Two Ford Expeditions pulled up to the curb. Rangers rushed to fill their seats to capacity and beyond. I got into my truck when Moulson and Booker knocked on the window.
“You driving to Pronghorn?” Moulson said.
“Hop in.”
Booker climbed carefully into the front seat as Moulson tossed their bags into the back and clambered after.
“How was the football?” I said.
“They won. Barely,” Moulson answered as Booker scowled.
“Think I pulled a groin muscle,” he said, “trying to run in that frigging mud. I was supposed to have Abernathy blocking for me, but the fool busted his foot.”
I pulled away from the curb, following the second shuttle. “Daryll Abernathy?”
“You heard of him? He was All-American offensive line for Iowa. Skipped the draft to enlist.”
I’d really wrecked Big Daryll’s weekend. His own damn fault for jumping me.
The shuttles turned east, following the side streets out of town and onto a road I hadn’t driven on before. It ran alongside a lazily flowing river, the water equal parts blue and deep green with silt from the bottom. The current swirled in eddies and splashed over the rocks in the shallows.
“Damn, I might move out here someday,” Moulson said, “for the fishing alone.”
“No calzone places in town,” Booker said, scrolling through his phone, “and the cell reception sucks in the boonies.”
He was right. My own phone flickered between no service and one lonesome signal bar. And we weren’t more than ten miles out of Mercy River yet.
We were also climbing, slowly but surely. I guessed the elevation at around half a mile. The terrain had evolved from the thick clumps of evergreen and juniper trees near town to something more arid, while the rolling hills had been replaced by rocky, reddish buttes and peaks. We passed another sign warning drivers to watch for falling rocks. The pavement ended in packed dirt as the road became steeper. My Dodge’s engine strained a little to keep up with the newer SUVs.
“You guys been to Pronghorn before?” I said.
Booker gave a thumbs-up. “Last year. They gave a talk on it.”
“And Ken here actually paid attention,” Moulson jibed.
“Pronghorn was a mining town,” Booker said, ignoring his friend like usual, “named for the antelope that used to be thick around here. The railroad at the time went through the town. Then the mines dried up and everybody left, including the train.”
In another two miles, I saw the ghost town for myself. The dirt road led us through a tight collection of deteriorating wooden structures, ranging in size from sheds to stables. Most of them had lost their roofs, and all of them sagged sideways by at least a few degrees.
We passed what might have been the railway station, back when trains had run on wood and coal. Whatever track hadn’t been torn up for scrap a century ago had long since been buried by the elements, rails and ties alike. The piled stone foundation survived as an incongruous rectangle in the grass.
But Pronghorn’s remnants weren’t the first thing that caught the eye. A massive orange-red butte towered above the town like a second sky. Eons of weather had formed the huge rock into a roughly cylindrical shape. By late afternoon, all of Pronghorn would be completely in its shadow.
The butte was marked by more than just the elements. A steep narrow road had been hacked and dynamited into its face. The road started at the far end of the ghost town and disappeared up and around the opposite side of the colossal rock.
“A mining road?” I said, pointing to it.
“Yeah,” said Moulson. “We hiked up there last year after the shooting. Hell of a view.”
“But hold on to your ass with both hands if you try driving,” Booker broke in. “There’s a deep ravine below the butte on the other side. Right where the road gets narrow.”
“The express elevator to hell,” Moulson said, sounding elated by the notion. “Hardly know what hit ya.”
“Not fast enough for me,” Booker mused. “Give me an aneurysm, maybe while I’m sleeping. Like switching off a light.”
There was something to be said for that. I’d spent a lot of years accepting the probability of my own demise while training like a demon to prevent it. Japanese samurai supposedly had that same attitude. Readiness for the moment. My only hope had been that if death came in battle, it would come as a head shot. I wouldn’t see it coming and probably wouldn’t feel a thing. The combat equivalent of Booker’s ruptured cranial artery. Full dark. Instantly.
