Shots Fired (10 page)

“Seven, actually,” Nate said.

“You flatter me.”

Nate said nothing. He listened for the sound of a vehicle outside on the tarmac.

Rocky lit a cigarette with trembling fingers. “We kept the bar open until very early this morning,” he said. “The owner wanted to close at two, but we sweetened the pot for him. The whole town had a wonderful time.”

“It wasn't the whole town,” Nate said. “Just some drunks and derelicts. Your friend Khalid wasn't with you, though.”

Rocky looked up, the match still burning in his fingers. His ever-present smile was missing.

Nate said, “He was with me.”

Al-Nura used his hands on the arms of the chair to turn himself so he could see Rocky behind him. Father and son exchanged glances.

“Where is he now?” Rocky asked, almost in a whisper.

“Outside.”

“Let me see the birds,” Al-Nura said, turning back to Nate. His eyes were hard.

“Where are my falcons?” Nate asked.

Al-Nura gestured outside with his chin. “They are safe in the
hangar we rented. It's the second one from the left out there. They've been watered and well fed.”

Nate nodded, backed up, and pried the lid off the crate. The birds began to chirp furiously when exposed to light.

Al-Nura asked quickly, “Are they hooded?”

“Nope.”

“They'll see us!” he said angrily. “They'll be imprinted for life!”

“You said—”

“Close the box!”

Nate put the lid back on. While he fastened the clips, a horn honked outside. Rocky looked at the curtained window, then back to Nate.

“You asked about Khalid,” Nate said, gesturing toward the window.

Rocky inhaled deeply on the cigarette and crossed the cabin to the window and brushed the curtain aside. Nate watched Rocky's eyes widen and the cigarette dropped from his fingers, then Rocky stumbled backward, flailing his arms.

“What?” Al-Nura asked his son. “What has happened?”

“Khalid . . .” was all Rocky could say.

The sound of war cries erupted from the monitor as the Apaches attacked the fort.

Al-Nura reached up and opened the curtain. Nate could tell from Al-Nura's lack of alarm that he had seen worse in his life, and it had probably been on his orders.
Bastard,
Nate thought.

It had taken two hours to mount the sun dance pole onto the back of the flatbed truck, spearing it through a missing
fifth-wheel mount on the truck bed. But it had taken only twenty minutes to hang Khalid from the leather ropes from sharpened bones pierced deeply through his pectorals. Now the bodyguard was suspended in the air, his hands limp at his sides, his face tilted to the sky.

“He comes to every once in a while,” Nate said. “He screams a bunch of crap in Arabic, then he passes out again.”

“How could you do that to a man?” Rocky said, his face contorted.

“It's not so bad,” Nate said. “I did it once myself. But when he gets cut down, he'll be a warrior.”

Al-Nura swiveled slowly to Nate, his face a mask. But Nate could see his lower lip tremble involuntarily.

“It's time for you to go,” Nate said. “You've got five minutes to order your pilot to fire up the jets.”

Al-Nura was frozen with rage. He looked like he wanted to leap out of the chair and attack Nate with his hands.

“You don't threaten my father,” Rocky said.

Nate nodded toward the windows on the other side of the plane. “Check that out,” he said.

Nate didn't even need to look because he knew what Rocky would see: a dozen Northern Arapaho warriors in full dress on horseback on the edge of the tarmac, feathers from lances and rifles riffling in the breeze.

“Just like
Fort Apache
,” Nate said.

Al-Nura slowly shook his head back and forth. “You'll never get the rest of the money,” he said.

“Don't need it,” Nate said. “And don't ever contact me again
or you and your little boy will end up on the sun dance pole, too.”

“But don't you want the money?” Al-Nura asked.

“I'll be the first: no.”

With that, Nate opened the hatch and clambered down the steps. He helped Bad Bobby Whiteplume cut Khalid down. The man stumbled toward the plane as the jet engines started up. Nate watched Khalid climb up the stairs on his hands and knees and wondered for a moment if Rocky would shut the door on him before he got in. Khalid made it, barely, without ever looking back. Twin spoors of blood snaked up the aluminum steps from Khalid's wounds.

The door closed behind him and the stairs scissored back into place and Nate and Bob drove their vehicles to the side of the airport, where they met the warriors. The roar of the plane shook the ground itself and split the sky in two.

While the 737 rose into the air, Nate checked the birds in the hangar. The peregrine screamed at him when he opened the door. He rejoined Bob and Bob's crew with the hooded falcon on his fist.

It was minutes before the jet was far enough away that they could hear themselves speak.

