A Noble Calling

by Rhona Weaver

  Gentry had already given Trey and the group a brief run-through of the incident. The attackers who’d nabbed his rangers had arrived in a white electrical company van and lured them into the shed with a report of faulty wiring. Other than a good description of the driver and two of the fake utility guys, they had little to go on—the license plate came back as stolen and the company name was fictitious. Gentry reported that he’d heard the van pull away early on, but with dozens of white utility vans in the park, it would be nearly impossible to find. They had barely enough information to put out a BOLO, or “be on the lookout,” to law enforcement. After Gentry and Maddox were disarmed by the “repairmen,” the other bad guys had slipped into the shed dressed as hikers and backpackers. They would have easily blended into the early-evening visitors near the Lower Terraces. They’d donned their masks and camo as two of their group outfitted themselves with the Special Response Team members’ uniforms and weapons. They were on guard duty outside the house within minutes. The kidnappers’ leader mentioned going to the vehicles as they left the shed, but that gave them no firm leads.

  Win’s small backyard was illuminated by a dozen headlights, but Trey had ordered no Code 3, or lights and siren response, until they figured out where they were in this. And that wasn’t happening nearly fast enough. He had a man stringing yellow tape around the yard and buildings, trying not to further contaminate the crime scene. Jimmy Martinez was checking for tracks with a high-powered light. The helicopter crew was on standby in case the weather cleared enough to get the ship up. A thousand details were running through his mind, competing for his attention.

  He turned that attention back to Gentry. “Okay, think. Anything else you noticed . . . car keys, maps, anything else?” He had to work at keeping his voice and manner calm and steady. This is not the time to panic.

  Gentry wrapped himself tighter in the olive-green blanket and stared down. “Well, their leader was a giant, he’d be easy to spot. And when they left out, they all had night-vision equipment . . . all dressed in military fatigues. All with backpacks. Fully armed. If they were going toward the parking lot—to vehicles—they’d have been a lot less conspicuous in civilian clothes. There’d be no need for night-vision gear. No vehicle pulled in behind the house. We’d have heard it.” He looked at Trey. “Could they have hiked out?”

  “That’s what I’m thinking—Jimmy’s checking,” Trey said. “But they could have moved Tyler into a vehicle and then the larger party walked out. They could have split up any number of ways. The Beaver Ponds Trail is the most logical route. We’ve had it closed for several days now. . . . Doubtful they’d meet any late hikers going north from here.”

  “Trey, who are those guys?” one of the rangers asked.

  Trey drew a deep breath. It was general knowledge that the Arm of the Lord Church was under some form of FBI surveillance due to the Prophet’s constant anti-Semitic rhetoric and the upcoming dedication of the Cohn Monument. His Special Response Team and a few other folks knew the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team was in the park, but most of the other Park Service personnel had no idea of the scope of the federal operation. The attempted hits on Agent Tyler were rumored to relate to some case Tyler had been part of back East, in his previous posting. Trey hated keeping his folks in the dark, but those orders had trickled down directly from Washington. Even after the shooting at the hotel, their Department of Interior bosses were still hoping the problem would disappear. But Daniel Shepherd had played his cards tonight. He’d sent a team to kidnap Win, and his men had flat-out said who they were working for. Two rangers had been left alive to report it. Prophet Shepherd’s war was on.

  As Trey started to answer the ranger’s question, the room went darker. Johnson’s large frame filled the doorway as he barged into the shed. “Whata we got?”

  Trey knew Johnson had driven from his home in Gardiner. The man looked like he’d been rushed out of bed, but his eyes were sharp and his jaw was set. Trey moved to his side and gave him a hurried run-through of the facts. As they were talking, Ranger Jimmy stuck his head in the door.

  “We’ve got several pairs of boots going north up Beaver Ponds Trail. I went up as far as the second bridge—there’s mud on the bridges. A group went that way since this rain started tonight,” he reported.

  “It’s not even seven miles to that damn church compound as the crow flies. How many miles by trail from here?” Johnson asked.

