Trail of the Fallen Page 2

  “We’re kinda in California, too, chief.”

  “We’re in the good side of California,” he said. He looked up from his phone. “This big-city shoot-’em-up is a long way from sleepy old Paiute Meadows.”

  “As long as these guys don’t start heading east toward our side of the mountain,” Sarah said.

  “Let’s hope it stays that way,” said Sorenson.

  “Scared, big guy?” Mitch said.

  The phone in his hand buzzed, and he walked back toward his office. He didn’t see Sorenson flip him off.

  “Well, baby,” Sarah said, “Kip on the loose somehow was always going to be our worst nightmare. If he is on the loose.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But this has nothing to do with us.”

  I hadn’t told her about my nightmare yet.

  We spent half the year, Sarah and I and our baby Lorena, and a ten-year-old orphan foster kid, Audie Ravenswood, on Sarah’s dad’s ranch in Shoshone Valley forty miles north of our pack outfit. Audie’s mother had been a teenage prostitute whose murder in Reno had left the kid alone in the world. Alone except for my awesome new wife, who guarded that kid like a cranky she-bear. Together with my mom and her boyfriend, Burt Kelly, a Marine packing instructor at the Mountain Warfare base up by Sonora Pass, we helped Dave Cathcart with his cattle out on a winter grazing permit and kept the place squared away and profitable. Together, we all spread the ranch work around and got it done. Dave called our random bunch a goddamn redneck hippie commune, but his health had been spotty and we could tell he liked having his daughter and granddaughter and old friends close.

  Mom and Burt lived on his place in the double-wide that used to belong to Sarah and her first husband, Kip, the Folsom convict. The same convict who was on all our minds, and who we tried not to talk about. When I first came back to California from Fort Benning, I sat in that double-wide drinking Kip’s Maker’s Mark and trying to ignore his snide questions about what I’d seen and what I’d done and how it might’ve messed up my head. As we sat there, Kip was already scaring the crap out of Sarah with that talk, but I figured he’d got some of those questions from stuff she’d told him before. The way we all run our mouths about our exes sometime, even if we know we shouldn’t.

  I came into Shoshone Valley that morning from the south on the Reno Highway. The valley sat between the brown rocky edge of the Sierra on the left and the huge empty Monte Cristos on the right, the aspen in the high canyons yellow now from the early frosts. Out on the meadows, cattle close in to the barns and corrals grazed on the last of the green, and pockets of fog marked the course of the West Frémont River as it flowed north. In spots it looked like the whole valley was underwater with just treetops poking up through the whiteness. Early falling cottonwood leaves burned in piles along the ranch lanes, the smoke mixing with the fog on the river.

  That night at dinner we kept Dave’s TV on for live coverage of the prison break, but the news was already moving on to other stories with fewer live updates. The escape sounded more and more like it had turned into an old-fashioned manhunt. Like a black-and-white heist movie from my dad’s day. Mom wanted to turn it off, but Sarah stopped her.

  “Tommy and I should keep on top of this,” she said. “Just in case.”

  “I know,” Mom said. “I just hate that we have to fill our thought with this horrible stuff.”

  Burt got up to take his plate into the kitchen. He gave Mom’s shoulder a squeeze, but his eyes were on me.

  “Hey, Tommy,” he said, “you sure that Isringhausen psych-job isn’t traveling with these cons?”

  “Not from what we heard so far.”

  “But would he bust out if he had the chance?” He looked from me to Sarah. “Would he come after you two?”

  Just then, Audie walked into the living room from the bedroom Sarah and I shared with the baby. She’d probably been Instagramming her fifth-grade-Instagram-girl-mafia about boys. Junior high boys. Sarah said she was already tightening her cinch and screwing down her hat for a long decade ahead of us with that child, and we still had a ways to go with the whole adoption business. Audie climbed on the couch next to Dave. The grown-ups all watched her, seeing if she would ask us what we were talking about and wondering what we would say.

  I looked back to Burt.

  “I expect Kip would come at us if he had the chance.”

