Nate hit the floor of the mudroom and rolled a full rotation with his revolver extended in front of him. The door from the mudroom into the main lodge was propped open, and he could see clearly down a shadowed hallway all the way to a brightly lit corner of the kitchen itself. A slim woman stood at the stove, and she turned in his direction at the sound of the door opening.
She was young, mid-twenties, dark-haired, and obviously frightened. She held a cast-iron skillet aloft about six inches from the top of the range. In her other hand was a spatula. Her wide-open blue eyes were split down the middle by the front sight of his. 500. Her mouth made a little O.
“Who’s there?” a male called out from inside the kitchen. Nate recognized the Reverend Oscar Kennedy’s voice.
“Me,” Nate said.
“Jesus,” the woman said, still holding the skillet and spatula in the air as if her limbs were frozen, “It’s him.” She had a pleasant Southern accent that made everything she said seem significant and earthy.
“Is it the infamous Nate Romanowski?” Kennedy boomed, then appeared on the threshold in his wheelchair. The woman stood motionless behind him.
“Oscar,” Nate said as a greeting, and stood up.
“You can put that thing away,” Kennedy said, wheeling down the hall toward him. “She’s on our side.”
“Maybe not his side,” the woman huffed, pronouncing it like sad and throwing a vicious evil eye toward Nate, and turned on her heel and vanished out of view.
Nate grunted, holstered his weapon, and leaned forward to give his old friend a greeting hug. They slapped each other on the back-Kennedy was surprisingly strong, and the slaps stung Nate’s injured shoulder-then released quickly.
“What’s her problem?” Nate asked.
“Haley? She’s all right. You scared her, is all.”
From out of view in the kitchen, Haley called out, “He didn’t scare me, and you know it. Now, make him go away.”
Oscar Kennedy waved his hand as if to suggest to Nate to pay her no mind. “Let me look at you,” Kennedy said, wheeling back a quarter-turn and squinting. Then: “You look not so good.”
“I’m fine,” Nate said, releasing the rifle sling and letting the weapon slide down his arm, where he caught it before the butt hit the floor. He crossed the room and propped it up in the corner.
“I guess the fact that you’re actually here and still with us is a miracle in itself,” Kennedy said.
Nate sighed. “So you know.”
“Some of it, anyway.”
“So where is everybody? Where’s Diane Shober?”
“Gone.”
“Where are the others?”
“Gone.”
“‘Gone’?”
“Nate, the purge is on. But for some reason the operators seem to have packed up and left. I’ve seen no sign of them since yesterday.”
“I might know why,” Nate said. Then: “‘The purge’?”
Kennedy nodded. He was dark and fleshy, his bulk straining the pearl buttons of his patterned cowboy shirt. His condition had made him resemble an upside-down pear: pumped-up upper body, shriveled legs. His big round head was shaved, and he had no facial hair save a smudge of silver-streaked black under his lower lip. Nate noted the holstered. 45 semiauto strapped to the right side of his wheelchair within easy reach. The old-school operators still loved their 1911 Colts.
Oscar Kennedy narrowed his eyes. The look, Nate thought, was almost accusatory.
“They’re taking us all out,” Kennedy said. “And you’re the reason why.”
“So where did everybody go?” Nate asked Kennedy. He sat at the kitchen table. A bank of computer servers hummed in the next room. Somewhere above them on the top floor, Haley stomped around in a room. The reading room of the lodge, which had once been where hunters gathered after a day in the mountains, had been converted into a communications center. Large and small monitors were set up on old pine card tables. Wiring, like exposed entrails, hung down behind the electronics and pooled on the floor. Nate remembered the size of the generator in one of the outbuildings that supplied the compound with power. From this location, Oscar Kennedy could monitor events and communications across the globe via satellite Internet access. And because he didn’t draw from the local grid, he could do so without raising much attention.
Kennedy wheeled his chair up to the table and sighed. “This isn’t High Noon,” he said. “They didn’t desert you when you needed them most. It’s a lot worse than that.”
