C. Box - Force of Nature

She looked over at him, puzzled.

“When it comes to folks, I always try to err on the side of goodwill,” Joe said. Then: “It’s gotten me in a lot of hot water, but it’s better that way.”

She laughed, surprised, and asked, “How is that?”

Joe said, “I’ve never tried to find out what terrible thing Nate was involved in that drove him out here. I just take him at face value. From what he’s shown me and what he’s done for my family, that’s good enough. That was what I meant earlier about not always needing to know everything. When a man wants a whole new life, I guess I’m okay with that.”

A minute later, she said, “And Marybeth-she’s okay with you knowing him? From what you’ve told me I don’t think I’d want him around my children, provided I had any.”

Joe looked ahead. Deputy Sollis was in the lead, followed by two other deputies, Mike Reed, and Sheriff McLanahan. It was less than four miles to the turnoff to Nate’s place on the bank of the river.

“We’re both comfortable with him,” Joe said. “In fact, he’s been the master falconer to my daughter Sheridan, who is his apprentice. Marybeth and Nate, well, let’s just say they have a special friendship.”

“Explain.” Her eyes sparkled wickedly, Joe thought.

He tried to think of the right words. He decided on, “Marybeth and I have a marriage based on trust. But if we didn’t…”

She grinned. “So he’s hot.”

“So they tell me,” Joe sighed.

“I’ll have to ask her about him the next time we go riding,” she said.

Joe moaned. “He might not even be at his place. Nate has a habit of vanishing for weeks and then suddenly showing up where you don’t expect him to be. He might have been gone this whole time, and this entire deal we have going here might be a waste of time and effort.”

“I’m looking forward to meeting him,” she said, as if she hadn’t heard a word Joe said. Dulcie Schalk was attractive and unmarried, and he’d heard the local gossips having coffee at the Burg-O-Pardner restaurant speculate about her sexuality, but Joe had never doubted she liked men. As Marybeth had said, pickings were slim in Twelve Sleep County, Wyoming.

Sollis began to slow down on the highway. The two-track road that led three miles to Nate’s had no markings or signs. In the winter, it drifted over and was inaccessible.

Joe looked to the southwest. A lazy curl of black smoke rose from where the river coursed through the valley where Nate’s place was located.

“Trouble,” Joe said, chinning toward the smoke.

Nate Romanowski watched the procession of vehicles stream down the two-track through binoculars. He counted seven of them-four look-alike sheriff’s department SUVs, the sheriff’s pickup, and two green pickups with decals on the doors bringing up the rear.

“Joe,” he said aloud. He glanced down at his satellite phone. An hour before, Joe had tried to call him but he hadn’t picked up. Five minutes later, there had been another call from Marybeth Pickett that he declined to answer. But both calls coming so close to each other told him all he needed to know.

Nate was on his belly in a tangle of aspen high on the slope not far from where he’d hunted ducks the day before. His peregrine and prairie falcon were hooded a few feet behind him in the gold carpet of fallen leaves. The birds stood erect like still little sentinels, waiting to be unleashed.

For the hundredth time that day, he cursed his actions the evening before. He’d let himself be taken in by the three men in the boat simply because they were locals, and he hadn’t connected their presence with The Five, the Special Forces unit he’d been in. That had been his first mistake. His second was that in the pain from the arrow through his shoulder, he’d let the boat simply float away downriver where it would eventually be found.

The two calls from Joe and Marybeth confirmed that it had.

So he’d been off his game. But an arrow in his flesh and the killing of three men had focused his mind, and he knew he was in the midst of a battle that might turn out to be his last. The rules hadn’t changed as much as they’d been adapted to his location and circumstances. And he hadn’t seen it coming.

That morning, he’d made his plan. Through a haze of pain and with the use of only one arm, he’d sunk his boat, burned the mews to the ground, and gathered all his gear and clothing into piles on the floor of his house before torching that, too. He’d smashed his electronic gear into bite-sized pieces and thrown only a few of his possessions into an old military duffel bag, along with the last bricks of cash, to take with him.

On a gravel bar in the river, he’d found the carbine the old man Paul had aimed at him. The rifle was in good shape after he’d dried and cleaned it. It was an all-weather Ruger Mini-14 Ranch rifle chambered in 6.8-millimeter with a thirty-round clip and a scope. He’d decided to keep it because the weapon would be good for precision work and for laying down cover fire, if necessary. The stock was black synthetic. The rifle, along with his. 500, would serve his needs, he thought.

Nate had killed an antelope several days before and packed the carcass in ice in a dug-out icehouse fifty yards downriver. After cleaning his wounds with alcohol and taping on compresses, he’d sliced off the tenderloins and back straps and ate one of the back straps whole after searing it and seasoning it with salt and pepper. The light and flavorful lean meat seemed to help speed the replenishing of his blood supply. It was pure protein from the wild, and he thought it had healing properties.

In his circumstances, he’d decided to trim his life down to the bone. He’d taken only what he could carry. He’d eat only wild game and fish that he caught. And he’d get rid of his phone now that he’d made three calls on it; one to the Wind River Indian Reservation, the next to colleagues in the Idaho compound, and the third to a man in Colorado Springs.

It hurt to shift his position, even to follow the oncoming procession through his field glasses. His shoulder screamed at him, and he’d noticed that his skin was purplish near the entry wound, and the dark wine color was expanding out. He had no painkilling drugs available and had spent most of the previous night fighting back waves of delirium. He’d lost a lot of blood.

As the caravan neared, he removed the satellite phone from its cover and placed it on a rock and smashed it into pieces with the butt of the rifle. In the pile of shards, he located the memory chip and therefore his call record, and flicked it into a mud bog on the edge of the aspens. By doing so, he was eliminating the last object in his possession that would leave a digital trace of his whereabouts.

The first SUV entered his yard and stopped with a lurch in front of his smoldering house. A strapping sheriff’s deputy in full assault gear blasted out of the door with a semiautomatic rifle and aimed it toward the front door. The other SUVs roared in on both sides of it, and the occupants flew out of their vehicles in a similar fashion. They were so far away that he couldn’t hear their shouts and warnings but assumed what they were yelling by their gestures and body movements. Nate had done enough assault training that he knew all the moves and objectives. These guys were sloppy and predictable and wouldn’t have lasted long if he’d decided to make a stand against them, he thought. They were overgrown boys playing army with real weapons. Considering their leadership, he wasn’t surprised.

He shifted his field of view over to the sheriff, who had parked his truck behind the row of SUVs. McLanahan ambled out, shouting instructions to the deputies in front of him and talking on a handheld radio to someone else. The first green pickup continued on through his yard and braked to a stop near the river. Another green pickup stuck close behind it. Nate sharpened his focus a bit.