Long Range

by Box, C. J.

  Joe had notified both the FBI and Judge Hewitt that they had a lead. Hewitt begged to go along, but Joe refused to let him. The special agent he’d spoken to at the FBI in Cheyenne had instructed him to do no more than determine if the cabin was occupied. If it was, Joe was told, he should alert the feds and await a strike team.

  “I hear you,” Joe had said.

  The special agent was reassured, unaware that Joe had meant exactly what he’d said. He’d heard the man. That didn’t mean he’d comply with the order.

  Joe hadn’t bothered alerting the sheriff’s department. Both Deputies Steck and Woods had been suspended and weren’t in the building. Sheriff Kapelow was bunkered in his office with his door closed, refusing to take calls from the media, law enforcement, or his angry constituents.

  *

  MARYBETH ALSO DID a background check on Dr. Tom Arthur, which was something the local hiring committee—including Chief Williamson and other prominent local types—had apparently failed to do before offering him the job.

  The community had been so desperate to land a new doctor, she’d surmised, that they’d take whomever they could get.

  Arthur’s medical degree was from a university on an obscure Caribbean island that she’d had to look up to verify. Although he claimed he’d done his residency at the University of Houston hospital, there was no record of him there. He had been on the staff of a Baptist hospital in Oklahoma City for a year, but had left under mysterious circumstances and the administrator there wouldn’t elaborate except to say she was glad he was gone. When Marybeth asked her directly if he’d been accused of selling prescription drugs on the side, the administrator had said it was “something like that.”

  Dr. Arthur had been sued for malpractice in Fargo, North Dakota, but had vanished before the civil trial took place. There was a four-month gap between Fargo and Saddlestring, where no doubt he’d been grateful to land. Marybeth learned that Arthur had been passed along from hospital to hospital by unscrupulous administrators who feared lawsuits from damaged patients or a wrongful termination suit from Arthur himself. None of them had raised a red flag about his incompetence or criminal behavior.

  She was furious at those hospital administrators as well as the local hiring committee for not vetting Arthur and for welcoming him into their county.

  *

  JOE AND MARTIN had studied the Google Maps images while formulating a plan. Because of the wide mountain meadow that fronted Arthur’s cabin, the man—if he was there—would have a 180-degree field of vision. If they approached the structure in vehicles, he’d be able to see them coming a mile away. For a suspect who likely had a second long-range rifle, it wasn’t a viable option.

  Instead, the Predator Attack Team transported their horses to a trailhead four miles south of the cabin. They saddled up the mounts in the dark and were deep into the timber by the time the sun nosed over the eastern mountains. Joe had his shotgun in a saddle scabbard as well as the .308 Smith & Wesson M&P strapped across his back. There was a satellite phone in his saddlebag as well as binoculars, a handheld radio, a field first-aid kit, and extra ammunition. Martin and Smith were similarly armed and equipped.

  *

  AS HE RODE through the trees to the north, Joe felt both excited and sick to his stomach. He thought there was a very good possibility that they could locate and arrest Dr. Tom Arthur, that it made sense that he’d hole up in a cabin while every trooper and every cop in seven states was out looking for him on the highways. How it would play out if he actually was there was another thing entirely.

  Dr. Arthur was undoubtedly a desperate man. He’d killed before and he’d likely have no hesitation to do it again. They’d need to assess the situation and go in—if they chose to go in—with their eyes open and every possible precaution in place. It would be Arthur’s choice to give himself up without violence or go down shooting. Joe prayed it would be the former.

  But it wasn’t just the anticipation of what could go badly that made Joe feel nauseous. It was a stew of feelings and realizations. He still couldn’t quite believe that the county prosecutor had bled out from a gunshot wound right in front of him, or that he’d been shot at all. It seemed like a bad dream. After Patterson had confessed and humiliated himself before Joe, the man had been cut down.

