by Rhona Weaver
Trey let out a breath. “You and I have seen plenty of miracles in this job—he could still be alive. If they won’t let anyone start digging on the mountain for hours, we need to go with what we’ve got and get the helo up.”
Gus’s voice took on an even more somber tone. “The FBI brass here seem resigned to the worst, especially after Sam’s find on the mountain. But you’re right, we’ve seen miracles before.” He paused. “Trey, I can’t authorize you to break the FBI’s rules. You’ll have to think it through yourself. You’re our incident commander up there.”
“Ten-four. I’ll get back with you.”
Trey hung up the phone, walked over to the conference room window, and stared down at a crowd of visitors gathered around two grazing elk. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, maybe it was too much caffeine, or maybe it was just his caring nature. Whatever the cause, he had a nearly overpowering desire to sit down and cry. But he didn’t. He sucked in a few deep breaths and turned back into the room, where the others expected him to be calm and in control. He hadn’t been a supervisor long, less than a year, and he’d never been involved in a case even remotely this large and complex. He was beginning to understand the loneliness of being at the top.
He knew what he had to do.
* * *
Win woke up in a daze. He’d had a terrible nightmare. He tried to blink his eyes open, but something was wrong, he could only blink with one eye. His hand reached his head and quickly pulled away—the side of his head was matted and crusty. His wrists were bleeding. . . . Lordy! He sat up with a start and nearly fell off the boulder. He’d fallen asleep. Where was the bear! Had he dreamed the bear? Uh, nope. There it was, asleep in the sun, flat on its back, right by the little stream, about twenty yards away. An inquisitive coyote was sniffing at an area of brown-stained grass . . . the blood—Luke’s blood. The awful nightmare was real.
He checked his watch. It was just after noon; he’d been asleep for nearly three hours. The coyote had moved on, but he was still watching the bear nap and the ravens pick around in the dried blood about fifteen minutes later when he saw the bear suddenly sit up and stare off to the east. Then he heard a low hum in the distance. Helicopter? Plane? With the ear injury it was hard to tell the exact direction the sound was coming from, but he prayed they’d be able to fix on the weak signal from the phone.
The sound suddenly grew louder as a helicopter cleared a mountainside slope to the northeast of him. He could hear the high-pitched whine and the steady thump of the rotors even though he couldn’t see it yet. He gingerly stood on the rock, trying to look over the tree line. If the locator on this phone worked way out here, he vowed to be a customer for life.
Before he knew it the bear was sprinting for the tree line and the Park Service’s yellow medevac helicopter was above him, with an armed ranger waving down to him. Win gave the guy a thumbs-up, shimmied off the rock, and waited while the ranger rappelled down about sixty feet with an extra harness. The clearing was too small and steep for the copter to land, but the guy was on the ground in seconds and the helicopter lifted higher above them to regain position in the rising wind.
The small man in the green tactical uniform flipped up the dark sun visor on his helmet and grabbed Win by the shoulders. It was Ranger Jimmy, and Win could tell from his expression that he was both shocked and thrilled to find him alive. The ranger’s eyes immediately went to the left side of Win’s head.
“Head wound? We’ll get you to Idaho Falls!” He shouted it over the noise of the returning helicopter.
“No hospital! Back to Mammoth or the TOC! I’m okay—just lots of blood. Need to report in!” Win was shocked his parched lips could still form words as he yelled back at the ranger. Jimmy wouldn’t call down the chopper until Win agreed to let him wash out both eyes and shine a light into them. Then the ranger did a quick manual exam of his bloody head. Win impatiently submitted while he washed the blood from his mouth with an extra bottle of water.
Jimmy helped him into the harness and they were both winched up to the helicopter by another ranger and strapped in for the ride. It was hard to communicate, since Win couldn’t hear much out of his left ear; he was still bleeding from that side of his head. After he drank two more water bottles and washed more of the blood off his face, he settled for holding one half of the copter’s headset to his right ear.
