Off the Grid (26 page)

Jan and Suzy embraced. One or both were crying. Joe turned back to Nate.

“Why didn’t they go after the convoy?”

“Not sure, although I have a theory,” Nate said.

“Is it possible they didn’t know about it? That they were trying to kill it in the nest but they were fifteen minutes too late?”

“Anything is possible,” Nate said.

At that moment, the motor under the hood of Phil Parker’s pickup shuddered and died.

“Of course,” Joe said sourly.

Nate turned so his back was to Joe. He was staring intently at the fire down below in the valley with his hands on his hips. Thinking.

•   •   •

“D
OES
M
OM KNOW
?” Sheridan asked Joe after they’d hugged and stepped back to assess each other. Joe thought Sheridan seemed dirty but safe. There was a faraway look in her eyes that he recognized from when she was young, when she’d seen things that bothered her but she was determined not to fall to pieces. In that way, he thought, she was like her mother. She stayed strong and in the moment.

“No,” he said.

“Are you going to tell her?”

“You know the answer to that.”

Sheridan closed her eyes briefly, then said, “I hope she doesn’t freak out. I had no idea what I was getting into. Nobody did.”

“Blame it all on me,” Sheridan’s roommate Kira said as she crossed her arms and leaned back against the Jeep. “It won’t be the first time everything was all my fault.”

“Please,” Sheridan said to her. “Not now. Let’s not make everything about you for right now, okay?”

Kira huffed and looked away.

“How about we worry about that later?” Joe said. “Right now we’ve got six people, three falcons, and a dog, and we need to try and get out of here in one Jeep. Not to mention, there are trucks out there filled with killers on the way to the interstate highway system.”

Nate laughed grimly. Without looking over his shoulder, he said, “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”

Kira said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Nate ignored her when he turned back around. If anything, he was even calmer than before. Joe knew something was about to happen.

To Joe, he said, “I think I know what’s going to happen next. Are you okay if I take control of our situation?”

“Will it get us out of here without anyone else getting hurt?”

“I can’t guarantee it, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Joe hesitated a moment. “Go ahead,” he said. “You know more about what’s going on than I do.”

Nate said, “Okay. Sheridan, lead the three ladies to the northeast, toward those distant rocks.” He pointed across the desert toward the only visible landmark on the desert floor. “That’s Adobe Town.
There are plenty of places to hide there. Don’t show yourselves, no matter what you hear or see.”

Sheridan looked to Joe and raised her eyebrows. He nodded, then waited for Nate to provide an explanation that didn’t come.

“Go now,” Nate said to her. “We don’t have that much time.”

“Why can’t we take the Jeep?” Kira asked.

“Because I know how this goes,” Nate said. “I had a dream about it. In my dream, I have the Jeep.”

“A dream?” Kira asked, incredulous. “What are you, some kind of mystic?”

“He’s the guy who saved our lives twice already today,” Sheridan said to Kira. “Now shut up and follow me so he can try to do it again.”

Jan and Suzy didn’t comment. They were still too much in shock to argue, Joe thought.

Sheridan kissed Joe on the cheek and said, “I love you, Dad. Thanks for coming for me.”

“Of course,” he said. “I love you, too, sweetie. Just don’t make me ever have to do it again, okay?”

She laughed.

“Take this,” he said, handing her the shotgun. “You know how to use it if you need to. And take Daisy with you.”

Sheridan rested the shotgun on her shoulder and said, “Follow me, ladies.”

As the group gathered, she looked back and said, “Be careful, Dad.”

“I will.”

“And you, too, Nate.”

He grunted.

•   •   •

J
OE WATCHED
as the four walked away toward Adobe Town. Daisy stuck close to Sheridan. It had gotten warm enough that their forms began to undulate in waves of heat.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Joe asked.

“No.”

“So what is your plan?”

Nate reached into his shirt and withdrew a satellite phone and powered it on.

When someone answered on the other end, Nate said, “I bet you’re surprised to hear from
me
right now.”

Joe couldn’t hear the other side of the conversation.

“Tyrell, I have to admit I didn’t realize what an evil bastard you are, and the same with your buddy Keith Volk, or whatever your real names are. But you shot your wad and you have no idea what kind of trouble you’ve caused. If you don’t sit down and listen to me right now, a lot of people are going to die. It’ll be the biggest thing since 9/11, and maybe bigger.

“I’ll deal with both of you when this is over, but for now you need to listen to
me
.”

•   •   •

F
OR THE NEXT FIV
E MINUTES
, Joe stared at the tops of his boots while Nate described the two tractor-trailers—one painted with the logo of a battery company and the other a familiar commercial carrier—as well as what was inside each of them. He estimated their coordinates and argued with the man on the other end of the line about how the helicopters could take them out.

