Killer Summer (Walt Fleming)

by Ridley Pearson

  The two opposing forces of the eddy, one upstream, one downstream, met at the Widow Maker, now only yards away. Kevin had started them out by swimming for shore. Only now did he see his mistake.

  “You’ve got to work with it, not against it. Understand?” the cowboy had told him.

  Kevin lurched back, kicking wildly away from shore.

  “What the hell?” asked the cowboy.

  “It was your idea!”

  “Shore!” John called out.

  “No! Hold on!”

  Kevin pulled at the water with his one free hand and kicked his weary legs as hard as he could. Finally, the cowboy feebly contributed to the effort. Together, they managed to move to the left of the rock wall as the powerful push of the river drew them ever closer to it.

  “We’re going to hit,” Kevin said. “Hold your breath!”

  He felt the ferocious tug, the phenomenal power, of the current. It was as if they were being sucked down a drain. They were fully immersed in a wild, boiling froth.

  Kevin’s lungs burned, his chest felt like it might burst. Then he felt the change: the current was no longer pushing them downstream but was briefly neutral. For the moment, they didn’t have to fight it, they could rest.

  And then, while fully submerged, as if snagged by a hook, they were wrenched farther to their left, and jettisoned upriver. Their heads surfaced and they gasped for air.

  Kevin continued to swim hard. The cowboy kicked, finding renewed strength. But the current was their friend now. It moved them upriver, nearly to where they’d jumped from the raft, now long gone. Kevin changed course, pulling John across the slack water and joining the downstream current. With one final pull, he delivered them to the broken rocks at the base of the waterfall. Here, the current turned neutral again.

  They clutched the rocks, found their footing and staggered toward shallow water.

  Kevin now sat in knee-deep water. John dragged himself up next to him. His large, callused hand reached out for Kevin and slapped him on the cheek. Once, twice, three times.

  The cowboy was nodding and smiling, his false teeth having fallen out in the struggle, leaving a hockey player’s mouth grinning back at Kevin.

  80

  I’ll have the rope cut and we’ll both be free-climbing,” Cantell called up to Summer. They were thirty or forty yards off the ground, McGuiness in the lead, then Salvo with his wounded hand, then Summer, with Cantell last. The route had started out quite easy, the rope for safety only, the physical act of climbing requiring little technical expertise.

  But Cantell soon realized they’d been lied to: the route the cowboy had suggested grew increasingly technical the higher they climbed. McGuiness, a human fly, had no problem with it. It was child’s play for him. Matt Salvo overcame his lack of technical prowess and his broken finger with sheer guts and muscle. It was Summer who was slowing them down, and it had taken Cantell too long to realize it was intentional on her part.

  “We’ll all be far better off once we’re at the top,” Cantell called out. “If you want to escape, why don’t you try then. Now is not the time. We’ll haul you up if we have to. But if you force us to do that, we’ll punish you. We’ll strip you naked and let the sun get you.”

  Icy terror raced through Summer. The man knew which buttons to push. The idea of being stripped drove her to reach for the next rock and pull herself up.

  The little guy was above her, and he’d mentally undressed her every time he’d eyed her ever since back at the plane. Even now, he would glance down at her and seem to be leering.

  Those looks of his paralyzed her. He was the reason she was in no hurry. The copilot had it all wrong. She wasn’t scheming. She just didn’t want to be close to the little guy.

  But she was terrified. She was afraid of reaching the top, of heading off into the wilderness as a hostage of these men, wondering what they had in mind for her.

  “Last warning,” the copilot called from below.

  81

  With the cowboy in stocking feet, the going was slow. Kevin and John followed Mitchum’s Creek out of the gorge to the elevated plateau that included the grassy field surrounding the lodge nearly a mile to the north. It was familiar territory for John, after years of maintaining the property, and he led the way through a dark forest, the creek to their left. He displayed a surprising amount of energy, now moving as if his unprotected feet didn’t bother him in the least.

  Within thirty minutes, they crouched at the edge of the clearing around the lodge. John pointed out the dangling ropes in the distance, the sky now brighter, the stars all gone. Kevin followed the ropes higher and could make out four tiny figures. They looked like insects dangling on spiderweb threads. They were very near the top.

  “That’s all of them,” John said, the relief in his voice palpable.

  “Will we climb? I’m not great when it comes to heights.”

  “No. As I said, they’ll have taken all the ropes with them, if they’re any good, and they’re good. They’ll pull them up behind them. If we’re going to catch them, we’ve got to get across the river and head upstream to that next zip line. That’ll get us across the gorge and, I imagine, just about even with them, depending how fast we can travel.” He looked again at the top of the cliff. “They won’t be running after all the energy they’ve wasted climbing. If we hurry, we’ve got a fool’s chance at it.”

  “Is there any food in there?” Kevin asked.

  “They could see us cross if we move now. For the girl’s sake, I don’t think it’s worth it. We’ll sit here a minute and let them all get over the top. Then we’ll provision in the lodge. I have a hunting rifle up in my room they won’t have found. It’s a beautiful gun and will outshoot anything they brought with them.”