Nate cocked his eyebrows, waiting for more.
Kennedy said, “Sweeney and McCarthy were killed in a car accident two weeks ago. On that steep hill into Victor. The Idaho Highway Patrol said they lost control of their vehicle, but I think they were forced off the road.”
“Any proof of that?”
“None,” Kennedy said. “Other than they’d negotiated that stretch of highway hundreds of times. Yes, it can get treacherous in the snow and ice, but they were used to that. We had our first winter storm that morning, and they were going into town to get groceries. They never came back.”
Nate felt cold dread spreading through him. Jason Sweeney and Mike McCarthy were serious men. Sweeney was paranoid at times and scary when he got angry, but he was capable of locking his emotions down when the going got tough. McCarthy was an ex-Navy SEAL who was so silent it was easy to forget he was in the room.
“Two weeks,” Nate said. “That’s about the same time things started happening in Wyoming. You heard about Large Merle?”
Kennedy nodded and gestured toward the communications center.
“Any chatter about McCarthy and Sweeney from official channels?” Nate asked.
“None. Which told me everything I needed to know.” Kennedy smiled sadly. “Whenever one of our brothers passes on, there’s chatter. Guys email and post stories about the fallen warrior and let others in his unit know where to send flowers and donations and such. But in this case, there was nothing. Not a word. Not even a link to the write-up in the local paper. And when I sent a few emails out to their old unit, there were no replies. That means somebody put a lid on it.”
“How can that be?” Nate asked. “Nobody has the juice to tell ex-operators not to grieve. No one can tell them anything.”
“It’s not that,” Kennedy said. “The emails I sent never got there. And if anything was posted on the secure blogs and websites, it got deleted just as fast. Our guys in high places have that ability: to scrub digital communications. They’ve had it for years, but I’ve never encountered it personally. Somebody somewhere put out the word that there would be no mention of Sweeney and McCarthy. And because all communications go through conduits that we-our government, I mean-own, they can squelch anything they want to. They even have the ability to go back and ‘disappear’ items that were posted years ago. That’s a new capability, I think, but I’ve heard them talk about it unofficially.”
Nate shook his head. “You mean they can delete history?”
“Digital history, at least,” Kennedy said. “They have the ability, if they wanted, to scrub every story, article, post, or reference to the moon landing. They could make it appear that the event never took place. Or change the narrative.”
“Christ.”
“It’s a tremendous tool for counterinsurgency,” Kennedy said. “Think about it. The terrorists use email, websites, and social media to connect. If our guys can alter or delete their communications and history, they’re fucked.”
“But someone is doing it to us,” Nate said.
“I’m afraid so, yes.”
“Official or unofficial?”
“You tell me.”
As Oscar Kennedy talked, Haley reentered the room and studiously avoided eye contact with Nate. She padded over to the sink.
“Mind if I do the dishes now?” she asked Kennedy.
“It can wait,” he said.
She turned on him, and her eyes flared. “How about you do them when you feel the time is right, then? I’m not your maid.”
“Fine, then,” Kennedy said with a sigh. She did a shoulder roll away from him and turned on the taps.
She said, “Let me know when he’s gone, okay?”
Nate looked to Kennedy for an explanation.
“She came with Cohen,” Kennedy said. “They were an item.”
“‘Were’?”
Gabriel Cohen had been tall and rangy, with black curly hair. He was a talker and a charmer, and women fell for him. He was charismatic, passionate, and he drew people in. He’d looked Middle Eastern enough to be dropped inside the region into the hottest spots. Since he spoke Arabic and a smattering of Urdu, he could operate in several countries, including Pakistan.
Kennedy nodded. “He’s gone, too.”
“Jesus. What happened?”
“ You happened,” Haley spat. She scrubbed the pots so violently, water splashed across the countertop.
