Lex Talionis

by Peter Nealen

Keeping my head down, I scanned the sky. At first, I couldn’t see anything aside from the eagle or hawk that was gliding in great, looping circles above Sawtooth Lake to our west. I knew guys who would insist that it wasn’t a hawk or an eagle, but a disguised drone, but I kept my ear enough to the ground, especially through Derek’s unending tech talk, to know that there weren’t any devices out there, yet, that could reliably disguise a drone as a bird. There are ways an animal moves that a machine just can’t reliably mimic.

  As I let my eye rove, however, I eventually saw it. A glint of sunlight on metal, high above. I squinted at it, just barely able to make out the tiny outline.

  Larry had ridden up next to me, visibly uncomfortable and more than a little stiff, intent on staying in the saddle, but watching the sky instead of concentrating too hard on the horse. Larry might not have been much of a rider, but he was a pro.

  “Scan Eagle?” he muttered, squinting at the drone. It was a lot higher up than I’d thought, and quite a bit farther away, but still noisy enough to be picked out from several miles away.

  “It sure sounds like the flying lawn mower,” I replied. I couldn’t make out enough detail from that distance to definitively identify the machine. “But why would they be using a bird that old? It’s not like they can’t afford next-gen systems, just going off of what we’ve seen.”

  “Maybe they’re trying to look respectable?” Larry suggested. “As far as I know, the Scan Eagle’s the only drone in its class that the FAA’s okayed to operate in US airspace. Maybe they don’t want to press their luck too far from their main body.”

  “Or,” I countered, as an ominous thought occurred to me, “that thing is the one we’re supposed to be watching, and the real deal is staying quiet and out of sight.”

  “Devious, if that’s what they’re doing,” Larry replied. “You know the best way to handle either case, though.”

  “Yep,” I replied, kicking my horse into an easy walk down the jeep trail. “Make like we don’t notice anything. We’re just a couple of yokels out for a ride.”

  “I just hope there aren’t any horse people watching,” Larry said. “If they see the way we ride, they’ll see through us in a minute.”

  I glanced over at him. “You really think there are going to be horse people sitting in a control trailer, working for the poster children for the worst fears of the black helicopter set?”

  He shrugged. “It was a joke, but I’ve seen stranger things. I knew a bleeding-heart liberal Ranger once.”

  I had to nod. I’d known a few of those, too. They were few and far between, but they did exist.

  We rode on, trying to act like we hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary, while still keeping our eyes peeled for enemies, aircraft, and the perhaps more mundane, if no less dangerous, four-legged predators. I had my TRP on my hip, loaded with Buffalo Bore +P rounds, but getting surprised by a bear, a cat, or a wolf pack would still be a bad day.

  We rode through breathtaking country, with jagged, stony mountains rising above their fir-clad shoulders to our north and west. The crest we followed was open and grassy, but with scattered low pines and solid pine and fir forests rising on the lower slopes. Fleecy white clouds scudded across the bright blue sky.

  It would have been an idyllic ride, if not for the fact that we were being hunted. This wasn’t like running and gunning in some Middle Eastern shithole, or even the much more attractive terrain of Latin America. These high alpine spaces were home. And yet here we were, doing precisely what we’d hired out to kill people and break their shit in distant lands for years to avoid. We were fighting the war on our own turf.

  It was a depressing thought, casting a pall over the awesome scenery. I should have been up there hunting, or fishing in Deep Lake, not riding back down toward Cody with killing on my mind.

  Cody itself was too far to make it in any sort of timely manner on horseback, and The Broker had been insistent that time was of the essence, so we weren’t going to go all the way mounted. Instead, we worked our way down into the Clarks Fork canyon, and followed the river until we reached the gravel parking area where Morrison Road met the paved Canyon Road.

  We had still heard the drone overhead intermittently for hours. I didn’t think the hackles on the back of my neck were ever going to go all the way down; it had felt like we were being watched every step of the way. That uneasy, hunted feeling didn’t go away as we approached the horse trailer and the old, beat-up Honda Civic parked on the dirt.

