Breaking Point

or around town.
    Then he recalled the layout and details of the two-acre lot. The Kubota tractor. The plot of dug-up ground where the agents were found. The surrounding homes in the trees of the subdivision. The shot-up target Butch had used to sight in his rifles and blow off steam.
    That’s when Joe thought the unthinkable. A thread tied together what he knew.
    And he didn’t like it one bit.
    —
    H E WAS JOLTED out of his dark theorizing when he heard the cracking of branches directly in front of him. Toby’s ears pricked up, and Joe could feel the horse tense between his legs. Something was coming up the game trail fast and hard in the dark, and it was not concerned with stealth.
    He strained forward in the saddle, squinting in hope of seeing better through the gloom. His headlamp wouldn’t throw light far enough into the trees to see anything yet.
    Behind him, one of the agents lost control of his horse when the mount started crow-hopping and the man fell heavily to the ground with a shout.
    The sound of twigs and dry branches breaking rose in volume, and a small constellation of glowing blue lights like manic fireflies filled the trees. They were eyes reflecting back from his headlamp.
    Elk—cows and calves and spikes and bulls—were suddenly pouring up through the forest. Heavy antlers of the bulls, still in velvet, thunked tree trunks with the sound of muffled baseball bats. Joe watched the herd draw close and part around him like a river coursing around an island, only to rejoin farther up the mountain.
    “Easy, easy, easy,”
Joe cooed to Toby, whose muscles were taut with tension.
“Easy, easy, easy . . .”
as the huge herd poured around them and kept going.
    Behind him, the agents were having their own private rodeo. Their horses bolted, and soon there were more men on the ground than in the saddle. Underwood’s horse reared, but somehow he stayed on.
    When the elk were gone, leaving the air heavy with their musky smell, Joe was still mounted. Agents moaned and cursed and writhed in the grass, and two of the horses ran behind the herd of elk in a panic, their stirrups flapping and striking their flanks as if to goad them on.
    “Jesus Christ!” Underwood hollered. “What in the hell just happened?”
    “Elk,” Joe said calmly.
    “I know that! But what made them charge into us like that? We’ve lost most of our horses, and I’ve got injured agents on the ground.”
    “Something spooked them,” Joe said, turning in his saddle to look west, the direction the elk had come.
    There was a slight rose-colored tint to the sky that threw him off. Not only was the sun rising in the wrong direction, he thought, it was coming up an hour too early.
    Then he smelled the smoke.
    —
    “A RE YOU TRYING to get us killed?” Underwood yelled into the satellite handset to Juan Julio Batista. “Why didn’t you fucking tell us the forest was on fire?”
    Joe was still mounted, and he listened while leaning forward in his saddle with his arms crossed over the pommel. The agents who still had horses held them by the reins. The two without horses just stood there. One man said he thought his arm was broken and another said he couldn’t walk because of a sprained ankle.
    “I don’t care,” Underwood bellowed at Batista. “This isn’t worth it. We might burn to death if we stay here, and I won’t waste the lives of these men. You need to send an evacuation chopper
now
. We’ll figure out where it can land and how to get to it.”
    The agents were nodding and urging Underwood on.
    “I don’t care if your ass is on the line,”
Underwood shouted. “We’re not going to fry up here for you or anybody else.”
    Underwood punched off, furious. He said, “The missile started the forest on fire, and it’s already out of control. The fire is spreading out to the east, north, and south.”
    “We’re east,” one of the agents said.
    “Not for fucking long,” Underwood said. “Those elk had the right idea. We’re evacuating. We’re going to go right back up that trail where we came from until we can get above the tree line. I’m hoping they’ll send a chopper to get us out of here before the whole fucking mountain goes up.”
    “How fast is the fire moving?” someone asked.
    “Fast,” Underwood said, and Joe noted the real panic in his voice.
    “What about those of us who don’t have horses?” an agent asked.
    Underwood extended his hand and let the agent double up on the back of his