by Jeff Carson
She’d never been to the area. The peak directly left of the dot was called Dark Mountain—elevation 13,210 feet, according to the label.
It only took a tiny twitch of her finger to look over the northern edge of the bowl, a trek that would’ve taken a hiker most of a day and all their energy.
Cold Lake slid into view—dark blue surrounded by a sea of green trees.
Well-to-do people had carved clearings in the forest and erected summer homes off the southern tip of the lake. They were well-spaced and at the current zoom level she saw them all at a glance.
Her eyes traveled from the edge of the lake southward to the top of the mountain overlooking the meeting point. To walk the distance from one of the houses to Dark Mountain would’ve been formidable—through thick trees to the tree line, and then steep, rocky terrain above.
Furthermore, the homes were all multi-million-dollar structures, sturdy, large and built with modern materials. The few outbuildings she saw were big and topped with stone tiles.
Closing the mapping app, she checked the first picture of Rachette she’d received. She saw dirt underneath the hay pile Rachette had been laid on. There was a sliver of wall behind him made from bleached and warped wood. Darkness filled gaps between the planks.
In other words, an old beat-up shack. Not the outbuilding of a multi-million-dollar home.
Opening the maps app again, she scrolled south, past the blue dot and over the southern wall of the bowl. Again, the map disappeared and digital gridlines took its place.
“Damn it.”
Slapping the phone on her leg, she stretched her neck.
Charlotte walked across the parking lot towards her.
Patterson took off her seatbelt and was about to climb out to meet her halfway when the phone screen flickered, displaying the aerial images.
The blue marker pulsed at the top of the screen now. In the middle, was a line of snow-covered peaks, and in the valley to the south, just below the southern edge of the crescent peak dubbed Dark Mountain, stood a single structure casting a shadow.
Her heart hammered in her chest as she pinched her fingers and studied a basic square building that had been twisted into a parallelogram by years of standing in the elements. A two-track road stitched the ground east and west, passing feet from it.
Charlotte had stopped outside and was talking to Yates again. Yates held up his phone and Charlotte reluctantly went back and took it. Maybe MacLean was on the line wanting to talk to her.
Patterson zoomed back out on the map and followed the two-track road to the east. Swiping her finger, she traced a meandering stream down the valley until it leaked into the larger valley below. There, the two-track became a regular dirt road and connected with Highway 734. The junction of the two roads was only a few miles south of where Wolf would’ve turned off earlier tonight to hike to the coordinates.
The ambush scenario became clear. Ethan Womack had driven up this road with Rachette and held him in this shed. The meeting spot was one valley to the north. Between the two valleys was a ridgeline—the perfect perch for a shooter with a fifty-caliber sniper rifle.
Quickly, she swiped back to the structure, then followed the two-track the other way.
Again with the gridlines.
Her heart pumped wildly now and sweat spread under her armpits.
Outside, Charlotte stood by the hotel, nodding and saying few words into the phone pressed to her ear.
The aerial-view images materialized again, and Patterson followed the two-track west between two mountains. It curved south, and then, surprisingly, it swung to the east.
The road widened and was marked as Turkey Hill Ranch Road.
Swiping further, she waited again for the picture to materialize. And then it did, revealing a complex of buildings in a clearing. They were painted red and white, with cattle strewn about in the surrounding green fields that cut into the forest. Machinery littered the space near one of the buildings, and three pickups were parked in front of another.
Overlaying the map was a hyperlinked label: Turkey Hill Ranch.
She tapped it, and when a website came up she scoured the page for the names of the owners. She found none, but saw mentions of a company called Cormack Holdings and an association called Johnstone Beef Growers.
A soft knock ripped her from her reading.
She lowered the window, revealing Charlotte’s drawn face.
“Hey.”
“Hey.” Charlotte’s upper lip trembled and she gazed into nothing with stoic stillness.
Patterson put the phone on the passenger seat with the screen down and climbed out. Wrapping Charlotte in a hug she said, “We’ll find him.”
Charlotte sobbed and leaned on Patterson’s shoulder without wrapping her arms.
The emotional outburst lasted a few seconds and then Charlotte backed away, wiping her nose. “So what’s happening? I saw you reading something on your phone. You find anything in those articles?”
“Uh, no. Well, I see that Ethan Womack probably found out about us through those articles. They mention me and Tom a few times. But …” Her subconscious interrupted her with something, but failed to elaborate.
“But what?”
Patterson shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Yates pulled his vehicle up to the front of Patterson’s Acura and rolled down the window. “Situation room in ten minutes!”
Patterson nodded.
“You coming?” Charlotte asked.
She furrowed her brow, hit hard by the desperation in her friend’s voice. “Of course, Char. I’ll be there.”
Charlotte turned and climbed into the vehicle. Then they drove away with hissing tires.
Patterson got back inside and studied the website page some more. After another minute of fruitless reading, she cursed the tiny, sluggish device in her hand and called Bryce Duplessis.
“Yo,” he said in greeting.
“It’s me.”
“I know.”
“I need a favor. Are you in the office?”
