Force of Nature

by C. J. Box

  “No,” Nate said. “But it doesn’t matter.”

  “I don’t understand something,” she said. “I don’t understand why you never went to the government or to the press with your story? You could have put Nemecek out of business.”

  “It wouldn’t have worked,” Nate said. “Nemecek is inside of the inside. He would have found me before I even made contact with anyone. He used every resource the government has to try to find me, which is why I went low-tech and completely dropped out of society. No credit cards, no phone, no address. But if I’d stepped forward and tried to contact someone, it would have been like signing a death warrant on us both. Very few people in the bureaucracy can operate with complete impunity. They’ve got to report to people and write summaries. Nemecek would have intercepted the communications within minutes and cut everything off and eliminated anyone involved.

  “Believe me,” Nate said, “I’ve spent years agonizing over this. I could never figure out a way to take him down without taking down innocents as well. I don’t mind killing people who deserve it, but not those just doing their jobs. So I dropped out. I did what I could to help out a friend. I carefully made contact with a few others, like Oscar and Cohen. And look what happened to them.”

  Haley squirmed in her seat. He could guess what she was thinking.

  “And now I know,” she said.

  “I tried to get you to leave,” he said.

  “We don’t have a choice, do we? We’ve got to kill him and stop this.”

  “It’s our only option,” Nate said. “But an old saying keeps coming to mind: If you’re going to try to kill the king, you’d better kill the king.”

  AFTER THEY’D driven a few more miles in silence, Nate looked over at Haley. He said, “It’s a different version of events than you heard from Nemecek, isn’t it?”

  The question froze her in her seat. Even in the dark, he could see her face drain of color and her eyes fix on the windshield in involuntary terror. She looked like a frightened ghost with dark, hollow eyes.

  “He told you it was me who was in business with bin Laden, didn’t he? And that there was a score to settle? That’s what he told all the other operators, wasn’t it?”

  She didn’t react other than to continue staring ahead. But the fact that she didn’t lash back told him everything he needed to know.

  “You don’t have to explain,” he said. “I can figure it out. He recruited you for this operation with the story about letting bin Laden get away. Only he reversed the players and the motivation. You don’t know how many others are on the team, and you don’t know who they are or what they’ve been told. And you’ve spent the last few hours trying to reconcile what he told you against what you’ve seen and heard yourself.”

  He said, “I think you’ve got a good heart, Haley. I think your reaction to what happened to Cohen and Oscar was genuine. And I sure as hell know your passion back there with me felt real.”

  Her mouth trembled, and her eyes blinked too fast.

  “You’ll have plenty of opportunities ahead to take me out,” Nate said. “And if you choose, you can probably find a way to warn Nemecek I’m coming for him. I’m not going to stop you or kill you now. I’ll let fate take its course.”

  In a barely audible whisper, she asked, “Why?”

  “Because I think you’ll do the right thing.”

  She said, “If you’re going to try to kill the king, you’d better kill the king.”

  He didn’t ask which king.

  28

  THE PICKETT FAMILY sat in a line on uncomfortable red plastic scoop chairs in the predawn at Saddlestring Municipal Airport as the tiny cinder-block structure staggered to life. Their luggage, an assortment of mismatched suitcases and duffel bags, had been checked through by the lone ticket agent, a pierced dark-haired stocky woman of indeterminate age who had communicated via a series of grunts, and who had gone outside the double doors for a cigarette the minute she’d completed grunting as she tossed the bags on a cart.

  Joe turned in his chair and watched her out there, the tiny red cherry of her cigarette bobbing in the darkness, until she returned and sulked back to her counter to check the manifest. He’d caught a glimpse of it as they checked in: only five passengers were listed. The Picketts and a local rancher named Donald M. Jones, also known as Rowdy. Rowdy Jones hadn’t checked in yet.

  Joe wore civilian gear and his battered hat. No uniform shirt, holster, or equipment belt. He felt lighter than air and vulnerable without his weapons and gear and sense of purpose.

