Killer Summer (38 page)
Authors: Ridley Pearson
83
T
he cowboy moved with a speed and agility that stunned Kevin. In the past few minutes, John had been transformed, as if by donning combat boots and slinging a rifle over his shoulder he’d dropped thirty years. He was a dog trailing a scent—a junkyard dog at that. Kevin struggled to keep up.
he cowboy moved with a speed and agility that stunned Kevin. In the past few minutes, John had been transformed, as if by donning combat boots and slinging a rifle over his shoulder he’d dropped thirty years. He was a dog trailing a scent—a junkyard dog at that. Kevin struggled to keep up.
“Wait up!” Kevin called out.
“You fall behind, you stay behind,” John called back to him, his missing teeth causing a lisp that might have been comical had the reason behind it not been so chilling.
Kevin got it, then: it was personal. The cowboy wasn’t doing this for Summer, he was doing it for himself.
They ran for forty-five minutes nonstop, reaching the second zip line and crossing back over the river, without John ever saying a thing, as if words cost energy. They left the faint trail, forsaking the easier terrain for a cross-country route.
John knew where he was going. And he had a clock ticking in his head: he was constantly checking his watch.
He was going to ambush the hijackers.
Twenty minutes later, over an hour since they’d crossed the first zip line, John finally stopped running. He wasn’t even breathing hard, though his shirt was soaked through with sweat. He offered Kevin some water, and Kevin drank eagerly.
The cowboy reminded Kevin of old westerns the way he checked the position of the sun in the sky. Then he led Kevin out of the forest to the top of a pillar of rocks white with bird droppings. They were twenty feet above a rarely used trail bordering a marsh full of knee-high bog star. Beyond was a forest, charred lifeless, the trunks of fir and lodgepole pine standing sentinel, a hundred thousand wit nesses to the destructive power of wildfire. The deadness, the blackened bark, made it feel like a graveyard.
Nothing good will ever come of this place,
Kevin thought.
Kevin thought.
The cowboy used binoculars to scout the trail below and to their left.
“No tracks . . . we beat them,” he said proudly, his lisp distracting.
“How do you know they’ll come this way?”
“It’s the trail to Morgan Creek, what there is of it. These guys want the quickest way out. The trouble with having a plan is, you usually stick to it.”
“And what’s
your
plan?” Kevin asked, unable to contain his concern. “You can’t just shoot them.”
your
plan?” Kevin asked, unable to contain his concern. “You can’t just shoot them.”
“You think I’m going to negotiate?”
“In cold blood?”
“Their blood’s the same temperature as yours and mine. That’s the choice that has to be made.”
“But Summer!”
“Same temperature as hers too.”
Despite the rising sun, the light breeze ran cold, and Kevin shivered.
“She comes first,” he said. “We don’t do anything until she’s safe.”
“You can’t put the cart before the horse, son.”
“She comes first.”
“You listen to me. They have no use for us. And we’ve seen their faces. We know their names. We’re expendable to them, and that’ll soon include the girl. Right now, she’s valuable to them, but it won’t last. We want to focus on what they’ll do to her
before
they kill her.”
before
they kill her.”
“They won’t kill her.”
“Of course they will.”
“Then why didn’t they kill us? Why put us onto the river?”
“We’re going to get one chance here,” John said, not answering Kevin, not wanting to hear him. “You’d better bone up, son. I need you . . . Summer needs you. You go thinking there’s some other way out of this and you’ll do this half-assed, and that’s unacceptable. Where’d all the John Wayne in you go?”
“Who?”
“Oh, Christ.” John surveyed the route again. “You know anything about human nature?”
“I suppose . . .”
“We go taking potshots at them, what’s the first thing they’re going to do?”
“Shoot back?”
“What’s the second thing?”
“Seek cover?”
“You said earlier you’re a policeman’s son?”
“My uncle’s the sheriff.”
“You see? It’s rubbed off. Yes, seek cover. And if somebody is throwing shots from up here, then what?”
“Down there, I suppose . . . in the rocks.”
