A sacred duty, p.1
A Sacred Duty, page 1
Praise for A Noble Calling
A rookie FBI agent battles through adversity and danger to rediscover his true identity in this story of intrigue and suspense.
“The characters are entrancing, and Weaver describes scenery like a poet, slipping the reader into the comfort of a Yellowstone cabin where one can almost feel the heat from the nearby hot springs or hear the pound of bison footfalls.”
—Arkansas Democrat Gazette
“Loved it! Awesome book that flat-out rocks! It really honors park rangers, FBI agents . . . [shows them as] real people with real strengths and weaknesses. Great descriptions of the scenery and pure adventure! Can’t wait to see what happens next!”
—Central District Ranger Kevin Moses, Shenandoah National Park
“Read the book in two days! Absolutely loved it, especially how it depicted the problems (and successes) between agencies and different groups within the FBI. Can’t wait for the next one!”
—Diane O., FBI, retired
“A Noble Calling: Mysteries, mayhem, and the maturation of an FBI agent. Win [Tyler] remains determined to honor his sacred oath as an FBI agent, even at the cost of his own physical and emotional well-being.”
—Philological Review
Also by Rhona Weaver
A Noble Calling: An FBI Yellowstone Adventure
2021 Bill Fisher Award for Best First Book in Fiction (Independent Book Publishers Association)
2021 Best Action/Adventure Novel (Next Generation Indie Book Awards)
2021 Best Christian Fiction (Next Generation Indie Book Awards)
2021 Finalist for Best Thriller (Next Generation Indie Book Awards)
2021 Finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award for Commercial Fiction (Eric Hoffer Foundation)
2021 Finalist for the Christy Award for First Novel (Evangelical Christian Publishers Association)
2021 Bronze Medalist in Regional Fiction (Independent Publisher Book Awards)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2022 by Rhona Weaver
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Two Oaks Press, Little Rock, Arkansas
www.rhonaweaver.com
Edited and designed by Girl Friday Productions
www.girlfridayproductions.com
Design: Paul Barrett
Project management: Sara Spees Addicott
Editorial production: Jaye Whitney Debber
Cover photos by Bill Temple
ISBN (hardcover): 978-1-7347500-3-4
ISBN (paperback): 978-1-7347500-4-1
ISBN (ebook): 978-1-7347500-5-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022906752
To Bill, the love of my life and my true FBI hero
Chapter One
The bones were stark white. . . . Maybe they aren’t real. The long, slender finger bones were still attached to the delicate metacarpal and carpal bones. They extended only a few inches above the wrist to a jagged break. He remembered just a few of the bones’ names from his single biology class at the University of Arkansas—anatomy hadn’t been one of his big interests. Sweat stung his eyes as he shifted his boots on the hot wooden planks and cocked his head to squint through the drifting steam. The hand looked so much like it belonged on one of those fake plastic skeletons that were ever present in science classes. Maybe it isn’t real, he told himself again.
He and the two park rangers had already taken dozens of photos and measurements of the site. As far as he knew, no one had disturbed the bones since they’d been belched up from Yellowstone’s volcanic depths. Lord only knows how long they’d laid there. He eased his six-foot-three frame into a low crouch, balanced on the balls of his feet, and worked his damp hands into the thick black polypropylene gloves. He resisted the urge to hold his breath as foul-smelling vapor whirled around the eight-foot-wide caldron of muddy goo that lay just beyond him. Blinking the sweat away, he eased the bones back from the edge of the hissing steam vent that was draining into a bubbling pool. He flinched when the vent burped up a glob of thick, whitish mud—it seemed to be protesting the removal of its prize.
No one spoke.
Geez . . . how did this get here? He gently lifted the featherlight bones away from the hot crust, afraid they might disintegrate under his touch, but they didn’t. They were solid and smooth, and frighteningly real. He examined them, turning the remains in his hands, brushing away the pasty muck that was clinging to their underside. The sun made a sudden appearance from behind a cloud bank—something between the skeletal fingers gleamed and sparkled in the bright light.