“We kept getting weak pings from the phone locator out here in the Gallatin Bear Management Area. There isn’t supposed to be anyone in this area—locator kept coming in and out to our repeaters for the last two hours. Trey kept us on it. We had no idea you’d be this far southwest. When we got over Quadrant Mountain, we were able to lock on the general area of the cell phone pretty good. Used binoculars to spot you. No sign of anyone else around, but there was a bear—a grizzly bear in the clearing!” Jimmy was saying through the headset.
“Yeah, he was waiting to have me for lunch. Thank goodness you ruined his plans!” Win tried to smile and it hurt. “The bear kept me out of the water or I coulda cleaned up a little for you.”
He asked Jimmy to relay the coordinates of the clearing to the TOC as he gave their communications guy a quick report that fifteen heavily armed men, including one sniper, had left the clearing for parts unknown just after dawn. Then he tried to focus on not getting too airsick on the bumpy ride back into Mammoth.
He was told to be on a video feed from the rangers’ ready room to the TOC as soon as they landed—twelve more minutes of turbulent riding. When the TOC technician signed off, Win handed the bloody headset back to Jimmy and dropped his head down into his arms for the rest of the flight. He knew Luke had left him a clue to Shepherd’s plans right before he’d pulled the trigger. He just had to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Win unbuckled and stepped out of the helicopter as soon as the skids touched the ground. He ducked his head, cleared the rotors, and jogged off the concrete landing pad and up the ramp to the Park Service’s Fire Response Building a few yards away.
Trey was standing just outside the building’s metal door. “Video conference in five!” he called to Win over the decreasing whine of the helicopter’s engine. “Oh, man! It’s good to see you!”
Win grabbed Trey’s outstretched arm and pulled the ranger to him into a serious bear hug—he wasn’t big on hugging, but it sure felt like the right thing to do at that moment. Trey slapped him on the back a couple of times before his EMT training took over and he starting checking him for injuries.
“Good Lord, you look rough! Where did all that blood come from?”
Win was already moving through the door. “Later. Show me your maps, let’s talk this thing through.”
It was already 12:45—only fifteen minutes until the Israeli delegation’s plane was set to land in West Yellowstone. The video feed in the rangers’ communications room came up on their 27-inch monitor. Win held the maps and sat opposite the screen in front of the camera. The dark screen blinked twice and then a camera shot of SAC Strickland, ASAC Givens, SAC Lomax from Secret Service, Chief Randall, and Kirk Phillips appeared. Those men were seated at a long table in front of various monitors; there were others in the background whom Win didn’t recognize. The higher-ups’ body language told him everyone was on edge, even the normally calm Commander Phillips.
The rangers’ tech guy hit the feed from his end and Win knew they could now see him. Wes Givens actually sat back and gasped when the feed came through. Win saw Mr. Strickland’s heavy eyebrows go up in shock. The SAC began haltingly, “Win, we thought we’d lost you—thank God you’re okay. The rangers said you weren’t badly injured, but . . . but are you all right?” He frowned, then regrouped. “What have you got for us?”
“I’m fine, sir. The trek toward the church, with me as a hostage, then the switch-off on the mountain, was a diversion to draw us into an attack on their compound. They have some sophisticated vi
deo plan set up to use any raid on the church as an online recruitment tool—propaganda. They have a well-established camp, looked like it was within a cave, at the coordinates I sent you. As you can see, it’s only about seven miles northwest of the Cohn Monument site.” His audience’s somber looks became even more grim.
Win shifted in the hard chair and briefly summarized events that were still difficult for him to imagine, much less verbalize. “Luke Bordeaux was at their camp. He pulled off a fake execution at dawn. Most of the blood on me is his. . . . He risked his life to save mine. I’ve got maybe a ruptured eardrum, lots of dings, no serious issues.” That might not be completely true, but if I have serious issues, at least they’re not physical. He kept talking, “Killing me was to be Daniel Shepherd’s revenge for the death of his son in a bank robbery shootout. Shepherd stood in front of me and ordered it. It had nothing to do with their operations today except to tie his men to him, force us to spread our resources, and confuse the situation further.” Which is working out real well for him, from the looks of it.
