He grabbed the radio from Nathan and brought it to his lips.
“Copy you. Snake Nest, this is Liberty 1.”
“Where the hell have you been, Liberty 1? You missed your last check-in.”
Raven couldn’t help but grin, getting into the character. “We found some loot back on Interstate 70. We’ll be back in a few hours.”
There was a pause that felt like an eternity.
“Roger that, Liberty 1. The General looks forward to seeing what you brought him. Over.”
Raven turned off the handheld. “Who the fuck is the General?”
“Answer him,” Nathan said, squeezing Joe’s arm.
“General Fenix,” Joe mumbled. “He’s the leader of the Sons of Liberty.”
“That’s the guy Dupree was talking about, right?”
Nathan nodded and looked at Joe. “You’re with the Aryan Nation or what? How many of you fuckers are there?”
Joe didn’t answer. He shifted in the seat next to Nathan and brushed up against the door, moaning in pain.
“How many soldiers are there in your group?” Raven asked.
Nathan grabbed Joe and pulled him away from the door. His eyes had rolled into his head and his lips pursed. The wrap covering Joe’s leg was saturated with blood. It looked like he’d lost a lot—maybe too much. Raven didn’t feel so much as a flicker of remorse. Skinhead bastards got what was coming to them.
“I don’t think we’re getting much more out of our friend,” Raven said. “We have to stick to the original plan.”
Raven pulled around the debris pile, the tires jolting over the loose rocks. After powering through the last stretch, he continued through the windy ravine at fifty miles an hour. Gray clouds rolled overhead, only a sliver of sun peeking through their belly. Raindrops pelted the windshield, seeping through a bullet hole and onto the dashboard.
“The first turn-off is about a mile ahead,” Nathan said.
“I know,” Raven replied. He had memorized the map Joe had sketched out for them. He claimed it was the back way to the Castle. Totally unguarded. Raven and Nathan were both skeptical, but they had no other choice than to check out the road. They would find a place to ditch the Humvee and move the rest of the way in on foot.
“Hand me that radio,” Nathan said. “I’m going to try and see if I can get ahold of my sister or someone who can reach her.”
Raven handed it back to Nathan.
“You ever hear of this General Fenix?” Nathan asked while he was fiddling with the channels.
“Nope,” Raven said. “But I know the type. If he’s part of the Aryan Nation, then he sure as hell isn’t going to like me.”
Nathan caught his gaze in the rearview mirror. “You’re sure you’re up for this?”
Raven took a moment to think before he answered. Running the gauntlet was one thing, but heading into a lion’s den to face the kind of men who would skin him alive was another. Sandra, Allie, Creek, and Colton needed Raven. But so did Nathan, and so did his nephew and the other kids being held hostage.
“I’m up for it, Major, but I need you to make me a promise. If something happens to me, I want you to look after my family. You have connections through your sister. Make sure that Estes Park gets supplies and help.”
“You have my word, Raven. I promised Colton the same thing.”
Raven held up a hand. “One more thing. If I die, you better tell Lindsey that I went down in a blaze of glory—especially if I didn’t.”
Nathan scanned through the channels, reaching out to anyone who might be listening. Raven sped through the ravine while they waited for a response that never came.
They drove in tense silence. Up ahead, Raven saw something hanging from a tree that made his blood run cold.
“I think we’re about to enter enemy territory,” Raven said, pointing. He pulled off onto the shoulder of the road and backed into the shadows of a bluff.
“Is that a…” Nathan’s voice trailed off.
Raven pulled the binoculars from his vest and narrowed in on the figure of a man stretched out in a T-shape, lashed to the branches of an oak. A vulture pecked a ribbon of flesh away from his neck.
“They crucified the poor son of a bitch,” Nathan said.
Joe groaned. “Liam didn’t see eye to eye with the General, so the General took his eyes.” He coughed and rested his head against the seat.
“Damn,” Raven breathed. These bastards were even worse than he’d imagined.
“Took his eyes,” Joe mumbled to himself. “He’ll take yours too, and do worse to the injun.”
