Bad Penny

by John D. Brown

  “I don’t see any signs,” Frank said. “And there’s only one car way down by the interstate.”

  “You feeling this wind?” Pinto asked. “The road runs north-south. The crosswind will blow us to Hell and back.”

  “Pinto,” Frank said. He had to get down. He’d been in enough situations to know that you took your opportunities when they presented themselves. A bird in the hand was always better than two hundred in the bush. “I know you don’t know me. But I’m begging your big old Portuguese heart.”

  Pinto sighed heavily.

  “I believe the cow is in the mud,” Sam said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Pinto said and licked his lips. “And we’re going to sink into the mire with her. Right into a big old friggin’ eight foot deep manure lagoon.”

  There was a beat of silence.

  Then Pinto said, “Aw, hell. Here goes nothing. You two might just be picking me up in jail. That is if they aren’t picking us all up in pieces off that road.”

  He turned the plane in a big circle to get it lined up with the road.

  “How much space do you need to land this thing?” Frank asked.

  “About 1,400 feet.”

  “That’s a quarter of a mile.”

  “The man can do math,” Pinto said.

  “That road is at least two miles long. You’ve got plenty of room.”

  “Oh, do I?” Pinto said dryly. “Good thing I’ve got you navigating.”

  Sam was looking back at the interstate with his binoculars. “They’re just pulling into the truck stop.”

  Frank looked down at the road. The one car was heading away. “We’re good,” he said. “The road’s clear.”

  Pinto finished his turn, dropped altitude. Dropped more. They flew over the fields west of the road.

  “That’s a dirt road,” Pinto said. “You know what happens if we hit a rut or pot hole?”

  “We bounce a bit?” Frank offered.

  “If it catches the tire, we slam our nose into the ground and go tumbling.”

  They dropped closer, maybe two hundred feet. Then a hundred. The wind was pushing them east, pushing them closer to the road, buffeting the plane. They passed over a group of black cattle in a green field, dropped lower.

  Henry must have seen the cattle. He woofed excitedly.

  “Yeah,” Frank said. “Cows.”

  They flew over the tops of a line of cottonwood trees. They were close enough to the ground that Frank could make out the barbed-wire fences. They passed over the roof of one of the few houses along this road. A couple of kids were digging in a sandbox. Their little hand shovels glinted in the late afternoon sun.

  They dropped lower. Fifty feet. “This is going to be tight.”

  A gust of wind slammed into them and blew them to the side of the road.

  “That’s got to be twenty knots,” Pinto said. “Which means this method ain’t going to work.” Pinto turned the wheel a bit, moved the foot controls. The tail of the plane suddenly spun around, and they roared down the road sideways, Frank looking out his window like he was in the driver’s seat. They dropped lower, twenty feet now. They were almost there.

  “Uh, Pinto,” Sam said, “we’re kind of sideways.”

  “You think?”

  “Shouldn’t we be turned the other way?”

  “Not in this wind,” Pinto said.

  That’s when the car pulled out onto the road. It was a beat-up brown Ford, all boxy corners in a 1980s style. It had been parked beneath a tree. Easy to miss in the late afternoon shade. One second the road was clear. The next the car was right there. A teen was driving it, white earbuds in his ears. The car accelerated, kicking up dust.

  “Hell’s bells!” Pinto shouted.

  The plane roared up behind the car. There were stickers all over the bumper, the trunk, the back windshield. One said “Big Hairy Deal” in block letters. The plane and car were both kicking up a storm of dust.

  The kid at the wheel looked into his rearview mirror. He saw the plane. His eyes went round as eggs. Not every day you get rear-ended by a plane.

  “Get out of the way!” Frank yelled.

  They were going to crash into the car. They’d hit it with the landing gear, which would tip the wing on Frank’s side down, and then they were going to roll, and the propeller was going to cut into the driver’s side. They were all going down in a mess of tin and airplane gas. Maybe a nice ball of fire.

  Frank thought about Tony and Kim. And Ed, the evil genie.

