Force of Nature

by C. J. Box

  What was missing, Nate observed, was his Academy entrance photograph. And a shot of him with his first falcon. In their place were photos of Dalisay when Gordo first met her in the Philippines, and another of Gordo, Dalisay, and their two infant daughters. The girls were striking miniatures of Dalisay: petite, dark hair, big eyes, caramel skin. Because it was Colorado Springs and therefore a military town, Nate assumed Asian wives and children weren’t unusual at all in the community. But Nate had never met his stepmother or half sisters.

  “You look fit,” Gordo said.

  “Wild game meat and clean living,” Nate replied.

  Gordo snorted with doubt and disapproval. “Why are you here, anyway? Why now, after all these years?”

  Nate sipped the strong coffee and met the glare of his father with his own. “That’s why I called. I wanted to touch base.”

  “What’s that mean?” His father was uncomfortable, and looked away.

  “I wanted to see you one last time,” Nate said.

  “Shit,” Gordo said, and groaned.

  THEY SAT in overstuffed chairs on opposite ends of the coffee table. Gordo seemed stiff and edgy. Nate put his cup down on a coaster and sat back.

  “So Dalisay and your girls … they’re still with you, right?”

  Gordo nodded.

  “What, they’re at school? Dalisay is working?”

  “Let’s not talk about them.”

  Nate shook his head, puzzled. He swiveled his head around. A stack of children’s books was on the floor by the bookcase next to a plastic milk crate of Barbie dolls and accessories. The refrigerator in the kitchen was cluttered with school photos and a Polaroid shot of a grinning seven-year-old girl labeled “Melia’s first checkup: no cavities!” It was dated from August, two months prior. In the photo, Melia boasted a perfectly symmetric row of Chiclets-like teeth.

  “Why in the hell did you come here?” Gordo asked, pain in his face.

  “I told you.”

  His father said, “Do you know how many times men have come to this house asking if I’d heard from you? Special agents from the FBI? Pentagon brass? Even detectives from the Montana and Wyoming DCI?”

  Nate hadn’t thought about it, but it made sense.

  “I had to tell them I hadn’t heard a damned word from you in twelve years. That the last time we talked, you called me from who-the-fuck-knows-where saying you’d left the service and had decided to drop out of the world and become a fucking anarchist.”

  “I don’t think I said that, exactly,” Nate said.

  “You might as well have.” Gordo leaned forward in his chair and gripped his knees as if to squeeze the life out of them. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to live in a patriotic military town when your only son is a goddamned traitor to his country?” The last words were shouted out.

  Nate said, “I’m no traitor. Who told you that?”

  “Nobody in so many words,” Gordo said. “But I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. I looked it up: you didn’t get a proper discharge back in 2001. You just fucking left. That’s AWOL in my book, son. And when you just vanish and all I know about it is that officers and federal agents come here asking about you, it ain’t too hard to figure out.

  “And if there’s another story,” his father said, “it hasn’t come to light. I just figure you’re ashamed of yourself, and you ought to be. Because you brought shame on the uniform and the country. And you brought shame on me.”

  Nate let the words hang there for a minute without responding. Then he said, “There’s another story. Or at least a different version.”

  “Well, then spill it out,” Gordo croaked.

  Nate stood up slowly, taking in his father. The man was exercised, and tiny beads of sweat dotted his upper lip. His eyes were haunted. Then he looked again at the children’s books, the photos on the refrigerator, the small stack of unopened mail on the kitchen counter.

  He said, “When was the last time you saw Dalisay and the girls? I’m guessing two or three days, judging by the mail.”

  Gordo’s face twitched as if slapped. It wasn’t a reaction Nate had seen much in his life growing up with his father.

  “They’ve taken them, haven’t they?” Nate said. “They’ve got them somewhere. And they told you that if I showed up, you should let them know right away or you won’t see them again. Is that about right, Dad?”

  His father sat as if frozen, but his tortured eyes gave Nate the answer he sought.

  “Did you call them when you saw me outside? Are they on their way now?”