  Burt’d been in Desert Storm. I guessed he’d be out at their double-wide cleaning his AR-15 right after dessert. Sarah got up and took her department radio into our bedroom. She was gone about five minutes.

  “So far the rough count is twelve convicts still on the loose,” she said, “not eighteen.”

  “But still,” Mom said, “twelve is a whole lot.”

  “It was thirteen, Mom, but one of them took a bullet.”

  “Lucky thirteen,” she said.

  “They dumped the laundry truck sometime this afternoon over by Rancho Cordova,” Sarah said, “then they seem to have split up. It looks like they had a stolen Econoline van and a Toyota 4Runner plus, according to a witness, a pickup waiting with supplies and weapons. All of the vehicles hot, all with stolen plates. The witness wasn’t sure about the make of the pickup, only that it was blue and long, like maybe a crew cab. And the woman saw a lot of firepower.” Sarah sat on the arm of my chair, just calm and professional, looking at her iPad.

  “There was naturally huge confusion,” she said. “A truck from a mattress recycling charity pulled out of Folsom just before the breakout and local cops thought they had another escape vehicle. They pulled it over, but the driver checked out and his load was nothing but old mattresses so they let him go.”

  “Not enough Lysol in the free world to make me sleep on a used jailhouse mattress.”

  Sarah made a face and smiled at me then went back to processing the facts. “FBI has a BOLO out on the Econoline and the 4Runner. These guys obviously had outside help, including using pretty common vehicles for the getaway. But there was what seemed to be a fair amount of organization from the inside, too. A lot of discipline. The woman witness said it was almost like a military operation. Cool, efficient, and methodical.” She turned to me. “What do you think, baby? You’re the soldier.”

  “Looks like they’re heading down towards Sacramento.”

  “It’s easier to lose yourself in an urban area,” she said.

  “If that’s really where they’re headed.”

  Dave got off the couch and walked to a window. “Snowin’,” he said.

  “What’s the weather like down at Folsom?” Burt said.

  “It’s snowing from Placerville on up,” Mom said. She smiled at Burt. “Maybe we’ll have a white Christmas this year. Why don’t you start us a fire, Burtie?”

  That old boy was way too big to be called Burtie, but he didn’t seem to mind if it was Mom saying it.

  “The Sacramento County sheriffs said one of the twelve was a lifer, an ex-soldier called Billy Jack Kane,” Sarah said. “Now a skinhead badass who killed two Mexican guys bare-handed in a biker bar down in Taft. He’s new to Folsom, but they think Kane might be the main man—or one of them.”

  I thought I saw Burt pause a step on his way out to the mudroom. Or maybe I just imagined it. I looked up at Sarah.

  “Where’re you getting all this, babe?”

  “The US Marshals Service,” she said.

  “Folsom’s a state pen,” Dave said. “What the hell are the Feds doing messing in?”

  “Since nine-eleven,” Sarah said, “the marshals have taken over most all of our fugitive operations nationwide. They’ll be running a joint task force on this.”

  Dave sort of snorted. Audie mimicked him, and he laughed.

  “Hey, Dad, you didn’t mind the FBI’s help when Kip almost killed you a year and a half ago,” Sarah said.

  Dave walked back to the couch and sat next to Audie. “You got me there,” he said. “That agent Aaron Fuchs and Tommy here saved my bacon, so old Fuchs is okay with me.” br />
  “Aaron Fuchs is not old,” Audie said.

  “Figure of speech, Sis,” Sarah said.

  She read a text on her phone.

  “The joint task force is establishing a perimeter from Rancho Cordova to El Dorado Hills,” she said.

  Dave looked at me. “Where the hell is that?”

  “One of those strip-mall big-box towns in the foothills east of Sacramento.”

  “The perimeter is established by verified sightings,” Sarah said. “The task force will be widening it soon enough.”

  Burt stood at the mudroom door with an armload of split kindling. For a big guy, Burt walked awful soft.

  “The US Attorney and marshals have already started interviewing family members and prisoners on the inside,” Sarah said. “We can learn a lot about every one of these clowns and whether this was an organized act of this guy Kane’s skinhead gang—”

  Burt dropped his armload of wood on the floor about six feet from the stove. The room got quiet.