  Then there was the disappearance of Nate, Liv, and Kestrel. They were simply gone. Cell phone calls to Nate and Liv went to voicemail. Joe had driven to their place to find the van sitting there with the keys in the ignition, all of the doors unlocked, and no indication that they’d packed up to flee. Even the nanny was gone.

  Joe had fed Nate’s Air Force, and assured them without confidence that Nate would be back soon.

  *

  WHEN THE DENSE timber ahead of them started to lighten up, Joe realized they had found the open meadow. He signaled to both Martin and Smith to stop their horses while he dismounted.

  Although Rojo was as reliable a gelding as he’d ever ridden and he’d been trained as a cutting horse mount, Joe didn’t dare simply drop the reins and walk away. Instead, he tied the horse firmly to a tree trunk. There was never any way to predict what even the best horse might do if they caught a whiff of a bear or mountain lion.

  Joe limped toward the opening because his legs and butt ached from the saddle. Although Marybeth rode whenever she could, Joe rode when he had to. And he was paying for it with sore knees and dull pain in his thighs.

  He lowered his profile and crabwalked through knee-high dead grass as he got close to the meadow. He crawled on his hands and knees to the edge and parted the grass as if looking through a curtain. Raising his binoculars to his eyes, he focused the optics.

  The cabin, about two hundred and fifty yards away, was simple, weathered, and boxy. It was constructed of heavy logs and it had a faded green metal roof. There was a covered porch on the front with what looked like two ancient Adirondack chairs on it. A gray woodpile was stacked on the west side of the cabin, and on the east side, Joe could see the nose of a vehicle parked alongside it.

  He sharpened the focus on his optics to see the R and D of ford on the grille, as well as the dr tom license plate. A thin curl of woodsmoke wafted up from the chimney.

  Before Joe could scuttle back to confirm what he’d found, the front door to the cabin opened. Joe froze in place with the binoculars pressed to his eyes.

  Dr. Arthur walked out on the porch and paused to sweep the forest with his eyes. He appeared to be in no hurry. He wore jeans, a canvas coat, and a floppy, wide-brimmed hat. Joe had never seen him look so casual. Arthur also had a heavy high-tech long-range rifle over his shoulder on a sling.

  Joe knew that if he had a similar weapon, he could end it all that moment. Dr. Arthur would never know what hit him. After all, that’s how he liked it.

  Arthur moved off the porch and took the two steps down to the grass. He continued to survey the surroundings as he did so. After gathering several lengths of cut and stacked pine, he turned back for his cabin. But before he went inside, he paused and turned around. Toward Joe.

  Although it seemed practically impossible, Arthur seemed to stare directly at him. It was as if his gaze penetrated the twin barrels of the binoculars and pierced Joe’s eyes.

  Then Arthur quickly went inside and kicked the door shut behind him.

  *

  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN he might have seen you?” Martin asked Joe in a whisper.

  “I know it’s crazy, but it’s like he looked right into my eyes.”

  The three men were gathered together at the base of a huge spruce. Martin and Smith had dismounted and secured their horses. They talked in low tones so their voices wouldn’t carry.

  “What do you think?” Smith asked. “Should we call the feds in like they asked us to?”

  Joe shook his head. “I don’t think so. Arthur’s truck is right there by the cabin. He could get in and just drive away and we’d never intercept him on horseback. By the time the FBI got here, he could be a hundred miles a
way.”

  “Agreed,” Martin said. “We need to take him down ourselves.”

  “Right,” Smith said, “but he’s got that rifle. If he knows we’re out here, he could pick us off one by one. We’ll never even see it coming.”

  “Should we wait until dark?” Martin asked Joe.

  Joe thought about it and again shook his head. “Maybe. But I don’t like it that he could drive away any time. I think the best odds for us taking him down are right now when we know exactly where he is. He might think he saw something, but he can’t be certain.”

  “How do we do it?” Smith asked. “Tell him to throw down the rifle and come out with his hands up?”

  “I don’t think that would work,” Joe said. “Arthur’s a doctor. He thinks he’s smarter than everyone else and he’s never been held accountable for anything. He’s already shown us he’s capable of violence. I doubt after all of this he’ll just walk out.”

