C. Box - Force of Nature

Nate thanked his hosts and paused while two soldiers threw back the tent flap and let him out. The night was cool and dry and the stars brilliant. He paused outside and looked up, marveling at the upside-down constellations.

The two other visitors followed, and Nate stepped aside to let them pass. He nodded at them as they strode toward their car and driver. The driver, Nate noticed, eyed him coolly and thumbed the receiver of the AK-47 he had strapped across his chest. The older, intense man removed his steel-framed glasses and cleaned the lenses with his robe while the tall cool one paused next to Nate. Surprisingly, the tall man spoke in English for the first time that night.

“You’re from America,” the man said. “Do you watch the cowboy shows?”

Nate was confused. “The cowboy shows?”

“You know, what you call westerns. Cowboys and Indians.”

His tone was soothing, whispery, almost hard to hear. His eyes were dark and soulful, his features thin and angular.

“Like Gunsmoke?” Nate asked.

The man grinned and gently clapped his hands together. Nate thought the display oddly effeminate. “Gunsmoke,” the man said. “Marshal Matt Dillon. Miss Kitty. Doc. And that Festus, he makes me laugh. Do you remember the one where Festus went to San Francisco and thought they were trying to feed him a mermaid?”

Nate was flummoxed. He vaguely remembered it from when he was a boy. “I think so,” he said.

“That one makes me laugh,” the man said. “And the one where Marshal Dillon is trapped in the mine with the outlaw? Do you know that one?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t.”

“Did you ever watch The Rifleman?” To illustrate his question, the tall man pretended he had a Winchester lever-action rifle and fanned his right hand as if firing and ejecting spent shells.

“I remember that one,” Nate said.

“Good show,” the tall man said, and grinned. “His son was named Mark.”

In the dark, the older man with glasses had reached their car. He coughed politely and insincerely. The tall man talking to Nate waved in his friend’s direction.

He said, “Maybe we can talk about westerns later. Before you go back to America.”

“Sure,” said Nate.

The tall man bowed with a nod and turned toward his car.

“So did you sell the falcons to this Mohammed guy?” Haley asked.

“I’ll get to that. Plus, half of them were named Mohammed. Our guy was Al Khartoum.”

“Sorry,” she said. “I just think of all those innocent birds from Montana sitting there in a crate halfway across the world. It kind of breaks my heart.”

Nate snorted. “I wasn’t crazy about the deal, either. I don’t mind killing bad guys I’ve never met. I didn’t lose a minute of sleep afterward. But those birds… it bothered me to leave them there, to be honest.”

“Anyway,” she said, a lilt in her voice to prompt him to continue.

“Anyway,” he said, “you’re focused on the falcons. That is the least significant part of this story.”

For the next two days, Nate took out each of the seven peregrines one by one to demonstrate their ability. The Arabs would gather on an escarpment under a temporary cover with binoculars and long-lens video cameras as Nate drove out farther into the desert. Nemecek stayed behind with the emirs to detail the strengths and abilities of each young bird, as well as the attributes and characteristics of peregrine falcons in general.

“The birds were magnificent,” Nate said wistfully. “It was almost as if they’d been born there, the way they took to the sky. There was no hesitation, and no lack of confidence in any of them. All of them were perfect aces-they performed as if they’d been bustard-hunting all their lives. Those little falcons would drop out of the sky at two hundred miles an hour and take out a bustard running full-bore across the desert that weighed four times as much. I could hear the approval of the Arabs even without using the radio.

“It was more like an air show than falconry,” Nate said. “As if we were defense contractors showing our new equipment in front of rich generals who wanted to buy.”

Nate noted that late at night, after the inevitable long dinner in the tent of their hosts, after he’d fed and secured the falcons on their stoops and tightened their hoods and gone to bed, Nemecek would gather his pack and slip outside without a word. He’d be gone for an hour or more and return silently and slip back into his blankets. Nate never asked Nemecek where he went, and Nemecek never explained.

But Nate knew that along with personal items and clothing, the satellite phone was located within the small pack he took along with him.

On the morning of the fourth day, as the wind picked up and sandblasted the fabric of the tents with the sound of angry rattlesnakes, Nemecek appeared and said, “Let’s go.”

They left the peregrine falcons, and the drive back to the airport through the makeshift camp and parked jetliners seemed strangely hollow to Nate. Nemecek, however, was buoyant.

When they were seated together in first class on the commercial airplane on the way home, Nemecek said, “Establishing and nurturing relationships with these people is more important than anything else. We’ve got billions of dollars of hardware and technology, but what we don’t have is on-the-ground human intel. It’s like the Jetsons versus the Flintstones, and we’re the Jetsons. But that doesn’t mean the Flintstones might not win in the end if we don’t figure out a way to relate to them on a human level.”

Nate nodded, not sure where the conversation was going.

Nemecek said, “Now all those men back there know us and respect us on a basic level. We can sell them planes and rockets and technology, but that doesn’t mean they like us. But appealing to their actual wants and needs, like we did back there, puts us on a different level. We can now call on them if we need something, even if it’s personal. They’ll receive us in their homes and palaces. If the diplomats and the politicians can’t get them to do what we want, they’ll ask us to help out.”

His commander grinned at Nate, an expression Nate had rarely seen before.

“If you think you were valuable to our government as an operator,” he said, “imagine how valuable you are now. Imagine how valuable we are. Suddenly, Mark V is the tip of the spear in Special Forces because we know these people personally. And the Middle East is where everything will happen when the shit hits the fan.”

Then he turned, still smiling, and closed his eyes. Nemecek slept for the remainder of the flight. Nate spent his time wondering what he’d just been told.

Nate’s incomprehension grew deeper the next time he was called into Nemecek’s bungalow.

“That’s when he handed over two million dollars in cash to me,” Nate said. “A full military duffel bag filled with bricks of hundred-dollar bills. He said it was my share.”

Haley gasped.

“The peregrines performed so well there was a bidding war between the emirs,” Nate said. “The final price was a half million each. Or so Nemecek said. It might even have been more.”

Nate paused and said, “I’ve been living on it ever since.”

He took the duffel bag of cash back to his quarters. He sat next to it on the bed for the entire night, thinking. How many other operations was Nemecek involved in that provided such huge payoffs? How many other Peregrines were tethered to Nemecek because of off-the-books operations that resulted in personal wealth?

Of course it wasn’t right. Operators didn’t become operators for the money. But if by doing good and valuable things for their country and risking their lives every time they went out resulted in rewards that would provide for them (if they lived) and their families for years, where was the harm? After all, the only other logical recipient of cash would be the U.S. Treasury. Might as well feed the bricks of cash, one by one, into the garbage disposal, right?