The Ninth District - A Thriller

by Douglas Dorow

  “This path down here is great!”

  “Don’t tell anybody. I don’t want to share it.”

  Chapter 34

  The sun was coming up, but the Mississippi River Gorge was still in shadows. The rays of color from the rising sun just touched the tops of the oaks and elms lining the top of the gorge on either side of the river. The river’s surface was ninety feet below the tops of the trees, carrying water from northern Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico.

  The Governor was sweating as he worked his way down through the trees from the street to the riverbank below. He was in a hurry to be set for when Jack ran by. Vadim’s surveillance said Agent Miller ran most mornings, leaving his house at five thirty. Vadim’s cohorts had also scouted out this spot for the Governor to shoot from.

  He wrapped the rifle in a jumble of fishing rods he carried in one hand, a plastic pail filled with ammunition and his camouflaged gillie suit in the other. At the edge of the river, he checked the time. Jack should be running across the river from him in about five minutes.

  The Governor stood in the sand along the riverbank and dumped the contents of the pail by a tree. He put the plastic pail upside down on the shore for a stool, and propped up a fishing pole next to it with the line in the water.

  A large log was half-buried in the sand. Weeds and brush grew up around it. He pulled the gillie suit over his shoulders and lay behind the log. He was almost completely out of sight. He looked up and down the opposite bank of the river. Seeing nobody, he looked to the south, up at the Ford Parkway Bridge, the only place somebody may be able to see him as he was exposed from above.

  Under the netting, leaning on the log, he felt secure, hidden. He wiggled and shifted to move the sand until it conformed to his body. The rifle barrel rested on a branch from the fallen tree. He held the stock against his shoulder and moved his eye to the scope. The trees across the river were suddenly in focus. The Governor looked through the scope and scanned slowly up and down the river to make sure he could move the rifle freely. He also assessed the path through the trees to identify the best spot to execute his plan. He didn’t want his prey to have a place to hide. He wanted him in the open, trapped. The Governor looked up and down the opposite bank, took a deep breath and exhaled to relax. Any minute.

  The cracked blacktop path curved up the slope and merged with the bike path before turning back down into the woods farther ahead. Jack slowed and Patty caught up with him.

  “Here’s your chance, Patty. We’ve gone a mile. You can turn around here or it’s another mile before we come out of the woods again up by the Ford Parkway Bridge.”

  “Let’s keep going.”

  “You going to tell me what info you found out?”

  “Later.” Patty ran out ahead of Jack. “Follow me.”

  Jack followed Patty into the woods. She was running faster than he had up to this point and he was breathing heavier than he had before. “So what was it… you found out?”

  “Shut up, Miller, or I’ll run faster so you can’t talk at all.”

  Jack stayed quiet and ran on the path behind Patty. Running with somebody else wasn’t so bad, if it was a beautiful woman and she was running in front of you. He tried to guess what she might have found out, running different scenarios through his head. Back down the slope in the trees, it was quiet again; the only sound was their feet pounding along the path. Jack felt himself pushing to keep up, running at a faster pace than normal.

  “How can somebody as short as you run so fast?”

  “I don’t have as much gravity pulling on me. Just move the legs fast, Miller.”

  The walking path ran along the river about halfway up the slope between the river and the road above. A dirt path veered down the slope to the river.

  “Follow the path down the hill,” Jack panted. “We’ll get down closer to the river.”

  Patty slowed and worked her way down the steep dirt path to a path that ran along the Mississippi River. They ran in the same direction as the river flowed.

  “This is great being this close to the river. I feel it’s pulling us along with it.”

  “Down here can be a different world,” Jack said, having a chance to catch his breath as they slowed, coming down the slope. “I’ve seen deer, fox, and a coyote.”

  Patty kept running ahead, her feet crunching across the dead leaves on the dirt path. “I haven’t seen the Ford Parkway Bridge from down here before,” she yelled back over her shoulder.

  “I told you, everything is different down here.”

  The Governor caught some movement through the scope. He blinked hard and settled in behind it. The runner in the crosshairs was a woman. She was attractive, and ran smoothly along the trail. She turned her head and it looked like she was saying something. It was almost as if she was talking to him.

  He stopped tracking the woman and saw his target, as Special Agent Jack Miller ran into his view. The Governor was surprised to see him running with somebody else this morning. He needed to think quickly. He had planned options, but two runners hadn’t been one of them.

  His plan wasn’t just to shoot Jack without warning. He wanted to toy with him. Draw out the fun so Jack knew the Governor was in control. He focused on controlling his breathing and caressed the trigger with his finger.

  Jack entered the shooting zone, the area where the running path squeezed between the steep wall and the river with no place to hide. The Governor centered the cross hairs on his target and then pivoted the gun on top of the log it was resting on, tracking to the left to keep pace with the runner, and moving the crosshairs slightly ahead just as he had with the tires during practice. He slipped off the safety, took a deep breath, exhaled part of it, and squeezed the trigger.

  Chapter 35

  Jack continued to watch his step, but he was also watching Patty. Her strong legs carried her ahead of him down the trail. The straps of her jogging top framed her shoulders. He could see the muscles shift under the skin as her arms pumped forward and back.

