Off the Grid Page 24

  Vehicles arriving on the ranch.

  He looked over his shoulder through the window and saw them pass by, one by one. Four white pickups—one more than in his dream—with armed men in the back, just like in his dream. A couple of the fighters in the back of one of the trucks glared into the window as they went by, but Nate was certain they couldn’t see him in the dark room.

  Suzy Gudenkauf had called it.

  Now he learned what was on the hood of the lead vehicle: the severed head of a grizzly bear. Bear paws were wired to the grilles of the second and third trucks.

  He thought: Where did they find a bear?

  27

  A half hour before, Joe and Jan Stalkup had watched the four white pickups caravan south in the distance while they hid on their bellies in a shallow cactus-rimmed hollow on the desert floor. The depression had been carved out of the sandstone by thousands of years of wind, and it would no doubt fill with rainwater when thunderstorms opened up. He had told her to keep her head down while the trucks passed in the distance.

  They had found the hollow after they’d heard another round of very distant gunshots. It was difficult for Joe to figure out the direction the shots had come from since they wafted to them in the breeze. Jan wasn’t even sure she’d heard anything, she said.

  But Joe certainly recognized the faint pop-pop-pop for what it was. He’d spent his career hearing shots and then trying to pinpoint where they’d originated.

  When the fourth and last pickup was out of sight and only the spoor of dust kicked up by the trucks’ tires remained, Joe scrambled to his feet.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “They’re headed straight to the ranch.”

  “I thought that’s where they were going before,” she said, standing and brushing fine dust from the thighs of her jeans.

  “Me too. Something must have distracted them or maybe they got lost. But I’m glad to see they haven’t reached the ranch yet.”

  “Did they see us?”

  “Nope.”

  He guessed—and it was only a guess—that he and Jan were fifteen miles from the old sheep ranch. Even if they picked up their pace to a near jog, it would still take them more than three hours to get there. Three hours, he thought, of worrying himself sick over what Sheridan might be experiencing. If the men in the trucks were capable of beheading Cooter as well as a grizzly bear, they were capable of anything . . .

  • • •

  “WHAT’S THAT?” Jan asked suddenly once they’d set off again on foot.

  Joe wheeled and followed her gesture.

  On the same two-track road the white pickups had taken, far enough back that it couldn’t be seen but close enough that it traveled within the last wisp of dust contrail, a green pickup slowly limped along.

  Joe raised his binoculars and said, “I’ll be damned.”

  “What is it?” Jan asked while lowering instinctively to her haunches.

  “I think it’s one of ours,” he said.

  “One of ‘ours’?”

  Although the heat undulated through his field of vision, he recognized the cowcatcher mounted to the front grille, the abbreviated light bar on top of the cab, and the badge-shaped decal on the door.

  “It’s got to be Phil Parker,” Joe said with a grin.

  “Really?”

  “Who else could it be out here?”

  Jan shook her head and said, “I never thought I’d be happy to see that guy.”

  “I need to get his attention. I don’t think he sees us.”

  Joe couldn’t risk firing his rifle in case the men in the white pickups could hear it, and there was no way to radio Parker in the truck.

  He hoped Parker had decided to come check on him after all. If so, Joe could borrow Parker’s gear and call radio dispatch as well as Governor Rulon’s office. Obviously, the other Game and Fish pickup had not been targeted by either the people on the sheep ranch with their truck-mounted EMP device or the men in the white pickups.

  “Hold this,” Joe said to Jan as he handed her his rifle. He quickly stripped his uniform shirt off to his T-shirt and waved it, hoping the red color could be seen by Phil Parker.

  Jan said, “I bet if I took off my shirt, he’d be here in seconds.”

  Joe laughed at that. His spirits had swelled. Seeing Phil Parker out there was the first good thing that had happened to him in thirty-six hours.

  He jumped up and down and waved the red shirt over his head.