“No. I’m at home enjoying a glass of wine.”
Patterson hesitated.
“Of course I’m in the office. What do you need?”
CHAPTER 32
“Yeah, well … if you had come up with a better plan, we wouldn’t be following her now.”
Rachette’s health slid downhill, and fast. He could tell by the way sleep called him. All he wanted to do was close his eyes, but this guy had no volume knob on his voice.
“What? I can’t hear you! Damn reception … what? Yeah, I can hear you. Then just run her off the road and shoot her in the head with his gun.”
That remark made Rachette blink awake. He stared at the wool blankets, wondering who this guy was talking about. A woman. Charlotte?
“Charlotte.” His voice sounded like a vacuum cleaner.
He was so thirsty.
“He’s coming … he’s up on the ridge in place … we’re ready, so just keep following her … then we’ll have to deal with it. Correction: you’ll have to deal with it. And you’re gonna have to go all in. We can’t have her walking around after tonight, understand? … Huh? … Yeah. Well, like Dad used to say, ‘Put your shit back in your ass!’”
Rachette smiled and passed out again.
CHAPTER 33
“Nope,” Bryce said. “Dead end there.”
Patterson sat staring at the now quiet Edelweiss Hotel through streaks of rain. “Shit.”
“Cormack Holdings’ registered agent is a firm in Denver called Gander and Mesner.”
“You know anyone there?”
“I’d have to look into it tomorrow. Why? What’s the big deal?”
Patterson closed her eyes and sagged into her car seat.
“So we’re going to need another day of looking in on Chandler Mustaine, by the way.”
She cracked her eyelids. “What?”
“Yeah. Twenty-seven photos and you got zero usable shots of his face.”
“You got him with a hat and self-tinting glasses on, which look like mirrored Ray-Bans in the photos I’m looking at.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Nope. It’s kind of comical. But, anyway, no big deal. Just head back next weekend. Miss big-tits will be back in town, or the other one. Either way, there’ll be another chance soon. I’m not worried about it.”
She was going to tell him that Chandler Mustaine had seen her in the trees as she’d fled the scene, which was going to make another time very difficult, but then decided she didn’t give a shit. “Okay.”
Hanging up, she swallowed and looked at herself in the mirror. She reached over, pulled open her glove compartment, and took out her Glock 17 nine-millimeter tucked in a paddle holster—just like the department issue she used to have.
She had one magazine inserted and two spares lying underneath the paperwork in her glove.
After staring at the oiled weapon, she looked over her shoulder toward Main Street. Then she looked down at herself, dressed in slacks and a blouse, with shoes built more for show than for usefulness. The coat draped on the back seat would repel rain for a while, then sop it up like a sponge. But the rain was letting up, wasn’t it?
“Fuck it,” she said. “Let’s go.”
She started the car and flicked the wipers, then twisted the lights and drove.
“Who are you talking to?” she asked, pulling onto Main, south toward Williams Pass, and the two partners who needed her.
CHAPTER 34
Wolf fired again into the tree and went around to the other side to assess the damage he’d done. Ten of the 5.56 millimeter bullets had left fist-sized holes in the opposite side of the sopping-wet ponderosa pine.
He put both hands on the trunk and pushed. The tree felt as immoveable as a healthy ponderosa growing in Rocky Mountain soil normally did.
The bridge was gone. The water had severed it from its moorings and shoved it up onto the opposite shoreline, which explained why he’d not seen it earlier. The water flowed just as fast, if not more intensely, than before. If there was a better way to cross the river, he wasn’t seeing it.
He fired another few rounds.
The rain had stopped now, but water continually dripped off the branches above Wolf, let loose by the vibrations of bullets ripping through its thick trunk.
He walked out into a clearing and checked the sky. A patch of stars twinkled through a break in the clouds. The weather was rolling out, which was one obstacle gone, but the river ran higher than ever, swelled by the runoff collecting in the bowl up the valley and pouring out like a shotgun blast.
One more time, he looked up at the tall pine and clicked the gun to full auto. He ducked underneath the canopy and aimed carefully, his theory being that if the exit holes came out toward the water the tree would follow that direction once he’d put enough lead through it.
He squeezed, firing off six, seven, ten rounds, trying to concentrate his fire in the center of the trunk. It sounded like a cracking whip, if a whip’d had full-auto mode, and the noise rolled up and down the valley as he paused between bursts.
He gave it a push again, and thought he felt it give a little.
After another long squeeze of the trigger and the gun kicking in his arms, the empty click told him he’d gone through sixty rounds and the tree still stood. Without hesitation, he slammed another magazine home and squeezed off more rounds until, finally, he saw the tree jolt.
He stopped and stared at it, wondering whether it had only been the gun’s recoil playing tricks on his mind. Then he felt the fresh cascade of water coming off the branches above him and knew he’d finally cut through.
He placed the M4 on the ground and put his full weight behind, pushing against the tree. Then it creaked and shuddered, and started falling away from him. The last thing he wanted was the trunk to split and kick back into him with the force of a Mack truck, so he picked up the gun and ran away, hearing popping and cracking and then a whoosh as it landed in the river.
