The next morning, in the long cold shadow of the sawtoothed Teton Range in the mountains outside of Victor, Idaho, Nate Romanowski smeared a tarry mixture of motor oil and road dirt below his eyes, across his forehead, and over his cheeks. The morning sun had not yet broken over the top of the mountains. Light frost coated the long grass in the meadows and the cold, thin air had a scalpel-like bite to it. Below him, through a descending march of spindly lodgepole pine trees that strung all the way to the valley floor, a single sodium pole light illuminated the center of a small complex of faded log structures. It was 7:40, Thursday, October 25.
He raised the field glasses. Below was a lodge and four smaller outbuildings in the complex: a garage, a sagging barn, a smokehouse, and what looked like a guest cabin. He focused in on the hoary metal roof of the lodge and noted several wet ovals on the surface, meaning there were sources of heat inside. That was confirmed when he shifted his view to the mouth of a galvanized chimney pipe that exhaled a thin plume of white woodsmoke.
When the wind shifted from east to west, he thought he caught the slight aroma of coffee and bacon from below. Breakfast, he thought. The place was occupied, but by whom?
He turned to his vehicle and slid the scoped Ruger Ranch rifle from beneath the front seat of his Jeep. It was the rifle he’d liberated from the old man in the boat. He checked the loads. The thirty-round magazine was packed full with red-tipped Hornady 6.8-millimeter SPC shells in 110 grain. Nate seated a live round in the chamber with the Garand breech bolt-action and slung the weapon over his shoulder. His. 500 shoulder holster was buckled on over his hoodie and fleece for quick access. A pair of binoculars hung from a strap looped around his neck.
He was ready.
The trip from Colorado Springs to the compound in Idaho had taken slightly more than nineteen hours after the killing of the third operator.
Despite initial objections from Gordon, Nate had persuaded his father to take his family away. Nate gave him half a brick of cash and apologized to his stepmother and half sisters for meeting the way they did.
Nate didn’t leave the scene until 1:00 in the afternoon. No other operators arrived.
He’d debated himself how much evidence-if any-to leave behind. The body contained no legitimate identification. The man had a wallet in his pocket with $689 in it and a Colorado driver’s license. No credit cards, no receipts, no other cards of any kind. And when Nate studied the license, he recognized a professional forgery right away. The license was too new, stiff, and shiny. It was the kind of identification Nate had been given to use a hundred times in the past. There wasn’t a single thing wrong with it except the wrong name, Social Security number, address, and birthplace. Nate had nodded to himself in recognition. In the rare circumstance that the body of a member of The Five was left in a country they weren’t supposed to be in, there would be no means of identifying him. It rarely happened-they prided themselves on bringing everyone back every time-but it was standard operating procedure. This alone would send Nemecek a message.
Rather than backtrack through Colorado Springs and drive north on highly trafficked I-25, he took rural county roads for sixty miles until he merged onto I-70 west and on to Grand Junction, Colorado. The way north and west from there lost him five hours more than if he’d taken the other route, but he thought if anyone were looking for him, he’d escape their attention. It was evening when he hit the outskirts of Grand Junction and stopped to fill the tank and spare gas can before proceeding west into Utah, and then north toward Salt Lake City. He was never out of sight of the mountains, and he drove with his eyes wide open, noting every potential escape route toward those mountains if he encountered a roadblock or an enemy vehicle.
As he drove and lost his light, he replayed all the events of the morning, from meeting his father to sending his old man away from his own house with a wad of unmarked cash. He could only speculate on what faced him, based on his knowledge and experiences with John Nemecek. When he ran everything back through his mind, he concluded with more questions than answers.
Nate needed to know how many people were in the team with Nemecek. Once he knew for sure, he could tailor his strategy and defense. His mentor liked working with small strike forces of no more than eight, but it wasn’t a hard-and-fast prerogative. Nemecek liked eight because the number was perfect for a small footprint but an effective infiltration. Only one large vehicle or two midsized cars were necessary to move everyone into place on the ground. Eight could be broken up into the smaller units Nemecek favored: two killing squads of four each, including the team leader, a communications operative, and a jack-of-all-trades (JOAT) operator trained in emergency medical triage and whatever other special skills the particular mission required.
Assuming eight was the number, Nate could identify five so far. This included the three dead operators, and the mystery woman who’d killed Large Merle. That meant there were three other operators out there somewhere-maybe with Nemecek, maybe on an assignment of their own. In this case, Nate guessed the JOAT would be the woman. She was attractive and aggressive enough to turn Large Merle’s head and manipulate him into giving away Nate’s previous location as well as cold-blooded enough to kill his colleague when he was no longer useful to her. Women were rare in the ranks of Mark V, but not unheard of.