  Gordo’s eyes flashed with defiance. “No.”

  “To do this to a man like you,” Nate said, shaking his head, feeling his stomach clench. “A man who spent his life serving his country. That should tell you all you need to know about who I’m dealing with.”

  Gordo Romanowski’s face twitched again.

  “If I told you what happened,” Nate said, “it would be like putting a death sentence on you, like the one that’s on me. So I’m not saying another word.

  “What you need to know, Dad, is I haven’t been in contact because I wanted to protect you and your new family. I don’t care if you believe me right now, but I think if you dig deep, you will.”

  Nate took his cup to the sink, returned and gripped his father on the shoulder, and said, “Take care of Dalisay and those girls. Tell them not to be too ashamed of their older half brother. I’m out of here.”

  As he opened the front door, Gordo asked softly, “Where are you going?”

  Nate turned. “That’s what they want to know, isn’t it? Tell them I wouldn’t tell you. Which I won’t.”

  Gordo blinked slowly. Nate could only imagine the torture he was in.

  “Give me ten minutes to get back to the highway,” Nate said. “Then do what you need to do to get them back.”

  NATE ROARED away from the house, eyes wide open, weapon on his lap. But when he cleared the tunnel of trees, he didn’t turn left toward town and the highway. If they were on their way, they’d see his Jeep.

  Instead, he cranked the wheel to the right and floored it. The movement made his wounded left shoulder pulse with pain. He headed straight west toward the wall of mountains.

  Nevertheless, he had no doubt that whoever was holding Dalisay and the girls would be right behind him.

  14

  AS NATE CLIMBED the mountain toward Pikes Peak and the road began to curve upward and he approached a devilish series of switchbacks, he shot glances into his rear and side mirrors. He eased slightly on the gas as if riding a motorcycle when he leaned into the steep turns, so he could hang his head out the window to survey the bends of the two-lane far below and behind him. He’d passed a couple of small rental cars—tourists, with children in the backseats, wide-eyed mothers in the front, and fathers with death grips on the steering wheel—and grumbled “Flatlanders” when he blasted around them. The short wheelbase and all-terrain tires of the Jeep were made for this kind of driving: tight, fast, and full of sprints and sharp turns.

  He didn’t know the area or the road system well, but he knew the general direction he wanted to go: over the mountains and on to Rexburg, Idaho, seven hundred miles to the northwest. So like he’d done so many times in the wilds of Wyoming and Montana, he navigated not by GPS or maps but by studying the terrain and geography in the direction where he wanted to go and trusting there would be two-tracks, old logging or ranch roads, or even dry streambeds he could take to get him there. One thing he was sure of was that he needed to get off the state highway as soon as possible. If operators of The Five were coming after him, they’d by now ruled out his presence on the main road to town and to the interstate, which meant he could have only gone the opposite way from Gordon’s home. Given that, it would be a matter of time and determination to pin him down. The Five was known for its determination.

  The route he’d taken narrowed and went straight up the mountain. In a few miles, the pavement would end, and from there on the
road climbed an additional nineteen harrowing miles to the top of 14,100-foot Pikes Peak. He’d been up there once. On top, there was a developed parking area, views of blue waves of mountains to the west and the foothills and plains of Colorado all the way to the Kansas border. But it wasn’t a place to make a stand: too open, too many civilians, and only one escape route, which was back down the road he was on.

  Nate was disconcerted after seeing his father. The old man had been rattled and scared. He wasn’t the man Nate remembered, and it made him angry. The Gordon Romanowski he’d grown up with had been fearless and tough. He was the guy you wanted near you in a fight, a man so hard and set in his ways, so without nuance, that despite his intractability, there was comfort in his pure stubborn black-and-white worldview. Whoever had gotten to this tough old man in such a personal way … well, something bad should happen to them, Nate concluded.

