“Repeat them back to me,” Butch said to Batista.

Batista sighed, and said, “A helicopter, a public apology, and a dismissal of the compliance order.”

“Good,” Butch said. “You heard that, right, Joe?”

“I heard it.”

“And you’ll swear to me you’ll make sure they do those things?”

“I’ll do my best,” Joe said, feeling the knife twist.

Butch said, “Okay, then. I’ll call with the location of the landing area.”

Batista said with too much force, “Keep your phone on, Mr. Roberson. That way I can keep you updated on the status of the helicopter.”

There was a beat of silence, no response, and Butch’s phone signed off.

But Batista was still on, and he said to Joe, “How dare you say I’ll make a public apology,” he seethed.

“You should,” Joe said. “Do one thing right in this whole mess.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Batista said, dismissing the idea.

Joe said to him, “I guess being a federal bureaucrat means never having to say you’re sorry, huh?”

Batista’s voice rose to a shout. Something about two dead special agents.

“I’m done talking to him,” Joe said to Underwood, handing the phone back. Batista was still shouting.

Underwood held the phone out away from him without raising it to his ear. Joe turned Toby away and walked him into the standing dead trees as if trying to erect a wall between him and Underwood.

After a few moments, Joe watched Underwood raise the handset and say stonily, “So, boss, what’s the plan?”

Underwood listened and nodded, grunting several assents before punching off.

After clipping the phone to his belt, he turned to his team and nodded toward the top of the summit and said, “Let’s get moving.”

“What about the helicopter?” Joe said. “Shouldn’t I head down to the FOB to meet it?”

Underwood scoffed, “What do you think?”

Joe let that sink in.

“How long does Butch have?” Joe asked Underwood.

“Not long,” Underwood said, casting an inadvertent but telling look toward the sky.

“What is it with Batista?” Joe asked.

Underwood shrugged and turned away.

21

“JOE PICKETT SAID TO TELL YOU HE THINKS YOU’RE A moron,” Butch Roberson said to McLanahan.

McLanahan grunted, “Fuck him,” but Farkus couldn’t actually hear it. A few minutes earlier, when he saw Roberson’s finger tighten on the trigger, he’d closed his eyes and hadn’t seen the muzzle of the rifle swing to the right a foot from his forehead. The shot was like a punch in the air followed by extreme silence, and it took a moment for Farkus to realize he wasn’t dead. The hearing was gone in his right ear, though, and he’d pissed himself. When he opened his eyes, Butch had said into the handset, “That was Farkus”; Farkus had to lip-read to understand.

He missed the rest of the conversation as well in the vacuum of white noise caused by the shot, and he thanked God he wasn’t dead, because for a second there he was sure he was going to be.

—

THE HEARING IN Farkus’s ear improved to a low hum as Butch signed off, got up, and powered down the satellite phone. Butch looked distressed as he did so, and his movements were angry. He heard McLanahan say something about letting him go—that Butch could keep Farkus as his lone hostage—and maybe some of the heat would go off once they knew he’d released the ex-sheriff of Twelve Sleep County.

Suddenly, Butch said to Sollis, “Get up.”

Farkus realized why Butch had said he had two hostages, not three. Because he’d planned all along to get rid of Sollis.

“What?” Sollis sputtered.

“Get out of here. Start walking and don’t look back.”

“But you ran off our horses! I don’t have food or water . . . I’m not even sure I know how to get back.”

Butch dug a crumpled daypack out of his gear and filled it with spare clothing he’d kept from the pannier as well as a half-full canteen of water and a fold-up shovel.

“You can take this,” Butch said.

“But not my rifle?”

“Are you kidding me?”

While Sollis pleaded with his eyes for intervention by McLanahan, Farkus watched Butch unbuckle the shoulder straps of the daypack and weave them under Sollis’s armpits before securing them again. He roughly cinched the ties on the pack and fiddled with a side pocket. Farkus thought he saw Butch slide something into the pocket, but he wasn’t sure what it was. He hoped it wasn’t something good to eat. Farkus was hungry, and didn’t care if Sollis starved to death out there.

Butch shrugged and said, “Go.” He prodded Sollis with the rifle and spun him around.

“I might die out there,” Sollis said over his shoulder. There were tears in his eyes. He held out his banded wrists. “Aren’t you gonna cut me loose? I can’t even get to that pack this way.”

“You’ll figure something out,” Butch said. “At least out there you’ve got a chance. If you stay here around me, I’ll keep thinking about what you did to that poor hunter, I’ll put an end to your miserable life.”

When Sollis stopped and started to turn to plead his case, Butch fired a round at him that sounded like an angry snap. Farkus felt his legs go weak.

But when he looked up, Sollis was still standing. The bullet had creased his right cheek, leaving an ugly red rip in the skin. Streams of blood dripped down his face from the wound.

“I said go,” Butch growled through clenched teeth.

Without a word, Sollis stumbled away. Farkus could see his back through the trunks for a while. Butch watched him as well with his rifle raised, the crosshairs no doubt on the nape of Sollis’s neck. Farkus waited for a second explosion and squinted his eyes in anticipation. But it didn’t come, and then Sollis was gone.

“That guy makes me sick,” Butch said with finality. Then, to Farkus, “Start marching.”

—

“ABOUT WHAT I SAID . . .” McLanahan whispered to Butch after Sollis was gone.

“Naw,” Butch said to McLanahan. “I’m keeping you both.”

Farkus said to McLanahan, “Thanks a lot.”

“I didn’t think you could hear,” the ex-sheriff said back. “Besides, you smell like urine.”

“Get up, both of you,” Butch said, gesturing at them with his rifle.

Farkus rolled to his side and got his legs underneath him and stood. His wrists were still bound with zip ties, and he was as clumsy as a cub bear. Now that he could see out beyond the pocket of gray shale they’d been in, he could see shadows reaching out from the tips of the broken rock as if they were reaching for the horizon. It wouldn’t be long, he knew, before they’d be in darkness.

He asked Butch, “Why’d you do that? Shoot your rifle right by my head?”

“To make a point.”

“To me?”

“To them.”

“But I’m the one that’s deaf now in one ear.”

Butch shrugged sympathetically and said, “You’ll get over it.”

“Why didn’t you let me go?” Farkus asked. “I understand why you want the ex-sheriff—he’s a big fish. But why cut loose that idiot Sollis and keep me?”

Butch shrugged. “We hunted together. I guess I have a soft spot for you, even though you’re a lazy bastard.”

“Oh.”

Butch chinned toward the south. “That way.”

Farkus was confused. “I thought we were going over the top of the mountain?”

A slight smile passed over Butch’s lips. “That’s what I want them to think. But we’re not.”

Farkus looked to McLanahan for an explanation, and the ex-sheriff said, “I just figured it out myself. Butch here knows the Feds have a bead on where that drone went down, and they probably got a bead on that satellite phone before he shut it off. They’ll chart the two points on a topo and connect them with a line and decide we’re coming over the top of the mountain in their direction.”