C. Box - Endangered

Nate raised his eyebrows in surprise. He wasn’t aware that Rulon had been involved in the negotiations, but he was grateful for it.

“We’ve got your gun,” Dudley said. “And you’re not getting it back.”

“I’ve got a right to defend myself,” Nate said.

“When you sign these papers, you sign away your rights. You have no rights beyond that, unless I say so.”

“I want my weapon back.”

Nate had surrendered his .50-caliber five-shot Freedom Arms .500 Wyoming Express revolver when he gave himself up. It was a handgun that could take out a moose a mile away or kill a car. The gun was a part of him and he knew how to use it.

Dudley placed his hand on the file and said, “If you’re stupid enough to arm yourself again, you’ll be right back here, and I’ll be happy to expedite the paperwork.”

Nate looked away.

“I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that even though I lost the argument against releasing you, the DOJ agreed to retain me as your case manager, since we have such a special relationship and all.”

He said, “You know, before I took this job out here, I was warned about people like you. I was told there were still a number of lone-wolf survivalist types who lived out here in places like Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. I thought we’d stomped them out years ago, but here we are. There still may be a few of you left, but as of today the number is one less, which makes me feel very . . . patriotic .”

Dudley grinned at that.

—

“THE NEGOTIATIONS WERE LIKE five monkeys fucking a football,” Dudley complained. “You’ve got career federal prosecutors, a military JAG because of your Special Forces background, DOJ political lackeys, and the governor’s office all fighting about what to do with you. My solution was real simple: put you on trial and send you to the supermax in Florence, Colorado.”

Dudley looked up to see if he could get a reaction out of Nate. He couldn’t.

“But our biggest problem, as you know , was placing you at the scene of your most heinous crimes, because you were literally off the grid. No credit card receipts, no hotel registries, no cell phone records, no loans, no CC videotape, no arrests, no nothing . No direct or circumstantial evidence. Don’t get me wrong—I’m convinced that with enough time and manpower we’d be able to nail you. We can nail anyone if we set our mind to it. Anyone .”

Nate tried not to sigh. He’d heard the threat from Dudley a half-dozen times. He knew better than to rise to the bait.

What he wanted to say was simple: I’ve never killed anyone who didn’t need killing.

—

THE FACT WAS, Nate knew, the feds couldn’t convict him on the murder, conspiracy, kidnapping, or other charges they’d originally filed against him. As Dudley had admitted, the evidence wasn’t there.

But what they could do was put him away for not filing tax returns for the last twelve years. While the crime didn’t even remotely rise to the level of the original charges, a conviction on tax evasion could put him into federal prison for years. It was the “Al Capone method” of going after a target indirectly, and it could be devastatingly effective if the prosecutors were motivated to pursue it.

The original charges had been quietly dropped and replaced with new charges while the negotiations were under way. However it went, he knew, they had him.

—

“SO LET ME BE the first to welcome you back to the modern world,” Dudley said, showing his teeth. “Consider your wings clipped. You can’t make a move without me knowing about it. If you decide to try and go underground again, I’ll be on you with a team within minutes and we’ll drag your ass back here, unless, you know, something bad happens during the arrest that results in your demise.

“I’ll know where you drive, what you eat, where you sleep, and how long you sit on the toilet. You’ll be just another American citizen. We’ll know everything about you and we can take you down anytime we want. And believe me, I’ll be paying attention to those things because I’m . . . motivated. Motivated to putting you away. Do you understand that?”

Nate grunted again.

“Did you read the agreement?” Dudley asked.

“Yes.”

“Are you ready to sign it? Because if you aren’t, I’ll happily call the guard and send you back to your home away from home in the basement. Even the governor would have to understand that we couldn’t release you if you refused to play ball.”

“I need a pen,” Nate said.

“That’s my boy.”

Then, turning toward the two-way mirror, Dudley said, “Bring in the devices.”

—

A HIGH-TECH TRACKING BRACELET was secured to Nate’s left wrist and another was fastened to his ankle by two young DOJ technical support staffers. Nate barely listened to what they were telling him about the devices, but he got the gist. Neither of the techs would meet his eye as they worked.

The monitors were waterproof, shockproof, and permanent, and could only be removed by a DOJ specialist. The devices looped around his limbs and were locked in place by a coded infrared beam. They were thin and unobtrusive and reminded him of plastic-coated steel cables.

If he tried to cut them off or remove them, a homing signal would alert the feds—meaning Dudley as well as full-time surveillance staff stationed in Virginia—and “the wrath of God will descend upon you,” Dudley said. The devices would provide Nate’s precise GPS coordinates to the meter at all times and could be tracked by satellites and, if necessary, drones.

Even local private closed-circuit cameras could be hacked and overridden to provide video evidence of his whereabouts if they wanted to watch him. It was experimental technology, Dudley said with pride, but it had worked in beta experiments thus far.

One of the techs placed a cell phone and charger on the table in front of Nate.

Dudley said, “That’s your new BlackBerry. Don’t lose it, don’t use it for anything other than to check in every day, and don’t ever turn it off. There’s a single number stored inside that goes direct to an operations center in Langley, Virginia. When we say check in every day, we mean check in every day. Let us know what you’re doing, where you’re going, and who you’re with. You won’t be talking to me directly, but I’ll get a daily update from your contact. If you don’t call in, we’ll come looking for you. Got that?”

Nate frowned at the phone. Not only did he hate cell phones, but Dudley had given him a BlackBerry .

—

NATE BREATHED IN and looked up at the camera mounted over the two-way mirror in the wall. The red light was on. Someone, somewhere, was watching him.

He was back on the grid.

—

“I’M OBLIGATED BY PROCEDURE to go over the agreement with you so you fully understand what you’re about to sign,” Dudley said. “You claim that you’ve read it, so this is for the record.” The record meant the overhead camera, Nate knew.

Dudley opened the folder.

“‘Agreement between the U.S. Department of Justice and one Nathaniel Romanowski,’ blah-blah-blah, legalese boilerplate . . .” Dudley said in a singsong voice until he got to the third page. “Okay, page three: the terms. If you want me to read the actual language, please indicate by saying that you do. Otherwise, I’ll paraphrase.”

Nate sneered.

“Okay then, I’ll take that as permission to paraphrase.

“Subject agrees to cooperate with all ongoing federal investigations concerning one Wolfgang Templeton and his criminal network. Subject agrees to provide testimony in court if requested by the DOJ. Subject agrees to participate in any local operations if asked by the DOJ involving Wolfgang Templeton and to serve as an agent of the prosecution during said investigation. Got that?”