Chapter 31

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Brandenburg’s taillights flickered in the dust cloud kicked up behind his truck, then disappeared when he drove over a hill. The first raindrop hit the windshield, followed by a dozen more.

Wolf steered with both hands, leaning sideways in his seat to relieve the tension on his back.

“You all right?”

Wolf looked over at Larkin sitting in the passenger seat. The big man’s eyes were filled with genuine concern.

“I’ll be fine,” Wolf said. “Just some back pain.”

“I slipped a disc once,” Larkin said. “Hurt bad. But it went away. Took a shitload of time to heal, though. I had to lie on my back for a month. You ever had to do that?”

“No.”

“It’s a new kind of hell, let me tell you. Just staring at the ceiling for hours on end. I had my girlfriend screw a TV into the ceiling so I could watch shows on Netflix, though.” He chuckled. “She’s not handy. I was worried the whole time it was going to rip out of the ceiling and land on my face.” He looked out the window and shook his head.

Wolf eyed him and recognized the excited energy coming off the man, much like what he’d witnessed in his army days. Some men would recede inward before missions, others would break into spirited monologues, latching onto any conversation they could get their vocal cords into.

But now Larkin had gone silent.

“You still have this girlfriend?” Wolf asked.

“Yep. But she’s back in Fort Morgan. Going to beauty school. She’ll be done next semester, then she’s moving in with me.”

“I bet you’re excited for that.”

“I am.”

Up ahead, Brandenburg’s brake lights blossomed, and he took a sharp turn, disappearing into the trees. Wolf slowed and took the turn, the lights ahead coming back into view.

The rain increased, pinging off the roof of his SUV.

Larkin reached down to the floorboard, pulled a pair of rain pants from his bag, and started pulling them on.

“How much farther now?” Wolf asked.

Larkin looked at the MDT screen. “We’re close. Three-point-one miles.”

The rain fell steadily now, and Wolf turned up the windshield wipers. Ahead, Brandenburg’s lights smeared and sharpened. Despite the weather, the sheriff kept up his speed, following the same GPS waypoints programmed into his own data terminal.

I canceled the wedding plans.

Wolf pushed the thought away as quickly as it came but felt the aftershock in his quickened pulse. He couldn’t stop thinking about Piper, and he just wanted to be home holding her, telling her everything was okay, making up with her. But he would have to face that problem later. Right now, he had to concentrate on getting the girl out of this place, back to her father and grandmother, then he could get his own backside home to Rocky Points.

He picked his phone up from the center console, but there was no reception.

Larkin pulled his own phone from his pocket. “No service. You?”

“Nope,” Wolf said.

Larkin shifted in his seat and put on his raincoat: a black slicker that matched the bottoms, with a gold sheriff’s department logo emblazoned on one breast.

Wolf’s gear was in the back, and it looked like he would get wet putting it on once they stopped. He hadn’t thought that far ahead and had the more pressing problem of getting to where they wanted to go. He had no clue how passable or not the road would be once they got there.

They rode the rest of the way in silence, the rain intensifying until the wipers failed to keep up. Finally, Brandenburg slowed, pulling to the left side of the road and coming to a halt.

“This is it,” Larkin said. “It’s right there.” He pointed.

Wolf leaned into the windshield and saw a gap in the barbed wire fence, a cattle guard leading onto a rough-looking two-track road. Rocks jutted up on the other side of steel bars, and huge puddles roiled with the falling drops. Beyond that, the forest was a green smear, obscured by slashing rain.

Wolf pulled up to the passenger side of the sheriff’s truck and rolled his window down .

Nichols was in the passenger seat of the sheriff’s truck and rolled his down, too.

The rain was deafening, spray coming in at all angles and soaking Wolf’s left arm and leg.

“This is it!” Brandenburg yelled. “After you!” He gestured.

Wolf nodded, rolling up his window.

Wolf let off the brake, twisted the wheel, and barreled over the cattle guard. The SUV dipped and lurched upward as they went in and out of many holes. Smooth sections were few and far between, and the vehicle bucked like they were riding out a 9.0 earthquake.

Larkin held the ceiling bar next to him, his other hand on the center console.

“You okay?” he asked Wolf five minutes in.

“Yeah.” The movement seemed to be helping rather than hurting his back.

A minute later, the road took a sharp turn to the left and veered up at the same time the rain began to let up. He turned the defroster on high to combat the fog building on the inner windshield.

“A little more,” Larkin said, pointing at the screen. “Another 300 yards.”

For a while, the road angled sideways, then it cut across the forested slope. Wolf prayed for the tires to keep their grip.

The rain slowed to a trickle, ending quickly, but water continued to hit the glass, cascading down from dense foliage above. A thick fog remained, and the road ahead disappeared into the murk.

“Here,” Larkin said. “This is it.”