  “The WhiteFighters,” he said.

  Sarah just stared at Burt. “How did you—”

  “I knew his brother,” Burt said. “Ricky Lee Kane. He was a Marine.”

  “My god, Burt,” Sarah said. “The brother could be the key to all this. We need to talk to him fast.”

  “You can’t,” Burt said. “He’s dead.”

  Chapter Two

  I got up and started walking towards the kitchen. I felt wobbly, like I needed fresh air. Sarah was the only one who paid me any mind, but she didn’t say anything, just watched and looked worried. Mom asked Burt if Ricky Lee Kane, the brother of the escaped convict, died in combat. He shook his head.

  “The ATF shot him in Idaho maybe six months ago.”

  “But what for?” she said.

  “Making bombs,” he said. “And selling weapons.”

  Mom didn’t ask him any more questions. In years past she had some pretty rough-sawed cousins near Boise Valley, but she hadn’t spoke of them in years.

  I went into the kitchen and poured myself a Jack on the rocks in a plastic cup. Sometimes that worked as well as fresh air. I was setting the bottle back on top of the fridge when the cup just collapsed in my hand. I guess I was holding it harder than I figured. I cussed loud and could feel the folks in the living room staring. Things were quiet as I mopped the bourbon up with a paper towel. I got a coffee cup and tried again. Once I’d built another drink, I leaned against the doorjamb trying to look all casual and semi-human. All this seemed to take forever.

  “Selling weapons from who?”

  Burt didn’t answer me. I asked again louder.

  “He washed out of the Corps sniper school,” Burt said. “Some hassle on a survival exercise right here at Sonora Pass.” He bent over and picked up the stovewood. He set it real careful in front of the stove like he was embarrassed for throwing it down.

  “Kane went after his Red Hat instructor with a knife,” Burt said. “He was lucky he didn’t get shot on the spot. We’d all be better off if he was.”

  “How come?”

  He looked around the room a minute before he answered me. Like this was a real sore subject.

  “He stole weapons. High-end, state-of-the-art ordnance.”

  “Like what?”

  “You heard of the Mk 13?” he said.

  “Oh, yeah. Your guys’ new sniper rifle.”

  “Yeah,” Burt said. “The Mark thirteen Mod seven. After time in the brig for assault, Ricky Lee gets court-martialed and discharged. Right away he gets a crew together and hijacked a bunch of those sniper rifles. At least a dozen, maybe two or three times that. Snuck ’em right off the base in a lady visitor’s truck.”

  “Inside help?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “I never heard that.”

  “Hell, Tommy,” he said. “That’s nothing the Corps wants to advertise. They got enough trouble with finding those sex traffickers down at Pendleton.”

  “Any of these rifles get recovered? You know, used in some crime or sold in an ATF sting?”

  “They vanished without a trace,” Burt said. “Every last one of ’em. They’d be kinda hard to conceal, so Marine CID figures Ricky Lee hid ’em close to the base, planning on picking ’em up before too long. He was in Idaho meeting a buyer when he got killed.”

  “Damn,” Dave said. “What a waste of the taxpayer dollar.”

  “When he got capped up there,” Burt said, “the secret died with him. Feds found a couple of his accomplices shot dead execution style.”

  “How much we talkin’? Value-wise.”

  “Black market value?” Burt said. “From a hundred grand to over half a mil, depending on how many they scored. Some folks say there’s even more of ’em missing. Then you add nightscopes and suppressors for every unit. An exact count has never been released.”

  I walked over to the chair I’d been sitting in. Sarah patted the seat for me to sit back down with her. She took my cup then took a sip. Just as if my fantods and the wasted whiskey in the kitchen was no big deal.

  “Has too much time passed?” She handed back my cup. “Maybe it’s a cold trail.”

  I took a gulp. “No trail worth that much cash is ever cold for long.”

  “Do you think there’s any tie-in with the escaped-convict brother?”

  I just shrugged.

