“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.
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.
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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“This kind of thing… You can’t plan what’s going to happen.”
84
Deputy 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.