by Stephen Frey
Jack marveled at Troy’s sense of direction, too. The stone wall they were approaching had to be the cemetery’s perimeter. He’d led them straight here from the SUV without checking his bearings once. Granted, the moon was casting a decent light down through the leaves, but still. The trees in this forest were densely packed. Doing what Troy had just done in the daylight would have been extraordinary. Doing it at night was off the hook.
Troy had that bloodhound gift. He could smell his target from miles away even when that target was emitting no scent.
Jack leaned over beside a tree and put his hands on his knees to catch his breath when Troy reached out to stop him. They were still thirty feet from the cemetery wall.
“Stay here,” Troy whispered. “I’ll be right back.”
Jack took a few more deep but quiet breaths, then pulled the pistol from his belt and glanced around through the shadows. It was eerily quiet out here. There wasn’t a wisp of a breeze or a call from the wild—mammal, bird, or insect.
“Come up,” Troy called quietly.
Jack cringed as he moved. His footsteps on last year’s dead, dry leaves seemed so loud. “See anything?” he asked as he reached Troy, who was hunched down behind the three-foot wall.
“There’s a van in the parking lot.” Troy gestured across the cemetery, which was half the size of a football field. “It’s the only vehicle over there. See it?”
As Jack rose up slightly and squinted, he spotted the top of the vehicle through the night. “Barely, but I don’t see anyone around it.”
“Maybe someone’s behind it. I doubt L.J. or Karen are in it. It could just be a decoy. Still, that’s where they told Jennie to have us meet them.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Split up,” Troy answered, dropping a medium-sized canvas bag on the ground.
They’d bought it at a Walmart on the way there. Inside it were several reams of paper. It had to at least look like they were carrying cash.
“I go first. I’m gonna cut through the tombstones, so they can see me if they’re watching. I’m gonna try and make them think I’m the only game in town. When I get halfway across, you start moving around the outside of the wall. I don’t know how much Jennie told them about us before tonight. But on the call I listened to, she only mentioned one of us, like I told her to.” He pointed right. “Go that way around the wall so I’ll know about where you are. Keep your gun in your right hand and your phone in your left.” Troy gestured down at Jack’s pocket. “Put it on vibrate only.”
“It already is,” Jack said, pulling the device out.
“All right, go all the way around to the opposite wall, the one that parallels this one. Wait for me there to text or call before you do anything.”
“Maybe we should call the cops, Troy.”
“No.”
“Troy—”
“No.”
“You can’t put Red Cell Seven ahead of Karen and L.J.”
“I would never do that.”
Jack wasn’t so sure. “Well, then—”
“Are we clear?” Troy asked.
“Yeah, we’re clear all right.”
Whether or not he called 911 would be a second-to-second decision. He was going to trust himself on that one and no one else, including Troy. If a shootout exploded, they might need help.
Troy tapped Jack’s pistol. “You ready to shoot that thing?”
“Hey, don’t—”
“I’m serious,” Troy cut in, grabbing Jack by the chin and pulling it so they were staring straight into each other’s eyes. “Are you ready this time?”
Jack glared back at Troy. “I’m ready.”
Troy nodded and gave Jack a firm pat on the shoulder. “Remember, start moving when I’m halfway across the cemetery. Keep low behind the wall, and keep checking your phone.”
And then Troy was gone, up and over the wall and moving in among the tombstones toward the far side of the cemetery, carrying the heavy canvas bag.
Eyes just above the top of the wall, Jack waited until Troy’s shadow was halfway across. Then he took off, hunched down so he wouldn’t be exposed above the wall, and keeping his eyes peeled for any sign of trouble ahead.
When he reached the first corner, he hesitated and rose up. But Troy had disappeared into the darkness. The moon had slipped behind a cloudbank.
Thirty seconds later he reached the next corner, and he peered around it cautiously. Still no one around the van he could see, and no sound of a motor idling. Still no call or message from Troy, either.
