by Jeff Carson
Wolf, Chan, and the rest of the squad watched on as Womack dragged behind Titus and Chambers. On any other given mission, Corporal Paul Womack would’ve led a foot-blistering pace, but the man they’d once known was gone.
“What’s his problem?” PFC Chan asked next to Wolf.
“Henning,” Wolf said.
Wolf decided then and there that he had no choice but to report Womack to command. News that Sergeant Henning had died of his head injuries had reached them two days prior, and now Womack had gone from borderline insubordinate to walking zombie.
“Move, Womack,” Wolf said into his throat mic.
Womack upped his pace, catching Chambers as they reached the exterior of the first building.
Once Womack caught up with the others, he passed them and took position next to the doorway, which, like most of the structures in Afghanistan’s countryside, had no door.
A second later, without the go-ahead order from Wolf, he disappeared inside with gun raised.
“What the hell’s he doing?” Chan asked.
“Get in there after him,” Wolf said into his mic.
Before Chambers and Titus reached the doorway, yells and a burst of gunfire came from within the hut.
“Cover!” Wolf said, running out from behind the wall to the building. “Status! Status!”
“Enemy down, enemy down,” Titus’s voice came through the earpiece.
The rest of the squad followed and took up positions outside the hut, and Wolf walked in to assess the damage. A young man, no older than sixteen, was splayed on the ground with a stripe of gunshot wounds across his chest. An AK-47 lay on the dirt floor next to him.
“What happened?” Wolf turned to Womack.
Womack’s blue eyes flashed. “I shot him first. That’s what happened.”
“You didn’t wait for my order.”
“Thank God, I didn’t. Or we’d all be dead.”
They stared at one another.
A demon lurked behind Womack’s eyes, red-rimmed and bloodshot from five nights straight of drinking beer.
“Sir, sir!” Chambers pointed out the door.
Gunfire erupted outside.
They ducked for cover and Wolf edged to the doorway.
“Clear!”
A man sprawled on the ground outside, an AK-47 lying next to him, a similar line of gunshot wounds seeping through his ragged clothing.
“Anyone hit?” Wolf asked.
“No, sir.”
“Shit. Let’s move!” He turned to Womack. “Stay close to me.”
“Sir, yes, sir!”
Wolf ignored the insubordination in his voice and left out the door.
There was one main road through the town, which was the equivalent distance of one block of shops on Main Street in Rocky Points, but it felt like a mile in the current circumstances.
A full hour later, they’d searched and cleared every building. Besides the two combatants killed earlier, they uncovered no more threats, only elderly men and dozens of women and children who were shocked and scared after watching a group of technologically clad warriors methodically sweep through their town.
Like many times before, the team rounded up the non-combatants into groups and put them in huts so they could keep a close eye on them.
“Secondary sweep,” Wolf said, and Titus and Chan walked to him.
Another Ranger herded the final stragglers into one of the buildings.
“How many do we have?” Wolf scanned the buildings behind them with his NVGs.
“We have thirty-nine women, twenty-seven children, eleven men.”
“Okay.” His men looked calm-eyed and ready for action, save for Womack, who darted his M4 back and forth between the buildings.
“Womack, you stay with the non-combatants.” Wolf remembered the bag of candy and the swarm of giggling children.
“Sir, yes, sir!”
The other Rangers watched with wary eyes as Womack snapped a crisp salute, turned on his heels, and ducked inside. The silence of the countryside township deepened.
Wolf nodded to Chan. “You take the other hut.”
With too many non-combatants for one building they’d split them into two groups.
“Yes, sir.” Chan ducked into the building next door.
As the sun brightened the eastern horizon, Wolf and the rest of the squad fanned out and began methodically clearing the town again.
Experience told them that they’d overlooked plenty of hiding spots and the danger wasn’t over.
“Watch your asses,” Chambers said over the radio.
Tense chuckles swept over them. Once, the previous month, a different squad had carried out a mission a few miles away. A Taliban fighter had been hiding on a rooftop for hours when he’d decided to open fire, hitting a Ranger in the ass with two AK-47 rounds.
“Good call,” Chan said, stepping up on a crate to peer onto the surrounding rooftops. “Clear here.”
There was a three-round burst of gunfire and yelling from behind them.
They ran. And as they came back out to the main road, the shrill sound of dozens of simultaneous screams put Wolf’s heart in his throat. There was desperation and horror in those noises and they were coming from women and children. And in that instant, he knew that Paul Womack had done something seriously wrong.
Wolf had stopped shivering, which was either good or a sign of imminent death. He decided that since he was sweating, moving quickly, and upright, the threat of hypothermia had passed.
Still, he felt weakened, like a blood-sugar crash could be coming on, so he stopped and unstrapped the backpack. Inside were two protein bars, which he unwrapped and ate greedily. After a few bites, he realized that his water bottle, which had been clipped to his backpack, was missing.
Sneaking up to the edge of the still-raging stream-turned-river, he cupped his hands in the icy water and sucked down a dozen gulps.
9:03 p.m.
At this rate, he’d be plenty early.
Again, he pulled the Garmin GPS out of its zip case and hit the power button, then waited for the map.
