C. Box - Force of Nature

She started to say something flippant by her gesture, but stopped herself. Instead, she looked around the Tahoe and out through all the windows at the lodgepole pines that zipped by on both sides.

“What?” she asked. “We’re in a forest?”

“No,” he said. “We’re being followed.”

Joe cleared the tree line of the summit in his pickup to find a barren field of blinding white punctuated by sharp blades of volcanic black scree. The sharp shards pierced upward through the thick scrim of snow, which was untracked and polished to a high-gloss sheen by wind and high-altitude sun. As he emerged from the trees, his radio came to life with a screech of static, and he checked his phone to find two messages: Chuck Coon and Sheriff Kyle McLanahan. Each had called within the past twenty minutes.

He slowed for a moment and reached for the mic, but as he did so he could feel the tires begin to sink into the snow. Since he couldn’t tell how deep it was and couldn’t risk getting stuck on top fully exposed, he grabbed the wheel again and goosed the accelerator. The snow was deeper than he would have guessed, but he knew if he maintained his forward momentum across the top of it he had a chance of getting across it to a windswept bank of gravel on the horizon of the mountain. If he made it to the other side, he could return the calls and call in his position.

Although he couldn’t see clearly through the snow-covered windshield, he searched ahead for knobs of rock to steer toward so his tires could grab them and propel him forward. He saw a rock and cranked the wheel toward it, but the back end swung around again and his progress stopped cold. He cursed as the pickup settled in, sinking a few more inches, snow crunching and the exhaust pipe suddenly burbling as it descended into the snow, and he knew he was stuck fast almost exactly in the center of the snowfield.

Joe sat back and gritted his teeth. Just a few more feet and he might have been able to gain purchase and maintain momentum enough to get to the gravel. But there was no point now but to reassess. It would take hours of digging to try and find the solid rock bottom of the snowfield. And even if he did, the only way he could safely get out was to reverse in his own tracks and end up back where he came from. He knew from being stuck many times and helping others that he needed a winch-truck to get the pickup out.

He cursed and slammed the top of the wheel with the heel of his hand. Wind buffeted the driver’s-side window. Out ahead of him, on the snowfield, small waves of gritty snow moved along the surface like sidewinder snakes.

The view was magnificent. As far as he could see ahead were the snowcapped ridges of wave upon wave of mountains. Stringy cirrus clouds unfurled like battered flags through the brilliant blue sky. There wasn’t an airplane or a power pole or a cell tower to be seen anywhere.

He felt incredibly lonely and frustrated, and when he caught a sharp whiff of carbon monoxide through his heating vents he reached down and killed the motor. The exhaust pipe was now buried deep in the snow and leaking back through the undercarriage. If he kept the pickup running, he risked asphyxiation.

Joe briefly closed his eyes and calmed himself, then checked his phone. He had a weak signal.

He called Chuck Coon first, and the agent came on after the second ring.

“We found her, this Maryland student,” Coon said. “Woke her up at her little off-campus apartment. After I swung by your daughter’s dormitory and woke her up. She’s fine, Joe.”

Joe felt a wave of relief. “Thank God.”

“But we have a problem,” Coon said, and Joe could hear the anger in his voice. “Or I should say you have a problem. In fact, a couple of them.”

“Yes?”

“This Maryland girl checks out, Joe. Her name is Jennifer Wellington-a blue-blood name if I ever heard one-and from what we can tell, she’s exactly who she says she is: an out-of-state student. Her record shows a straight line from high school to college. No gaps. No military service. Her parents check out, and right now they’re very angry with the FBI, and her old man threatened legal action unless we cut her loose, which we did.”

Joe said, “You let her go?”

“No reason to keep her, Joe. That’s what I’m telling you. She was upset and blubbering, and she had no idea why we were there. This whole trip over the mountain was a snafu of the highest order, thanks to you.”

“You’re sure?” Joe asked, feeling his stomach clench. “You’re absolutely positive she’s clean and her identity is solid?”

“As absolutely sure as I’ve ever been in my life,” Coon said, his voice rising. “You’ve wasted my time and used up your last favor.”

Joe sat back and looked at the phone in his hand. He was relieved his suspicions were incorrect and Sheridan was safe but disconcerted about how he’d been so wrong and so paranoid.

“Oh,” Coon said, “your daughter isn’t real happy with you right now, either. In fact, I’d call her, um, hopping mad.”

Joe could hear someone, another agent in Coon’s vehicle, laughing at that.

“Man, I’m sorry,” Joe said. “But it means there is someone still out there. Another female operator.”

“At this point,” Coon sighed, “it means this conversation is over.”

“Hold it,” Joe said, sitting forward again. “Did McLanahan request assistance from you? Is your team on the way?”

“Just a second,” Coon said, and Joe could envision Agent Coon covering the speaker while he asked somebody. When he came back, he said, “No word from your sheriff. Nothing. Nada.”

Joe let the words sink in.

“Where are you right now?” Coon asked. “The reception is terrible.”

Joe slumped to the side. It was getting colder inside the cab, and he could feel a tiny tongue of icy wind lick his earlobe from a gap in the doorframe.

“I’m stuck on top of a mountain with no backup and no plan,” Joe said sullenly. “And in the valley below is John Nemecek.”

Nate had caught two quick glimpses of a vehicle coming up the mountain behind them in his side mirrors. Each look was fleeting: a dark pickup rounding a switchback turn maybe a mile away, a glint of reflected sunlight on glass and chrome. But he’d seen enough to know the pursuing vehicle wasn’t just driving up the mountain-but flying.

“Who is it?” Haley asked, placing her hand on the rifle next to her on the seat.

“Don’t know.”

“Could it be just a local? A hunter or something like that?”

“Maybe,” Nate said, increasing the speed of the Tahoe. “But he’s in a hell of a hurry.”

“Do you think local law enforcement? Maybe that car dealer called on us?”

“I said I don’t know,” Nate said.

He made a switchback turn to the right that leaned into a quarter-mile straightaway climb. He roared up the stretch, noting that Haley was instinctively bracing herself by clutching the handhold above her shoulder in a white-knuckle grip. He appreciated that she wasn’t a backseat driver.

There was another switchback turn to the left, and he slowed to take it. He hoped he’d put a few more seconds of distance between them and the oncoming vehicle. He’d need them. There were a few old roads leading off the asphalt, but they were few and far between on the climb up the mountain. The campgrounds and logging roads didn’t appear until they crested the top.

Three-quarters of the way up the second straightaway, he said, “Is that an opening in the trees up ahead?”

“Looks like it, but I can’t tell what it is.”

“It’ll have to be good enough,” he said, slowing down.

As they passed it, he took its measure: it had been a road into the timber at one time, likely a Forest Service road, but a hundred feet in they’d used an earthmover to create a berm that would be impassable. It was one of the more annoying Forest Service tricks of the last few decades: blocking access roads to the public while purportedly serving the public. But it was good enough for what he was looking for.