Off the Grid (3 page)

There was a black Yukon XL with U.S. government plates parked in front of the Bucholz ranch house and another man—younger, with a buzz cut and sunglasses—standing on the front porch. His loose jacket and the way he set his feet when the pickup neared told Nate the man was armed and wary. Despite his casual clothing, Nate thought, he looked tightly wrapped.

The ranch house itself was a modest, white two-story clapboard that served as the hub to barns, sheds, and outbuildings. And, except for modernized electric and plumbing, the house was virtually the same as when Bucholz was growing up. The home was shaded in the summer by hundred-year-old cottonwoods that looked stark and skeleton-like in the fall. The ground was carpeted with cupped yellow leaves, and a flock of teardrop-shaped wild turkeys strutted in slow motion at the tree line.

As he neared his home, Dr. Bucholz found Nate’s eyes in the rearview mirror and said, “Again, I’m sorry the way this worked out.”

“Don’t be,” Nate said from the backseat. More than anything, he was intrigued. Tyrell and Volk were the type of men who could exude menace in certain situations, but they seemed to have everything under control. If they feared Nate’s reaction to whatever it was they were doing or planned to propose, they didn’t show it. Both sat in the front seat with their backs to him. He assumed they had concealed weapons, but they’d not shown them. They hadn’t asked Nate to leave his weapon back at the cabin and the .500 was holstered under his arm.

They were either sure of themselves, Nate thought, or profoundly foolish. He guessed the former.

Tyrell, Volk, and the man on the porch all looked familiar to Nate. Although he’d never seen or met any of them before, he felt that he knew them. They were the kind of men he’d worked with, and for, as a special operator.

“Is he one of yours?” Nate asked Tyrell, gesturing to the younger man on the front porch.

“Yes, of course. And we’ve got another colleague inside.”

“So, four of you?”

“Yes.”

“Dr. Bucholz, did you see any others?” Nate asked.

“No. These four showed up about an hour after Rodrigo left this morning. Laura and I were just finishing breakfast.”

•   •   •

D
R
. B
UCHOLZ PULLED IN
next to the Yukon. Tyrell said to him, “When we go inside, you can get your wife and go to a different part of the house if you like, or the two of you can go out and do ranch things. You know, buildin’ fence or pullin’ calves or whatever
it is you people do. But under no circumstances should you sit in on or overhear the discussion I’m going to have with Mr. Romanowski.”

“You expect me to leave you all alone in my home?” Bucholz asked, affronted.

“That’s exactly what I hope you’ll do. Believe me when I tell you that for the safety of you and your wife, the less you know about this, the better. And when we’re gone, which we will be soon, I hope you’ll keep the fact that you met us confidential.”

It wasn’t exactly a threat, Nate observed. It was said with a tone of compassion. But he wasn’t sure there wasn’t a double meaning.

“What if I call the sheriff?” Bucholz asked. “After all, you’re trespassing on my ranch and you’re keeping my wife inside with one of your men.”

Tyrell took a deep breath and expelled it in a sigh. “Dr. Bucholz, you can do whatever you want. Go ahead and call your sheriff. Explain to him why we’re here and why you’ve harbored two federal fugitives on your ranch for the last seven months. If your wish is to get Mr. Romanowski here arrested and taken to federal lockup, that’s the way to proceed. I can make one call and the four of us out-of-towners will be released without charges. It’s up to you.”

Dr. Bucholz shook his head.

“And please,” Tyrell said, “don’t imply that we’ve threatened you or your wife in any way, because we haven’t. You invited us in when we showed up. Your wife offered us coffee. She’s been free to get up and leave anytime she wanted to. If you don’t believe me, just ask her.”

Volk said, “We’re all on the same side here.”

“Really?” Bucholz asked.

“Really.”

The doctor said, “All right, all right. Nate, are you okay with this?”

Both Tyrell and Volk turned their heads to him.

“I’ll hear what they have to say.”

“That was a good answer,” Volk said.

•   •   •

O
N THE FRONT PORCH
, the younger man with the buzz cut strode across the planks toward Nate while he mounted the steps.

The man raised his sunglasses to his forehead and his eyes blazed with an intensity that stopped Nate short. Buzz Cut held out his hand.