  I thought I recognized the grizzled character who got out of the truck and lowered the gate of the horse trailer, but I couldn’t quite place him. He might have been a local, though I suspected he was far more likely to be one of The Broker’s network. This didn’t seem like a time that The Broker would be contracting out to random locals. The balding old gent with the thick, white handlebar mustache didn’t betray any recognition as he held our bridles for us while we got painfully down from the weary horses, though, so the sense of familiarity might have been nothing.

  The old gent led the horses up into the trailer, then came down the ramp and tossed me a set of car keys. “The Broker told me to tell you to contact him for the next RV point,” he said, his voice just as gravelly as his appearance suggested. “He said you’d know how.”

  I just nodded tiredly and made my way to the car, noticing that I was moving a little more stiffly than I would have liked. That had been a long ride, and on very little sleep. I was going to have to be careful not to nod off behind the wheel.

  Larry and I got in, the car sagging visibly on its suspension as he wedged himself into the passenger seat, and headed for Cody.

  We stayed outside of town until a little after midnight. We weren’t well known in Cody itself, aside from some of the sheriff’s department, but there was no sense in taking chances. After all, it wasn’t like we had been exactly anonymous for a while, in large part thanks to our occasional employers.

  When we finally headed into town, I didn’t drive to the Sheriff’s Office. If my suspicions were correct, that would be suicidal, and even if they weren’t, it still wouldn’t be a good idea. Instead, I made for a small house on the other side of town.

  I took a pass by the front of Brett’s house, and saw two SUVs sitting out front that didn’t belong there. Brett’s truck was in the driveway, but those dark Ford Expeditions meant he had security. Which meant somebody was expecting us.

  Without a word, I circled the block, then turned into the narrow gravel alley that led behind Brett’s house. If they were on the ball, there would be security there, too, but we had better odds of success coming in the back.

  I parked three houses down, and we got out, careful not to slam the doors. I drew my TRP and held it down by my leg, even as Larry slid his STI into his gigantic mitt. That 2011 was not a small pistol, but it sure looked like it in Larry’s grip.

  Silently, we slipped through the shadows of the trees toward Brett’s back fence. There wasn’t a lot of light back there; Cody was nearly as low-crime as Powell had been. The odds were actually pretty good that most of the back doors we passed were unlocked. Even as rough as times had gotten, Wyoming, as sparsely populated as it was, had stayed pretty much the same.

  We got to Brett’s back yard without even eliciting a bark from a local dog. Both of us were a lot better at moving on foot than we were at horseback riding. As big as he was, Larry could move like a cat.

  Larry put his back to the plank fence around Brett’s yard and cupped his hands for my boot. I put my foot in his impromptu stirrup and lifted myself up just high enough to peer over the top of the fence, checking for more goons watching the back.

  If they were there, they were inside. The yard was empty and still. I clambered up and over the fence, making as little noise as possible.

  Larry had a bit of a harder time getting over; the fence swayed and creaked under his weight. He got over, though, as I crouched in the corner by the garden, my pistol out and trained on the back porch
.

  There was still no sign that we’d been seen or heard as we padded across the lawn toward the back. I started to hope that we could stay soft the whole way through this.

  We got onto the back porch, stepping carefully to avoid letting our boots drum on the planks. There wasn’t much we could do about the occasional creak, but fortunately, they were few and far between.

  The screen door creaked threateningly as I eased it open. I just knew that the hinges were waiting to unleash the screaming of the damned any moment. I was pretty sure if they did, I’d be staring down the barrel of a gun in seconds.

  But I got it open with a minimum of noise, and tested the back door. The knob turned and swung open, leading into the darkened kitchen.

  The kitchen was reassuringly abandoned, and since we had both been to Brett’s house before, we knew where we were going. Carefully and quietly, we stalked toward the bedroom.