Wolf parked, shut off the engine, and got out, his boots landing on wet, rocky earth. Icy dollops streamed down and hit his head and neck as he went to the hatchback, opened it, and retrieved his rain jacket.

Larkin met him at the back bumper. Zipping up his own garment against the cold, he pulled the hooded collar tight around his neck and watched Brandenburg’s truck come to a stop behind them.

The truck’s engine roared like a beast, heat emanating, and then it shut off, whining down to a low hum as the fan kept going underneath the hood.

Wolf closed the rear hatch, putting a hand on his Glock for reassurance, and looked up the slope. Anything beyond fifty yards was hidden in the fog. It was another hundred yards or so to the ridgeline and the vantage of the compound below if the fog lifted.

Brandenburg and Nichols got out, zipping up their own rain jackets.

They had a cache of rifles in their back seat, including a Savage Model 10 for Wolf. He waited for Brandenburg to gather the weapons and hand them out, but the sheriff stood stiffly at his front bumper, eyes darting between the trees.

Wolf felt it, too. They were being watched. As quickly as the thought occurred to him, a green laser point appeared on Brandenburg’s chest.

Wolf’s insides dropped. Another beam lanced through the fog, landing on Wolf’s center mass.

“Drop your weapons,” a voice said from their right, impossibly close. Wolf turned and saw a man up in a tree, downslope so as to be at eye level. He was perched in a camouflaged stand, holding a rifle with another laser sight aimed at Larkin .

“Shit,” Larkin said.

“Drop. Your. Weapons. You have three seconds, or we start shooting.”

“Okay!” Brandenburg said loudly. “We’re dropping our weapons!”

Wolf pulled his gun, stretched his arm sideways, and dropped it onto the wet earth. The other weapons clattered to the ground.

Men came out of the fog from up the slope, at least a dozen of them, all carrying assault rifles across their chest, handguns holstered on their hips, dressed in similar camouflaged rain gear.

One drew Wolf’s attention, pulling ahead of the pack. It was Snake.

The biker gang leader’s eyes were on the terrain in front of him as he walked, then he looked up to meet Wolf’s stare.

How in the hell did they know we were coming? Wolf finally had a second to think, and he looked at Brandenburg and Nichols. The two men both had lasers dancing on their chests. Larkin was also under guard. So, who told them?

“Right on time,” Snake said, reaching them. The biker hitched his rifle over a shoulder and stopped a few paces away. “Did you guys have a good drive?”

Snake looked between them, not a hint of humor on his face. “Anyway, glad you could make it.”

“We have an FBI response team on its way,” Wolf said. “They’ll be here within the hour.”

Snake’s eyes squinted almost shut, and he tilted his head. With a familiar deep voice he said, “We have a bit of a delay here down in Denver with the weather. I’m afraid we’ll have to ignore your request. Assistant Special Agent in Charge Lance Romero signing off.”

He opened his eyes, his lips curling into a brief smile. “I took a lot of acting classes as a kid. Comes in handy in my line of work.”

Wolf looked at Brandenburg. The sheriff stared at the ground.

“You piece of shit,” Wolf said, looking at Nichols and finding a similar shame-filled expression. “You, too?”

Nichols lifted his chin but kept his eyes averted as if Wolf were a mute apparition.

Wolf turned to Larkin.

“I didn’t know,” Larkin said. “I had no idea they were working with these guys.”

“Okay, shut up,” Snake said. He looked at the man next to him. “Keys, phones, pockets.”

Rough hands patted Wolf down, leaving no centimeter of his body unsearched. They reached into his pockets and pulled out his wallet, keys, and phone.

Wolf watched with interest as Brandenburg and Nichols were also stripped of their possessions.

“What’s this about?” Brandenburg asked.

“Just precaution,” Snake said. “You’ll get everything back.”

One man gathered all the loot in a bag and walked away, putting it on Wolf’s hood. With expert hands, he dug inside, dismantling phones and pulling SIMs and batteries.

“Leave the vehicles here,” Snake said, turning upslope. “Let’s move.”

A rifle barrel jabbed into Wolf’s back. “Walk.”

Larkin was similarly prodded, and again, the sheriff and Nichols were treated equally .

Brandenburg turned around. “Don’t touch me with that. This is the thanks I get?”

“Just a precaution,” Snake said, his voice distant, already in the fog above.

The man knocked Brandenburg on top of the head with the barrel.

“Ow!”

Then the barrel came down between Brandenburg’s eyes, and the sheriff turned around, his arms out to his sides.

The sheriff leaned forward and began slogging uphill, prompted up to speed by the gunman behind him. “Okay, okay. Son of a bitch.”

For the first time, Brandenburg looked over at Wolf. His eyes narrowed to slits. “What? You think I had a choice?”

“Yeah,” Wolf said. “I do.”