and to the right.

He heard Geronimo’s semiautomatic shotgun bark rapidly three more times. Geronimo was apparently going after a group of four militants farther down the wall. Nate saw two of them fall immediately, and one scramble into a crack between boulders.

Since the three closest to Nate were all standing side by side away from him, he aimed his rifle at the head of the closest one, a lanky white male with dreadlocks, and shot him. When the man dropped away, Nate’s front sight was already trained on the male farthest away in the group, because he was taller than the female in the middle.

Nate fired and that man cried out and fell, leaving the woman.

She was small, with pink hair and terrified eyes. Nate shifted his aim to a spot on the bridge of her nose. She looked to be in her midtwenties and her face was all sharp angles. But instead of the woman in front of him, he saw the face of Bethany in bed in that Sublette County vacation home, and couldn’t make himself pull the trigger.

Only when she snarled at him and swung her rifle up in his direction did he squeeze off another round. She fell on top of the third militant.

It was chaos. The remaining activists were shooting up into the trees as fast as they could fire their semiautomatic rifles. It was now dark enough that muzzle flashes popped and lingered for a moment in his vision. But they were firing wildly, blindly.

Geronimo had apparently put aside his shotgun and was now going after them with both of his 1911 .45s. Nate could see the heavy rounds smacking and sparking against the granite wall. The militant who had slipped between the boulders a moment before screamed when he was hit, and he tumbled out onto the dirt.

Through it all, Nate could clearly make out a furious monologue coming from a radio clipped to the uniform of one of the three militants he had taken out. It was Axel, screaming at them to “ Get down behind cover. Don’t fire blindly, you idiots! Pick a target and squeeze the trigger. Stop panicking! You assholes are completely useless! ”

The pincer movement Nate and Geronimo had applied had worked almost perfectly, Nate thought. Geronimo had wiped out the four militants on the southern end of the wall, and he had cleared the three on the north side.

That left three in the middle—two men and another woman. They had huddled together after throwing down their weapons.

“We give up,” one of the males shouted, his voice cracking. “We give up. We’re not armed anymore.”

He stepped away from the other two and raised his hands high into the air.

As he did so, there was a sharp crack of a rifle from somewhere up above them in the trees, and the man in the process of surrendering was hit and fell straight back into his comrades. Nate ducked down, knowing the shot hadn’t come from Geronimo.

Twenty yards ahead of him, the two surviving activists broke their embrace and bolted across a clearing away from the wall into thick brush. They did so holding their arms over their heads, as if that gesture could ward off bullets. There was another crack , but the shooter missed, and the round smacked into the scree and threw sparks.

“ Fucking useless morons ,” Axel Soledad screamed from the shadows.

Then the two-stroke engine whined as he rode away.

Geronimo appeared from behind a boulder to Nate’s left. He’d holstered his .45s, but held his combat shotgun loose and ready at his side.

“That was Axel,” Geronimo said. “He killed one of his own and tried for another one. Then he took off like the coward he is.”

Nate didn’t say anything. The wild cacophony of gunshots still rang in his ears, and his nostrils were filled with the sharp odors of gunpowder, dust, and blood.

Geronimo looked at the carnage around them and shook his head sadly. He said, “It’s just a bunch of stupid kids. When I saw what they looked like, I hesitated. But one of ’em saw me and started blasting away, so I shot back.”

“I heard the sequence,” Nate said. “You had no choice.”

Geronimo said, “It’s a good thing for me that they couldn’t hit what they were aiming at. In fact, they didn’t even know what they were doing. They had no training to fall back on when things got crazy. And two of ’em got away, but I’m fine with that.”

“Agreed,” Nate said. “They aren’t worth chasing down. But we’re not done.”

And with that, Geronimo quickly reloaded his shotgun and slapped fresh magazines into the grips of his .45s. Then he broke into a run down the mountain.

—

Geronimo moved with such speed and stealth that he nearly ran into the professionals in the dark. The four of them had crept down the slope and had positioned themselves within sight of the lights of the B-Lazy-U below, as if they were awaiting some kind of signal to move out. Their broad backs were to him.

The scene on the valley floor was otherworldly, Geronimo thought. He could see scores of dull, orange-colored luminary candles far below, set up in lines to mark pathways through the grass lawn. The luminaria threw off just enough light that he could make out groups of onlookers in lawn chairs or sitting on blankets.

Between where he was and the lawn below, three figures dressed as Roman centurions wound their way down an S curve of a mountain path toward a stage that had been set up at the end of the lawn. They were carrying sputtering torches. As they marched, thunderous classical music blared from speakers.

The vets seemed to be entranced with the goings-on in front of them, until Geronimo raised his shotgun and said, “Gentleman, this is over. Lower your weapons, turn around, and get face down in the dirt.”