“The cops said it was a bar fight,” Kennedy said, ignoring her. He chinned toward Haley. “Those two got in a big argument. It had to do with her staying here. Nunez didn’t like the idea of anyone bringing a stranger inside, and she overheard him telling Cohen. When Cohen didn’t defend her, she ripped into him. This place,” Kennedy said, “isn’t as big as you might think. There are lots of spats and arguments when you’ve got a bunch of people cooped up in here. Plus, there was the stress of Sweeney and McCarthy dying.”
“Anyway…” Nate prompted.
“Cohen left pissed-off ten days ago. It wasn’t the first time. I knew he’d likely just go down to Victor or over to Tetonia to get drunk and hash it out in his own mind. They found him beaten to death outside a bar in Tetonia. Blunt-force trauma. No suspects at all.”
“So they were waiting for him,” Nate said.
“That’s my theory.”
“They probably jumped him from behind,” Nate said. “Cohen was a tough guy, and you wouldn’t want to take him on from the front.”
“He was tough,” Kennedy said, shaking his head sadly. “But we’re all just flesh and blood. We’re all mortal. Even you.”
Haley reacted by throwing the dishrag into the sink with obvious disgust. When she turned on them, her eyes were filled with tears and her chin trembled. “You talk about Gabriel like I’m not in the room, Oscar.”
“Your choice.”
“But I’m not here by choice,” she said. Her Southern accent was honey-laced, Nate thought. But her voice built as she said, “I’m a prisoner. My man is gone, and the wolves are right outside the door. I’m doing my best, but I don’t have much left. So at least extend me the courtesy of not talking about him as if I wasn’t in the room, okay?”
Then she faked a slap at Kennedy’s head-he ducked-and again left the room. Nate watched her leave and was surprised to find his insides stir. She was fit and fiery, with that mane of jet-black hair and large blue eyes. She filled her tight jeans nicely and had a graceful way of moving-even when she was throwing a wet rag or stomping around-he found surprisingly attractive. He stanched the feeling. Alisha was still there with him-a braid of her hair on his weapon-and he instantly felt guilty about it.
When she was gone, Nate asked, “How long has she been here?”
“Three months, July,” he said. “We’re like an old married couple the way we fight all the time. She’s got a good heart, though. I’m fond of her, and it’s tough on her Cohen is gone. Really tough.”
Nate did a quick calculation in his head. She couldn’t be the vixen who lured Large Merle to his death if she’d been in Idaho for three months. But who was to say there was only one vixen?
“Have you checked her out?” Nate asked Kennedy softly.
The man nodded. “Of course, or I wouldn’t have let her in the door with Cohen. In a nutshell, she’s a North Carolina girl, born and raised in Charlotte. Old Southern family. Went to the University of Montana, then moved to New York. She was some kind of prodigy at a big public-relations firm for a while, got married to a sharpie, then divorced. No kids. She wanted to move back home, and she bounced around for a while until she ran into Cohen at Sun Valley and he brought her back here. No gaps in her history, no likely interactions with bad guys. Most of all, no incentive to infiltrate our compound. She was crazy about Cohen, even though they fought all the time.”
Nate nodded. “Are you two…?”
“No,” Kennedy said flatly. “Not that I haven’t suggested it. But no.”
“And Nunez?” Nate asked.
Aldo Nunez was a wiry man of Hispanic origins with a cherubic face and the ability to insinuate himself into any group. Nate had met him only once but liked him immediately.
Kennedy said, “He went down to talk to the local cops to find out what they knew about Cohen’s beating a week ago. That’s the last we’ve seen of him. He just never came back. You didn’t know Nunez very well, but believe me, he’s not the type to bug out.”
Nate rubbed his face with his hands.
“Diane Shober went with him,” Kennedy said flatly.
“So she’s gone, too.”
“I’m afraid so. Collateral damage.”
“It’s worse than I could have guessed,” Nate said.
Kennedy simply nodded as he kept his eyes on Nate.
