Dark Sky, page 9
part #21 of Joe Pickett Series
The sat phone had been reliable in the past and he’d tested it before they’d ridden away from the base camp. But although it’d powered up like it should, the device somehow couldn’t fix on a signal. He’d watched it search for twenty minutes. And since there was no cell phone signal this far away from civilization, he’d been left with no options.
When he mentioned to Boedecker that morning that he’d been unable to use the device, Brock nodded conspiratorially and had taken Joe aside.
“I saw that Joannides guy going through your gear bag,” he told Joe in a whisper. “He looked like he was looking for something.”
“Tim?” Joe asked. “Are you sure?”
“I thought maybe he just got the bags confused,” Boedecker said. “Lord knows he’s got enough equipment along with him and we had to repack, so he might not know where everything was. But he looked kind of suspicious to me while he was doing it.”
“When did this happen?” Joe asked.
“While we were making dinner. I came outside the tent to take a pee and I saw him over by your stuff. I didn’t say anything at the time.”
Joe nodded and filed it away. Boedecker had made no secret of how much he disliked the hunting party members, so maybe his take on what he’d seen had been colored by that. And he hadn’t mentioned it to Joe any further during the evening.
But it was odd that his sat phone didn’t work. And if anybody knew their way around electronic devices and how to disable them, it was probably Joannides. But why would he do such a thing?
Joe planned to confront the man about it once the morning hunt was over and they were back at camp. He decided not to accuse Joannides of anything outright, but to bring him the sat phone and ask him to take a look at it to see if he could figure out what was wrong with it. Joannides’s reaction to that request might give Joe the answer he sought. And if nothing else, if Boedecker’s distrust was misplaced, Joe could ask Joannides to lend him his sat phone so he could check in with Marybeth.
And all would be right with the world.
* * *
—
Until he talked with her and got right, he would simply proceed, he thought. Elk-hunting trips had a certain rhythm to them from day to day.
Elk were most active at daybreak and dusk. During the day they bedded down and hid in thick timber and were hard to locate. Joe’s intention was to hunt hard very early in the morning and late in the afternoon until dark and take a long break—and a nap—in between.
Hunters got their elk less than half the time, he knew. Some years the success ratio was less than that overall. On average, it took about eighteen days in the field for every elk taken.
Their odds for a five-day hunt weren’t in favor of Steve-2. Which meant the odds of Wyoming landing the server farm project Governor Allen desired weren’t really very good, either.
Nor were the prospects for his continued employment.
* * *
—
It was about a half hour before sunrise, when the eastern sky began to take on the vague cream color that would erase the stars, that Joe saw something in his peripheral vision. Something on the forest floor had struck him as incongruous.
He paused long enough for his breath to return to normal, then slowly rotated his headlamp beam to the right. He wasn’t sure what he’d seen other than it didn’t fit within the powdery snow cover.
Joe placed one hand on the grip of his Colt and with the other he pushed a gloved index finger through the trigger loop of his bear spray canister. He backtracked a few feet and aimed the red beam down.
At first, he thought it was a disturbance made by a very large elk hoof or by a moose moving through the timber minutes before him. Both could do so without making a sound. The soil was churned and pine needles stuck out of the depression, and when he bent down to get a closer look, he realized it was a fresh boot track.
Cleated Vibram sole, maybe size eleven or twelve. From a big man. Who appeared to be alone.
Joe could hear the beat of his heart in his own ears. A chill that had nothing to do with the cold morning crawled down his spine.
From his low angle, he could see the single tracks continue on and he was surprised he hadn’t noticed the trail sooner, since he’d obviously crossed it a few yards before. He guessed that the boot prints had been made within the hour.
The first likely person he thought of was Zsolt Rumy. Rumy was a big man who wore brand-new hunting boots straight out of the box. But why would Rumy be on the move and out ahead of him instead of back in the brush with his boss? It didn’t make sense.
Joe raised his head and studied the forest around him. If it wasn’t Rumy who’d made the tracks, he was surprised there was a hunter out before him and he wondered why they hadn’t seen anyone or noticed a camp. Since the area was entirely off-road, the lone hunter must have come in on foot or horseback. But they’d seen no one—or any sign—on the trail.
Joe dug his phone out of his breast pocket. He shielded the flash with his left hand and snapped several photos of the track, as well as the others as they proceeded north to south. Whoever it was wasn’t headed in the direction of the clearing.
Joe stood and simply listened for several minutes. He closed his eyes to concentrate. But the sound of a footfall, a grunt, or a snapped twig didn’t come.
The elk, if they were there, would be through the trees to his left. The lone hunter was somewhere to his right. Joe vowed to himself to keep all of his senses turned up high and to keep his head on a swivel as he proceeded.
* * *
—
The elk were there, all right. Joe smelled their musky odor before he saw them.
On his hands and knees, he crawled up the grassy back side of the hill. He knew he was near the top when a slight cold wind hit him from the east. On the very top he flattened on the ground and inched forward, taking in the clearing below him a few inches at a time. His heart raced and his breath shallowed out as he slowly moved to where he could see the clearing below.