“It’s a ring. . . . Win, there’s a ring on the third finger. See that?” The ranger poised next to him spoke in a reverent tone.
“Uh-huh.” He slowly turned the hand to reveal a blood-red stone encircled by pale-green gems, glistening against the background of bleached bone and tarnished gold. A woman’s ring on a woman’s hand. Whose ring? Whose hand?
Special Agent Winston Tyler was squatting on wooden boards above chalky-white ground just to the right of a five-foot-tall steam vent and only a few feet from a large sinkhole that was breathing noxious vapor. A fumarole was spitting streams of water ten feet into the air on the other side of the steaming white plain, which measured less than five acres. Vapor rose from fissures and jumbled piles of stone. Dead trees, stripped of their bark, were scattered about the scorched ground at odd angles—frozen in shades of gray and white—monuments to the heat that had killed them. The superheated ground crested on a slight rise where a gaping hole roared every few minutes as it breathed more steam and fumes. He’d heard the rangers call it the Devil’s Breath Spring. An apt name, since the seething thermal landscape had a hellish feel. Tall lodgepole pines stood at the periphery of the chalky ground—silent spectators watching the scene unfold; dark mountains rose on three sides, close and claustrophobic. The turquoise lake a few hundred yards beyond the thermal area was a redeeming quality, Win supposed, but this morning it too was shrouded in swirling steam.
Win cradled the ghost-white bones in his hand as if he were holding an injured bird, aware now that the amateur geologist’s report of human remains at the remote geyser field was sadly accurate. These reports usually turn out to be animal bones or even pranks, the rangers had said. They’re often just false alarms—nothing to find, nothing to investigate. Win blew out a deep breath as jagged emotions fought an internal battle to push away his professional detachment. No hoax today. A woman had died here.
Park Ranger Trey Hechtner was wobbling on another of the thin boards they’d brought along on the helicopter to support their weight on the unstable crust of the thermal site. Both young men were athletic and fit, but the balancing act in the intense heat was no easy feat. The ranger pulled off his dark-green Park Service ball cap and wiped a gray sleeve across his face. Sweat was coursing through his short blond hair, staining his shirt. The 170-degree heat from the ground was permeating both men’s clothes. Win could feel it beginning to seep through the soles of his leather hiking boots. He slowly stood and stepped backward on the boards as he continued to study the lost hand.
In his three years in the Bureau, Win had concentrated on white-collar crime and public corruption. Until very recently he’d never seen a dead person, and he’d never assisted in the retrieval of remains, as the process was formally called. Most anywhere else in the country, he’d be standing on the sidelines while an FBI Evidence Response Team went about this unsavory business. But his field office was in Denver, over seven hundred miles away, and his supervisor hadn’t opted to call out the ERT for an excursion to the middle of nowhere, especially when there was no evidence of a crime. Win found himself in the role of an ERT member, since time was of the essence—there was the very real possibility that the skeletal remains might sink back into the superheated goo.
Win took several steps back toward more stable ground and delicately placed the bones into the plastic evidence bag that Ranger Jimmy Martinez handed him. Everyone flinched when a geyser erupted thirty yards away, spewing water high into the air. Win’s eyes left the bones to watch the sunlight form prisms of red, yellow, blue, and violet within the scalding spray. Beautiful. A fitting farewell from this otherworldly place for the precious package he held.
* * *
The Park Service’s canary-yellow medevac helicopter had its main rotor slowly turning as Win climbed into the rear passenger compartment ten minutes later and buckled himself in. Trey gingerly handed him the evidence bag that contained the bones, grabbing his cap with his other hand to keep the rotor updraft from pulling it away. Win nodded to the ranger and raised his voice over the whine of the copter’s revving engine. “Make another sweep for anything we mighta missed and get with me when you get back to Mammoth. I’ll call this in and hit the missing persons database.” Trey gave him a wave and ducked away from the chopper.
