A Noble Calling

by Rhona Weaver

  Wes was having problems visualizing the bison roadblocks, but he could clearly see Mr. Strickland in his mind. His SAC would have his hand to his broad forehead and his eyes focused squarely on his large desk as he methodically reviewed each possible option given their circumstances. The Bureau had every imaginable law enforcement asset at its disposal; no other agency in the world could be better prepared for an event like this. But they were at the mercy of Yellowstone’s fickle spring weather, just as surely as Win was at the mercy of a madman named Daniel Shepherd.

  Mr. Strickland recited what they had: “Locals are assisting with roadblocks, rangers are canvassing the Mammoth area. The Park County sheriff said there was a small-building fire at the church compound earlier tonight. The area’s volunteer fire department showed up—all sorts of confusion. Shepherd, Chandler, and who knows who all could be in the wind.” He sighed. “Our surveillance teams are real thin near the church. No way we can prevent them from reentering that compound. . . . Right now, the kidnappers are actually better armed than our folks on the ground up there.”

  Wes’s voice rose in anger. “We knew it was a mistake when Headquarters ordered us to reposition our entire SWAT Team! Without them . . .” He worked to curb his frustration. “The militiamen are all former military and you’re right, we’re outgunned at the church. Our surveillance teams wouldn’t stand a chance trying to engage them tonight. In fact, we’ve got so few folks on the ground up there, we may not even get a good thermal or visual hit on the group as they hike back into the compound.”

  “You’ve got HRT set to go to the church compound?” Strickland asked.

  “Yes, sir. Two teams from the Blue Tactical Unit. They trained for a compound raid for days in Mammoth. HRT’s Gold Unit has operators taking their places at the Cohn Monument site as we speak. I’ve got eighteen operators sitting in a hangar here at the airport, ready to go surround that church.” Wes hesitated for a moment. “They’re predicting the fog will clear out of here before dawn, but that . . .”

  Mr. Strickland finished the halting sentence. “May be too late.” He paused. “God only knows what that maniac Shepherd will do if he gets Win into that compound. Some type of spectacle to draw in the press, for sure.”

  “Is the Critical Incident Response Group sending their hostage negotiators from Headquarters?” Wes asked.

  “They’re already in the air. Where they’ll land, who knows. I’ve talked to the Director twice tonight already.” The SAC cleared his throat and proceeded more slowly. “Wes, it’s now clear Shepherd was behind the attempted hits on Win. He’s tried to kill him twice. . . . The militiamen who went into Mammoth tonight could have been a hit squad, regardless of what they said in front of those rangers. Win could already be dead. . . . I know that’s not for general consumption, and I know we have to operate under the assumption he’s still alive, but what’s your gut feeling? What’s your level of certainty this is Shepherd’s plan—taking Win back to the church?”

  Wes stared into space and took a deep breath before he answered. “I’d say there’s a pretty high level of certainty the church is where they’re headed . . . with Win as a hostage. It’s the scenario that makes the most sense if Shepherd is after national publicity. We’ll have overwhelming force surrounding the Cohn Monument site. Looks as if Shepherd has decided to upstage the dedication rather than make some foolhardy attack on the actual event. He can use Win to do just that. Killing him ahead of time makes no sense.”

  “If only we were dealing with someone who made the logical choices—who had some sense!” Mr. Strickland responded.

  “We’re trying our best to verify that Win’s still with the kidnappers. The Park Service has four of their rangers reconning the trail behind Win’s house. They’re reporting back every fifteen minutes by satellite phone. So far they’ve tracked nine men moving for almost four miles to the north of the incident point—that’s the eight bad guys and Win. It’s three more miles on that trail before the rangers reach the top of some mountain . . . let’s see, ah, Sepulcher Mountain. The church compound is about five miles by trail northwest of that mountain. The kidnappers seem to be making a straight shot for it.”

  “And we still haven’t picked up any unusual activity near the dedication site? Nothing on aerial or drones in the last few days?”

