Free Fire - C. J. Box [134]
Joe’s heart was still beating hard when the agent from the gift shop came out beaming, said to Portenson, “We got it all on tape. It’s perfect.”
“Then shut the system down,” McIlvaine said, with a menacingsmile.
By then, McCann had been helped to his feet and was standingthere gasping for air. Despite the Kevlar vest under his parka, the impact of the bullets had punched the breath out of him, and he wheezed raggedly. Olig had stripped off his vest and thrown it across the room as if wearing it another second insulted him somehow. He was furious, he said, about how close he’d come to death, how long the agents had waited.
Joe squatted next to Chuck Ward. Ward still had the distant, almost animal look of shock on his face. Joe had seen many game animals in the back of pickups with the same look.
“How could you do this?” Joe asked. “How could you betray the governor like this? Worse, how could you betray Wyoming?”
Ward studied the hardwood floor inches away, tears forming in his eyes.
Joe repeated his question, and this time it got through. He absentmindedly worked Layborn’s glass eye in his hand like a big prayer bead.
“He knows everything, Joe,” Ward said.
“Who?”
“The governor. Our boss. Nothing gets by him when it comes to revenue.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Then don’t. You’re so naïve.”
“You’re lying.”
Ward turned away with a bitter smile. He was lying, Joe thought as he stood up. Of course he was lying. Of course he was lying.
Portenson skipped over and gave Joe a bear hug, almost lifting him off the ground. “It was perfect,” Portenson said. “Your plan, it was perfect! Even better, it’s federal prosecutor-proof! This is the biggest arrest we’ve ever made in our office, and I was in charge! I’m going to get the hell out of this fucking state afterall.”
He kissed Joe sloppily on the cheek, and Joe looked away.
“I’m next,” McIlvaine said, stepping up after Portenson let go. He wrapped his arms around Joe and clamped hard, nearly squeezing Joe’s breath out.
“Okay, okay,” Joe grunted.
But McIlvaine didn’t let go. Instead, he squeezed harder. Suddenly, what was about to come next hit Joe like a hammer. The realization was worse than McIlvaine’s grip.
“Get his weapon,” McIlvaine ordered one of his men, who plucked the Glock out of Joe’s holster.
Across the room, before Joe could shout out a warning, two agents clubbed Nate to the ground with their rifle butts. They took his .454 and cuffed him behind his back, shouting at him to “stay the fuck down.”
Joe tried to get loose, arching his back in a wild jerk, attemptingto take McIlvaine to the ground with him, but the FBI commander was too strong. After Nate was bound with an agent on top of him and a gun jammed into his temple, McIlvaine pressed his mouth to Joe’s ear.
“I’ll let you go now, but don’t try to save your friend. There are way too many of us, and you saw what happened to Layborn.”
When McIlvaine released him, Joe staggered away, sucking in racking breaths. He saw Portenson staring at him, shaking his head sadly.
“We had a deal,” Joe said, gasping.
“Yes we did,” Portenson said, “and I honored it. But you didn’t have a deal with him.” He gestured toward McIlvaine.
“He’s been on our list for quite a while,” McIlvaine said, confirming without saying what the whispering campaign on the radios had been about.
Joe threw himself at Portenson and his fist caught the FBI agent square in the nose, hard, smashing it flat against his face in a concussion of dark red blood. Portenson dropped to the floor, unconscious. Joe tumbled on top of him, cocked his arm back for another blow, when McIlvaine and two other agents tore him away.
Before cuffing Joe around a knotty pine stanchion to keep him out of the way, McIlvaine leaned into his ear again and said: “Don’t you know by now? Never trust a Fed.”
Through a fog of rage and betrayal, Joe watched as the assaultteam read Miranda rights to James Langston, chief ranger of Yellowstone Park; Layton Barron, CEO of