The Holdouts (Buddy Lock Thrillers Book 2)

by James Tucker

  The man shouted, “Time’s up.”

  Buddy knew this was his last chance at life. They could push him out of the plane right now. They would push him out. He struggled with his hands.

  Ponytail moved closer, grabbing the horizontal chrome bar above Buddy’s head.

  Buddy sensed the man behind him holding on to the vertical bar at his back. He wriggled his hands and wrists. The bungee cord’s metal hook popped free.

  The trolley swayed and began rolling to his left, toward the open door and the screaming engines and shrieking wind outside.

  He didn’t think. He moved his hands. Got the right one free. His heartbeat spiked. He went for Ponytail. Hit his nose, harder than he’d ever hit anyone.

  Ponytail didn’t expect it, must have thought Buddy couldn’t get his hands free in time. Ponytail’s head knocked backward like that of a doll. Blood shot out of his smashed nose. He lost his balance and toppled over backward.

  The trolley stopped. Didn’t get closer to the open door, didn’t move farther away.

  Buddy planted his feet and threw himself onto Ponytail. He dragged the wooden chair and the trolley with him, upending them. As he landed on Ponytail’s chest, he jacked his feet up and down and lost his shoes but got both feet free. He kicked the chair and the base of the trolley backward, heard them hit the man behind him, then the man crash against the side of the plane.

  The plane tilted to the right and then straightened.

  Buddy punched Ponytail in the nose and the side of the head. Three savage blows. Blood streamed out of both nostrils. But Ponytail was strong and even with the smashed nose, he rolled onto Buddy and punched Buddy in the face and neck.

  Buddy raised his hands and tried to buck him off. Ponytail lost his balance and wavered, as if suspended above Buddy. Buddy sat up and punched him in the eyes. Ponytail swayed backward and Buddy kicked him. Three times. Fast. Buddy wanted to survive. He’d fight like an animal, scrambling, scrappy, dirty.

  Suddenly, the plane banked harshly to the right, doing a one eighty, turning back in the direction of the city, before straightening. Buddy put a hand to the side of the fuselage to steady himself.

  Then he rolled to the right side of the plane and kicked hard at Ponytail. Once. Twice. Kicked him toward the door. Ponytail’s eyes widened with terror as he realized what was happening. He grasped Buddy’s legs.

  Buddy pivoted and sat up, stood up, and punched him over and over in the face. Ponytail grasped at the sides of the door and pulled himself into a sitting position. Buddy crouched low, anchored himself as best he could, and slugged Ponytail in the chest. He watched Ponytail waver and tip backward.

  Ponytail’s left shoulder extended beyond the doorway. The wind caught his shoulder, put him off-balance, and sucked him out the door.

  Buddy didn’t watch him go, didn’t listen for a scream. Instead he turned to the man behind him. It was Rat Eyes. Hunched and hulking in the small plane. Now that Rat Eyes had removed his mask, Buddy could see the dark complexion, the wide face, and the eyes that resembled shiny black marbles. Those eyes were hard and filled with determination and complete confidence. The man’s shoulders seemed to be five feet wide, like those of a linebacker for the Giants. Rat Eyes was climbing to his feet and pulling a gun from his ankle holster. Buddy knew he couldn’t wait.

  He launched himself over the wooden chair and the trolley lying on their sides. He tackled Rat Eyes. He expected the impact of a shot to the chest, but his quickness meant the man didn’t have time to raise the gun very far.

  Crack!

  The gun discharged, the sound distinct from the violent thrum of the engines.

  Buddy knew the shot had missed him, but the second one wouldn’t. He socked Rat Eyes in the face, pulled away, saw the gun. Went for Rat Eyes’s right forearm and hand, ratcheting them upward.

  Crack!

  Another shot, this one into the upper fuselage.

  Buddy held Rat Eyes’s right arm, the one with the gun, but the guy was huge, his arms like pythons. In close combat, Rat Eyes had the advantage. He began to hit Buddy. He knocked Buddy off his feet. Buddy scrambled up.

  Shit.