He studied the screen and set the zoom wider, then checked the valley to the south.
With numb hands he grabbed the M4 and brought it to his shoulder.
He put his eye to the scope and saw a clear night-vision-green image of the surrounding terrain. The nitrogen-purged interior of the rifle scope was free of fog on the inside chamber and free of streaking on the outside lens glass.
The weather was cooperating too. The rain had stopped and the clouds were moving to the east, revealing larger patches of stars and a half-moon that slid in and out of view.
He saw no movement up the trail or behind him. When he switched it to thermal-camera view the image turned black and white, and then he dialed up the knob to show heat as red.
Like his hands and feet, the surrounding landscape ahead and behind was cold. Nothing. He focused on the top of the ridge of Dark Mountain, sweeping from left to right. Still no red, so he lowered the gun and hit the scope power switch.
According to the numbers on the screen, he was 0.73 three miles from his destination now. He studied the map again, then the valley, matching the picture of a rock outcropping on the screen with the real thing.
Behind it, the towering bowl loomed.
He shut off the GPS, zipped it in his backpack, and got moving again.
CHAPTER 36
The highway pavement at the bottom of the valley was dry in spots now, and Heather Patterson risked pushing the speed of her Acura MDX to just under eighty miles per hour. Her eyelids were glued open and she had the high beams on, scanning the landscape left and right for wildlife. Fragrant sage oils and the scent of rain seeped through the vents.
She made good time, but had to check her speed and switch back to low beams often as oncoming traffic passed by. The last thing she wanted was to be pulled over.
Even so, every vehicle she’d come upon she’d passed, and she blew by another mini
van now.
Pulling back into the right lane, she checked her rearview, focusing on a set of headlights far behind. For most of the drive she’d been watching the vehicle closely as it copied her moves, driving way too boldly for the average layperson. They could have been a teenager, she supposed—a college kid headed down to Ashland, trying to make good time and latching onto her psycho driving by making the same passes, assuming she’d get a speeding ticket before they did.
She relaxed when the headlights remained behind the receding reflection of the minivan. Then she eased into her seat some more when another mile went past and it looked as if she’d lost the vehicle altogether.
Adrenaline steadily dripped into her veins and there was nothing she could do about it.
She flicked on the high beams once more, illuminating the sage shrub-covered landscape and a green sign with a big arrow pointing right: Cold Lake National Forest Access/Dark Mountain Trailhead—17.3 miles.
Passing the turnoff Wolf had taken, she felt another stab of guilt hit her, then reminded herself that she was potentially tiptoeing inside the lion’s den right now. At seventy-five miles per hour.
Her dash clock read 9:03 p.m.
Movement caught her eye and she jammed the brakes. An elk, standing massive with a rack of antlers, materialized in the oncoming lane. It reared and whipped its head to look at her, eyes gleaming in the headlights. Then it walked into her lane.
She swerved right and the car vibrated as she ran over the rumble strip. Then it shuddered as she mashed the brake harder.
The elk took another step.
She was either going to flip off the side of the raised highway and slide on muddy terrain through a barbed-wire fence or collide with the huge animal.
There was too little time to register the thought as the animal grew in the windshield.
Instinct took over and she cranked the wheel left, and at that very instant the elk lunged forward.
The jumping animal flashed by and then there was nothing but the long road ahead of her.
She let off the brake and let go of her breath.
“Shit.”
Her body hummed and her hand shook as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
Damn it, she had to stay focused. Her chances of helping her friends were already slim. Add smashing into a thousand-pound animal at seventy-five miles per hour and they’d be zero.
Another green sign reflected in her headlights out the windshield.
Normalizing her breath, she coasted and then slowed. As she eased onto the shoulder, mud spattered on the underside of her car until she came to a stop.
The sign read: Turkey Hill National Forest Access—10 Miles, with an arrow pointing right.
She leaned into the windshield and looked up the dirt road gouged into the sage and then into the monolithic mountains making up the western wall of the valley. Rachette was up there, but if she took this route, she’d pull up to the shack like it was a drive-thru restaurant. One manned by Ethan Womack wielding a fifty-caliber sniper rifle that fired armor-piercing rounds he was good at shooting, if the trophies told anything.
Ethan Womack would not be expecting a visitor to come up his tailpipe. But to Patterson this felt too direct. Turkey Hill Ranch was calling her, with the circuitous route that climbed out of the cattle property and up to the same shack from the opposite direction.
Headlights crested the horizon behind her and she let off the brake. Pressing the gas, she passed the turnoff and pulled back onto the highway, her tires sloughing off the mud as she upped her speed to sixty-five.
Ambush the ambusher.
Or was it ambushers? she asked herself again.
The turnoff for Turkey Hill Ranch was less well advertised 1.7 miles later. In fact, there was no sign at all, only a widening of the shoulder and a dirt road shooting perpendicular to the west off the highway.
She jammed the brakes and barely made the turn. As she skidded to a stop on mud, her headlights illuminated a cattle guard with a red and white sign: Private Drive—No Trespassing.
She drove across, her car vibrating on the grate, and then she slowed to a stop at a metal swinging gate blocking the road.