Bad Bob yawned. “Too damned early for this kind of stuff.”

Several men agreed. They had all dismounted and held their horses by the reins.

“Any of you ever see
Fort Apache
?” Nate asked.

“You mean
Fort Apache, the Bronx
?” one of them asked. “With Paul Newman and Ed Asner?”

“Pam Grier was in that, too,” Bob said.

“No,” Nate said. “The original. With John Wayne.”

No one had.

“Here,” Nate said to Bob. “Our deal.”

He gave Bob half of the brick of Al-Nura's cash. Bob started to count it as the others gathered around him. Bob lost count, looked up at Nate, said, “I trust you. Besides, I know where to find you at my sister's place.”

A couple of the men laughed.

“Not a bad gig,” one of them said, nodding at the 737, which was a dot against the belly of a cumulus cloud.

“You can still make the shoot,” Nate said, looking up. “The light is still good.”

“Fuck the Cherokee thing,” Bob said. “This is much better. Call on us anytime you need Indians.”

“I hope I don't need you again,” Nate said.

“You don't think he'll come back?”

“No. We screwed up his worldview.”

Bob said, “Whatever that means.”

•   •   •

A
S
N
ATE CLIMBED INTO HIS
J
EEP,
Bob broke off from his friends and approached him. Bob had a threatening expression on his face, the one he had no doubt used on the film location to get more money from the director.

“What?”

“I've got a question,” Bob said in a gravel voice.

“Ask away.”

“Does this cover the seven chickens you took from my coop?” Then Bad Bob broke into a grin.

Nate smiled back and peeled off two more bills. “This should cover the chickens,” he said, “with change left over to buy some coffee and your own television set.”

T
he guide, Randall “Call Me Duke” Conner, pushed them off from the sandy launch below the bridge into the river and within seconds the muscular dark flow of the current gripped the flat-bottomed McKenzie boat and spun it like a cigarette butt in a flushed toilet. The morning was cool but sunny and there was enough of a breeze to rattle the dry fall leaves in the cottonwoods that reached out over the water like skeletal hands. There were three men in the boat. Jack, who'd never been in a drift boat before, cried out: “Is this safe, Duke?”

“Ha!” Duke snorted. “Of course. Just let me get at the oars and get us turned around. Everything will be just fine. It's a good day on the river. Every day is a good day on the river.”

Duke stepped around Jack, who had the front fishing seat in
the bow. The boat bucked with his weight. Jack reached out and grasped the casting leg brace in front of his seat and held on and slightly closed his eyes until Duke got settled in the middle of the boat and it stopped rocking. The guide grasped the oars and with two quick and powerful strokes—forward on the left oar, backward on the right—stopped the boat from spinning and righted it within the flow.

Duke said, “See, we're perfectly fine now. You can relax. It's Jack, isn't it?”

“Yes, it's Jack.”

Duke nodded, then spoke in a pleasant, soft voice. What he said was well rehearsed. “This is a McKenzie-style drift boat, Jack, the finest of its kind. It was designed for western rivers like this. Flat-bottomed, flared sides, a narrow pointed stern, and extreme rocker in the bow and stern to allow the boat to spin around on its center like a pivot. It's not sluggish like a raft or a damned tank like a jon boat. We point the bow toward one of the banks downriver and keep the stern upriver and we use the power of the river to move us along. That's why it's called a drift boat! I use the oars to keep us in the right place for fishing. Hell, I can shoot this boat from side to side across the river like a skeeter bug to get you fishermen in the best possible position for catching fish, Jack. That's why we float at a forty-five-degree angle to the current, so both of you will have clear fishing lanes and you won't have to cast over each other. It's stable as hell, so don't be afraid to stand up in that brace and cast. Just make sure you keep balanced, Jack. And try not to hook me in the ear on your back cast!”

Duke had a deep laugh that Jack would describe as infectious if he were in the right mood.

Jack found out his fishing seat would turn on its pedestal. He released the leg brace and cautiously spun the seat around so he could watch Duke work the oars. The guide was a magician, an expert, and he could move the boat with a flick of either oar. Duke was tall, with powerful shoulders from rowing, no doubt. He had a big sweeping mustache and a dark tan. He wore a fishing shirt, shorts, and river sandals. His eyes were hidden by dark sunglasses fitted with a strap so he could hang them from his neck. Forceps were clipped to a breast pocket as were clippers strung from a retractable zinger. He had a big wolfish smile full of perfect white teeth. Jack thought,
He's a man's man. One of those men, like skiing instructors or firemen, who just seem to have everything they ever wanted in life.

