Off the Grid

by C. J. Box

  Before eating, he checked his three falcons to make sure their gullets were still swelled with the meat they had caught and eaten earlier. The sheet he’d spread across the back was spattered with excrement, and he made a note to himself to wash it in the spring the next morning.

  Instead of digging into the cooler for the food he’d bought in Rawlins, Nate grilled the backstrap of a pronghorn antelope over a campfire. It was delicious and it felt right harvesting his meat from where he hunted and slept. He’d killed it earlier in the day with a single shot at a hundred and fifty yards.

  Whenever he poached a game animal without a license he was reminded of how angry Joe Pickett would be if he were there, and it made Nate smile. Joe was a straight arrow and it was one of the qualities he liked about the man.

  • • •

  NATE STOOD AND STRETCHED and let the fire burn itself out after he’d eaten. He hoped he’d be able to find more wood to burn for future campfires. Wood was as scarce as water. He waited until it was dark before he returned to his Jeep for the encrypted phone. Even though there was just the thinnest slice of moon in the sky, the surface of the desert was lit up in a very light blue.

  Because he was so far from a town or any other source of ambient electric light, the stars appeared roiling, endless and deep, like cream poured into an upside-down cup of coffee.

  Instead of opening the door to trigger the interior light, Nate reached in through the open window for the phone. He clipped it to his belt so it was out of the way. Then, one by one, he retrieved his three hooded birds from inside. They didn’t like being disturbed, but they settled down quickly. With the peregrine and red tail on his left fist and the gyrfalcon on his right, he walked about a hundred and fifty yards from his camp and the spring to a small shallow cave that had been carved out of the sandstone ridge by the wind. The cave was located on a rise, so his camp was below him.

  He sat with his back to the rock wall with his legs stretched out and his revolver alongside his thigh. From there, he could see the last of the fire and the light blue smudge that was his dome tent. The three birds stood like little stone statues in a wind hollow at the base of the cave.

  He opened the back of the phone and snapped the battery in before powering it up. While it searched for the satellite, he cupped the face of the phone with his free hand so it wouldn’t leak out any light.

  Tyrell answered without a greeting of any kind. “What the hell are you doing disabling your phone, goddamnit?”

  Nate ignored him. “I’ve made contact. He’s with a guy named Ghazi Saeed.”

  There was a beat. Then: “Spell that.”

  “Figure it out.”

  Tyrell sighed, and said, “Do you have a location where he’s staying?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Has he done or said anything that gives you an idea what he’s up to?”

  “He’s hunting with his falcon. He’s a serious falconer.”

  “Besides that.”

  “One thing,” Nate said. “I’m being watched.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Someone is out there right now. I’m waiting for them to move in.”

  “Is it Ibby?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Whatever you do, keep that battery in your phone on so we can get an exact location on you at all times.”

  In response, Nate powered down the phone, removed the battery, and shoved it in his pocket. He didn’t want to talk or listen anymore and he needed all of his senses on high alert.

  12

  Nate’s eyes shot open and he sat up and leaned forward in the cave while silently cursing himself for falling asleep. He checked his watch. It was one-eighteen a.m. Cold from the ground had penetrated his legs and buttocks and made him momentarily numb. He rocked forward onto his knees and looked out but he didn’t see anything suspicious. No doubt, though, something had awakened him. He closed his eyes and listened.

  Then he heard it again: the distant and very muffled sound of a vehicle door closing.

  The sound came from somewhere beyond the south rim of a toothy vertical wall of sandstone. The top of the rim prevented him from seeing what was up there behind it. There was no light splash from headlights and no sound of a motor running. He’d not heard them approach. But he knew that at least two doors had been shut, and not silently.

  He thought: Sloppy.

  • • •

  FOR THE NEXT FIFTEEN MINUTES, Nate sat as still as his falcons beside him. He concentrated on the south rim, and his eyes adjusted to the starlight. There were three openings in the rock wall, three cracks wide enough for a man to come through toward his camp. Whether or not the openings were as wide on the top where the vehicle was, he didn’t know. There was also the possibility, he thought, that the intruder or intruders might skirt the rock formations entirely and flank the camp on the right or left.

