Agents in black tactical gear and helmets poured out of the helicopter before it settled on the grass on the skirt of the parking lot. They carried Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns and shotguns and jogged to where Joe and Nate stood.
For a moment, Joe thought the agents might start firing, and he threw his shotgun aside and raised his hands. Nate did the same with his revolver.
The lead agent paused and made a hand signal for the agents to swarm the inn around him. As the second helicopter landed, more black-clad agents ran across the parking lot into the inn. When they were dispersed, the lead agent raised his face shield. Coon.
Joe noticed that Coon glared at Nate with obvious contempt.
The conversation was heated and held mostly in shouts. Joe shouted that Critchfield, Smith, and Robert Whipple were dead, Latta and his daughter were inside, and as far as he knew the violence was over. The sheriff and judge were likely on the run. Then he gestured toward the missing wall of the processing facility.
“Jesus Christ,” Coon said. His face blanched white as he recognized the bodies. “We’ve broken this thing wide open. But Jesus, that’s disgusting.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Joe said.
“What about him?” Coon asked.
“He’s working with us,” Joe shouted to Coon. “He’s going to help you build the case, same as Latta. You’ll need them.”
Joe insisted Nate had inside information and had in fact saved his life by confronting Whipple and taking him out. Coon yelled back that Nate was as bad as Whip, and just as guilty. Nate didn’t say a word.
Finally, as the helicopters wound down and they could speak normally, Coon turned suspiciously to Nate and asked, “Will you help us throw Templeton into federal prison for the rest of his life?”
“I’ll tell you what I know,” Nate said. “The throwing-into-a-cage part is up to you.”
Coon stepped back and shook his head, as if having an argument with himself. Then he looked up and asked Joe, “You’ll vouch for him?”
“I trust him with my life and the lives of my family.”
“I can’t promise anything,” Coon said to Nate. “You know that, right?”
Nate nodded.
“We’ll see what we can do. The U.S. attorney will make the final call, not me. Now, if you’ll both just hang tight, I’ll go inside and set up a command center and coordinate a raid on the ranch to get Templeton, and a couple of more teams to go after the sheriff and the judge. Then we’ll all have a real long talk.”
The morning air smelled of smoke from the explosion and the exhaust fumes of two helicopters and a dozen SUVs. It was warming up nicely, though, and snow was sliding off the pitched roof of the inn to the ground below.
Joe leaned against the damaged front of his pickup as the adrenaline dissipated. He felt suddenly exhausted, and tried to count the hours since he’d last slept. He couldn’t.
He didn’t even note the high-pitched sound of an airplane overhead in the sky until he saw Nate had his head back, looking at it with interest.
“There he goes,” Nate said.
“Who?”
“Wolfgang Templeton and his new squeeze, Missy Vankueren.”
Joe nearly lost his footing. “What?”
Before Nate could explain, Joe felt a vibration from the phone he had just turned back on in his pocket.
It was Sheridan, and she was panicked. “Dad, someone just saw Erik Young going up the stairwell to the roof with a rifle.”
Joe said with anguish to Sheridan, “I’m five hours away.”
Nate asked, “What’s going on?”
30
Past Douglas and somewhere over Laramie Peak in the Cessna Turbo 206H Stationair that belonged to Wolfgang Templeton, Joe said to Nate: “I didn’t know you were a pilot.”
“Officially, I’m not,” Nate said. “But I’ve spent a lot of time in small planes. Plus, I observe how birds fly.”
Joe put his head in his hands. He was grateful they’d be able to quickly cover the 320 miles to Laramie. Nate had reported they were traveling at 220 knots, which meant nothing to Joe. Arriving in less than an hour and a half meant everything.
“Can you land it when we get there?” Joe asked.
“We’ll see.”
There were three passengers in the plane. In addition to Joe and Nate was a woman named Liv Brannan who had been standing on the edge of the private airstrip in tears with a duffel bag and a suitcase. Joe hadn’t heard the conversation that went on between Brannan and Nate — he was on his phone with Sheridan — but he was surprised when Nate said they’d have company.
When the Federal Strike Force arrived at the Sand Creek Ranch earlier, Templeton’s Gulfstream jet with Missy inside was long gone. While Agent Coon and his agents swarmed the ranch headquarters and gathered the confused staff, Nate had commandeered a ranch ATV and driven Joe to the airstrip. The air had been heavy with smoke from the burning lodge, which added enough confusion to the raid that they were able to slip away.
As the Cessna gathered speed on the strip and ascended, Joe looked down. The massive old lodge was engulfed in flames. By the time the rural fire department arrived there would likely be nothing left. Templeton had covered his tracks. Nate asked Brannan what had happened with the four men inside. Joe didn’t pay any attention to the conversation. It could be sorted out later, he thought.
Over the radio, Joe could follow the progress of the FBI raids throughout Medicine Wheel County.
Judge Bartholomew was arrested in his home while he ate his morning oatmeal.
Sheriff Mead was stopped and arrested as he tried to escape in his personal Lincoln Continental.
Police Chief Dale Miller was in custody, but being flown to the Rapid City hospital due to massive blood loss.
All of them claimed they had no idea where Wolfgang Templeton had gone. In fact, they said they barely knew the man.
Before losing his cell signal, Joe had been able to learn from Sheridan that the university had been locked down and all dorm residents had been ordered to stay in their rooms. She had talked to the student who’d seen Erik Young in the stairwell and reported it to campus police. The student knew nothing about guns, but said the rifle “kind of looked like a toy.” Joe guessed from that description that Young had the stolen Bushmaster, because that semiautomatic rifle had plastic composite stocks. It also had a high-capacity magazine filled with .223 rounds.
The Laramie Police Department and campus police had been called. The rumor mill was up and running. There were posts on Facebook and Twitter about up to a dozen victims thus far, but Sheridan said she’d not personally heard any shots from the roof of her building, and her floor was close enough, she thought, that she should have.
From her dorm room window, she could see police setting up a perimeter and sealing off the streets to traffic. The rumor was that a SWAT team was being assembled to storm the dormitory, but she couldn’t see any signs of them yet.
Joe was proud of how calm Sheridan was, given the situation. He hoped he could hold it together as well as Sheridan had until they arrived.
But he wasn’t sure what he’d do when they got there.
“She just held her hand out and said, ‘I don’t think so,’” Liv Brannan said to Nate. “I was handing my bags up to Mr. T. on the steps of the plane when she said it. At first he seemed confused. But he didn’t argue with her. He just said, ‘Sorry, Liv,’ and handed my bags back.”