  With one hand he guarded his face, with the other he reached around the floor and found a wicker tray containing snacks. He picked it up and hit the linebacker in the eyes. Buddy took a step back, closer to the open door.

  Rat Eyes held up the gun, aimed at Buddy.

  Buddy rushed at him, forearms crossed in front of him, aiming his fists at the man’s face. Instinctively, Rat Eyes raised a left forearm to block him. And didn’t fire. But Rat Eyes pushed forward, bulldozing Buddy, backing him toward the open door. Bringing up his left fist, Rat Eyes punched Buddy.

  Twice.

  The second one like a sledgehammer.

  Then Rat Eyes tossed the gun behind him and grabbed Buddy. Buddy stepped forward, enduring a punch to the head and bear-hugging the guy.

  If I go, you go.

  Then someone held Buddy’s shoulders. A grip like a steel claw.

  What the hell?

  Two blows to his back, his spine.

  Who?

  The pilot.

  Fuck.

  He stood on the lip of the opening, reaching to the sides of the door to halt his progress. But they knocked his hands forward. He grasped at nothing, at air.

  And they pushed him out of the plane.

  No!

  He descended into the frigid air. He couldn’t breathe. He thought his heart had stopped. He was a rock thrown toward the earth at an unbelievable speed. The wind howled in his ears. He couldn’t think.

  He was in freefall, his arms and legs outstretched in a futile attempt to slow his inevitable death.

  He lived at the edge of consciousness, his heart racing wildly before slowing, before cardiac arrest.

  Now on his back, he saw the plane bank right and disappear into the clouds.

  80

  Two hundred feet above the DHC-6 Twin Otter, Ward stood in the open doorway of another plane. A plane that had climbed faster and could fly above and behind the Otter.

  After raiding the skydiving shop near the hangar, he’d taken at gunpoint a King Air jump plane that had just finished fueling on the other side of the airstrip. He’d told the pilot he was trying to save a man’s life. The pilot had looked at the gun and followed Ward’s instructions. They’d been airborne thirty seconds after the Otter.

  As they’d followed the Otter out over the Atlantic, Ward remembered Buddy’s text about the suicides off Long Island. The medical examiner had suggested they’d jumped or been pushed off a bridge.

  Some fucking bridge, Ward had thought.

  When he and the pilot had seen the Twin Otter’s open door, they realized that the men who’d captured Buddy weren’t taking him anywhere. There was no destination. Not for Buddy.

  The pilot had begun to turn the plane, to return to the hangar, to get away from whatever would happen. Ward had put the gun to his head, and the pilot had straightened the King Air.

  Now Ward gripped both sides of the open door to keep from falling. He watched for Buddy. He hoped the clouds would allow him to witness the moment his brother was pushed out of the Otter.

  A few minutes earlier, he’d nearly jumped but caught himself. At first he’d thought the man falling from the plane was Buddy, but the man he’d seen had long dark hair.

  Ward stood at the chrome-plated lip of the doorway, his legs wide apart, fighting against the pressure and the icy wind that pulled at him. He wore goggles he’d taken from the skydiving shop and tight leather gloves. The parachute harness was too tight, but that was okay. If things went right, there’d be a shitload of weight on it. He’d strapped a second harness to his left leg.

  He waited, watching, squinting, straining to see. If he jumped too soon, Buddy would die. Buddy would probably die anyway. His idea was almost certain to fail, but he’d give all he could. He knew that if the situation were reversed, Buddy would do the same for him.


  But he couldn’t wait too long. Three seconds too long meant he’d have no chance.

  He saw something.

  What is it?

  Movement at the edge of the plane. A man, it seemed. A familiar man.

  Buddy.

  The tip of a nimbus cloud passed between the two airplanes, obscuring Ward’s view. He leaned forward, farther out the door. He squinted and ignored the roaring plane engines.

  What was that?

  The planes flew beyond the cloud, making clear his view of the Otter. But he couldn’t see anyone in the doorway.

  Jesus.

  Did I see a fleck of black peel off the side? I think so. Or was it nothing, a dense portion of the cloud?