Twenty-Two
Past the ghost town, we found the first of the shooting ranges. I understood why the Rally had set the contests here. Aside from the novelty of Pronghorn itself, the desolate town was bordered by broad, flat fields, perfect for short-range shooting, with the steep first edges of the huge butte serving as natural backstops.
We parked and Moulson and Booker thanked me as they hurried off to the competition. The crackle of small-arms fire signaled that one of the rounds was already under way. I walked along the fields, looking for Zeke Caton. Contestants stood in short lines, shooting at targets placed at five, ten, and twenty-five meters. In the distance, I saw a circular target fly through the air on a zip line. That would be the Moving Range. It wasn’t tough to guess what the Stress Range would consist of. A whole lot of push-ups and shuttle runs to get the blood pounding, before racing to the firing line and lighting up multiple targets, maybe with a hot reload—one round left in the chamber as the shooter drops the magazine and replaces it in a single movement before firing again. We’d done plenty of stress exercises in Army training, some of it while wearing seventy-plus pounds of battle rattle and ruck.
I hadn’t found Zeke among the competitors, and was about to ask someone when I spotted his familiar yellow hiking jacket at the farthest field, where the mining road curved and climbed out of sight above the town. I jogged to meet him.
“Zeke,” I said. He turned from the table where he was plugging AA batteries into a palm-sized black plastic gadget. Two spare devices of the same type waited on the table, along with extra batteries and colored light bulbs, and a miscellaneous collection of other electronic bits and pieces. The device had a toggle switch on its top side.
“Hey, man,” he said, with a glance toward the range. Half a dozen Rangers were working to get it ready, none of them within earshot. “I figured you’d be out playing Nazi hunter.”
“That’s why I’m here, to figure out the timing. If Jaeger and his men shot Erle that morning, you and Henry and the constable must have just missed them. Maybe somebody else saw them when they arrived. Run through what happened with me.”
He frowned. “Not much to it. We knew Erle had the box. I met Fain at the coffeehouse on Main Street when it opened. We waited there for Erle to send the all-clear.”
“Send it to you?”
“I grew up around here. And Erle wasn’t a trusting type.”
“But your team did some business with Sharples before this, right?”
“Shit.” Zeke checked the range again. “That isn’t what I’d call relevant, Shaw.”
“It might be, if Erle’s sideline got him killed. Fain said the skinheads could check his bona fides. What was Erle into?”
“Uh-uh. I can’t get into that. Fain would tell Daryll to twist my spine like licorice.”
Zeke wasn’t budging. I’d have to try a different approach.
“Okay,” I said. “We’ll stick with what happened that morning. Time-stamp it. When did you and Fain meet? When did Erle tell you it was clear?”
“The coffeehouse opened at seven. Erle gave us the signal at ten past the hour. He sent me a text.”
The police report had said Erle turned off the cameras at 6:40 a.m. I still didn’t know what he had been doing for half an hour before signaling Zeke. “What did you do after you got Erle’s message?”
“Problem was, from where we sat with our coffee, Fain and I had been watching Wayne Beacham dicking around a
t the top of the dead-end road. Having a cop around wasn’t part of the plan. We decided I should still go to the gun shop, so Erle wouldn’t panic. I walked up Main to the intersection. By then Henry Gillespie was there, too, talking to Wayne. Kinda screwed the idea of me strolling down to the shop without being noticed. Not that it mattered. Erle was dead already.”
Barely. Erle had signaled Zeke that the cameras were off and had been murdered almost immediately thereafter. Leo might have crossed paths with the killer when he arrived at twenty past seven. Why had security-conscious Erle Sharples arranged to hand off the box of stolen drugs when Leo was due to show up for work?
“And you and Fain both saw Beacham the whole time, since seven in the morning,” I said.
“Yeah. You think he’s a suspect?” Zeke shook his head. “Wayne, shit. I’ve known Wayne since high school football. He didn’t kill Erle. And Henry can barely kill pheasants.”
“Just shooting down theories,” I said.
“If you want to shoot shit, you’re in the right place. Check this out.”