  Nate assumed Gordon had made the call he had to make and the operations team was on its way. Nate wondered about the numbers and the makeup of Nemecek’s force. He doubted locals had been recruited in Colorado and had to assume the team had come with Nemecek. Trusting locals to hold a family hostage and respond with lethality when called upon was too much of a stretch. But how many operators would agree to deploy domestically, and what had Nemecek told them about their mission? Surely, Nemecek had lied, and that likelihood put Nate in a quiet rage. Operators of The Five that Nate had known and fought beside were good men: loyal, patriotic, and tough as nails. They wouldn’t simply do the bidding of a superior officer without being convinced of the righteousness and morality of the mission. These men, like Nate himself back then, were well trained and efficient but not automatons. They’d do anything asked of them if they thought it would save lives and protect their country. Kidnapping Gordon’s family and setting a trap for Nate would happen only if Nemecek had fed them lies, and he hated his old superior for taking such craven advantage of good men.

  Good men, Nate thought, who would kill him in an instant, because that’s why The Five existed. In other circumstances, these were the kind of men he’d fight beside and lay down his life for. But because of Nemecek and Nate’s secret history, and Nemecek’s willingness to lie to subordinates, some warriors would likely die. Nate hoped he wouldn’t be among the first. Not until he did everything he could to cut the depraved head off the snake.

  HE WAS a little surprised surveillance hadn’t been set up near his father’s home. It heartened him that whoever was in charge of this phase of the operation—surely not Nemecek himself—had allowed such a lapse. If they’d been stationed in the trees when Nate had arrived, the game would be over by now. But sloppiness or some kind of anomaly had prevented that. And he knew it wasn’t unusual. Things just happened—machinery broke down, people got sick or injured, gaps appeared in surveillance because someone read their watch wrong or misheard the schedule—no matter how much time had been spent on the plan. He’d been involved in so many intricate operations, he knew that when things got hot, plans evaporated and instincts and training took over. He could only hope whoever might be after him hadn’t been in the same kind of crazed and chaotic balls-to-the-wall combat he’d encountered. If not, he might have an edge on them.

  NATE TOOK a sharp turn to the right onto another steep switchback. Dark pine trees climbed up the right-hand slope of the road, but to the left there was open air all the way down to Colorado Springs, which glittered in the distance in the mid-morning sun. It was the kind of vast, achingly clear view rarely seen from anywhere except an airliner as it broke from the clouds. He swallowed hard several times to clear his ears of building pressure from the altitude of the climb. Judging by the thinness of the air and the looming snow-covered monolith of the peak to his south, he guessed he’d broken ten thousand feet.

  That was another advantage, he thought. If his pursuers weren’t acclimated to the altitude, they’d find their mental and physical reactions slowed down. Altitude sickness produced foggy thinking and rapid exhaustion.

  Around the corner was a small gravel turnout on the other side of the road, with barely enough space for a single vehicle. The turnout existed so descending drivers could pull over and let their brakes cool before making the rest of the drive. He whipped the Jeep across the center line of the road and into the turnout. He parked parallel to the guardrail and stomped on his emergency brake and kept his engine running.

  Slowly, he looked around and took measure of the situation he was in.

  The highway ahead of him continued ascending for about five hundred feet and then vanished to the right in a blind corner for what was no doubt the start of another switchback up the mountain. But from where he parked, it seemed as though the road simply disappeared from view. He looked up the side of the right-hand slope, but trees blocked him from seeing any flashes of the higher switchbacks up above him.

  From the perch, he’d be able to see if a vehicle was coming. Because the road was carved along the vertical rise of the mountain itself, only a two-foot-high guardrail on the east side of each turn separated the ribbon of asphalt from a sheer drop of more than a thousand feet. It was the kind of aerie that terrified some visitors, and he could imagine—and understand—the swoon of vertigo the view could bring on. But because he’d spent so many hours rappelling down cliff faces to trap falcons, height—or being suspended in air—didn’t bother him.

  From his vantage point, he could see the bends of four switchbacks below him on the mountain. It was as if he were nearly on the top of a tiered wedding cake. There were glimpses of the outer edges of the tiers below him. But from those lower tiers, it would be difficult to look straight up and keep the car on the road at the same time.

