C. Box - Force of Nature

As he reached around her to pull her closer, she gently pushed him away.

“Thank you for teaching me that,” she said.

“Thanks for the kiss.”

They held each other in their eyes for a long tense moment. He could feel his heart beat.

“I don’t know why I did that,” she said, grinning and turning away.

“I do,” he said, and turned her around so she was facing him. He reached down and grabbed her hips again and launched her up onto the hood of the Jeep. She collapsed back on the hood until her head was propped up against the windshield, and she looked at him with heavy-lidded eyes. Snowflakes landed on the warm sheet metal on both sides of her and dissolved into beads of moisture and he stepped up on the front bumper next to her.

“Let me get a blanket from the back,” he said.

“Hurry,” she begged, and he felt her fingers trail off his shoulders as he rolled away.

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” she said, looking down at her shoes while she cinched her belt. Fresh snow-larger flakes now but more infrequent-tufted her hair and shoulders.

“Whatever it was, I hope you think it again,” Nate said, folding the blanket.

“Too much has happened,” she said, still not looking up. “My nerve endings are exposed, I guess. My force field is worn out. My reserve has been blown away. I’ve never…”

“Stop talking,” he said.

“It’s different for you,” Haley said. “In one day you kill a guy, torture another guy, and get the girl. This must seem like fucking Christmas to you.”

“Only the get-the-girl part,” he said.

She finally looked up and smiled. “Well, I guess that’s kind of a nice thing to hear.”

They were back on the highway and no more had been said since they left.

“Since it’s very unlikely we’ll be around much longer,” Nate said, “you should know something about me. And when I’m done telling you, there won’t be any hard feelings on my part if you want to get dropped off at the airport. In fact, I wouldn’t blame you.”

She reached over and touched his arm and turned to him, waiting.

Nate couldn’t meet her eyes. He said, “Because of me, thousands of people are dead. Maybe tens of thousands.”

She gasped, and her fingertips left his sleeve for a moment as she recoiled. Then, surprisingly, she touched him again.

“Tell me,” she said.

After they crossed the border of the Wind River Indian Reservation, Nate told Haley about growing up, moving around, discovering his interest in falconry, and meeting Lieutenant John Nemecek at the Air Force Academy. And the six brutal months of training to become a full-fledged member of Mark V, a secret and off-the-books Special Forces unit comprising the best special operators from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. As with the other members of the Peregrines, Nate didn’t know how many men were involved, or most of their real names. Eight-man teams were assembled for specific tasks based on their skills, sent overseas to kill, cripple, and destroy targets, then broken up when they returned. Although all the operators assumed Nemecek reported directly to superiors high in the government, it was never clear who gave the orders or even which branch or federal agency had ultimate authority. It wasn’t their business to know.

Peregrines operated under false identities in foreign countries, and got in and got out. Their assignments were highly choreographed and impeccably planned, and rarely failed. Nate was sent to South America, Eastern Europe, Africa, island fiefdoms in the Pacific, and the Middle East. None of his teams ever lost or left a man. There were only two missions that weren’t completed successfully. Once, when their target-a Central African warlord-was tipped to their presence and the team immediately evacuated, and another instance where a team member got too intimate with locals and inadvertently blew their cover. None of the other Peregrines from that mission ever saw or heard from the operative again.

The one constant in all the operations and planning for all the Peregrines was the man who’d recruited and trained them: Lieutenant John Nemecek.

“He is the greatest falconer I’ve ever seen,” Nate said to Haley. “He’s flown every species of raptor imaginable, from kestrels to golden eagles.”

Haley said, “I’m confused. What does falconry have to do with thousands of people getting killed?”

Nate drove on for a full minute before he said, “Everything.”

There was still a sifting of powdered-sugar snow that held in the cold night air as Joe slid his shotgun into the cab of his pickup and pulled himself in. He shut the door and started the motor and sat for a few seconds with the engine idling, sorting out his route and hoping his suspicions about Luke Brueggemann were wrong. Lord knows, he thought, he’d been wrong before.

As he backed out of the drive onto Bighorn Road, he recalled the first time he’d heard that he’d be getting a trainee. It had been less than a month before and in the form of a departmental email sent by the assistant director of the Game and Fish Department in Cheyenne. It wasn’t a request as much as an order. Joe hated orders, balked at them simply for being orders, but in this case he swallowed his consternation and remembered his own days as a trainee, and how the experience-for better and for worse-had set him on the path he had taken. Pay it forward, he had thought.

But Joe recalled that the initial email was typically terse: the trainee’s name, origin, and date of arrival. No other information, and Joe didn’t have additional reason to ask for more at the time. Joe knew the state system well enough to doubt whether Brueggemann had somehow infiltrated it with this end in mind. He doubted it. More likely, he thought, Brueggemann had been recruited by someone-probably his girlfriend.

Brueggemann was of the age and station in life-single, barely twenty-two, and practically penniless-that he’d likely be vulnerable to an approach, Joe thought. If sex, a future, or money were offered, few boys that age would refuse. So maybe they got to Brueggemann once it was known he’d be assigned to Joe Pickett in Twelve Sleep County.

Or maybe, Joe thought, she’d replaced the real Luke Brueggemann with a Luke Brueggemann of her own? If so, what happened to the real kid? Joe shivered at the possibilities.

Or maybe, Joe thought, he should stop letting his imagination run wild until he knew more and could actually base his speculation on a foundation of facts.

As he drove away from his home, he watched it recede in his rearview mirror. The house was lit up like Christmas, which was all the more striking because of the utter darkness all around. It looked like a beacon, every room lit up as Marybeth and Lucy and April packed for their early morning flight. The place looked so… inviting.

He took his foot off the gas and coasted for a moment, thinking about turning around. It wouldn’t be that many hours before they’d need to gather up and go to the airport. If something happened while he was away, he’d never forgive himself.

But…

Mike Reed had agreed to stay until he got back. Reed could be trusted, couldn’t he?

Joe swatted away his paranoia and drove on.

As he let the threads of speculation hang there, one item jolted him in another direction: Brueggemann’s girlfriend. All he knew about her, or thought he knew about her from Brueggemann, was that she lived in Laramie because she was a student at the University of Wyoming. And he thought about what Nate had said: a young female.

Which made his mind leap and his scalp contract. Joe drew his cell phone out of his breast pocket and opened it and scrolled down the speed dial until he found Sheridan’s cell phone number.