He didn’t count the three locals Nemecek had recruited to ambush him from the river.
And what if there were more? Nemecek knew Nate knew him. The number could be smaller, but Nate doubted that because of logistics. But it could very well be larger, maybe even double or more the size Nate anticipated. If that was the case, Nate would need help. And he knew there was only one place he could find it: Idaho.
Nate was still puzzled by the demeanor and physical appearance of the three dead operators in Colorado. The colleagues he had worked with years before were unique in looks and attitude in that they were fairly normal and didn’t stand out from the crowd: Nate and Large Merle being two exceptions to that rule. The Peregrines who made it through training weren’t the bodybuilders, or the ex-jocks, or the street fighters and ex-bouncers who volunteered for special ops. They weren’t the hard cases covered with tattoos and jewelry. The men who’d spent their young lives being ogled, brown-nosed, or feared by peers couldn’t handle what Mark V training threw at them. They didn’t have what it took when the mental part of the training took place, the weeks designed to humiliate and break down the recruits.
The ones who made it, like Nate, made it because of something different inside: a desire to succeed no matter what, a defined and accomplished hatred for their tormentors, and an almost pathological desire to be a member of one of the most elite special-operations units ever devised. The Peregrines who emerged had unbelievable mental toughness, what Nemecek called “high-tensile guts.” They weren’t necessarily the greatest physical specimens, or the tallest or biggest. The majority of them were fresh-faced and soft-spoken. Most came from places like Oklahoma, or Arkansas, or South Carolina, or Montana, or Wyoming. Many were raised on farms and ranches, and most were hunters and fishermen or mountain climbers or kayakers. Men who had grown up amid the cruelty and amorality of nature itself, where predators were predators and prey was prey.
Nate had always thought he had an advantage over the others in his class, and it was that thought that kept him going. He had since realized that perhaps it was a false advantage, but at the time it sustained him and drove him on. Nate thought at the time, during the training, that no one around him could possibly understand the single-minded dedication it took to be a falconer. The rigors and psychological suspense of logic and disbelief he’d encountered capturing and flying birds of prey had honed his disposition and dedication to a place none of his fellow operators could yet grasp. Nemecek got it, which is why he’d approached Nate in the first place.
The men who survived Peregrine training were highly intelligent, resourceful, entrepreneurial, apolitical but loyal to their country and their fellow operators-and capable of killing without second thought or remorse. Killing was considered part of living, a by-product of the job and nothing more or less. It had to be done, and there wasn’t anything particularly glorious about it. And those who were killed had it coming.
So the look of all three operators Nate had encountered ran counter to his experience. The two in the Tahoe looked like hyped-up gangbangers. The older one in the house looked like a middle-management thug.
It puzzled him. Either Nemecek’s standards had slipped or his current operators were harbingers of a new generation.
Now Nate picked his way down the mountainside toward the compound below. He moved from tree to tree, and paused often to look and listen. Despite what many people thought, mountain valleys didn’t awake in silence. Squirrels chattered warnings of his approach to their compadres. A single meadowlark perched on an errant strand of wire sang out its haunting chorus.
He moved within a hundred yards of the compound before he slid down to his haunches to observe. Although the outbuildings and guest cabin looked unoccupied, he could see the shadowed grille of an old Toyota Land Cruiser in the open garage. The vehicle was familiar. It was a stock SUV that had been retrofitted to accommodate a handicapped driver. But he wondered why there was only a single auto present when there should have been three or four.
Although he couldn’t yet figure it out, something was awry from how he remembered the place. His only proof was a sense of unease.
Through his binoculars, he swept the tree-lined slopes on the far side of the small valley. In the early-morning sun there was the chance of a glint from glass or metal. If there were operators up there in the trees watching the compound, he couldn’t pick them out.
The last four times he’d visited the compound there were five ex-operators who used it as a base camp and headquarters. Oscar Kennedy, who’d been a paraplegic since taking a bullet in the spine in Somalia, owned the compound and managed its operations. Kennedy was a contemporary of Nate’s in Mark V, and the man he knew best and trusted the most. Kennedy maintained close contacts with personnel in the Defense Department in Washington and operators within the Joint Special Operations Command, the small and secret agency that oversaw special ops for every branch of the military. When Nate needed to know what was going on, he asked Oscar Kennedy to make inquiries.
Oscar Kennedy was a man of God, and the reverend for a small wilderness church located off Highway 33 between Victor and Driggs. His congregation was small and diverse, including not only ex-military and isolated survivalists but counterculture diaspora from the resort areas over the Tetons in Jackson Hole. Nate had attended a couple of services over the years. The Reverend Kennedy preached self-reliance and self-determination, and shameless love for a tough and judgmental God. He worked in themes and lessons he’d learned in Special Forces with a twist, and spoke of the holy need for warriors, the moral authority of Christian soldiers, with special emphasis on Romans 13.