  Kevin felt the hairs on his arms stand up. There was a tone to the cowboy’s voice that said any possibility of forgiveness was gone. Whatever it took, he was going to free Summer. He’d kill them, if necessary. Kevin understood he was now party to that. They were going to hunt these men down.

  John sensed Kevin’s reluctance.

  “You don’t have to come along,” he said. “You’ve more than earned your keep, son. You’ve done good. I can handle this last part on my own. They’re in my country. This is my ranch—or that’s how I feel about it—and they’re about to learn what it means to do what they’ve done. You saved my life. I will get your friend back for you.”

  “I’m coming,” Kevin said.

  The cowboy smiled.

  “How did I know that? But you and me, we have an understanding. I’m in charge. You do what I say. Exactly! And if it comes to killing, I’ll be the one doing it. It’s not falling to you, boy.”

  “I want her back,” Kevin said.

  “I know that. But you’re going to have a life after this. I’m not leaving you with memories you can never shake.”

  “You make it sound as if you’ve done this before.”

  John wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  “Some men,” he said, “live in isolation because they enjoy it. Others, because they deserve it.”

  The cowboy leaned back against a tree trunk and closed his eyes.

  “Ten minutes,” he said, “and they’ll be over the top.”

  Sometime later—it felt like half an hour or more—the cowboy was in dry clothes and wearing a pair of lace-up boots. Army boots, Kevin thought. Both he and John wore backpacks, and John carried a military-looking rifle over his shoulder. He offered Kevin a nickel-plated snub-nosed .38 revolver. Six shots in it, and a box of rounds for his pocket. John showed him how to reload it, and he warned him not to use it unless his life depended on it. “Not hers, not mine, just yours,” he’d emphasized. And Kevin had agreed.

  Amid chirping squirrels and singing birds, they jogged up the narrow path to the top of the canyon wall north of the airstrip. Here, as the path continued, there were amazing views to the right of the river sixty feet below and of the forest to the left.

  The cow
boy ran effortlessly in the high-altitude air, unencumbered by incline or load. Kevin labored to keep up. The older man had come alive, either because Kevin rescued him or he wanted to settle with the hijackers. One thing was clear: he wasn’t going to wait for Kevin. He was on his own mission.

  It was only a matter of minutes before they reached the zip line spanning the canyon walls. It was antiquated, with a galvanized-steel tower on either side supporting a thick cable from which hung an improvised chair. Two ropes were attached to the chair, one allowing the passenger to pull himself across, the other allowing the chair to be pulled back to the other side.

  As planned, Kevin went first. The chair sagged, feeling feeble and dangerous. He tried not to look down as he pulled on the rope across. The cowboy pulled the chair back and followed.

  Another ten minutes gone.

  Until that moment, Kevin hadn’t realized how tired he was. He felt like he couldn’t move.

  “You said there’s an ATV, right?” he said.

  “There is,” said the cowboy, “but there’s no trail between here and Morgan Creek, so it’s no use to us. We’ll go on foot. Don’t drop behind. If you do lose me, just hold to the river as best as you can and you’ll eventually reach the zip line about three miles upstream.”

  Kevin eyed the cowboy. How dare the old man suggest he might actually fall so far behind that he’d need directions.

  Just then, John took off running and quickly disappeared into the woods.

  82

  Ten minutes after they had separated, Walt heard a horse coming up behind him and knew who it was without looking. The horses were lathered and exhaling steam by the time Walt picked up the rarely used trail. He climbed off his horse then and studied the condition of both the dry, dusty soil and the nearby vegetation. Jerry had passed the packhorse off to Brandon in order to catch up with his son.

  Walt hadn’t yet told his father about the call about Sumner’s confession. He kept that in his back pocket.

  Jerry had seen his son work his tracking magic before. For once, he withheld the usual cynical comments that perhaps really concealed his pride. Walt had few equals, if any, on the trail.

  “It’s the same tire tracks we saw back at the creek,” Walt said.

  “Okay . . .”

  Jerry clearly hadn’t seen any tire tracks back at the creek.

  “Three weeks, maybe four. The most recent tracks are headed for the river.” Walt, kneeling on one knee, looked that direction. “They don’t float in their supplies, it’s too much work. We should have thought of that.” Excitement in his voice, he added, “The dash on the map, it is man-made. It’s a cable crossing.”

  As they reached the zip line a quarter of a mile later, Jerry failed to acknowledge Walt’s expertise.

  “That’s Mitchum’s Ranch on the other side, isn’t it?” Jerry said it like he’d expected it. He consulted the map. “There’s two others south of here. Now, here’s what we’re going to do,” Jerry said, interrupting himself. “Tell Brandon to do an about-face and get his butt over here. He can leave the packhorse behind. We won’t be needing any of that river stuff, and if we need food, we’ll get it at the ranch. We’ll go across first and establish the perimeter, which means . . . What?”

  Walt was back down on one knee again, shining a flashlight into the half inch of pale dust at the end of the zip line.

  “The chair’s on this side,” Walt said.

  “So?”

  “Let me see the soles of your boots.”

