Page 97 of Battle Mountain

And now, after hearing the heavyBOOMs farther down the mountain, he surmised that finding Nate might be in the cards after all.

—

A half hourbefore, Nate and Geronimo had covered enough terrain that they were in sight of the ridge. They could see it from the steep side of an adjoining slope through a gap in the heavy timber.

The granite outcropping was horizontal and pale against the dark timber of the next mountain. It stretched for nearly a mile across the face of the slope. Geronimo dug a pair of binoculars from his pack and steadied himself by leaning into a cedar trunk.

After twenty seconds, he said, “I see movement.”

“What do you see?” asked Nate.

“Not much. But a couple of them have walked behind an open crack in the rock. They’re all hunkered down behind that wall. I see them wearing combat fatigues and carrying rifles.”

“Is Axel with them?”

“I haven’t seen him.”

Nate said, “I’m glad we got here before they attacked. But I have a feeling it could happen at any minute.”

Geronimo lowered the binoculars. “We need to outflank ’em,” he said. “Get behind them before they know we’re here.”

Nate nodded in agreement, then sank quickly into a cross-legged sitting position. He closed his eyes.

Geronimo now knew better than to say anything or interrupt his friend. Instead, he watched him in silence and then tilted his head skyward. The peregrine was doing a lazy loop far above them, a black speck moving across a fading cumulus cloud.

After a moment, Nate said, “The bulk of them are behind the ridge, but a few of them are out ahead, moving down toward the ranch. I’m guessing they’re the professionals. Soledad would want his best people out front, and I don’t blame him.”

“So how do we do this?”

Nate said, “We circle around behind them, like you said. I’ll come down from their right, and you come down from their left, and we move on them from two different directions in a pincer movement. If we do it right, they’ll be trapped with their backs to the rock wall.”

Geronimo nodded.

“We communicate with hand signals so they can’t hear us,” Nate said. “And we fire different weapons at intervals so they’ll think there are a lot more of us than there are.” Then: “I want Axel myself.”

“Maybe,” Geronimo said. “But if I get him in my sights first I won’t hesitate to kill him dead. And I won’t leave him lying there to bleed out like I did before. I want him extinguished this time.”

Rather than argue, Nate unslung his Ranch Rifle and racked a round from the fifteen-round magazine into the chamber. Out of habit, he also checked to make sure all five rounds in the cylinder of his .454 were filled.

“After we take them out,” Nate said, “we need to hustle down the mountain after those vets. They’re creeping down through the trees, so if we go all-out we should be able to engage them.”

“I told you I don’t like the idea of killing my brothers,” Geronimo said.

“You’ve made that clear. I don’t want to do it, either. Maybe we can convince them to turn around and go home.”

“Do you think that’s possible?”

Nate shrugged. “I hope it’s possible. But either way, after we’ve engaged the vets we need to book it to the ranch itself. Soledad has to have a couple of infiltrators down there. Whoever they are, they might be able to pull off the operation practically on their own if we don’t stop them.”

—

Fifteen minutes beforeAllison and Joe heard gunshots, Nate and Geronimo had approached the ridge from the side. They’d advanced taking cover from tree trunk to tree trunk, being careful not to expose themselves to anyone who might be looking in their direction. They moved stealthily, leapfrogging each other across the slope. While one moved, the other peered carefully around his tree for movement on the top of the ridge or through cracks in the rock wall.

When they reached the northern edge of the ridge near a field of loose scree, they paused for a moment and Nate nodded toGeronimo, meaning it was go time. Geronimo nodded back, and he cut straight up the mountainside until he vanished in the shadow-darkened trees. For such a big man, Nate thought, Geronimo Jones could move like a cat.

Nate approached their position in a low crouch, careful to keep a large boulder between him and the activists. When he reached the boulder, he pressed his back against it and held his rifle at port arms.

He gave Geronimo time to climb the hillside and loop around to the south. While he waited, he could hear the militants on the other side of the rock wall. He heard snatches of low talk and several scratchy radio transmissions. Several higher voices confirmed that at least some of the militants were women. Nate guessed that the person on the other end of those transmissions was Axel. But he couldn’t yet see him or sense where Axel was in relation to his ground force.

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