The cowboy studied the boy’s face.
“Have you figured it out yet . . . how we’re going to do this?”
“I can’t shoot anybody. I mean, maybe I could, but I don’t know for sure.”
The cowboy’s expression revealed his missing teeth.
“I told you before, it’s not coming down to you.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
“The over-under’s only good at close range, and it’s doubtful these guys are good enough to make the handgun count. Besides, if they go for their guns, they can’t be holding the girl. Intelligence and preparation wins here.”
“You want me to be your scout, is that it? I can do that.”
“No. The intelligence part is this: that shotgun is loaded with bird shot, but they don’t know that. It’ll sting like a mother, could even blind a person, I suppose. But it’s not going to kill anybody, and it’s certainly not going to kill me.”
“What’s
that
supposed to mean?” Kevin said, sizing up the cowboy. “You’re not planning on getting yourself shot.”
that
supposed to mean?” Kevin said, sizing up the cowboy. “You’re not planning on getting yourself shot.”
“This kind of thing . . . You can’t plan what’s going to happen.”
84
D
eputy Stratum did not prevent Fiona from entering the interview room as Fiona had expected she would. Positioning herself behind the video camera, Fiona decided to record the second interview as a pretense for being in the room. She wasn’t going to miss this.
eputy Stratum did not prevent Fiona from entering the interview room as Fiona had expected she would. Positioning herself behind the video camera, Fiona decided to record the second interview as a pretense for being in the room. She wasn’t going to miss this.
Teddy Sumner had aged in the past hour. Bags had formed under his eyes—the man had been crying—and a gray pallor had replaced the tanning-bed bronze. He reminded her of a piece of fruit ripened too long and left on the countertop.
She didn’t want to feel sorry for him, didn’t understand how she could. But his remorse had a contagious quality: it begged to be shared, as if others’ pity might lighten his load.
“The insurance company received a call,” Stratum told him.
“And . . . ?”
“They gave them forty-eight hours to make a wire transfer of eight million dollars to a bank account—”
“In Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.” Sumner nodded. “Well, at least they’re sticking with the plan.”
“Not exactly,” Stratum said. “At least, not the plan you detailed for us. You were right about the GPS coordinates. If the money arrives on time, the coordinates will be sent. But there was mention of ‘a package.’ ” Stratum drew quotation marks in the air. “They said it will be returned when the deposit is confirmed.”
“Summer.” It came out as a moan. “Oh . . . dear . . . God . . .”
“Can you reach him . . . Cantell?”
“I tried before, remember? He didn’t pick up.”
“We’d like you to try again.”
“I’ll do anything, of course. But I don’t see what good—”
“If he answers the satellite phone, we’ll get a GPS fix,” Stratum explained.
Sumner’s sagging head snapped to attention. His eyes widened with hope.
“Where’s the phone?” he asked.
“It has to be yours,” she said, “in case of caller ID.” She slid his BlackBerry across to him. “We’d like it on speakerphone, please. Take the position that the ransom call has come in and you’ve been told it’s going to be paid.”
Sumner held the BlackBerry in his hand, briefly looking at it as if he’d never seen it before.
“God, what a mess,” he mumbled.
He looked up a number on the device.
“This wasn’t part of the agreement . . . a call from me. The idea was, no contact.”
“You’re concerned about your daughter, plans have changed. Be strong with him. Remind him you’re holding a card nearly as strong as his. If you turn yourself in to the police, there’ll be no money.”
“But why would I do that? That puts Summer in the middle.”
“She’s already in the middle. If you can negotiate her release ahead of the ransom, maybe they’ll take it. It’s all we’ve got.”
In Fiona’s opinion, Sumner wasn’t up to it.
But he punched in the number and hit the green button.
85
F
irst came a radio call from his father. He’d located the camouflaged Learjet, ignored Walt, and entered the lodge without backup, and found evidence of a fight, some wet clothes, and no people. A radio had been destroyed, and there were signs that a room and a closet had been sealed up.
irst came a radio call from his father. He’d located the camouflaged Learjet, ignored Walt, and entered the lodge without backup, and found evidence of a fight, some wet clothes, and no people. A radio had been destroyed, and there were signs that a room and a closet had been sealed up.