  “So, Burt,” Dave said, “how come an old packer like you knows so much inside dope about this hardware?”

  “I got a hunting buddy in Marine CID,” Burt said. “There was plenty of talk when the rifles disappeared. Then folks get transferred in and transferred out. It kinda faded after a bit.”

  “Be interesting to see if there’s been increased chatter in the underground arms market in the past twenty-four hours,” Sarah said.

  “Or goddamn ISIS,” Dave said.

  My hands kinda stiffened. Sarah flinched when she felt it.

  “We’re talking about super-accurate, super-long-range sniper rifles. Way over the thousand-yard range of the old M40s. Value depends on who’s holding them. Non-state actors could use ’em for political assassinations. The Middle East? DC? Who knows? And if one gets in the hands of the Russians or Chinese, within a year our kids are gonna be getting shot with knockoffs of our own hardware.”

  “Damn,” Dave said. “A guy could sure rob a bank with a half dozen of them puppies.”

  “Chump change. You could almost buy your own bank, Dave.”

  “So who else?” Burt said.

  “One of the confirmed escapees is a Russian national.” Sarah scrolled her phone. “Vanya Vasiliev.” She looked at the rest of us. “Contract killer. Murder in the first.”

  “Maybe this dead Kane character knew your ex, Sarah.” Dave said. “Didn’t Kip wash out of the Marines, too?”

  Sarah ignored her dad. “There’s an ATF woman named Sanchez who’ll be on the task force, Burt,” she said. “Friend of Aaron Fuchs. You should talk to her.”

  Sarah and I lay in bed together not sleeping, not talking.

  “I’m not doin’ so good.” I could barely hear myself say it.

  “I know, honey,” she said. She spoke in a half whisper so as not to wake the baby in the crib across the room.

  “How could you know?”

  “Other than you feeling hot to the touch, yelling in your sleep, shivering, sweating, stuff like that, you’re just as normal as pie, babe.”

  “Think maybe it’s . . . I don’t know . . . PTSD?”

  “I’d be surprised if it was anything else. You’ve gone through a fair amount of hell the last couple of years.” She put her hand on my chest. “And a lot of that hell was after your discharge. Right here in god’s country.”

  I told her about the hallucinations out at the tree line that morning. About night terrors. And how I got so shook I left the Remington in the outhouse rafters.

  “Well, that is totally not like you,” she said.

  “I’m going back up there first thing tomorrow to get
it.”

  She got up on one elbow. “I’ve got a day shift. I can pick it up when I’m done. Save you a trip.”

  “I need to go back there.”

  “You don’t need to face your fears on my account. I know how strong you are. You can’t let this tear your world apart.”

  “I can’t not do this.”

  “You want to tell me about the nightmares?” she said.

  I told her about the dream of being trapped in a cave so small I couldn’t stand up, and of nursing Lieutenant Hendershott back from the brink. Of having no food and no rounds to spare, and only the firewood I took off a dead burro to keep us from freezing. Of my boot tracks in the snow leading right back to our hiding place.

  “Did any of that really happen to you?” she said.

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “I remember . . .” she stopped herself a minute before she plowed ahead. “I remember after I texted you at Fort Benning when Dad was missing. When you got here, Kip was asking you what it was like. You know. Combat and stuff.”

  “He was just probing for weakness.”

  “That didn’t bother you?”

  “Not at the time.”

  She gave me a look like she didn’t quite believe me.

  “What were you thinking about, then?”

  “You.” I stared at the ceiling. “You and him.”

  “Okay.”

  I could tell I’d made her uncomfortable.

  “How long were you in the cave for real?” she said.

  “Seventy-six hours, give or take.”

  “How did you pass the time?”

  “Hendershott talked history. Nonstop. He’d studied how the hard-core believers we were fighting figured they’d see an army coming from the east, an army from a thousand years ago, carrying black flags and bringing . . . I don’t know . . . the second coming of god knows what. Some damn savior. The believers had to join that savior army even if they had to crawl through the snow to do it. Stuff like that.”

  “Sounds creepy,” she said. “So what did you talk about?”