Another no-trespassing sign reminded her she was unwelcome.
Headlights from the highway lanced off the gate and she decided to douse her own.
Now sitting in the dark, she listened to the soft whisper of the vents blowing on her face and waited for her eyes to adjust.
The road beyond the closed entrance went straight for a stretch, then curled left up a gentle rise into pine trees. In those trees, just over some low hills, sat the Turkey Hill Ranch. Past that ranch, the road bent around, climbed in elevation, and eventually curved back east to the shack—her back entrance to the action.
In other words, she had to pass through this gate.
A car hissed past on the highway and she watched the taillights disappear. To the south, the outskirts of Ashland twinkled on the valley floor.
In Patterson’s experience, subconscious thoughts found their recognizable form in the quietest of moments, and especially after exciting or traumatic events—like, say, hard exercise, or almost nailing an elk at seventy-five miles per hour.
Like an animal out of the dark, a thought sprung into her mind now.
After shifting into park, she picked up her phone, pressed the unlock button, and was glad to see some decent reception bars. She opened her email and navigated to the list of links representing Ethan Womack’s web-browsing history.
She opened the first article and skimmed. Then closed it and went to the next. Then the next. It took her less than a minute because she was looking for something specific in the articles—one single word—and, yet, she’d failed to find it.
When she was done, she closed her phone and put it back in the center console.
In all the stories and corruption allegation exposés—any that involved Wolf, Rachette, and herself—none had mentioned the word finger. Or the other, closely related word she would’ve settled for: pinkie.
They all mentioned that David Wolf had suffered a gunshot injury to the hand, because that had been the official statement released from Sheriff MacLean a week after the events. But there was no mention that Wolf had gotten his left little finger clean blown off by a nine-millimeter bullet fired at point-blank range.
So why was somebody cutting off Tom Rachette’s left pinkie and sending a picture of it to them?
Clearly the injury was a taunt, referring to Wolf’s past. Trying to re-open the wound, so to speak.
Sure, everyone in town knew what had happened to Wolf, but how would Ethan Womack have known?
She shut off her car and got out.
The air was still and quiet, thick with post-rain fragrance. Feet crunching, she stepped over a puddle and walked to the end of the gate.
A rusty chain hung off a steel post and she saw that the gate wasn’t locked. Relief should’ve been flooding through her at this moment, but that feeling was muted by apprehension. She pushed, and the gate’s hinges sang as it swung all the way open.
A pickup truck went past on the highway, then disappeared.
She jogged to her car and hopped in. She turned it on but kept the lights extinguished and drove beyond the gate. Then she got out and swung it shut again.
She turned to run back to her car but stopped, realizing that as the last truck had passed she’d seen the silhouette of a mailbox alongside the highway, a few paces on the other side of the cattle guard.
She looked up the ranch road. The coast was clear. Then up the highway. No one was coming. She vaulted the gate and sprinted.
A few seconds later, and after stepping gingerly over the yawning slats of the wet metal grate—thank God she never wore high heels—she pulled open a rusty mailbox and found a stack of mail.
She patted her pocket and cursed herself for leaving her phone in the car. A cloud obscured the moon, making it hard to see the names and addresses on the mail. Still
, if she stared hard enough she could see.
Current Resident.
Turkey Hill Ranch.
Cormack Holdings.
A car came over the rise from the south and bathed her in blinding light. Her back was to the passing vehicle and she kept it that way. Now exposed and feeling like she’d been caught red-handed in a federal offense, she shrugged away the anxiety and took advantage of the light, flipping faster through the pile of envelopes.
Turkey Hill Ranch … Cormack Holdings …
She stopped at the next one and her face dropped.
Cormack Barker.
“Holy sh—”
Squeaking brakes pulled her gaze to the highway. She saw the same pickup truck that had passed in the opposite direction a few seconds previously. A man’s face was pressed to the driver’s-side window, and when they locked eyes, Patterson’s skin crawled.
The man was smiling.
She put the mail back inside and slammed the door.
Stumbling on the cattle guard, she almost broke her leg as her tiny foot slipped into one of the gaps.
A throaty roar came from the pickup truck as it turned around on the highway.
She sprinted back up the road, her eyes watering from the rushing wind, and seconds later hurdled the gate with adrenaline-fueled ease.
Just as she got back into her car, headlights swung onto the road behind her.
She mashed the gas and the Acura’s wheels spat dirt.
As she sucked back into her seat, she saw in the vibrating rearview that the truck had come up sideways to the gate. Then a cab light flicked on and a door opened.
The curve came up fast and she hit the brakes and cranked the wheel just in time.
She leaned into the window as she followed the road left. The man down at the gate wasn’t following her, though with his cab light on she could see him putting a phone to his ear.
She considered his bearded smile, and the headlights she’d thought had been following her all along, and had a feeling he was more than just a concerned neighbor.
Then she entered the trees and the truck disappeared.
CHAPTER 37
Wolf lay on his belly and crawled up to some rocks. Once there, he got to his knees and studied the terrain ahead. A lake shone silver in the moonlight, surrounded on three sides by the steep slopes of Dark Mountain, jutting skyward like a giant’s castle walls.