  Then the car’s brake lights lit up. Frank braced himself, but the landing gear did not hit the back of the car. Instead, the plane roared, what must have been no more than five centimeters, above the roof of the car, leaving the freaked-out driver in a thundercloud of dust.

  They flew maybe another fifty feet, about six feet off the ground, and then Pinto spun the plane straight and dropped it onto the road with a solid thump. They jostled about, and then they were bumping and roaring down the road.

  “Thank you, Lord,” Sam said.

  “Unbelievable,” Frank said.

  Pinto shook his head. “Shaw, you’re officially on my dead man’s list.” He idled the engine and put on the brakes, and after another hundred feet the plane came to a stop.

  They were all still breathing hard.

  They looked at each other, and then Pinto began to laugh. “Now that’s a landing, boys.”

  “I’m off your death list then?” Frank asked.

  “Don’t get your hopes up.”

  “That was definitely a new technique,” Frank said.

  “That’s an old technique,” Pinto said. “It’s called crabbing into the wind.”

  “It’s called crazy,” Sam said. “I think I’m going to need a diaper.”

  Pinto said, “You get out of here and waylay that SOB. If I’m going to have the locals on my tail, it had better damn well be worth my while.”

  Frank clapped Pinto on his big shoulder. “I owe you, man. I owe both of you.”

  “That doesn’t even begin to describe it,” Pinto said. “Now get.”

  Sam opened his door and climbed out. Frank piled out after him, happy to have dirt under his feet. Henry jumped out, ran to the side of the road, and lifted his leg to take a leak in the grass. He finished and raced back into the plane.

  Sam got back in behind him, shut the door, and Pinto cranked the motor back up. The plane rolled forward, then Aristotle and the Lone Ranger drove down the road like they were taking a Sunday drive, the dust kicking up behind them into the wind. Henry sat in the back watching Frank. He woofed a couple of times like, “Dude, I’m still in a plane!”

  Frank turned around. The kid in the car was still parked down the road, probably hyperventilating. A car ride would be quicker than running, but Frank wasn’t going to ask the kid for a ride.

  Across the fields, about half a mile away, stood the truck stop with the semis and cars clustered about it. The buildings were white. A huge sign towered over them. Frank descended the shoulder of the road, jumped the barbed-wire fence that ran along the side, and sprinted out into a field that was about calf-high with the beginnings of a second crop of hay.

  It had taken them maybe three minutes to land. It would take Frank another three to cross this field to the truck stop. He prayed Ed was standing at the back of a long line to the crapper.

  10

  Truck Stop

  TO THE UNTRAINED EYE, fields of hay looked peaceful, pastoral. And some might be, but not in Wyoming. Frank had found that those fields the farmers irrigated were actually gauntlets. Mosquitoes thrived in the moist cover. And so when any idiot thought it would be a dandy idea to prance through one, the swarms of Hell rose up to suck every last pint out of the man. Or at least try to infect him with malaria or West Nile. In some places where they flood irrigated, the mosquitoes swarmed above the field in columns and sheets as big as Winnebagos, whining with mad blood-fury.

  You hoped for a wind. Because the little buggers would be s
wept away when they rose to devour you. Frank had a wind. He took this as a good sign and ran through the field of meadow grass. He came to the end, hopped another barbed wire fence, and ran into another field of dark green alfalfa. Halfway through, he realized he didn’t know exactly where Ed had parked, so he called Sam.

  Sam picked up, the roar of the Cessna in the background, but then Frank spotted the Nissan. There was a gray car parked way out in the southwest corner of the massive parking lot, away from everything else. The hood was up. A moment later Jesus appeared from behind the hood, his back to the car and the field, holding his hand to his ear. He was on the phone.

  Bingo.

  Frank hung up. So it was engine troubles. Which meant Ed was probably inside trying to get a part or fluid. Or maybe just getting something to eat.

