Authors: Kenneth G. Bennett
Beck ordered his pilot, Jeff Donaldson, to make two slow passes along the cliff face.
South to north they drifted first. Then back the other way. Beck studied the land above and below the cliffs.
There were tourists at the Jump, all below the escarpment.
Beck could see a dirt parking area with perhaps fifteen cars, a large covered gazebo, cinder-block restrooms, interpretive kiosks. The Buffalo Jump was not a major tourist attraction. Accessible from I-90 via twelve miles of dusty dirt road, only a tiny fraction of the four million visitors who trekked annually to Yellowstone stopped here. But it was a steady trickle nonetheless. History buffs. Geology enthusiasts. New Age believers hoping to tap into some mystical Native American vibe.
Some people waved at the helicopters. Snapped pictures. Beck paid not the slightest attention.
He stared at the precipice. At the upper plain. At a school-bus-sized boulder in the middle of the broad alley above the Jump, a hundred or so feet from the cliff edge. The flattopped stone stood out, big and bold. An island in a sea of grass.
Beck tried to imagine herds of terrified, stampeding buffalo roaring down the prairie, splintering into two streams at the boulder, and raining over the precipice—waterfalls of two-thousand-pound bison crashing to their deaths. And then he tried to imagine the gate. The terrestrial portal hinted at in Stanton’s thought captures.
The Buffalo Jump in the blazing late afternoon sunshine of July 5 provided no hint of the tumult foretold on Ring’s monitors.
Farther away, though, clouds were building on the hundred-mile long Gallatin Range, hugging the shoulders of the mountains, casting the snow-covered peaks into shadow, defying the summer sun. Beck stared. Ring did also. They hadn’t noticed the clouds there before.
Beck ordered the helicopters to land on a broad, flat sagebrush-covered bench a half mile into the plain above the cliffs.
Donaldson’s voice crackled over the radio. “State park. We’re not supposed to land here without a permit. Could be looking at a fine.”
“I’ll take the risk,” Beck replied. “Set ’em down.”
The helicopters settled onto the bench like giant dragonflies, coming to rest a hundred feet apart. The pilots powered down the engines, and the roar of the machines died away. The rotors continued spinning, silently. Finally stopped. The dust settled, and everybody got out.
The bench made for an ideal observation platform—a flat pedestal of land with views east and west of the wide alley leading to the Jump.
There were no tourists here. No road. There
was
a footpath—a trail leading up from the parking area, deep into the six-thousand-acre park, but no one was on it. No one, it seemed, wanted to make the climb in the blazing afternoon sun.
“Find a place to sit,” Dodd told Joe and Ella.
The couple held hands as they stepped slowly away from the helicopter. The sun felt good on Joe’s skin, and he lifted his face to the sky. Reveled in the warmth. In the fresh air and fragrant, rain-washed smell of the prairie.
Standing there, basking in the light, Joe felt better than he had in days. He was weak and washed-out, yes; bruised and sore from the surgery and from Beck’s backhand blow in the War Room, but otherwise okay. For a moment he imagined that if Beck would simply let them go free, he’d recover completely. Regain his health.
The fantasy played in his mind. He and Ella would hike down to the visitor parking area. Hitch a ride to Bozeman. Find a place to stay. To sleep and rest. Soon, he’d be as good as new. The sickly prisoner-of-war visage he’d seen in the mirror would fade. The gray in his hair would revert to black. His vision—cloudy now for days—would return to twenty-twenty.
Then he remembered the drug Heintzel had given him, and his mood sank like a stone. The drug was propping him up. Enlivening his mind and body like a river of caffeine. But the buzz—the illusion of vitality—wouldn’t last. His prognosis hadn’t changed. The tremor in his hands hadn’t disappeared. His downward trajectory had not been altered.
And of course, Beck wasn’t about to let them go free. Joe’s thoughts—the pictures flowing through his subconscious—were the reason they’d come to the Buffalo Jump in the first place.
Joe looked out at the prairie and wondered where the pictures were coming from.
Mia’s “counterpart,”
Ring had said.
The leader of the terrestrial Exodus.
Where is she?
What sort of creature is she?
When will the gate form?
And where are all the animals?
he wondered,
if another Exodus is about to happen.
The questions were endless, the answers, not forthcoming.
