“Congratulations.”
From the bathroom, Alisha called out, “Is that Bobby?”
“Good coffee!” Bob yelled back.
“Bobby, I need my television back! You’ve had it for a week!”
Nate looked at Bob.
“Mine went out,” Bob explained. “We needed to watch the poker tournament.”
Bob drained his cup and refilled it. While doing so, he saw the digital clock on the microwave. “Shit, I need to get going. They wanted to shoot with the sun at a certain angle. The director loves dawn light.”
Nate said, “Who doesn’t?”
“If we miss the dawn light, we just sit around until dusk and smoke cigarettes and shoot then,” Bob said. “It’s a good job.”
“That’s what counts,” Nate said.
“Hey, did you hear that plane last night?” Bob asked, backing out the door so he wouldn’t spill his coffee. He was taking the mug with him.
“No.”
“I heard there’s a big-assed jet sitting at the airport,” Bob said. “Some kind of foreign writing on the fuselage.”
With that, Bob left.
To himself, Nate said, Damn.
Nate Romanowski lived in a small stone house on the banks of the Twelve Sleep River, in the shadows of hundred-year-old cottonwoods and a high steep bluff across the water. As he crested the long rise from the east, his place was laid out in front of him — house, round pen, sagging mews where he kept his birds. He could tell instinctively that someone had been there.
Pulling off the two-track, he climbed out of his Jeep and walked back over to the road. Three sets of fresh tire imprints cut the night crust of the dirt where a vehicle had gone in and out and back again to his home. The tracks were wide — an SUV or pickup. The tread was sharp, indicating new tires or a brand-new vehicle. Then he saw what had triggered his suspicion in the first place: the mews door was slightly open. Meaning his falcons had been disturbed or were gone. Which meant somebody was going to get hurt.
He stood and squinted, determining whoever had come onto his place had parked their vehicle on the side away from his house so it couldn’t be seen from the road. And that they were waiting for him.
Slipping his .454 Casull handgun from its holster under his seat to his lap, Nate drove down the rise. As he approached his house, the front door opened and a man walked out. Nate recognized the man as Ben “Shorty” LaDuke, a sometimes ranch hand who resided mainly on stool number four at the Stockman’s Bar in Saddlestring. Shorty had been to his house before, when he was briefly employed by Bud Longbrake. Looking for strays, Shorty had said. Shorty was diminutive with a hunched, gnome-like posture that made him look even smaller. He wore torn Wranglers and boots and a hooded Wyoming Cowboys sweatshirt.
Nate parked under the cottonwoods with his open driver’s-side window framing Shorty, who ambled over. The .454 was gripped in Nate’s hand, the muzzle an inch below the window.
“Nate, how are you?” Shorty asked.
“Not pleased that you’re trespassing,” Nate said.
“I’m sorry, but I wasn’t sure where to find you. There’s a feller inside who—”
“Raise your hands and turn around. Put your hands on top of your head.”
Shorty grimaced. “Ah, Nate, buddy, I don’t mean no trouble here.”
“Then don’t walk into a man’s house or fuck with a falconer’s birds. Do what I said.”
Shorty sighed theatrically, turned, and laced his hands on top of his King Ropes cap.
Nate walked up to Shorty and reached around him and patted him down. No weapons. He shoved the barrel of the .454 into Shorty’s back to urge him toward the house.
“I had nothing to do with taking your birds,” Shorty said. “The gentlemen inside said you owed them and they were just retrieving their property. I just said I’d make the introduction, is all.”
“Don’t talk,” Nate said, pushing the gun into Shorty’s spine.
“Be careful that don’t go off,” Shorty said. “It’d likely cut me in half.”
Nate said, “Then you’d be really short.”
He pushed him through the door, keeping the ranch hand in front of him. Over Shorty’s shoulder, Nate saw two men sitting at his table with cups of coffee in front of them. They were Saudis.
“Greetings from my father,” the younger of the two men said. He was olive-skinned, well groomed, and well dressed in a crisp white shirt, charcoal slacks, and tasseled black loafers. He had a thin perfect mustache over white perfect teeth. The lens of a pair of wire-framed sunglasses poked up from his shirt pocket.
The other man was older, thicker, darker, wearing an open-collared yellow shirt and a black blazer. He didn’t smile. His eyes were locked onto Nate’s face. He had a thicker black mustache and his hands were under the table. Nate turned Shorty slightly so the older man would have to shoot through Shorty to get to Nate.
The younger man noticed what Nate had done and shook his head from side to side as if trying to alleviate a terrible misunderstanding. “No, no, none of this is necessary. Please put the gun away and let Mr. Shorty go home. We can all be good friends here.”
Nate didn’t move.
“I’m Lamya Abd al Saud,” the man said. “Everybody I graduated with at Stanford calls me Rocky. You know my father. He says you’re a talented, amazing man, but he’s disappointed in you. He asked me to come here to invite you to see him to explain your recent insult.”
“You know them?” Shorty said to Nate. “Jesus.”
Nate ignored Shorty, keeping his eyes on the older man, watching the man’s shoulders for even the smallest bit of motion from his hands hidden under the table.
“This is Khalid,” Rocky said, gesturing to the dark man. “He’s with me because my father asked that he come along. Khalid, please greet Mr. Romanowski.”
Khalid nodded his head, but never broke his stare.
“Let me see your hands,” Nate said to him.
Khalid shot a glance to Rocky. Rocky nodded back. The older man withdrew his hands from beneath the table and put them flat on the surface.
“There,” Rocky said. “Are you happy now?”
“Nope. Where are my birds?”
“They’re safe. My father is admiring them.”
Nate said, “Admiring them?”
Rocky nodded.
“Shorty, hit the trail,” Nate said, pushing the man aside.
“I don’t have a vehicle,” Shorty protested. “I came out here with Rocky and—”
“Hit the trail, Shorty,” Nate said. “And as you walk away from this place, forget you were ever here. If anybody ever asks you to bring them out here again, your answer will be that you don’t know where it is.”
“They said—”
“Hit the fucking trail, Shorty,” Nate said through clenched teeth.
Khalid drove and Rocky was in the passenger seat of the rented white Cadillac Escalade. Nate sat in the backseat. Khalid had asked Nate to leave his .454 at home before he would drive them.
“I’ve never seen a handgun like that,” Rocky said. “Five cylinders. I wish to fire it.”
“Wish denied,” Nate said.
Khalid shot a glance at Nate in the rearview mirror.
“My father is looking forward to seeing you,” Rocky said affably, turning in his seat.
Nate nodded. “Did he come here in his 727?”
Rocky shook his head. “That was his old plane. The new one is a 737. It is very luxurious, very well appointed. He prefers staying on the plane because it’s more comfortable than the hotel accommodations you have here. You’ll like it.”
“I just want my birds back.”
Rocky laughed. “I’ll never understand the fascination you and my father have with falcons. It’s a mystery to me. I prefer fast cars and fast women. Blond women with big lips. And movies. I’m a great fan of American movies. Especially the gangster movies and the Westerns. I love the Westerns. I don’t see why your people don’t make them anymore.”