Off the Grid (A Joe Pickett Novel, Band 16) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

C. J. Box is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Joe Pickett series, five stand-alone novels, and the story collection Shots Fired. He has won the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, Gumshoe, and two Barry awards, as well as the French Prix Calibre .38 and a French Elle magazine literary award. His books have been translated into twenty-seven languages. He and his wife Laurie split their time between their home and ranch in Wyoming.

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Chapter One

Nate Romanowski knew trouble was on the way when he saw the falcon’s wings suddenly flare in the distance.  Something beyond his eyesight was coming fast.

It was cool and crisp in the desert and the light dawn breeze smelled of dust and the rotting carcasses of dead wild horses who had drunk at a poisoned spring.

The rising sun bathed the eastern sky ochre and silhouetted the rock haystacks and hoodoos into a dark snaggle-toothed horizon.  It was the best time of day, he thought: the anticipatory moment before the morning light lifted the curtain on the terrain to reveal the reds, pinks, oranges and beiges of the striations in the bone-dry rock formations and revealed the rugged broken terrain.  The desert was made up of canyons, arroyos, and vast sheets of hard-packed clay that had been sculpted through history first by magma, then water, now wind.

Nate had learned that in the morning the desert didn’t wake up.  Instead, it shut down.  Herds of pronghorns moved from the sparse grassy bottoms where they’d been grazing through the night to the high desert plateaus where they could be seen for miles – and they could be on the lookout for predators.  Herds of wild horses, with their cracked hooves and woolly jug-heads, trotted across openings headed for the shade of wind-formed rock oddities that looked in the right light like Doric columns that remained from ancient ruins.

It was the early morning hours when cottontails retreated to their dens and upland game birds moved from feeding on seeds and grass to structure and safety.

That was why Nate chose this time to hunt.

But he wasn’t the only predator in the area.

The gyrfalcon, the largest and most formidable falcon of the species, was a horizontal hunter.  Unlike the prairie falcon, which struck its prey fast and low and often in the air from a perch or promontory, or the peregrine that screamed down from the heavens at 200 miles an hour with balled fists and intercepted its target in a mid-flight explosion of meat and feathers, the huge gyr cruised silent and white above the desert floor.  When the gyrfalcon sighted its prey  -- a rabbit, sage grouse, or gopher -- it maneuvered its profile into the sun, then simply dropped down on it as if from the sun itself and pinned its prey to the ground.  The gyr then used its weight and the powerful grip of its talons to crush the life out of its meal.  If the prey continued to struggle or wouldn’t die fast enough, the gyr bent over and severed the spinal cord with its hooked, razor-sharp beak.

Nate wasn’t sure how long he’d been hunting with the new gyrfalcon.  There were gaps in his memory. All he knew was that the big bird was his partner and had arrived as some kind of gift from the arctic where it thrived and now he was hunting with it.

The falcon was stocky and thick the first time he lifted it up on his glove, and it weighed more than any raptor he’d ever flown.  It was smaller than a golden or bald eagle but not by much, maybe a pound or two less.  When it was in the air, its five-foot wingspan and mottled white coloring reminded Nate of a flying white wolf.  In the dawn of the desert, when the first shafts of the sun lit up the gyrfalcon in flight, its coloring made it look twice as big as it actually was.  The gyrfalcon was a formidable weapon.  If a peregrine was a cruise missile, Nate thought, the gyrfalcon was a Stealth bomber.

Gyrfalcons had been reserved for royalty in ancient times.  Commoners couldn’t fly them.  It was a miracle that the big white bird had shown up.  She was a big female, almost silver in color, and females of the species were larger than males.  He enjoyed simply staring at her when she was on the glove, and she seemed to enjoy – and expect – his admiration. 

Because his new bird had no natural predators except the occasional golden eagle, it flew and hunted with impunity.

So when it flared sharply upwards a mile and a half away and immediately started climbing, when its long wings blurred with effort as they worked hard and fast to ascend from the threat, Nate knew the raptor had encountered something deadly and unusual.

Whatever was approaching also attracted the attention of a small herd of pronghorns to his right.  He’d not seen the creatures previously in the dark, but there they were.  As one, the animals froze and turned their heads to the north where the falcon had flared.  After a beat, a secret signal was given and the herd came alive and took off to the south.  Small puffs of dust rose in their wake from twin teardrop-shaped hooves.  The pronghorns moved away like molten liquid flowing across the desert until they were gone.

Then Nate felt a vibration through the ground itself.  It was remarkable in the desert how he could feel something coming before he could see or hear it.

A motley herd of twelve or thirteen shaggy horses thundered over the wide northern horizon.  One by one they appeared, manes flying and nostrils flared.  The rhythm of their hoof beats increased in volume and they were far enough away that the sound was disconnected from their movement. 

Something was driving them, he knew.  Something had spooked them into running straight at him.

The horses came toward him over the hard-pan, kicking up a spoor of dust that hung in the air behind them.  They were getting close enough now – maybe a hundred and fifty yards away – that the sound of their pounding hooves started to sync with their movement.

He wondered if the herd was going to run right over the top of him.

Nate raised both of his hands in the air and waved his arms.  The herd kept coming. 

Not until they were twenty-five yards away did the animals part and run by him on both sides.  The ground shook.  Before he closed his eyes against the dust, he caught glimpses of white-tinged eyes, flared nostrils, matted manes, and scabbed-over wounds on their flanks.  They were sorrels, mostly, but the lead stallion was black with a single white sock. Their smell lingered after they’d gone, a heavy musk that was part dried sweat, part caked mud.

They continued to thunder south.

When he opened his eyes, he saw a pair of headlights, like pinpricks, poke through the hanging dust where the horses had appeared on the horizon. 

Nate squinted, trying to see better.  The vehicle, like the horses, was coming right at him.

He turned and scanned the cloudless sky.  The gyrfalcon was a tiny white speck against the powder blue.  Nate knew the difference between a falcon rising in a thermal current for a better hunting lane or circling for an angle of attack, and when it was flying away. 

The gyrfalcon was flying away.  He knew in his heart he’d never see it again.

He’d had the experience before.  Sometimes falcons that he’d spent years feeding, training, and hunting simply flew away.  Each time it happened, it opened a hole inside him that could only be filled by a new raptor.  But this time he didn’t feel loss as much as a sense of betrayal.  His thought was:

The bitch set me up.

Then he turned to the oncoming vehicle and was surprised to find it had divided into three parts.  What he’d initially assumed to be a single four-wheel drive unit was now three, and he realized that what he’d first seen was the lead truck in a small convoy of...