way to become a relevant part of the wild. There’s nothing sweet or Bambi-like about it. It’s not about status or elitism. Most of the falconers I know are barely getting by, because it takes so much time to get good at it. You can choose a family and a career or you can devote your life to falconry. They don’t mix well. The only exception to that I can think of was Nemecek himself. He was able to maintain his falconry while running Mark V. He thought of himself as a royal falconer because of this strange connection he had with his birds, and I really can’t blame him for it.”
While Nemecek detailed the Arab obsession with falcons and falconry, Nate listened patiently and waited for the general outline of the mission ahead. Instead, Nemecek asked him about obtaining young peregrine falcons from the nest.
“At the time,” Nate told Haley, “peregrines were hard to find. They were on the endangered species list, and even though there were plenty in zoos and aviaries, it was illegal to capture the wild birds. Wild birds are what falconers want, not birds raised in captivity. They’re considered to be a much higher prize.
“I knew of a nest-maybe two-in Montana where I grew up, and I told Nemecek about them. He asked me if there were young birds up there, and of course I didn’t know at the time, but I assumed so. Right then, without telling me anything more about the operation or explaining why there were no other team members present, he signed a travel authorization for me to fly up to Great Falls. He told me to go as a civilian, take my climbing gear, and operate under my real name.”
On a thirty-degree spring day under leaden skies, Nate snapped on his climbing harness, threaded the rope, and backed off the edge of a five-hundred-foot cliff overlooking the Missouri River. Beneath him, car-sized plates of ice floated sluggishly with the current of the water and occasionally piled up at river bends. The northern wind was sharp and cold and teared his eyes as he descended.
He rappelled down, feeding rope through the carabiners of his harness, bouncing away from the sheer rock with the balls of his feet. Tightly coiled netting hung from his belt.
It was fifty feet down to the first nest, which filled a large fissure in the cliff face. The next was a huge crosshatching of branches and twigs and dried brush, cemented together by mud, sun, and years. It was well hidden and virtually inaccessible from below, but he’d located it years before by the whitewash of excrement that extended down the granite from the nest, looking like the results of an overturned paint bucket.
As he approached it from above, he noted the layers of building material, from the white and brittle branches on the bottom to the still-green fronds on the top. The nest had been built over generations, and had hosted falcons for forty years. Nate couldn’t determine if all of the inhabitants had been peregrines, but he doubted it. The original nest, he thought, had been built by eagles.
The nest came into view, and Nate prepared for anything. Once he had surprised a female raptor in the act of tearing a rabbit apart for her fledglings and the bird had launched herself into his face, shredding his cheeks with her talons. But there were no mature adults in the nest. Only four downy and awkward fledglings. When they saw him, they screeched and opened their mouths wide, expecting him to give them food.
He guessed by their size that they were two months old, and would be considered eyas, too young to fly. Four young birds in a nest was unusual, he knew, since usually there were just two or three. If taken now, they would need to be immediately hooded and hand-fed until their feathers fully developed, and kept sightless in the dark so they didn’t know who gave them their food. If the birds saw their falconer too early in their fledgling maturity, the falconer would be imprinted for life as the food provider and the birds would never hunt properly or maintain their wild edge. Nate didn’t like taking birds this young, not only because of the work involved but because of the moral question. He no longer wanted to own his birds, preferring instead to partner up with them.
But here they were. So where was Mom? He almost wished she would show up and drive him away. He could claim to Nemecek that the trip had been unsuccessful. But Nate was in a stage of his life where he refused to fail.
He spun himself around, and the landscape opened up as far as he could see. The sun was emerging from a bank of clouds on the eastern horizon and lighting the skeleton cottonwoods below while darkening the S-curves of the river. There were no birds in the sky.
He spun back around, pulled the net from his web belt, and reached inside the nest.
Farther downriver, on another cliff face, he found the second nest. He was surprised to find out it held three more birds. The seven eyas were carefully crated, and Nate drove them to Colorado, where Nemecek maintained his elaborate falconry camp in Poudre Valley near Fort Collins. For the next eleven months, the birds were slowly and carefully brought along by Nemecek and Nate. All seven turned out to be healthy, strong, and wild. All seven turned out to be exquisite killers.
When Nate finally asked what the fate of the birds would be, Nemecek was vague, except to say their presence had a national security purpose, and that Nate would soon learn what it was.
When Nate asked why no other operators had been involved in the mission thus far, Nemecek was contemptuous. He told Nate the answer to his question should have been obvious: there were very few competent master falconers in the entire country, much less Mark V. Nemecek and Nate were the only men capable of capturing, nurturing, feeding, and training the young peregrine falcons. So of course no others were brought in.
Nate didn’t know whether to be flattered or suspicious.
“One year later, in February,” Nate said, “I found out. When the falcons were a year old and in prime flying condition, Nemecek and I took the seven birds with us to Kandahar in Afghanistan. We were met at the airport by a driver in a brand-new GMC Suburban and taken a hundred miles south in the desert. The driver seemed to know Nemecek by sight, and never asked for ID. There was barely a road, and the guy driving us didn’t speak a word of English.”
“By then,” Haley asked, “did you know what your operation was about?”
“Barely,” Nate said. “All Nemecek told me was we were to meet some important people who would buy the falcons from us for a minimum of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars each.”
“Good Lord.”
“That’s what I thought, but I didn’t say it. You didn’t say much around Nemecek, or question his planning. You simply did what you were told. But when I saw where the driver was taking us, I was blown away.”
Seven large jetliners and two cargo planes were parked on the desert floor on a huge flat expanse of hard rubble. Arabic writing marked the tails of the aircraft. As they passed through the makeshift airport, Nate could tell from the lettering and the green, red, white, and black flags painted on the sides that they originated in the United Arab Emirates. One had a slogan painted in English on the side that read visit dubai-the jewel of the desert. They continued on the poor road but the driver never slowed down. Uniformed men with automatic weapons waved them through two checkpoints and the driver didn’t even acknowledge them.
This operation continued to be unlike any other Nate had participated in. There were only the two of them-his superior and him. If others had been embedded, that fact was kept secret. They were traveling under their own names, with their personal passports. And they had no weapons. Only the birds in their special darkened crates, their personal luggage, and a single satellite phone Nemecek kept turned off in his carry-on bag.
The predominant color in all directions was beige, Nate noted. There was little green vegetation except in shadowed pockets on the sides of rock formations, and everything looked sun-bleached and windswept and bone dry. As they drove on, the terrain rose and got rougher and wind-sculpted rock escarpments stood like monuments. Nate could see the distant outline of mountains, and he was reminded of the bleak badlands of eastern Montana or western Wyoming. That impression went away, however, when the driver topped a small hill and below him he could see an elaborate desert camp.
As they approached, he was astonished by the size and number of Bedouin-style tents. Parked next to the tents were dozens of late-model American SUVs, Land Rovers, and Mercedes luxury crossovers. Uniformed men with submachine guns strapped across their chests wandered through the tents. But what struck him most were the dozens of tall wooden poles mounted in the desert next to the tents. On each of the poles was a small platform. And perched on top of each platform was a hooded falcon.