“She’s right,” Kennedy said, referring to what Haley had exclaimed. “We’ve been virtual prisoners here. Honestly, I’m not afraid to go out, but I understand the odds. So we haven’t left this place since Nunez vanished. I haven’t been able to go to the church to preach.”
He chinned toward the window above the sink. “We haven’t opened the curtains until just this morning. We’re locked down and I’d like to say we’re ready for anything, but it depends what they throw at us. As you know, this is a tough place to get into if you don’t know the keypad code. I can’t see them trying an all-out assault. Instead, they’ve been patient and they picked us off one by one.”
Nate said, “Why do you think they’re gone now?”
Kennedy shrugged. “Because we’re still alive, and God has a plan for me. He wants me to continue to do what I’m doing here.”
After a few moments, the Reverend Oscar Kennedy said, “You came here for help and information, Nate. I’m not sure I can provide information, and the men who could help you have been taken from us.”
“I understand,” Nate said. “I’m sorry.”
“It is what it is.”
“Do you know how many men Nemecek has on his team?” Nate asked. “Has there been any chatter about changes in tactics?”
“A little,” Kennedy said. “Obscure references. Some serious complaints. But I can’t recall seeing a number, and certainly not a list of operatives.”
“Damn.”
“Everything is locked down tight. Tighter than you can believe.”
“What do you mean when you say ‘serious complaints’?” Nate asked. “About what?”
“The quality of Nemecek’s team. There is some grumbling from ex-Five operators still in the business that quality control isn’t what it used to be when he’d been selecting men. I get the impression,” Kennedy said, “there is a feeling Nemecek has surrounded himself with a close group of men without strong character. Not that they aren’t well trained like we all were, but that he’d let the intangibles slip. There’s been some chatter that Nemecek prefers yes-men to patriots these days. That at least some of the Peregrines are there to serve John Nemecek instead of their country. He’s ambitious-we both know that. He likes power, and he always thinks he’s the smartest man in the room.”
Nate nodded. “So he’s surrounded himself with thugs.”
“That sums it up pretty well. But you know how it is. Ex-Five operators always think they had it tougher than the new recruits. It’s part of the game.”
“But in this case they may have a point,” Nate said. “The three men I saw in Colorado wouldn’t have been in Mark V ten years ago. They would have washed out, believe me.”
“Because you defeated them?” Kennedy asked.
“Because they weren’t that good,” Nate said. He looked around the small kitchen, at the thick window and the steel window frames. At the dishes undone in the sink.
“Maybe we should all get out of here,” Nate said.
Kennedy quickly shot that down. “Never. This is my home, and my church needs me. I owe them. I can’t just leave. My work has just started here, Nate. The word is starting to get out that people like us have a place to come and find fellowship and worship God.”
Nate didn’t argue. Kennedy was adamant.
“Can you print out some of the chatter you found?” Nate asked. “I might be able to decipher some of it. I need anything I can get.”
“I’ll find what I can,” Kennedy said, wheeling back from the table. “I’ll check to see if there’s anything new. Maybe we can find out what happened to our friends out there.”
“Thank you.”
Kennedy spun in his chair and propelled it toward the next room, where his computers hummed. But in the doorway he stopped suddenly, and turned a half turn so he could look at Nate.
“Are you finally going to tell me what this is all about? A lot of blood has been shed, and we’ve lost some really good men. I’d like to know why directly from you, because I’m not sure I can believe what I read on the Net anymore. I’m sure Nemecek has changed history.”
Nate said, “You know why.”
Kennedy’s face flushed with anger. “I know John Nemecek is your mortal enemy. But what I don’t know-and I deserve to know-is exactly what happened back in 1998 in the desert.”
“Nineteen ninety-nine,” Nate corrected.
“So be it,” Kennedy said. But his face was set and he wasn’t moving.
“Print out what you can,” Nate said, “and I’ll tell you if you really want to know.”
The Reverend Oscar Kennedy glared at Nate for a while until his expression finally softened. “Okay, then,” he said.
