“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
First 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
The 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.
The cowboy lay on his belly hidden in the waist-high grass at the edge of the marsh. Even though Kevin knew where to look, he couldn’t see John with the naked eye. He had to use the binoculars to work from one landmark to the next until he found the place. When he did, he saw John’s binoculars trained back at him. Kevin held up three fingers, and the cowboy nodded. Kevin held up his fingers again to make sure the message was clear.
Three people, he had signaled, not the four they had expected. The small guy-crazy, unpredictable-was nowhere to be seen.
The cowboy fashioned his hand into a gun and squeezed the trigger, then nodded. Game on. Kevin was to go ahead with the plan.
Kevin practically shit his pants. His mind suddenly cluttered up with all the stuff the cowboy had told him, all the stuff his uncle had told him, all the stuff his mother had told him-half a dozen voices competing for his attention.
Where was Matt? Had he been left behind following a climbing accident? Had he gone elsewhere? Or was he out there just waiting for him?
Strange things happened to time when Kevin was like this. Summer and her two abductors were a hundred yards off, now they were just sixty. Adrenaline charging through his system would not allow him to focus.
Forty yards.
His mind clouded. He wasn’t up to the challenge, didn’t deserve the trust the cowboy had placed in him. It was just him, after all, just Kevin.
He reached for the revolver. The cowboy had warned that its nickel plating might spark in the sunlight, so Kevin wrapped it in a handkerchief with only the dark hole at the open end of the barrel showing.
Yes, now he had it. It all came back to him. Not so hard, not so much to remember. The cowboy had kept it simple for him.
“Can you do this?” John had asked.
“Yes.”
“Say it. I want to hear it.”
“I can do it.”
Focus.
They were now within thirty yards of him, close enough to hear scuffing of weary boots on the trail. One of them coughed lightly.
The copilot was in the lead. He carried the shotgun in both hands. Next came Summer, a two-foot length of climbing rope tied around both calf muscles like a horse’s hobble: she could walk but not run. The pilot was last, three yards behind her, carrying the handgun in his left hand and watching her ass.
Kevin wondered if Summer being hobbled like that affected the cowboy’s plans. He lifted his binoculars: John was watching the three, his body flat and still.
A pair of magpies burst from the woods and swooped toward the marsh. Kevin followed them, rotating his head very slowly.
And there was Matt, to Kevin’s left, at the edge of the woods. He was paralleling the three on the trail, playing scout, slipping in and out of the shadows.
He also carried a handgun. Had John accounted for all the possible weapons? An occasional snap of a twig gave him away, but he was trying to be quiet.
Kevin dared not move his head. Racking his eyes to the right, he barely glimpsed the three below.
Twenty yards away.
And still ten from reaching the cowboy’s mark, a stick by the trail.
Did Salvo’s approaching change the plan?
With every step, Matt drew closer.
If Kevin did as John asked, he’d be an easy target for Matt. Wedged in the rocks like he was, he was a sitting duck.
Kevin caught another glimpse of Summer. He had a choice to make, the same choice he’d made in the river when John was being pushed toward the Widow Maker. Only this time it wasn’t Mother Nature he was facing but a madman out to get him.
Kevin understood the importance of the element of surprise. He understood that this was the place for an ambush. He understood that everything came together here. Saving Summer came down to this one last chance. If he failed, Summer would be lost. And maybe John.
Kevin had to change the timing.
He would do as the cowboy had instructed, but he had to do it now, before Matt saw him. He should try to get a shot off at Matt, but he knew there was no way he was going to shoot a human being. John was right about that.
Kevin had been the one who found his father. He could never do that to another human being, not for any reason. Not even for Summer.
So if he did what the cowboy asked-and he had only seconds to decide-he knew the shooting would be in one direction only: his.
Kevin began to shake. His muscles locked up. He felt impossibly cold. The revolver slipped from his hand, thudding six feet down in a dirt-filled, cup-shaped indentation in the rock ledge below him.
Summer and her captors reached the stick, then walked past it.
Too late…
He glanced down at the gun. There was no way to get it in time. He couldn’t fire the rounds to attract attention as John planned.
But Matt had stopped when he heard the gun fall. He’d spotted Kevin.
Matt raised the pistol and took careful aim.
Kevin realized his being shot would create the same diversion the cowboy wanted from him firing the revolver. He didn’t have to shoot, all he had to do was make damn sure Matt fired.
Kevin stood up and held out his arms.
Impossible to miss.
87
The crack of a gunshot echoed off the rocks. In the confusion, it sounded as if a second round had been fired. Then a third.
“KEVIN!!” Summer screamed, spotting him atop the rock face, Christ-like, arms outstretched.
Kevin felt a searing jolt to his right shoulder-not exactly pain but the presence of something foreign and frightening-the impact of the bullet spinning him a quarter turn, speckling his face with his own blood. Losing his footing, he fell to the ledge below.
He opened his eyes. He was still conscious.
The pilot and copilot had stopped dead in their tracks, their weapons raised in Kevin’s direction.
