Force of Nature

by C. J. Box

  It was nearly midnight when he saw a glimpse of distant headlights coming down the road. Just as suddenly, the lights doused. Joe, he thought, had hit his sneak lights as he got close to where the poacher had been reported. Sneak lights were mounted under the bumper and threw a dim pool of light out directly in front of the vehicle so potential violators couldn’t see him coming up the gravel road.

  It was a cool, clear night and the stars were brilliant. The only sound was the occasional eerie and high-pitched elk bugle from the wall of thick trees on the rising mountains behind him. Upper Doyle Creek tinkled lightly on the other side of the road, deeply undercutting the grass banks on its circuitous route to the Twelve Sleep River.

  Joe was almost upon him before he realized it. Nate saw the dull orb of light from beneath the front of the pickup, got a whiff of exhaust and heard the low rumble of the engine, and there he was, creeping along the gravel road, windows open so he could hear shots.

  “Joe,” Nate said aloud.

  The pickup braked to a stop. “Nate? Where are you?”

  Nate fished a mini-Maglite flashlight out of his vest and swept it along the road in front of him until the light reflected from the headlights of his Jeep in the brush.

  “This way,” he said, stepping aside.

  As Joe turned off the gravel road and rumbled by Nate, his friend said, “There are no poachers, are there?”

  “No.”

  NATE USED his flashlight to see ahead as he led Joe deeper into the trees to the edge of a small clearing. He jabbed the beam of light on a fallen tree trunk and said, “Have a seat,” while he kicked enough grapefruit-sized rocks free from the soil to make a small fire ring. Nate bunched a handful of dried grass in the center of the ring, lit it with a match, and started feeding the flames with dried pine needles and twigs.

  He said, “I couldn’t risk calling you or coming to your place because I don’t know if you’re being watched and I can’t afford to leave any physical or digital records of my location or movements. The last thing I want to do is involve you or your family in what’s happening.”

  Joe cleared his throat and sat back. “Good thing I showed up alone, then. The department assigned me a trainee, but when I called the TeePee Motel he wasn’t in, so I didn’t bring him along. I don’t know where he is.”

  “That would have been unfortunate,” Nate said.

  Joe leaned forward with his elbows on the tops of his knees and squinted at Nate. “So what is happening, Nate?”

  Nate continued to feed twigs to the flame and didn’t look up. “Those three guys in the boat. They drew on me and I put them down. One of them shot me in the shoulder with an arrow.”

  “Ron Connelly, the Mad Archer, I’d guess,” Joe interjected.

  “Yes. They took me by surprise because they were locals. I let my guard down and they took advantage of it, which I think was the strategy all along. It was self-defense, Joe. Two of them were pulling guns as I shot them, and the one in front—the Mad Archer—had already put an arrow into me. I want you to know that even though you can’t really help me, because I know how you are. I understand it’s too late for that anymore.”

  Nate took Joe’s lack of response as agreement. He said, “When you go off the grid, there are advantages and disadvantages. I always knew that. I’m not accountable for anything except to my own code, which is how I want it, because I trust my code more than any set of laws manipulated by those with their hands on the levers. But that’s an old story,” he said.

  Joe nodded for him to go on.

  Nate said, “I’m nonexistent as far as the government is concerned, and that’s harder these days than you’d think. But when something like this happens—or what happened to Alisha—I can’t respond through normal channels. I can’t let anyone know. I smashed my phone and there’s no way to find me. But I can’t call the cops or get a lawyer to defend me because then I’m back in the system and that’s where the bastards want me to be.”

  Joe nodded, thinking it over, and finally asked, “How are you doing? You said you got hit with an arrow.”

  Nate tented a half dozen bigger sticks over the fire and watched as the flames licked around them like tongues tasting peppermint sticks before they ignited. “I’m okay,” he said. “I can barely use my left arm, but it’s healing. I’m okay. I’ll be in yarak soon.”

  “‘Yarak’?”

  “Falconry term. Look it up,” Nate said, waving the exchange away.