While Kennedy was in the computer room, Haley reentered and strode purposefully toward Nate and sat down at the table. There was no avoiding eye contact this time. She was all business.
“I want you to find the men who did it,” she said. “You owe it to me and to Gabriel. Not to mention the others.”
He stared back at her and again felt the little tug inside him as he looked into her wide blue eyes. He had always been a sucker for long black hair and blue eyes, especially if they belonged to intelligent women.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” she said. “At one point I really wanted to finally meet you and hear if what they said was true. But not under these circumstances. Now I just want you to go and find them.”
He remained quiet.
She said, “I’ve heard about the falcons and a little about what you were involved in years ago. Gabriel talked about that big gun you carry. He said you’d just show up from time to time without any notice. He also said if it came to a fight, he’d want you in his corner more than anyone else he knew. That’s saying something, you know.”
Nate had to look away because it seemed her eyes were reaching inside him.
“Diane Shober told me how you brought her here. She said you were good to her, but she couldn’t figure you out. She said she got the impression you were carrying a very heavy weight around with you, but you wouldn’t talk about it. I liked her, although she was very intense. We got along, and it was nice to have another woman in the place. I never had a sister, and she was like a sister to me. To think that they would hurt her, too… it makes me sick.”
Nate nodded.
“Oscar is a wonderful, gentle soul,” she said, her eyes shifting toward the computer room. “He really does want to help people, and he’s a true believer. I can’t really say I buy everything he says, but I know in my heart he’s sincere and kind. He almost makes me believe in God, to be around a man like that. If a man as tough and practical as Oscar becomes an evangelical, I almost have to concede that there is something out there bigger than what we see, you know? And after what’s happened to us here, I have no doubt there is true evil in the world. So doesn’t it make sense there would be true good? If nothing else, you need to do what you can to protect him. You need to eliminate the people depraved enough to try and hurt him.”
Before Nate could reply, she said, “I’m going to go pack. You can take us both out of here. Maybe someday Oscar can come back when it’s safe.”
With that, she reached out and patted the back of Nate’s hand and left the table to go upstairs and pack.
Nate took a chair next to Kennedy and opened a laptop.
“Do you mind?” Nate asked, gesturing to the computer.
“Feel free.”
“Is it a secure IP address?”
Kennedy said, “As secure as I can make it. But that’s no guarantee of anything with the capability they have.”
“Got it,” Nate said while the laptop booted up. If Nemecek had gotten to Gordon in Colorado and sent a team to the compound in Idaho, there was only one other target close to Nate: Joe Pickett. And his family. He prayed they weren’t under surveillance, or worse.
He called up the old falconry site and started a new thread:
TRAINING AND FLYING MY NEW KESTREL
‹0COMMENTS›
Under it, he wrote:
TRAINING MY NEW FALCON IS TURNING OUT TO BE A VERY BAD EXPERIENCE. NOTHING I TRY WILL WORK, AND I’M GETTING FRUSTRATED AND CONCERNED. IT’S A DISASTER ON EVERY FRONT. I JUST WANT TO SAY TO THAT BIRD, “FLY AWAY NOW AND DON’T LOOK BACK.”
“Thank you,” Nate said to Kennedy, closing the laptop.
“I’m finding some stuff,” his friend said. “I’ll be back with you in a minute.”
When Oscar Kennedy rolled back into the kitchen with a sheaf of printouts, he eyed Nate with suspicion.
“I hope Haley didn’t unload on you,” he said.
“She didn’t.”
“She can come on pretty strong.”
“I like that in her,” Nate said.
“Uh-oh, you’re smitten,” Kennedy said simply, shaking his head.
“She agrees with me that we should all leave now.”
“I’m not surprised,” Kennedy said. “But I’m not going anywhere. You can take her, though. Get her on a plane somewhere so she can fly back to her family.”
“Are you sure you won’t go?”
“I’m sure, and that’s that,” Kennedy said.
He handed the printouts to Nate. “I was able to locate most of the blog posts. But a few have been scrubbed since the last time I saw them.”
