“Hold tight,” he said to Geronimo.
He got out of the van and walked up the road with a spotting scope mounted on a short tripod. There was a set of recent tire tracks in the dust of the road. Someone had been just ahead of him.
Nate crept to the summit and kept low. He didn’t want to skylight himself and be seen. He set up the scope and leaned into the eyepiece.
The ranch headquarters was entirely in the open. It reminded him of his own compound in Wyoming. There was no way someone could drive to the buildings below without being seen and tracked from a great distance. Nate assumed Smisek and Prentice had picked the location for exactly that reason, as had Nate. It was mimicking the defense mechanism of a pronghorn antelope: stand boldly in the open so as to see potential predators long before they could get there.
The compound was a collection of outbuildings surrounding a Victorian two-story brick ranch house in the middle. He could see the snout of a Jeep poking out from one of the outbuildings, and the back of a pickup was next to it. Someone was home, but there was no Mercedes transport visible.
There were several satellite dishes on the roof of the ranch house that he guessed were for internet access. The brokerage of falcons was now largely done on the web, and even in such a remote location it enabled them to communicate with potential buyers anywhere in the world.
A small, shallow creek serpentined through the swale floor and through the corrals next to the house. The creek was choked with brush on both banks, which were relatively high, and he could see only a few openings with water.
Nate nodded to himself and went back to the van to lay out his plan to Geronimo.
* * *
—
Forty-five minutes later, Nate gently splashed down the middle of the ankle-high creek and pushed through brush that seemed determined to choke out the sun. Geronimo followed and cursed under his breath at the hazards. The temperature was in the low sixties and there was a slight breeze from the north. It was much warmer than it had been in Wyoming or Colorado.
They’d hiked down the side of the hill far upstream from the compound. He’d chosen to approach on foot via the creek bed because it was the only route available that couldn’t be watched easily by someone in the house.
“I’ll need new boots after this,” Geronimo said.
* * *
—
The creek widened as they approached the headquarters, and the brush became more sparse. Nate couldn’t get any lower to stay out of sight. He turned to Geronimo and gestured toward the side of an old barn fifty yards away.
“You ready?” he asked.
Geronimo indicated he was.
Nate broke into a run with Geronimo just a few feet behind him. They dashed to the barn in the open, hoping no one would glance through a ranch house window and see them. The barn would hide them from the house if they made it.
They made it.
Nate stood with his back to the barn wood and Geronimo joined him. Geronimo reached into his coat and drew his shotgun out and held it down the length of his thigh.
“I think we’re good,” he said.
Nate waited until his breath returned to normal after the sprint, then sidled down the wall toward a four-pane window. He dropped below it and then slowly raised up to see inside.
He motioned to Geronimo to come over.
The interior of the barn was dark except for natural light that came from the windows and a discolored fiberglass covering on the roof that served as a skylight. On the floor of the barn were long rows of wooden crosses pounded into the dirt. Thin leather straps hung from the Ts of the crosses and the ground was spattered with splashes of white.
In the background were lights on stands and plywood panels painted primary colors.
Nate whispered, “This is where they keep the birds they’re going to sell. Jesses are hanging from those crosses to keep the birds in place. You can see that they photograph them against different backgrounds and they post the shots to their site on the dark web.”
“I see that,” Geronimo said. “But where are your birds?”
“I hope there’s another mews in one of the other buildings.”
“Or they aren’t here at all,” Geronimo said. Nate noted the slight elation in his voice. He obviously didn’t want to be done with their mission.
* * *
—
They looked in the windows of two other outbuildings. One was a smaller mews, but the crosses were just as empty. The other building was filled with typical ranch junk: broken-down pickups, a tractor with three flat tires, an old trailer wagon that had probably come with the place.
Nate was frustrated and angry. He said, “I think it’s time to pay a call on Smisek and Prentice.”