Cold Wind (9 page)

“He seems like a good man,” she said. “And a good friend to you.”

Nate grunted.

“You can’t just dismiss him as a government man. You know better, and you two have been through a lot. Do you still keep in touch with his daughter? Is she still your falconry apprentice?”

Nate nodded. Sheridan should have gone to college by now, and he knew nothing of her choice of school. He didn’t know where she was, which was troubling to him.

“You shouldn’t punish her,” Alisha said. “It’s not her fault.”

“I know.” He was getting annoyed because she was right.

“Marybeth knows I’m still here,” Nate said. “She called a while back to check on me. I even got a call from her
mother
.”

“The pretty dragon?”

“Yes, her.”

“But not Joe?” she asked.

“Not Joe.”

“Phones work two ways, you know,” she said.

“Hmmmmph.”

“Well?”

“Well, maybe I’ll give him a call one of these days.”

“No,” she said, “Go see him. You two don’t talk well on the phone. I’ve heard you. You’re like two apes grunting. You don’t
say
anything.”

Nate turned the fillets. He liked how angrily they sizzled. When he looked up, she was staring at him, waiting.

“Okay,” he said, with a little edge. “But first I have to get the hell out of this canyon. I told you why last night.”

She made a face. It had to do with his time working for a branch of Special Forces, a rogue branch. He didn’t tell her the name of the organization or what he’d done while he was there. He never would, because she’d be outraged. Even Joe didn’t want to know, even though Nate had offered to tell him.

There were things he’d done—that his team had done—that were coming back to haunt him. Because Nate had left abruptly, without clearance, an exit interview, or his pension, there were men who were concerned about exposure. He’d never threatened to reveal them or talk about their work, but they were paranoid by nature. Several of his old team had come to the Rockies at different times to try to take him out. Each had failed, and they no longer walked the earth. But the rotten core of the team—four men and a woman—still survived, and several had moved up in the government within the Department of Homeland Security. He called them The Five.

According to a contact he still trusted in the agency, The Five were alarmed about Nate’s work and growing underground reputation. There was no doubt they’d breathe easier if Nate didn’t breathe at all.

From what he understood from his contact in Virginia, The Five had not yet deployed. He wondered if telling her about them the night before had caused his uneasy feeling when he woke up that morning, or if it was something else. If The Five deployed, he didn’t want Alisha anywhere close to him.

Another source of tension was the increasing numbers in the underground resistance. They looked to him for help and protection. What had originally been a few dozen people who had dropped out of contemporary America because they loathed the direction the country seemed to be headed in had swelled to hundreds and perhaps more. They were located in remote pockets throughout the mountain west. The woman Joe and he had saved a year ago—for what turned out to be different reasons—had been the catalyst for their disagreement. She was now in the Snake River country of Idaho, among her kind. He had no idea what would happen when the movement was either publicized or challenged. But he knew there would be a good chance of violence.

“I’ve got a lot on my mind,” he said, after the fillets were cooked golden brown. He removed them and put them on a towel to drain and cool. He gestured toward the mews. “Plus, that damned eagle still won’t fly even though it’s fully healed and capable of flight.”

“Maybe it’s a symbol,” she said.

“Maybe. Let’s eat.”

“Please remove your weapon,” she said. “Civilized people don’t eat breakfast wearing guns.”

“First time you called me civilized.”

“You aren’t there yet. It’s something to aspire to.” She looked up and smiled coyly. “Maybe when you don’t feel the need to live in a cave.”

 

 

As they finished breakfast,
he thought of something. He said, “You didn’t mention seeing Large Merle last night.”

Large Merle was a fellow falconer and member of the underground resistance. He was a huge man who had known Nate in the old days but had moved west and had gone to fat. He wore a full beard and stained clothing from his job as a cook in the restaurant in Kaycee. Large Merle rented a ramshackle home up on the south rim of the canyon. The only established road to get to Nate’s stretch of the Hole in the Wall passed through Large Merle’s property, and his friend would clear or shoo away visitors. Either way, Large Merle would call Nate on his satellite phone and let him know who had been there at his place and who might show up in the canyon. Since Nate had been expecting Alisha, he hadn’t realized until now there had been no call.

Alisha took her last bite of the trout and closed her eyes as she chewed it. She loved the fresh fish, and he loved watching her eat it. She said, “Merle wasn’t home.”

“Maybe he was cooking,” Nate said, unsure.

“The restaurant wasn’t open when I drove by,” she said. “I was thinking of stopping in for a cup of coffee.”

Nate sat up. “Large Merle has never left without letting me know,” he said.

She shrugged. “Maybe it was an emergency. Doesn’t he have a sick dad somewhere?”

He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes.

“He’d let me know if he drove to Casper. He always does.” Then, pushing quickly away from the table: “Alisha, I can’t explain it, but something’s wrong. Let’s pack up.”

“Where are we going?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Are we coming back?”

“No.”

Nothing spells trouble
like two drunk cowboys with a rocket launcher.

That’s what Laurie Talich was thinking as she drove them down the rough two-track toward Hole in the Wall Canyon.

Not that they were
real
cowboys, sure enough. They wore the requisite Wranglers, big Montana Silversmith buckles, long-sleeved Cinch shirts, and cowboy hats. Johnny Cook was a silent strapping blond from upstate New York near Albany, and Drennen O’Melia, chunky and chatty and charmingly insincere, was a Delaware boy. But they were young, strong, dim, handsome, and eager to please. Not to mention currently unemployed since that incident on the dude ranch from which they had recently been let go.