The four of them froze.

After a beat, one of the vets slowly turned his head. His white skin was darkened with camo face paint that reflected the low lights from below. He had a quizzical expression on his face.

“Who are you?” the man asked.

Geronimo said, “Geronimo Jones, at your service. I’m the guy who really doesn’t want to shoot up my brothers at the moment. But it’s your choice how this goes down.”

The man next to the vet who’d turned his head said, “Sergeant, he has the drop on us.”

“Did you engage those hippies up on the mountain?” Sergeant asked Geronimo. “We heard the fight going on, but we couldn’t get any intel.”

“Axel didn’t tell you we took out your second wave?” Geronimo said. “How very like Axel.”

Geronimo noted that the four of them were wearing tactical armored vests and carrying AR-15s and combat shotguns much like his own. If they turned on him, it could get very dicey, he thought.

He heard footfalls thump behind him, and he knew it was Nate without turning around. A second later, Nate stood next to him, breathing heavily from his run down the slope. All four of the vets had now stood up and turned around to look at them.

“Do what he says, boys,” Nate said.

The four vets exchanged glances. One of them cursed under his breath. Then, one by one, they laid their rifles aside and drew their sidearms out of their holsters and dropped the weapons in front of them.

“The worst of the worst are down there on that lawn,” the man called Sergeant said. “They’ll continue to get our brothers and sisters crippled and killed in more shithole countries if someone doesn’t stop them.”

Nate said, “We’re sympathetic to your cause, but we’re not going to let you finish your mission.”

“Some of us are more sympathetic than others,” Geronimo said with a side-eye glance toward Nate. Then, to the vets: “We’re going to zip-tie your hands and feet together for now and keep you out of the action. I’d appreciate your cooperation.”

Afterward, Nate turned to Geronimo and said, “You’ve got this.”

“Where are you off to?” Geronimo asked. “Do you know where Axel is?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Then what are you…”

But Nate was gone, running down the rest of the mountain toward the ranch.

—

Allison emerged from the vegetable cellar with a fully automatic Glock pistol in each hand. She looked both ways, then started walking toward the lodge. She kept in the shadows as she did so.

On the stage, the three new Centurions handed their torches to other similarly clad members and stood to face the crowd on the lawn. The Imperial Legate stepped to the microphone and announced, “Please help us welcome our newest Centurions” to applause from the people on the lawn. “After the initiation oaths are complete, please join us in the lodge to celebrate the membership of our three newest warriors.”

Allison approached the side door of the lodge when she heard a snick-snick metallic sound from the darkness to her right. A man appeared with mean eyes, a blond ponytail, and a massive revolver in his hand aimed at her. He’d just cocked it.

“Allison Anthony,” he said. “Don’t take another step.”

“Who are you?” she asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Drop the weapons and tell me where Axel Soledad is.”

At that moment, the fireworks behind the stage erupted as the ceremony reached completion. The night sky lit up with rockets and exploding multicolored shells. Psychedelic colors pulsed across the lawn and the ranch buildings.

“Double-A?” someone called. “What’s going on?”

It was Marshall Bissett. He’d returned from duty at the front gate to take his place inside for when the celebrants crowded into the lodge. Like Allison, he carried two modified Glocks low at his sides.

The blond man didn’t hesitate. He swung his gun to the side and shot Bissett with a single shot to the heart. Then the huge muzzle was whipped back around to her, and the cylinder rotated within the movement. It had happened so fast she wasn’t able to react, and the sound of the gunshot was muffled by exploding fireworks.

“You killed him,” she said.

“I recognized him from before,” the man said. “Are there any more of you down here?”

Allison hesitated. Then: “No. But others are coming.”

“Not anymore.”

And it dawned on her that the “fireworks” she’d heard earlier had been been a mixture of gunfire and pyrotechnics.

“Where’s Axel?” the man asked again.

“He’s not up there?” she asked, indicating Battle Mountain.

“He ran off when the situation got raggedy.”

She was confused. Axel ran away?

“How did you know my name?” she asked.

“I met people who care about you, and that’s why I’m going to let you walk away from this. But first you need to drop the weapons.”

She looked over to see that the Centurions were making their way from the lawn to the lodge. The party was about to begin.

“I know what happened in Afghanistan,” the man said. “I understand. But you’ve been manipulated by Axel into doing this. He’s good at that.”

She stared deep into the eyes of the man with the revolver. Something about them reminded her of a bird of prey. His eyes were sharp and relentless.

“But…”

“There are other ways. You don’t have to throw in with Axel. He doesn’t deserve you.

“Go home,” he said. “Get in your car and go home.”

Allison took a deep breath and sighed. Then she let the Glocks slip from her hands into the grass.

“Go,” he said. “Don’t look back.”