  “It’s not foolproof in these mountains, but there’s been no sign that any of Shepherd’s militiamen have been within twenty miles of the monument site since those sightings way back in mid-April.”

  Mr. Strickland’s voice was subdued. “Wes, we’ve got to try to stay positive here. I’m flying in to you as soon as they clear us to land there. Sounds like very early morning, from what you’re telling me. Go ahead and reach out to our surveillance people at the church and to the park folks. Let’s keep trying to determine if Win is still a hostage—thermal imaging or visual, if we can get in close enough. But do not engage them. When our SWAT Team gets to Mammoth, we may change that strategy, but if we try to stop them from reentering the compound without adequate manpower, things could quickly go from bad to worse.”

  As Wes Givens hung up, he glanced out the window of their makeshift operations center in West Yellowstone. The fog was so thick he couldn’t even see vehicles parked under the streetlight thirty feet away. He resisted the urge to blame himself for not shipping Win out of Mammoth when Deb brought him evidence that the attacks on the agent could be a personal vendetta. This wasn’t the time for self-recrimination. He thought back over his boss’s final comment: Things could quickly go from bad to worse. No, things were already beyond bad—they could quickly go from worse to much, much worse.

  * * *

  Trey was trying to catch his breath as he rested behind a smooth boulder jutting into the trail. They’d left Win’s carriage house nearly an hour ago—they hadn’t waited for Sam Morris, their best tracker, to arrive. The kidnappers already had a significant lead; standing around, waiting for reinforcements, was no longer an option.

  They’d used headlamps instead of their night-vision equipment to try to make better time—at many points they were actually jogging up the path. All four rangers knew it was risky. If the bad guys hadn’t continued on—if they’d stopped for some reason—they’d see the rangers coming for a mile. They could be ambushed by a force twice their size packing plenty of firepower. But there were well-used trails forking off both the Beaver Ponds and Sepulcher Mountain Trails, and there were backcountry campers in this area. The rangers were tasked not only with pursuing the kidnappers, but also with protecting the park’s visitors. No one questioned the urgent push toward the mountain.

  Two of the rangers huddled behind trees in the damp woods while Jimmy shined his Maglite at the base of a large rock to illuminate something that had caught his attention. The light picked up short links of white plastic cord—the remains of zip ties. Trey stared down at the ties and drew in a sharp breath. He pulled his phone from his pocket and took two photos, then quickly placed the ties into a clear bag. He shined his headlamp into the plastic baggie for a closer inspection as Jimmy searched around the rock for more evidence.

  “Trey, there’s a little blood here . . . a couple of places on the rock.”

  “Yup, it’s on the ties too. Get a couple of pictures, write down the coordinates from GPS for the exact location. I’ll call it in.”

  Trey killed his light and pulled the heavier satellite phone out of its pouch; he took it off standby and placed the call to Chief Randall. The phone surprised him by connecting in seconds.

  “Chief, we’re at 4.1 miles from the point of the incident on the Sepulcher Mountain Trail,” Trey reported. “We’ve got a clipped set of zip ties with blood on them, also a small amount of blood on a rock along the trail—looks like a stopping point for them. We’ve got nine sets of boots to this point. They’ve already passed the other trails that split off. They’re going straight for the mountain. We’re good
to proceed.”

  Trey could tell by the tone his boss was irritated. “The FBI wants you to hold your position. Do not advance any further. They don’t want any chance of engagement.”

  “We’re the only ones following them, sir. We know these trails. We’re the only pursuit!”

  “We’re working with the FBI to coordinate containment, Trey. We’re not calling the shots. We need to make sure no visitors are between Mammoth and the Sepulcher Mountain area. Looks like we’ve got four groups of backcountry campers permitted for the primitive campground at Clematis Creek, all adults. Dispatch is telling me no one has been permitted to camp at either of the other two campsites in that area, but we need to double-check those sites. Roust those campers out tonight. Escort them down to the trailhead ASAP.”