  Trey knew the trails by heart. “It’s 12.2 miles to the church over Sepulcher Mountain. That’s a difficult trail, 7.2 miles to the summit—an elevation change of more than 3,400-feet from here. Quite a climb. It would be really slow going in the dark. If they’re well trained, they could reach the church in seven, maybe seven and a half hours taking that route. . . . They’ve got more than a two-hour lead. They could get there before dawn.”

  “They have night-vision equipment?” Johnson asked.

  “Yup, I assume Win would know how to use it?”

  “No idea. He’s never done SWAT training, so maybe, maybe not. He could get motivated to learn it pretty fast with someone holding an AR-15 on him. Our surveillance perimeter at their compound has been down to bare bones since most of our folks were repositioned today. They could probably drive a damn tank through our lines and no one would notice! If they get him to that compound, we could have a drawn-out hostage situation.”

  Johnson stretched his back and stared up at the cobwebbed ceiling. “I see you’re getting the scene secured. . . . We can’t get tunnel vision here. They could have him in a vehicle. We’ll call the locals and set up roadblocks outside the park near Gardiner and Cooke City. You have some folks do drive-arounds, look for anything hinky here in Mammoth—might get lucky. Can you get a tracker in here quick? I’m gonna reach out to my bosses again and see who’s on the way. Visibility is near zero at West Yellowstone—they can’t get anything in the air. Still no chance of getting a chopper up here?”

  “No, ceiling’s way too low, but it’s supposed to clear some later tonight. Our best tracker is camped down near the monument site. I’ll get him up here. Will be at least two hours ETA in this fog. We’ll get some folks driving the roads and the parking lots. Let me know what you need.”

  A half hour later, after about a dozen phone calls and urgent, hurried conversations, Trey walked over to the front of Win’s Expedition. The Park Service’s crime scene photographer had finished her work outside and was moving into the carriage house. Trey saw Win’s brown felt hat lying crown-down in the wet gravel. He bent over and picked up the damp hat as he swallowed a rising rush of emotion. He’d started to respect the guy, even like him . . . and now, now Win’s life might be in his hands. He fingered the hatband and pulled in a breath. He’d been running on autopilot. It embarrassed him that he’d forgotten to pause and pray. His hands gripped the hat’s soft brim tighter and he closed his eyes for a moment as he tried to find the right words. Heavenly Father, please . . . The words wouldn’t come, but he knew he had another phone call to make.

  * * *

  They’d hiked for what seemed like hours on a very difficult stretch of the trail through volcanic rock fields and alongside ridges of deep snow on 9,652-foot Sepulcher Mountain. Win had heard that one could see the Teton Range, eighty-five miles to the south, from here on a clear day. He was sure the hike would have been spectacular on a warm, sunny morning. After midnight, in night-vision goggles, with drizzle, low clouds, and the temperature hovering around thirty-three, he wouldn’t recommend it.

  Visibility had become much poorer since they entered the clouds on the high mountain. The footing near the summit and its immediate side slopes was rocky chert and flat granite slick from the light rain. At least the trail was mostly free of snow and ice, but the cold had set in with a vengeance. They must have hit the crest somewhere along the way in the dense clouds, but Win’s total concentration was on his tenuous footing and he hadn’t noticed.

&nbs
p; He let his mind drop back into thoughts of remorse as the group slowly moved down the switchbacks on the north side of the mountain. His preoccupation caused him to stumble badly on a stone in the rocky trail. Two broke his fall just before he slammed into the ground, and that brought everyone to a halt. The near-disaster snapped Win back into the present. Two had steered him another hundred feet down the steep trail when there was a faint whistle from far down the slope. “We’re getting here right on time,” he heard someone say.

  “Get him on the rocks over there.” Eriksson was giving orders. “We’re just above the spot . . .” Win couldn’t hear what else was said. Two and another guy moved Win off the trail and sat him on a rock behind several jagged boulders. He could still see glimpses of the six men standing on the trail. Then movement below—someone was coming up the path.

  “Keep your mouth shut or I’ll tape it,” the guy beside him whispered.

  He kept his mouth shut.

  There were five men in winter hiking clothes making their way up the nearest switchback. He saw them grab the hands and slap the shoulders of his kidnappers. The newcomers looked like typical backcountry hikers, except for the fancy monocular and twin night-vision devices and the assault rifles slung across their chests. Lordy, more militiamen! Win began to catch fragments of their conversations. “Cabin ten was martyred for the cause!” There was laughter. “No problem getting through their surveillance lines.” “Feds can’t fly . . .”

