Lee Child: MatchUp

“I wasn’t planning on going anywhere,” Pickett said, sounding annoyed. “And when this is over, I’m still going to arrest you for murder.”

He sighed.

The man was a bulldog. The worst kind.

“Look,” he said, “you can do whatever you want once we get out of here. But right now we’ve got a little time while they reload and regroup. I need you to call this in and get some backup here. I know the Teton County sheriff has access to a chopper. I can give you the exact coordinates.”

“That would be fine if I had a radio or a phone.”

He turned angrily. “What kind of law enforcement officer doesn’t have a radio or a phone?”

“The kind whose horse was spooked by a lunatic who suddenly appeared from the trees. Everything was in my saddlebags, including my cell phone. You don’t have a phone?”

“I did but it’s . . . gone.”

Pickett frowned.

“What part don’t you understand? It’s no longer in my possession.”

“Did you drop it?”

He swore under his breath. “I gave it to them, and they took the battery out.”

“And you thought I was a chump.”

He felt a flash of anger and considered decking the guy.

But first things first.

“How well do you know these mountains?” he asked.

“Not well at all. This isn’t my district. I’m doing a guy a favor.”

“Fucking great. I’m stuck here with a game warden who doesn’t even know where he is.”

“Story of my life,” Pickett said with a shrug. “By the way, thanks for helping me up out there when we were running for the cabin.”

He nodded.

“What’s your name, anyway?”

“Coburn.”

“Just Coburn?”

“As far as you’re concerned.”

“Just Coburn? One name, like Cher or Beyoncé?”

“Lee Coburn, damn it.”

“Can you spell it so I get it right on the arrest warrant?”

“Capital F-u-c-k Capital O-f-f.”

He briefly considered smacking the game warden on his precious hat with the butt of his .45. Maybe that would keep him quiet for a while. But he needed Pickett to keep an eye on the north while he handled the east, west, and south where the shooters surely were.

“I’ll just call you Coburn,” Pickett said.

FOR THE NEXT HOUR, JOE sat with his back to the wall and his shotgun across his knees, wishing the day had gone in an entirely different direction. He scanned the trees he could see over the top of the walls, hoping the shooters weren’t creeping closer to them.

He also kept an eye on the north side of the clearing, hoping against hope that Rojo would wander out of the woods. He hoped his horse was okay. In addition to the shooters perched in the rocks above their position, the timber was populated by the grizzly bears, mountain lions, and other predators who would consider Rojo meat on the hooves.

He checked his watch.

Two in the afternoon.

Marybeth would expect him back by dark, but not before. So unless they could get word somehow to the Teton County sheriff, for the next five hours no one would know he was in trouble or even think to send someone up to look for him. Today, he recalled, the plan for his family was to buy tickets for the alpine slide on Snow King Mountain. Lucy was quite excited about that.

Next to him Coburn sat, watchful, still, lethal. When he moved at all, he raised up just high enough to look over the top of the wall. Each time he did the shooters retaliated by firing shots, which Joe figured was what Coburn wanted. When they fired, he could spot them.

After the last volley, Coburn had aimed and squeezed off a shot. He said he was pretty sure he’d hit his target that time, but he couldn’t guarantee it. Which meant there were two shooters left, or two shooters and a wounded shooter. All had high-powered rifles. The odds were still against him and his unlikely ally.

“One of these times when you pop up like a Whac-A-Mole, they’re going to blow your head off,” he said to Coburn.

“Like a what?”

“A Whac-A-Mole.”

Coburn’s face remained a blank.

“You know. The kids’ game.”

Coburn looked down at the pistol in his hand, hefting it. “Never was much of a kid. Didn’t play many games.” Then he raised his gaze back to Joe and said with derision, “Sure as hell not one called whack a . . . whatever.”

Joe tucked that observation away to think about later. “So you’re just going to keep letting them take potshots, until you get off a lucky one?”

Coburn glared at him. “Do you have a better plan?”

“Nope.”

“Then please shut up.”

Joe thought about the canister of bear spray attached to his belt. He could still blast Coburn, disarm him, and bind him up with flex-cuffs. But to what end? Would he then stand up and explain to the shooters in the mountains that everything was okay? That they could put down their arms and surrender peacefully?

Coburn was rude and likely a murderer.

But he possessed one redeeming quality.

He was on this side of the wall.

COBURN WAS AWARE OF THE game warden watching him as he reloaded.

Pickett said, “Coburn, before this is over, I’m fairly certain that things are going to get western between you and me.”

“I told you this isn’t your fight. Do I have to say it again?”

“My family’s in Jackson. I’d kinda like to see them again.”

Coburn again considered bringing his gun down hard on the crown of that Stetson. He could use some peace and quiet to deal with the situation at hand. He’d never been one to accommodate weakness. It wasn’t that he had no empathy or understanding for men not hardwired for action. But in a firefight, and he’d been in many, slow thinkers resulted in the deaths of not only themselves but other brave men too. In this situation, he had two options.

Fight or flight.

But he doubted the shooters would even extend to him the second option.

“If nothing else,” Pickett said, “you need to tell me what’s going on. It’s not every day I start out checking elk camps and end up getting shot at with a psycho next to me.”

He snickered. “I’ve been called a lot of names. But psycho is a first.”

“Then prove to me you’re not. From where I sit, I see a dead guy with a bullet through his forehead and two or three other guys trying to kill us. It’s hard to come up with any other conclusion.”

He took that as a challenge. “So what do you think happened here?”

Pickett took a long time to answer, which was a little maddening. “I’ve seen a lot of strange things up in these mountains. Here in the Gros Ventres, or in my own mountains, the Bighorns. Sometimes these woods look to people like the last best place for them to wash up, when they can’t fit in anywhere else. I’ve run across end-of-times survivalists, sheepherders dealing meth, environmental terrorists, and landowners who run their ranches like tin-pot tyrants.

“When I look around here,” Pickett said, gesturing toward the camp beyond the walls, “I see the beginning of something that blew up while in progress. My guess is you and your buddies decided to pick the most remote part of these mountains to set up a little headquarters. For what I don’t know. But you figured, like so many do, that you’d be far enough away from civilization that you could do what you pleased, whatever that is.

“So you gathered up your best weapons and tools and got up here somehow and started building your stockade. Then there was a falling-out. That’s not surprising, given your foul disposition and the fact that the dead guy in the door obviously carried around a black rifle. So the disagreement, whatever it was about, escalated beyond control. You shot that guy over there, and the rest of the crew headed for the hills. You were going after them when they got the sense to go to high ground and turn on you. That’s when I showed up.”