Page 32 of Dark Sky

“We’ll stay,” Price said, cutting off his man. “We’ll do this right.”

“Good,” Joe said.

It had been Price’s decision to hunt without radio communication to better ensure a classic fair-chase hunt. Joe was fine with that. It bothered him when he encountered hunters in the field who operated as if big-game hunting was a military spot-and-kill maneuver. Radios weren’t necessary as long as everyone involved understood the strategy and contingencies.

Then he pulled his pack on and left them.

—

It was a surprisingly cold morning, Joe thought. There had been a dusting of snow during the night from the storm clouds he’d seen, but not even an inch of accumulation. The kind of snow that would likely melt off during a sunny day. He hoped Price and Rumy could stay loose and warm.

The light snow was a plus, he knew. It made it much easier to see tracks and gauge movement across the forest floor and in the meadow if the elk weren’t where he guessed they’d be.

The forest was dense with downed timber and tangled limbs. He had to make several detours to get around impenetrable brush so that his path, if mapped from the air, zigzagged all the way down the mountain and up the other side. Joe was grateful he was the one on the move because his activity warmed him up. It wasn’t long before he could feel the prickle of sweat beneath his armpits and in his crotch beneath his light wool underlayer.

In addition to the pack filled with extra clothing, optics, gear, a first-aid kit, and a knife and saw for field dressing, Joe wore both his .357 Magnum and a canister of bear spray on his belt. He’d laced gaiters over his boots to keep out the moisture from the snow.

In a perfect world, he thought, his plan would work at least as far as presenting the shooter with an opportunity. But anything could happen. Price might miss or wound his target, and they’d deal with either result. Panicking at the sight of elk happened often to many first-time hunters, Joe knew. It had happened to him the first time when he was fourteen and he’d let a lead cow walk by him so closely he could see the dew sparkle in her thick hide. He’d been frozen to his spot and never taken a shot. Joe planned to be very forgiving of Price if the same thing happened to him the first time.

He might not be as forgiving if it happened repeatedly.

—

As he picked his way through the trees, Joe couldn’t push away the feeling of being oddly disconcerted. Part of it, he knew, was leading an elk hunt for people he didn’t know. Anotherpart of it was that he hadn’t been able to talk to Marybeth the night before because his satellite phone wouldn’t work. Talking to his wife was a ritual and it helped them both. It bothered him that he’d been unsuccessful and he felt like there was a hole in his heart that needed filling.

He also knew that when he didn’t call her—and it was rare when he couldn’t—her mind began to conjure up all kinds of worst-case scenarios. Especially when he was in the field. He was hurt, he’d been abducted, he’d been killed. And he couldn’t really assure her that none of those things were possible because of the many close calls he’d had in the past,includingfrom his own doctor.

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 everythingwas. 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 himhissat 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.

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