Nate agreed to nothing.
“But we’ve gotten the word to back off. All they care about at the Department of Justice right now is this deal,” Dudley said, again tapping the file. “I don’t know if you realize how flipping lucky you are.”
“I’m Mr. Luck,” Nate said sourly. He’d been held in the basement of the Federal Building in detention for four months. He’d not flown his falcons, or breathed mountain air, or eaten his normal diet of lean game meat he killed himself. Although he’d done thousands of push-ups, pull-ups, squats, and other exercises in his cell, and he was in many respects in the best physical shape since he’d been in Special Operations, mentally he felt bloated, flabby, dull, and completely off his game. His brain was foggy, and he had trouble concentrating. Nate had come to understand the vacant-eyed tigers he’d seen pacing rhythmically back and forth in the zoo because he felt like one of them.
“Rulon didn’t help, either,” Dudley scoffed, referring to the governor of Wyoming, who had two and a half years left in his second and final term of office. “I don’t know what you ever did for him, or if you have illicit photos of him or what, but he went to bat for you. He somehow convinced my superiors you’d be of better service to us out there than in here. I think he’s full of shit, but he must have been pretty convincing.”
Nate raised his eyebrows in surprise. He wasn’t aware that Rulon had been involved in the negotiations, but he was grateful for it.
“We’ve got your gun,” Dudley said. “And you’re not getting it back.”
“I’ve got a right to defend myself,” Nate said.
“When you sign these papers, you sign away your rights. You have no rights beyond that, unless I say so.”
“I want my weapon back.”
Nate had surrendered his .50-caliber five-shot Freedom Arms .500 Wyoming Express revolver when he gave himself up. It was a handgun that could take out a moose a mile away or kill a car. The gun was a part of him and he knew how to use it.
Dudley placed his hand on the file and said, “If you’re stupid enough to arm yourself again, you’ll be right back here, and I’ll be happy to expedite the paperwork.”
Nate looked away.
“I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that even though I lost the argument against releasing you, the DOJ agreed to retain me as your case manager, since we have such a special relationship and all.”
He said, “You know, before I took this job out here, I was warned about people like you. I was told there were still a number of lone-wolf survivalist types who lived out here in places like Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. I thought we’d stomped them out years ago, but here we are. There still may be a few of you left, but as of today the number is one less, which makes me feel very . . . patriotic.”
Dudley grinned at that.
—
“THE NEGOTIATIONS WERE LIKE five monkeys fucking a football,” Dudley complained. “You’ve got career federal prosecutors, a military JAG because of your Special Forces background, DOJ political lackeys, and the governor’s office all fighting about what to do with you. My solution was real simple: put you on trial and send you to the supermax in Florence, Colorado.”
Dudley looked up to see if he could get a reaction out of Nate. He couldn’t.
“But our biggest problem, as you know, was placing you at the scene of your most heinous crimes, because you were literally off the grid. No credit card receipts, no hotel registries, no cell phone records, no loans, no CC videotape, no arrests, no nothing. No direct or circumstantial evidence. Don’t get me wrong—I’m convinced that with enough time and manpower we’d be able to nail you. We can nail anyone if we set our mind to it. Anyone.”
Nate tried not to sigh. He’d heard the threat from Dudley a half-dozen times. He knew better than to rise to the bait.
What he wanted to say was simple: I’ve never killed anyone who didn’t need killing.
—
THE FACT WAS, Nate knew, the feds couldn’t convict him on the murder, conspiracy, kidnapping, or other charges they’d originally filed against him. As Dudley had admitted, the evidence wasn’t there.
But what they could do was put him away for not filing tax returns for the last twelve years. While the crime didn’t even remotely rise to the level of the original charges, a conviction on tax evasion could put him into federal prison for years. It was the “Al Capone method” of going after a target indirectly, and it could be devastatingly effective if the prosecutors were motivated to pursue it.
The original charges had been quietly dropped and replaced with new charges while the negotiations were under way. However it went, he knew, they had him.
—
“SO LET ME BE the first to welcome you back to the modern world,” Dudley said, showing his teeth. “Consider your wings clipped. You can’t make a move without me knowing about it. If you decide to try and go underground again, I’ll be on you with a team within minutes and we’ll drag your ass back here, unless, you know, something bad happens during the arrest that results in your demise.
“I’ll know where you drive, what you eat, where you sleep, and how long you sit on the toilet. You’ll be just another American citizen. We’ll know everything about you and we can take you down anytime we want. And believe me, I’ll be paying attention to those things because I’m . . . motivated. Motivated to putting you away. Do you understand that?”
Nate grunted again.
“Did you read the agreement?” Dudley asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you ready to sign it? Because if you aren’t, I’ll happily call the guard and send you back to your home away from home in the basement. Even the governor would have to understand that we couldn’t release you if you refused to play ball.”
“I need a pen,” Nate said.
“That’s my boy.”
Then, turning toward the two-way mirror, Dudley said, “Bring in the devices.”
—
A HIGH-TECH TRACKING BRACELET was secured to Nate’s left wrist and another was fastened to his ankle by two young DOJ technical support staffers. Nate barely listened to what they were telling him about the devices, but he got the gist. Neither of the techs would meet his eye as they worked.
The monitors were waterproof, shockproof, and permanent, and could only be removed by a DOJ specialist. The devices looped around his limbs and were locked in place by a coded infrared beam. They were thin and unobtrusive and reminded him of plastic-coated steel cables.
If he tried to cut them off or remove them, a homing signal would alert the feds—meaning Dudley as well as full-time surveillance staff stationed in Virginia—and “the wrath of God will descend upon you,” Dudley said. The devices would provide Nate’s precise GPS coordinates to the meter at all times and could be tracked by satellites and, if necessary, drones.
Even local private closed-circuit cameras could be hacked and overridden to provide video evidence of his whereabouts if they wanted to watch him. It was experimental technology, Dudley said with pride, but it had worked in beta experiments thus far.
One of the techs placed a cell phone and charger on the table in front of Nate.
Dudley said, “That’s your new BlackBerry. Don’t lose it, don’t use it for anything other than to check in every day, and don’t ever turn it off. There’s a single number stored inside that goes direct to an operations center in Langley, Virginia. When we say check in every day, we mean check in every day. Let us know what you’re doing, where you’re going, and who you’re with. You won’t be talking to me directly, but I’ll get a daily update from your contact. If you don’t call in, we’ll come looking for you. Got that?”