“Nate Romanowski, it’s a real honor to meet you. I’ve followed your career for a long time.”

“I don’t have a career,” Nate said, shaking the man’s hand.

“I should have said ‘cause.’” Buzz Cut grinned.

“I don’t have one of those, either,” Nate said.

“Can we end the lovefest and go inside?” Volk asked.

•   •   •

T
Y
RELL
, V
OLK
,
AND
N
ATE
sat at the kitchen table while Doctor and Laura Bucholz left the room for the upstairs library. Before climbing the stairs, Bucholz turned and looked over his shoulder at Nate, as if it were the last time he’d ever see him.

Nate wasn’t sure that he was wrong. “It’s okay,” he said to Bucholz.

When the couple was upstairs with their door shut, Tyrell said, “Shall we get to it?” It was more of a statement than a question.

Nate nodded.

Tyrell reached out and opened a laptop sitting in the middle of the table.

“We had to talk here because I needed a secure Wi-Fi connection,” Tyrell said. “I know you don’t have one at your place.”

“You’ve got that right.”

“Or a landline, or a cell phone, or for that matter anything that will link you to the outside world,” Tyrell continued. “No credit cards, loans, subscriptions, licenses, tax forms . . .”

“I have a Social Security number,” Nate said with a wry smile.

“That you never use,” Tyrell said. “We know the number, believe me.”

Volk said, “Five-one-six, three-three, three-one-one-eight. Montana prefix.”

Nate arched his eyebrows at that. Volk was correct.

“We probably know as much about you as anyone could,” Tyrell said. “And like our colleague out there on the porch, we think there is much to admire. Your years in special ops were . . . special. The men you worked with all speak highly of you, if we can persuade them to speak. The black ops reports of your missions are impressive.”

He hesitated a moment. “But you’ve certainly gone your own way since you were a special operator for the Peregrines, haven’t you?”

Nate didn’t answer.

The Peregrines were an off-the-books strike team that had operated on behalf of the government without any official sanction. If the team failed on a mission, there weren’t any officials who could take responsibility, because the command structure was top secret.
Nate and his colleagues knew at the time that the existence of the Peregrines was known to fewer than five people in Washington and he didn’t know the names of any of them. But the team rarely failed.

The special status of the Peregrines had led to hubris in the commander, John Nemecek, and resulted in a wholesale dissolution of the strike team. Nate didn’t disapprove of the action, because he’d been betrayed by Nemecek. Later, he’d taken his old ranking officer down.

Tyrell said, “You’ve done a hell of a job staying off our radar the last seven months, and that’s a pretty hard thing to do these days for anyone, as you know. That’s how long we’ve been trying to find you. As far as we can tell, you never made a phone call, logged on to the Internet, or sent an email or a text. Not to mention no use of credit cards or anything else. You don’t have a bank account. Obviously, you’ve paid no federal income taxes.”

“I haven’t had income,” Nate said.

“You still have to file and you know that. But we’re not here on behalf of the IRS. What I’m saying is, you’ve done as good a job of hiding in plain sight as anyone we’ve ever tracked domestically. We have access to surveillance video nationwide and there’s never been a hit. We find it nearly incomprehensible that you’ve never shown up in a public or private place with cameras.”

Nate said, “Public
or
private?”

Tyrell grinned. “We have access to it all. If you walked into the local convenience store for a quart of milk, we’d know it.”

“Face recognition software,” Volk added.

“So how did you find me?” Nate asked.

“Alas,” Tyrell said with what appeared to be sincerity. “Olivia Brannan had to make a few calls in the last month, didn’t she?”

Nate got it. When Liv learned that her mother had a terminal illness, she’d driven into town to call her, as well as the doctors in Louisiana. She’d done it from the only pay phone remaining in the little Wyoming community of Saratoga, and from borrowed telephones in the grocery store and convenience store.

Nate said, “You monitored every outgoing call from the Platte River Valley?”

Tyrell said, “Mr. Romanowski, we monitor every call in the United States. We didn’t have to focus our efforts here. We can see and hear everywhere. You should know that.”

“Who are you with, the NSA?” Nate asked.

Tyrell and Volk exchanged glances.

“Not exactly,” Tyrell said.