Finally, his phone vibrated, and he pulled up the new text immediately. Troy had made it to the far wall and was ready to jump over and approach the van. Jack was to go over the wall now so that he was inside the cemetery, then move along the wall until they saw each other, where he was to hold until Troy went over. Then he was to rise up as well and cover Troy as Troy headed for the van, which was in the parking lot about thirty feet outside the cemetery.
Jack pinged back a quick “ok,” slipped the phone into his pocket, then climbed the wall and eased down into the cemetery.
Now he was inside the wall closest to the van. Hunched down, he ran thirty yards, past a row of tombstones, until he spotted Troy, who was also crouched down against the inside of the wall. There, he stopped and gestured.
Troy gestured back, then pointed at the wall and motioned, indicating that he was going over it and toward the van. And that Jack should cover him.
As Troy rose up and scaled the wall, Jack stood up, too, and aimed the Glock at the van. There was still no one around it that he could see.
Troy dropped the canvas bag at the edge of the parking lot, and then moved cautiously toward the van, which was another twenty feet ahead of him.
“Careful,” Jack whispered to himself. His heart was beating so hard, the same way it had as they’d sprinted down that slope for the back of the pickup at the Griffin farm, and in the seconds before Wayne and the other guy had raced back out of the house. “Careful, brother.”
“A MILLION dollars,” Kyle said quietly but firmly into his phone as he stood beside Ray’s Explorer in the middle of the forest. “And I want that million wired to the same account I had you use before, and I want it wired immediately.”
Kyle and Ray had parked on an old logging road that wound its way through the woods outside Creighton, the town where he and Ray had grown up together. As kids, they’d played war in this forest with the rest of the gang, using BB guns for weapons. Anyone unfamiliar with these woods would get lost in here very quickly, but they knew it like the backs of their hands.
At this point in its roundabout travels through the forest, the logging road passed within fifty yards of the Glen Haven Memorial Park. But the best part about its path was its unmarked status. Kyle had checked on all the Internet map applications he could find, and this dirt road didn’t show up anywhere.
The woman who was tied up in the back of the Explorer moaned from beneath her gag, and he hissed for her to be quiet as he held his hand over the phone, threatening her with death for the tenth time this evening if she didn’t shut up. The little boy was inside the van in the parking lot, and Ray was waiting at the back of the van for the father of the little boy and the husband of the woman in the Explorer.
Kyle had night-vision glasses from his time as a Marine in Iraq, and as he spoke on the phone, he could see Ray waiting behind the van in the darkness, smoking a cigarette.
Ray had smoked like a chimney since they were thirteen, when he’d stolen a full pack of his mother’s Marlboros, smoked all of them in one day, and gotten violently ill. Ray was weak in certain ways—he needed those cigarettes badly in times like these—but that was okay. His dependencies made him easier to manipulate. That was why Ray was standing by the van—and not him. So if this went wrong, Ray was going down—not him.
; “That’s what I want for all my extra time, the risk, and my immeasurable patience,” Kyle said, “a million dollars. You hear me?”
“You’re out of your damn mind,” Sterling snapped through the phone. “I’ve had enough of this. Forget it. Don’t make the deliveries. Keep them, you son of a bitch.”
Kyle was quite prepared for the bluff. He’d done his research. “I know who they are. I know who their father is, or was, depending on who you believe. And I know they’ll pay me if you won’t.” He gritted his teeth. “But let me tell you something. If you don’t pay me, I’ll tell the cops who you are and what you’re planning.”
“You have no idea who I really am,” Sterling retorted, “or what I’m planning.”
“Do you really want to take that chance, Mr. Aussie?” Kyle grinned as he glassed Ray again. He sensed fury at the other end of the line, and he loved it. “I don’t think so, pal.” He loved getting in someone’s grill like this. He always had, ever since he was a kid. “You didn’t think I’d fly into this hurricane blind, did you, Mr. Aussie?”
