Page 53 of Dark Sky

The two of them walked abreast back into the trees where they’d seen the birds. Joe stepped up behind the nearest one and took aim. The swing resulted in athunksound and the grouse bounced up and down on its back in its death throes. Joe stepped over it and targeted another that launched into flight as he neared it. The bird flew so close to his head that he felt the tips of feathers on his neck.

Price took a wild swing at the bird in flight and whiffed. His stick hit a tree branch, which blew up a shower of snow. The birds spooked, but not before Joe thumped another one on the ground. The rest of the flock vanished into heavier timber.

“Shit,” Price said. “I missed.”

“We got two,” Joe said, picking up the warm carcasses off the ground. “They’ll keep us alive.”

He was standing there, a bird in each hand, when Brock Boedecker stepped out from behind a thick pine tree.

“Good hunting,” he said to Joe. “I was sneaking up on them from the other side. I got one myself.”

To demonstrate, he held up the pine grouse by its feet. It had been beaten bloody.

Joe glared at Boedecker. “Why did you take off back there? Where did you go?”

“To make sure I could find the cabin where we can stay the night and get out of this damned snow,” Boedecker said. “And if you’ll come with me, I’ll show you where it is.”

Joe and Price exchanged a worried look, but they followed him.

FOURTEEN

Thousands of feet below on the valley floor, Nate Romanowski downshifted and grabbed a gear so he could muscle the old truck up a steep embankment on a slick dirt road that climbed west into the foothills. He was driving on County Road 189, which was also known as Spring Creek Road because it hugged the contours of the creek to where it originated in the mountains. The snow had started an hour before and the Bighorns behind him were encased in dark clouds. It looked like a serious storm up there, he thought. Snow had just begun to stick within the gnarled twists of sagebrush around him, making the landscape look like a cotton field.

He’d traded the Yarak, Inc. van for a vintage 1948 Dodge Power Wagon that he’d purchased at an estate auction the previous spring. He’d always wanted one because ranchers he’d grown up around extolled its virtues and they considered it the greatest working vehicle ever made. A version of the three-quarter-ton 4×4 had been first used in World War II, andafterward rural ex-GIs wanted a truck at home in the mountains as tough as the one they’d had in Europe. That original 94-horse, 230-cubic-inch flathead six wouldn’t win any races, but it could grind through the snow and mud, over logs, through the brush and willows. This one had been lovingly restored and included big knobby tires, high clearance, and a winch welded on the front. It had a toothy front grille and a split windshield with two headlamps mounted on high, wide fenders. In low light, they looked like dead eyes. Blooms of black smoke huffed through the tailpipe. From a distance, he thought, he’d be mistaken for some ancient set-in-his-ways rancher puttering up the road to the Twelve Sleep Senior Center before the afternoon lunch buffet closed down.

His .454 Casull was coiled in its holster on the cracked leather seat next to him.

It was the perfect vehicle, he thought, for making a personal call on a falcon smuggler and rearranging the man’s face and his future plans in the area.

—

Sheridan’s research had helped narrow down the focus of their investigation, and both Liv and Marybeth Pickett had chipped in with their computer skills. For the first time, Nate realized the advantage Joe had possessed these many years. His secret weapon was Marybeth and her ability to find information from both public and private sources. It had taken only a few hours for the three of them combing through records and websites to narrow down his target.

Simply put, there were very few prominent falcon smugglers in the world. Although extremely lucrative, because the primarily Middle Eastern buyers were willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars for wild-caught falcons, the skills, equipment, contacts, and subterfuge required to make it all work quickly weeded out amateurs looking for a fast score. Nate knew this because he’d once been involved in the illegal trade himself, but that had been years before. He had no idea who was still active.

As far as Sheridan, Marybeth, and Liv could determine, there were only three big-time falcon smugglers whose names popped up time and time again on the watch lists of the National Wildlife Crime Unit in the UK, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Rhodesian Ornithological Society, as well as on the website of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. They’d also searched through falconry blogs with threads and comments about missing birds and speculation on who might have taken them.

Frank Szofran, from South Africa, was being held by Welsh authorities after being arrested for taking peregrine eggs from cliff ledges in the Rhondda Valley in southern Wales. His travel records revealed that he’d made dozens of trips to Dubai, presumably where he sold the eggs to Middle Eastern falconers. A rental cottage he’d used was filled with incubators and other equipment designed to keep the eggs alive.

Keith Geis, from Canada, had been arrested the previous year at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago after a bathroom janitor found thin shards of eggshells in a bathroomsink and identified the man who had just exited the lavatory in a hurry. Geis had been pulled out of line in the departure lounge and a search of his body revealed that he had fourteen peregrine and two red-tailed hawk eggs stuffed in thick socks and taped to his torso to keep them warm. Thirteen of the sixteen eggs were shown to be viable. The eggs, along with a ticket to the United Arab Emirates, had been confiscated and Geis was charged with federal crimes. If sold individually, the eggs were estimated to be worth over $650,000 on the illicit Arab falconry market. As far as they could tell, Geis was in custody awaiting trial.

It was possible, Nate thought, that he was up against a falcon thief who was so clever and so diabolical that he’d never been suspected or named. That seemed unlikely, though. The falconry world was small and specialized, and although practitioners often didn’t all like each other, they knew each other. For someone to glide through that world without raising a red flag seemed unrealistic.

Which left Axel Soledad, a thirty-five-year-old Utahan and former special operator who had recently moved to Colorado. Soledad was suspected of not only stealing falcon eggs but sending raptor chicks to international buyers via FedEx and private courier. Soledad was a political activist. Background searches revealed that he purportedly used much of the money he made smuggling birds to finance growing antifa movements in Denver, Portland, and Seattle. A warrant was out for his arrest for the beating of a photographer during a Denver antifa rally, and there was a photo attached.

The image showed Axel Soledad to be tall, rangy, and lean with a hawklike nose and piercing dark eyes. He had a shaved head with black stubble on his face. His military background suggested he might have contacts in the target countries. He looked like trouble, Nate thought.

“He looks likeyou,” Liv observed while cradling Kestrel. “Same stare. Same intensity.”

“And he’s a former special operator,” Sheridan had added. “What is it with you guys?”

“There is noyou guys,” Nate had said, offended by the implication.

Colorado shared a border with Wyoming, and north-south traffic was significant. Coloradans, with their distinctive green-and-white mountain license plates, were ubiquitous throughout Wyoming and wouldn’t draw a second look. Intuitively, Nate knew they’d identified the man who had looted his bluffs. The man who would pay for it in bruised flesh, broken bones, and possibly his life, if he got chippy.

—

So where is he?” Nate had asked.

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