Off the Grid Read online

  • • •

  INSTINCTIVELY, NATE TOOK a step back behind the trunk of an ancient river cottonwood and drew his weapon. The snick-snick sound of the hammer cocking back and the cylinder rotating was an audible signal that put all of his senses on hyperalert. Suddenly, he could hear the sound of the river flow increase in volume, and the clatter of Bucholz’s pickup became a cacophony. The bitter, dusty smell of the cottonwood tree stung his nose. And the faces of the two men sitting next to the doctor in the cab zoomed into high focus.

  Both passengers were in their late forties or early fifties. The man next to the doctor, in the middle, was clean-cut and serious. He had short-cropped FBI hair, a jutting jaw, and black horn-rimmed glasses.

  The other man, next to the passenger door, had a heavy brow, a shaved head, a broad nose, and sharp eyes. His face looked like a fist cocked back, ready to strike.

  Nate placed the front sight of his weapon squarely between the bald man’s eyes. He could take him out first and kill the man in the middle with a snap second shot. He’d long ago perfected the technique of rapid-firing the single-action revolver: recocking it in a single smooth motion as he pulled it back to level from its massive recoil. He could fire all five rounds nearly as fast as a semiauto, but with more accuracy. It would take two-point-five seconds.

  But what if the man in the middle had a gun jammed into the ribs of the doctor?

  Nate hesitated, but didn’t lower his weapon.

  Dr. Bucholz slowed to a stop and killed the motor. He was twenty yards away.

  Slowly, the man in the middle raised his hands, palms out, so that Nate could see them. He said something to the bald man, and the passenger raised his hands as well.

  Without moving the .500, Nate surveyed the brush and trees on both sides of the pickup for movement or sound. Had the men come alone?

  He could hear nothing but the ticking of the rancher’s truck as the engine cooled.

  The man in the middle said something again and a moment later both the driver’s-side and passenger-side windows whirred down.

  “We’re going to come out now,” the man in the middle said. “We’re unarmed, so there’s no need for fireworks. We’re well aware of what you can do with that gun of yours. Dr. Bucholz and his wife have not been harmed in any way, have you, Doctor?”

  Nate looked hard at Dr. Bucholz. He seemed concerned but not terrified. If the men in the doctor’s pickup had come to take him out, Nate thought, they wouldn’t have chosen to do it this way. They wouldn’t have driven right up to the cabin and made themselves targets.

  “I’m sorry, Nate,” Dr. Bucholz said through his open window. “They didn’t give me much of a choice.”

  The man in the middle gestured to the bald man to open his door.

  “No need to get excited,” the bald man said to Nate as he stepped out.

  “I’m not excitable,” Nate said. He kept his gun on the bald man’s forehead. “Now step around the door and come to the front of the vehicle. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

  The bald man nodded and did what he’d been asked. He was tall and solid. He wore a canvas safari-like jacket over a button-down shirt and jeans that looked straight off the rack. The jacket had a lot of bulging pockets, Nate observed. He didn’t like that.

  Nate said, “Let your coat slide off to the ground.”

  “It’ll get dirty,” the man protested. But after a glance at the man still in the truck, he shimmied his shoulders so the jacket slid down his arms and fell into a heap at his feet.

  The second man slid across the bench seat and took his place next to the bald man. He was taller but thinner and he looked fit and professional. He wore a North Face down shell over a crisp plaid shirt. Like the bald man’s, his blue jeans looked pristine. Both men, Nate thought, looked out of place because they had tried too hard not to. And both had a distinctive military bearing about them that Nate recognized from the first moment he’d seen them.

  The man in the glasses said, “Nate Romanowski, you’re a hard man to find.”

  Nate nodded. “That’s the point.”

  “I’m Brian Tyrell and this is Keith Volk. We’ve been looking for you for months.”

  “Why?” Although he had a good idea.

  Tyrell said, “I’d like to say that we’re from the government and we’re here to help you, but I have a feeling that wouldn’t go over so well.”

  Nate didn’t respond.