“I don’t care what you—”
“Send the money,” Kyle ordered when he spotted a shadow coming over the cemetery wall. “And send it right now.”
Kyle dropped the phone and grabbed the hunting rifle leaning against the Explorer.
“Here we go,” he whispered. “Here we fucking go.”
“WHERE’S MY son?” Troy demanded as he edged toward the man standing at the back of the van, smoking a cigarette. He made certain to stay wide of the vehicle so Jack could see him from behind the wall. And wide of the man so the man couldn’t make a sudden wild rush at him. “Tell me now.”
“First,” Ray answered, “you need to understand that you’re being tracked by five Marine sharpshooters who are positioned all around you in the woods, and they have—”
“Bullshit.”
There was one more guy involved in this thing right here right now, Troy figured. Maybe two, but that was it. Nobody would involve six people in one phase of a kidnapping. It was hard enough keeping things on the QT with just two people in on the deal.
Besides, the dollars made no sense for six people. They’d been ordered to bring two hundred thousand bucks in ransom. Split six ways, two hundred grand wasn’t that much, not for the crime being committed. For the same risk of punishment, it would have been much more profitable to knock over a bank.
Even more telling, the dollars didn’t split evenly. It didn’t split evenly three ways, either, which, most likely, meant it was this guy and one other, and that was it.
“Damn it, where’s my son?”
“Is the money in that bag you dropped over there?” Ray asked, pointing with the cigarette.
“Yeah, but I want to see my son first. You take one step toward that bag and I’ll shoot you down. Now, where is he?”
“In the van.”
“What about the woman?”
Ray shook his head. “We got her behind the lines. We let her go later, after we got the money.”
“No deal. I want her here immediately, or you don’t get that bag. That’s not negotiable.”
“You aren’t calling the shots, pal. We are.”
“I’ll shoot you dead on the count of zero if you don’t yell to or call whoever has Karen and tell them to get her up here right now,” Troy threatened, aiming his pistol at the man’s chest. “Five, four—”
“I don’t think so,” Ray cut in, flicking the butt of his still-burning cigarette out and to the right. “I think we’re in charge, and you’re about to find that out.”
The moment the cigarette hit the ground, a rifle shot split the night, and the van’s passenger window shattered.
Despite the gag stuffed down his tiny throat, Little Jack began screaming from inside the van.
A thrill coursed through Troy’s chest. The man standing before him had been telling the truth about at least one thing. L.J. was only a few feet away.
“HERE I come!” Jack yelled as he jumped the cemetery wall and sprinted past the canvas bag.
“Bring it on, brother,” Troy called as he raced at Ray and hurled the kidnapper against the van before the man could turn and run.
Another rifle shot cracked the night and slammed into the side of the van just beside Troy and Ray as they struggled.
“Go to the other side of the van, Jack!” Troy shouted as he grabbed Ray by the shirt collar and pulled him roughly around the back to the driver’s side. “Go to the driver’s side!”
Jack veered right, dashed past the front of the van, and met Troy on the driver’s side just as Troy slammed Ray against the vehicle again. “Who’s paying you?” Troy demanded as he shoved the barrel of the pistol into the kidnapper’s mouth. “Who is it?”
“Where’s Karen?” Jack shouted, hurling open the driver’s door and climbing in. Little Jack lay in the middle seat, hog-tied and screaming through the gag. Jack scrambled over the console and scoured the backseat and floor of the vehicle, but didn’t find Karen. “She’s not in here, Troy.” He wanted to comfort L.J., but there wasn’t time. As gently as he could, he pulled L.J. to the floor, where he’d be safer from gunfire, then hustled for the front of the vehicle. There hadn’t been time to untie the boy, and it was probably better not to, anyway. He might try to run from the van, and then he’d become a potential target for whoever was firing away outside. “I’m coming back out!”
