Force of Nature

by C. J. Box

  As they approached, he was astonished by the size and number of Bedouin-style tents. Parked next to the tents were dozens of late-model American SUVs, Land Rovers, and Mercedes luxury crossovers. Uniformed men with submachine guns strapped across their chests wandered through the tents. But what struck him most were the dozens of tall wooden poles mounted in the desert next to the tents. On each of the poles was a small platform. And perched on top of each platform was a hooded falcon.

  “IT WAS a bustard hunting camp,” Nate explained. “The emirs flew their falcons and handlers from the UAE to Afghanistan for a hunting trip. The cargo planes brought the tents, soldiers, and vehicles. I found out later that when they struck the camp and left, the emirs left the SUVs and tents for the Taliban as payment. And they did this kind of thing two or three times a year.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Haley said. “These rich Arabs flew private jets to Afghanistan just to hunt forty-pound birds? That must have cost them millions to stage a thing like that.”

  “Absolutely,” Nate said. “And it’s why Nemecek schooled me. So I’d have an idea what we were getting into.”

  “But why were you there?”

  “I was there to be the bird handler,” Nate said. “I assumed when we saw the camp that our mission was to gift the peregrines to some king. As tribute, since the UAE were allies and things are done different over there. I could imagine some genius in the State Department finding out an influential emir was crazy for falcons, and having the brilliant idea of delivering rare North American peregrine falcons to him as a gift. Remember, this was a year and a half before 9/11 happened. This was after the Khobar Towers bombing but before the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen. Al-Qaeda was at war with us, but very few of us knew it. All I knew at the time was that in the Arab world we had both friends and enemies, but that nothing was clean-cut or predictable. Some of our friends bred future enemies, paid protection money to terrorists, and killed their own people. But it wasn’t my job to know which from which, or why we were over there delivering peregrine falcons to emirs. My job was to take care of the birds and show them when Nemecek gave the word.”

  THEY WERE housed in an amazingly well-appointed tent on the edge of the camp. Servants appeared to bring them food and drink and to help secure the bird crates.

  While they waited, Nemecek left the tent with the satellite phone and didn’t return for a half an hour. Nate fed the birds—they were hungry and disoriented and now of age to fly and hunt once they were released—and wondered who his boss was checking in with. But he didn’t ask, and Nemecek didn’t volunteer any information when he returned.

  “WE WERE invited to the largest tent that night for dinner,” Nate said. “We ate roasted goat and lobsters flown in from Maine. Our host was the prime minister of Dubai, named Mohammed bin Rashid Al Khartoum, and he was fat and jolly and a wonderful host. He spoke perfect UK English because he’d gone to school at the London School of Economics and later MIT. But his interest was in the peregrines, and Nemecek deferred to me on all the questions. It didn’t take long to figure out Nemecek knew this guy pretty well, and he was our contact. There were about twenty-five other guests that night. No women. After dinner they told hunting stories and laughed about things that had gone on during the day, how one of the emir’s falcons missed a bustard and smashed into the ground, that sort of thing. I could understand bits and pieces of the conversation, but it wasn’t unlike any hunting camp I’ve ever been to. They broke out the single-malt Scotch, although technically as devout Muslims they weren’t supposed to drink, and it went on late into the night. I know now it was a Who’s Who of UAE royals and underlings. Plus, there were some visiting guests in addition to us. All I remember about the guests was that several of the emirs really groveled around them, and I assumed they were locals. I guessed they were emissaries from the Taliban government, but it was only a guess.”

  Nate said, “One of them was tall and handsome and the other older and very intense. Both had long beards in the Taliban style—one black, one gray. The older man wore glasses and talked a lot. He kept looking at us in a way that gave me the impression he was suspicious of our being there. The tall one just smiled the whole time, as if he was enduring the stories in a good-hearted way. He seemed serenely calm. They were never introduced to us. The storytelling went on for hours, and I was bushed. It was obvious Nemecek wanted to stay, and I didn’t care. I needed to feed the birds. As I said good night, the two other visitors got up and made all kinds of apologies about leaving as well. From what I could understand, they had a camp of their own a few miles away and it would take them a while to get back.”

