Си Бокс - Dark Sky

He might not be as forgiving if it happened repeatedly.

—

As he picked his way through the trees, Joe couldn’t push away the feeling of being oddly disconcerted. Part of it, he knew, was leading an elk hunt for people he didn’t know. Another part of it was that he hadn’t been able to talk to Marybeth the night before because his satellite phone wouldn’t work. Talking to his wife was a ritual and it helped them both. It bothered him that he’d been unsuccessful and he felt like there was a hole in his heart that needed filling.

He also knew that when he didn’t call her—and it was rare when he couldn’t—her mind began to conjure up all kinds of worst-case scenarios. Especially when he was in the field. He was hurt, he’d been abducted, he’d been killed. And he couldn’t really assure her that none of those things were possible because of the many close calls he’d had in the past, including from his own doctor.

The sat phone had been reliable in the past and he’d tested it before they’d ridden away from the base camp. But although it’d powered up like it should, the device somehow couldn’t fix on a signal. He’d watched it search for twenty minutes. And since there was no cell phone signal this far away from civilization, he’d been left with no options.

When he mentioned to Boedecker that morning that he’d been unable to use the device, Brock nodded conspiratorially and had taken Joe aside.

“I saw that Joannides guy going through your gear bag,” he told Joe in a whisper. “He looked like he was looking for something.”

“Tim?” Joe asked. “Are you sure?”

“I thought maybe he just got the bags confused,” Boedecker said. “Lord knows he’s got enough equipment along with him and we had to repack, so he might not know where everything was. But he looked kind of suspicious to me while he was doing it.”

“When did this happen?” Joe asked.

“While we were making dinner. I came outside the tent to take a pee and I saw him over by your stuff. I didn’t say anything at the time.”

Joe nodded and filed it away. Boedecker had made no secret of how much he disliked the hunting party members, so maybe his take on what he’d seen had been colored by that. And he hadn’t mentioned it to Joe any further during the evening.

But it was odd that his sat phone didn’t work. And if anybody knew their way around electronic devices and how to disable them, it was probably Joannides. But why would he do such a thing?

Joe planned to confront the man about it once the morning hunt was over and they were back at camp. He decided not to accuse Joannides of anything outright, but to bring him the sat phone and ask him to take a look at it to see if he could figure out what was wrong with it. Joannides’s reaction to that request might give Joe the answer he sought. And if nothing else, if Boedecker’s distrust was misplaced, Joe could ask Joannides to lend him his sat phone so he could check in with Marybeth.

And all would be right with the world.

—

Until he talked with her and got right, he would simply proceed, he thought. Elk-hunting trips had a certain rhythm to them from day to day.

Elk were most active at daybreak and dusk. During the day they bedded down and hid in thick timber and were hard to locate. Joe’s intention was to hunt hard very early in the morning and late in the afternoon until dark and take a long break—and a nap—in between.

Hunters got their elk less than half the time, he knew. Some years the success ratio was less than that overall. On average, it took about eighteen days in the field for every elk taken.

Their odds for a five-day hunt weren’t in favor of Steve-2. Which meant the odds of Wyoming landing the server farm project Governor Allen desired weren’t really very good, either.

Nor were the prospects for his continued employment.

—

It was about a half hour before sunrise, when the eastern sky began to take on the vague cream color that would erase the stars, that Joe saw something in his peripheral vision. Something on the forest floor had struck him as incongruous.

He paused long enough for his breath to return to normal, then slowly rotated his headlamp beam to the right. He wasn’t sure what he’d seen other than it didn’t fit within the powdery snow cover.

Joe placed one hand on the grip of his Colt and with the other he pushed a gloved index finger through the trigger loop of his bear spray canister. He backtracked a few feet and aimed the red beam down.

At first, he thought it was a disturbance made by a very large elk hoof or by a moose moving through the timber minutes before him. Both could do so without making a sound. The soil was churned and pine needles stuck out of the depression, and when he bent down to get a closer look, he realized it was a fresh boot track.

Cleated Vibram sole, maybe size eleven or twelve. From a big man. Who appeared to be alone.

Joe could hear the beat of his heart in his own ears. A chill that had nothing to do with the cold morning crawled down his spine.

From his low angle, he could see the single tracks continue on and he was surprised he hadn’t noticed the trail sooner, since he’d obviously crossed it a few yards before. He guessed that the boot prints had been made within the hour.

The first likely person he thought of was Zsolt Rumy. Rumy was a big man who wore brand-new hunting boots straight out of the box. But why would Rumy be on the move and out ahead of him instead of back in the brush with his boss? It didn’t make sense.

Joe raised his head and studied the forest around him. If it wasn’t Rumy who’d made the tracks, he was surprised there was a hunter out before him and he wondered why they hadn’t seen anyone or noticed a camp. Since the area was entirely off-road, the lone hunter must have come in on foot or horseback. But they’d seen no one—or any sign—on the trail.

Joe dug his phone out of his breast pocket. He shielded the flash with his left hand and snapped several photos of the track, as well as the others as they proceeded north to south. Whoever it was wasn’t headed in the direction of the clearing.

Joe stood and simply listened for several minutes. He closed his eyes to concentrate. But the sound of a footfall, a grunt, or a snapped twig didn’t come.

The elk, if they were there, would be through the trees to his left. The lone hunter was somewhere to his right. Joe vowed to himself to keep all of his senses turned up high and to keep his head on a swivel as he proceeded.

—

The elk were there, all right. Joe smelled their musky odor before he saw them.

On his hands and knees, he crawled up the grassy back side of the hill. He knew he was near the top when a slight cold wind hit him from the east. On the very top he flattened on the ground and inched forward, taking in the clearing below him a few inches at a time. His heart raced and his breath shallowed out as he slowly moved to where he could see the clearing below.

Thirty-five to forty elk grazed in the meadow, just like he’d hoped. They were scattered across the breadth of it, grazing with their heads down. Because it was so cold, their breaths created condensation clouds that dissipated quickly but still made it look like the herd was a single organism puffing like a kind of steam train. Five were bulls, and one of the bulls was a magnificent seven-point royal, with seven tines on each antler. The rest were cows, calves, and two young yearling spikes. Although Joe had seen thousands of the animals throughout his career, he still marveled at how those big bulls could carry their heavy racks around, not to mention running with them full-speed through dense timber.

Joe brought his binoculars up. He focused in on the mouth of the dry wash at the bottom of the clearing and tilted the glasses up into the dark forest. Although he couldn’t clearly see where he’d left Price and Rumy, he got a good idea of their location. He wondered if they could see the herd in the clearing from their vantage point.