  He tensed when a single mountain plover chirped and flew out of the third opening like a shot. The plover was a ground bird and something or somebody had disturbed its nesting area. The little bird looked like a light blue spark as it flew through the starlight.

  Nate swiveled slightly and raised his scoped revolver with both hands to steady it. A good scope like the one he had mounted on his .500 gathered a little more light than the naked eye. He trained the crosshairs on the third opening.

  There were three of them. He could see their heads bobbing slowly as they crept one after the other through the crack in the wall. He couldn’t see their features yet, just glimpses of the crowns of their heads in a thin bar of starlight that penetrated the crack through a fissure. They moved like ghosts.

  They paused at the mouth of the opening, which was unfortunately where the shadow was the deepest. He guessed they were observing his camping spot and going over last-minute plans. Although there was a slight cold breeze, he could hear the faint murmur of whispered voices.

  Two of the three emerged from the mouth and moved toward the camp. They were bent over, walking, not running. He couldn’t see if they were armed. Man Number One crab-walked toward the tent. Man Number Two angled toward Nate’s Jeep.

  Man Number Three hung back, not letting himself be seen.

  Come on out with your buddies, Nate mouthed to himself.

  As Man Number One got within ten feet of Nate’s dome tent, he straightened up and closed the distance swiftly. As he did, he raised his arms above his head. When he reached the tent, he brought his hands down and snorted with effort and the sword he held sliced through the fabric and thudded into something inside. Nate saw the blade flash in the starlight.

  Then, with energy surely fueled by fear and a release of tension, Man Number One raised the sword again and again and hacked into the tent. The sound of the blade hitting home was a solid thunk. The dome collapsed as its frame was destroyed and down feathers from the sliced-up sleeping bag rose from the fabric. Nate could hear the sound of bones crunching and the edge of the sword cutting deeply into flesh and hide. Chunks of the pronghorn antelope carcass Nate had laid down beside his sleeping bag flew into the air as Man Number One hacked away.

  “Got him!” Man Number One said, excited but out of breath. “Holy shit! He wasn’t so tough. I chopped him into fucking pieces.”

  “Stand back,” Man Number Two said. “Get out of my line of fire.”

  Man Number One skipped away from the tent, circling the sword through the air over his head as Man Number Two shouldered a long gun and aimed it at what was left of the tent. The burst of automatic gunfire split the night open and the long orange tongue of flame strobed the camp. Nate saw the walls of his tent dance as bullets struck it and more pieces of antelope flesh flew from the wreckage, including a long broken bone slick with blood.

  “Woo-hoo!” Man Number One sang when the gunfire stopped. “Ain’t nothing left of that guy, that’s for sure.”


  Nate squinted at the opening, imploring Man Number Three to come out. He didn’t.

  Man Number Two said, “Keep back,” and a flashlight blinked on and bathed the smoking tent in light. Nate looked away because he didn’t want the sudden illumination to blot out his night vision. Besides, he knew what they would see.

  “Oh shit,” Man Number Two said. “What’s that? It has hair and a fucking horn on its head.”

  “A what?” Man Number One said.

  Nate raised his weapon and squeezed the trigger and blew Man Number Two’s heart out of his back. Two dropped straight down into a heap.

  Nate recocked the revolver with his thumb as he brought it back level from the massive recoil and then fired at One as he tried to flee. The shots were barely a second apart. The impact of a bullet knocked One sidewise to the ground like a mule kick. The sword clattered on the hard surface.

  The two orange fireballs from the muzzle of Nate’s gun turned slowly in the lingering afterimage of his field of vision. He waited impatiently to get his sight back before rising and charging across the flat toward the third opening.

  • • •

  MAN NUMBER ONE WRITHED on the ground as Nate loped past him toward the sandstone wall. Number Two was stock-still. The dry desert air smelled of dust, gunpowder, and blood.