As Jack yelled, Troy withdrew the pistol from Ray’s mouth, pressed it to the side of the man’s head, and fired into the air as Jack jumped back out of the van.
“Cover us,” Troy ordered as Ray began screaming. The shot fired directly beside his head had him screaming for mercy. But his screams were cut short when Troy jammed the barrel of the pistol back into his mouth. “We cut off the bastard’s line of sight by coming to this side of the van,” Troy explained, gesturing over his right shoulder, “but it won’t buy us much time. Listen for someone running through the woods from the left. Watch for someone coming out of the woods at us and trying to get to the other side of the van. You see anything, you empty that clip at him. You kill him! If it’s more than one person, shout.”
“Find out about Karen!”
“Cover us!” Troy yelled back, refocusing on Ray. “Who had you take the boy and the woman? Who was it?”
Jack darted to the back of the driver’s side, half listening to Troy interrogate behind him, half listening for footsteps in the dark woods in front of him, adrenaline pumping through his system wildly as the chaos continued. “I hear something,” Jack called over his shoulder as someone raced across the leaves out in front of him. “He’s coming from the left.”
“Get back here, Jack,” Troy yelled, pulling Ray around to the front of the van. “Get back here. Now!”
Jack obeyed his brother and bolted for the front of the van. Just as he turned the corner, another rifle shot blasted the night. The bullet blew past the van and caromed off the cemetery wall, pinging wickedly as it ricocheted off the stones and up into the air.
“Who was it?” Troy demanded again, this time pressing the barrel directly to Ray’s forehead. “I swear I’ll kill you if you don’t tell me.”
“Some Australian guy,” Ray babbled breathlessly. “He’s holed up in West Virginia, in some town called Harpers Ferry, I think. He’s got a lot of badass people with him. That’s what Kyle said.”
“Who’s Kyle?”
“My partner.”
“What’s the Australian’s angle in all this?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know. We were just supposed to deliver the boy and the woman. I swear I don’t know anymore than—”
“He’s moving again!” Jack yelled. Footsteps were crashing through the woods from the left. In a few seconds the person out there was going to have another shot at them.
“What’s the big picture?” Troy
demanded again, hauling the kidnapper to the passenger side. “What’s the Australian doing?”
“I don’t know, I swear.”
Another bullet blasted past Jack just as he darted around the front right corner of the van to the passenger side. “Ask him where Karen is. Damn it, Troy, come on!”
“What’s going on in Harpers Ferry?” Troy hissed, ignoring Jack. “Tell me!”
The next bullet from the woods shattered the driver’s side window.
“Jesus Christ,” Jack muttered as he ducked instinctively. “We’re gonna get killed out here.”
Turning the tables on the shooter in the woods suddenly seemed like the best option—the only option. So he sprinted along the passenger side of the van, away from the cemetery and toward the woods.
Jack broke from behind the van, running as fast as he could, expecting at any moment to take a bullet for the second time today before he reached the tree line, which was thirty yards in front of him. If he could reach the trees, he just might have a chance to take the shooter down from close range.
He dove the last few yards into the woods, tumbled head over heels once, scrambled to his knees, crawled behind the trunk of a large elm, and gazed up the tree line toward the general area where the last bullet had exploded from. The moon had reappeared from behind the clouds, and now he had a decent view of the open ground between the van and the forest. If anyone ran for the van he’d see him.
Above the sounds of Troy yelling at the kidnapper, footsteps crashing across dead leaves reached Jack’s ears. They were off to the left, deeper in the woods, slowly receding.
Jack headed deeper into the forest, dodging tree trunks as they loomed in front of him. He made his way along quickly but warily, both hands clasped tightly around the Glock’s handle as the gun’s barrel led him through the forest. Even as he was whipped in the face by the low branches of smaller trees, he kept track of the other person’s progress, intensely focused on all sights and sounds. Praying the entire time that only one other person was out here, because if there was a third enemy in this battle, he could be walking straight into an ambush.