  “I can’t take you into town, but I could take you to the clinic on the res,” Joe said. “We might be able to work something out with them to keep it confidential. You’ve got lots of friends there.”

  Nate shook his head. “No—I won’t involve anyone else in this. This thing I’m in is mine alone. And anybody who comes near me could get into trouble that’s not of their doing. I learned that when I stopped in to see Alice Thunder. I can’t risk anybody else, Joe. It’s not right.”

  Joe looked confused.

  “Alice promised me she would take a flight out,” Nate said. “But I could see her finding an excuse not to leave. The only thing I’ll ask you is to tail up and make sure she goes on vacation. Can I ask you that?”

  “Done,” Joe said.

  “What I couldn’t figure out,” Nate said, nodding, “is why. Why would three locals decide to try to rub me out? I didn’t even know them very well, and I’d never had any trouble with them. And I’m pretty sure the people I used to work with who want me dead wouldn’t associate with rubes like that. The Mad Archer and the Kellys weren’t professionals. They were rednecks with guns, and like everybody around here, they knew how to aim and shoot, but that didn’t qualify them as anything special.”

  Joe said, “I might know something about it.”

  Nate looked up, surprised. There was enough flickering orange light now that he could see Joe’s face.

  “This afternoon, I went out to the Kelly place,” Joe said. “Two of the men you killed were Kellys—Paul the father and his son Ronald, better known as Stumpy.”

  “The gargoyle,” Nate said with derision. “I’ve done it before, but I don’t take any pleasure killing the mentally or physically handicapped, even if they want to kill me.”

  Joe hesitated, looking Nate over. Then he said haltingly, “No one I’ve ever known would make a statement like that.”

  Nate shrugged, and Joe continued, “Yeah, him. Anyway, I talked to Paul’s wife and Stumpy’s mom, Pam Kelly. She’s in a state of rage because you took two of her men away, and it wasn’t a very pleasant conversation,” Joe said.

  Nate asked, “You went and talked to her? Is this after the sheriff interviewed her?”

  Joe shook his head. “McLanahan did a cursory call to her saying he was sorry for her loss. But he didn’t interview her.”

  “But you did,” Nate said as a statement.

  “She’s a piece of work, and I wouldn’t want to cross her. She’s mad at Paul and the world in general. She was literally tearing her hair out. I mean, she had strands of it in her fingers when I showed up.”

  Nate said, “It didn’t have to happen.”

  “I know,” Joe said. “But try telling that to Pam Kelly. The weird thing was I didn’t get the impression she was crazy from grieving as much as angry that Paul and Stumpy had let her down. Anyway, I asked her why she thought Paul and Stumpy went out in their boat with the Mad Archer. At first, she acted like she had no idea at all, but I could tell she was lying about part of it.”

  “Which part?”

  “I don’t think she knew anything about the boat trip in particular. For all she knew, they were going hunting. It took a while to get to the bottom of why they were with the Mad Archer. Apparently, they’d met him just a couple of weeks ago and he recruited them into some scheme that would make them big money. Pam Kelly didn’t know what it was, but she really liked the idea of big money and didn’t ask a lot of questions.”

  Joe sighed and said, “It’s no secret that all the
trouble Stumpy and Paul got into with their illegal guiding operation was all run out of Pam’s home office. She wants nice things but she was stuck with a loser. Paul’s disability checks didn’t go very far, I guess. I’ve heard it said that she wore the pants in that family, and my talk with her confirmed that.”

  Nate said, “Someone was going to pay them to kill me?”

  “That’s what I got out of it,” Joe said.

  “Did she say who it was? It sure as hell wasn’t the Mad Archer, I’m sure.”

  Joe said, “There are probably fifty-four game wardens across this state who aren’t very busted up about what happened to that guy. So at least you’ve got that going for you.”

  Nate smiled.