“I know you’ve fired all the missile ordnance,” Nate said with impatience, “but turn them around right now. Those Apaches are fitted with thirty-millimeter cannons. That’s more than enough to take out those EMPs. The bad guys have small arms, as far as we know.

“And whatever you do, don’t let them fire up the EMP devices or they could take the Apaches out of the sky. Tell your pilots to hit them hard and fast and rake over whatever is left. Tell them if they see the back doors of the trailers opening, that means they’re priming the EMPs.

“Tell your guys to
kill them all—”

“Look,” Nate said, cutting through whatever was being said to him. “You don’t have time to send other aircraft or drones. If you don’t turn those Apaches around right now, you’ll lose them on the highway or you’ll target the wrong trucks and kill even more civilians than you tried to here. I-80 is a sea of semitrucks and passenger cars. If you don’t destroy that convoy before they get there, it’ll be your ass in federal prison, and you know it. You’ll be famous for all the wrong reasons.

“I’ll keep this phone on so you can tell me how it goes,” Nate said.

After a long pause, he said, “Oh, don’t worry about us. We’ve got this end handled if they come back.”

Then he punched off and grinned at Joe.

Joe said, “We’ve got this handled?”

Nate shrugged.

Joe took a long breath and looked out across the desert to the north.

“Get in,” Nate said, nodding toward his Jeep. “Be careful not to rile up my birds.”

•   •   •

A
S THE
J
EEP RUMBLED DOWN
from the ridge on the two-track, Joe said, “It’s been a while, Nate.”

“That it has, Joe.”

“You know, Marybeth had the same dream. She told me about it the next morning.”

Nate said, “Hmmm.”

“You know how much stock I put in dreams and your other woo-woo crap, right?”

“I do. That’s one reason I’ve always liked you, Joe.”

“Will this be the end for us?”

Nate pondered the question and said, “Probably. I wish to hell I knew how that dream
ended.”

DESERT SOLITAIRE

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

—E
DWARD
A
BBEY
,
A Voice Crying in the
Wilderness

“Here come the horses,” Nate said. “Right on schedule.”

Joe looked up from where he’d positioned himself on the rocky ridge fifty yards behind Nate and his Jeep. To the north, he could see rolls of dust on the horizon.

“Just like my dream,” Nate added.

Joe nodded.

It had been an hour and a half since Sheridan led the other three toward Adobe Town—about three miles away. Joe had tracked their progress until their forms melted into the heat waves, catching a glimpse of clothing here and there. He could no longer see them and he assumed they had made it and were crouched behind the columns and boulders of the red rock cathedral. At least he hoped so.

He’d stuffed his daypack between two football-sized rocks on the top of the ridge and placed the M14 carbine in the fold. A spare thirty-round magazine was placed on the top of the right-hand rock for easy retrieval. He had half a box of ammunition remaining, although he wondered, if a firefight happened, if he’d even get a chance to reload an empty magazine.

He could not get over how isolated he felt. There was no way to communicate with Sheridan, with the governor, with dispatch, with Marybeth. The Red Desert was a stark and fascinating place and he wished he knew it better. But he didn’t want to die there.

Below him, Nate tended to his falcons and looked up occasionally to sweep the horizon with his eyes. Joe watched him check the loads of his two handguns more than once.

“Hey, Nate,” Joe called out. “This is like something out of the 1870s.”

“We’re just a couple of lone cowboys,” Nate agreed.

“Is there a plan B?” Joe asked hopefully.

“Nada,” Nate said. “I only had one dream.”

Joe let that sink in. “Well, I guess that’s good to know.”

Nate shrugged.

•   •   •

T
HEY HAD BOTH PAID
close attention, fifteen minutes before, when several series of heavy booms echoed from the north. Joe assumed it was the sound of cannon fire from the Apaches. Interspersed within the booms were snappy single shots from small arms and the long cloth-ripping sounds of automatic-weapon fire in return.

Then silence.

•   •   •

J
OE HEARD AN ELECT
RONIC BURR
and looked down to see Nate pull the satellite phone from his pocket and hold it to his ear. He listened for nearly a minute before lowering it and cursing out loud.

Nate said to Joe, “Tyrell said the Apaches knocked out one of the
two tractor-trailers a half mile from the interstate, but the second one got on the highway going west in the middle of heavy truck traffic, so they couldn’t keep firing on it. The choppers have eyes on the semi, but they’re nearly out of ordnance and fuel. One of the pickups got blown to hell, but the other three got away.”

“Headed our direction?” Joe asked.

“Of course,” Nate said. “If the idiots in charge of this operation had geared up for taking out the convoy instead of blowing up the ranch, this show would be over by now.”

