He remained quiet.
She said, “I’ve heard about the falcons and a little about what you were involved in years ago. Gabriel talked about that big gun you carry. He said you’d just show up from time to time without any notice. He also said if it came to a fight, he’d want you in his corner more than anyone else he knew. That’s saying something, you know.”
Nate had to look away because it seemed her eyes were reaching inside him.
“Diane Shober told me how you brought her here. She said you were good to her, but she couldn’t figure you out. She said she got the impression you were carrying a very heavy weight around with you, but you wouldn’t talk about it. I liked her, although she was very intense. We got along, and it was nice to have another woman in the place. I never had a sister, and she was like a sister to me. To think that they would hurt her, too … it makes me sick.”
Nate nodded.
“Oscar is a wonderful, gentle soul,” she said, her eyes shifting toward the computer room. “He really does want to help people, and he’s a true believer. I can’t really say I buy everything he says, but I know in my heart he’s sincere and kind. He almost makes me believe in God, to be around a man like that. If a man as tough and practical as Oscar becomes an evangelical, I almost have to concede that there is something out there bigger than what we see, you know? And after what’s happened to us here, I have no doubt there is true evil in the world. So doesn’t it make sense there would be true good? If nothing else, you need to do what you can to protect him. You need to eliminate the people depraved enough to try and hurt him.”
Before Nate could reply, she said, “I’m going to go pack. You can take us both out of here. Maybe someday Oscar can come back when it’s safe.”
With that, she reached out and patted the back of Nate’s hand and left the table to go upstairs and pack.
Nate took a chair next to Kennedy and opened a laptop.
“Do you mind?” Nate asked, gesturing to the computer.
“Feel free.”
“Is it a secure IP address?”
Kennedy said, “As secure as I can make it. But that’s no guarantee of anything with the capability they have.”
“Got it,” Nate said while the laptop booted up. If Nemecek had gotten to Gordon in Colorado and sent a team to the compound in Idaho, there was only one other target close to Nate: Joe Pickett. And his family. He prayed they weren’t under surveillance, or worse.
He called up the old falconry site and started a new thread:
TRAINING AND FLYING MY NEW KESTREL
<0 COMMENTS>
Under it, he wrote:
TRAINING MY NEW FALCON IS TURNING OUT TO BE A VERY BAD EXPERIENCE. NOTHING I TRY WILL WORK, AND I’M GETTING FRUSTRATED AND CONCERNED. IT’S A DISASTER ON EVERY FRONT. I JUST WANT TO SAY TO THAT BIRD, “FLY AWAY NOW AND DON’T LOOK BACK.”
“Thank you,” Nate said to Kennedy, closing the laptop.
“I’m finding some stuff,” his friend said. “I’ll be back with you in a minute.”
When Oscar Kennedy rolled back into the kitchen with a sheaf of printouts, he eyed Nate with suspicion.
“I hope Haley didn’t unload on you,” he said.
“She didn’t.”
“She can come on pretty strong.”
“I like that in her,” Nate said.
“Uh-oh, you’re smitten,” Kennedy said simply, shaking his head.
“She agrees with me that we should all leave now.”
“I’m not surprised,” Kennedy said. “But I’m not going anywhere. You can take her, though. Get her on a plane somewhere so she can fly back to her family.”
“Are you sure you won’t go?”
“I’m sure, and that’s that,” Kennedy said.
He handed the printouts to Nate. “I was able to locate most of the blog posts. But a few have been scrubbed since the last time I saw them.”
Nate took the stack and put it aside on the table for later. Upstairs, he could hear Haley shuffling around in her room, no doubt throwing clothing into a suitcase.
“Unburden yourself,” Kennedy said.
“We don’t have much time,” Nate said, gesturing toward the upstairs room.
“We have enough.”
Nate sat back, putting himself back in that place again. Recalling the heat and hot wind and dust, the smells of desert and cooking food. The elaborate tents and fifty four-by-four vehicles flown in just for the occasion. The flowing robes of the guests. And the dozens of falcons, hooded and still, roosting on their poles.
“Have you ever heard of the houbara bustard?” Nate asked Kennedy.
“No.”
It took Nate ten minutes to tell the story. As he did, Kennedy’s reaction changed from intense interest to seething outrage. Red bloomed on his cheeks, and beads of perspiration appeared across his forehead.
“Holy Mother of God,” Kennedy said, when Nate was done. “It’s worse than I imagined.”
“That’s who I’m dealing with,” Nate said. “And what I’ve been dealing with for all these years. I hate that all of you’ve been dragged into it.”
“Nate,” Kennedy asked, his tone softening. “How have you kept this to yourself?”
“No choice, because I’m responsible for what happened, too. And the result.”
Nate heard Haley descending the stairs heavily, likely with her suitcase. He rose to go help her, but Kennedy pushed his chair back and blocked his path.
“You can’t blame yourself, Nate.”
“I do,” he said, attempting to step around the chair. Kennedy was quick and rotated the wheels sharply and pushed back into the doorway. Mid-morning sun lit up his face from the window above the sink.
“Oscar, let me by.”
“We need to talk about this. No one can shoulder the burden of what you’ve just confessed.”
“I’m just going to give her a hand with her suitcase.”
“We need to talk—”
Oscar Kennedy didn’t finish his sentence because his head snapped back violently and his hands fell limply to his sides and there was a simultaneous crack-pock sound inside the kitchen. Blood and matter flecked the wall behind Kennedy from floor to ceiling, and Kennedy slumped in his chair.
Nate instinctively dropped into a squat and fought an urge to cover his head as he did so. He wheeled and saw the neat dime-sized hole in the glass of the window above the sink, then dived toward the chair to push his friend out of the view of the window.
From the stairwell, Haley called out, “Hey? What was that?”
Nate shouted, “Sniper! Get down now!”
On his hands and knees, he scrambled into the computer room, pushing Kennedy’s chair in front of him. Nate hoped to God the injury to his friend wasn’t as bad as he thought it might be.
But it was. When Nate rose to look he saw how much damage a .50 caliber armor-piercing sniper round could do to a man. Then he looked up and saw Haley in the stairwell, almost to the bottom of the threshold, clutching the handle of her suitcase with both hands. When Haley saw Kennedy’s splayed-out body in the chair, she dropped the suitcase and screamed, covering her face. The suitcase tumbled down the last four steps.
“I said, Get down!”
Still shrieking, she sat straight back on the stairs, her face still hidden by her hands.
Nate retrieved his rifle as he ran through the mudroom to the back door and then pressed the lock-release mechanism. Once he heard the click and the door was free, he kicked it open rather than fly through it into the grass.