  Man Number Three was gone from the mouth of the opening.

  Nate followed his outstretched weapon as he powered up the trail created by the crack in the rim. Periodically, he passed through short stretches where starlight found the sandy path. It was pocked with three sets of boot prints going toward his camp and one set heading back up. Man Number Three had a good lead on him, Nate thought, and he was a long strider.

  Before he could emerge from the crevice, Nate heard a motor start up on the rim above him. The driver gunned it and the spinning back tires threw a spray of gravel into the crack. Nate didn’t see it coming and the dirt hit him in the face and temporarily blinded him.

  By the time he was able to clean most of the grit from his right eye and see again, Nate knew, the vehicle would be too far away to hit or catch. Nevertheless, he climbed to the top of the rim and carefully raised his head over the lip of the crevice. In the distance, muted by kicked-up dust, were the two tiny pink taillights of fleeing Man Number Three.

  He was headed south.

  • • •

  USING HIS OLD HEADLAMP TO SEE, Nate approached his camp from the direction the invaders had come. He could hear a high whistling sound from one of the victims.

  Man Number Two, whom Nate renamed “Heartless,” was a stocky Caucasian in his mid-twenties. He wore a hipster stocking cap, a full beard, cargo pants, and a flannel shirt. His pink face had been daubed with soot or grease so it would be harder to see him in the dark. Beside his body was an AK-47 modified to fire full-auto. An extra magazine of 7.62x39mm ammo was jammed in his belt. He had no wallet or identification on him, which Nate found interesting.

  Nate turned Heartless’s pockets inside out. There were only a few coins, a lighter, and two joints of weed. Nate could smell marijuana smoke on the man’s clothing as well.

  The whistling sound turned out to be from Man Number One. He’d apparently turned at the last second when Nate aimed and he’d altered the hit a few inches from a heart shot into a lung shot. Frothy bright red blood foamed from the man’s mouth and nose and pooled around his body. He was unconscious and nearly bled out and he clearly wouldn’t make it.

  Number One was also a Caucasian male, young and lean to the point of malnourishment, with long hair over his shoulders and a scraggly beard that flowed halfway down his chest. He wore a kind of trendy porkpie hat and a dirty North Face sweatshirt. His clothing also smelled of weed. Perhaps that explained, Nate thought, why the two of them had so carelessly slammed their car doors shut.

  The sword the man had used looked like a replica of a pirate’s cutlass—heavy, long, and brutal. The blade was covered with blood, bone chips, and bristly antelope hair.

  No ID, either, so Nate gave him the name “Hipster.”

  He stood and said, “I’m sorry”—not to Hipster but to the mutilated antelope carcass inside his tent. He hated to take the life of a magnificent creature like that and to then use the bulk of the meat and carcass not to eat but as a decoy. He vowed to pass up the next clean shot he had at a similar animal—even if he was hungry.

  He’d thought that intruders might shoot into his tent and hear the unmistakable sound of bullets hitting flesh. But he never thought they’d come at him with a sword and try to hack him to death in his sleep.

  Hipster whistled again.

  Nate stood over him. “Are you conscious? Can you hear me?”

  Gurgling.

  “Who are you with? Can you talk?”

  Choking.

  Nate ended it with a point-blank head shot.

  In his death throes, Hipster’s legs windmilled as if he were doing an air jig. Then they went still.

  • • •

  NATE DRAGGED THE BODIES TOGETHER until they lay shoulder to shoulder on the desert floor. He placed the sword and the AK-47 across their chests as he reassembled the satellite phone and took a photo of them and sent it. As he did, he was reminded of the grisly photos of dead outlaws from the Wild West days who were posed for viewing by tourists.

  He kept his phone on just long enough to send the image to Tyrell with the text message Who are these guys? Then he turned it off again and pulled out the battery.