  “Rock!” Patty shouted back over her shoulder.

  Jack saw it as she passed over it and stepped quickly around it.

  “We have to run back up there?” Patty asked, nodding at the bridge ahead of them sixty feet above.

  “I didn’t say it was a flat six-mile run.”

  Patty held up her right hand and flipped him the bird. Jack was laughing to himself when Patty screamed and went down on the trail ahead of him, rolling across the dirt. A bang sounded and echoed in the river gorge. Jack ran up to Patty, suspecting she’d sprained her ankle, but then the sound registered. Jack pushed Patty’s head down onto the ground and shielded her body. “Stay down.”

  “I’m bleeding!” Patty yelled. She was holding her leg. Blood covered her hands and ran down her thigh.

  Jack pulled off his tank top and wiped off her leg. A small dot showed in the hamstring on the back of her leg. “I think you’ve been shot. Put this on it.”

  “Shot?” Patty asked, confused and in pain. She tried to sit up.

  Jack held her down. “Stay down.” He scanned the far bank of the river from the water to the trees to the road above the river gorge. “I don’t know what happened, but you need to stay down until we figure out what’s going on. It’s not bleeding too bad, so we stay down for a little bit.”

  “Somebody shot me?”

  “Shh, you’ll be OK,” Jack tried to calm Patty. “Probably some freak accident. Just hold my shirt over the wound.”

  Jack tried to assess their situation. This wasn’t some freak accident. People didn’t shoot guns down in the river gorge early in the morning and accidentally hit somebody who happened to be running by. She had definitely been shot. He could tell by the entrance wound in her leg. Small caliber, meant to hurt. It had to be the Governor.

  He didn’t like where they were. He went back through all of his training and experience as an agent. He had to assess the situation and make some decisions. There were a few trees around, but they we
re on a part of the path down by the river with the steep wall behind them. They were kind of in the shadows, but in a short time, the rising sun would expose them in a brighter light, making them easier targets. The path was worn enough that it was a small trough. With Patty lying flat in it, it offered some protection.

  Why did he shoot Patty? He’d been waiting for him to go out on his morning run. The Governor had been watching him. Patty being here was a surprise. She wasn’t the target. The Governor was playing some sick game with Jack.

  “Jack. I’m going to kill whoever shot me,” Patty said between clenched teeth.

  “Listen. I think he wants me, but we can’t just sit here all morning. We’re off the usual path down here, but somebody else might come along.”

  “They can go for help for us,” Patty said.

  “Or he’ll shoot them too.”

  Patty continued lying on the path, sucking breaths between her teeth against the pain. “Not good. So what do we do?”

  “I’m going to run a little farther down the path. When he starts shooting, you go back the other way and try to get behind a tree. Stay in the path. Stay down.”

  “He’s going to shoot at you? Why hasn’t he shot you sitting here?”

  “He either can’t see me or he’s toying with me. I don’t think he was shooting at you. I think he was shooting at me. But with us running it threw him off.”

  “I’ll kill him,” Patty said.

  “You ready?” Jack asked. He wanted to move while Patty was worked up and mad, using her anger to get past her pain.

  “Yeah.”

  “Stay low.” Jack jumped up and ran farther along the path, away from her. The wall of the gorge ahead of him puffed dirt as a bullet hit it and Jack heard the report of the rifle echo down the river. Jack kept running. A second bullet hit a branch on a tree to his right. The Governor had hit Patty when she was running. Jack didn’t want to give him the chance. He hoped Patty had used this chance to run the other way for cover. Jack veered left in his run and after three strong paces, dove from the riverbank into the river.

  The shallow dive brought Jack out into the river away from the riverbank. The cold water instantly gripped him and carried him along with it as it made its way south towards the Gulf of Mexico. When Jack surfaced, he looked back and saw Patty scrambling and limping the other way. She quickly became smaller as he was carried the other direction in the current. She’d be safe.

  Jack did a dive and got below the surface, out of sight, where the water could carry him safely farther downstream away from the Governor. He held his breath and counted, trying to imagine how far he had moved down river. He wanted to get back to shore and get out near the base of the Ford Parkway Bridge. From there, he could make it up to the road for help.

  When his head broke above water for the second time, Jack wiped the water from his eyes and looked back across the river, trying to see if he could tell where the Governor might be. He heard another shot but couldn’t tell where it hit. He turned and swam hard towards the bank. He made some progress, but was moving downstream much faster than he had anticipated. For each stroke towards the bank, he moved further downstream. It didn’t look like he would be able to reach the riverbank at a point where he would be able to crawl out.

  The river pulled him towards the locks on the west side of the river. There were two locks side-by-side for moving barges and boats past the dam used to provide electricity to the Ford truck plant. He floated by the concrete walls along the riverbank below the bridge. There was no way to get out of the river from here.

  A loud bang sounded as a bullet ricocheted off one of the steel lock doors. The shot wasn’t close to him, but served notice that the Governor was still there and Jack was still within range. Jack dragged his hand and foot along the wall, trying to slow his progress, trying to allow himself time to examine the wall for a ladder, a hand hold, something to help him get out of the river. He floated below a red button on the wall. The button was used by boat drivers to signal the lock operators to open the locks for the boats. Jack kicked his legs to propel his body out of the water and stretched his right arm up the wall, but he was still four to six feet short of reaching the button.