Settling his ball cap and pulling the headset on, Win closed his eyes against the dust and sand kicking up from the rotors’ increasing spin and pulled the side door closed with his free hand. He fought down a brief wave of nausea as the craft pitched sharply upwa rd while his stomach tried to stay at the lower altitude. He hated helicopters.
This wasn’t at all what he’d expected on his first day back at work. The doctor had told him to take it slow and easy for several more days. He doubted a crack-of-dawn chopper ride to a remote geyser field in a far corner of Yellowstone, three hours of tromping around the bubbling, hissing, spewing thermal features in intense heat, and a second bumpy helicopter ride back to the office had been what the neurologist had in mind. He cradled the bag in his lap, leaned against the web seat, and let his mind float back to the previous days—days that had changed his life and his soul, forever. He hadn’t come to grips with all of it yet, nowhere near. Instead he’d focused his energy on physically healing. He figured that needed to come first. The weightier things of the soul could wait just a bit until he pulled the rest of himself back together.
The firefight that had nearly claimed his life had been fourteen days ago. Touch and go—he’d heard that over and over after he awoke from a three-day induced coma. It had been touch and go. By the grace of God, for him it had been a go. Not so for several others.
They’d kept him in the Med Center in Idaho Falls for over a week; he’d been back in his rented house in Mammoth Hot Springs since last Tuesday night. His mother had insisted on staying with him after his father flew home to Arkansas. He might be nearly thirty, but he knew better than to argue when the head of the Tyler clan announced she’d stay until he got back on his feet. And during those first few days of fighting the headaches, nausea, and pain, he’d been content to let her care for him.
He’d spent parts of those days sitting on the stone house’s front porch, watching the tourists traipse up and down the boardwalks of Mammoth Hot Springs’ Lower Terraces, which lay just beyond his yard. By the third day home, he’d begun walking at daybreak; just a hundred yards at first, now he was up to a mile. He’d consumed enough of his mother’s Southern cooking to regain most of the weight he’d lost during the ordeal. He’d gone through countless phone messages, notes, and cards from friends and well-wishers . . . nice to know so many people cared that he’d nearly died.
The gun battle and its aftermath had made the national news several nights in a row, and he’d been hailed as a hero. A hero. He didn’t feel like a hero; he didn’t know how he felt. During those infrequent times when he’d allowed his emotions to seep to the top, he’d felt an odd mixture of gratitude, sadness, elation, and anger. He’d thought he would come through the ordeal closer to God—deeper in his faith. But he hadn’t. Not yet, anyway. He wasn’t wise enough at twenty-eight to understand why.
He’d come back to Yellowstone to a crisis that hadn’t ended. Four of the domestic terrorists, as they were being called, had slipped away and disappeared into the park’s vast wilderness. The mastermind of the debacle, Prophet Daniel Shepherd, had escaped with roughly two million dollars’ worth of diamonds; there wasn’t even a lead on his whereabouts. Win’s life had been in the balance more than once in his dealing with Shepherd—no one could assure him that the danger had passed.
No, it wasn’t over yet. But it hadn’t been his concern for the last two weeks. Others were handling the False Prophet case, as they called it. Colleagues from the Denver Field Office were collecting evidence, executing search warrants, interviewing witnesses, and testifying before grand juries. The process of investigating and preparing for prosecution ground on—he hadn’t been asked to assist.
He was also on the outside looking in while the Bureau rotated units of its elite Hostage Rescue Team and countless SWAT teams into the deep forests of Yellowstone in pursuit of the four fugitives. A restricted zone had been established over a vast area west of Mammoth, including the northwest quarter of the park and parts of two national forests. Checkpoints were manned, trails and roads were closed, law enforcement activity was intense. And it was all happening without him. He wasn’t accustomed to being sidelined—it wasn’t in his nature to sit on the bench.