  Across the road from where the turnout was carved into the mountain face was a narrow clearing in the trees about the width of a vehicle. Sure enough, there appeared to be an old overgrown two-track Jeep trail coming down from high in the mountains. The entrance to the road was partially blocked by four steel T-posts that had been driven into the rocky ground. There were no fresh tracks on the trail. He didn’t know where the trail came from or where it went, but it was pointed in the right direction: northwest. He nodded and turned back to the panoramic view of the switchbacks out of his driver’s window.

  There was the metallic flash of reflected sun off a windshield four switchbacks down. Nate narrowed his eyes and homed in, but he saw the vehicle was one of the four-door rentals he’d already passed creeping around the corner. Before he could grumble “Flatlanders” again, a white SUV with smoked windows barreled around the turn, overtook the rental as if it were standing still, and shot back out of view into the trees as it cleared the turn.

  Grunting aloud from pain because he kept forgetting about his injured shoulder, he slipped the .500 revolver out of its holster and extended it out the window. He trained the scope on the widest part of the third switchback down and waited, giving the SUV a minute and thirty seconds to appear. It did, and it filled the scope.

  The SUV was a new model Chevy Tahoe with green-and-white Colorado plates. No doubt a rental, Nate guessed. Whoever was driving was going too fast, barely keeping the big unit under control. Unfortunately, though, because of the fleeting glimpse of the SUV and Nate’s angled view of the darkened windows, he couldn’t see the faces or outlines of who was driving or how many others were inside.

  His instincts told him whoever was driving the Tahoe was after him. That they were hurtling up the mountain because his father had been coerced into placing a call.

  They’d appeared behind him so quickly he got another thought that sent a chill through him: Dalisay and the girls could be inside. It was possible whoever was holding them had responded quickly to the call and had brought them along for the ride.

  Nate thought: Melia’s first checkup: no cavities!

  He pulled his weapon inside the cab of the Jeep and laid it across his lap. Then he weighed his options.

  He could simply wait where he was, parked in the only pull-out on
the fifth switchback, and take out the driver as the Tahoe roared by. But if the girls were inside and the Chevy plunged off the road …

  Or he could drive up ahead, keeping a protective cushion between them, and hope there would be a scenario where he could somehow get the Tahoe to stop and pull over so he could see who was inside and take action. But he knew he was close to the top of the tree line. Even if he got well ahead, he’d have no cover, and the occupants of the Tahoe would see him up ahead on the road and know he had nowhere to run.

  Or he could barrel across the highway, mow down the T-posts, and four-wheel it up the Jeep trail and hope his pursuers didn’t notice the damage or the fresh tracks up through the grass as they blasted by. But even if he got away, he had no idea where the road went. He could be trapped in a situation where he didn’t have an escape route. The road might be impassable due to downed trees or a rockslide. Or, if they saw the bent posts and followed and the road opened up, he could be overrun by the Tahoe.

  Nate wasn’t encouraged by his options.

  He looked out his window to see the white Tahoe blast around the hairpin turn of the closest switchback. He knew at the rate the car was climbing, they’d be right on top of him in less than two minutes.

  He took a deep breath. His choices of staying or trying to outrun them or outclimb them all had vicious downsides. And if Dalisay and the girls were inside the Tahoe, all the variables changed.

  But he had his advantages. They didn’t know he was there or that he knew they were coming. And although the driver of the Tahoe was likely well trained in evasive driving, Nate owned these mountains. They were his Rocky Mountains, and he knew how to use their savage beauty and extreme character to his benefit.

  He’d been in a similar situation once on a mountain road in Montana. At that time, he’d recalled something he’d once learned about counterinsurgency tactics from John Nemecek himself. Nemecek had said, “When you’re in the middle of a shitstorm and your back is to the wall and the only options that exist are fucking horrible, you need to think, that instant, about the last possible thing you want to see coming at you. Then do it to them.”