  And where was Tony? No way Ed would take him into the truck stop. So Tony had to be in the car behind those cola windows. Unless Ed had already taken care of him, which was an option that had to be considered and might explain why Ed was so late getting to this point. Maybe the car troubles were secondary.

  Frank didn’t want to contemplate that. He’d go in with the assumption Tony was there. And if he wasn’t, then this little hostage rescue mission was going to take on an entirely different flavor.

  He was standing in plain sight of anyone in the parking lot. He needed to get to the edge of the field, to the road that fronted the entrance to the truck stop. There were cottonwoods all along the road that would provide good cover. He could get within twenty feet of the Nissan going that way. Frank was about to move when Jesus turned around, sunglasses on the top of his head, still talking on the phone. He looked right at Frank.

  Frank’s heart banged. He wanted to hit the deck; instead, he bent over and dug up a handful of dirt. He brought it up to his nose and crumbled it in his fingers. He had no idea if ranchers ever smelled their dirt, but he was pretty sure Jesus didn’t know that either.

  He threw the dirt down and walked a few more paces, ignoring Jesus. The mind often saw what it expected to see. He bent down, grabbed another handful of dirt and smelled it. He turned his back to Jesus, put his hands on his hips like he was surveying the field. Then he pulled out his phone, acted like he was calling someone and began to gesticulate. He walked slowly through the alfalfa straight toward the cottonwoods. He told himself he was a farmer, concerned with his field. He was boring, unremarkable, nothing to look at.

  He just kept walking, talking to nobody on his phone, looking down at the ground. He desperately wanted to see what Jesus was doing, but controlled himself. Only when he was almost to the fence did he glance back.

  Jesus had moved. He was now standing in front of the hood, looking down at the motor, still holding his phone to his ear.

  Frank pressed down the top strand of barbed-wire and swung one leg over. Still holding it down, he swung the other leg over. Then he slipped between two huge old cottonwoods onto the shoulder of the road. The trees broke the wind, and a number of mosquitoes came at him. It was summer; Frank had shaved his head. He swatted the buggers away from his neck and exposed scalp and wished he had more hair.

  He watched the Nissan through the trees. He watched for Ed. There was a lot of deadfall here, but none of it looked useful. The branches were either too thick, or too old and rotted, or much too small. He thought about picking up a stone, but there weren’t any visible in the tall grass. So it was just him, with the gifts Mother Nature had given him. He was going to need to get in close.

  He walked the final fifty yards and approached the corner where the field ended and the parking lot began. Jesus had lit up a cigarette. He was leaning against the side of the car, facing the truck stop, his phone still up to his ear.

  Only a fat tree and a few yards of blacktop stood between Frank and the car. The wind was making a racket through the branches of the trees, which would mask his approach.

  The hood was up, blocking most of the view inside the car. He looked past the car at the front doors of the truck stop. Ed wasn’t there. He wasn’t in the parking lot. This was about as good as it was going to get.

  When you practiced raids, you quickly learned that the times you employ speed, surprise, and shock action work out a lot better than the times you don’t. Especially in hostage situations. Surprise was easy to blow on the approach. You needed noise discipline. You needed to walk quietly, avoid obstacles, and keep out of view.

  The wind gusted through the trees which cast shadows over this part of the parking lot. There were some small twigs on the ground between him and the car. There was dirt and grit that would grind under foot. He looked around the parking lot to see if there was anyone watching; way down the strip of lawn at the other end of the parking lot an extremely fat motorist in shorts, sandals, and socks was letting his tiny dog sniff about the lawn. The man was looking the other way.

  Frank moved out, walking until the raised hood blocked Jesus’s view of his approach. Then he slipped across the sidewalk and over a strip of lawn that bordered the whole stop. He kept the raised hood between him and Jesus. He stepped over the curb and onto the asphalt. The wind gusted again, masking the grating of the grit under his feet. He crossed the last few yards to the front of the car. The engine was filthy. The yellow caps to the windshield wiper and brake fluids and the yellow handles to oil and transmission fluid were dark brown.