With wide eyes, he ran to the side and raked the headlamp beam over the tree to the other bank. The water frothed through the branches and underneath the downed behemoth, but it held firm against the battering.
He shouldered the M4, avoiding the scorching barrel, and walked to the cracked base of the fallen tree. The air was saturated with the scent of pine sap and gunpowder, which, along with his victory, energized him to move.
He climbed up onto his makeshift bridge, and it only took a few steps into the maze of branches to realize that crossing was going to be harder than he’d expected. But he moved steadily, pointing his headlamp, grabbing branches for balance when he could, and inched his way over the water.
When he reached the center of the raging torrent, he felt the tree move underneath him, and then it began to roll. Sidestepping, he slipped on the soaked wood and landed squarely on his crotch.
His testicles took the brunt of the fall and nauseating pain overpowered everything.
The tree kept moving.
Gritting his teeth, he got to his hands and knees and scrambled forward as best he could. The strap of the M4 caught on a branch and pulled him back, and he almost toppled into the water, but his foot landed on wood and he pulled hard, freeing himself just in time.
Another step—another two feet.
The rotating underfoot stopped as he neared the other side. Then the tree jolted and the rushing water changed in pitch, and he saw that the end of the tree behind him was buried in whitewater. A second later it began creeping downstream, and then it broke loose.
Needles poked his face as he scrambled forward, and he watched in horror as the front end backed into the water.
Without thinking, he dove sideways toward the bank, but came up short of solid ground and plunged into the icy liquid.
The shock to his system was made worse by the rip current that sucked him under and sent him tumbling. There was no up or down, only rolling.
Almost instantly the air in his lungs was gone, and they convulsed, begging for air.
He felt rock underneath him and he kicked off it, managing to get his head above water and suck in a tiny breath before he went back under.
An instant later, he felt a shattering pain against his back as he ran into something. He twisted around and grabbed bark-covered branches. The tree had wedged to a stop and caught him like a net. Water piled behind it, submerging his head, and he struggled to stay above the frothing torrent.
With numb fingers, he gripped hard and pulled himself up. As he lay draped on the trunk, he sucked in a breath, and then something hit him on the head and he fell off. The blow stunned him and it took a second to realize that the ponderosa pine was rolling like a paddle wheel and the rotating branches were now pushing him under.
He clawed and pulled his way out from under the murderous wooden arm and managed to pull his torso up out of the water and onto the trunk again.
The tree seemed to jam itself home into a stable position, and that was all the coaxing Wolf needed to climb up.
With water pouring off his face and flowing down his body—over his back, down his pants, into his boots—he got up and walked over the slick wood.
He stumbled and slipped, raking his body through the branches as he moved toward shore. Then something cracked and the tree lurched, and like a boat backing away from a dock, he felt the pine swing downstream. He dove off again and held his breath, but his time he crashed face-first into a bush.
Panting, he rolled onto his back and watched the dripping branches pull away from him and disappear.
As shock wore off, he sat up and took stock of his situation.
He looked over his shoulder and saw the suppressor muzzle of the M4 still on his back, and his daypack was securely fastened underneath that. He ran a hand over his waist and felt the Glock still in his paddle holster.
All in all, he figured he’d come out all right, and he was on the o
ther side of the river.
Then he realized he was shivering.
CHAPTER 35
He stumbled out of the bush and unslung the M4 and the backpack. As he unzipped the bag, he was hit with the stench of Fabian’s clothing, and then relief that it was dry.
He sloughed off his rain jacket, the long and short-sleeved shirts beneath it, his sopping jeans, underwear, and socks, and started putting on the dry clothing.
His teeth chattered uncontrollably and he stumbled while poking a leg into the dry jeans—both signs that he was hypothermic.
A fire was out of the question. He had a lighter, but then what? Everything was wet.
He zipped the jeans, put on the spare long-sleeved shirt and sweatshirt, and donned some new socks. Shoving on his winter cap, he felt something slide down the leg of his pants. He kicked and a small black box clattered to the ground.
Even with the life evaporating from him, he paused at the sight. He bent over and picked it up, then fumbled with numb fingers and opened the box. The diamond ring he’d once offered to Lauren shimmered inside the velvet case.
He thought of Lauren’s smiling face, and then Ella’s.
He shut the box and dropped it in his backpack, and with renewed determination pushed his feet into the sopping boots. After a few seconds of fumbling with the laces, he gave up and tucked them inside instead.
With the distraction of death tapping him on the shoulder, he was surprised by a lucent idea that had come to him. And instead of leaving the wet clothing, he packed it in the bag and shouldered it again.
He grabbed the rain jacket, strapped on the M4, and marched fast.
“Let’s move. Team One, go.”
Titus, Chambers, and Womack got up from their cover positions and jogged toward the cluster of huts they were calling Objective B, or Bamyani to the locals.
Intel described Bamyani as a town with a population of a hundred that had been known to house Taliban combatants. Wolf saw it as another group of huts perched on a hill in the middle of three thousand years ago.