  Jerry obliged, balancing against a metal tower.

  “Two people . . .” Walt said, training the flashlight toward the woods. “You see this pickling of the surface? A rain shower. These tracks are recent, the past day or so. One’s big, wearing combat boots. The other’s a kid, Dad, a running shoe, size eight, eight and a half. Any guesses who that might be?”

  “If you’re trying to stop me from going over there, forget it.”

  “The chair is on this side,” Walt repeated. He walked carefully to the nearby trees and studied the ground in the glare of the flashlight. “The bigger guy took off at a run.” He touched several spots. “These are fresh, incredibly fresh.”

  “Why is it you don’t want to cross, don’t want to get this thing over with? Are you holding out some kind of hope that the Bureau takes this off your hands? Is that what’s going on here?”

  “Yeah, that’s what’s going on here. That’s why I turned off my phone, abandoned my team. Why I’m looking at a recall vote if this all goes south.” He pointed to the tracks. “Size eight and a half, maybe nine. It’s Kevin. That’s why the chair is on this side of the river: Kevin crossed over with one of the hijackers. Not the girl. There’s only one set of running-shoe tracks. The combat boots took off at a run. Kevin’s at a walk. So maybe Kevin escaped, came across alone and was followed.”

  “Let’s cross to the ranch, look around, find out what we can find out.”

  “And we waste maybe an hour doing it,” Walt said. He pointed toward the woods. “Kevin went that way.”

  “A hunch, that’s all it is.”

  “No, an educated guess . . . Big difference.”

  “We need to collect data, follow the most promising lead, and find the plane. We are this close!” He pinched his fingers to half an inch apart. “We’ll start at the crime scene.”

  “Not me,” Walt said, coming to his feet. “You go if you want. We’re on comm. You can call to tell me how wrong I was. But wherever these two are headed—and I think it’s Morgan Creek Ranch—we can have them bookended. I can move Brandon back up that same trail we came in on. We’ll squeeze them.”

  “And if you’re wrong?”

  “We know the girl called her father from the plane.”

  “What?”

  Walt nodded.

  “We won a confession from the father. The idea was his, the insurance scam. He’d met Cantell while making a film. He cut a deal with him to steal the Learjet and ransom its location to the insurance company. If his daughter hadn’t been on the jet with your grandson, if the pilot hadn’t sucked in a couple geese over Baldy, it might have all worked out.”

  “The girl’s father?”

  “Correct.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Okay, so I’m impressed.”

  Of all times not to have a tape recorder.

  “According to her,” Walt said, “no one was injured in the landing. Including Kevin.”

  “And you were going to tell me this when . . . ?”

  “Maybe they’re holding the girl at the ranch. Maybe only Kevin escaped. But this is Kevin,” he said, pointing down, “and I’m following him.”

  His father’s face hardened and his fists clenched.

  “Another way to look at it . . .” Walt proposed. “But you won’t like this.”

  “You keep it to yourself.”

  “Think about this for a second, Dad. They don’t need Kevin. What do they need him for? They’ve got the plane, they’ve got the girl. They let Kevin go. It’ll be a day or two before he reaches people. But it’s a lie, of course. They just want him far away from the ranch so no one ever finds his body.”

  “Shut your face.”

  “The combat boots are running because he has a job to do. Maybe he enjoys the hunt.”

  “I said shut up.”

  “We have a decision to make here.”

  Jerry looked across the abyss of the river canyon, clearly seeing that the chair was on their side.

  Then something occurred to Walt. He climbed up the tower far enough to reach out and grab hold of the chair’s pulley.

  “It’s not exactly warm,” he said, “but it’s nowhere near as cold as the rest of this metal,” feeling the surrounding frame. “Thirty minutes, maybe less.”

  “You’re talking yourself into this, do you see that? You’re making it work nice and tidy like and nothing’s ever nice and tidy. I can’t play it the way you say,” Jerry continued. “Ground rules are, yo
u start at the scene—the ranch—and work your way out from there.”

  Walt saw his father’s rigidity, his unwillingness to let the evidence dictate his next step, and he wondered how much of this resistance stemmed from thirty years ago. A river surrounded by forest, much like this one only bigger. By all estimates, D. B. Cooper had parachuted into the Columbia and drowned. There were never any tracks to follow. Jerry’s task force never had a chance to find Cooper yet Jerry still shouldered it as a failure, his failure.

  “Surveillance only,” Walt said. “You report back to me. Don’t engage without some kind of backup—me or Brandon.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Jerry said, already working with the suspended chair.

  “I need you to agree to that. No engagement. We lost Bobby. I can’t lose you too.”

  “Or Kevin.”

  “Or Kevin,” Walt said.

  “Okay, so I’ll wait for backup.”

  “Keep your radio on. No excuses.”

  “No excuses, agreed,” Jerry said. “You’re going to wish you’d come.”

  Father and son stared at each other.

  “Don’t go rogue on me,” Walt said.

  “We’re burning daylight,” Jerry said.

  He climbed into the chair and secured the chain across it.

  “Shit,” he said, “I’ve never liked carnival rides.”

  83

  The 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.