C. Box - Force of Nature

As he approached the cabin from the back, Joe thumbed the safety off his shotgun and tucked the stock under his arm. He tried to stay quiet and not dislodge small rocks from the scree that might tumble downhill, clicking along with the sound of pool balls striking one another.

When he was close enough to see the entire side of the small structure, he dropped to his haunches and simply listened. There was no sign of life from the old log shelter, and two of the four small panes of glass from the side window were broken out. In the rocks near the closed front door were dozens of filtered cigarette butts. Richie, Joe thought, must be a smoker. But what had he seen from this perch that spooked him off the mountain?

“Hello!” Joe shouted. “Anybody home?”

Silence from the cabin. But below in the trees, squirrels chattered to one another in their unique form of telegraph-pole gossip. They’d soon all know he was there, he thought.

He called out again, louder. If someone was inside, perhaps he’d see an eye looking out from one of the broken panes. But there was no movement.

For the first time, he noted a rough trail that emerged from the line of timber to the front door of the cabin. The trail was scarred on top, meaning it had been used recently. Maybe Richie had seen someone coming up on it? But why would that scare him?

Joe stood and slipped along the side wall of the cabin until he was underneath the window. He pressed his ear against a rough log and closed his eyes, trying to detect sounds of any movement inside. It was still.

He popped up quickly to the window and then dropped back down. No reaction, and all he’d seen inside was a shaft of light from a hole in the roof cutting through the gloom, illuminating what looked like three stout black logs on the packed-dirt floor.

Stout black logs?

The heavy front door wasn’t bolted, and it moaned as it swung inward on old leather hinges. Joe stood to the side, shotgun ready, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Nothing moved in reaction to the wide-open door.

He stepped inside. It was still and musty, but he caught a whiff of a sour metallic smell. The odor seemed to hang just above the floor.

The logs weren’t logs at all but three dark green plastic bundles placed next to one another on the floor. Joe stepped closer and prodded the nearest one with the toe of his boot. There was something heavy inside, but there was a little give, like poking a sausage casing. A chill rolled down his back.

He bent over to look closely at a line of beige-colored print on the plastic. It read human remains pouch in military stencil font.

“Oh, no,” he whispered, as he dug the flashlight out of his daypack and snapped it on.

He stood quickly and took a deep breath of fresh cold air before bending back down to unzip the first body bag. Now he knew why Richie had run off. But he’d neglected to report what he’d found, the coward.

A middle-aged woman, her skin waxy, eyes open and dull, hair matted to the side. And a dark deep cut across her throat.

Joe felt his insides gurgle as he unzipped the second bag to find a familiar dark round fleshy face looking out. The body also had a deep slash around its neck, only partially hidden by a fold of fat.

The third body Joe didn’t recognize. It had been a young man with sharp cheekbones and a thin, long nose. Short spiky hair. Same wound.

Joe thought, The real Luke Brueggemann.

After heaving what little was in his stomach into the scree, Joe fished the radio out. No signal.

He tried his cell phone. Reception was faint; one bar lapsed into roaming and back again. He climbed back up the mountain to where the signal was stronger. He called Sheriff McLanahan.

“What now?” McLanahan asked, obviously agitated. “Is all forgiven?”

Joe ignored the question. He was shaking as he said, “I found the bodies of Pam Kelly, Bad Bob Whiteplume, and an unknown male. All murdered and stashed in an old cabin overlooking the South Fork. Here, I’ll give you the coordinates…”

After telling McLanahan the name of the suspect and his possible location in Camp Five, Joe said, “I don’t know how many bad guys are down there, but I do know they’re armed and dangerous.”

Then, shouting into the phone: “Listen to me this time, Sheriff. Make that call to the FBI and tell them to send everybody they can up here. Now. And gather what’s left of your department and gear them up and storm Camp Five. I’ll try to get into position so I can be a spotter. Stay off the radio, and keep your phone on.”

The phone popped hard with static, and when it quieted back down Joe no longer had the connection. He wasn’t sure how much the sheriff had heard or understood.

He could only hope that enough got through that the vise was finally beginning to close on John Nemecek.

Haley drove the Tahoe through the thick lodgepole pine trees on South Fork Trail, and Nate craned forward in the passenger seat, looking ahead. The river, no more than cold crooked fingers of water probing around boulders, was on their left. He caught glimpses of it through the timber.

“There are tracks on the road ahead of us,” Nate said, “but nothing fresh from this morning.”

Haley didn’t respond. Her face was grim and her mouth set. She obviously didn’t understand the significance of his comment.

“That means that Game and Fish truck went somewhere else,” Nate said. “So maybe we can forget about it.”

“Okay,” she said.

She looked small behind the wheel, he thought. But determined.

Nate looked over as they passed by an outfitter camp tucked up into the trees on a shelf on their right. The camp had a large framed canvas tent, but there were no vehicles around and the door of the tent was tied up. A headless elk carcass hung from a cross-pole behind the tent.

“That’s the fourth camp,” she said.

Nate nodded and ducked down on the seat. Anyone observing the vehicle would see only the driver.

“Talk to me,” he said calmly. “Tell me what you see as you see it.”

In a moment, she said, “The trees are opening. I think we’re getting close to Camp Five.”

Over the last half hour, Joe had worked his way down the mountain carefully, avoiding loose rock and downed branches, and he’d set up behind a granite outcropping laced through the seams with army-green lichen. From the outcrop he could clearly see the layout of Camp Five two hundred feet below.

There were two hard-side trailers parked nose-to-tail in a flat on the other side of the river. The camp was remarkably clean: no debris, coolers, folding chairs, or other usual elk camp indicators. The fire pit, a ring of colorful round river rocks, looked cold and unused. There were no skinned elk or deer carcasses hanging from a cross-pole in clear view of the trailers.

There were two vehicles he could see parked on the other side of the trailers: a late-model white Tahoe with green-and-white Colorado plates behind the second trailer and a dark SUV crossover parked on the side of the first. The second trailer, Joe thought, was a curiosity. Antennae and small satellite dishes bristled from the roof. Then he noticed something blocky covered with a blue tarp on the front of that trailer; no doubt an electric generator. The generator operated so quietly he could barely hear it hum.

The second trailer was obviously the communications center.

He was grateful his handheld radio hadn’t worked earlier. No doubt, they were monitoring air traffic. He hoped McLanahan listened this time and stayed off the police bands.

A few feet from the tongue of the first trailer, Joe noted, were two five-foot pole-mounted platforms. On the top of each platform was a hooded falcon: a peregrine and a prairie.