  NATE THANKED his hosts and paused while two soldiers threw back the tent flap and let him out. The night was cool and dry and the stars brilliant. He paused outside and looked up, marveling at the upside-down constellations.

  The two other visitors followed, and Nate stepped aside to let them pass. He nodded at them as they strode toward their car and driver. The driver, Nate noticed, eyed him coolly and thumbed the receiver of the AK-47 he had strapped across his chest. The older, intense man removed his steel-framed glasses and cleaned the lenses with his robe while the tall cool one paused next to Nate. Surprisingly, the tall man spoke in English for the first time that night.

  “You’re from America,” the man said. “Do you watch the cowboy shows?”

  Nate was confused. “The cowboy shows?”

  “You know, what you call westerns. Cowboys and Indians.”

  His tone was soothing, whispery, almost hard to hear. His eyes were dark and soulful, his features thin and angular.

  “Like Gunsmoke?” Nate asked.

  The man grinned and gently clapped his hands together. Nate thought the display oddly effeminate. “Gunsmoke,” the man said. “Marshal Matt Dillon. Miss Kitty. Doc. And that Festus, he makes me laugh. Do you remember the one where Festus went to San Francisco and thought they were trying to feed him a mermaid?”

  Nate was flummoxed. He vaguely remembered it from when he was a boy. “I think so,” he said.

  “That one makes me laugh,” the man said. “And the one where Marshal Dillon is trapped in the mine with the outlaw? Do you know that one?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t.”

  “Did you ever watch The Rifleman?” To illustrate his question, the tall man pretended he had a Winchester lever-action rifle and fanned his right hand as if firing and ejecting spent shells.

  “I remember that one,” Nate said.

  “Good show,” the tall man said, and grinned. “His son was named Mark.”

  In the dark, the older man with glasses had reached their car. He coughed politely and insincerely. The tall man talking to Nate waved in his friend’s direction.

  He said, “Maybe we can talk about westerns later. Before you go back to America.”

  “Sure,” said Nate.

  The tall man bowed with a nod and turned toward his car.

  “SO DID you sell the falcons to this Mohammed guy?” Haley asked.

  “I’ll get to that. Plus, half of them were named Mohammed. Our guy was Al Khartoum.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “I just think of all those innocent birds from Montana sitting there in a crate halfway across the world. It kind of breaks my heart.”

  Nate snorted. “I wasn’t crazy about the deal, either. I don’t mind killing bad guys I’ve never met. I didn’t lose a minute of sleep afterward. But those birds … it bothered me to leave them there, to be honest.”

  “Anyway,” she said, a lilt in her voice to prompt him to continue.

  “Anyway,” he said, “you’re focused on the falcons. That is the least significant part of this story.”

  FOR THE NEXT two days, Nate took out each of the seven peregrines one by one to demonstrate their ability. The Arabs would gather on an escarpment under a temporary cover with binoculars and long-lens video cameras as Nate drove out farther into the desert. Nemecek stayed behind with the emirs to detail the stren
gths and abilities of each young bird, as well as the attributes and characteristics of peregrine falcons in general.

  “THE BIRDS were magnificent,” Nate said wistfully. “It was almost as if they’d been born there, the way they took to the sky. There was no hesitation, and no lack of confidence in any of them. All of them were perfect aces—they performed as if they’d been bustard-hunting all their lives. Those little falcons would drop out of the sky at two hundred miles an hour and take out a bustard running full-bore across the desert that weighed four times as much. I could hear the approval of the Arabs even without using the radio.

  “It was more like an air show than falconry,” Nate said. “As if we were defense contractors showing our new equipment in front of rich generals who wanted to buy.”

