C. Box - Breaking Point

Joe nodded.

“Have you?”

“I don’t think so,” Joe said. “We’re like local beat cops, is the way I think about it. We know the people, so we can do our jobs better.”

Rulon nodded, and said, “‘Government closest to the people governs best,’ some wise man once said. Do you agree?”

“I guess I do.”

“So do I,” Rulon said with finality. Then: “Next question?”

Joe hesitated, then said, “She told me you approved her lending me out on this investigation, that it was my duty to assist the best I can.”

Rulon raised his eyebrows and said, “So?”

“I’m not sure I can do it,” Joe said, surprising even himself with the words. “I know Butch Roberson. I’m not sure I can go along with this the way they’re doing it.”

“Why? Do you think he’s innocent? Isn’t this exactly what LGD is afraid of?”

Joe shook his head. “I don’t think he’s innocent. Not from what I know.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

Joe felt tongue-tied. After a beat, he said, “I’m just not sure how much longer I can keep doing this.”

“What? Being a game warden?”

“Being a state employee,” Joe said. “She offered me a desk job in Cheyenne. I’ve never worked behind a desk before.”

Rulon, for once, didn’t fire another question. Instead he said, “Do what’s right, Joe. That’s what you’re good at. This is your decision.”

Joe waited for more that didn’t come. He wasn’t sure what that would be, though.

Rulon, as he usually did, changed the subject again. “We’ve had a couple of interesting adventures together, haven’t we, Joe?”

“Yup.”

“I thought for a while there you were going to lose me my job,” Rulon said. “You just have a knack for getting right into the middle of trouble, don’t you?”

Joe nodded. He said, “Marybeth says I have a singular skill in that regard.”

“She’s smart and too good-looking for you,” Rulon said. “You don’t deserve her.”

“I know that.”

“What about your friend, the maniac? That stone-cold killer with the falcons you hang around with? What’s he think about all this?” Rulon said, knowing Joe didn’t like to talk about Nate Romanowski.

“I haven’t heard from him,” Joe said. “But I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t like it.”

“So you haven’t been in touch since that trouble last year,” Rulon said, and nodded. “That’s probably good for you. You wouldn’t want to be aiding and abetting a known fugitive.”

Joe shifted uncomfortably.

“Maybe I need some guys like that on my team,” Rulon mused, and gestured toward the FOB. “I could use some real muscle dealing with this tyrant Batista.”

Joe looked up, puzzled. He wasn’t sure if Rulon was serious.

“What’s going on over there?” Rulon asked suddenly, leaning forward in his seat. Joe looked over to see Batista rushing from the tent toward a white panel communications van. The vehicle had a brace of antennas and radio dishes mounted on top. Lisa Greene-Dempsey emerged after him and walked slowly and cautiously toward the Suburban.

When she arrived and saw Joe she couldn’t disguise the look of anguish on her face.

Rulon asked, “What’s happening?”

She said, “His people said something happened to the drone. They lost contact with it somewhere up there in the mountains.”

“It crashed?” Rulon said hopefully.

“Worse.”

Rulon’s smile grew into something almost maniacal. He said, “Someone shot it down?”

“That’s what they’re thinking,” she said, shaking her head.

“Wonderful!” Rulon shouted. “Let’s have more of that!”

As Joe mounted Toby to join Underwood and the others, Rulon bounded out of the SUV and called his name.

When he turned, Rulon gave him two thumbs up, then walked over toward the communications van, a skip in his step.

Joe wasn’t sure what the governor meant by the signal-that everything would be fine or he was simply giddy a drone had been shot down. Everything Governor Rulon said or did, Joe had learned, had two or three different interpretations.

“Okay, men,” Underwood said to the four other special agents on horseback, and pointed to Joe. “Follow this man.”

Approaching the Elk camp on horseback on the floor of the canyon, Farkus felt sick to his stomach. He’d made this kind of trek before, when a hunter in his party claimed he’d knocked down a deer or elk and they set out to find it, but the only time he’d been in a similar situation was three years before in the Sierra Madre, when he’d been recruited on a similar mission to find those two murderous brothers-and that hadn’t gone well at all. Jimmy Sollis’s constant chatter- he had certainly woken up -added to his unease.

“Look at this,” Sollis said, sweeping his hand to indicate the huge expanse around them. “Look how fucking far this was for a perfect shot. Jesus, one shot at eighteen hundred yards. It’s taking us nearly a half-hour to even get there. Man, what a rush. What a fucking rush. ”

They rode abreast now, walking their mounts, like outlaws in a western movie, Farkus thought. The floor of the canyon was thick with a green carpet of grass and wildflowers-columbines and Indian paintbrush, mostly. The shallow creek flowed through it. The bed of the stream was orange pea gravel, and the water was cold, shallow, and clear. He could see shadowed darts of small brook trout shoot out from beneath the grassy banks and fin madly upstream, and he wished it meant something to him. Given the circumstances, though, it didn’t.

The elk camp was ahead of them, slightly elevated from the valley floor, but he could see nothing in it except a wisp of smoke from the untended campfire.

“I don’t see a body yet,” Farkus said, finally.

“That’s because he’s down , man,” Sollis said, lapsing into druggie cadence as well as acting like he was under the influence of something stronger than adrenaline, Farkus thought. “You don’t see him cause he’s down .”

“I think I liked it better when you wouldn’t talk,” Farkus grumbled.

Instead of feeling rebuked, Sollis threw back his head and laughed.

After a beat, McLanahan asked Sollis, “Where do you think you hit him?”

Farkus was grateful that at least the ex-sheriff appeared to understand the gravity of what they’d done.

Sollis said, “It was probably a heart or lung shot-that’s what I was going for. I’m thinking heart, because the poor son of a bitch dropped like a sack of cement. He might have stood and wavered a few seconds if I blew his lungs out.”

Farkus looked away.

“Any chance he’s pretending to be hit so he can draw us in?” McLanahan asked. “The guy is more wily than I thought, and he can shoot . You saw the way he took down that drone.”

“Not a chance, man,” Sollis said. “At that distance the round got there long before he could have heard the shot. He’d have to be some kind of wizard to guess I was about to pull the trigger a mile away, and from what I understand he wasn’t no wizard.”

McLanahan nodded, apparently satisfied.

“Look back.” Sollis laughed, turning in his saddle and pointing at the canyon ridge wall in the distance. “Look how damned far away it was. Jesus, what a rush. . ”

They were close enough that Farkus could smell the smoke. It was sharp and acrid, probably fueled by green twigs. A breath of wind shifted and took the smoke away. But there was also another smell tucked inside the smoke.

“Be alert,” McLanahan said, as he reached down and peeled back the security strap of the Bushmaster in its scabbard. He drew the rifle out and seated a round. Farkus observed and did the same and laid his rifle across the pommel of his horse.