The cowboy came out of the bog at a sprint from behind the three, their attention being on Kevin, reaching them in four or five long strides. John hit the pilot in the ribs and sent him to the ground. A gun discharged, but Kevin couldn’t tell whose. John then scooped Summer off her feet, cradling her in his arms, angling himself in such a way so as to shield her, anticipating the shotgun blast from the copilot. He took the hit, went down on one knee, then somehow managed to stand back up, still holding Summer tight. He continued toward the rocks.
The copilot tracked him with the shotgun, took aim.
The revolver’s nickel plating sparkled not five inches from Kevin’s face on the ledge.
Without thinking, he reached for it, his finger finding the trigger, and, extending his arm, aimed it.
Red spray erupted from the center of the copilot’s back, directly behind his heart. He didn’t move. Still standing up, he was already dead. Instead of falling, he wilted to the ground like a marionette having its strings slowly released. His knee struck his chin, throwing his head back, and the shotgun discharged. A waft of gray smoke rose into the morning sky.
The pilot placed his hands on his head and spread his legs, making a dusty angel in the soil. Deathly silence followed, with not a bird or squirrel or even the wind announcing itself. For Kevin, gun still in hand, it was as if the whole world were holding its breath. He hadn’t even realized that he’d pulled the trigger. But there was blood and there was the man, and he most certainly was dead. Kevin was mar veling at the accuracy of his shot when his stomach suddenly erupted and he vomited up bile.
Recovering, he couldn’t see the cowboy or Summer and didn’t know if they’d made it to the rocks.
He released the revolver from his hand, its barrel brushing his forearm as it tumbled to the dirt. The barrel was cold, not hot. The gun hadn’t been fired.
Had the cowboy shot the man?
Footfalls came running toward him. In that instant, Kevin realized he’d lost track of Matt. Kevin grabbed the revolver, sensing he was a fraction of a second too late already. He rolled on his side and aimed where the rock horizon met the sky, his finger finding the trigger.
The footfalls slowed. Then a silhouette appeared.
Kevin closed his eyes and squeezed the trigger.
There was a pop, followed by loud ringing in his ears. The smell of cordite hung in the air.
He opened his eyes. The silhouette was gone. Only rock and sky remained. No Matt.
“Put down the gun, Kevin!”
Kevin heard the voice of the man he wished were there instead of the man who wished to kill him. He heard his uncle’s voice, not Matt’s. Were his ears playing tricks on him?
Before leaving this earth, Kevin was determined to summon up the defining moment of his short life: his finding his father’s body. But he couldn’t do it like he usually could. Instead, he only saw peaceful blue sky and pristine white clouds.
“Kevin!”
No mistaking it this time: it was his Uncle Walt. There was no way it could be but it was.
In his mind’s eye, Kevin replayed, videolike, the shots striking the copilot’s chest. His uncle could hit a matchbook at a hundred yards.
“Kevin, is the gun down? Put the gun down!”
“Okay,” Kevin muttered, releasing the revolver, “it’s down.” It tumbled off the ledge and landed in the sage.
Kevin heard something and stole a look at the pilot. The man was now facedown, his hands still over his head. The cowboy, five yards away, his rifle trained on the man, was
missing his shirt. His back was bloody.
Walt’s face appeared cautiously over the edge of the rocks. He reached out a hand and pulled Kevin up.
Matt lay awkwardly on the ground ten yards away, his eyes blinking, his legs twitching, with two holes in his chest. Kevin had to look away.
“Good thing you’re a lousy shot,” Walt said.
“I thought it was-”
“That arm okay?”
“It’s felt better,” Kevin said. Then he shouted: “Summer?”
His uncle smiled.
“Down here!” came her voice.
For Kevin, it was all that mattered, it was all he’d wanted to hear. But then purple orbs loomed at the periphery of his vision. He felt faint.
“Morgan Ranch,” Walt said into his radio.
“Is he okay?” Summer cried out in panic.
“He’s going to be fine,” Walt answered. “Just fine.”
Kevin felt his uncle’s arms around him. He felt a sense of peace he had not known in a long time. And then the world went dark.
88
Using a first-aid kit, Walt cleaned Kevin’s wound and wrapped his arm-the through shot that was no longer bleeding too badly-before boarding Garman’s four-seater. Garman had transferred the cell repeater, which was about the size of a briefcase, to the plane’s small cargo hold, allowing Summer to occupy the front passenger’s seat while Walt sat with Kevin in the back. Walt held Kevin’s upper arm firmly, keeping the compress on the wound. Despite the pain, Kevin didn’t complain.
The FBI was reportedly on their way in a helicopter to Morgan Creek Ranch to “establish supervision.” A Life Flight chopper out of Boise was coming for Salvo. While Cantell was dead, Salvo was critically wounded and needed medical attention. But who had decided the evacuation of Kevin and Summer took precedence over Salvo.
Summer, now wearing a headset, listened to radio traffic and communicated with Garman. She checked over her shoulder every few minutes to assure herself that Kevin was still there. She seemed to be in surprisingly good spirits.
Killer Summer Page 27