Shadows Reel (Joe Pickett #22)(49)

Randy did. Soledad had halted half a mile from the compound. After rummaging around through a gear bag in the back of the transport, he’d gone outside and shut the door, then come back five minutes later without an explanation.

“I hid a trail cam in the brush,” Soledad said. “That way, I’d know who went in and out after we left. The trail cam sends shots to my phone as long as the batteries hold out.”

Randy nodded for him to go on.

“This van showed up an hour after we left. Drove down the road one way, then back out. Can you see what’s written on the side of it?”

Randy reached out to steady Soledad’s hand. He peered at the screen and pinched it out with his fingertips to zoom the shot.

“Yarnick?” he asked.

“Yarak, Inc.,” Soledad corrected. Then: “Bird abatement specialists from Saddlestring, Wyoming.”

Randy was befuddled. Soledad laughed, but not at Randy. He was laughing at the photo of the van.

“Nate Romanowski is after us,” he said.

“Who?”

Soledad chinned toward the transport. Meaning the birds inside. “He wants what we have.”

“Who is he?”

“You’ve never heard of him,” Soledad said. “You’re not a falconer. He’s old-school, from another era. He was considered to be a big man back then: deadly, full of mystery and crackpot ethics. But he left the life to become a pussy capitalist. His time has passed.”

“Why is he following us?” Randy asked.

Soledad didn’t answer. He had already spoken longer than at any time Randy had been with him. Soledad, if anything else, kept his own counsel. His description of Nate Romanowski, even. It seemed like it was something Soledad was saying to himself, not to Randy.

Then Soledad checked the clock on his phone and said, “Time to go.”

“Where?”

Soledad didn’t answer.



* * *



—

They took the US 30 exit off I-84 and drove through central Pendleton until it became Southeast Court Avenue. They passed a Walmart Supercenter and Randy pointed out that it was open, but Soledad kept driving. They merged onto Westgate and crossed the Umatilla River, and Soledad slowed down and drove into the parking lot of the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution.

The facility was sprawling and multistoried, constructed of blond bricks and topped by a red-slate roof. Randy thought it looked more like a college campus than a medium-security prison.

“What are we doing here?” he asked Soledad.

“Picking up a buddy,” Soledad said. “You’ll need to move into the back.”

“What, and sit on the floor? With the hawk shit?”

Soledad shrugged. Then he gestured toward the large building in the center of the complex that appeared to be the headquarters. “There he is.”

Randy squinted toward where Soledad was pointing.

Four men emerged from the side door of the building. Three were obviously correctional officers. They were dressed in dark blue and wore EOCI ballcaps.

The fourth was a small man in ill-fitting civilian clothes. A baggy short-sleeved shirt over a dark long-sleeved Henley. Only when the man stopped at the gate and turned his back to the COs to have his handcuffs removed did Randy realize it wasn’t long underwear but full-sleeve tattoos.

“Well, get in the back,” Soledad said to Randy with impatience.

“Who is this guy?”

“Let me give you a tip,” Soledad said. “Don’t challenge him.”



* * *



—

Soledad and the released inmate fist-bumped in the front seat as they left the parking lot. The new man turned and glared at Randy hunkered down behind him. His gaze was not kind.

The inmate had dark hollow eyes, sharp cheekbones, and an overlarge mouth barely covering a mouthful of sharp yellow teeth. He looked feral, Randy thought. Not a man to be messed with.

“How do you two know each other?” Randy asked.

“The Blade and I were baptized in blood together,” Soledad said.

“What does that mean?”

The Blade turned in his seat and his gaze froze Randy to the floor of the van.

“It means shut the fuck up.”

Randy did.

The Blade grinned crookedly at Soledad.

“Happy Thanksgiving, I guess,” he said.



* * *



—

What Randy didn’t know and would never know, Soledad thought, was about that baptism in blood. Soledad and the Blade were bonded together in a way that a civilian trust-fund boy like Randy would never comprehend.

It had happened halfway around the world in Myanmar, formerly Burma, in 2012. That’s where they’d lost not only their comrades but also their faith in the U.S. government. And they’d pledged to each other that if they ever got back to the States alive, they’d burn it down.

Their team of eight Mark V special operators had scrambled out of a black helicopter just inside the border of Rakhine, the westernmost state in the country. Their mission had been to accompany an ethnic Rohingya warlord from his village and get the man safely to Thailand. From there, other operatives would whisk him away to Australia.

Myanmar government forces wanted to stop the passage of the warlord and either murder him or put him into a concentration camp. It was part of their campaign to annihilate and ethnically cleanse the entire Rohingya population. With the warlord out of the picture, the resistance would weaken even more.