  NATE NOTED that late at night, after the inevitable long dinner in the tent of their hosts, after he’d fed and secured the falcons on their stoops and tightened their hoods and gone to bed, Nemecek would gather his pack and slip outside without a word. He’d be gone for an hour or more and return silently and slip back into his blankets. Nate never asked Nemecek where he went, and Nemecek never explained.

  But Nate knew that along with personal items and clothing, the satellite phone was located within the small pack he took along with him.

  ON THE MORNING of the fourth day, as the wind picked up and sandblasted the fabric of the tents with the sound of angry rattlesnakes, Nemecek appeared and said, “Let’s go.”

  They left the peregrine falcons, and the drive back to the airport through the makeshift camp and parked jetliners seemed strangely hollow to Nate. Nemecek, however, was buoyant.

  When they were seated together in first class on the commercial airplane on the way home, Nemecek said, “Establishing and nurturing relationships with these people is more important than anything else. We’ve got billions of dollars of hardware and technology, but what we don’t have is on-the-ground human intel. It’s like the Jetsons versus the Flintstones, and we’re the Jetsons. But that doesn’t mean the Flintstones might not win in the end if we don’t figure out a way to relate to them on a human level.”

  Nate nodded, not sure where the conversation was going.

  Nemecek said, “Now all those men back there know us and respect us on a basic level. We can sell them planes and rockets and technology, but that doesn’t mean they like us. But appealing to their actual wants and needs, like we did back there, puts us on a different level. We can now call on them if we need something, even if it’s personal. They’ll receive us in their homes and palaces. If the diplomats and the politicians can’t get them to do what we want, they’ll ask us to help out.”

  His commander grinned at Nate, an expression Nate had rarely seen before.

  “If you think you were valuable to our government as an operator,” he said, “imagine how valuable you are now. Imagine how valuable we are. Suddenly, Mark V is the tip of the spear in Special Forces because we know these people personally. And the Middle East is where everything will happen when the shit hits the fan.”

  Then he turned, still smiling, and closed his eyes. Nemecek slept for the remainder of the flight. Nate spent his time wondering what he’d just been told.

  Nate’s incomprehension grew deeper the next time he was called into Nemecek’s bungalow.

  “THAT’S WHEN he handed over two million dollars in cash to me,” Nate said. “A full military duffel bag filled with bricks of hundred-dollar bills. He said it was my share.”

  Haley gasped.

  “The peregrines performed so well there was a bidding war between the emirs,” Nate said. “The final price was a half million each. Or so Nemecek said. It might even have been more.”

  Nate paused and said, “I’ve been living on it ever since.”

  HE TOOK the duffel bag of cash back to his quarters. He sat next to it on the bed for the entire night, thinking. How many other operations was Nemecek involved in that provided such huge payoffs? How many other Peregrines were tethered to Nemecek because of off-the-books operations that resulted in personal wealth?

  Of course it wasn’t right. Operators didn’t become operators for the money. But if by doing good and valuable things for their country and risking their lives every time they went out resulted in rewards that would provide for them (if they lived) and their families for years, where was the harm? After all, the only other logical recipient of cash would be the U.S. Treasury. Might as well feed the bricks of cash, one by one, into the garbage disposal, right?

  The next day, he drove back to Nemecek’s bungalow to return it. Nemecek was gone, cleared out. Nate guessed he’d moved—as he often did—to one of his other small offices throughout the world.

  He went back to his quarters, expecting a secure set of orders for his next operation or at least a communication from his commander. But there was nothing.

  Over the next year, Nate spent a good deal of his time deconstructing the mission and analyzing everything that had occurred both at home and in Afghanistan. Because of the vertical and decentralized design of Mark V, he never saw or heard from Nemecek. That in itself wasn’t unusual, except for the special circumstances of Nate’s relationship with his superior officer. Nate had questions and concerns. And later, guilt.