  “Let me get straight to the point,” Tyrell said. “You’re a wanted man. You’re an outlaw. I’ve seen the charging documents that will be used to indict you and Olivia Brannan in federal court. As usual, they’ve overcharged you. But even if they can prove half of the crimes in the indictment, they could put you away for the rest of your life.”

  Nate nodded.

  “So you’re not here to arrest me?”

  “I’m here to offer you a proposal and a deal. If you accept it, we can make all the charges go away for both you and Ms. Brannan. You won’t have to live off the grid anymore.”

  “I kind of like being off the grid,” Nate said.

  “I know you do. That’s why you were so damned hard to find and why you should be very interested in what we plan to offer, if for no other reason than to get Ms. Brannan off the hook. From what I’ve read, her biggest crime comes from aiding and abetting you.”

  Tyrell seemed very sure of himself, Nate thought. And he was right about Liv. Nate couldn’t stand to see her go to federal prison.

  “If you’ll come with us to Dr. Bucholz’s house, I can explain further,” Tyrell said.

  Nate didn’t lower his gun. “Why can’t you just lay it out right here?”

  “Look,” Volk said, unsuccessfully trying to hide his impatience. “If we wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead. If we wanted to arrest you, you’d be in custody right now. But we drove out here because Mr. Tyrell said he thought he could reason with you. That wouldn’t have been the way I would have played it, but he’s in charge.”

  “In charge of what?” Nate asked.

  “That’s part of our discussion,” Tyrell said. Then to Dr. Bucholz: “Would you please drive us all back to your lovely home?”

  4

  There was a black Yukon XL with U.S. government plates parked in front of the Bucholz ranch house and another man—younger, with a buzz cut and sunglasses—standing on the front porch. His loose jacket and the way he set his feet when the pickup neared told Nate the man was armed and wary. Despite his casual clothing, Nate thought, he looked tightly wrapped.

  The ranch house itself was a modest, white two-story clapboard that served as the hub to barns, sheds, and outbuildings. And, except for modernized electric and plumbing, the house was virtually the same as when Bucholz was growing up. The home was shaded in the summer by hundred-year-old cottonwoods that looked stark and skeleton-like in the fall. The ground was carpeted with cupped yellow leaves, and a flock of teardrop-shaped wild turkeys strutted in slow motion at the tree line.

  As he neared his home, Dr. Bucholz found Nate’s eyes in the rearview mirror and said, “Again, I’m sorry the way this worked out.”

  “Don’t be,” Nate said from the backseat. More than anything, he was intrigued. Tyrell and Volk were the type of men who could exude menace in certain situations, but they seemed to have everything under control. If they feared Nate’s reaction to whatever it was they were doing or planned to propose, they didn’t show it. Both sat in the front seat with their backs to him. He assumed they had concealed weapons, but they’d not shown them. They hadn’t asked Nate to leave his weapon back at the cabin and the .500 was holstered under his arm.

  They were either sure of themselves, Nate thought, or profoundly foolish. He guessed the former.

  Tyrell, Volk, and the man on the porch all looked familiar to Nate. Although he’d never seen or met any of them bef
ore, he felt that he knew them. They were the kind of men he’d worked with, and for, as a special operator.

  “Is he one of yours?” Nate asked Tyrell, gesturing to the younger man on the front porch.

  “Yes, of course. And we’ve got another colleague inside.”

  “So, four of you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dr. Bucholz, did you see any others?” Nate asked.

  “No. These four showed up about an hour after Rodrigo left this morning. Laura and I were just finishing breakfast.”

  • • •

  DR. BUCHOLZ PULLED IN next to the Yukon. Tyrell said to him, “When we go inside, you can get your wife and go to a different part of the house if you like, or the two of you can go out and do ranch things. You know, buildin’ fence or pullin’ calves or whatever it is you people do. But under no circumstances should you sit in on or overhear the discussion I’m going to have with Mr. Romanowski.”

  “You expect me to leave you all alone in my home?” Bucholz asked, affronted.