  Jack put his thumb and second finger just inside his lips and blew, whistling a high-pitched shriek, just as his uncle had taught him thirty years before. He had to get the attention of somebody working at the locks or somebody passing over on the bridge. He didn’t have many options left. Swimming east, past the locks would put him in a position where the river would carry him over the dam, almost certainly killing him as the churning water would hold him in its grip at the base of the dam until he drowned. Here in the calmer water in front of the lock, he was open to a shot by the Governor. Jack swam to the lock door and positioned himself in the corner between the steel door and concrete wall between the two locks. His exposure to the Governor was minimized. He treaded water, shivered, and whistled.

  The Governor took one last shot at Jack, aiming more for the steel doors, certain he wouldn’t hit him from this distance. But he wanted Jack to stay pinned in the corner by the steel lock doors. After the shot, the Governor turned the scope back up stream to see what the woman was doing. She was still behind the tree, using it for protection from the shooting.

  The sound of a horn echoed up the river gorge walls. The lock operators must have learned somebody was in the water and sounded the alarm. The Governor decided it was time to leave and pulled the camouflaged netting off. Then he stood, wiped the sand from his clothes, and threw the rifle, netting, and fishing equipment into the river.

  He took a last look towards Agent Miller and then his running partner before turning and walking through the trees, and then entered the opening of a storm sewer that emptied into the Mississippi River.

  Chapter 36

  The St. Paul police cordoned off West River Road and were investigating the trees along the riverbank with dogs, trying to find the shooter and the site from where the shots had come. The Sheriff’s department had launched a boat from the University of Minnesota two miles upstream and was patrolling the river from there to the Ford Parkway Bridge, looking for signs of the shooter. The shooter had to go up the bank to the road or north along the river. The only way south was the way Jack had done it, in the water, and from the east side of the river, a swimmer would be swept over the dam.

  The FBI dispatched a tactical team to Jack’s location and took up positions on the west side of the river to provide protection to the paramedics who were tending to Patty. Jack and the tactical team’s lead waited at the ambulance parked on the bike trail at the top of the river gorge, next to the road. Somebody had given Jack a t-shirt and he sat on the bumper of the ambulance, trying to recover from his time in the river and the effects of the adrenaline leaving his system.

  The lead was listening to a report from the radio, the earpiece keeping Jack from listening in.

  “What is it?” Jack asked.

  “A couple of things. Your running partner is going to be OK. She’s on her way to HCMC. She’s pissed and says you owe her.” The lead smiled. “She’s feisty.”

  “That word fits. What else?”

  “They found the shooting site. The shooter positioned himself in the sand on the other side of the river. Looks like he was laying behind an old tree on the riverbank. That’s it, no shooter, no gun, nothing else.” The lead stood in front of Jack, arms crossed over his Kevlar vest. “There’s a vehicle in the parking lot above there. May have been the shooter’s. We’re checking it out.” Drivers on their way to work slowed their cars as they drove by on River Road to see what was going on. “What do you have for me, Jack?”

  “It’s got to be the Governor, the bank robber. He was waiting for me. I usually run alone along this route in the morning. I don’t know why he shot Patty. Hit her by accident or just messing with me.” The words poured out of Jack. “They haven’t found anything?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Where’
s Ross?” Jack asked.

  “He’s coordinating services from the office. You want to talk with him?”

  Jack leaned back against the door of the ambulance and closed his eyes. He started shivering.

  “Hey, Miller. You OK?” The lead shook Jack by the shoulder. “Jack.”

  Jack opened his eyes. “Yeah, I’m OK. Just really tired.”

  “You’re wet, a little dehydrated, and coming down from the adrenaline rush.” The lead kept a hand on Jack’s shoulder to make sure he didn’t faint or fall to the ground. “Let’s get you home to your family; you need to sleep a little.” The lead motioned to the paramedic to come to the back of the ambulance.

  Jack’s head snapped up at the mention of his family. If the Governor knew who he was, he may know he had a family. “Get me Ross on the radio.”

  The lead handed Jack his radio and earpiece. Jack asked him to get him a ride to his house and then spoke into the radio. “Junior, it’s me.”

  “What’s going on out there? You OK?”

  “I’m fine. Listen. Get the St. Louis Park police to go by my in-laws’ house and watch it, but not to go in. I want to make sure Julie and the kids are fine and stay that way. Tell the police I’m coming to check out the house.”

  The Mercury Cougar skidded to a quick stop in the driveway. Jack was out before it had rocked back into place and settled. On the way over, he had called his in-laws and nobody had answered. Then he tried Julie’s cell phone and it went straight to her voice mail. He cut the twenty-minute drive to fifteen by speeding the whole way, but it still seemed to take forever. Jack had called ahead to the patrols that were around the house and had them looking for any individuals that didn’t seem to belong. All was quiet and Jack told himself that everything was fine. The Governor was after him, not his family, and probably wouldn’t know they weren’t living with him.