Battle Mountain

The twenty-fourth installment in the Joe Pickett series opens seven months before its main events. Nate Romanowski, a tall, blond master falconer, crosses icy North Piney Creek in predawn darkness to assault a rental lodge near Big Piney, Wyoming. He is hunting Axel Soledad, the man whose associates murdered Nate's wife, Liv. Armed with his signature Freedom Arms .454 Casull revolver, Nate kills three of Soledad's armed associates inside the lodge, but Soledad himself left for Jackson Hole the day before. Consumed with shame, Nate burns the lodge, destroys his cell phone, and severs his last connection to the modern world. Five days later, FBI Special Agent Rick Orr inspects the crime scene and silently recognizes the distinctive bullet hole from a .454 round.

In early October, the story shifts to its main timeline. Elk-hunting guide Spike Rankin leads his new assistant Mark Eisele up Battle Mountain in the Sierra Madre range of south-central Wyoming to scout for elk. Eisele, a remote tech worker, took the job at the urging of his father-in-law, Governor Spencer Rulon. On a ridge overlooking the exclusive B-Lazy-U Ranch, the two men stumble upon five camouflaged figures with semiautomatic rifles and spotting scopes trained on the valley. When Rankin tries to explain they are scouting elk, the group opens fire. Both men are hit, and as Eisele lies wounded, he watches a small jet descend toward the ranch.

At the same time, far to the north in Hole in the Wall Canyon, Nate has been living off the grid for over seven months, hunting with two falcons and pursuing a vision quest to reenter yarak, a falconry term for a state of swift, instinctual action. One evening, Geronimo Jones, a fellow master falconer and Special Forces veteran, descends into the canyon. Directed there by Sheridan Pickett, Joe's eldest daughter and manager of Nate's falconry company Yarak, Inc., Geronimo reveals that Soledad's associates burned his Colorado home with his family inside; only a chance hospital trip saved them. He urges Nate to join him in hunting Soledad.

Meanwhile, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett is summoned to meet Governor Rulon, a uniquely popular Democrat recently returned to office. Rulon explains that his son-in-law Eisele went hunting with Rankin at Rulon's urging, and daily progress texts from Rankin have stopped. Refusing to involve the local sheriff, Regan Haswell, whom he considers corrupt and hostile, Rulon asks Joe to travel south and quietly locate Eisele. Joe agrees, briefs his wife Marybeth, who is caring for Nate's three-year-old daughter Kestrel in Nate's absence, and departs.

In captivity, Eisele drifts in and out of consciousness in a dark room, restrained by nylon straps. A woman using the call sign "Double-A" administers medication and reveals they are in a ghost town formerly called Summit, now renamed "Soledad City." When Soledad later visits, Eisele pleads for medical help for Rankin, who lies unresponsive in an adjacent cot. Soledad unsheathes a stiletto blade concealed inside one of his crutches and kills Rankin instantly.

Nate and Geronimo trace Soledad's movements through a network of contacts. A paranoid falconer and gun dealer named C. W. Reese reveals that Soledad purchased firearms under a false name using a stolen check. Cheryl Tuck-Smith, a towering former Army Ranger and attorney in Cheyenne, confirms she has been tracking Soledad pro bono and warns that he has recruited both disaffected military veterans and activist types for an attack somewhere in Wyoming. She directs them to Russ and Jolene Anthony, whose daughter Allison, a decorated Marine sniper, ran off with Soledad. Russ describes how Allison, deployed to Kabul during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, had the Abbey Gate suicide bomber in her crosshairs but received an order not to engage. The bomber killed thirteen Marines, including Allison's closest friend. Allison returned devastated and fell into Soledad's orbit. As Nate and Geronimo leave the Anthony home, Nate ambushes and kills three of Soledad's operatives who lie in wait on the road below.

At the B-Lazy-U Ranch, a new waitress arrives for Centurions Week, the secret annual gathering of an exclusive club whose approximately 250 members include defense industry CEOs, military leaders, and federal officials. She befriends Peaches Tyrell, a veteran server who has worked the event for forty years, and secretly diverts three boxes marked with black X's to a hidden vegetable cellar in the woods. The truck driver who helps her, a fit young man with a handlebar mustache and facial scar, is later identified as Soledad's operative Marshall Bissett. The waitress wears a name tag reading "Allison from Wyoming."

Joe arrives in Warm Springs and teams up with local game warden Susan Kany. They find Rankin's elk camp intact but empty and trace his truck to a road leading to Battle Mountain. Riding horseback up the mountain, they find no sign of the missing men before dark. Kany returns to organize a search party while Joe camps alone. That night, he discovers a recently cleared logging road with fresh tire marks leading toward Summit.

After being turned away at the ranch gate, Nate and Geronimo confirm that the scarred guard is Bissett and conclude the attack will come from the mountain. Agent Orr finds them in Warm Springs and reveals his bureaucracy has failed to act on the threat. He stays behind to coordinate while they enter the wilderness.

In the predawn hours, Soledad briefs his strike force: ten young activists he privately considers disposable cannon fodder and six military veterans led by Allison and Bissett. The activists will block escape routes from a granite ridge while the veterans assault the lodge from multiple directions. Soledad also orders Sheriff Jackson Bishop, who is secretly in his network, to abduct Kestrel and distract Nate. In the adjacent room, Eisele hears the entire briefing and begins working free from his loosened restraints.

Bishop's attempt to take Kestrel fails when Sheridan stops him at gunpoint and handcuffs him. Joe, continuing up the mountain, encounters Eisele staggering down the road in hospital scrubs, having escaped. Eisele recounts everything: Rankin's murder, his captivity, and Soledad's plan. At the abandoned Summit compound, Joe finds the attack plan on Soledad's laptop, labeled OPERATION OCTOBER SURPRISE. He calls Kany to mobilize law enforcement and learns National Guard helicopters are at least two hours away. Leaving Eisele with a radio, Joe sets off alone over the mountain.

Nate and Geronimo traverse brutal terrain to flank Soledad's force. Using an ability he developed during his months of isolation, Nate enters a trance and perceives the enemy's exact positions through the eyes of his peregrine falcon circling overhead, a capacity he describes as an entire level beyond yarak. They execute a pincer assault on the activists behind the ridge. When three survivors try to surrender, Soledad shoots one of his own people and flees on an ATV. Nate and Geronimo then disarm the four professional veterans without violence.

At the ranch, Nate intercepts Allison as she emerges from the cellar with two automatic Glocks. When Bissett appears behind her with his own weapons, Nate shoots him dead. Telling Allison he met her parents, that he understands what happened in Afghanistan, and that Soledad manipulated her, Nate convinces her to release the Glocks into the grass. She walks away without looking back. Joe, jogging down the mountain, encounters Soledad fleeing uphill on his ATV. Joe fires his shotgun, hitting Soledad's armored vest and crashing the vehicle into a tree. As Soledad rises on his crutches, Nate's .454 booms from the dark timber, killing him instantly. Joe sits in the meadow as National Guard helicopters approach from the east.

Two days later, Governor Rulon meets the group in Cheyenne. The Centurions' collective power ensures the incident will be buried: no media coverage, the bodies and captured veterans absorbed into federal custody. Allison has returned to her family. Sheriff Bishop has vanished. When Rulon asks where Nate is, Joe replies, "He's back in Saddlestring. He's getting reacquainted with his daughter."