  He thought, Should I wait, to be sure?

  No!

  His gut told him Buddy was falling. He couldn’t wait. This was it. This was his one chance, Buddy’s only chance.

  He dived out of the plane. Headfirst, arms at his sides, jackknifing downward, away from the King Air and to his left, back to where he thought he’d seen the speck peel off the plane.

  Speed, unlike any he’d known. He didn’t hold out his arms and legs to slow his fall, he went faster and faster, to the edge of consciousness, to the point at which his heart began to run so fast he couldn’t breathe.

  He broke through the cumulus clouds and scanned the enormous space below him for a form he knew well. He saw a flock of white gulls but not Buddy.

  Extending his arms upward in a stretch, he angled himself north and dangerously increased his speed.

  One chance.

  Come on, Buddy.

  Come on!

  Where the fuck are you?

  81

  Buddy was dropping fast, so fast he couldn’t move. An impossible fatigue covered him, smothered him.

  He gave up, lying still as a doll.

  He tried to look up, to see the gray clouds and patches of sky during his last few seconds of life, but he couldn’t help but look down.

  The indigo-colored Atlantic approached fast. Now he could make out the individual swells and their relative sizes, the wind whipping up whitecaps on their crests. He saw the edge of land in the distance. The land seemed flat and white and winter brown. A few boats miles away, barely moving if they were moving at all. His eyes took in these details but he couldn’t think. His eyes were an old camera with the shutter stuck open and no film inside to process the images. Nothing registered. He fell, that was all.

  In his chest he felt an intense, rigid pain. He stopped breathing. He blacked out.

  82

  The air screamed in Ward’s ears. He felt light-headed. He knew he had another ten or fifteen seconds, and he’d have to pull the rip cord or fall to his death. He screamed to stay alert. He bit his tongue until it bled. He took deep breaths. He frantically searched the airspace below him, north and south, east and west. The endless sea and the smooth rim of Long Island. Boats in the distance. He tensed. He scanned up and down and back and forth.

  Nothing.

  His stomach churned. He turned his head and vomited.

  Then he refocused. He saw it.

  A hundred yards below him and to the left, a black disk camouflaged by the dark waters of the Atlantic. But it wasn’t a disk. It had a head, a torso, legs.

  He went for his brother.

  One chance.

  83

  Buddy jerked awake as he was knocked sideways.

  He opened his eyes.

  Breathed.

  He heard screaming.

  Something was on him, around him, hugging him.

  No, someone. Someone was with him. He wasn’t alone. He was dying with someone else.

  He felt himself relax. He tried to ignore the screaming.

  Without much curiosity, he glanced at the person with him. A man from the plane, he thought. But then he saw the blue eyes behind the goggles. He recognized them.

  Hey, what?

  He tried to focus on the voice he knew so well.

  Ward yelled, “Help me! Put these straps around you! Now!”

  Buddy reached toward the straps, tried to fit his arms through them.

  And blacked out again.

  84

  Ward felt his brother go slack his arms.

  “No, no, no. Buddy! Buddy!”

  But his brother didn’t respond.

  He looked down.

  Five seconds.

  Five seconds to get the harness on his brother.

  Not one second more.

  He moved, pulling the harness around Buddy’s legs. He snapped one side. The other.

  Then he snapped his harness to Buddy’s and yanked the rip cord.

  85

  Buddy came to. Water poured over him. Water so cold he shook violently.

  He was in some netherworld. He lay shivering, blind and cold and wet. He lifted his head, trying to get out of the water, and breathed.

  Deeply.

  Again. Again.

  His mind began to function.

  He sensed his brother near him, unclipping the parachute.

  He knew that he was alive.

  86

  Mei hugged Ben and turned her head away from the men pointing guns at them. She inhaled and held her breath, ready for her life to be shot through and extinguished. She clung to the boy she considered her son, and he nestled against her chest. Both wept aloud.

  “I love you,” she told him. These were the last words she wanted to speak, the last words she wanted him to hear before they faded into time’s oblivion.

