Shadows Reel (Joe Pickett #22)(28)

A second later, the directions to his property appeared on Nate’s screen. It would be a forty-minute drive into the mountains with a bound and gagged antifa in the back of his van.

Nate wasn’t upset to leave Denver in his rearview mirror.





CHAPTER TEN


    Hungarian Hay Hook


Out on the county road, the two men in the rental SUV sat parked in shadow beneath overhanging branches of a massive river cottonwood tree. A hundred and fifty yards ahead of them on the road was the small sign indicating the turnoff to the game warden station.

“You’re sure this is her address?” László asked.

Viktór showed him the illuminated screen on his phone with the map feature on. “Look,” he said in Hungarian.

“This might be good,” László said. “I don’t see any neighbors around. I don’t even see any lights.”

“What is our plan?” Victór asked.

“We sit here and wait. We don’t know how many people are at the house. If she’s alone, we can go there tonight.”

Viktór settled back in his seat. “I’m hungry and tired.”

“I don’t care.”

“I want chicken-fried steak. Like last night. I can’t stop dreaming about it.”

“We can’t go back to the same restaurant two nights in a row. We’ll get noticed.”

Viktór cursed and turned his phone screen down on his thigh so there would be no glow inside the car.

“How do we know how many people are at her house?”

“We go and find out.”



* * *



—

They’d eaten the night before at a diner in town called the Burg-O-Pardner. It had been a very long day of transatlantic travel and driving eight hours from Denver International Airport to northern Wyoming. Victór had ordered the chicken-fried steak, which came with mashed potatoes. The entire dish was smothered in white sausage gravy. He had thought he was ordering some kind of chicken like his native chicken paprikash—but he loved it. Viktór loved eating beef, and he loved being in a part of the United States that offered it on every menu he’d seen thus far. These people ate meat three times a day, it seemed. He was astonished. He wondered if that was the reason so many of them were fat.

László had ordered “Rocky Mountain Oysters” thinking it was seafood. He liked it as well, but after he did a Google search on his phone he cried out and pushed the plate away.

Victór had a good laugh about that. They even ate the testicles of cows and called them oysters!

This place they were now, Viktór thought, wasn’t anything like New York City or Orlando. It was high in the mountains, and the sky was huge and the air was thin. There were very few people or towns, and they’d noted on the highway that they didn’t see many oncoming cars. Pronghorn antelope—Viktór had to google them on his phone—dotted the sagebrush plains like domestic sheep. Snow covered the tops of the mountains in three directions. It was cold, but it was an oddly thin cold because there was little to no humidity in the air. He was constantly thirsty and felt like the moisture in his eyes and mouth was being wicked away.

But at least it had lots of beef.



* * *



—

The Kovács brothers had purchased their clothing at a Walmart in Casper and then discarded what they’d worn on the airplane. So they would look like Americans. Viktór wore a new ballcap with the logo of the New York Yankees. László wore a Denver Broncos sweatshirt that was too small for him. László liked tight clothing that showed off his thick shoulders and biceps.

After sitting for another ten minutes, László said, “Let’s go.”

“What are we doing?”

“Reconnaissance.”

They got out and shut their car doors softly, then moved to the back of the SUV. László opened it, and when the dome light came on he cursed and crushed it out with the heel of his hand.

They pulled on dark jackets, gloves, and balaclavas. Viktór had been tasked with removing all of the sales labels the night before.

Although they’d heard how unbelievably easy it was to buy guns in America and that all Americans in this part of the country walked around with them as if they were living in a cowboy movie, they’d found out differently.

Despite very professional false IDs—László was “Greg Seitz” from Cleveland and Viktór was “Bob Hardy” from Syracuse—they’d discovered that in order to purchase a gun, they needed to endure an FBI background check that the clerk said might take hours or even days. This was a surprise to them. They found out it was the same at several gun stores they stopped at on the way north through Wyoming.

Although Viktór was willing to wait for the background check to clear, László was not. He declared that he didn’t like or trust the FBI and he wanted nothing to do with them. What if their new identities didn’t check out? What then? He declared they would forego firearms. There were other ways to complete their assignment. And then they could go home.

So instead of guns, they’d purchased hand tools, knives, zip ties, bear spray, and other items that would do. László favored a Pulaski tool used by firefighters in the Rocky Mountains. On a stiff handle was a vertical steel ax blade on one end and a horizontal adze on the other, and it weighed one and a half kilograms, or three and a half pounds.