Raven shook his head, thinking of the Sioux story about the end of the world.
It tells of a place where the prairie meets the badlands—a place with a hidden cave.
Well, there was a nice rolling meadow ahead, and behind them was a stretch of rocky, arid terrain and a network of caves in the mountains—if Joe was to be believed. All they needed was a black dog, and yet another of Raven’s childhood stories would come to life.
Nathan tightened the rope around Joe’s hands and then tied it to the door. He finished securing the prisoner with tape over his mouth. Nathan grabbed one of the six M4s they had taken from the dead Sons of Liberty, and climbed into the passenger seat.
“Keep moving,” he said.
Inside the cave lives a woman, Raven thought, repeating the story in his mind as he drove. She’s been there for thousands of years working on a blanket strip of her buffalo robe. Beside her sits Shunka Sapa, a massive black dog.
“I think I figured out who Shunka Sapa is,” Raven finally said.
“What?” Nathan looked over. “Oh, from the Cherokee story?”
“The Sioux story. Big difference, Major.”
Nathan plucked the map off the dashboard. “General Fenix is our Shunka Sapa, right?”
Raven nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”
“According to Joe, we’re almost there. Let’s put that black dog down.”
“Recon first, Major,” Raven said. “I don’t trust a thing this punk says.”
Nathan agreed with a nod. “I’m going to try the radio one more time.” He ran through the channels while Raven checked his gear.
Crossbow and hatchet? Check. Glock? Check. MK11? Check. Hand grenades? Check. They had plenty of ammunition and weapons for the hunt. He caught himself. This wasn’t a hunt—this was a battle.
Nathan cursed and tossed the radio aside. “Still nothing. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
Raven didn’t know what to say, so he merely put the Humvee in gear and rolled on. They were coming up on the man on the tree. His shaved head was bowed, his chin tucked against his naked chest. His hands and feet were nailed into the bark. It was hard to tell how long he had been strung up, but his flesh was already decomposing.
He gunned the engine and sped down the road that cut through the meadow. A fence of foothills lined with pine trees provided a natural barrier at the end of the valley. The road twisted up into the mountains beyond.
“You see the turn-off?” Raven asked.
Nathan was already scoping the jagged cliffs that towered over the road. There were plenty of perches for a sniper, but they hoped the Humvee and the radio would allow them to sneak behind enemy lines.
Still, Raven didn’t like it. This was starting to bring back memories of the raid in North Korea eighteen months ago. Even for a trained soldier, heading into enemy territory never got any easier. Without intel, and with only a two-man team who were both injured and exhausted, it was going to be almost impossible.
Letting out a discreet sigh, Raven focused on the plan. Recon and scouting came first. They would also try one last time to reach Nathan’s sister or someone else who could call in support. If that failed again, they would do a risk assessment.
On the right side of the road was a lake with a mirrored surface, and to the left, a lush forest of pines. Raven slowed on the approach, looking for the entrance to the frontage road that would take them to the so-called C
astle. Instead of the path, he saw another body strung up on the base of a ponderosa pine on the left side of the road.
“Christ,” Nathan said. “More of them?”
He was looking to the right side of the road. Raven turned to see another corpse crucified to a tree there. He stopped the Humvee in the middle of the shadowed road, engine humming.
These bodies weren’t Sons of Liberty soldiers. The dead people—a man on the left side and a woman on the right—appeared to be in their mid-twenties and were dressed in civilian clothing. They looked like campers.
Nathan pointed at a National Park Service sign about a quarter mile down the road. “That’s the turn-off.”
“And this is a warning,” Raven said, nodding at the dead.
It reminded him of what the Apaches did to their prisoners—and the stories of what the American Army did to the American Indians. Both sides had butchered each other, scalping, slaughtering, and stringing up the dead.
But this wasn’t the fucking Oregon Trail. This was the twenty-first century. This type of brutality wasn’t supposed to exist in the American West anymore. The Aryan Brotherhood displayed a level of brutality Raven had never seen in his lifetime.
