Page 54 of Battle Mountain

“Armed?”

“Too far away to confirm. But I think we should proceed as if they are.”

“Gotcha,” Geronimo said. “So what’s the plan?”

Nate said, “We can’t communicate, so we go old-school. Give me twenty-five minutes. That ought to give me enough time to get into position. If something goes wrong, like they see me coming, you’ll hear shots. If that happens, drive down that hill like your hair is on fire.”

“Copy that,” Geronimo said. Then he extended his huge right fist. “Yarak.”

Nate fist-bumped Geronimo in silence.

“Say it,” Geronimo insisted.

“Yarak,” Nate said.

—

Nate’s route tothe prairie floor was circuitous and tough going. He cut into the heavy pine forest to his right and waded through and over downed timber as he traversed the mountainside. It was tangled and dark in the trees, and the forest floor was littered with deer and elk scat. The smell of elk was pungent, and he kept an eye out for them. As he entered a shadowed alcove, a covey of pine grouse broke noisily from the cover and slashed through thelow-hanging branches and he reached for his weapon in response. Following the grouse, he heard the heavy footfalls of a small herd of elk out ahead of him and saw brown and tan flashes of fur through the tightly spaced pine trunks. Then it was silent. After a few breaths, Nate continued.

He’d observed through his binoculars that a dry wash ran through the sagebrush from the side of the mountain they were on through the valley floor and beyond. The SUVs were parked on either side of the gravel road ahead of a culvert that accommodated the wash. Nate’s plan was to slip down the side of the mountain, using the heavy trees as cover, then duck into the wash and continue down it to the vehicles. The wash appeared to be deep enough—a jagged slash cut into the alkaline terrain by decades of flash floods—that he could approach the vehicles without being seen.

Nate was puzzled why the two vehicles had parked out in the open. It wasn’t the most optimal ambush location. In fact, the best place to get the drop on Geronimo and Nate would have been just on the other side of the rise in the road. That way, they could have parked in the trees without being seen until the Suburban cleared the top of the hill.

Which meant to Nate that the subjects were either amateurs—or professionals with a plan too clever for him to fathom at the moment.

Or, he thought with a grimace, the subjects on the road below them were civilians doing something that had nothing at all to do with Nate, Geronimo, or the Anthonys. Maybe a drug deal was going down. Or something completely innocent. If so, Nate could signal Geronimo to stand down as he approached.

He glanced at his wristwatch. He’d been away from Geronimo’s Suburban for seventeen minutes. He had eight minutes to move up the ditch and take a position with a clear view of the targets and cover to hide behind. Nate picked up his pace.

—

Nate kept lowin the wash, scuttling through it without raising his head. There was no need. He knew where the SUVs were, and if he stood up and looked, they’d see him coming.

His thighs began to burn and his back ached as he pushed down the draw in a crabwalk. He noted mountain lion tracks in the soft sand of the wash, as well as rabbit pellets. Nate felt more than saw how close he’d gotten to the vehicles, and he dropped to his knees and bent forward to stay low. He grasped the grip of his .454 in the shoulder holster with his right hand and eased it out. Then he waited for less than a minute before he heard Geronimo’s Suburban approach.

He kept his head down.

Not until the roar of Geronimo’s engine was less than thirty yards away did Nate rise into a shooting stance with his weapon out in front of him. As he raised the .454, he thumbed back the hammer at the same time.

It all happened quickly, and he let his killer instincts—his sense ofyarak—take over.

The two men in the vehicle closest to him scrambled out of the SUV, holding semiautomatic rifles. One of them yelled to the driver of the other vehicle to get out and arm up.

Nate observed in a second that the three subjects looked to be unfamiliar with their weapons, and one of them had bangedthe barrel of his rifle against the doorframe as he leapt out. Their actions ranged from the sheer panic of the driver of the nearest SUV, to what appeared to be frozen terror taking over the driver of the other vehicle, who stood motionless in the middle of the road with his rifle at his side as Geronimo sped toward them. The three of them looked young and hip and out of place, which was a surprise to Nate. The passenger of the nearest SUV sported a man bun and unseasonable river sandals over bare feet. He nervously bounced up and down while reaching to chamber a round in his weapon. None of the three had glanced over to the side to see Nate twenty feet away with his weapon aimed at them.

To be sure, Nate waited until the second driver unfroze, racked the slide of his rifle, and fired two quick shots in the general direction of the oncoming Suburban. One of the bullets smacked the windshield, leaving a white star-shaped impact on the darkened glass.

As soon as the shots were fired, Nate proceeded, because he was now sure of their intent.

BOOM.The second driver did a sideways flip when the round hit him in the left side of his neck.

BOOM.The passenger of the first vehicle turned his head toward the sound of the shot and never saw the bullet coming. He dropped away like a wet sock.

BOOM.The driver of the first SUV thought he could scramble and take cover on the other side of his vehicle, not realizing that the .454 round aimed at him would penetrate both the driver’s-sideandthe passenger door before blasting through his heart.

Two seconds later, Geronimo’s Suburban shot through the space between the two vehicles, and the right tires thumped overthe dead body of the sprawled-out passenger. The Suburban came to a skidding halt twenty-five feet farther out, near the culvert.

Geronimo leaned over inside the cab and pushed open the passenger door. Nate holstered his revolver as he climbed back in. “Let’s go,” he said.

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