Haley recoiled. “Oh my God.”
“Now, apparently,” Nate said, “Nemecek has gone semi-private, like a lot of the old spooks have with all the defense cuts. His company is up for a massive contract to do clandestine counterintelligence, and he looks like a shoo-in, at least according to that poor bastard I got the information from back in Jackson. The skids are greased for him to make millions more and do what he’s best at. His reputation in Washington is stellar because of the great work of the Mark V Peregrines. But if the staffers and senators awarding the contract knew that he did his damnedest to save bin Laden’s life before 9/11…”
“He’d lose the contract and his reputation and probably go to jail,” Haley said, finishing Nate’s sentence.
“And there’s one guy who could blow it for him if this ever got public,” Nate said.
“Now I understand,” she said. “So your friend Large Merle? He knew?”
Nate nodded.
“What about Oscar and Gabriel and the rest back in Idaho?”
“No. But Nemecek thought they might. So he had to take them out.”
“What about your friends in Saddlestring? The ones you called and told to leave?”
“No,” Nate said. “But it doesn’t matter.”
“I don’t understand something,” she said. “I don’t understand why you never went to the government or to the press with your story? You could have put Nemecek out of business.”
“It wouldn’t have worked,” Nate said. “Nemecek is inside of the inside. He would have found me before I even made contact with anyone. He used every resource the government has to try to find me, which is why I went low-tech and completely dropped out of society. No credit cards, no phone, no address. But if I’d stepped forward and tried to contact someone, it would have been like signing a death warrant on us both. Very few people in the bureaucracy can operate with complete impunity. They’ve got to report to people and write summaries. Nemecek would have intercepted the communications within minutes and cut everything off and eliminated anyone involved.
“Believe me,” Nate said, “I’ve spent years agonizing over this. I could never figure out a way to take him down without taking down innocents as well. I don’t mind killing people who deserve it, but not those just doing their jobs. So I dropped out. I did what I could to help out a friend. I carefully made contact with a few others, like Oscar and Cohen. And look what happened to them.”
Haley squirmed in her seat. He could guess what she was thinking.
“And now I know,” she said.
“I tried to get you to leave,” he said.
“We don’t have a choice, do we? We’ve got to kill him and stop this.”
“It’s our only option,” Nate said. “But an old saying keeps coming to mind: If you’re going to try to kill the king, you’d better kill the king. ”
After they’d driven a few more miles in silence, Nate looked over at Haley. He said, “It’s a different version of events than you heard from Nemecek, isn’t it?”
The question froze her in her seat. Even in the dark, he could see her face drain of color and her eyes fix on the windshield in involuntary terror. She looked like a frightened ghost with dark, hollow eyes.
“He told you it was me who was in business with bin Laden, didn’t he? And that there was a score to settle? That’s what he told all the other operators, wasn’t it?”
She didn’t react other than to continue staring ahead. But the fact that she didn’t lash back told him everything he needed to know.
“You don’t have to explain,” he said. “I can figure it out. He recruited you for this operation with the story about letting bin Laden get away. Only he reversed the players and the motivation. You don’t know how many others are on the team, and you don’t know who they are or what they’ve been told. And you’ve spent the last few hours trying to reconcile what he told you against what you’ve seen and heard yourself.”
He said, “I think you’ve got a good heart, Haley. I think your reaction to what happened to Cohen and Oscar was genuine. And I sure as hell know your passion back there with me felt real.”
Her mouth trembled, and her eyes blinked too fast.
“You’ll have plenty of opportunities ahead to take me out,” Nate said. “And if you choose, you can probably find a way to warn Nemecek I’m coming for him. I’m not going to stop you or kill you now. I’ll let fate take its course.”
In a barely audible whisper, she asked, “Why?”
“Because I think you’ll do the right thing.”
She said, “If you’re going to try to kill the king, you’d better kill the king.”
He didn’t ask which king.
28
The Pickett family sat in a line on uncomfortable red plastic scoop chairs in the predawn at Saddlestring Municipal Airport as the tiny cinder-block structure staggered to life. Their luggage, an assortment of mismatched suitcases and duffel bags, had been checked through by the lone ticket agent, a pierced dark-haired stocky woman of indeterminate age who had communicated via a series of grunts, and who had gone outside the double doors for a cigarette the minute she’d completed grunting as she tossed the bags on a cart.
Joe turned in his chair and watched her out there, the tiny red cherry of her cigarette bobbing in the darkness, until she returned and sulked back to her counter to check the manifest. He’d caught a glimpse of it as they checked in: only five passengers were listed. The Picketts and a local rancher named Donald M. Jones, also known as Rowdy. Rowdy Jones hadn’t checked in yet.
Joe wore civilian gear and his battered hat. No uniform shirt, holster, or equipment belt. He felt lighter than air and vulnerable without his weapons and gear and sense of purpose.
Joe hadn’t slept since he’d returned from following Nemecek into the mountains, and his sleep deprivation heightened his sense of despair. His thoughts were like too many large fish in a small tank-writhing and intertwining over one another, depleting the oxygen available, in search of some kind of blue-water relief.
Three locals dead. Bad Bob and Pam Kelly-missing. Nate gone, his only communication a cryptic warning to get his family out. Nemecek, planning his next move. Brueggemann’s betrayal. Snow, elk hunters, The Looming Tower.
He thought about the community he was leaving, the residents bunkered in their homes. And he felt like a coward.
Marybeth looked over to Joe and smiled in a worried way. He knew she wouldn’t be comfortable until they were all on the airplane and Sheridan had checked in with them. It was still an hour or two before Chuck Coon could get over the summit from Cheyenne to Laramie, and likely longer before Sheridan would awake and turn on her phone. Nevertheless, Joe reached out and patted his wife on her knee to reassure her, then stood up and paced behind the row of chairs. He couldn’t sit still until they were all on the plane, either, he thought. His stomach churned and he had the sour taste of acid in his mouth.
They’d left Marybeth’s van in long-term parking on the side of the terminal. There were only two other vehicles there, both dusted with snow-travelers who’d not yet returned. He wondered about asking Mike Reed to move the van somewhere after they’d departed, so Nemecek or one of his crew wouldn’t spot it and know they’d flown away.
“Are you going to sit down?” Marybeth asked him.
“Can’t,” he said, wandering toward a display case on the wall that boasted faded photos of famous people who had once used the local airport, including Queen Elizabeth twenty years before to visit relatives and buy locally made saddles, and former vice president Dick Cheney en route to a wilderness fly-fishing trip. He returned to the counter and waited for the agent to look up from her magazine.
“What do you need?” she asked. He felt his anger rise from her manner.
“Just wondering who has access to the passenger lists,” he said.
She shook her head, confused.