He struggled with it, then gave up and focused instead on the luxurious warmth caressing his skin. He squeezed Ella’s hand, led her to a patch of grass amid the sagebrush, and together they sat down.
Ten minutes after the cacophony of the helicopters had faded, the soundscape returned to normal. Birds sang. Insects chirped. Prairie grass rustled in the warm afternoon breeze.
Beck’s men worked quietly. Efficiently. Pulling bags of gear from cargo holds and unpacking just the right equipment in just the right order.
On an open, level patch of ground, they set up folding tables and a chair for Ring and his computer equipment. Pitched a ten-by-ten open-sided tent over everything and anchored the legs of the structure with rocks and sandbags.
Another table was set with boxes of food: Energy bars and chips. Bagels, apples, blocks of cheese. Coolers full of drinks were positioned close by.
There were weapons, also. Crates of ammunition and hand grenades. Heavy canvas bags full of rifles and machine guns. Joe caught a whiff of gun oil as Beck’s men unzipped the bags on a wide, flat rock nearby. The weapons were quickly checked, then covered with a tarp.
Jeff Donaldson and the other helicopter pilot, Aaron Wicks, grabbed snacks and retreated to the Bell 206L4. Climbed into the cockpit and sat in the seats like they didn’t know what else to do.
Ring and Beck wandered downslope, toward the mile-wide grass-filled lane leading to the cliffs, and stood taking it all in. Ring lifted an enormous pair of binoculars toward the Gallatin Range. The clouds massing there were still a far-off threat—a vague rumor of events that might or might not unfold.
“We wasting our time here?” Beck asked.
Ring shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t think so.”
“So where are the animals? Where’s the migration? Shouldn’t we be seeing something?”
Aside from a pair of hawks riding the thermals above the cliffs, there was no wildlife visible anywhere.
Someone flipped on a radio in Ring’s newly assembled workstation, and the top-of-the hour news played. The entire report was about the marine Exodus. And the voices of the scientists, pundits, and politicians featured in the newscast reflected anxiety. Fear—bordering on panic. The world had changed suddenly, jarringly, and the experts didn’t have a clue what was going on.
Ring said, “Stanton’s thought captures don’t reveal a specific timetable. We don’t know when this phase of the Exodus will start. Though, if I had to guess, I’d say that it will happen soon. Very soon.”
Beck said nothing. The throbbing pain in his head—around his eyes—had returned, and he felt suddenly agitated. Gazing once more at the plain, his agitation changed to anger. Anger founded in deep and abiding terror. The thing living in his head might have retreated to the deepest recesses of his mind, but it had not departed. Unless he could find a way to expel the thing once and for all, it would simply wait for him to weaken, then it would lurch forward and break him like a twig.
Kneeling near the weapons, Dodd watched Ella inspect Joe’s injuries. Watched her caress Joe’s face and check his incision. Watched her touch Joe’s bleeding lips gently with one finger and ask if he was thirsty.
Dodd grabbed a plastic water bottle from the cooler and tossed it at Joe, hard and fast.
Joe wasn’t looking, and the water bottle hit him squarely in the side of the head. Right on the incision site. Joe grunted with the pain, slumped back, and put his hand to his head.
Ella spun on Dodd, murder in her eyes. “Do you mind, asshole? Why did you do that? Can’t you see he’s hurt?”
Dodd and Kehler laughed. Wilden, standing nearby, stayed quiet.
Dodd plucked another water bottle from the cooler and brought it to Ella. Kneeling, he presented it to her with mock concern.
“Your boy’s not doing too well. Maybe after he croaks, you and me can hook up. What do you say?” He grinned. “I think all the guys are looking forward to that, actually, but I’d like to be first.”
Joe lifted his head and glared at Dodd. “Touch her,” he said, “lay one finger on her, and I will kill you. I swear it.”
Dodd tugged on his baseball cap and considered the threat with feigned alarm before breaking into another grin. “Can you do that? As a priest, I mean? Doesn’t that violate some kind of vow or something?”
Ella, tears in her eyes now, said, “Just get away from us. Please. Leave us alone.”
Fresh blood was oozing through Joe’s bandages. Dodd stood, still smiling, and said to Ella, “Gimme a kiss and I’ll bring ya the first-aid kit. Whatdya say?”
“Get away from us,” Ella repeated.
Dodd laughed and sauntered off. Traded high-fives and more laughs with Kehler.