  Frank walked around the open hood to the side where Jesus leaned up against the car. He was still on the phone, taking a drag on his cigarette. Frank took another step, and Jesus glanced over. Then his eyes widened in alarm. He reached for the gun in the waistband behind his back, but Frank was already on him.

  He grabbed Jesus’s gun hand with both of his and twisted it up and around into his back. Jesus automatically faced into the car. Jesus struggled, but Frank grabbed him by the hair and banged his face into the car. He banged it again hard for good measure. He kept Jesus’s arm twisted up behind his back with one hand. With the other Frank slid the gun at Jesus’s waistband out of its holster and into his own pocket. It was a nice nine millimeter semi-automatic.

  Frank’s adrenaline and rage kicked in high gear. He banged Jesus’s head into the car a third time, and blood began to run down the man’s nose. You wanted controlled aggression in a fight, but Frank didn’t know if he was going to be able to control this.

  He yanked Jesus back and marched him around to the front of the car, away from the eyes at the truck stop. But Jesus still had one free arm. He reached into his pants on that side and came out with a tactical knife. The double-edged spear point blade shot forward out of the housing and locked in place.

  “Not smart,” Frank said and swept the man’s feet out from under him. Jesus slammed into the car and slid down by the front passenger’s wheel. Frank fell upon him, put one knee into the man’s back, then banged the knife out of his hand. It was a Benchmade. Said so right on that razor sharp four inch steel blade. Four inches is about a long as a big man’s index finger. Plenty of length to slash, plenty to strike vital organs in a thrust. He kicked the knife away. “Those knives are only for law enforcement and the military,” Frank said. “I don’t think I saw your badge.”

  “You’re dead,” Jesus slurred.

  “Don’t give me ideas,” Frank said and pressed on the back of Jesus’s neck with all his weight. He looked back across the parking lot toward the front of the truck stop. There was nothing going on. Out along the curbing, the fat motorist had missed the whole thing and was watching his dog.

  Frank turned back to Jesus, and searched him for more weapons. There was nothing in his waistband or pockets, nothing around his ankles.

  He thought a moment about finishing Jesus right there. Frank had not been trained as a cop. He’d been trained to kill. And killing Jesus would have been the smart thing to do. If interrogated, he could say it was in self defense. He could say he’d feared for his life and the life of his nephew in the car. Jesus was a dirt bag. A judge and jury would certainly take tha
t into consideration. Of course, to them Frank was a dirt bag as well. But Frank wasn’t going to kill Jesus.

  It would have been nice if he’d thought to bring some rope or wire—something to tie up this moron. But he’d have to make do with what he had, so he undid Jesus’s black leather belt and pulled it off his pants. It was a real looker, all studded with bits of chrome. Frank cinched it up tight around the man’s wrists, retrieved Jesus’s knife, and made a nice hole and buckled it tight. Then he wrapped the rest of the belt round and round the wrists and tied it so there was nothing for Jesus to grab onto.

  Frank felt his back prickle, and he twisted round. Ed was standing about five yards away, pointing his Springfield subcompact right at him. On the ground next to him, stood a blue radiator fluid container. The container was all wet, but not with coolant. It was wet with water, and Frank realized Ed hadn’t been in the truck stop; he’d been around back or out among the semis getting water.

  Frank cursed.

  Ed said, “I wouldn’t be making any sudden moves if I were you.”

  Frank was in an awkward position, but action was always faster than reaction. Two or three steps and he’d be ten feet away and running. Ten feet might not seem like a lot of space, but they’d done studies on New York cops, which had been repeated elsewhere. They’d counted the number of bullets shot versus the number of hits in real-life shootouts. Here were guys that repeatedly practiced their marksmanship, but put them in a high stress situation, and they had a hard time hitting more than twenty-five percent of the time. And that was within a range of six feet.

  Ed wasn’t a cop. Frank would be surprised if Ed practiced at all. Frank would put some distance between him and Ed, and then he’d turn and train Jesus’s gun on him. And then they’d see what was what.