  “No, I don’t think it was Ron Connelly behind anything. He was a dupe just like the Kellys,” Joe said. “I asked Pam Kelly who might have been behind it and she said she saw a man with them a couple of weeks ago. She’d gone to visit her sister in rehab in Riverton and wasn’t expected back for a couple of days, but her sister had flown the coop. So she got home before she was expected back and apparently surprised them all—Paul, Stumpy, Ron Connelly, and a mystery man—when she walked into the kitchen and found them sitting at her table. The man she didn’t know got up and walked out and drove away and she never saw him again. When she asked her husband who the man was, he said he didn’t know his name but he was the one who had the big money. She called him the Game Changer. She said Paul seemed to be scared of this Game Changer guy and didn’t want to talk about him at all.”

  “Did she describe him?” Nate asked.

  Joe fished his small spiral notebook out of his breast pocket and flipped it open. “Tall, pale, mid-fifties. Dressed well. Kind of handsome in a scary way, she said. He had ‘creepy’ eyes and a mouth like a girl model. That’s what she said, ‘a mouth like a girl model.’”

  Nate shook his head in recognition.

  “So you know about him?” Joe asked.

  “Yes, and now it’s starting to make some sense. He also went to the school to ask about Alisha. What I don’t know is why he came himself, and why now.”

  “Does this guy have a name?” Joe asked.

  “John Nemecek,” Nate said.

  Joe repeated the name phonetically, “John Nemma-check.”

  “Yes. He was my master falconer. I was his apprentice. We used to work together. He saved my life more than once, and I saved his.”

  Joe asked, “So he’s a friend?”

  “He was once. But that was years ago.”

  “Not anymore, then?”

  Nate paused, then said, “Joe, he’s the most dangerous man I’ve ever met.”

  Joe simply stared. Then he asked, “Why would he pay the Kellys and the Mad Archer to take you down?”

  Nate said, “Because that’s one of their tactics: recruit local tribesmen.”

  Joe sat up straight and asked, “What?”

  Nate said, “Even with the name, you’re not going to find out anything about him. Like me, he’s been off the grid for years. But unlike me, he’s been hiding in plain sight.”

  Joe said, “Local tribesmen?”

  Nate stirred the fire so the flames erupted and the dry pine lengths popped sparks. He said, “COIN. Counterinsurgency tactics. How much do you want to know? I’ve tried to tell you before, but you didn’t want to hear it.”

  Joe cocked one eye. “And I’m not sure I want to hear it now. Just tell me: how much trouble are you in?”

  Nate sat back on the cool ground and met Joe’s eyes. He said, “He’ll probably kill me. I’m just being realistic. He’s that good.”

  Joe’s face fell.

  “In a way, I deserve it,” Nate said. “In fact, I’m resigned to the fact. Considering what I carry around with me, it may even come as a relief. I’d welcome some kind of conclusion. Except for one thing.”

  “What’s that?” Joe asked, almost in a whisper.

  “John Nemecek deserves it even more than I do.”

  NATE THOUGHT Joe looked like he was in physical pain, the way he kept writhing around while seated on the log. Nate could guess at the source: Joe wanted to know almost as badly as he didn’t want to know. And Nate understood. Joe was a sworn officer of the law. He took his oath seriously. He’d managed to stay just over to the right side of the line all these years because he wasn’t keeping Nate’s secrets—secrets that might lead Joe to turn his friend in or arrest him outright. Not to mention what Joe would think of him if he knew.

  Nate said, “I’ll let you off the hook for now so you can relax.”

  Joe looked up with the quizzical Labrador-type expression he sometimes had, even if he didn’t know it.

  “I’ll save it for when you have to know,” Nate said. “When there’s no choice. It might be sooner than you think, but for now we can move on.”

  Joe seemed to be okay with that. He asked, “Do you have a game plan for this Nemecek guy?”

  Nate shrugged, “I’m still working it out. But what I do know is that something has happened to cause him to come out here for me in person. In the past, as you know, he sent surrogates. I was able to, um, make them go away.”

  As he said it, he could see Joe withdrawing a little, so Nate brought it back to vagaries.

  “Anyway, I need to do some investigating of my own,” Nate said. “I’ll find out what’s happened that made him feel like he had to come out here and take care of things himself. He’s secretive and cautious, and he’s always been an expert when it comes to getting things done and not leaving any fingerprints of his own on the operations. So for him to leave his lair, well, something is pressing him hard. If I find out what it was, I might have an angle.”