  Joe hadn’t slept since he’d returned from following Nemecek into the mountains, and his sleep deprivation heightened his sense of despair. His thoughts were like too many large fish in a small tank—writhing and intertwining over one another, depleting the oxygen available, in search of some kind of blue-water relief.

  Three locals dead. Bad Bob and Pam Kelly—missing. Nate gone, his only communication a cryptic warning to get his family out. Nemecek, planning his next move. Brueggemann’s betrayal. Snow, elk hunters, The Looming Tower.

  He thought about the community he was leaving, the residents bunkered in their homes. And he felt like a coward.

  Marybeth looked over to Joe and smiled in a worried way. He knew she wouldn’t be comfortable until they were all on the airplane and Sheridan had checked in with them. It was still an hour or two before Chuck Coon could get over the summit from Cheyenne to Laramie, and likely longer before Sheridan would awake and turn on her phone. Nevertheless, Joe reached out and patted his wife on her knee to reassure her, then stood up and paced behind the row of chairs. He couldn’t sit still until they were all on the plane, either, he thought. His stomach churned and he had the sour taste of acid in his mouth.

  They’d left Marybeth’s van in long-term parking on the side of the terminal. There were only two other vehicles there, both dusted with snow—travelers who’d not yet returned. He wondered about asking Mike Reed to move the van somewhere after they’d departed, so Nemecek or one of his crew wouldn’t spot it and know they’d flown away.

  “Are you going to sit down?” Marybeth asked him.

  “Can’t,” he said, wandering toward a display case on the wall that boasted faded photos of famous people who had once used the local airport, including Queen Elizabeth twenty years before to visit relatives and buy locally made saddles, and former vice president Dick Cheney en route to a wilderness fly-fishing trip. He returned to the counter and waited for the agent to look up from her magazine.

  “What do you need?” she asked. He felt his anger rise from her manner.

  “Just wondering who has access to the passenger lists,” he said.

  She shook her head, confused.

  “Who keeps track of who flies in and out?”

  “I do.”

  “I mean generally,” he said, letting impatience creep into his voice. “Can anyone walk up and ask who flew out this morning?”

  “Nobody ever has,” she said.

  He took a deep breath. “What I’m asking, ma’am, is what if someone did?”

  “Nobody ever has. I just told you that.”

  “But if they did,” he said, his voice rising, “what would you do?”

  She shrugged. She looked over at his family, assessing them. He followed her gaze. Marybeth sat primly with her hands in her lap. Lucy was slumped to the side, her chin in her hand. April slouched back with earbuds plugged into her iPod.

  She said, “I don’t think it’s public information, sir. It’s nobody’s business.”

  He glared at her. “Let’s keep it that way.”

  She flinched and rolled her eyes in a whatever gesture. Then she looked over his shoulder and said, “I’ll need to get you to step away from the counter, sir. The other passenger has arrived.”

  Joe looked over his shoulder to see Rowdy Jones enter the terminal in full western dress: boots, pressed Wranglers, massive silver rodeo buckle, string tie, fine 30X gray Stetson. He pulled a large rolling
leather suitcase behind him that had been personalized with his brand burned into both sides.

  “Rowdy,” Joe said as a greeting, stepping aside.

  “Morning, Joe,” the rancher said, looking over the Picketts. “Taking everyone on a family vacation?”

  “Kind of,” Joe said.

  “Game warden leaving during elk season,” Rowdy said, grinning. “That’ll get around.”

  JOE CONTINUED to pace. The eastern sky was lighting up into early-dawn cream. Snow crystals hung sparkling in the air. The sky looked as if it would clear soon. He looked at his watch, then his phone.

  Joe listened halfheartedly as April mocked Lucy by saying, “I’ll miss my precious play rehearsal, boo-hoo.”

  “April, please,” Marybeth said.

  Joe looked out onto the road, looking for a dark Audi crossover.

  ROWDY JONES lowered himself in a chair that faced Marybeth. Rowdy commented—loudly—as white-clad Transportation Security Administration employees filed in through the doors, headed for their screening station set up in front of a small departure area.

