Shadows Reel (Joe Pickett #22)(44)

“What does it mean?” Nate asked. “You still haven’t told me why you’re helping me shut down Axel Soledad.”

“I’ll tell you when I’m ready,” Geronimo said. “I need more proof than I’ve got. I don’t want you to think I’m one of those conspiracy nuts.”

Geronimo leaned back in his seat with Tristan’s phone perched between his thighs. He tapped it and said, “There’s a lot of information we can use from this. It’s like our own little captured Enigma machine. We can follow message threads and weigh in as Tristan Richardson if we want to. We can really screw with those people when they’re planning street action or coordinating their movements.”



* * *



—

Six hundred and eighty-five miles later, north of Boise, Nate asked Geronimo, “Did ‘Baker City’ ring any bells for you?”

“No. Never heard of it.”

“Have you ever heard of an outfit called Wingville Enterprises?”

“No, man.”

“Have you ever heard of Ken Smisek or Bob Prentice?” Nate asked.

Geronimo shook his mass of dreads. Meaning no.

“They’re more my age,” Nate said. “Falconers gone bad, like Soledad.”

“What about them?”

“They live near Baker City.”





CHAPTER FIFTEEN


    Wingville


Baker City, Oregon, was a town of fewer than ten thousand people in the high desert between the Wallowa Mountains to the east and the Elkhorn Mountains to the west. Nate found it charming. The downtown was historic and well-preserved, with ambitious early nineteenth-century stone buildings. The structures had obviously been put up by residents who at one time had believed the place would boom into a major city. There were so many of those once-ambitious towns in the west, he thought. Showpiece architecture that shouted optimism for something that would never come. It was kind of depressing.

It was also largely closed due to the Thanksgiving holiday. Driving through the deserted downtown reminded Nate of the bad old days of the pandemic.

Ken Smisek and Bob Prentice lived eight miles outside of Baker City on US 30 near an unincorporated town called Wingville that was more of a location on a map. All that remained of the settlement was a historical sign and the Wingville Cemetery.

Smisek and Prentice had obviously taken the name of the location for their business. Wingville, Nate thought, was a clever name for a falconry brokerage business.

Smisek and Prentice were former bounty hunters and falconers who were partners in business as well as in life. They had a side business trafficking small arms as well. They’d been in operation for over twenty years. Nate knew about Wingville from back when he was in special operations and his mission was to facilitate the purchase of rare North American falcons for rich tycoons and members of royal families in the Middle East. The purpose of the mission had been to infiltrate the elite caste of men who not only employed official falconers but also financed terrorists, including Osama bin Laden. Mark V had paid Wingville to locate peregrine falcons and gyrfalcons to provide to the targets. The prices per bird were equivalent to what they were today, and money was no object.

In many Arab countries, the art of falconry was considered regal and of exceptionally high status. Billionaires employed official falconers, and they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to equip their charges with top-quality raptors and temperature-controlled mews. There were even custom-designed four-wheel-drive vehicles to transport falcons and falconers across the roadless desert. Relatives of the royal families sometimes flew private 757s to desert encampments to hunt and fly their birds. Bin Laden had been located in one such encampment, but the potential collateral damage of taking him out had been considered too risky at the time. That fact would forever haunt Nate, and it had turned him against his own commander.

As new laws were enacted domestically and across the world to prohibit the sale of wild falcon species, Smisek and Prentice hadn’t closed shop. Instead, they’d gone underground.

Like Axel Soledad, the owners of Wingville breached the falconers’ code in addition to breaking international wildlife trafficking laws. Prentice and Smisek bought and sold birds that had obviously been poached or stolen, and they placed birds with unscrupulous falconers in other countries. Their clientele was still largely in the Middle East, where falconry remained revered and spiritualized, but they also served customers in Scotland, Wales, Australia, and New Zealand.

After briefing Geronimo on Wingville’s background, Nate said, “It only makes sense that Soledad would come see the Wingville boys on his way to Seattle. My hope is that he sold them my birds and we can liberate them before they get sold again.”

“So your birds might be here?” Geronimo asked incredulously.

“That’s what I hope.”

“If we get them back, will you still want to find Soledad?”

“Yes. But it might be delayed a while.”

It was obvious to Nate that it wasn’t the answer Geronimo wanted to hear.

“I’m giving up Thanksgiving dinner and football at home,” Geronimo said.

“Me too.”

“Our ladies aren’t very happy with us as it is. I’d hate to think this adventure is a waste of time.”