  “So what do we do?” Martin asked.

  “We rush him,” Joe said.

  Martin looked at Joe with skepticism. But he listened further.

  *

  FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, Joe climbed into Rojo’s saddle and nudged the horse forward through the trees toward the meadow. He lifted the handheld to his mouth and said, “Mike, are you in position?”

  “Roger,” Martin said.

  “Eddie?”

  “Roger.”

  “Keep your radios on and start yelling if anything goes wrong.”

  Mike Martin had ridden his horse in a wide arc through the trees to the west of the cabin. He’d tied up and was to advance on foot through the timber and brush until he could clearly see the side of the structure. Eddie Smith had ridden around to the west. Both were to find good cover where they had eyes on the front door of the cabin. There was no back door.

  Joe took a deep breath and tried to calm his nerves. His plan was audacious and he was glad Marybeth had not been there to hear it. Even now, after persuading Martin and Smith to go along with it, Joe was having second thoughts. Maybe calling in the feds and hoping they’d get to the location before Arthur left it was the prudent thing to do after all?

  The germ of his strategy was something Nate had said when they’d found the location of the shot fired at Sue Hewitt.

  Joe had asked, “How long does it usually take for a high-tech range finder to determine the distance and all the variables for the shot?”

  “On average, fifteen seconds,” Nate had said.

  Dr. Arthur was alone in his cabin and he didn’t have a spotter to call out the calculations for an accurate long-range shot. Which meant he’d have to guess if he had a target, or spend precious time determining the logistics. The rifle wasn’t meant or designed for close-in snap shots. It was heavy—a computer mounted on a synthetic stock.

  If he’d figured correctly, time and distance were actually in Joe’s favor in this scenario. The closer Joe got to Arthur and his weapon, the harder he’d be to hit.

  He hoped.

  “Here we go,” Joe said into his radio.

  He eased the safety off his shotgun and held it at his side in his left hand. After pulling on the compression straps of his game warden ballistic vest as tightly as he could, he grasped the reins in his right. He clicked his tongue and Rojo moved through the last of the brush into the open meadow. Joe spurred Rojo with his boot heels and the horse broke into a dead run. Joe held on. His hat flew off his head and landed somewhere behind him.

  Rojo ran fifty yards straight at the cabin when Joe saw the front kitchen window slide up. Arthur had seen him coming. After a beat, a rifle barrel emerged from the opening and rested on the sill.

  Joe was not the horseman Marybeth was, but he tried to re-create her cutting horse exercises with Rojo outside their house in the corral. He laid the reins across the left side of Rojo’s neck and squeezed with his right leg. The horse responded and Rojo cut quickly to the right in full stride. So quickly, Joe nearly lost his balance and flew off.

  Righting himself, Joe guided Rojo back toward the cabin at more of an angle. After fifty more yards, he cut the horse to the left. This time, Joe was ready for the sudden shift and he leaned into it and didn’t have to recover from it as clumsily as he had the first cut.

  Rojo seemed supercharged. He was a horse on a mission. It was as if the gelding could sense Joe’s terror and trepidation through the close contact of seat, legs, and reins.

  Joe could only imagine Arthur inside looking through his powerful rifle scope, trying to keep it steady and on a target that was filling his optics with blurred images as it zigzagged in front of him and got steadily closer.

  Joe cut Rojo to the right again, then left, then right and right again. He was close enough to the cabin now that he could see Arthur inside the window holding the rifle stock to his cheek. The muzzle swung back and forth erratically. A glint of reflected sunlight flashed from the lens of the optics.

  When Joe was twenty yards from the front porch, he dismounted on the fly with the intention of hitting the ground running. Instead, his boots got tangled up on the landing and he tumbled forward face-first. His shotgun flew out of his grasp.

  He rolled to his side and looked up at the window. Arthur wasn’t there. Joe shakily got to his feet.