Win realized he was talking fast, so he tried to slow it down. “Just before Luke pulled the trigger”—Win saw Wes Givens close his eyes when he said that, and Lomax flinched a little—“just before the shot went off, Luke called out ‘La Porte Battante!’ He told Shepherd and Chandler it was a Cajun war cry, but it was actually a clue for me. It’s a famous football formation that won LSU a huge bowl game against Alabama. I think it’s Cajun French for ‘the swinging gate’ or ‘the swinging door.’ It’s a designed swing play—you line up heavy to the left, then on the snap you decoy a fourth of your line to the left while swinging the other three-fourths back to the right and into the end zone. Luke knew I would know about it. He figured those western guys wouldn’t get it. Luke had me facedown; my head was facing due west. If I’m correct about the clue, there has to be a target of some sort to what was my right, or north. The monument dedication site is exactly 7.1 miles south-southeast, or to the left of that point. Luke mentioned getting to their objective by three o’clock this afternoon. They’re mostly using game trails and a few of the park’s hiking trails. They could hike as far as eighteen miles to some other target by three.
“The monument dedication is scheduled for four o’clock. I know they have the militia’s sniper, Clay Ferguson, and maybe one or two other guys moving toward the dedication site. That group, or at least Ferguson, thinks they’re on a suicide mission. I doubt if any of Ron Chandler’s men are in the sniper group. Luke Bordeaux went with Chandler’s team, as they called it.”
Win gave them his conclusions. “I believe the sniper attack on the Cohn Monument is a diversion and their main play is somewhere else. We’ve been reviewing the maps for the last few minutes, and there are five large private lodges to the north-northwest of their camp, just over the park’s boundary. The lodges are all on inholdings within the Gallatin National Forest. They’re very remote by road, but any of the five could be reached by the militiamen by three o’clock this afternoon.”
Win sat back in the metal chair and let the higher-ups digest it all. Some good-hearted ranger had set a cup of hot coffee near his right hand. He took a slow drink and noticed there was fresh blood all over his wrist and hand. As the blood trickled down onto the white Styrofoam cup, he tried to wipe his bloody hand off on his even bloodier jacket. He guessed he did look like something out of a horror movie.
Mr. Strickland leaned forward toward the monitor. “You’re convinced there’s another objective—but why would they strike a private dwelling? It makes no sense, Win.”
“I don’t know, sir. But if Luke’s tip to me is correct, there are maybe twelve heavily armed men moving north of their camp toward something or somebody, and two or three men moving seven miles south toward the monument site. I think we’ve got two situations to counter.”
Lomax cut in. “And if you’re wrong, and we include Bordeaux and Shepherd, we have fifteen heavily armed men moving toward the site where we’ll hold the dedication in less than three hours.”
Win’s SAC gave Lomax a dark look and took back control. “We got our drones and planes up by 8:30 this morning. We haven’t had visuals on anyone moving into our three-mile security radius at this point, but you know how difficult visuals are in this terrain.”
The SAC sat back. He glanced over at Mr. Givens. “Wes? What’s the latest word from Headquarters since we let them know that Win wasn’t in the church compound?”
“The Deputy Director is telling me they don’t want to reposition anyone at this point. They want us to leave Blue Unit’s HRT guys and our SWAT agents on the church compound. Everyone else and everything else, including our air assets, stays put near the monument site or down at Old Faithful until we get those Israelis out of the park. That word comes directly from the top,” Wes said.
“Well, we’re in full agreement with that!” It was the Secret Service SAC chiming in again. “We’ll be driving the VIPs to Old Faithful and the various sites—it’s too windy to make a chopper ride comfortable.” He glanced down at his watch. “Their ETA is less than five minutes. I need to get out to the tarmac.”