Nate took the stack and put it aside on the table for later. Upstairs, he could hear Haley shuffling around in her room, no doubt throwing clothing into a suitcase.
“Unburden yourself,” Kennedy said.
“We don’t have much time,” Nate said, gesturing toward the upstairs room.
“We have enough.”
Nate sat back, putting himself back in that place again. Recalling the heat and hot wind and dust, the smells of desert and cooking food. The elaborate tents and fifty four-by-four vehicles flown in just for the occasion. The flowing robes of the guests. And the dozens of falcons, hooded and still, roosting on their poles.
“Have you ever heard of the houbara bustard?” Nate asked Kennedy.
“No.”
It took Nate ten minutes to tell the story. As he did, Kennedy’s reaction changed from intense interest to seething outrage. Red bloomed on his cheeks, and beads of perspiration appeared across his forehead.
“Holy Mother of God,” Kennedy said, when Nate was done. “It’s worse than I imagined.”
“That’s who I’m dealing with,” Nate said. “And what I’ve been dealing with for all these years. I hate that all of you’ve been dragged into it.”
“Nate,” Kennedy asked, his tone softening. “How have you kept this to yourself?”
“No choice, because I’m responsible for what happened, too. And the result.”
Nate heard Haley descending the stairs heavily, likely with her suitcase. He rose to go help her, but Kennedy pushed his chair back and blocked his path.
“You can’t blame yourself, Nate.”
“I do,” he said, attempting to step around the chair. Kennedy was quick and rotated the wheels sharply and pushed back into the doorway. Mid-morning sun lit up his face from the window above the sink.
“Oscar, let me by.”
“We need to talk about this. No one can shoulder the burden of what you’ve just confessed.”
“I’m just going to give her a hand with her suitcase.”
“We need to talk-”
Oscar Kennedy didn’t finish his sentence because his head snapped back violently and his hands fell limply to his sides and there was a simultaneous crack-pock sound inside the kitchen. Blood and matter flecked the wall behind Kennedy from floor to ceiling, and Kennedy slumped in his chair.
Nate instinctively dropped into a squat and fought an urge to cover his head as he did so. He wheeled and saw the neat dime-sized hole in the glass of the window above the sink, then dived toward the chair to push his friend out of the view of the window.
From the stairwell, Haley called out, “Hey? What was that?”
Nate shouted, “Sniper! Get down now!”
On his hands and knees, he scrambled into the computer room, pushing Kennedy’s chair in front of him. Nate hoped to God the injury to his friend wasn’t as bad as he thought it might be.
But it was. When Nate rose to look he saw how much damage a. 50 caliber armor-piercing sniper round could do to a man. Then he looked up and saw Haley in the stairwell, almost to the bottom of the threshold, clutching the handle of her suitcase with both hands. When Haley saw Kennedy’s splayed-out body in the chair, she dropped the suitcase and screamed, covering her face. The suitcase tumbled down the last four steps.
“I said, Get down! ”
Still shrieking, she sat straight back on the stairs, her face still hidden by her hands.
Nate retrieved his rifle as he ran through the mudroom to the back door and then pressed the lock-release mechanism. Once he heard the click and the door was free, he kicked it open rather than fly through it into the grass.
Wondering if the shooter would anticipate his exit from the house and fire again. But there were no shots. Did the shooter even know he was in the house?
He kicked the door wide open a second time-no reaction-and followed it out on the third, hitting the ground and rolling until he could find cover behind a tree trunk.
When he raised the rifle to where he thought the shot had come from-a V in the brush on the northern horizon-he clearly heard a motor start up and a car roar away. Forty-five seconds later, it was gone.
He stood up, bracing himself against the tree. Only then did he realize he’d landed on his injured shoulder, and the pain screamed through him. But not as loud as the screaming from Haley inside the house.
Nate thought of Oscar Kennedy and spun around with pure rage and cried out: “Goddammit!”
Then: “Come on, Haley. We’re going after them.”