  Trey swallowed his objections. “Roger that. I’ll send Maddox and Gentry to Clematis Creek campground; they can check the two other primitive camps on the way.”

  “Ten-four. Our folks with the FBI’s SWAT convoy from the monument site are still at least forty-five minutes out of Mammoth. Sam Morris is with that group and can assist with tracking if the FBI chooses to send a team up Sepulcher Mountain.”

  Trey’s boss paused for several seconds. “Move a little further up the trail. . . . Make sure you’re still tracking nine men. Check around your immediate position. They may have been changing out the zip ties or . . .” He paused again. Trey knew the Chief Ranger was working through the possibilities. “Yeah, well, if you’re confident you’ve still got nine men on the trail, you and Jimmy come back down and wait for the convoy to arrive. Weather reports out of Gardiner and Mammoth are showing some improvement. We might be able to get a ship in the air from Mammoth within an hour or two. We’re still totally socked in here in West Yellowstone. You’ll be the incident commander for our part of this deal in Mammoth. Get back down to the office and get set up.”

  Trey put the sat phone on standby and called his small team over. “Jimmy, move up the trail a bit, let’s verify how many we’re tracking.” The small man moved off into the darkness and clicked on the light strapped to his helmet. Trey turned to the other two men crouching beside him. He normally wouldn’t have thought of bringing Maddox and Gentry along for this ride after the trauma they’d just experienced, but both men had been adamant about taking part in any rescue attempt. Maddox had stood in the carriage house with a blanket wrapped around him and reminded everyone that Win Tyler had pleaded for their lives, not for his own. “Trey, I get to go home to my wife and baby cause of that man. I’m not sitting this one out!” Trey couldn’t argue with that, not to mention the fact that, except for Jimmy, he had no other Special Response Team members in Mammoth.

  While they waited to hear back from Jimmy, Trey stood on the trail and explained the mission to clear out the primitive camping sites. “And since they cut off his cuffs, let’s do a quick, narrow grid search here—to make sure we’re not missing, ah, something.” He didn’t want to say—he refused to say—“a body.”

  * * *

  The steady thump thump thump of a helicopter could be heard in the distance and immediately the men moved off the trail into the surrounding forest. Win’s guard dragged him into the trees and pushed him down beside a car-size boulder. The chopper was definitely coming closer, and Win could hear the other men taking cover. It had the high whine of a medevac or search-and-rescue copter, not the heavy, pulsing sound of a military Black Hawk. It had to be the rangers looking for him. The militiaman pulled a lightweight tarp over the top of them and flipped up Win’s night-vision goggles. Everything went dark, but he could sense the man sitting close beside him against the cold rock. Win’s sudden movements against the boulder caused his arms to spasm with pain. He gritted his teeth to keep from crying out. The thermal blanket that was blocking their location to any heat-sensing equipment on the helicopter was claustrophobic.

  The man’s raspy voice was low and hard. “You need to know that if they land or if there’s any rescue attempt, I have orders to kill you. Some of the other boys don’t know, but this isn’t a hostage deal. This is us takin’ you to someone else who’ll kill you tomorrow at first light.” The words hung in the closed space between them, and Win suddenly felt a wave of overwhelming heaviness and despair. He’d fought it off successfully for hours—actually for days—but within the blackness of the stifling blanket, he felt himself drowning in it. He recognized his pent-up emotions were from the sniper shot, from his killing Richter, from all the days of looking over his shoulder, all the little moments of fear. The raw emotions were suddenly pressing down on him like a dam fixing to burst, and he had no idea how to deal with it. The sound of the helicopter had given him hope, but after the man’s words, it only added to his crushing sense of dread.

  The sound of the rotors began to fade away. Win could no longer hear it clearly. He strained to hear it, and he involuntary groaned when he realized he couldn’t. He felt a firm hand rest on his shoulder and move him back into the boulder. “Easy . . . easy . . .” Two was talking to him as if he were a dog or some animal to be calmed. “We’ll stay here for a few minutes, breathe shallow—not a lot of air under this blanket. If the copter doesn’t have heat-seeking equipment, sometimes a heat-seeking drone is trailing.”