  “THE WEEK after 9/11,” Nate said in a whisper, “I walked away. I didn’t say goodbye to anyone, and I didn’t file any papers. I didn’t submit to debriefing, which was in my contract. I just threw that duffel bag in the back of my Jeep and started driving. I ended up in Montana.

  “All along the way,” he said, “I saw American flags on every storefront and in every yard. I remember looking out once over the prairie near Billings, way out in the distance, and seeing a single flag flying above a ranch house. The world had changed, good people had been killed and damaged, and I was partially responsible for it. And when they needed me most, I quit.”

  Haley had wrapped her arms around herself, and she shook her head from side to side. She seemed deeply troubled.

  “I don’t get it,” she said. “I don’t see why you just left them when they probably needed you the most. It doesn’t seem like you.”

  Nate snorted.

  “Why did you do it?” she asked. “Why did you desert our country and your service?”

  Nate took a deep intake of breath. “I was young. I was stupid. I was devastated.”

  He turned away. “I believed in Mark V and John Nemecek. I devoted my life to the cause, and I killed human beings all over the world on their behalf. I knew what we were doing was questionable in terms of laws and treaties, but I thought it was for the greater good. But when I found out Nemecek was using the Peregrines for his own benefit, and that much of what we’d been doing was all a game, I lost faith in the entire system. I just wanted out. I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror anymore, and I sure as hell couldn’t go on another operation. So I went to Montana to leave Mark V and the rest of the world behind.”

  She asked, “And why do you say you were responsible for innocent lives lost?”

  “I told you the story,” Nate said, “except for the most important parts. It all became clear that week after September eleventh. I watched those buildings go down in New York and the speculation on who was responsible. Then they showed the old video of who had masterminded the attack. Until then, I didn’t know.”

  “Know what?” she demanded, her tone shrill and accusatory.

  He took a deep breath and held it. Then: “The visitor to the camp that night, the lover of westerns, was Osama bin Laden. His friend was Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri. Together they were the heart and brains of al-Qaeda, and at the time they were putting the final touches on the 9/11 attacks.”

  “But how could you know that?” she asked.

  “I didn’t, and nobody did at the time,” Nate said. “But our government wanted to kill bin Laden for things he’d done already—the USS Cole bombing, the embassy bombings. They were watching that camp with satellites while we were there, ready to launch
cruise missiles and take him out. In the end, the reason they didn’t pull the trigger was because they were afraid of collateral damage—they didn’t want to be responsible for a bunch of dead princes in the desert as well.”

  Haley shook her head. “But you said the visitors had a camp a few miles away. They could have hit that camp and everybody else would have been fine.”

  “Exactly,” Nate said.

  “So how are you responsible for that bad decision?”

  Nate turned his head, his eyes slitted. “Because our government man on the ground called them up each night on his satellite phone to tell them bin Laden was staying in our camp. So we wouldn’t risk our lives and so we’d personally get rich with blood and oil money.”

  Haley recoiled. “Oh my God.”

  “Now, apparently,” Nate said, “Nemecek has gone semi-private, like a lot of the old spooks have with all the defense cuts. His company is up for a massive contract to do clandestine counterintelligence, and he looks like a shoo-in, at least according to that poor bastard I got the information from back in Jackson. The skids are greased for him to make millions more and do what he’s best at. His reputation in Washington is stellar because of the great work of the Mark V Peregrines. But if the staffers and senators awarding the contract knew that he did his damnedest to save bin Laden’s life before 9/11 …”

  “He’d lose the contract and his reputation and probably go to jail,” Haley said, finishing Nate’s sentence.

  “And there’s one guy who could blow it for him if this ever got public,” Nate said.

  “Now I understand,” she said. “So your friend Large Merle? He knew?”

  Nate nodded.

  “What about Oscar and Gabriel and the rest back in Idaho?”

  “No. But Nemecek thought they might. So he had to take them out.”

  “What about your friends in Saddlestring? The ones you called and told to leave?”