Thirty-five to forty elk grazed in the meadow, just like he’d hoped. They were scattered across the breadth of it, grazing with their heads down. Because it was so cold, their breaths created condensation clouds that dissipated quickly but still made it look like the herd was a single organism puffing like a kind of steam train. Five were bulls, and one of the bulls was a magnificent seven-point royal, with seven tines on each antler. The rest were cows, calves, and two young yearling spikes. Although Joe had seen thousands of the animals throughout his career, he still marveled at how those big bulls could carry their heavy racks around, not to mention running with them full-speed through dense timber.
Joe brought his binoculars up. He focused in on the mouth of the dry wash at the bottom of the clearing and tilted the glasses up into the dark forest. Although he couldn’t clearly see where he’d left Price and Rumy, he got a good idea of their location. He wondered if they could see the herd in the clearing from their vantage point.
The situation was as he’d hoped it would be, but he waited another fifteen minutes until it got lighter. It was a risk, he knew. But moving the elk into the dry wash when it was too dark for Price to see clearly in the forest shadows wasn’t a good idea, either. That could result in wounded animals.
Finally, Joe rose up slowly from where he lay so his profile was skylighted on the horizon of the top. He didn’t climb to his feet, but he knew he could be seen from below.
Several calves reacted first, and they ran around in circles as if they didn’t know what to do. Then a cow looked up and blew twin plumes of condensation from her nostrils. Another woofed. The herd was instantly aware of him and they began to mill around.
This was the moment, he knew, where they’d make their decision.
It was the big lead cow—and she was nearly as big in body as the bulls—who wheeled on her back feet and headed down and away from him. Her pale butt flashed and it was joined by a dozen others.
Joe could hear the muffled footfalls of the entire herd as they rumbled away from him. It wasn’t a panicked run, but it was steady. The herd coalesced from where it had been spread out across the meadow and flowed like a tan-and-brown stream of liquid straight toward the mouth of the dry wash. He glimpsed their dark heads and heavy shoulders as they moved up the wash until they couldn’t be seen in the timber.
He watched them go, estimating how many seconds it would take for the herd to appear before Price and Rumy. Since Price was bowhunting, there would be no sound of a shot.
Joe listened for a whoop that might indicate that Price had hit his target, or a curse that would convey the opposite. But there was no such sound beyond the occasional snap of a twig and the thumping footfalls of the moving elk up into the timber.
* * *
—
After waiting five more minutes, Joe got to his feet and hiked down into the clearing, which was now bereft of elk. He was in clear view, in the open, and there was no reason to walk stealthily as he had earlier. Hard black pellets of elk scat still steamed in piles in the grass. He followed the churned-up track of the herd down to the bottom and up into the dry wash. The heavy odor of the animals still hung in the trees, even ten minutes after they’d been there.
As he climbed up the wash, he kept his eyes open for the steaming body of a downed elk or a blood trail that might lead him to a wounded animal. He saw nothing.
Joe climbed in silence. He didn’t want to call out in the remote possibility that the herd had bunched up ahead of him and Price was waiting for a good shot.
He stopped and listened. Nothing.
When he climbed out of the wash, he realized he’d walked twenty yards past the tangle of brush where he’d left Price and Rumy. Joe walked back to the downed timber cover. They were gone.
Confused, Joe surveyed the location carefully. Perhaps he’d confused it with somewhere else? It had been completely dark when he’d left it, after all.
Then he noticed a football-sized piece of bark propped on the root pan that Price had been stationed behind. Written on the smooth light skin of the underside of the bark, with a felt-tip pen, was:
Joe:
Back to camp. Hurry.
S-2.
* * *
—
Seething, Joe strode back to the camp. He didn’t hurry as instructed and he crossed no elk along the way, but he did see Price’s and Rumy’s fresh prints in the thawing surface of the trail.
He paused to study them. Rumy’s were larger than Price’s. Joe retrieved the photos he’d taken that morning and compared the shot to Rumy’s actual boot print. They weren’t the same. The lugs on Rumy’s soles were sharper and less worn.
Then he noticed two other sets of prints. They were hoofprints of shod horses—one on each side of the trail about five feet away.
As if a set of horsemen had followed them back to camp. Or accompanied them. Or had driven them.
* * *
—
Ten minutes later, Joe could smell the pleasant odor of woodsmoke and bacon cooking. Their pack animals whinnied from where they were picketed.
It wasn’t until he was nearly upon the camp that he realized there were too many horses tied up in the trees. In fact, twice as many as they’d ridden up there.
They had visitors.
Joe stepped behind the trunk of a tree so he couldn’t be seen.
TEN
Joe pressed against the sticky rough bark of the pine tree and carefully peered around the trunk. He wasn’t certain why he’d taken the precaution, but something in the air just didn’t seem right. The fresh boot tracks he’d discovered, the fact that Price and Rumy had abruptly left their position, the hoofprints along the trail, the arrival of visitors in their camp—things didn’t add up.