  Before he could scramble to recover his weapon, though, Arthur threw open the front door and emerged. Ignoring his big scope, he thrust the rifle toward Joe like a heavy lance.

  “Drop it,” Joe ordered.

  Arthur didn’t. He pointed the rifle toward Joe without aiming and pulled the trigger.

  BOOM.

  The impact of the bullet spun Joe around and he lost all feeling in his lower body. It felt as though he’d been hit with a baseball bat. In slow motion, he fell again to the ground, accompanied by a fusillade of two .308 rifles firing multiple rounds into Arthur on the porch.

  The last thing Joe Pickett saw was the wide blue sky and the underbelly of a fat cumulus cloud.

  TWENTY-NINE

  AT THE SAME TIME, NEARLY A THOUSAND MILES AWAY IN the tiny and eccentric lobby of the Flying Saucer Motel on the outskirts of Roswell, New Mexico, the desk clerk scrolled through his cell phone for a number he’d entered years before. As he did it, he was observed by dozens of pairs of oval black eyes from alien figurines that occupied the shelving behind him. Each figurine cost $29.99 and supposedly resembled the beings from outer space that had crashed their ship near the town in 1947, an incident that had allegedly been hushed up by the U.S. government but was still celebrated—only partly tongue-in-cheek—by local businesses and the chamber of commerce.

  The desk clerk was named Arthur Youngberg, and he’d had the job at the inn for five months after moving south from Townsend, Montana.

  Youngberg had vacated his home up north after receiving a tip that armed agents of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service were planning a dawn raid with the purpose of arresting him and confiscating golden and bald eagles, red-tailed and prairie falcons, and a magnificent goshawk. To Youngberg, Roswell seemed to be a good place for an outlaw falconer without official federal eagle permits to go off the grid. Thus far, he’d been correct.

  Roswell, population 48,000 people, was located in the southeastern quarter of the state, 155 miles from Lubbock, Texas, and 162 miles from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. It was warmer than Townsend, but just as arid, and the wind blew gritty and stiff.

  Youngberg was stocky and he moved with the gait of a cautious black bear. He came from a family of Wyoming farriers, but he’d gone his own way. He had a long beard streaked with gray and black military-style horned-rim glasses. All of his hunting birds had been relocated to a mews he’d constructed behind his double-wide trailer twelve miles from town. The birds seemed to have taken to the harsh terrain, and Youngberg ventured deeper and deeper with them, hunting prairie chickens and grouse on federal lands that were once occupied by the Walker Air Force Base—the place where the recovered aliens were supposedly hidden away.

  Youngberg
had been suspicious about goings-on at the motel since he’d been hired. Rather than families on vacation, the overwhelming majority of guests at the motel had been single men from Mexico who exuded menace. Many didn’t speak a word of English, but they had plenty of cash to pay the bill. They drove new cars and often partied hard while they were there. The owners of the business seemed to have an understanding with people south of the border, he thought. Recently, three men had stayed nearly a week before they simply vanished.

  He was also a regular contributor to an unruly website devoted to falconry, although he didn’t post items under his real name because he knew the feds were reading it, too. There had been items on the site over the years featuring the name and exploits of a fellow outlaw falconer in Wyoming with a Special Forces background and a legitimate new bird abatement service.

  Members of this particular breed of falconer kept in touch via the website, although most members of the community had never met in person. They used it not only to discuss falcons and hunting, but also to alert others about strident local and federal law enforcement activities when it came to possession of eagles, which, although the ownership was technically legal for qualified master falconers, had all but dried up. The feds didn’t want private master falconers to hunt with eagles, even though statutes allowed it. Master falconers, especially those with a Don’t tread on me view of government in general, helped each other stay a few steps ahead of the federal bureaucrats who tried to shut them down.

  Nate Romanowski, the legendary master falconer from Wyoming, rarely posted on the site. When he did, it caused a mild sensation within the tiny but fervent outlaw falconry community. But he’d done a post just the day before.