She didn’t look back.

—

Joe jogged down the trail on the mountainside, trying not to exert himself to the point of useless exhaustion. The gunshots had gone silent, but following them there had been the frenetic crackling of a fireworks display that had briefly lit up the sky. He debated whether he should stop and call in what he’d heard and seen, but decided to keep going, keep pushing.

A few minutes later, ahead of him farther down the trail, someone wailed. It was a desperate, plaintive sound and he paused to catch his breath and listen. Seconds later, he noticed a light bobbing through the trunks of the trees ahead of him. A headlamp.

He stepped off the trail and got behind the trunk of an ancient ponderosa pine. He doused his headlamp. The light got brighter in the darkness, and he heard the racked voice of a woman saying, “ Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God …”

Joe wondered if she was actually a believer, or if she had chosen this moment to invoke a higher power.

Then he saw that she wasn’t alone. Two figures emerged from the dark timber, staggering back up the trail. The man wore the headlamp, and the woman was with him. They stepped into a small clearing between a wall of trees and where Joe had hidden. For a moment, Joe could catch a glimpse of them coming, starlight on their shoulders. They were about thirty yards away.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God … ”

The high-pitched whine of an engine revving cut through the stillness, and suddenly the two figures were illuminated by a single headlamp coming up behind them. Joe saw the man pause and turn toward the sound, but the woman broke into a panicked run toward the ponderosa.

It happened fast: The ATV with Axel Soledad behind the handlebars burst from the timber and bore down on the man with the headlamp. Joe saw a flash of steel in the starlight as the ATV roared next to the male activist and the blade was plunged into his side as if Soledad were performing a joust. The activist fell away, clutching his side and howling.

Joe stepped out from behind the tree just as Soledad rammed into the back of the fleeing woman and ran her over with the knobby tires of the ATV. After she was down, he hit the brakes and paused for a moment, the exhaust of the tailpipe curling up pink-colored in the rear of the vehicle due to its brake light. It was obvious that Soledad was planning to back up over her.

“Axel, freeze,” Joe shouted as he raised his shotgun. He was bathed in the white of the ATV headlamp.

Soledad looked up, puzzled. He’d obviously not seen Joe until that moment.

“Turn it off and stand down,” Joe barked. “You’re under arrest.”

Soledad glared at Joe; his twisted scowl illuminated by his gauge lights. He wasn’t happy.

Joe shouldered his shotgun and took a step forward. He needed to be wary of the blade Soledad had just used on the activist, so he moved to Soledad’s left a little.

Then Soledad leaned forward on the seat and gripped the handlebars and accelerated toward Joe with shocking speed.

As Joe dived for the cover of the trunk again, he held the shotgun out with one hand and pulled the trigger in the direction of the oncoming ATV. He hit the ground at the same time the machine smashed into the tree on the other side, rocking it and sending a shower of pine needles and a few broken branches earthward. Because he’d been pressed against the trunk itself, the impact of the collision sent shock waves through Joe, as if he’d been hit directly.

With a mouthful of dirt and covered by a carpet of dislodged pine needles, Joe raised himself to his hands and knees and peered around the base of the trunk. The ATV was wrapped around it, the engine dead and hissing. But there was no rider.

Joe scrambled back and located his shotgun. He listened for the sound of Soledad staggering around, but he heard nothing over the hissing.

Joe got to his feet and twisted his headlamp on. Ten feet behind the ATV, Axel Soledad lay on his back with his arms askew. His bloody blade was next to him in the meadow grass.

There was a baseball-sized hole from the shotgun blast in Soledad’s tactical vest where his heart would have been.

Joe quickly checked on the two people Soledad had injured. The male was crying and rolling from side to side in the grass. The woman was unconscious or dead.

“Stay still,” Joe said to the injured man. “I’ll call for help.”

The man stopped rolling and turned his face to him. There was terror in his eyes, and Joe realized the wounded man was looking at something over Joe’s shoulder.

Joe wheeled around to see that Soledad was struggling to his feet with his crutches. The shotgun blast had stunned him, but the body armor he wore had saved his life.

Before Joe could react, a sudden BOOM sounded from the darkness of the trees and the left side of Soledad’s head vanished. Then he collapsed into a heap like a broken doll.

Nate stepped out of the timber holding his revolver in front of him in a two-handed grip.

“Are you okay, Joe?”

“Yup.”

“We got him,” Nate said. “We finally got that son of a bitch.”

—

Joe squatted down and placed the back of his hand up to Soledad’s lips. No breath. Axel Soledad was dead.

Joe sat down in the meadow with his shotgun across his lap. He leaned back and locked his elbows and threw back his head to the night sky. He felt equal parts stunned, triumphant, and sickened.

Then he heard the sound of helicopters approaching from the eastern sky.