Page 68 of Battle Mountain

Nate took a beat before answering. “No,” he said. “She doesn’t want me to come back.”

—

As they shotby the Abraham Lincoln visage that marked the highest point in the nation on I-80 (which was once known as the “Lincoln Highway”) and plunged down the mountain canyon toward Laramie, Geronimo said, “On to Warm Springs?”

Nate nodded. Then: “Specifically a location called Battle Mountain. Delaney thought Axel has established a compound there to stage whatever it is he’s going to do. She heard him mention it once.”

“Battle Mountain,” Geronimo repeated. “That sounds familiar to me.”

“It does?” Nate asked.

Geronimo suddenly turned to Nate with his eyes wide as he drove.

“What?” Nate said.

“October, Warm Springs, Battle Mountain,” Geronimo said. “Did she mention the name of a specific dude ranch there?”

“No. Why? Keep your eyes on the road.”

Geronimo corrected his drift over to the shoulder of the road and said, “Have you ever heard of the Centurions?”

“No.”

Geronimo spoke as if everything were falling into place for him.

“I had a buddy once in special ops who was assigned to them,” he said. “The dude was flown to the Warm Springs airport in October to work security for a visiting four-star general at this big secret gathering of defense industry CEOs, Pentagon brass, and politicians. They call themselves the Centurions.

“My buddy said he’s never seen so many private jets in one place as he saw at that little airport,” Geronimo continued. “When the four-star arrived, they shipped him out to some old dude ranch in the mountains, where the Centurions have their annual gig. Dude saideveryonewas there: his boss’s boss’s boss. These Centurions play cowboy and have meetings to discuss who knows what. Then they all fly out together after the gig is done and come back the next year to plan the next stage in the future of the world.”

“You’re not kidding, are you?” Nate asked.

“I shit you not,” Geronimo said. “My buddy said it kind of blew his mind.”

“I’m surprised he told you anything,” Nate said.

“Yeah, well, you know how it is. We’re in some shithole pressure cooker overseas, and when we get sent back home for a little mission, we tend to loosen up and blow off steam. That was my buddy. He told me all this one night when we were clubbing in Tampa and he got into some potent weed he couldn’t handle. Basically, what he told me that night was that if someone were to drop a bomb on the Centurions, it would wipe out most of our military-industrial complex in one big bang. The next morning, he found me and told me to never repeat what he’d said.”

Nate sat back in the passenger seat and stared out the windshield with a blank expression on his face.

With a cold half grin that Geronimo couldn’t decide was serious or playful, Nate said, “It might not be such a bad idea, actually.”

“Nate, really,” Geronimo admonished him. He thumped the steering wheel a few times with the heel of his hand and said, “I mean,come on.”

“Think about it, though,” Nate said. “You’ve got all these patriotic kids from good families who volunteer to serve their country. They’re generally not the born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-their-mouths East Coast Ivy League types, they’re the kids from here, or the South, or from some farm or ranch.

“They go through all kinds of hell in basic, but they stay with it because they believe in America and what it supposedly stands for. Then people like the Centurions ship them off to Third World countries, where they see their buddies get maimed or killed—and for what? It’s not like we fight our wars to win anymore, because we don’t. Instead, we quit early and bugger out, leaving a lot of dead people and betrayed allies. Then it’s on to the next conflict somewhere, where we do it all over again. I can see where the anger and bitterness come from. I can see where Allison Anthony comes from.”

Geronimo said, “That’s the longest speech I’ve ever heard you make. I wish I could argue with you about it.”

“We were there,” Nate said. “We know what it’s like to risk our lives for nothing, for a country that forgets why we were ever there in the first place. We know what it’s like to accept losing, when every damned time we could have and should have won.”

“Stop,” Geronimo said. “You’ve made your point.”

—

As they enteredthe city limits of Laramie on I-80, Geronimo said, “We need to be cool around this town. I heard a report on the radio about a shootout near Tie Siding earlier today. The cops think it might be drug- or gang-related.”

“What’s this world coming to?” Nate asked. Then, gesturing toward an exit sign off the interstate to Wyoming State Highway 230, he said, “Take that one. There’s a gun store up ahead. We need to stock up on ammo before we get to Battle Mountain.”

---