  If the goons weren’t in the house, I was relatively sure we could do this quietly. Brett was divorced and his kids long since grown. If there weren’t task force security personnel watching the doors, then Brett was alone inside.

  My eyes were well enough adjusted to the dark by the time we got to the bedroom to see Brett’s form under the covers of the bed. He still slept on one side of the queen, leaving an empty space where his wife had slept.

  I froze suddenly, listening. I didn’t thing Brett had picked up a girlfriend lately, but if he had, and she was in the bathroom at the moment, this could get real complicated, real quick. But the silence continued, and, confident that we were still alone, I stepped into the room and moved to the side of the bed. Larry loomed at the foot.

  I clapped a hand over Brett’s snoring mouth. He started awake and began to try to rise, stopping as I placed the cold steel of my .45’s muzzle to his forehead. “Yell for those assholes outside and you’re a dead man,” I hissed.

  I felt him relax and cautiously took my hand away. “Holy shit, Jeff,” he whispered hoarsely. “Where the hell have you been and what the hell did you do?”

  I’ll admit, that threw me a little; it was not what I expected to hear from a man with a pistol held to his head, while his security waited outside. “What,” I asked, “your new buddies didn’t clue you in?”

  “Buddies!” He almost came off the bed at that, but subsided at the pressure of the 1911 barrel. “Those cocksuckers outside? They haven’t told me shit, except where to keep my people and to keep my mouth shut.”

  I glanced at Larry, then took a long step back, letting Brett sit up while still keeping my .45 trained on him. “Keep talking,” I told him.

  He sat up, swinging his legs out of bed, though he didn’t move to stand up. “You think I’m working with these clowns?” he asked.

  “There do appear to be two carloads of them out front of your house,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah,” he said bitterly. “To make sure I stay put. I don’t know who they are, but they seem to know a lot about me, including the fact that I’ve trained on your facility. They don’t seem to think they can trust me.”

  “Who are they?” I asked. There was still the off chance that he was bluffing, but I’d known Brett long enough that I was pretty sure he wasn’t. He was pissed, clear down to his bones, mad enough not to bitch me out for putting a gun to his head.

  “Shit,” he said, “I was hoping you could tell me. Three days ago, these assholes come roaring into my office with some official-looking guy in a suit, making noises about national security and telling me to turn over every bit of info I’ve got on The Ranch. When I asked who they were, they waved some papers in my face and told me they had authority and I was required to comply with anything they said. When I pressed the issue, the guy in the suit just laughed at me and pointed out the two armored vehicles he had parked out front. The implication was pretty damned clear.”

  “Have they solicited any other support?” I asked.

  “Nope,” he replied. “They just wanted anything we knew about The Ranch, and then we were told to stay out of the way. The guy in the suit never said it outright, but if any of my people got in their way, they were going to either disappear or get killed in a tragic accident.”

  “Did you try to contact anyone else?” I asked.

  He shook his head, barely visible in the dark. “I tried once. I called the State Attorney General. That son of a bitch in the suit broke into the call before anyone could answer and warned me to ‘stay in my lane.’ After that, I didn’t dare.”

  This was bad, all right. At least I could now be reasonably confident that our friends in the sheriff’s department, at least, hadn’t willingly betrayed us.

  “What the hell is going on, Jeff?” Brett asked.

  Before I could answer, Larry posed another question. “Is Little Bob still all right?”

  That startled Brett. “You mean…? Oh, shit.”

  “What?”

  “Bob disappeared out of the hospital just before these guys showed up,” he said. “I thought you guys had gotten him out. He sure as hell wasn’t in good enough shape to get himself out.”

  “Fuck,” I muttered. I hoped like hell Little Bob was still alive. Those cocksuckers in the task force had better hope he stayed that way, too.