“Then who? You guys have ‘fed’ written all over you.”

Volk said, “Are we that obvious?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe we ought to grow our hair into ponytails and start hanging around hawks?” Volk said to Tyrell. “Then we wouldn’t look like G-men?”

“Maybe,” Tyrell said. Then to Nate: “Let me give you some background on us. I’m telling you more than I want to because it’s important to establish credibility. I have the feeling you won’t cooperate with us unless you have more background.”

Nate nodded and tried to fight back his anger toward both of them.

“Do you love your country, Nate Romanowski?” Tyrell asked. It was a serious question.

“I do.” It was a serious answer.

“Do you love your government?”

“That’s different,” Nate said.

“I’ve read the agreement you signed earlier this year with Special Agent Stan Dudley of the FBI,” Tyrell said, tapping his screen with his finger. “You agreed to quite a few conditions that led to your release from federal custody. You made an agreement with the U.S. government, in effect.”

Tyrell swept his fingertip across the screen as he read.

“Let’s see. You agreed to wear a digital monitor so your movements could be tracked at all times.” Tyrell’s eyes rose from the screen to Nate.

“I wore it until they cut it off at the hospital. There’s nothing in that document that requires me to get a new one.”

“A technicality, but okay, I’ll buy that,” Tyrell said. “Next, you agreed to check in every day with Agent Dudley via smartphone.”

Nate said, “The phone was damaged when I was ambushed by two men with shotguns. The FBI never provided another one.”

Tyrell smiled at that. “Another technicality, but legally you have a leg to stand on, according to our lawyers. How about ‘Subject agrees to cooperate with all ongoing federal investigations concerning one Wolfgang Templeton and his criminal network. Subject agrees to provide testimony in court if requested by the DOJ. Subject agrees to participate in any local operations, if asked by the DOJ, involving Wolfgang Templeton, and to serve as an agent of the prosecution during said investigation’?”

“There has been no trial I’m aware of,” Nate said.

Prior to the agreement, Nate had been persuaded by his friend Joe Pickett to provide state’s evidence against Templeton, who had successfully run a high-powered murder-for-hire operation out of his ranch in the Wyoming Black Hills. Nate had been hired by
Templeton to do what he considered honorable work that turned out not to be. After Nate turned, Templeton fled in a private plane and had not been located or arrested, as yet.

“Does this have to do with Templeton?” Nate asked.

“No,” Tyrell said. “The FBI would love to catch him, and there’s some political heat to get that done, but no, we’re not here about Wolfgang Templeton. In fact, if you ask me personally, I approve of most of the murders he committed. He took out some real dirtballs we couldn’t touch through legal means.”

Nate shook his head. He said, “You’re an unusual fed, that’s for sure.”

Tyrell shrugged and continued scrolling through the document. “It says here you signed away your right to carry a gun.”

“That was my mistake,” Nate said. “I didn’t realize at the time that Dudley was offering me up as bait. He wanted me unarmed so that if Templeton came after me he would show himself and they could go after him. It was a trap set by Dudley. Only, the wrong people took advantage of it. I was ambushed without a way to fight back. The agreement violated my Second Amendment rights and it nearly got me killed. I wasn’t a convicted felon. That’s not right.”

Tyrell said, “I agree that it was an unusual provision in an agreement of this kind, but the fact is, you signed it.”

“I did, and I shouldn’t have. It’s not something I’m proud of. But I would have signed just about anything to get out of federal lockup.”

“So what you’re saying is, you feel you have the right to decide which provisions of the agreement you’ll actually follow? That you’ll only abide by the terms you agree with?”

Nate said, “I know the difference between right and wrong. Offering me up as a target with no way to defend myself was wrong.”

Tyrell moved his finger from the screen and stubbed the tabletop with it to emphasize a point. “So, Mr. Romanowski, do you think that your own personal code about what’s right and wrong supersedes anything else?”

“In this case, yes.”

“I see,” Tyrell said, sitting back.

“You left two things out,” Nate said. “In that same document, I agreed to Governor Rulon’s request that I not commit any crimes in the state of Wyoming while he was still governor, and I haven’t.”

Volk looked to Tyrell with surprise. “Can a governor actually make that kind of deal?”