  “Five of the knuckleheads!” Rowdy said, evincing a scowl from two of the agents as they passed by. “Count ’em. Five of ’em. One per passenger. Boy, I sure feel safe now, don’t you? And to think it’s my tax money that’s paying them. And from what I hear, they’ve never caught a damned terrorist. Not one!”

  One of the TSA agents paused to glare menacingly at Rowdy.

  Marybeth looked to Joe like she’d rather be anywhere than where she was.

  Another dark fish was added to Joe’s small tank. This one represented what might have been, back in 1999, if cruise missiles would have been launched to take out the targets who later planned and approved 9/11. Would the world be better? Would those five TSA agents even exist? Would TSA exist? Would the country still be somewhat safe and innocent and intact?

  Rowdy turned back to Joe and Marybeth and said, “Make sure you don’t have any tweezers on you or any liquids more than four ounces. Think about our safety!”

  To change the subject, Joe asked Rowdy where he was headed.

  “Europe!”

  “Really,” Joe said.

  “Craziest thing,” Rowdy said, shaking his head, “I used to have to beg folks to come and help us out on the ranch during spring and fall, when we moved cattle to and from the mountains. Literally beg them. Bribe ’em with a big steak dinner afterward and hope they’d show up when they said they would. Then I started charging tourists for the privilege. Got my son to throw up a website advertising ‘Rowdy’s Authentic Cowboy Cattle Drives,’ and it was Katie-bar-the-door,” he said.

  “Fifteen hundred a person,” he said, grinning, as if Joe and Marybeth were coconspirators in a scam. “And all these Easterners and Europeans are paying me to do what nobody around here will do anymore. Now I spend the summer ranching and taking care of these dudes, and I spend the winter visiting them in Europe. England, France, Holland, Germany … staying in the homes of former guests. They tell me my money isn’t any good over there.”

  “That’s quite a story,” Marybeth said. Joe knew it was true.

  “Saved the ranch,” Rowdy said. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it fifteen years ago. Hell, I finally figured out how to make that place pay, and it sure as hell isn’t horses and cows. It’s rich folks playing cowboy! I’m thinking about building some more cabins at the place so I can charge ’em to stay there. I used to pay Mexicans and provide beans and a bed, and now I can charge folks for the same privilege.”

  Rowdy looked up as the front door opened. Joe wheeled around in his chair, tense. But instead of John Nemecek, it was the two pilots, each pulling along a battered wheeled bag. They were very young, and their uniforms helped only a little, Joe thought.

  “They look like they’re Sheridan’s age,” Marybeth whispered to Joe.

  Or military age, Joe thought, feeling his insides clench. But the pilots nodded to a couple of the TSA agents and addressed them by name. They were familiar with one another, and this was obviously a daily event. Joe sighed in relief but couldn’t sit any longer and listen to Rowdy. Rowdy was a fine man and a good guy, but Joe was too nervous and guilty and paranoid to relax.

  “I’ll be back,” he said to Marybeth.

  “Man looks like he’s got ants in his pants,” Rowdy said as Joe walked to the far end of the terminal to look at the old photos.

  AGAIN, Joe checked the road out front. No Audi. He checked his phone. No call or text from Sheridan. He tried her number again and it went straight to voice mail.

  There was a high whine outside. He went to the window that overlooked the tarmac to see that the pilots were bringing the airplane around from its hangar on the other side of the field. It was a small Beechcraft 1900D turboprop that held nineteen passengers. All over Wyoming, like angry bees, the little planes delivered people to Denver International Airport, where they could board large jets for other places.

  The aircraft swung around and parked, and the pilots killed the spinning propellers but kept the engines running. In a moment, the door opened and a spindly staircase accordioned out. Joe watched as the surly counter girl, now in an overlarge parka, tugged the luggage cart out toward the plane. The copilot stood near the back of the aircraft to help her toss the luggage inside. He could see Lucy’s colorful suitcase and April’s bulging duffel bag. It seemed to Joe the girls had packed everything they owned.