“Given that we found only two sets of prints at the zip line,” Jerry said, “they must have split up. That means they went with the river, as far as I can tell, but I’ll scout the woods.”
“You were going to wait for backup, Dad.”
There, he said it.
“Woulda, coulda, shoulda . . . he’s my grandson.”
Jerry ended the call.
Within minutes, Walt’s phone interrupted his chasing scuffs through the pine straw.
The call was the second from the office in the past fifteen minutes, this time rehashing Sumner’s contact with Cantell, a conversation that had gone poorly but which netted them Cantell’s lat/long coordinates, putting him less than a mile due west and moving in the same direction as Walt, south-southeast. Summer clearly was part of the ransom package. Cantell hadn’t budged from his demands.
Walt marked Cantell’s position on the map, being no pro when it came to the handheld GPS in his backpack, and determined he had a fighting chance of intercepting the hijackers. Cantell’s refusal to negotiate with the girl’s father, his original partner in the Learjet theft, sent up a flare. There would be no negotiating ever.
The position on the map seemed to imply that their destination was Morgan Creek Ranch as Walt had guessed. The Middle Fork ranches were all accessible by plane, and with the ranches being open during the summer, there likely was a plane on the property.
Given the remote location, the plan no doubt was to scout Morgan Creek Ranch and then escape by plane.
He couldn’t rule out the possibility that they might try to cross the river at the next zip line, in which case he was being handed an ideal setup for an ambush. But, then, why hadn’t more of them used the zip Kevin had?
The contradiction confused him. A possible explanation was that Cantell had split up his team and hostages to circumvent capture. Two different teams, each with a hostage, each with a different route out.
Was that it? Or was Kevin being lured to his grave in the woods.
The only solution was to keep following the tracks. Kevin’s rescue came first. Sumner’s daughter’s would have to wait.
Walt radioed Brandon, got his location.
“You left a dirt trail half a mile back,” Walt said, consulting the map.
“Affirmative.”
“Turn around and find that trail again. Follow it east to Morgan Creek Ranch. Cross the river however you can. Incapacitate any aircraft or ATVs, then evacuate the ranch. If there are any horses, take them.”
“Copy.”
“If you’ve got time, change into civvies and head out on horseback, north-northeast. Maybe there’s a trail you can pick up. You want to make a line for Mitchum’s.”
“Got it.”
“If you make contact, play dumb, and do your level best to stall them. Kevin will recognize you, so signal him if possible. Buy me some time to come up behind them, but don’t overplay your hand.”
“I’m with you.”
“If we have to hit them—and likely we will—then we’re going to hit them hard. You’ll have to turn off and hide your radio once you are on the trail, so this is our last contact. Hopefully, I’ll see you on the trail somewhere. If not, we go back on air in two hours.”
When Walt popped out of the forest, he was looking at another old zip line. The tracks led to the edge of the gorge, and the wobbly-looking chair on the far side was empty.
Walt glanced down at the roiling water some fifty feet below. Pulling on the rope, he moved the chair toward him.
86
T
he morning sun was beginning to bake as Kevin lay back in a crevice in the rock. With only the most minimal of movement, he lifted the binoculars for the umpteenth time and surveyed the lightly trod trail.
he morning sun was beginning to bake as Kevin lay back in a crevice in the rock. With only the most minimal of movement, he lifted the binoculars for the umpteenth time and surveyed the lightly trod trail.
There!
Sounds of the forest came from behind Kevin: pine boughs sighing, magpies cawing, obnoxious squirrels chattering—all underscored by the river’s timeless advance. As the birds’ whitewash coating of the rocks warmed in the sun, stench surrounded him, overpowering the sweet smell of sage nearby and even the bitter trail dust at the back of his throat. All around, insects alighted, wings abuzz. Up ahead, blackbirds darted in and out of the boggy marsh across the trail, the red chevron on their wings a designation of rank.
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