He motioned to the range. There were only two firing positions in this field, set a few meters apart and marked by wooden sawhorses. Downfield from each position, four-foot wooden posts had been placed at varying distances on the range, in a pattern identical for both shooters. Each post was topped with a pie-plate-sized steel target with a number painted on it, ranging from 1 to 9. The closest target to each firing position was numbered 5, the farthest 7. As I watched, a guy with his hair shaved into a floppy Mohawk tapped one of the targets with his fist, and it fell backward on a hinge.
“I call it Nine-Ball,” Zeke said. “The shooter gets only nine rounds. Frangible, so they won’t ricochet off the target. Draw and shoot all nine targets, in order. First one to knock down all nine of their targets, or highest target hit, wins.”
“Not bad.”
“It gets better.” He smiled wickedly. “For the final eight shooters, it becomes a quick-draw contest. You have to holster and slap the sawhorse between each shot.”
“Without blowing your foot off.”
“That’s why we have these maniacs sign release forms.”
“And you invented the game. How many times have you won it?”
“Every time, dude. I’m un-fucking-beatable.”
The guy with the Mohawk waved from the rear of the range, near a taller post without a target on it. “Gimme one of the bulbs,” he hollered, “and bring the switch.”
Zeke picked up a green light bulb and the toggle switch he’d loaded with batteries and jogged downrange. I examined the assortment of spare parts on the table, an idea forming in my head.
By the time Zeke reached him, Mohawk had set up a ladder by the tall post. Zeke handed off the green bulb. Mohawk screwed the bulb into a socket on the post and took the toggle switch from Zeke. He clicked the switch a couple of times and the green bulb obediently flashed on and off.
“Ready for a test,” Mohawk said once the two men returned to the firing position.
“Let’s do it.” Zeke stripped off his yellow jacket and tossed it aside to adjust his hard-shell holster. It was high on the thigh, standard Army placement for the pistol to be within reach but under where body armor would lie. He stepped to the firing position. Mohawk and I moved back behind him.
“Clear,” called Mohawk, pointing the little switch downrange. Two men on either side of the small range shouted the same. Zeke was completely still, his hand hovering over his pistol.
A hush had fallen. The light bulb blazed green. Before I’d fully registered the fact, Zeke drew and began firing in one liquid motion, his shots coming so quick that the clangs on the steel targets sounded like a finger riff on a piano. Nine shots, nine separate targets downed, all in barely five seconds including the draw.
There was a scattering of applause and whistles. Zeke holstered his pistol—a compact Glock 19 with an extended magazine—and bounced on his toes.
“S’all right,” Mohawk pronounced, pocketing the toggle switch in his baggy fleece coat. “But we need a starting whistle along with the light.” He walked to the jumbled collection of electronics at the table. Zeke and I joined him. The ground was less even here, and I nearly twisted my ankle on a hole, stumbling against Mohawk.
“Sorry,” I said, dusting him off.
“Lay off the morning beers, friend,” he said.
“That’s a pretty good draw,” I said to Zeke, without a lot of enthusiasm.
“You can do better?”
“Not for free.”
“Hundred bucks,” he said, as Mohawk went to install the starting whistle at the bulb. “And I’ll make it easier. One shot, first target, winner takes all.”
“Make it a thousand. Against telling me what kind of work Erle handled for Fain.”
“Fuck.” He made the word two syllables. “We back to that? Come on.”
“You have to bet big to win big, champ.”
Zeke peered downrange, then at me. “Deal. But you better have that grand on you.”
He grabbed a gym bag from under the table and brought out a metal lockbox for a pistol, and a frayed soft holster. “I’m gonna guess that you’re still a Beretta guy, yeah? Standard-issue?”
“It’s what I know.”
“I like my Glock. Faster action.” He handed me the box, its lid open to show a Beretta M9, new enough that it still smelled of factory oil.
“If this is a hustle, you picked the wrong mark,” Zeke said, holding out a loaded magazine.