  Beyond the small airplane, the serrated profile of the Bighorn Mountains, fresh with snow, dominated the horizon. Up in those mountains was Nemecek’s headquarters. And Joe was flying away. As he stared, his stomach churning, he saw a lone falcon soaring high in the cirrus clouds, moving so slowly as to almost be motionless.

  He wished he could talk to Nate, tell him what he’d found out.

  Because of the whine of the aircraft, he didn’t hear Marybeth approach, and he jumped when she placed her hand on his shoulder.

  He turned.

  “Joe, are you all right?” she asked, tilting her head slightly back, probing his face with her eyes.

  He paused for a moment. “No, I’m not.”

  She couldn’t hide the disappointment but tried. “I know how you feel about these little planes.”

  “It’s not that,” Joe said. “Think of how many times he helped me. How many times he helped us,” he said, nodding toward Lucy and April. “Now, when he’s the one in trouble, I’m flying away.”

  “But he wants you to,” she said. “He said it himself.”

  “Nate doesn’t always know what’s good for him,” Joe said.

  She shook her head and said, “This is a different level they’re playing at. These are different kinds of men. You said it yourself, Joe.”

  “Doesn’t mean I can’t help,” he said. Her inference stung.

  “But he doesn’t want your help,” she said, frustration showing. “He wants you to go with us and watch over this family. That’s what he admires about you, Joe. You’re not like him.”

  Joe smiled bitterly. “I’ve got to see this through,” he said.

  Marybeth reached out to him and cupped her hands around his face and took a long moment. Then she said, “It won’t do me any good to argue, will it?”

  “Nope.”

  “If you get yourself hurt or killed …” She didn’t finish the thought. There was no point.

  Joe said, “I’ll see you in California in a day or so. We can use a vacation we can’t afford.”

  She smiled, but there were tears in her eyes.

  He said, “Go into the bathroom and compose yourself, honey. We don’t want the girls to see you crying. I’ll go say goodbye to them and tell them something came up.”

  She nodded, then kissed him on the cheek.

  “I’ll be careful,” he said. But he wasn’t sure what he meant.

  FROM INSIDE Marybeth’s van, Joe watched his wife and daughters troop across the tarmac toward the waiting plane. Rowdy Jones followed them. At the bas
e of the accordion stairs, Marybeth turned and gave him a little wave.

  He waved back but wasn’t sure she could see him.

  When the airplane was in the sky and its wings tipped and it banked to the south toward Denver, he started up the van. Now that they were safe, the fish tank of his mind got bigger. He could see the individual fish, the individual problems. He began to make a plan.

  He had no idea if it was a good one.

  29

  ALTHOUGH NATE ROMANOWSKI had been gone only a week from Twelve Sleep County, it seemed to him as he cruised the untracked morning roads of the Wind River Indian Reservation that he’d been gone forever. He drove by Bad Bob’s, noting that although it was too early to have opened, there was a troubling and vacant feeling about the place, indicating no one was there. Bob’s pickup was parked as always on the side of the building, but it was covered with snow. There was no sign of life from inside the store or Bob’s house behind it.

  Same with Alice Thunder’s place. No woodsmoke from the chimney or exhaust fan on the roof. Newspapers, both the Saddlestring Roundup and the even smaller reservation weekly, gathered on the front porch sheathed in translucent orange tubes.

  “She’s gone, and she’s been for a week or so,” Nate said. “Good.”

  “Who’s gone?” Haley asked, following his gaze toward the small frame house.

  “Someone I care about,” Nate said. “Everybody I was in contact with is in danger. That’s why I warned them to get away.”

  Haley didn’t respond but seemed to be looking inward, thinking. He didn’t ask about what.

  NATE CRUISED up Bighorn Road fifteen minutes later. As he did he checked his mirrors repeatedly and slowed down on the crest of each hill before descending. His weapon was on his lap.

  He nodded as he drove by Joe Pickett’s house. Joe’s Game and Fish pickup was parked on the side of the garage, also blanketed with a thin coat of snow. A set of tracks emerged from beneath the garage door: Marybeth’s van. They were gone.