  Win was surprised to feel hot tears on his cheeks. Even in the complete darkness, he turned his head so the man wouldn’t see. He fought to control his emotions; he was shivering from either the cold or, more likely, the stress.

  The man dug around for something in his pack and moved even closer to Win. “You need a heavier coat. . . . You’re cold, that’s all. I got some coffee in here somewhere . . . might still be hot.” It occurred to Win that the man was attempting to show compassion. Maybe he’d realized how hard his matter-of-fact comments about killing him had been. “This here little thermos keeps coffee warm for nearly a day, it seems. Here we go.”

  Win wasn’t sure how the guy was seeing well enough to get the coffee to his lips, but it was warm and strangely comforting. He drank some and swallowed, and for a moment it pulled him away from the cliff of despair he’d nearly gone off.

  The man pulled the thermos back and rested it on Win’s chest. He could feel the warmth of it radiate through his jacket. The words were whispered, and because of the closed darkness they seemed to float in the air. “This is a hard thing, but you’re making it harder on yourself. You’re looking back, ain’t you? You don’t have any peace with yourself.”

  Win’s retort was angry. “What’s it to you?” But then he folded. “Okay, so I’ve done some things I’m ashamed of.”

  “Like what?”

  Why am I letting this criminal quiz me on my sins? But he answered anyway. “I, uh, lived with my fiancée.” He drew a shallow breath after the confession and hoped he could keep it together.

  There was silence from the other side of the blanket. Finally, “And?” The man snorted in disbelief. “That’s it?”

  “What? We’re gonna one-up each other on our sins?”

  “You didn’t beat her, steal her money, or cheat on her?”

  “’Course not!” Win couldn’t believe he was having this conversation.

  “You loved her?” the man asked in a softer tone.

  “Yes. I loved her.”

  “Well, Tyler, as sins go, I’m thinkin’ I may have you beat there. Know why they call me Two?”

  “No.”

  “’Cause I’ve been Ron Chandler’s number two man for goin’ on eleven years. The boys here don’t know that.” He laughed softly. “You Feds don’t know that either, now do you? Ron and me, we go way back. . . . Let’s see, you heard of the Stockmen’s First National Bank, the Warrenton Bank, the Falls City Bank, then there was that Wells Fargo armored car and a few other smaller bank heists you may not have tied to us. I like to call ’em heists—sounds kinda classy, and a man’s gotta do somethin’ to supplement a military pension. Not
to mention it’s kept the Prophet’s church rolling in cash all these many years. It’s hard to make a decent living raisin’ a few cows out here, but it sure as hell is a great place not to get noticed. You boys never noticed me, never noticed ole’ Clay Ferguson, retired U.S. Marine Corps sniper. . . . I moved here years ago, but me and Ron never lost touch. We had us a real lucrative business arrangement.”

  “You’re the one who brought Shepherd and Chandler here? To Gardiner?”

  “Yessir! It’s workin’ out real well for ’em, too. But back to our talk on sins . . . I been around lots of sinners, Tyler, and somethin’ tells me shacking up with your woman was just the tip of it—sorta like one of them icebergs. Bet you were raised strict, bet you needed to break out, to rebel! Hell, maybe your real sin was being too much of a coward to pull out of a relationship you didn’t have no business in, see if you could make it without God for a while. Wanted to live on the wild side, but couldn’t quite make yourself get there.”

  “You don’t know!” Win was horrified this stranger was striking so close to the truth.

  “That’s the damn point. You don’t know either. Only God knows why you pulled away from Him.”

  Two was quiet for a few moments, and then the voice in the darkness took on a gentle tone, like you might use with a child. “You’re gonna die in a few hours, Agent Tyler, and there’s only one real question you need to answer. Is Lord Jesus gonna take your hand in the light when you go over? If you can answer yes, then there ain’t no need to be looking back—you can’t undo anything that’s behind you. Just trust Him and lean forward, son.”