  “That’s exactly what I hope you’ll do. Believe me when I tell you that for the safety of you and your wife, the less you know about this, the better. And when we’re gone, which we will be soon, I hope you’ll keep the fact that you met us confidential.”

  It wasn’t exactly a threat, Nate observed. It was said with a tone of compassion. But he wasn’t sure there wasn’t a double meaning.

  “What if I call the sheriff?” Bucholz asked. “After all, you’re trespassing on my ranch and you’re keeping my wife inside with one of your men.”

  Tyrell took a deep breath and expelled it in a sigh. “Dr. Bucholz, you can do whatever you want. Go ahead and call your sheriff. Explain to him why we’re here and why you’ve harbored two federal fugitives on your ranch for the last seven months. If your wish is to get Mr. Romanowski here arrested and taken to federal lockup, that’s the way to proceed. I can make one call and the four of us out-of-towners will be released without charges. It’s up to you.”

  Dr. Bucholz shook his head.

  “And please,” Tyrell said, “don’t imply that we’ve threatened you or your wife in any way, because we haven’t. You invited us in when we showed up. Your wife offered us coffee. She’s been free to get up and leave anytime she wanted to. If you don’t believe me, just ask her.”

  Volk said, “We’re all on the same side here.”

  “Really?” Bucholz asked.

  “Really.”

  The doctor said, “All right, all right. Nate, are you okay with this?”

  Both Tyrell and Volk turned their heads to him.

  “I’ll hear what they have to say.”

  “That was a good answer,” Volk said.

  • • •

  ON THE FRONT PORCH, the younger man with the buzz cut strode across the planks toward Nate while he mounted the steps.

  The man raised his sunglasses to his forehead and his eyes blazed with an intensity that stopped Nate short. Buzz Cut held out his hand.

  “Nate Romanowski, it’s a real honor to meet you. I’ve followed your career for a long time.”

  “I don’t have a career,” Nate said, shaking the man’s hand.

  “I should have said ‘cause.’” Buzz Cut grinned.

  “I don’t have one of those, either,” Nate said.

  “Can we end the lovefest and go inside?” Volk asked.

  • • •

  TYRELL, VOLK, AND NATE sat at the kitchen table while Doctor and Laura Bucholz left the room for the upstairs library. Before climbing the stairs, Bucholz turned and looked over his shoulder at Nate, as if it were the last time he’d ever see him.

  Nate wasn’t sure that he was wrong. “It’s okay,” he said to Bucholz.

  When the couple was upstairs with their door shut, Tyrell said, “Shall we get to it?” It was more of a statement than a question.

  Nate nodded.

  Tyrell reached out and opened a laptop sitting in the middle of the table.

  “We had to talk here because I needed a secure Wi-Fi connection,” Tyrell said. “I know you don’t have one at your place.”

  “You’ve got that right.”

  “Or a landline, or a cell phone, or for that matter anything that will link you to the outside world,” Tyrell continued. “No credit cards, loans, subscriptions, licenses, tax forms . . .”

  “I have a Social Security number,” Nate said with a wry smile.

  “That you never use,” Tyrell said. “We know the number, believe me.”

  Volk said, “Five-one-six, three-three, three-one-one-eight. Montana prefix.”

  Nate arched his eyebrows at that. Volk was correct.

  “We probably know as much about you as anyone could,” Tyrell said. “And like our colleague out there on the porch, we think there is much to admire. Your years in special ops were . . . special. The men you worked with all speak highly of you, if we can persuade them to speak. The black ops reports of your missions are impressive.”

  He hesitated a moment. “But you’ve certainly gone your own way since you were a special operator for the Peregrines, haven’t you?”

  Nate didn’t answer.

  The Peregrines were an off-the-books strike team that had operated on behalf of the government without any official sanction. If the team failed on a mission, there weren’t any officials who could take responsibility, because the command structure was top secret. Nate and his colleagues knew at the time that the existence of the Peregrines was known to fewer than five people in Washington and he didn’t know the names of any of them. But the team rarely failed.