  He noticed the new guys were dropping their backpacks and stacking their weapons. He glimpsed one of them pull a camping shovel from his pack, then another shovel appeared. They were mostly out of his sight, moving below him in the scattered boulder field, which was strewn with pockets of snow. Then he heard the sounds of digging, of shovels scraping rock. His tall, thin bodyguard stood up and moved back toward the trail. The other man still had Win’s arm locked in his. Win turned his head slightly to get a better view of the activity thirty yards below him. He immediately forgot about the frigid air and the aching in his arms and legs. All five of them are digging. Oh, no . . . He swallowed hard. Maybe they weren’t taking him to the compound after all.

  “You want a Snickers bar?” The whispered voice again.

  “What?”

  “Got a sack of those itty-bitty Snickers bars here. Best invention since sliced bread! Want some? Got water here too.”

  Chocolate wasn’t real high on Win’s list of concerns right then. “What’s goin’ on down there? It isn’t right not to tell me, if . . . if . . .” Win’s voice caught in his throat.

  The guy craned his neck to see the diggers below them. “You thought . . . ? Oh, hell . . . hell no. That ain’t it.” His smile looked weird in the green glow. The man shook his head. “Some of the brothers are switching out of their uniforms. They’re digging up the cache—regular clothes, hiking gear, and such. They’ll swap out clothes and stuff, then rebury the cache boxes with the military gear. We’re splitting up and they’re going back to the church. You’re going with our team. We don’t want those five boys to know you’re here. . . . Need-to-know mission, you understand.”

  Win closed his eyes tight for a moment and swallowed hard again. “Yeah . . . yeah, a candy bar and water sounds real good.”

  * * *

  Win couldn’t hear Eriksson’s instructions to the group of men who headed down the trail to the north several minutes later, but all nine of them were dressed in hiking garb and every man was armed except for one, a guy about his size. That man had his hands loosely tied in front of him and was taking some good-natured teasing over being the “hostage” for what five of the group thought was a routine training mission. Win knew exactly what they were doing. He could do the math. Anyone tracking the kidnappers from his house would follow nine men in combat or hiking boots north over Sepulcher Mountain directly toward the Arm of the Lord Church. Unless the tracker was really on his toes or just got lucky, he would never notice that five men had hiked off trail on the flat rocks to the southwest. Any Bureau flyover or ground surveillance with thermal imaging would show eight armed men and one unarmed man, who appeared to be bound, moving toward the church’s land. The good guys would assume Win was being smuggled back through the Bureau’s surveillance lines into the church compound. That would certainly draw more law enforcement resources back to the compound and away from both the Cohn Monument site and Win’s actual location. His heart sank again. Where are they taking me?

  The hike became significantly more difficult as Win’s group of five carefully inched their way off the back side of the mountain through the exposed-rock and boulder fields above the tree line. They followed a faint high-altitude trail serpentining through vast snowfields. Any slip here could send a man tumbling hundreds of feet off the exposed-rock walls and cliffs. It occurred to Win that he could easily fall to his death from the damp granite. His confidence in his ability to maneuver with the night-vision goggles dropped in direct proportion to his increasing stress level. One advantage, though: He had such poor depth perception with the goggles that he wouldn’t know how far he’d fallen till he hit bottom. It wasn’t much of an advantage.

  Win was guessing it had been well over an hour since they’d split from the other group of nine. His legs were trembling from fatigue after the long, difficult descent off the mountain. The terrain finally began to moderate and roll, and they hiked through open meadows, sagebrush flats, and dense forests. When Eriksson called a halt in a thick stand of budding aspens, the other men, including Win, collapsed exhausted against the trees, sliding down to rest on the wet ground.