  Parker continued to slowly roll forward. He was traveling much slower than the pickups had been. Joe thought that it didn’t fit that Parker would creep along so slowly unless he had a reason for it. He guessed that Parker was driving just fast enough to follow the four white pickups by their fresh tire tracks and dust but slow enough so that they wouldn’t know they were being pursued. It made sense.

  “Phil, you idiot, look over here!” Jan shouted when the green truck continued on.

  If he progressed much farther along the distant road, Parker might not look back to see them, so Joe took off running across the hard-packed terrain at a forty-five-degree angle in front of the pickup, waving his red uniform shirt over his head.

  He thought, I’m getting too old to do much running. But he ran, his T-shirt clinging to his skin from sweat.

  Finally, when Joe was too winded to continue and he stopped to catch his breath, Parker’s truck slowed to a stop.

  “Yes!” Joe shouted back to Jan.

  “He’s turning,” she yelled. “Here he comes.”

  • • •

  IT TOOK TEN MINUTES for the pickup to get close enough to them for Joe to realize something was wrong. It was Parker’s unit, all right, but the pickup was damaged in some way and barely crawling toward them.

  He raised his binoculars and saw dents made by holes in the door and front fender, the windshield spider-webbed with bullet holes, and a man wearing a black face cover behind the wheel.

  Phil Parker wasn’t driving, but it was Phil’s truck.

  Joe turned and looked behind him. Jan was about fifty yards away, struggling ungainly under the weight of her pack, the pack that Joe’d discarded, and the firearms she had clamped under her arms. He didn’t know if he could get to her before the pickup arrived.

  “Jan, it’s not Phil. Somebody’s got his truck,” he shouted.

  She stopped, squinting her confusion. “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well . . . fuck,” she said.

  Joe wheeled around to face the vehicle. It was nearly to him. There were holes in the front grille as well, and the left headlight had been shot out.

  Although the glass was destroyed and nearly white with cracks and damage, he could see that the driver was alone. There was no passenger. All he could make out in regard to the driver was a pair of dark eyes bordered on the top and bottom by a black cloth.

  “Oh no,” Jan said. “What do we do? Joe?”

  When the pickup was ten yards away, it stopped, but the driver kept it running. The driver’s-side door opened and the man jumped down. He was in all-black fatigues, like the men Joe had seen around the bear, and he had an AK-47 with an extended magazine.

  While he raised his rifle, he spat a stream of Arabic that Joe couldn’t understand.

  Joe was fully exposed and unarmed. He regretted leaving his .40 Glock handgun in his pack, even though he was a notoriously poor pistol shot.

  “Please . . .” Joe said. In an instant, he thought of Sheridan, Marybeth, Lucy, and April.

  He’d always wondered what he would think of the second before he was killed.

  Joe heard the boom of his shotgun and then the black-clad driver froze in motion, his rifle stock not yet mounted to his shoulder. In the distance behind the driver, Joe saw errant shotgun pellets kick up dirt from the desert floor.

  W
as the man hit?

  Then, as if to answer the question, the driver sidestepped quickly away from the truck, as if he were doing a dance routine, until he was practically running. Then he crashed to the ground on his side. Only then did Joe see small tears in the fabric of the man’s black shirt and blood glistening in the sun.

  Joe had seen game animals react like that when they were hit through the lungs: a last burst of manic energy before death.

  The man let out a long moan that ended with an “Ung” sound. Bright red foam seeped through his mask where his mouth was. The rifle he still held out dropped into the sand.

  Joe ran to him and kicked the rifle away. Then he bent over and stripped off the black head covering and tossed it over his shoulder. The man was olive-skinned, black-bearded, gaunt, young, and dead, having taken a chest full of double-ought buckshot.

  Joe stood and turned to Jan. “Wow.”

  The two packs and Joe’s carbine were at her feet, but she still held the shotgun. She was frantically pulling on the front stock to expel the spent shell and reload it, but she didn’t know how.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Don’t worry about that now.” Then: “That was a good shot. You saved my life.”

