C. Box - Breaking Point

When Sollis stopped and started to turn to plead his case, Butch fired a round at him that sounded like an angry snap. Farkus felt his legs go weak.

But when he looked up, Sollis was still standing. The bullet had creased his right cheek, leaving an ugly red rip in the skin. Streams of blood dripped down his face from the wound.

“I said go ,” Butch growled through clenched teeth.

Without a word, Sollis stumbled away. Farkus could see his back through the trunks for a while. Butch watched him as well with his rifle raised, the crosshairs no doubt on the nape of Sollis’s neck. Farkus waited for a second explosion and squinted his eyes in anticipation. But it didn’t come, and then Sollis was gone.

“That guy makes me sick,” Butch said with finality. Then, to Farkus, “Start marching.”

“About what I said. .” McLanahan whispered to Butch after Sollis was gone.

“Naw,” Butch said to McLanahan. “I’m keeping you both.”

Farkus said to McLanahan, “Thanks a lot.”

“I didn’t think you could hear,” the ex-sheriff said back. “Besides, you smell like urine.”

“Get up, both of you,” Butch said, gesturing at them with his rifle.

Farkus rolled to his side and got his legs underneath him and stood. His wrists were still bound with zip ties, and he was as clumsy as a cub bear. Now that he could see out beyond the pocket of gray shale they’d been in, he could see shadows reaching out from the tips of the broken rock as if they were reaching for the horizon. It wouldn’t be long, he knew, before they’d be in darkness.

He asked Butch, “Why’d you do that? Shoot your rifle right by my head?”

“To make a point.”

“To me?”

“To them.”

“But I’m the one that’s deaf now in one ear.”

Butch shrugged sympathetically and said, “You’ll get over it.”

“Why didn’t you let me go?” Farkus asked. “I understand why you want the ex-sheriff-he’s a big fish. But why cut loose that idiot Sollis and keep me?”

Butch shrugged. “We hunted together. I guess I have a soft spot for you, even though you’re a lazy bastard.”

“Oh.”

Butch chinned toward the south. “That way.”

Farkus was confused. “I thought we were going over the top of the mountain?”

A slight smile passed over Butch’s lips. “That’s what I want them to think. But we’re not.”

Farkus looked to McLanahan for an explanation, and the ex-sheriff said, “I just figured it out myself. Butch here knows the Feds have a bead on where that drone went down, and they probably got a bead on that satellite phone before he shut it off. They’ll chart the two points on a topo and connect them with a line and decide we’re coming over the top of the mountain in their direction.”

McLanahan sighed and said, “But I guess we’re not doing that.”

“No, we aren’t,” Butch said. “Now go.”

McLanahan led, then Farkus, then Butch bringing up the rear with his rifle held loosely in his hands. Butch had secured Sollis’s sniper rifle to his pack as well. Instead of going up or down the mountain, Butch indicated he wanted them to traverse it, even when they cleared some trees and looked out at a quarter-mile rock slide that had taken a good piece of the slope with it, leaving an exposed slough of loose rock.

The problem crossing the slide, Farkus figured, would be that they’d be in the open for the first time. If the Feds had another drone up or a spotter plane, they’d be sitting ducks. He didn’t care if the Feds took Butch down, but he didn’t want to be collateral damage. Butch must have been thinking along the same lines, because he told McLanahan to hurry.

“Hurry, hell,” McLanahan said. “These slides are dangerous.”

“So is being seen,” Butch said. “So pick it up, Sheriff.”

“This would be a lot easier if you’d cut these cuffs off.”

“I’m sure it would,” Butch said, “but that ain’t going to happen. Now go . Pretend there’s a box of donuts on the other side.”

As they scrambled over it, Farkus looked down. The slide had not only taken the topsoil with it, but had gathered and snapped off tree trunks, which had collected into a tangle far below, almost like a driftwood hazard in a river. It was not only bad footing, but the setting sun threw knifelike shadows from the tops of trees that striped the ground like jail bars and made it hard to see.

When he shifted his weight he accidentally dislodged a football-sized rock that started rolling, then bouncing down the slide making a pock-pock-pock sound until it crashed into the timber below. The soles of his boots slipped a few inches as well, and he held his breath waiting for the rest of the mountain to let go and follow the rock, taking them down with it.

“This isn’t a picnic,” McLanahan said with emphasis to Butch, who told him to cowboy up and keep going.

The last beams of the sun had a special intensity, Farkus noticed. As if the light had been choked down into natural laser beams. He didn’t mind the heat, though, because he hoped it would help dry out his trousers.

Farkus grumbled to McLanahan, “I heard you back there, trying to convince him to let you go and keep me.”

McLanahan shrugged. He was crab-walking low to the ground to keep his balance.

“Is that how one partner treats another partner?”

“I was thinking strategically,” McLanahan said over his shoulder. “If he’d let me go, I could help lead the Feds to him.”

Farkus rolled his eyes. He said, “Aren’t you tired of thinking up ways to be the hero? None of ’em have worked out very well so far.”

“Shut up, you two,” Butch said from behind them. “Concentrate on getting across this.”

Farkus glanced back over his shoulder at Butch, who was scanning the cloudless sky.

When they finally made their way across the rock slide to solid ground and reentered the dark timber, McLanahan bent over with his hands between his knees to rest.

“Keep going,” Butch said.

“I’m beat,” McLanahan said between panting breaths. Sweat streamed down his face and dripped off the tips of his beard and mustache. Farkus half expected the ex-sheriff to hang his tongue out like a dog.

“Go,” Butch ordered with force.

“Where are we going?”

Farkus wanted to know as well, and he looked over his shoulder at Butch.

Butch actually grinned. He said, “We don’t want to be late for dinner, do we?”

It was always startling, Joe thought, how quickly the temperature dropped once the sun slipped behind the rocky peaks of the mountains as if a switch had been thrown and the thin, warm air that hung in the trees was sucked with a whoosh into invisible vents. As they ascended toward the looming summit, he reached back and dug a well-worn Filson vest from a saddlebag and shrugged it on.

“We don’t even have any goddamned coats ,” one of the special agents complained from the back, obviously observing Joe. “No coats, no food, no sleeping bags, and no fucking plan.”

“That’ll be enough,” Underwood said wearily, not even bothering to look over his shoulder to locate the offending agent.

Joe kept his senses turned on high and tried to fight back mental threads that kept intruding from within, so he could concentrate on the situation before him. Although Underwood had no doubt been given coordinates for his handheld GPS of where the call from Butch had originated-and they certainly knew where the drone had gone down-Joe couldn’t simply relax and ride. Butch Roberson had sounded angry and desperate, and he’d shot Dave Farkus in cold blood, leaving a body count of three over three days in August. Butch was also on much more intimate terms with the terrain and secrets of the mountain they were on than he was.