He couldn’t see what was happening because the walled cook tent blocked his view, but he could hear voices and snippets of speech from the other side of it. He heard a bass voice rumble the word “ConFab” and Price raise his own voice with a question: “How can we settle this?”
Joe thought, Settle what?
His first thought was that perhaps they’d unwittingly encroached on someone else’s hunting camp or area. It was unlikely but possible. Joe knew where the elk outfitter camps were located in the Bighorns because he patrolled them annually, and no one he knew of had used this particular location in years because it was so far from any roads. That was one of the reasons he’d chosen it.
Maybe someone was using the area for something they didn’t want discovered? A gang of poachers operating in the mountains wasn’t unheard of, but poachers in Joe’s experience were opportunists. They’d rather gun down a trophy from their truck and cut off the head and antlers and get away. They rarely devoted themselves to the hard work, planning, and logistics it took to use this remote location.
Whatever was happening on the other side of the tent would have to be dealt with. He wanted to make sure he handled it the correct way. Joe didn’t want to alarm anyone or panic them because they’d know from his uniform shirt that he was law enforcement. He also didn’t know how many individuals he’d be confronting.
The best method he’d found, since he was always outnumbered and outgunned when he approached a hunting camp, was to be as amiable and friendly as possible. He’d smile and ask about their day while at the same time keeping himself far enough away and to the side so that he wasn’t directly challenging them. And he’d keep moving, walking and talking, because a moving target was harder to hit.
It was also possible he was misreading the entire situation and conjuring up a threat when there was none. Maybe the two horsemen had stumbled onto Price and Rumy and the four of them had decided to go get coffee back at the camp. Maybe someone was injured and needed medical attention. It could be anything.
And Joe had to be prepared for anything.
* * *
—
What he wasn’t prepared for was when a forearm flashed across his vision and his head was wrenched back by a powerful hand and he felt the cold bite of a knife blade on the skin of his throat.
“We were wondering where you were,” said the man who’d come up silently behind him. He spoke softly into his ear. “Don’t fucking move.”
Joe marveled that he had not heard the man approaching. And he didn’t move. He was too startled to be scared.
“I’m going to let go of your head, but the knife stays where it is,” the man said to him. “If you move, I’ll cut you.”
“Mmmmm.” Joe didn’t want to speak or nod. The grip was released on the crown of his skull.
He felt the man tug at his pack to remove it. Joe rolled his shoulders back to make it easier. Then the man pulled loose the safety strap of his revolver and drew it out of the holster.
“A Colt Python,” the man said with admiration. “Nice. I’ve always wanted one.”
Joe expected the man to reach up under the other side of his coat and pull out the canister of bear spray that was velcroed to his belt, and he did. Then his cell phone was removed from his breast pocket and the personal locator beacon was removed from his back pocket. A few seconds later, Joe heard the crunch of glass and components as both devices were crushed underfoot.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Joe said.
“Do you have any more weapons?” the man asked. As he did, Joe felt the pressure of the blade lessen slightly, which allowed him to talk.
“I’ve got knives and saws in the pack for field dressing,” he said. “No more firearms.”
Which was true. He’d left his rifle and shotgun in camp that morning. There was a spare can of bear spray in the side pocket of his daypack and a Leatherman multi-tool in the other, which he assumed the man would find if he searched it.
“What’s going on?” Joe asked the man. The harsh nature of the situation was starting to take hold.
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
“You know I’m a Wyoming game warden, right?”
“Oh, I know who you are.”
“Then you know you could be in big trouble. I’d like to avoid that and I’m sure you would as well.”
“We’ll see,” the man said. He took the blade away from his throat and a second later Joe felt the sharp point of it cut through the material of his coat, shirt, and underwear where it pricked the skin between his ribs. Joe flinched in surprise from the pain.
“I’m not fucking around,” the man said while applying a little more pressure to the point of the knife. “I’ll push it all the way into your heart if you try anything stupid.”
“I won’t.”
“Walk slow.”
“Where are we going?”
“The camp, idiot.”
As he stepped away from the tree, Joe shot a glance over his shoulder.
“I know you,” he said.
“You should,” Kirby Thomas said. “You fucking arrested me once.”
Joe nodded and continued on. Six or seven years before, he’d been patrolling the breaklands in his pickup when he rounded a corner on a two-track road and saw that another truck was stopped and blocking his path. Joe had pulled around it to find a fatally wounded pronghorn antelope sprawled across the road in front of the truck and a man in the process of viciously kicking it in the head to kill it. The buck’s head snapped back with each blow and broken yellow teeth littered the ground. It was sickening, and Joe recalled the scene more clearly than he wanted to.
Kirby had obviously shot the antelope from the window of his truck directly from the road—two violations in one act—and instead of finishing off the wounded creature with a knife or fatal shot, he was manically kicking it with furious blows. That was until he looked up and saw the green Ford F-150 nose around his truck and he recognized who was driving it.