Ella turned at the sound of footsteps. It was Wilden. His face was serious. Impassive. No sign of malice in his eyes.
Ella looked from Wilden’s face to the first-aid kit in his hand and back. Then took the kit.
“Thank you,” she said.
Wilden nodded and walked off.
Dodd and Kehler watched him go, and Ella thought she saw resentment in their expressions. A little hostility. She found the looks encouraging. And she wondered, as she opened the kit and scrounged for alcohol swabs and fresh bandages, if Wilden was someone she could talk to. Reason with.
Maybe Beck’s guys weren’t uniformly sadistic. Maybe Wilden was different. Maybe if she could pull him aside she could get him to see things her way. Maybe—
“Guys,” said a voice, loud enough so that everyone turned. It was Donaldson calling from the open door of the Bell 206L4. “Look sharp. We got company.”
Following Donaldson’s gaze, they saw a lone hiker switchbacking down from the ridge overlooking the helicopters, winding his way through the scrub.
COLLINS FOUND GALLATIN VETERINARY SUPPLY
in a shabby industrial park on the edge of town. The one-story beige stucco building had a large gravel parking lot in front, a driveway on one side, and a chain-link fence topped with razor wire all around.
Collins could think of only one reason such a store would need razor wire: Drugs. Narcotics. He guessed they’d probably been broken into at some point and decided to put up a fence. At the moment, the wheeled gate at the edge of the lot was open, the lights inside the building on, and the glass-front door propped wide. There were no other cars in the lot.
Collins parked his rental truck a few paces from the door and studied the front of the building. No surveillance cameras. Not that he could see, anyway. Maybe the owners had decided the fence was enough. Figured they didn’t need cameras. Collins hoped that was the case.
He climbed out of the truck and walked inside.
The business was laid out like an auto supply store: Aisles full of products in the front half of the establishment. A long service counter in the middle. Floor-to-ceiling shelves in back. At the moment, there were two employees in public view: a pimply, greasy-haired twentysomething seated at a desk, working at a computer, and a dumpy, balding lab-coat-wearing salesclerk standing at the service counter.
Bouncy, insipid Muzak played on speakers mounted near the ceiling.
“Help you?” the dumpy clerk asked, as soon as Collins had crossed the threshold.
Collins reviewed the list Ring had given him, on his iPhone, as he walked. “Yeah,” he replied. “Understand you guys carry a five-by-eight steel cage made by LB Barn and Ranch.”
The pimply kid stopped typing to look at Collins as the clerk replied, a trace of superiority in his voice. “We’ve got the five-by-eight Exotic Animal Enclosure, if that’s what you mean. Don’t really call ’em cages anymore.”
Collins stopped at the counter, directly opposite the clerk. Stared at the pudgy man, whose name badge identified him as Harlan Beale.
“Exotic Animal Enclosure,” he said. “Good to know. So you have it in stock?”
Harlan glanced at the monitor over the cash drawer. Tapped some keys on the keyboard. “Yep. Got three in the yard. One assembled and ready to go.” He eyed Collins through worn black-framed glasses. “What ya need it for?”
Collins considered answering, “None of your business,” but decided to keep it cordial. He needed Harlan’s help.
“Predator issues on the ranch I’m working at,” he lied. “Up north.” He waved out the window in the direction of the Bridger Mountains.
“Oh?” said Harlan. “Which ranch is that?”
The pimply kid snickered under his breath, and Collins glanced at him, wondering what was funny. He turned back to Harlan. Smiled and kept his cool. “You know,” he said. “I’m new in town and actually just running errands for someone else who works at the ranch. So I don’t have a lot of details.”
The pimply kid snickered again, without looking up from his computer. Collins thought about jumping the counter and smashing his head in. It was tempting. Instead, he focused on Harlan. Kept his voice even. “So, if you could just help me out, with my list and all, I’ll get out of your hair.”
Harlan typed something on the keyboard, stared at the screen, and said, “The five-by-eight galvanized is seven hundred and ninety-nine dollars. Not including tax.”
“Great,” said Collins. “I’ll take it.”
Harlan raised an eyebrow. “Okay. Pull around back. I’ll meet ya.”
Collins did as Harlan instructed, and together they hefted the steel cage into the bed of the GMC. The cage was well made and heavy—six-gauge welded wire mesh all around—but manageable for two people. It fit perfectly in the back of the truck.