“Then please shut up.”
Joe thought about the canister of bear spray attached to his belt. He could still blast Coburn, disarm him, and bind him up with flex-cuffs. But to what end? Would he then stand up and explain to the shooters in the mountains that everything was okay? That they could put down their arms and surrender peacefully?
Coburn was rude and likely a murderer.
But he possessed one redeeming quality.
He was on this side of the wall.
COBURN WAS AWARE OF THE game warden watching him as he reloaded.
Pickett said, “Coburn, before this is over, I’m fairly certain that things are going to get western between you and me.”
“I told you this isn’t your fight. Do I have to say it again?”
“My family’s in Jackson. I’d kinda like to see them again.”
Coburn again considered bringing his gun down hard on the crown of that Stetson. He could use some peace and quiet to deal with the situation at hand. He’d never been one to accommodate weakness. It wasn’t that he had no empathy or understanding for men not hardwired for action. But in a firefight, and he’d been in many, slow thinkers resulted in the deaths of not only themselves but other brave men too. In this situation, he had two options.
Fight or flight.
But he doubted the shooters would even extend to him the second option.
“If nothing else,” Pickett said, “you need to tell me what’s going on. It’s not every day I start out checking elk camps and end up getting shot at with a psycho next to me.”
He snickered. “I’ve been called a lot of names. But psycho is a first.”
“Then prove to me you’re not. From where I sit, I see a dead guy with a bullet through his forehead and two or three other guys trying to kill us. It’s hard to come up with any other conclusion.”
He took that as a challenge. “So what do you think happened here?”
Pickett took a long time to answer, which was a little maddening. “I’ve seen a lot of strange things up in these mountains. Here in the Gros Ventres, or in my own mountains, the Bighorns. Sometimes these woods look to people like the last best place for them to wash up, when they can’t fit in anywhere else. I’ve run across end-of-times survivalists, sheepherders dealing meth, environmental terrorists, and landowners who run their ranches like tin-pot tyrants.
“When I look around here,” Pickett said, gesturing toward the camp beyond the walls, “I see the beginning of something that blew up while in progress. My guess is you and your buddies decided to pick the most remote part of these mountains to set up a little headquarters. For what I don’t know. But you figured, like so many do, that you’d be far enough away from civilization that you could do what you pleased, whatever that is.
“So you gathered up your best weapons and tools and got up here somehow and started building your stockade. Then there was a falling-out. That’s not surprising, given your foul disposition and the fact that the dead guy in the door obviously carried around a black rifle. So the disagreement, whatever it was about, escalated beyond control. You shot that guy over there, and the rest of the crew headed for the hills. You were going after them when they got the sense to go to high ground and turn on you. That’s when I showed up.”
He slowly shook his head. “That’s what this looks like to you?”
“Yup. Or something like it.”
“I’m FBI.”
Pickett raised his eyebrows with doubt. “You don’t expect me to believe that.”
He dug out his wallet badge from his jacket and showed the game warden his credentials.
“I’m undercover.”
“Undercover for what?” Pickett asked.
He took a deep breath, then quickly rose up and checked the perimeter to make sure the shooters weren’t sneaking up on them. Assured they weren’t, he lowered back down and said, “I’m based in Jackson when I’m not on assignment. It’s a good place to get my bearings back and recuperate.”
“Recuperate?”
He didn’t address that. “A few days ago I got a call from my boss, a guy named Hamilton. Real asshole.”
“Bureaucrat?”
“As I said. Anyhow, he told me that four really bad actors—white supremacists who call themselves One Nation—escaped from a raid on their compound in West Virginia last month. I’ve known One Nation was on the bureau’s radar for a long time, but I wasn’t involved with the case.”
“What’s their mission?”
“To incite a race war by gunning down white cops in largely black neighborhoods. These rednecks knew that if that happened, the local cops would likely overreact and trouble would spread. They put their whole manifesto on the Internet like so many of these mouth breathers do, but no one really thought they’d follow through. But they did. A couple of cops got shot in South Philly. And all hell broke loose. Riots, vandalism, looting, people on both sides killed, including some grade-school kids. I’m sure you saw it on the news.”
Pickett nodded.
“So the bureau raided the One Nation compound outside Wheeling. They arrested a dozen guys and a couple of women, but the four men in leadership got away. No one knew where they went, or whether they’d split up or stayed together. But one of the group in custody said one of the four guys had some familiarity with Wyoming, because he’d been elk hunting out here. Specifically, Jackson Hole. So my boss asked me to poke around, without alarming the locals.”
“And you did,” Pickett said.
He nodded. “I needed a distraction, so I jumped all over it. It took me a few days before I found a clerk at a hardware store who told me about two guys who fit the description buying up ammo and heavy-duty hand tools. He said they had West Virginia accents and one of them had a long beard like those yokels from Duck Dynasty.”
“Our man in the doorway,” Pickett said.
“I started making forays into the mountains. I didn’t think I’d actually run into them. It was really more an accident than intentional. I walked into their camp this morning, before I realized who they were.”
“That’s when you gave them your phone?”
“It wasn’t like that,” he said, annoyed. “I told them I wanted to join up. I told them everything I thought they’d want to hear about the country going to shit and the way to finally fix it. They liked what I was saying, but they didn’t greet me with open arms. I could tell they were thinking about it, though. If nothing else, they needed help with the building before winter rolled in. These guys aren’t exactly geniuses when it comes to construction, as you can tell.”
“Most criminals I’ve dealt with are just idiots,” Pickett said.
“I’ve known many who were fuckin’ smart. But these guys are idiots, with a cause. And even though they were friendly at first, they started getting suspicious. To prove I wasn’t a threat, I gave them my phone when they asked for it. I wasn’t worried because I’d deleted everything on it.”