Jack watched as Duke turned around and looked over his shoulder at the other fisherman, Jack's host, in the seat in the bow of the boat.

Duke looked over his shoulder. “And you're Tim, right?”

“Yes,” Tim said wearily.

Jack turned in his chair. Tim looked small and slight and scrunched up in comparison with Duke. Jack thought Tim looked like a wet mouse, even though he was dry. Maybe it was the way Tim sat, all pulled into himself, hunched over in his seat, his chin down against his chest. He wore an oversized rain jacket, waders, and a ridiculous hat with hidden earflaps tucked up under the band. Jack shot a look toward the northern horizon to see if there were thunderheads rolling. Nope.

Duke said, “So it's Jack and Tim. You guys seem like a couple of hale fellows well met. Did you say you've fished this river before?”

Jack said he was new to drift boat fishing, but he was willing to learn the ropes. Jack confessed, “I've never fished with a guide before. This is all a new experience. But when Tim asked me to come along, I jumped all over the opportunity. So just tell me what to do, I don't mind.”

“That's a good way to be, Jack. We'll have a good time. What about you, Tim?”

Tim didn't answer. He stared at the water on the side of the boat as if the foam and bubbles were the most fascinating thing he'd ever seen. The only sounds were the metal-on-metal squeak of the oars in the oarlocks and the rapid
lap-lap-lap
of the water on the side of the fiberglass hull.

Again, Duke said, “Tim, what about you?”

Finally, Tim looked up. There was something mean in his eyes and his lips were pulled against his teeth so hard they looked translucent.

“Duke, why do you say our names every time you ask a question, Duke? Is that so you'll remember our names,
Duke
? Is that one of your guide tricks,
Duke
?”

Then he added, in an icy tone Jack had never heard Tim use before: “Your name is Randall, but you go by Duke. I think I'll call you Randall, Randall.”

Duke flashed an uncomfortable smile and looked up at Jack instead of over his shoulder at Tim. As if trying to get Jack to acknowledge Tim was out of line. The silence between them
grew uncomfortable until Duke finally shrugged it off and filled it.

“Someone wake up on the wrong side of the bunk this morning? Well, never mind that, Tim. Everything will change, Tim. Every day is a good day on the river. We just haven't caught any fish yet because we haven't been fishing. So let's just get you fellows rigged up. I'll pull over here into this little back eddy and drop the anchor and get you rigged up. Everything will be fine once you hook up with one of these monsters.”

Tim rolled his eyes and said,
“What crap. Jesus Christ.”

Jack had never heard Tim talk with such sarcasm before, and he was a little shocked. He tried to cover for his host. Jack said, “Tim's been all over the West on all the famous rivers, right, Tim? The Bighorn, the Big Hole, the Wind, the Madison, the North Fork, and of course here on the North Platte. He always tells me about his trips. So when he invited me on this one, man, I jumped at the chance.”

Duke said, “So you've gotten around, eh, Tim?”

“I'm not the only one, Randall.”

Jack shook his head. Tim seemed so out of character, so bitter. He thought,
Something is going on here
. He wondered if rich men treated guides this way. If so, he didn't think he liked it.

•   •   •

J
ACK HEARD A HEAVY
SPLASH
and he turned around in his seat again. He'd seen the anchor hanging from an arm off the back of the boat and now it was gone. The anchor was ten scarred
pounds of pyramid-shaped lead. It was triggered to drop by a foot release under Duke's rowing bench. Jack could feel the boat slow and then stop when the anchor bit into the riverbed and the boat swung around into the current.

Duke spoke to Jack as if he hadn't heard Tim's earlier statement.

“We'll get you started with nymphs and an indicator. When we get rigged up, throw it out there and keep an eye on the indicator, Jack. If you see it tick or bounce, you raise the rod tip fast. Sometimes these fish barely lip the nymph. So if you see that indicator do anything at all, set the hook.”

Jack nodded. “Okay.”

“It's easy to get mesmerized by the indicator in the water, so don't worry about that. We only have one place on the river where it gets a little hairy, and that's the place downriver called the Chutes. You've probably heard of it.”

“I have. Didn't somebody die there last year?”

“About one a year, actually,” Duke said, stripping lengths of tippet from a spool to build the nymph rig and tying knots with the deft movements of a surgeon. “There are big rocks on both sides and some rapids down the middle. But as long as you hit the middle squared up, there's no problem. I've done it a hundred times and never flipped a boat. That's the only place you'll need to reel in for a few minutes and you may get a little splash of water on you since you're in front. Otherwise, don't worry about a thing. Tim, do you want me to tie on a couple of nymphs for you?”