  Joe said, “Did he send someone out here to take care of Large Merle? Get him out of the way? No one’s seen the guy in a month.”

  Nate was surprised Joe was aware of the disappearance of Large Merle, but he didn’t give it away. Joe once again impressed him with his innate ability to dig deep and look at the world through his own eyes.

  “Yes,” Nate said. “He sent a young woman. He knew Merle well enough to know his soft spot, and that’s how he got to him. Merle should have known better. Not many young and attractive women show interest in a giant.”

  Joe asked, “Is Merle the last one of your friends from the old days?”

  Nate shook his head. “Not entirely. I’ve still got some allies, but there aren’t many left. A few of them died of natural causes. A couple went straight and won’t even acknowledge our old unit. A couple more are in prison, where they tried to put me. And there is a small group of them … in another state. They’re off the grid, too.”

  “Can they help?” Joe asked. Nate wasn’t sure Joe knew about the conclave in Idaho, but he’d made references in the past and his friend was probably aware. For one thing, Joe knew Diane Shober, for whom they’d both searched in the Sierra Madre, was in Idaho. But Joe didn’t let on anything, and Nate didn’t press.

  “I’m going to find that out soon,” Nate said. “I’m going to go away for a while. Nemecek won’t hang around here if he thinks I’m gone.”

  “Can I help?”

  “I don’t want you any more involved, as I said. The farther you stay away from me, the better.”

  Joe sighed heavily. “I can keep an eye out, at least,” he said. “If this Nemecek is still in the area, I might get a lead on him. It’s a small town, Nate. Not much goes on somebody doesn’t talk about it.”

  Nate started to object, then thought better of it. Joe did have a wealth of contacts and was the kind of man people liked to talk to. Joe was empathetic. People told him things they shouldn’t, and Nate was guilty of that as well.

  “That might be okay,” Nate said. “As long as you don’t try to do anything. If you did and something happened and Marybeth and those girls lost a husband and a father … well, that can’t happen. I mean it, Joe.”

  Joe scoffed.

  “You think I’m kidding, don’t you?” Nate s
aid. “And I don’t mean that as an insult. You’ve got a way of getting into the middle of things and you usually come out on top. But it’s a percentage game, Joe. The odds wouldn’t be with you if you got too close to him. He’s not like anybody you’ve ever run across.”

  Nate paused, and said, “I’ve always admired you, Joe, you know that.”

  His friend looked away, but even in the firelight Nate could see he was flushing and uncomfortable.

  Nate said, “You’ve got a beautiful wife, great daughters, and a house with a picket fence. I know it sounds trite, but there are assholes out there who think my life is hard, but it isn’t. Anybody can keep to themselves and be selfish. What you do every day is hard, Joe. Staying true and loyal, man, that’s not the easy path. I admire what you’ve got. …”

  Joe leaned back on the log and rolled his eyes, said, “Enough!” but Nate kept going.

  Nate said, “I want to defend it, even if I can’t ever get there myself. That’s what this has always been about: admiration. So I can’t let you get hurt trying to solve my problem. And this guy … he’s something else.”

  “He really scares you, doesn’t he?” Joe asked. “What is it about him?”

  Nate thought about it as the fire died down. He didn’t put any more fuel on it. “You know what I’m like,” Nate said. “You know what kinds of things I’ve done.”

  “Some of them,” Joe said, cautioning Nate again not to go beyond their conversation.

  Nate said, “There’s a certain kind of ruthlessness that can only be achieved by the coldest professionals or the truly deranged. The middle ground is mushy as hell, and unpredictable. Nemecek taught me professional ruthlessness. It takes a certain kind of mind-set to believe that whatever you do is correct and whoever gets hurt in the process is no more than collateral damage when it comes to achieving something greater. He has that mind-set. He’s the greatest asset imaginable to his masters and to a righteous cause. Those are the circumstances I met him under. But if things get warped …”