  “I saved both of our lives,” she said, matter-of-fact. “And it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. Killing a man, I mean.”

  He wasn’t sure how to respond.

  She continued to pull and tug on the shotgun to rearm it. Her movements became frantic and he realized that delayed shock had begun to set in. She wasn’t as callous as she had appeared, after all.

  He walked to her and gently pulled the shotgun from her hands. He saw that there were tears in her eyes.

  “You did the right thing,” he said.

  “I killed a man. I don’t know if he had a wife or a mom or a family. I don’t know anything about him.”

  “We know that he was going to kill us,” Joe said. “That’s enough.”

  She wiped at her eyes for a moment and he pulled her close. She fell into his arms.

  Joe felt guilty and strange embracing a woman that wasn’t his wife. Jan felt oddly unfamiliar. But he thought that, given the circumstances, Marybeth would understand.

  “What happened to Phil?” she asked.

  • • •

  HE FOUND PHIL PARKER’S BODY sprawled facedown in the bed of his pickup. Fist-sized exit wounds pocked his back, neck, and thighs. If he’d been thrown into the back alive, he’d bled out in the past half hour, Joe thought, judging by the amount of still-wet blood in the channels of the floor.

  Joe stepped back and breathed deeply so he wouldn’t get sick. The death of the fighter right in front of his eyes and the sight of Phil Parker’s body had been a one-two punch to his gut.

  In his peripheral vision, he saw Jan approaching and he held out his hand to stop her.

  “You don’t want to see this,” he said.

  “Phil?” she asked, tearing up again.

  “Yup.”

  “Is he . . .”

  “Yup.”

  After a beat, she said, “Those bastards. I’m glad I killed that one over there.”

  • • •

  AFTER HIS LEGS FIRMED UP, Joe slid into the front, which was still tacky with Parker’s blood. The wires to the radio had been jerked out and they hung to the truck floor like streamers. Parker’s cell phone was on the floor in several pieces after a bullet had passed through it. Not that there would be a signal anyway . . .

  On the console was Parker’s blood-flecked legal pad. On the top page were the scrawled words:

  Gov. Rulon’s office

  Find JP. OOR since Thurs. night

  Call 777-7434

  Joe knew that OOR was an acronym for “out of range.” He thought: If only they knew how out of range I am.

  But the message was important and reassuring. It meant that someone, probably Marybeth, had alerted Rulon’s office that he was off the grid. And it meant Rulon or someone in the executive branch had contacted Parker. So they knew he was in some kind of trouble.

  Then it hit him. Phil Parker was dead because he’d been asked to come find him.

  “I’m sorry, Phil,” he said aloud. “I really am. You were just doing your job.”

  • • •

  JOE WAS ROOTING THROUGH Parker’s gearbox when Jan asked, “What are you hoping to find?”

  “A satellite phone,” he said. “All of us are supposed to have one. But we’re also all supposed to have a GPS transceiver so the suits in Cheyenne know our every move, and I know Phil threw his in a ditch right after they installed it. Now I wish he’d kept it on.”

  Like Joe’s gearbox, the back was packed with extra clothing, camping gear, a necropsy kit, several pairs of boots . . . and a large stash of pornographic magazines. Joe didn’t have those in his truck, but he didn’t fault Parker. He imagined how lonely it must get on patrol in the desert.

  “What was he doing out here? Why did those men kill him and take his truck?”

  “I can only guess what happened,” Joe said. “Poor Phil stumbled onto the four trucks and they saw he was law enforcement and took him out before he could radio for help. Then they decided to take his body and the truck to the ranch and get rid of the evidence.”

  Joe stepped back when he’d located the battered case he recognized as a satellite phone box.

  “The truck’s shot up and barely running,” he said as he opened the case. “It’s a good thing that dead guy kept it running. He probably knew that if he shut it off, it might not start again.”