  The special status of the Peregrines had led to hubris in the commander, John Nemecek, and resulted in a wholesale dissolution of the strike team. Nate didn’t disapprove of the action, because he’d been betrayed by Nemecek. Later, he’d taken his old ranking officer down.

  Tyrell said, “You’ve done a hell of a job staying off our radar the last seven months, and that’s a pretty hard thing to do these days for anyone, as you know. That’s how long we’ve been trying to find you. As far as we can tell, you never made a phone call, logged on to the Internet, or sent an email or a text. Not to mention no use of credit cards or anything else. You don’t have a bank account. Obviously, you’ve paid no federal income taxes.”

  “I haven’t had income,” Nate said.

  “You still have to file and you know that. But we’re not here on behalf of the IRS. What I’m saying is, you’ve done as good a job of hiding in plain sight as anyone we’ve ever tracked domestically. We have access to surveillance video nationwide and there’s never been a hit. We find it nearly incomprehensible that you’ve never shown up in a public or private place with cameras.”

  Nate said, “Public or private?”

  Tyrell grinned. “We have access to it all. If you walked into the local convenience store for a quart of milk, we’d know it.”

  “Face recognition software,” Volk added.

  “So how did you find me?” Nate asked.

  “Alas,” Tyrell said with what appeared to be sincerity. “Olivia Brannan had to make a few calls in the last month, didn’t she?”

  Nate got it. When Liv learned that her mother had a terminal illness, she’d driven into town to call her, as well as the doctors in Louisiana. She’d done it from the only pay phone remaining in the little Wyoming community of Saratoga, and from borrowed telephones in the grocery store and convenience store.

  Nate said, “You monitored every outgoing call from the Platte River Valley?”

  Tyrell said, “Mr. Romanowski, we monitor every call in the United States. We didn’t have to focus our efforts here. We can see and hear everywhere. You should know that.”

  “Who are you with, the NSA?” Nate asked.

  Tyrell and Volk exchanged glances.

  “Not
exactly,” Tyrell said.

  “Then who? You guys have ‘fed’ written all over you.”

  Volk said, “Are we that obvious?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe we ought to grow our hair into ponytails and start hanging around hawks?” Volk said to Tyrell. “Then we wouldn’t look like G-men?”

  “Maybe,” Tyrell said. Then to Nate: “Let me give you some background on us. I’m telling you more than I want to because it’s important to establish credibility. I have the feeling you won’t cooperate with us unless you have more background.”

  Nate nodded and tried to fight back his anger toward both of them.

  “Do you love your country, Nate Romanowski?” Tyrell asked. It was a serious question.

  “I do.” It was a serious answer.

  “Do you love your government?”

  “That’s different,” Nate said.

  “I’ve read the agreement you signed earlier this year with Special Agent Stan Dudley of the FBI,” Tyrell said, tapping his screen with his finger. “You agreed to quite a few conditions that led to your release from federal custody. You made an agreement with the U.S. government, in effect.”

  Tyrell swept his fingertip across the screen as he read.

  “Let’s see. You agreed to wear a digital monitor so your movements could be tracked at all times.” Tyrell’s eyes rose from the screen to Nate.

  “I wore it until they cut it off at the hospital. There’s nothing in that document that requires me to get a new one.”

  “A technicality, but okay, I’ll buy that,” Tyrell said. “Next, you agreed to check in every day with Agent Dudley via smartphone.”

  Nate said, “The phone was damaged when I was ambushed by two men with shotguns. The FBI never provided another one.”

  Tyrell smiled at that. “Another technicality, but legally you have a leg to stand on, according to our lawyers. How about ‘Subject agrees to cooperate with all ongoing federal investigations concerning one Wolfgang Templeton and his criminal network. Subject agrees to provide testimony in court if requested by the DOJ. Subject agrees to participate in any local operations, if asked by the DOJ, involving Wolfgang Templeton, and to serve as an agent of the prosecution during said investigation’?”