Wes Givens, one of the Denver Field Office’s Assistant Special Agents in Charge, or ASACs, had given Win his marching orders over the phone before he’d left the hospital. “Ease back into work, Win; no need to jump into the thick of things. Deb Miller is handling the False Prophet case, and it’s only a matter of time until we bring in those four remaining fugitives. There’s no intel that Daniel Shepherd is still an active threat to you, but don’t completely let your guard down. Take some time off, Win. Let yourself heal.”
But the ASAC knew the workload in Yellowstone, apart from the terrorism case, was nearly nonexistent. He’d offered Win some hope. “We’re trying to get you transferred to Denver. In the meantime, Ken Murray said you could handle some background work on several old missing persons files—interviews with witnesses, rangers, and local law enforcement folks who originally worked those incidents. It’s a good time to clear that backlog.” Mr. Givens had wrapped up the call on an upbeat note: “You’re in line for a commendation from the Director, Win. You’ve made the office proud, so ease back in.”
Win’s mind snapped back to the present as the helicopter banked and dropped for its approach into the park’s headquarters at Mammoth Hot Springs. His stomach fought to stay at the higher altitude; he clenched his jaw and stared out the window to stymie the queasiness. His motion sickness was temporarily forgotten as the chopper flew over the tall steel bridge above the Gardner River and made its final approach. Seeing Mammoth from the air was mesmerizing. There was such a sharp contrast between the vintage vibe of the Historic District, with its sandstone-and-frame structures surrounded by bands of shady trees, and the modern crush of hundreds of cars, RVs, and buses clogging the highways and parking areas. In a sense, Mammoth felt just as otherworldly as the geyser field he’d just left.
Mammoth sat on a plateau in the northernmost part of a park nearly the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined. The location had been the park’s headquarters since the horse-soldier days of the 1880s, when the U.S. Cavalry wrestled the world’s first national park away from the profiteers who were rapidly destroying its features. While the structures within the Fort Yellowstone National Historic District maintained their original look, the landscape had changed since the early 1900s. The cavalrymen’s wives hadn’t approved of the fort’s sterile terrain of sagebrush and stunted pines. They’d planted dozens of hardwoods and evergreens on the mostly barren plateau and piped in water to nurture the trees and to green their yards. The result was an oasis-like setting for Yellowstone’s old buildings.
When Win had arrived here in early April, it was still winter by park standards—the community was barely shaking off its long hibernation. The town ballooned in size from fewer than three hundred permanent residents to several thousand with the influx of seasonal park workers and tourists during the brief summer season from late May until mid-September. The bustling activity below him was evidence that peak tourist season was fast approaching.
The pilot made a sweeping turn that provided a view of the area’s namesake white terraces and hot springs. The steaming water cascaded down a mountainside in alternating pools and terraces for hundreds of feet before nosing up to the parking lots and the Grand Loop Road just southwest of Win’s stone house. The terraces were gleaming white, orange, and gold, and although earthquakes had sharply diminished the thermal activity of the hot springs over the years, they were still an amazing attraction.
The helicopter rocked back on its skids and settled onto the temporary landing pad that the FBI had installed weeks ago. Win waved to the pilots and walked several yards to a large stone building that once served as a cavalry barracks and was now used by the Park Service as their fire and rescue center. For the last two weeks it had become the tactical operations center, or TOC, for the continued search for the four fugitives—it was bustling with activity at all hours of the day and night.
The FBI Hostage Rescue Team operator guarding the entrance was outfitted in full tactical garb; his black MP5/10 was swung in a ready harness across his armored chest. Win flashed his credentials as he spoke a greeting. He got barely a nod in response. Win felt the tension when he entered the large staging room. Three analysts from the Bureau’s Critical Incident Response Group were poring over live drone footage being fed to them from above. The two twenty-seven-foot Predator drones, on loan from the military, were being flown from a small airport outside of Livingston, Montana, sixty miles away. Someone on the far side of the room was calling out for a tech guy, loudly griping that he was losing his drone feed. Logistics and communications at the remote park were difficult, and the droves of tourists made efforts at subject containment almost impossible. It wasn’t an ideal situation.