  He placed the case on the hood of the pickup and opened it.

  “Thank God,” he said, removing the phone from its foam packing and powering it on.

  “Who are you calling?” Jan asked.

  “My boss. Then my wife.”

  Jan said, “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  Surprised, Joe looked up to see her leveling the shotgun at him.

  She said, “I can’t let you do that, Joe. Ibby has devoted his life to this project. I’ve devoted my life to this. I’ve raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and coordinated all those volunteers. What we’re doing is important. We can’t screw it up before we know there’s nothing else we can do.”

  “There’s nothing else we can do,” Joe said. “Those pickups are on their way to the ranch as we speak. You saw them. I don’t think they’re friends of Ibby, do you?”

  She hesitated, and confusion passed over her face.

  He knew that if she said no, it meant the men in the trucks could not only derail their mission to take out the Utah Data Center but hurt Ibby and the volunteers in the process. If she said no, it meant she’d been deceived by Ibby all along.

  “Okay,” she said finally. She lowered the shotgun. “I don’t see where we have a choice.”

  “We don’t,” Joe said, lifting the phone to his ear.

  He held it there and waited for the device to pick up a satellite signal.

  “I’m just so . . . disappointed,” Jan said, as much to herself as to Joe.

  He’d never felt so excited to hear a dial tone in his life.

  At last, he heard “Governor Rulon’s office, this is Lisa . . .”

  28

  After separating the men from the women outside, the fighters marched each group into the second shed and ordered everyone to sit down in the dirt with an aisle of about five feet between them.

  Although no English was spoken, it was clear enough to Sheridan through their barks and gestures that everyone was to keep their head down and not speak. There were three of them with rifles: one was familiar to her because she’d seen him with Saeed that morning, but the other two had arrived with the four pickups and stayed.

  The arrival of the four trucks had frightened her for three reasons. Saeed had shouted a greeting t
o the fighters as they scrambled to the ground, meaning he knew them. He did it while wiping the blood from his hands on the clothing of Ibby’s body. That meant their arrival had been preplanned and timed for the exact day the EMP weapons were ready and operational. Plus, there were so many of them that it looked unlikely that she, or any of the engineering team or the student volunteers, could try to slip away without being seen.

  She felt suddenly stupid, scared, and vulnerable—a pawn in a game much larger and more horrific than she could ever have imagined.

  • • •

  ONE OF THE NEW MEN stood behind the seated volunteers and team members with his rifle out. The second man was in front. And the third, Saeed’s man, walked between and through the hostages as if daring someone to try to defy him.

  Sheridan watched as Seth raised his head across the aisle to say something to Saeed’s man, and the gesture was met with a brutal boot kick in his face. Seth cried out and sank over to his side with his hands covering his broken nose. Blood streamed out between his fingers.

  Kira Harden sat next to Sheridan with wide, terrified eyes. She’d seen what had happened to Seth as well, and she and Sheridan exchanged frightened glances.

  Sheridan was disgusted when one of her fellow volunteers, one of the sixth-year seniors from the University of Colorado, cried out that he, too, was a Muslim and he should be spared.

  Saeed’s man nodded and approached the student, who started to stand up. The student looked like he was ready to switch sides and grab a rifle if he could get one, but Saeed’s man raised his own and shot the student—BLAM!—in the head, and he dropped like a sack of sand. The male students around him recoiled in horror and turned away as the dead man’s body twitched. The odor of blood combined with the acrid smell of gunpowder within the shed.

  Sheridan’s ears rang from the sound and proximity of the rifle shot.

  Suzy Gudenkauf, whom Sheridan had come to understand as someone who was very close to Ibby, could not stop sobbing. Suzy’s head was buried between her knees and her entire body trembled. Sheridan watched with alarm as Saeed’s man heard her, walked over, and said something to her in Arabic. Suzy didn’t respond.