Joe said, “So the semi is headed to Utah after all?”

“Yes.”

“How are they going to stop it?”

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Nate said.

“I do,” Joe groused to himself.

•   •   •

T
HE HERD OF WILD HORSES
turned into nearly liquid form before they overran Nate and the Jeep. Joe was fascinated by them as they thundered past. They were rough and feral beasts, their hides scarred and manes tangled with brush, but the sheer weight and power of the herd shook the ground as it passed. He glimpsed white panicked eyes, yellow teeth, and clumps of dirt thrown into the air from flying hooves.

When their dust finally dissipated, Joe saw that Nate had taken his large gyrfalcon out of his Jeep and was holding it on his gloved fist. The satellite phone was strapped to the back of the bird by several lengths of red baling twine.

Then he let it go.

The falcon flapped its wings clumsily at first as it gained altitude,
apparently figuring out how to accommodate the unnatural weight on its back. It flew toward Joe and he ducked as it whooshed over his head so close that he felt the air pound down on his hat from its long wings. He turned to watch it climb toward a distant cirrus cloud that strung across the blue sky.

“I never really bonded with that bird in the first place,” Nate said after the falcon was gone. “I always thought of it as a spy. I want nothing to do with it whatsoever.”

Joe had no idea how to respond to that.

“Tyrell and his gang will never find us by the phone’s GPS now,” Nate said. “They’ll track the flight of the gyrfalcon. That bird will be in Colorado or Utah airspace by this afternoon.”

After a beat, Joe said, “Are you working for the good guys or the bad guys?”

“Right now I’m not sure there’s a difference.”

Joe pondered that while Nate stripped the hoods and jesses off both of his other falcons and released them to the sky.

“They’ll do fine one way or the other,” Nate said.

Joe knew the significance of the act, and it deepened his sense of dread.

Then Nate said, “Listen. Here they come. Get ready.”

Joe scrambled back behind the rocks and lay prone. The hum of engines came in wafts of breeze. He lifted his binoculars and focused on the northern horizon.

There they were: the three white pickups.

•   •   •

N
ATE STOOD IN FRONT
OF
his Jeep and limbered up. He grasped his hands in front of him and pushed his fists downward, then
reached behind his back and did the same thing to loosen up his shoulders. He flexed his fingers and balled them again and again. While he did it, he never took his eyes off the approaching vehicles.

There were extra cartridges in each of his front pockets, .50-caliber rounds in the right, .454 in the left. They were each the size of a woman’s lipstick, although much heavier.

Even though he’d known Ibby for a very short time, he couldn’t yet think of him in the past tense, as extinguished. What Saeed and his men had done was so awful, so savage, that there was only one way to respond.

Kill the snake
.

•   •   •

J
OE FELT HIS BR
EATH
getting shorter as the pickups neared. He tried to calm himself and ward off a fear so strong it could blind him, so he forced himself to think about Sheridan, Marybeth, Lucy, and April. He mentally placed each one of them: Sheridan safe at Adobe Town, Marybeth working at the library, Lucy in class, April . . . he couldn’t place April. Never could.

He wondered if he’d ever see any of them again. A cold chill ran down his back from his scalp to his tailbone.

There were so many of them coming, he thought. And they were coming fast. He was a decent shot with the carbine and he’d used the weapon primarily to dispatch wounded game, but could he shoot accurately when it came to trying to hit swiftly moving objects? He wasn’t sure he could provide Nate the cover fire his friend needed. He wasn’t sure anyone could.

As the trucks got closer, he couldn’t help but think of the men driving them and in the back. He wondered who they really were
and what they must be thinking about. They must have loved ones at home somewhere, he thought. They, like Joe, must have families waiting for them. They were human beings with dreams and ambitions and they loved their god and their mission.

Then he shook his head. Whether they were from ISIS or al-Qaeda or some other offshoot, whether they were husbands, fathers, and sons, didn’t matter right now. They were the enemy, and if given the opportunity, they’d kill him and Nate and the women at Adobe Town without a second thought. They’d treat him the way they treated the grizzly bear, and Ibby, and Cooter.

His mouth was dry and his heart pounded. He looked over the weapon and realized the safety was on. Joe angrily thumbed it off and seated a cartridge in the chamber.

He was ready.

•   •   •

N
ATE HAD THE
 .
454
in his left hand and the .500 in his right, then thought better of it and switched weapons. Although he had a big revolver in each hand, he wouldn’t fire both at the same time because that would result in two poor shots. This wasn’t the movies. Instead, he would aim and fire with his right hand and rotate the weapons when he needed to.

He wanted the scoped revolver first.

There was a reason, he thought, why the U.S. Secret Service purchased .454 Casull handguns from Freedom Arms. The reason was that one could
kill a car
. The round had so much power and velocity that, if properly placed, it could literally penetrate the engine block of a vehicle and knock it out.

