Gordo Romanowski’s face twitched again.
“If I told you what happened,” Nate said, “it would be like putting a death sentence on you, like the one that’s on me. So I’m not saying another word.
“What you need to know, Dad, is I haven’t been in contact because I wanted to protect you and your new family. I don’t care if you believe me right now, but I think if you dig deep, you will.”
Nate took his cup to the sink, returned and gripped his father on the shoulder, and said, “Take care of Dalisay and those girls. Tell them not to be too ashamed of their older half brother. I’m out of here.”
As he opened the front door, Gordo asked softly, “Where are you going?”
Nate turned. “That’s what they want to know, isn’t it? Tell them I wouldn’t tell you. Which I won’t.”
Gordo blinked slowly. Nate could only imagine the torture he was in.
“Give me ten minutes to get back to the highway,” Nate said. “Then do what you need to do to get them back.”
Nate roared away from the house, eyes wide open, weapon on his lap. But when he cleared the tunnel of trees, he didn’t turn left toward town and the highway. If they were on their way, they’d see his Jeep.
Instead, he cranked the wheel to the right and floored it. The movement made his wounded left shoulder pulse with pain. He headed straight west toward the wall of mountains.
Nevertheless, he had no doubt that whoever was holding Dalisay and the girls would be right behind him.
14
As Nate climbed the mountain toward Pikes Peak and the road began to curve upward and he approached a devilish series of switchbacks, he shot glances into his rear and side mirrors. He eased slightly on the gas as if riding a motorcycle when he leaned into the steep turns, so he could hang his head out the window to survey the bends of the two-lane far below and behind him. He’d passed a couple of small rental cars — tourists, with children in the backseats, wide-eyed mothers in the front, and fathers with death grips on the steering wheel — and grumbled “Flatlanders” when he blasted around them. The short wheelbase and all-terrain tires of the Jeep were made for this kind of driving: tight, fast, and full of sprints and sharp turns.
He didn’t know the area or the road system well, but he knew the general direction he wanted to go: over the mountains and on to Rexburg, Idaho, seven hundred miles to the northwest. So like he’d done so many times in the wilds of Wyoming and Montana, he navigated not by GPS or maps but by studying the terrain and geography in the direction where he wanted to go and trusting there would be two-tracks, old logging or ranch roads, or even dry streambeds he could take to get him there. One thing he was sure of was that he needed to get off the state highway as soon as possible. If operators of The Five were coming after him, they’d by now ruled out his presence on the main road to town and to the interstate, which meant he could have only gone the opposite way from Gordon’s home. Given that, it would be a matter of time and determination to pin him down. The Five was known for its determination.
The route he’d taken narrowed and went straight up the mountain. In a few miles, the pavement would end, and from there on the road climbed an additional nineteen harrowing miles to the top of 14,100-foot Pikes Peak. He’d been up there once. On top, there was a developed parking area, views of blue waves of mountains to the west and the foothills and plains of Colorado all the way to the Kansas border. But it wasn’t a place to make a stand: too open, too many civilians, and only one escape route, which was back down the road he was on.
Nate was disconcerted after seeing his father. The old man had been rattled and scared. He wasn’t the man Nate remembered, and it made him angry. The Gordon Romanowski he’d grown up with had been fearless and tough. He was the guy you wanted near you in a fight, a man so hard and set in his ways, so without nuance, that despite his intractability, there was comfort in his pure stubborn black-and-white worldview. Whoever had gotten to this tough old man in such a personal way … well, something bad should happen to them, Nate concluded.
Nate assumed Gordon had made the call he had to make and the operations team was on its way. Nate wondered about the numbers and the makeup of Nemecek’s force. He doubted locals had been recruited in Colorado and had to assume the team had come with Nemecek. Trusting locals to hold a family hostage and respond with lethality when called upon was too much of a stretch. But how many operators would agree to deploy domestically, and what had Nemecek told them about their mission? Surely, Nemecek had lied, and that likelihood put Nate in a quiet rage. Operators of The Five that Nate had known and fought beside were good men: loyal, patriotic, and tough as nails. They wouldn’t simply do the bidding of a superior officer without being convinced of the righteousness and morality of the mission. These men, like Nate himself back then, were well trained and efficient but not automatons. They’d do anything asked of them if they thought it would save lives and protect their country. Kidnapping Gordon’s family and setting a trap for Nate would happen only if Nemecek had fed them lies, and he hated his old superior for taking such craven advantage of good men.
Good men, Nate thought, who would kill him in an instant, because that’s why The Five existed. In other circumstances, these were the kind of men he’d fight beside and lay down his life for. But because of Nemecek and Nate’s secret history, and Nemecek’s willingness to lie to subordinates, some warriors would likely die. Nate hoped he wouldn’t be among the first. Not until he did everything he could to cut the depraved head off the snake.
He was a little surprised surveillance hadn’t been set up near his father’s home. It heartened him that whoever was in charge of this phase of the operation — surely not Nemecek himself — had allowed such a lapse. If they’d been stationed in the trees when Nate had arrived, the game would be over by now. But sloppiness or some kind of anomaly had prevented that. And he knew it wasn’t unusual. Things just happened — machinery broke down, people got sick or injured, gaps appeared in surveillance because someone read their watch wrong or misheard the schedule — no matter how much time had been spent on the plan. He’d been involved in so many intricate operations, he knew that when things got hot, plans evaporated and instincts and training took over. He could only hope whoever might be after him hadn’t been in the same kind of crazed and chaotic balls-to-the-wall combat he’d encountered. If not, he might have an edge on them.
Nate took a sharp turn to the right onto another steep switchback. Dark pine trees climbed up the right-hand slope of the road, but to the left there was open air all the way down to Colorado Springs, which glittered in the distance in the mid-morning sun. It was the kind of vast, achingly clear view rarely seen from anywhere except an airliner as it broke from the clouds. He swallowed hard several times to clear his ears of building pressure from the altitude of the climb. Judging by the thinness of the air and the looming snow-covered monolith of the peak to his south, he guessed he’d broken ten thousand feet.
That was another advantage, he thought. If his pursuers weren’t acclimated to the altitude, they’d find their mental and physical reactions slowed down. Altitude sickness produced foggy thinking and rapid exhaustion.
Around the corner was a small gravel turnout on the other side of the road, with barely enough space for a single vehicle. The turnout existed so descending drivers could pull over and let their brakes cool before making the rest of the drive. He whipped the Jeep across the center line of the road and into the turnout. He parked parallel to the guardrail and stomped on his emergency brake and kept his engine running.