“I'll do it myself.”

“Suit yourself, Tim.”

“I will,
Randall
.”

•   •   •

J
ACK REALLY DIDN'T KNOW
Tim well enough to claim they were friends. So he had been surprised when Tim called him at his construction company the week before and offered to host him on a guided fishing trip on the North Platte River. Jack had said yes before checking his calendar or with his wife, Janey, even with the odd provision Tim had requested.

Later, Jack had told Janey about the invitation and the terms of the provision. She was making dinner at the stove—spaghetti and meat sauce—and she shook her head and made a puzzled face.

She said, “He wants you to make the booking? I didn't think you knew him all that well.”

“I don't. But yes, he asked me to use my credit card for the deposit, but said he'd pay me back for everything afterward, including the flies we use and the tip. He wanted to make sure we were scheduled to go on the river with the owner of the guide service—somebody named Duke—and no one else. He said it was important to go with the owner because we'd catch the most fish that way. Who was I to argue? Tim wants the best, I guess.”

“But why you?”

Jack shrugged. “I guess he remembers I was the only one who never gave him any shit in high school when we were growing
up. Everybody else did because he was such a weird dude. And he was. You've seen that picture of him in the yearbook. But hell, I guess I always sort of felt sorry for him. For some reason, I liked him and I kind of sympathized with the little creep. His parents were real no-hopers, and for a while the whole family lived in their car. That car was just filled with junk—sleeping bags and crap. They'd drop him off for school on the street we lived on so nobody would know, but I saw him get out once. He was real embarrassed, but I didn't tell anyone I saw him. I guess he appreciated that. He told me once he never wanted to live in a car again. A high school kid telling me that, I don't know. I was sort of touched. Man, I sound lame.”

She laughed and said, “You do, honey, but that will be our little secret. Then he invented that thing—what was it?”

“You're asking me? Hell, I'm not sure. Somebody explained it to me once but it didn't take. Something about a circuit for a wireless router or something. Whatever it was, it made him millions.”

She pursed her lips and said, “And he moved back home to Wyoming. I always thought that was strange.”

“Yeah, me too. He coulda lived anywhere.”

“Jack,” she asked, while making a sly face at him, “if you made tens of millions, would you move?”

Jack snorted and rolled his eyes. “We won't have to worry about finding out. I'll never have to make that decision, so you better keep your job.”

“Bummer,” she said, and changed the subject. “And he got married to that bombshell. What is her name?”

He could see her in his mind's eye: tall, black hair, green eyes, great figure. A bit much, but that was the point, he thought. But her name? “I can't remember,” he said.

She said, “I saw them together once. Beauty and the Geek, that's for sure.”

“Maybe he wanted to prove something to all the jocks and high school big shots who used to pants him and hang him upside down from a tree, like,
Look at me, losers!
”

“
But he asked
you
to go fishing with him.”

“Yeah, and I want to go.”

“Maybe he thinks you're his best friend. That's kind of sweet and pathetic at the same time.”

“Oh, bullshit,”
Jack said, looking away. “I just want to catch big trout with a five-hundred-dollar-a-day guide. That's the big time, baby. Every man wants to fish with flies and catch a big trout. Here's my chance.”

•   •   •

J
ACK CAUGHT TWO LARGE TROUT
before noon with the nymphs and missed at least five more. The fish he boated and Duke netted were a rainbow and a brown. The trout were big, thick, and sleek and reminded him of wet quadriceps muscles that happened to have a head, fins, and a tail. Both were over twenty-two inches. When the fish took the nymphs, it was as if an electric current shot up through the line to his rod, as if they'd like to pull him out of the boat and into the water. He'd whooped and Duke dropped the anchor with a splash and
reached for his big net. Jack couldn't remember when he had had so much fun.

Tim caught ten, but netted them himself without a word, and Duke simply shrugged and said, “Let me know if you need any help.”

“I don't. I do things for myself
.
”

•   •   •

T
HE RHYTHM OF THE CURRENT
lulled Jack. He stared at the indicator until the image of it burned into his mind, and its bobbing mesmerized him. At one point he looked up and thought the boat and indicator were stationary in the river, but the banks were rolling by, and not the other way around. There were bald eagles in some of the trees—Duke pointed them out in a way that suggested he did the same thing every day—and they floated by mule deer drinking in the water and a family of river otters slip-sliding over one another on some rocks.

Duke kept up a steady patter.

“River right there's a nice hole.”

“Nice cast there, Jack.”