  Her eyes were scrunched closed, but she couldn’t close her ears. She heard the men’s boots crunch the snow.

  One set of feet moved around her until they stood behind Ben. The other set stood behind her.

  The man behind her said, “Kneel. Do it.”

  She had no choice. She knelt along with Ben. The knife stuck in her right boot gave her no protection. The cold of the snow passed through her pants. Immediately, she felt dampness at her knees.

  Ben was shaking in her arms, as afraid as she. He, too, wanted to live. While she had less life remaining than he did, she wanted to live just as much as ever. In the past six months, it had grown sweet, with Buddy and now Ben joining her life.

  A cool metal object pressed against the back of her head.

  “I love you,” she repeated.

  Ben whispered in her ear. “Mei? Mei?”

  “I’m here, sweetie. I’m here.”

  “They’re going to—”

  “Shhh. We’ll just go to sleep.”

  “But Mei. Mei?”

  She held him more tightly.

  A cell phone rang. At first Mei thought it was Ben’s phone, but a moment later she heard one of the men talking.

  “Yeah. We got them. A hiking path a mile from the house. I don’t see anyone else. Not here? Are you sure?”

  Everything around them grew still. The metal moved away from the back of her head.

  She waited, listening to her breath mixed with Ben’s.

  The screech of a hawk pierced the silence. It was overhead, unseen, now again unheard.

  The men behind her didn’t move.

  A single gunshot filled the trough of the ravine, echoing off its steep walls.

  87

  Buddy rolled up and down the swells. He knew he was hypothermic. His lungs were tightening, constricting. He didn’t know how much longer he had.

  He watched Ward’s arm rise above the water and press several buttons on the giant black watch that Buddy had once made fun of. The watch emitted a faint beeping noise that became continuous.

  Through his goggles, Ward looked over at him. “Hang in there, man. Brick’s on his way.”

  Buddy heard himself groan.

  Ward worked an arm under his neck and helped support him, kept his head above the swells toppling over them. Ward said, “This is the best thing that could happen!”

  Buddy wanted to shake his head, but he couldn’t move his neck. He croaked, “Are
you fucking kidding me?”

  “Don’t you see?” Ward shouted. “They think you’re dead. Dead.”

  “I’m not far off.”

  Ward ignored him. “Buddy, they’ll stop looking for you. You’re free. Now you can hunt instead of hide.”

  The argument warmed Buddy, angered him. After the fall, he felt completely defeated. He didn’t want to be prodded to do anything. He wanted to get away from New York. He wanted . . . he wasn’t sure what he wanted. Even lying faceup as the giant swells moved under him, he knew that he couldn’t live—and Ben and Mei couldn’t live—until he finished the business that had brought him to this watery grave. Yet continuing his investigation seemed difficult or impossible. He said, “I have no resources. I can’t use a phone. A car. My badge.”

  With his free hand, Ward patted his chest. “You have my resources. More than what the police department has. There’s no chain of command. No rules.”

  No rules, Buddy thought. No shit. You get thrown out of an airplane, you get justice however you can get it. He considered what had just happened to him and changed his mind. Justice? No. Revenge.

  He waited, focused on his breathing. A dense cold grasped at his heart. He fought it, tried to move his arms and legs.

  His eyes began to close. His legs grew so heavy he couldn’t move them. He’d die here in Ward’s arms. Better than alone, but he wished he were with Mei somewhere warm. In bed with her. He imagined her in his arms, sitting astride him, a smile on her full lips, her silky black hair falling around his face, her honey-colored breasts brushing his chest.

  “Mei,” he said aloud.

  His dream continued as the water lifted and gently lowered him. His breaths became shorter and shorter. Now he felt warmth, a flame that sparked in his heart and soon spread across his body like a wildfire. Peace, at last.

  But then he heard the sound of an engine. It intruded into his dream.

  Ward shouted something.

  Buddy blinked his eyes, tried to raise himself. He tried to speak but couldn’t.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw the length of a white fiberglass boat. On the side of it were red letters. They spelled Boston Whaler.