The pickups were side by side and coming fast. Nate squinted
and recognized Saeed driving the truck on the far left.
Good,
he thought.
Good
.

Several errant AK-47 shots snapped out from the gunmen in the back of the trucks firing wildly over the top of the cabs. Nate didn’t move. Aiming true from a moving truck was as ridiculous as shooting from the back of a galloping horse. The 7.62x39mm rounds sizzled over his head and thumped into the hill behind him.

He and Joe had the advantage until the vehicles stopped and the gunmen got out so that they could aim. Still, though, he heard a round
thwack
off the hood of his Jeep right behind him and carom into the hill beneath Joe.

Nate raised the .454 and put the crosshairs squarely on the upper third of the grille of the center truck—the closest one—and fired. The kick of the blast jerked the .454 straight over his head. Without hesitating, he thumbed back the hammer while lowering it and fired again.

The center pickup slowed dramatically and was now rolling forward with momentum but without the aid of its engine. Steaming green radiator fluid billowed out from under the hood and spattered the desert floor. The truck was soon enveloped in almost impenetrable steam.

He then turned to Saeed’s pickup on the left, but the man had anticipated that he would be next and he’d hit his brakes and slammed his truck into reverse. He made the maneuver so abruptly that two of the gunmen in the back were thrown out of the bed of the truck.

But Nate was on him, and he fired twice through the roll of steam into the engine of Saeed’s vehicle, disabling it.

The pickup on the right had veered away from the dead trucks,
and Nate swung the weapon across his body and tried a passing shot above the front right tire into the motor that did little or no damage.

Then he holstered the red-hot .454 under his left arm and switched to the .500.

•   •   •

J
OE WATCHED BREATHLESSLY
as Nate took out the first and second pickups.
Boom-boom.
Boom-boom.
Boom.

The gunmen in back of both trucks scrambled out over the bed wells, some hiding behind the vehicles for cover, others just standing there inexplicably, shouting to one another. There were too many to count, it seemed.

He placed his attention on the third truck, the one that had turned away from the others and was now speeding away from the disabled vehicles from left to right, parallel to Nate. If the driver turned sharply and looped back, he could get behind Nate, where Joe’s friend would be caught in a cross fire. If that happened, Joe’s shooting lane would be destroyed, because he’d have to expose himself on the rim to fire down at the third truck.

So if it managed to flank Nate, he thought, it would be the end.

As the pickup moved, Joe leaned in on the peep sight. Although the carbine was steady, the vehicle bounced up and down over rocks and brush and he couldn’t get a good bead on it. He fired anyway—
pop-pop-pop-pop-pop
—in the general direction of the windshield and front passenger window. He continued to fire as fast as he could pull the trigger.

Spent brass casings ejected and bounced off the rock to his right. One casing ricocheted back and into his open collar. As it burned
the bare skin in the crook of his neck, his aim got screwy and wild, but he kept pulling the trigger. Finally, the hot brass stung so bad he had to pause and slap it out of his clothing.

When he looked back up, he saw that two bodies writhed in the tracks behind the pickup. His errant shots had apparently hit them.

And by the way the pickup slowed down for no apparent reason and didn’t try to outflank Nate, Joe thought he might have hit the driver. Gunmen leaped out of the pickup as it lost speed, some tumbling on impact, others landing on their feet.

The truck stopped suddenly as if the brake pedal had been stomped, throwing the remaining gunmen in the back over the top of the cab and over the sides. Then the passenger door flew open and a black-clad man jumped out, screaming and pointing toward Joe’s location.

He felt panic, and for the first time in his life understood the phrase “fog of war.” Below him, the black-clad enemy ran and juked through swirling smoke and steam. It was hard to concentrate on legitimate targets, or get a good feel for what was going on.

Joe aimed carefully at the center mass of the man who had been in the cab and pulled the trigger. Nothing. He was out of rounds.

He rolled to his back and ejected the empty magazine and jammed the fresh one in.

Before he could right himself, the top of the ridgeline began to explode around him. Bullets were kicking up dirt and splattering into the rocks he hid behind. His pack jumped as if alive. A round hit the forestock of his carbine and left a notch that looked like someone had taken a bite out of it.

The remaining fighters in the third truck had been organized and were concentrating on
him
.

Below him came furious snaps from the AKs and heavy, measured
boom
s from the .500 as Nate engaged the occupants of the first two vehicles.

•   •   •

C
ROUCHING NOW B
EHIND THE
J
EEP
as rounds shredded its ragtop and thudded into the body, Nate loaded both weapons and glanced up the hill toward Joe’s position. It was getting shredded by rifle fire.