  Eriksson seemed to have superhuman energy. He checked on each man, then moved over to Win, flipped his goggles up, and knelt down in front of him. “We’re past the four-hour point, so we’ll see how quickly your people respond. We’re going to rest here for about fifteen minutes.” Eriksson held a canteen up to Win’s lips. “Drink this. It’s Gatorade with butter and caffeine mixed in—it’ll give you energy.” Win drank several swallows of the awful-tasting mixture. “I’m going to clip those ties off while we rest,” Eriksson said. “You drink water, eat, and tend to any business. Two will be watching you. Don’t be stupid.”

  Win just nodded. He didn’t have the strength to speak. He closed his eyes against the unnatural blackness—he was blind as a bat for a few moments. Some of the other men wore single-lens night-vision devices because of the temporary lack of vision that occurs when the twin goggles are removed. With the single-tube optics, they could at least see out of their “free” eye when the device was flipped up or turned off. The downside was the difficulty in adjusting to the monocular devices—couldn’t master those on a one-night hike. Win finished off Eriksson’s gift of water and protein bars while he waited for his vision to improve.

  There were fewer of them now, and Win’s thoughts turned to escape, but he saw no sign of complacency in any of his four captors. The one he’d come to think of as Candyman was friendly, but watchful. The man they called Two seemed to have eyes in the back of his head and super-quick reflexes. Eriksson was, well, professional, as kidnappers go, Win supposed; the huge guy was also terrifying. The fourth man was harder to read. He was having more trouble with the physical demands of the forced hike than Win or any of the others. He was the man who’d wanted to kill the rangers. He was likely one of Ron Chandler’s thugs, and Win was guessing, based on his size and demeanor, that he was either Billy or Bobby Thayer. He’d never been able to tell them apart in the Bureau’s surveillance photographs. He remembered Luke saying the Thayer brothers were mean as snakes. Yep, he got that right. Whoever the guy was, based on his earlier actions, he’d be the one quickest to kill him.

  He knew he needed to snap out of the cycle of morbid thoughts clogging his mind and come up with a plan. He needed to become more of an observer, to start looking harder for openings, for options. One thing he had noticed was that all the men had lowered their masks since they’d spl
it from the larger group. They no longer cared that their captive could clearly see their faces, could make positive identifications. Win was thinking that really wasn’t a good sign.

  The game trail they set back out on wasn’t nearly as dangerous as hiking Sepulcher Mountain, but it was far from easy. But knowing the Bureau should be in response mode by now gave Win hope and more energy—he was thinking the souped-up Gatorade probably wasn’t hurting any either. They spooked a herd of elk that had bedded down near a meadow, and the commotion of the wildly running animals in the dark forest seemed to throw Chandler’s guy into a bit of a frenzy. He’d whirled and aimed his assault rifle—only the quick action of the big guy kept him from firing off a few rounds. While Eriksson chewed out the Thayer brother, Win took in the sky for a moment and caught glimpses of stars through fast-moving clouds. The weather was clearing! The helicopters could get up, the drones could fly . . . they can find me!

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Can we find him?” His SAC’s question was telling. The Bureau was not given to tentative, faltering uncertainty, even during an unplanned phone call at 1:30 in the morning. They were, after all, The FBI—they always got their man. Wasn’t that the motto of some FBI detective show from fifty years ago? Or maybe the Canadian Mounties’ unofficial motto? Or was it both? He was too tired to remember. It might have been fluff created for TV audiences, an image the Bureau worked hard to project, but Wes Givens also knew it was damn well true. They got their man—and right at this moment, their man was in the hands of the bad guys, somewhere deep within a wilderness nearly as large as a small state.

  Wes Givens measured his words carefully as he answered his boss. “We’re pulling out all the stops, Tom, but I’ll be honest, this weather is killing us. Visibility is just now inching up above zero. No way to get anything in the air. We can’t even fly agents from other offices into Bozeman—that airport is closed. We’ve got SWAT teams from Seattle and Salt Lake City sitting on runways waiting to fly into Bozeman when they reopen the airport. I’ve got fifteen of our SWAT agents and several park rangers moving up the road from the Cohn dedication site toward Mammoth. That’s only twenty-four miles, and it’s been nearly two hours since we called them out. Got a satellite call a minute ago from their convoy. They’re still nearly an hour out of Mammoth, inching along in the fog and having to shoo bison off the highway to get through.” Wes closed his eyes as he tried to comprehend that bizarre mental image.