Other ex-special operators who had found their way to Idaho and the compound-dubbed Camp Oscar-were Jason Sweeney, Mike McCarthy, Gabriel Cohen, and Aldo Nunez. Only two of the men, Sweeney and Kennedy, had been operators for Mark V. The others had been members of other branches. Naturally, there was a built-in rivalry between them, but they had one thing in common: all had turned their backs on the government they had once worked for but considered themselves patriotic Americans. They were well armed, well trained, and absolutely out of the mainstream. Since Idaho and Camp Oscar offered refuge and common ground, they’d found their way there. Nate had told no one of the existence of Camp Oscar, including Joe Pickett. It was important to maintain the secrecy and integrity of the camp and its occupants.
Idaho was one of the few places in the country suited so well for such a compound of ex-operatives. The state was unique and its people independent, for the most part. Nate found Wyoming and Montana to have similar traits, but he understood why Kennedy had chosen Idaho.
There was a live-and-let-live mentality, Kennedy had explained to Nate, that allowed and even encouraged diversity of politics and opinions as long as neither were imposed on others. The ex-operatives were all libertarians of different degrees, although there were mighty political arguments among them. A couple of the men, including Gabriel Cohen and Jason Sweeney, considered the country already ruined. Cohen called it “the wimpification of America.” They were fully prepared to join a secessionist movement at the drop of a hat to help create a nation along the lines of what the Founders intended. Nunez and McCarthy weren’t yet ready to give up completely on Washington, D.C., but they simply wanted to be left alone. And if they weren’t left alone, they planned to push back. Oscar Kennedy kept his innermost feelings close to the vest, but Nate suspected Oscar would join with the secessionists if compelled to make a choice.
The one thing all the ex-operatives agreed on, though, was their solidarity. It was all for one and one for all, much like the credos of each branch of the Special Forces. But in this case, the enemy was likely to be the same government that had trained and selected them.
The year before, when Joe and Nate had found a missing woman named Diane Shober in the mountains of southern Wyoming, Joe had wanted to return her to her dysfunctional family because it was his duty to do so. After talking to her and assessing her views, Nate had disagreed and escorted her to Camp Oscar, where she’d thrived. And as far as he knew, she was inside the lodge.
But why no vehicles, except for Oscar Kennedy’s?
Something was very wrong. And who was inside cooking breakfast?
After waiting for another hour and giving up on the idea that someone would come outside, Nate kept low and sprinted to the back of the lodge and leaned against the outside wall. He kept still and scanned the trees behind him for movement but saw nothing unusual. With his cheek and ear pressed against the rough surface of a log, he concentrated on trying to detect movement inside. Rapid footfalls could mean they knew he was there. But it was quiet.
Closed-circuit cameras were installed throughout the property and fed to several monitors inside, but they were mounted in trees and on poles, and they pointed away from the lodge, not back toward it. Motion detectors were set up along the approach road on the far side of the property, but Nate had come from the back, through the trees, where he assumed there were no electronics. He’d learned through experience that motion detectors in wildlife-heavy brush were virtually useless and generally ignored.
He assumed his arrival had been undetected, either by anyone watching the compound or by whoever was inside.
There was a dark door that led inside into a mudroom. The door was painted reinforced steel made to appear to be wood. Like the door, the lodge itself looked rustic, but it was a fortress. Oscar Kennedy had used family money as well as disability income to make sure of it. The windows were triple-paned and designed to be bulletproof. All the entrance doors were steel, set into steel frames. Inside, like so many spare pairs of reading glasses scattered around in a normal residence, were loaded weapons within easy grasp.
Still pressed against the outside wall and keeping his senses on full alert, he reached out and felt beneath a log on the left side of the back door until his fingertips brushed against metal buttons: the keypad.
He wondered if they’d changed the code since he was there last. If they had, his old entry numbers would signal them inside that someone was trying to gain access. And if they hadn’t, punching correct numbers would alert whoever was inside that he was coming in.
But he needed answers as much as he needed allies. And if his friends had been replaced by Nemecek’s men, he’d know very quickly and try to fight his way out. He was willing to take the chance. Nate slung the rifle over his shoulder and secured it. He didn’t think he’d be needing a long gun inside right away: too clumsy and cumbersome in a tight space.
With his. 500 out and cocked, he reached under the log and found the keypad. The code always set his teeth on edge: 9-1-1.
The lock on the door released with a click, and he grasped the handle, threw the door open, and hurled himself inside.