I’d just seen Zeke draw. His gun had cleared the holster at least as fast as I’d ever managed when I was in uniform. And I wasn’t sure he had even been trying.
“Set it up,” I said, taking the magazine.
He grinned and went to join Mohawk. I went about threading my belt through the holster clips.
By the time they returned, I had taken my place at the second firing position, to Zeke’s right.
“You want a warm-up shot?” he asked, toeing the line behind the first sawhorse.
“Nope.”
“Confidence. I like that. Ollie here can judge which of us hits his target first, if there’s any question. We’ll shoot at number nine. All right?” Halfway down the range. Eleven meters.
“Ready?” Mohawk said, moving behind us.
“Yeah,” Zeke said around his grin. I nodded.
I exhaled the tension from my body. My feet were already planted, knees bent, left side angled toward the target. Left hand resting against my thigh.
Mohawk shouted, “Clear,” and the answer came back.
My right hand floated an inch above the grip of the gun.
I watched the center of the pie-plate target, not the bulb.
A second passed, then another.
The bulb stayed dark.
“Ain’t working,” Mohawk said. Zeke turned to look at him, and with my left hand I pressed the toggle switch in my pocket, the one I’d lifted when I’d stumbled against Mohawk and substituted a different switch into his fleece jacket with its batteries in backward.
The bulb blazed green and a high whistle sounded. I drew and aimed and fired. The target banged down, as Zeke wheeled around to see for himself.
“Goddammit,” Zeke said. “Ollie, you fucking idiot.”
“Must be faulty,” said Mohawk, unperturbed. “I’ll get a new switch.”
Laughter rippled through the small crowd of spectators.
“Well,” Zeke said, holstering his Glock. “That don’t count.”
“Hell it don’t,” said one of the spectators. “My man kept his focus.” There were murmurs of support. No one seemed to mind seeing the champion taken down a peg.
“He hit the target first, Z,” called Mohawk as he walked downrange to check the light.
Zeke swore again.
“So spill,” I said.
He puffed out his cheeks. “Two out of three.”
“Think of it this way. I’m going to be kicking over every rock in Erle’s life.
If I know what he did for your crew, there’s a chance I can keep that information quiet.”
Zeke spat into the arid dirt. “I tell you, you don’t say shit about it to Fain. Okay?”
“I wasn’t even here.”
“There’s a guy like Erle in every county. The kind who goes to swap meets and shows all over America. Fifteen, twenty years of swapping beers and bullshit with dickheads like him from Kentucky or Montana or wherever. Yeah? Birds of the same feather. A network of buddies like that can come by any matériel a man might ask for. Even if he’s a picky shopper.”
And who knew ordnance better than Spec Ops soldiers? I thought back to the duffel full of grenade launchers in Daryll’s room.
“So Erle was your arms supplier. That’s not so unusual, a few guns falling off a truck,” I said, “even if they are Army-issue.”
“It’s who those guns came from, dude,” Zeke said.
I put his hints together. Erle dealt in guns. Erle was known among the white power groups. When Fain’s team had needed arms, they had turned a blind eye to how and from whom Erle had acquired the weapons. Even if it was from the same First Riders that Macomber—and probably Fain and his crew—had kicked out of Mercy River.
“Jaeger knew Erle before this,” I said. “You think he figured out that Erle was fronting for your team?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care. Erle fucked up somehow, and they blew him away. You’re wasting our time with this shit, Shaw. Just find Jaeger. We’ll handle the hard stuff.”
He hitched his belt and walked away, swagger back in place. Let Zeke have his games. I might not be the fastest gun in the West, but I was in the running for the slyest.
Before I left Pronghorn, I drove up the mining road that spiraled around and up the giant butte. A series of signs at the bottom illustrated falling rocks and warned single lane road—no passing—no turn outs—use at own risk. I kept the truck in second gear as it climbed the grade.
Booker hadn’t been kidding about the ravine on the butte’s opposite side. I became extremely aware of the lack of any guardrail between the truck and the drop, only five or six short feet away. I stopped the truck and got out to take a closer look.
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