Underwood snorted. “They also found Roberson’s fingerprints all over the car Singewald and Baker drove up from Denver. I suppose you’ll say lots of people up here have the same fingerprints.”
“No,” Joe said. “I won’t say that.”
“Good. So can I get some sleep now?”
“One more question.”
“Jesus—what?”
“Back to how your agency operates. How much juice would someone have to have to get a noncompliance action going the same day? Are we talking low level, mid-level, or big-shot level?”
Underwood covered his face with his hand and moaned.
“I’m just curious,” Joe said.
“I told you I wasn’t going there.”
“But why not at this point? You seem pretty convinced Butch did it, so why does it matter who turned him in in the first place?”
“I never said anyone turned him in.”
“You implied it. So which level?”
Underwood cursed and said, “Big-shot level, of course. The mid-level types might get some kind of investigation opened, but they wouldn’t be able to make agents jump like that. Obviously, somebody with influence knew who to call to get them to react like that.”
“So Julio Batista was in on it from the beginning, then?”
“I never said that.”
“You implied it.”
“Jesus fuck,” Underwood moaned. “Leave me alone. Yes, I would guess whoever called talked to the director in person. No one else could have made the decision so quickly to send agents directly from Denver. Usually, we’d let the local EPA staff handle it first.”
“That’s what I thought. Which means Batista knows who got this whole thing going, but he doesn’t want to volunteer that information.”
Underwood grunted.
“So if Butch Roberson just goes away, Batista will probably never be asked.”
Underwood grunted again.
Joe thought about it, and said, “So what’s our plan?”
Underwood took a deep breath and slowly expelled it through his nostrils. “We keep moving down the mountain to the west until we pick up his track. You’re a tracker, right?”
“Not really,” Joe said.
“I think even I could follow the prints of three guys.”
“Maybe.”
“Anyway, Batista said they’ve put together a big interagency task force that will be coming up this direction from the west. They’re on their way now in a convoy of four-wheel-drives. The idea is they’ll flush Roberson our way and we’ll trap him in a pincer movement and he’ll have no choice but to turn loose his hostages and we’ll nail the son of a bitch in the morning.”
Joe nodded in the dark. “So you’ll flood the zone with people until you corner Butch.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“What do you think Butch will do when he realizes there is no helicopter? Do you think he’ll keep his end of the bargain?”
“Batista thinks he won’t have any options at that point.”
“Why is that?” Joe asked.
“Because we will have aircraft coming. Roberson won’t know it isn’t a helicopter until it’s too late.”
Joe felt a chill crawl down his neck. “What’s coming?”
Joe could see Underwood’s teeth in the moonlight as he smiled. “This is what I was worried about earlier, but I wasn’t sure he could make it happen. Drones—two of ’em this time. One is assigned to the EPA, and it’s just an observation unit like the last one. Just cameras and shit on board. But the second one is the kicker. Batista threw my name around and got authorization for a military drone to be assigned to us. All the way from an airbase in North Dakota. That one happens to be armed with Hellfire missiles.”
Joe was speechless for a moment. Then he said, “You’re going to blow him up?”
“Into a million pieces,” Underwood said, shaking his head. “Just like one of the many Al Qaeda number twos. That is, if Roberson doesn’t release the hostages and give himself up. So he will have a choice in the matter.”
“Aren’t Hellfire missiles used to blow up tanks on the ground?”
“Yes, and terrorists in their bunkers. But they’ll work pretty damned well on domestic terrorists, I’ll wager.”
Joe said, “If you want to start a war out here, this is the way to do it.”
Underwood shrugged it off. “I’m not worried about that.”
Joe said, “I am.”
“Please,” Underwood pleaded, turning his back to Joe, “leave me alone.”
“Good night, Mr. Underwood,” Joe said, and carefully reached up and clicked off the digital recorder again.
“Game Warden,” Underwood said, a few minutes after Joe assumed he was asleep. “Now I have a question for you.”
“What?”
“If a war started, which side would you be on?”
Joe hesitated. He said, “I’ll have to get back to you on that.”
—
JOE WAS IN HIS SLEEPING BAG, staring back at the hard white stars, when he heard Underwood’s phone buzz again. Batista, no doubt, with more orders, he thought.
Instead, Underwood walked over to Joe with the space blanket over his shoulders and extended the phone.
“It’s your wife,” he said with irritation. “Make it quick.”
—
“ACCORDING TO THE BIO on the agency website, Juan Julio Batista was born in Chicago in 1965,” Marybeth said. “That makes him forty-eight years old—our age. There’s no mention of a wife or children. He worked for an environmental group called One Globe in the Denver field office from 1989 to 2003, when he was hired by the EPA. He was named director of Region Eight by the Washington bigwigs in 2008.
“It says he graduated from Colorado State University in 1987. Majored in sociology and minored in environmental affairs.”
“Anything else?” Joe asked, aware that Underwood was hovering.
“Tons of media mentions,” she said. “He likes to give press conferences, and he’s mentioned dozens of times when his agency takes action against polluters.”
“Hmmmmm.”
“Let’s see,” she said, obviously scrolling through the site. “Region Eight oversees Colorado, Montana, North and South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming. But we knew that.”
“Has he ever worked for Region Ten?” Joe asked.
“I know what you’re getting at—Idaho. The Sackett case. No, he never worked there. I can’t find any connection.”
Joe asked, “Anything at all to tie him to Pam and Butch?”
“Nothing I can find.”
“What about Pate?”
“I found some mentions, but they just stop in 1988.”
“That fits,” Joe said, and told Marybeth what Underwood had revealed.
“That’s just . . . odd,” Marybeth said. Joe could visualize her mind racing. “I’ll dig deeper tomorrow at the library.”
Marybeth had access to several state and federal databases from the library computers that she wasn’t supposed to have. She’d assisted Joe with investigations several times.
Underwood extended his hand for the phone back.
“Good work,” Joe said.
“Stay safe.”
—
LATER, AS JOE closed his eyes, he heard the faraway sound of two unmanned drones whining through the sky.
26
JIMMY SOLLIS WEPT IN THE MOONLIGHT.
With the daypack strapped on his back and his wrists bound in front of him, Sollis stumbled on a tree root, lost his footing, and did a face-plant into the dank-smelling musky ground. He hit his head hard enough to produce spangles of orange on the inside of his eyelids, and his face was covered with dirt and pine needles.
He clumsily got to his feet again. That damned pack threw his balance off and he nearly sidestepped and stumbled to the ground again, but he got his tired legs beneath him.
And stood there and cursed and cried. He hadn’t cried for years, not for anything.
It was all so damned unfair . . .
—
SINCE THAT SON OF A BITCH Butch Roberson had shot a crease in his cheek and sent him away, Sollis had blindly worked his way down the mountain. Without a map, a GPS, or a good sense of direction, he simply went down. Whenever he was given a choice to continue on a line or veer to the right or left, he chose whichever side descended. Several times, this had led him into tangled ravines he had to tear himself out of—his clothes were rags now—but sometimes it was the right choice. His goal was to get out of the black timber onto the valley floor, where at least he could see and be seen if someone was looking for him.