Mr. Strickland turned his attention back to the monitor and Win. “We can’t move pre-positioned assets into a new sector without firm intel on what’s going down. We can’t do that, Win.”
“Then let’s check in with the lodge owners by phone, see if there’s a problem. If we can’t reach them, we could send an FBI contingent from here to check the private lodges from the air. The medevac helicopter could hold four of us: Johnson, Hechtner, Emily, and me. Ranger Hechtner knows the area and has technical training. We could at least do a delaying or containment action of some sort if Shepherd’s men show up. These guys have a strong criminal element, Mr. Strickland—some of them are killers. I can vouch for that.”
Win’s big boss seemed to be considering his argument. Win heard someone in the background announce that the delegation’s 767 had circled the field and was on final approach.
“Ms. Stuart is on suspension, but . . . but let me reach out to the State Department and see if they know anything about a possible target outside the park. Surely there isn’t a potential target we haven’t been briefed on.” Everyone on the video call was thinking the same thing—something political could be going on, and for some reason the Bureau had been left out of the loop. It was an operation commander’s worst nightmare.
Mr. Strickland moved out of Win’s sight. “Going to make some calls. Wes, you wrap it up with Win.”
Wes addressed his young agent. “You’re sitting this one out, Win. You can’t even think of going. You’ve hiked all night and nearly gotten your head blown off.”
“Nearly doesn’t count, sir,” Win replied softly. He saw Phillips actually smile just a bit, as he recognized what he’d told Win after the Richter incident. Win kept talking, “I’m sure there are several of us who’ve had a long night. The mission isn’t over yet, sir.”
“Well, get bandaged up. Let us get these folks off the plane and on their geyser tour. We’ll conference again in thirty minutes. Be available and ready to go with your plan, in case the boss gets new intel and we move that way.”
Win turned away from the monitor as the screen went black. Trey was standing to the side, taking it all in. Win nodded to him. “I just volunteered you. Are you willing to go?”
“You know I am. My guys will gear up while I get with Johnson. I haven’t seen Ms. Stuart around. . . . I think she’s been suspended or something. Never mind that, you get cleaned up. Our SRT lockers and showers are in this building. Jimmy will take care of you.”
Win could have stood in the hot shower for hours, but he knew the clock was ticking. He was stunned watching the hot water turn to a deep pink as it washed Luke’s blood from his head and neck. He had to fight back the nausea the sight of it brought on—there was a lot of blood. Luke had certainly made the head shot look convincing. The bla
st from the pistol had singed all the hair above his ear and burned a streak toward his cheek. No need for a haircut there for a few weeks. It was no wonder he still had a distinct ringing in his ears from the handgun’s concussion.
Jimmy showed up with someone’s clean ranger uniform that fit him and, more importantly, with dark-green tactical overalls with U.S. PARK RANGER stenciled across the front and back in black. He changed into the clean clothes and had no intention of asking where they came from. He was even more thankful for the toothbrush and antiseptic Jimmy gave him. He had to get the taste of blood out of his mouth. He pulled on his watch, then fished his small Bible out of his grimy cargo pants and slipped it into the borrowed overalls. Jimmy left the steamy shower room to find body armor and weapons.
As Win was walking out of the empty locker room, buckling the black web belt around his waist, he glanced into the long mirror and did a double take at the reflection he saw there. He wasn’t sure if it was the buzz he still felt from the militiamen’s Gatorade concoction, the shock of his ordeal, or the continuing surge of adrenaline, but the man who looked back at him from the mirror looked older, more confident, and far more intense than Win felt. How had his view of himself changed so much during the last few hours? He saw the angry red stripe of the gunshot blast on the side of his head, but he also saw the deep-blue eyes, the set jaw, and the squared shoulders of a warrior. He was face-to-face with a very capable soldier in the war against terrorism. It suddenly dawned on him: This was the Win Tyler others saw—this was why others often deferred to his leadership. He nodded to the image in the mirror and resolved to make those appearances a reality today. He was going to take this war to his enemy.