The AT4 shoulder-mounted rocket launcher, still in the packing crate in her rented pickup, was as real as it came, though.

 

 

The night before,
Laurie Talich had found Johnny and Drennen playing pool for drinks in the back of the Stockman’s Bar in Saddlestring. The bar was dark, cool, long, narrow, and iconic in a comfortably kitschy Western kind of way. She’d been advised this would be the place to find the right kind of men for the job, and her adviser had been exactly right. She’d sat alone on her stool at the bar for three straight nights, long enough to learn the name of the bartender—Buck Timberman. She was coy and hadn’t revealed hers. He’d called her “little lady,” as in “What can I get you, little lady?”

“Another one of these, please.” Meaning Crown Royal and Coke, even though her husband used to chide her and say she was ruining two good drinks with that combo.

She’d paid in cash so there would be no electronic receipts, sipped her second drink of the night, and shot furtive glances at the two dude ranch cowboys. They chalked their sticks, called the pockets, mowed down all comers—tourists, mainly—and collected their drinks. They noticed her: slim, jet-black short hair with bangs, and light blue eyes the color of a high-noon sky. She dressed the part in form-fitting Cruel Girl jeans, a jeweled cowgirl belt, and a white sleeveless top. Her legs were crossed one over the other, but when she rotated the stool and looked at them, the dagger-like toe of her right boot would twirl in a small tight circle, like a tongue licking open lips. Oh, they noticed, all right.

The more she watched them, hearing snatches of braggadocio and bullshit, knowing they were being observed and playing it up as much as possible, the more she began to believe she’d found the right boys. They’d be perfect for the job. They were role players, too: rent-a-cowboys for the summer. The guest and dude ranches throughout the Bighorns as well as most of Wyoming and Montana were swarming with them. The ranch owners needed seasonal help who looked and acted the part, because their clients expected it, and boys like Johnny and Drennen were perfect for the kind of job she had in mind. Young, handsome (at least Johnny was), Caucasian, nonthreatening to the permanent staff, unambitious in terms of running the guest ranch operation, willing to work the short three- to four-month seasons between snows, and without two nickels to rub together. For the ranch managers, it helped if they knew something about horses, and it was even better if they could play a guitar and sing a cowboy song. Mostly, though, they were required to look and act the part. No backwards baseball caps, street piercings, baggy pants, or shirts two sizes too big. These types would never replace the real wranglers and hands on the ranches, but they’d serve as pleasant enough fantasy eye candy for the wives and daughters, and they’d provide strong arms and backs for menial chores around the ranch.

Unless, of course, they lured the two teenage daughters of a wealthy Massachusetts union boss away from their family cabin while the parents participated in Square Dance Thursday and got the girls drunk on Keystone Light beer and were caught in the horse barn in the act of ripping the tops off the foil-wrapped condoms with their teeth—well, then they’d be fired, like Johnny and Drennen had been.

And they’d wind up playing eight-ball for drinks in the historic Stockman’s Bar, overlooked by beer lights hung from chains from the knotty pine ceiling, and generations of local black-and-white rodeo cowboy photos looking down at them from the walls, judging them and no doubt finding these two insufficient. As if Johnny or Drennen would give a rip about
that
.

 

 

Once she’d decided
they were probably the right fellows, she slid off her stool and slinked by them on the way to the women’s. They politely tipped their hats to her, and she paused to talk. She offered to buy them both a drink when they were through playing pool. She said she liked their style. That she was
intrigued
by them. They ate it up.

Laurie Talich settled
into one of the dark high-backed booths near the restrooms and waited. Timberman brought her another Crown Royal and Coke, and she ordered two long-necked Coors because that’s what Johnny and Drennen were drinking. She’d counted and knew they’d each had six beers already.

They played the last game fast, and lost when Drennen scratched on the eight ball. She watched the shot and determined he’d done it intentionally to speed things up so they could meet her. She suppressed a smile and waited to unleash it when the two faux cowboys joined her in the booth. Drennen asked to sit next to her and she moved over. Johnny slid in straight across the table. Neither removed his hat.

It didn’t seem to matter that she was ten years older and without another female friend. She caught Johnny staring at her wedding ring, despite the fact that she’d sprinkled the phrase “my late husband” into the conversation here and there. Since the boys weren’t much for nuance, she finally said, “My husband was killed two years ago,” and it finally seemed to register with them.

“Uh, sorry about that,” Drennen mumbled.

“What happened?” Johnny asked.

“He was shot,” Laurie said, keeping her voice low and steady. “And I was kind of hoping you might want to help me locate someone. A man who knows something about what happened because he was there. See, I’m new to the area. I could really use the help from a couple of men who know their way around.”

Johnny and Drennen exchanged glances. Drennen broke into a smile, although Johnny seemed either unsure of his own reaction or simply drunk and placid. She could tell they liked being called men as well as the implication they were locals.

Johnny grinned crookedly and held out his hand. “Johnny,” he said. “This other’s Drennen.”

“Walking After Midnight” was playing on the jukebox. “Patsy,” she said, knowing they wouldn’t get it. She shook Johnny’s hand first, and then offered her hand to Drennen, who flinched at first but then shook it.

“Nice to meet you, Patsy,” Johnny said, draining his bottle. “I bet Drennen and me could use another one of these while we talk, if you don’t mind.”

She gestured to Timberman again with two fingers, meaning she was fine but the boys were thirsty.

“I’m willing to pay you boys quite a lot of money,” she said. “As long as you keep your mouths closed and we actually find him. You see, I’m quite well off, due to the insurance money and all.”