“Stay frosty,” he said to himself.
Nathan kept his rifle shouldered, looking for targets as Raven pulled down the frontage road and entered a tunnel of trees. The canopy overhead nearly blocked out the mountain peaks in the distance. Darkness shrouded them as they drove slowly down the road. There wasn’t a single sound of nature inside the forest. No chirping birds or bugs—no sign of deer or rabbits.
“This place gives me the creeps,” Nathan said.
“I hear that, brother,” Raven agreed.
The dirt road snaked through the forest and began to rise over another hill. As they neared the top, Nathan suddenly lowered his rifle and said, “Back, back, back!”
Raven saw the stone lookout tower at the same time. He could only see the top of the structure, but it was enough to send him peeling back in reverse.
“Joe wasn’t kidding. They’ve got a castle,” Nathan said. “Pull off behind those trees.”
Raven steered the Humvee off the road and parked beneath the trees. It wasn’t full cover, but they would camouflage the truck. They both got out, and Raven hefted the MK11 they had found in the vehicle over his shoulder. He had trained to use the semi-automatic sniper rifle back in the Marines. It was equipped with a swivel-based bipod, sound suppressor, mil-dot riflescope, and back-up iron sights. He could pin a tail on a donkey with the gun at fifteen hundred yards.
“Joe’s unconscious,” Nathan said.
“I say we leave him here. Come on, help me cover the Humvee.”
After covering up the truck with fallen branches, they set off into the forest. Five minutes into the hike, Raven spotted the brown, rocky embankments framing the edge of the woods. A fence of Douglas firs grew out of the steep inclines. The slope descended a hundred feet to the pasture below and was covered in mossy boulders; plenty of places to hide.
They ducked behind one of the rocks and scoped the valley below. Raven checked the road and then moved the crosshairs back to the tower. It was more of a silo, made of stone with a lookout at the top. He put it at about twelve hundred yards out. Two men stood in the lookout at the top with their rifles angled out over the valley. A camp consisting of four buildings stood to the east.
“Two contacts,” Raven reported. “But we’re clear up here. This is the perfect vantage.”
Nathan held up a pair of binoculars. He did a thorough scan of the valley while Raven checked their six.
“Looks like some sort of camp,” he whispered. “That’s got to be where they’re keeping the kids. I see a couple of contacts patrolling, but that’s it.”
Raven took another look. A stone building and several log cabins were nestled under the ridgeline to the east. It was the same type of architecture Raven had seen in other national parks, built during the New Deal when President Roosevelt created the Civilian Conservation Corps to put America back to work after the Great Depression. Several men patrolled the camp with automatic rifles. Raven counted three of them and only one clunker pickup truck.
“My guess is these fuckers hightailed it up here to seek refuge after the attack last week,” he said. “They don’t appear to be that organized.”
“We can’t underestimate them,” Nathan said.
Raven nodded grimly. He had underestimated Brown Feather, and he wouldn’t make that mistake again.
“Try and get ahold of your sister again,” Raven said. “If you can’t, then we attack at dark.”
— 16 —
Rows of torches burned in Bond Park. Tonight, Cindy and Milo Todd were to be executed for killing Officer Rick Nelson.
Colton stood next to Lindsey, stoically watching the scene. He’d told Kelly and Risa to stay home—he couldn’t stand the thought of them witnessing this. All Colton could think of was a Ku Klux Klan lynching.
“This feels wrong,” Lindsey said.
“People need to know the law still exists,” said a voice.
Don approached, carrying a shotgun in one hand. A new gold star was pinned on his breast. “When the men who burned down the Stanley and took our supplies hear about this, they’ll think twice about coming back to Estes Park.”
“I don’t think Mr. Redford’s crew will be worried,” Colton said.
“Justice will be served to those that break the law, including this Mr. Redford,” Don said. He spat a wad of tobacco onto the ground when Colton didn’t reply.
“Don, don’t you have anything better to do right now?” Lindsey asked.