  “Look,” I told Brett, thinking fast, “we can’t stick around. I just wanted to make damned good and sure you hadn’t sold us down the river. Whatever’s going on, there’s a pretty long list of people who want us dead after the last few years. I don’t know which set this is. But you’re in a good position to be our eyes and ears down here. We’re still at large, and intend to stay that way.” I dug in my pocket and pulled out the burner phone I’d brought for comms. I had two more in the car. “Take this. If things start getting squirrely, or you notice something that we need to know about, call. Any of the numbers programmed in will get to one or another of us, and the word will get back to me.”

  “What are you guys going to do?” Brett asked as we started to leave the bedroom.

  “We’re going to get Little Bob back, and then we’re going to raise some hell,” I told him.

  Chapter 11

  The phone call with Renton was vanishingly brief, just long enough to establish a rendezvous point and meet time. Whoever we were up against, if they could mobilize a task force of that size, with those armored vehicles, then they had the scratch to be able to, at least potentially, listen in on any electronic communications. Out there, even if they couldn’t crack the encryption, they could probably DF the transmissions. Security meant going low-tech, and I really didn’t have a problem with that.

  There was a noticeable tension in the air during the brief exchange of words and information, suggesting that Renton was none too happy with me. That was fine; I wasn’t feeling all that friendly toward him or his organization at the moment, regardless of The Broker’s assurances that he was still one of the good guys.

  Leaving aside the anger at having to fight this fight at home, there were definite advantages to operating in rural Wyoming. For all intents and purposes, particularly as far as most of our adversaries were concerned, we were in the back of beyond, outside of their comfort zone. Meanwhile, we were on our home turf, and knew the country and the people intimately, far better than we ever had overseas or south of the border.

  There were also plenty of spots out in the wilderness with long sight-lines where you could be reasonably certain not to be observed, at least not without any observers giving themselves away in the process of either getting into position or following you there.

  Our chosen RV point was one of those places. It wasn’t quite in the middle of nowhere, since we wanted to be able to drive to it in a reasonable amount of time. But there weren’t a lot of tourists at the Heart Mountain trailhead in the fall, and when we pulled into the gravel parking lot, it was nearly empty.

  There was one other vehicle there, a four-wheeler parked next to the cinderblock outhouse. Since Larry and I were half an hour early, I didn’t think it was R
enton. I knew he was in the vicinity, but somehow it didn’t look right.

  It wasn’t Renton. When the outhouse door opened, Mia stepped out, dressed for the woods and packing a Glock on her hip.

  While I had glimpsed her during the evacuation, I hadn’t really looked at Mia since we’d last met at the hole-in-the-wall bar where I’d had my little confrontation with Janson, another one of Renton’s organization, who had had something to do with leaking our identities to the cartels while we’d been in Mexico.

  She was a reasonably tall, fit woman, with dark hair and just enough tan to her skin to let her blend into the background in most parts of the world, particularly in Mexico, where I’d first met her.

  She had a way of keeping you from noticing unless it suited her purposes, largely through her dress and cool, professional demeanor, but she was a very attractive woman. Unbidden, my mind turned back to that week in Veracruz, and just how pretty she was when she cleaned up, not to mention how she had felt under my arm. I forced the memory aside.

  I was rather surprised how glad I was to see her, considering how little I really trusted her. We knew she’d been put with us as a bird-dog, with the added fact of her sex being a way to get under our skin. She had tried to flirt her way into my confidence early on, though she’d backed off and acknowledged that it had been a bad idea. Later, she’d worked her ass off to make the mission succeed, and as she had pointed out several times, she’d been burned and put on the bounty list of every cartel and underworld hitter with access to the Dark Net along with the rest of us.

  Being hunted together tends to form a bond between people, and Mia wasn’t an exception. Even so, I had to remind myself that she had been an Agency Case Officer once upon a time, and was therefore a manipulator by trade. I still didn’t know which side she was really on; hell, I didn’t know what the sides were. So, I kept my face as neutral as possible when she looked up and saw me, and kept reminding myself to trust no one who wasn’t a Praetorian.