C. Box - Force of Nature

Nate cruised up Bighorn Road fifteen minutes later. As he did he checked his mirrors repeatedly and slowed down on the crest of each hill before descending. His weapon was on his lap.

He nodded as he drove by Joe Pickett’s house. Joe’s Game and Fish pickup was parked on the side of the garage, also blanketed with a thin coat of snow. A set of tracks emerged from beneath the garage door: Marybeth’s van. They were gone.

“For once,” Nate said, “Joe seems to have listened to me when I told him something.”

“He’s gone?” Haley asked.

“Looks like it. They’ve got kids, and the place would have been a beehive this time in the morning before school.”

He stopped at Joe’s mailbox a quarter-mile from the house and placed an object inside. When Haley gave him a quizzical look, he said simply, “I want him to know I was here.”

“Okay,” he said, swinging off the pavement onto a rough two-track directly away from the Pickett house, “the field has been cleared and the operation is under way.”

He could feel Haley’s eyes on him as he drove toward the base of Wolf Mountain. They crashed through a thick set of willows where the branches scraped both doors and emerged in a small white alcove. There was brush on all four sides of them, no way to see out, and no way to see in from the road.

He looked sternly at her and killed the engine. “Come on,” he said.

Unexpected fear flashed in her eyes. She hesitated for a moment, then climbed out.

He chinned for her to move to the front of the Jeep, and when she did he raised the. 500, then spun it with his index finger through the trigger guard and rotated it so the muzzle was pointed at his chest and the grip was offered to her.

“Take it,” he said.

“Why?”

“Just take it,” he said more gently.

She did. He stepped back three steps, his boots crunching in the light snow.

He said, “If you’re going to kill me, I want you to do it now.”

She stood there, uncomprehending, her eyes puzzled.

“In an hour or so, I’m going after John Nemecek,” Nate said. “I’m going to hit him hard and fast and right in his face. The tactic is speed, surprise, and overwhelming violence. You don’t have to participate, and I may not want you involved. But Haley, if you’re going to bushwhack me, or try to warn him, I want you to do it now. Aim and fire. Blow a hole in me no one could recover from. Do it and get it over with now, not later.”

She held the gun out away from her, pointed vaguely at his waist. But not yet raising it. Their eyes bored into each other’s.

“Why are you testing me like this?” she asked. “Why are you doing this?”

“I’m giving you your chance to be a hero. Do it now, if you’re so inclined. I have no other weapons, and I couldn’t get to you in time to stop a shot. This is your chance.”

“Why, Nate?”

He paused. “I can handle the enemy, and I salute him if he can get the better of me in a fair fight. But I hate betrayal. I need to know one way or the other with you.”

After a few beats, she shook her head and let the weapon drop to her side.

“You know what,” he said, as he took the. 500 from her and fed it back into his holster, “I’ve never done that before. Given my weapon to someone.”

He noticed her hands were trembling and he covered them with his own.

“This might work out,” he said.

“It’s tough when the foundation for your loyalty and beliefs crumbles away while you’re in the building, isn’t it?” he said, as they drove back out through the wall of willows toward the road.

“Yes,” she said.

She told him how Nemecek had found her after she’d enlisted in the Army and had gone through basic. How he’d selected her for the Peregrines and tested her character and strength. He knew her father was a lifer in the military, and that she understood the culture and the sacrifice necessary to ascend to Special Forces. She’d participated in two overseas operations-one in Bosnia, one in Iraq-before Nemecek came to her and explained that he was creating the strike team on the outside and that he had a very special role for her to play.

“He told me that same story about Afghanistan,” she said, “but he reversed the blame, just like you said. There wasn’t a single operator, once they heard what happened, who didn’t want your head. Me included.”

“He’s persuasive,” Nate agreed.

“And he’s evil and cynical,” she spat, “because he uses our patriotism and loyalty for his own benefit. Now that I know, I question both those missions I went on. Were they to help defend our country or to settle a score or eliminate competition for Nemecek? I just don’t know.”

“So it was you who found Merle,” Nate said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes, but I didn’t kill him. I’d already flown back to Idaho.”

“Merle was my friend.”

“And I’m sorry. I had no idea what they were going to do to him, and I was sick when I found out what happened.”

When they hit the highway, Nate turned back toward town instead of toward the mountains. It took her a second to realize what had just happened.

“Aren’t we going the wrong way?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Why? You aren’t going to get rid of me somewhere, are you?” she asked angrily.

“We need a new car,” he said, and didn’t explain any more.

As they neared the town limits, he asked, “Do you know how many are on the team besides you?”

“No,” she said. “He never told me. You know how it is. You get your assignment and maybe see or meet one or two other operatives, but no one knows the entire plan or all the players. I only knew my job, which was to seduce Gabriel and Merle and infiltrate that compound in Idaho. Nemecek said you’d be in contact with them, and when you were, I was to tip him off. I never knew he planned to use me to kill Oscar and Cohen and the rest. I didn’t have a clue. All I knew was that when you showed up, I was to alert him.”

“You didn’t?” Nate asked.

“I never got a chance,” she said. “And by that time I was having doubts about everything he told me, to be honest. I came to really like and admire Gabriel and Oscar and the rest. They weren’t antigovernment, like Nemecek had led me to believe. They were pro-American individualism. They were patriotic and honest, and they were straight shooters. I kept waiting to hear someone go on a rant about revolution or something, but it never happened. They just wanted to be left alone. I can empathize with that.”

Nate said, “You never knew where Nemecek’s headquarters was?”

“No,” she said. “I had only one assignment. I didn’t know they were going to kill everybody.”

She looked away sharply but not before he caught a glimpse of tears in her eyes. “Damn it,” she said, “I don’t want to cry. Goddammit. ”

Nate pulled into Hinderaker’s Used Cars on the south end of Main Street just a few blocks from the Burg-O-Pardner. As he entered the lot, Hinderaker-the bespectacled proprietor who had his official third-generation GM dealership dissolved when the government took over the company-emerged from a single-wide trailer that now served as his office. He shot his sleeves out so his cuffs emerged from his jacket, worked up a friendly grin, and ambled out into the drive so Nate couldn’t help but see him.

Haley stayed inside the Jeep while Nate strode through the rows of used vehicles, Hinderaker on his heels.

Nate paused at a white five-year-old SUV.

“You won’t be able to beat that deal,” Hinderaker said. “Plenty of miles but all highway miles. Are you thinking of trading in the Jeep?”

Nate fixed his icy blue eyes on Hinderaker and noted how the man took an involuntary step back.