“Look, I’m sorry about how things went down in the Mayor’s office today, but you don’t have what it takes to get us out of this mess, and I think you know it,” Don said, never taking his eyes off Colton.
Colton balled his right hand into a fist and pivoted like he was about to throw a punch. Don flinched and took a step back.
“Congratulations on the new job, Chief Aragon,” Colton said. “I hope to God you’re as tough as you think you are.”
He walked away, leaving Don to prepare the nooses and contemplate what came next.
Lindsey followed Colton toward the knot of curious residents that had formed in the parking lot beside the park. Several folks stood along the railing on the deck outside Claire’s Restaurant, and there were more standing on the balcony of La Cabana Mexican Grill.
In the flicker of torchlight, he recognized most of the faces. Many of them he had known his entire life. His job—his duty——his duty had been to keep them safe, and he had let them all down.
“Are they really going to hang those people?” someone asked.
“Sure are,” another person said. “They deserve it.”
“I’d shoot them myself,” said another man. “Rick was my neighbor. He was a good man.”
June Roberts, a retired woman who worked at the Safeway part-time bagging groceries, interjected. Her voice was soft but firm. “We can’t just kill them. That makes us no better than they are.”
Colton bowed his head, trying to hold off the anger by counting in his head. Every time he tried, he kept coming back to the pointlessness of each death that had occurred over the past week. He scanned the crowd for his wife, just to make sure she hadn’t come. He was glad he didn’t see Sandra or Allie in the crowd, either, but he did spot Rex and Lilly Stone. Both of them watched Colton, their faces blank.
One person he couldn’t find who should have been here was Mayor Gail Andrews.
A commotion came from the back of the crowd. Colton followed its source to see Milo and Cindy being led from the station by Officer Matthew and Officer Hines. The prisoners shuffled, hands cuffed and feet shackled together by a connecting chain.
“Where’s Gail?” he asked Lindsey.
She shrugged. “No idea.”
She better be here.
Father Frank Nolte emerged from the crowd. He was dressed
in a black shirt with a white collar. Colton had known Frank for thirty years. He’d married Colton and Kelly, baptized Risa, and most recently presided over Melissa Stone’s private funeral. Before the attack, he’d been gearing down to retire, but Colton had a feeling he was about to become a very busy man.
Frank loosened his clerical collar and said, “You’re sure there’s no other way, Marcus?”
“Not my call, Father,” Colton said. “Don’s in charge now.”
A woman shouted over the din of the crowd. “You can’t hang us!”
It was Cindy, and she was pulling on her chains, yanking her brother away from the gazebo. The crowd, now several hundred strong, would be unstoppable if they decided to protest.
“You can’t do this!” Cindy shouted. “Please, please!”
“It was Eric! Eric killed that cop!” Milo yelled.
Don pumped his shotgun and angled it at them. “Both of you, be quiet. You will have your time to speak in a few minutes.”
“I wish they’d get on with it,” someone said behind him. Colton turned and saw Gail, her eyes fixed on the makeshift gallows.
Apparently the mayor had decided to show up after all.
“We’re really going to do this?” Colton asked.
“We’ve already discussed this, Marcus. We have to do this.”
Colton faced her. “You’re wrong.”
“I wish I was,” she sighed. “This isn’t going to be the last time we have to do something like this.”
“No! Please!” Cindy shouted again.
Hines pulled Milo and Cindy toward a long wooden footstool that had been set up under the nooses. Don pointed the shotgun at them. “Up,” he ordered.
“Please, please don’t do this!” Milo begged. “It was Eric. He’s the one that hit that cop in the head with the rock!”
“Yeah, it was Eric!” Cindy shouted. “You already killed him. This ain’t right!”
Don angled the gun at Cindy, and she finally stood on the stool. Once she and Milo were both under the nooses, Father Frank performed the sign of the cross.
There were a few shouts from the crowd, but most citizens simply waited in silence. Colton suspected a good portion of them didn’t expect them to follow through with the execution.
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