  • • •

  AS HE RETREATED to his cave in the rim where his birds were, Nate pocketed the three spent casings and replaced them with fresh rounds. He wondered about Man Number Three, who was clearly hanging back for a reason. It was either because he’d lost his nerve or because he was directing the operation. Nate was inclined to believe the latter.

  He left the bodies of Heartless and Hipster where he’d arranged them in order to be found by Man Number Three. He’d get the message.

  He thought of Man Number Three as Ghazi Saeed.

  Or possibly Muhammad Ibraaheem, or “Ibby.”

  No reason to make up a name in this case, Nate thought.

  13

  Earlier that day, Joe Pickett parked his pickup in the gravel lot in front of the Mustang Café to wait for the game warden of the Red Desert district, Phil Parker, to meet him for lunch. Joe was fifteen minutes early. Parker had suggested the meeting place.

  The Mustang Café was a run-down structure within sight of I-80, ten miles west of Wamsutter. It had once been painted white, but it was now tinged pink from windstorms filled with Red Desert grit that had sandblasted the north side of it bare. There was a Coors sign in one window that simply spelled COO, and a brash WE ARE OPEN sign in the other window that looked cheerily out of place.

  There was a single muddy pickup with Sweetwater County plates parked in front of the place and an ancient panel van in gray primer in the back.

  Joe looked over the Mustang Café and planned to chide Parker about meeting there. He’d noticed over the years that shabby retail buildings on the fringes of society were never torn down—they were repurposed. That had certainly happened with this building.

  Joe remembered the Mustang Café from fifteen years before when it had first been put up to serve coal-bed methane energy workers in southwest Wyoming. At the time, it was a notorious strip club, where patrons could eat biscuits and gravy for breakfast on the lip of the stage while women danced during the shift change in the oil patch. The place was shut down after it had gone to seed in a few years and it had become a hub for workers to buy drugs. A sting operation by the Division of Criminal Investigation had led to the arrest and conviction of the original owner.

  After a bankruptcy auction, new owners took over and turned the building into a convenience store, again to appeal to the energy workers in the county. It was a place where they could
fill up coffee thermoses or their sixty-four-ounce soft drink containers and heat up soggy bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches for breakfast or prepackaged green chili burritos for lunch. When the market for methane tanked, so did the convenience store.

  It was then turned into a porn shop that stocked videos and magazines. But the Internet killed it.

  Now it was once again the Mustang Café, but without the dancers. Joe had only been inside when it was a convenience store, but the sign out front said it was now a bar and grill.

  Rather than wait outside for Parker to show up, Joe decided to get a table and wait.

  • • •

  JOE KEPT HIS HAT ON when he stepped inside and he waited a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. When he could see, his first impression was that it wasn’t really worth the wait. The décor was haphazard—signed dollar bills stapled to the wall, a few dented license plates nailed up, beer posters with long-legged women, a silent jukebox, and deer and elk antlers that needed dusting. A skinny man with deep-set eyes and stringy hair wearing an untucked, short-sleeved retro-western shirt with snap buttons stood behind the bar, while a put-together young woman with long dark hair and tight jeans, who kept her back to Joe, sat on a barstool.

  “Anyplace?” Joe asked the bartender. There hadn’t been a sign to wait for seating.

  “Anyplace you’d like,” the man said. He gave Joe a furtive glance and busied himself washing glasses. It was the behavior of someone who felt guilty about something who didn’t want to show it in the presence of a law enforcement officer, even if it was a game warden. Joe looked the bartender over and thought: Drugs. Buying for sure, but maybe dealing as well.

  Joe could care less. In fact, he found himself fighting back a grin. It came from the realization that he loved this.

  He loved being on assignment. He got a thrill out of walking into a microculture with a mission when no one knew him or why he was really there. Joe liked getting the lay of the land, listening to the conversations of locals to try and discern their backstories, motivations, and agendas. For a brief period of time, he didn’t have to answer callouts from dispatch or solve disputes between hunters and landowners or locate the remains of a game animal someone had poached on a back road. And when he showed up wearing his uniform, no one could ever see past it to guess what he was doing.