by John R. Kess
Jay surveyed the roofs of the three hangars and then swiveled in his chair, checking what parts of the perimeter he could see. He’d been doing the same thing for the past few years everywhere he went in Afghanistan. No snipers. No apparent backup.
“Amateurs,” Jay said, as he pointed his rifle out the passenger window, aiming at the guard covering the steps.
A hooded man walked down the stairs backward, motioning for someone to follow. A large man in handcuffs emerged at the top of the stairs, and the hooded man behind him gave him a shove. Sparks were still flying from the grinding going on beneath them. Jay knew the loud noise would mask the sound of a gunshot, which could give him an advantage if he had to start shooting.
“I got your back, buddy,” Jay murmured.
Jay froze as a beautiful young woman wearing handcuffs appeared at the top of the steps. Her pink-streaked brunette hair hung down to her shoulders. With a quick motion she flipped her hair out of her face, and Jay registered her terrified look and realized this was a kidnapping. The side doors on the van were opened as a hooded man pulled the girl down the steps by the handcuffs. Jay aimed his weapon at him.
* * *
“Kevin!” Elly screamed. Kevin reached the tarmac, and two men held him, one on each arm. She realized he couldn’t hear her because of the horrible noise coming from under the steps. The high-pitched buzz tortured her ears, and the smell of jet fuel made her gag. Her wrists were jerked forward by the hooded man in front of her pulling the chain of her handcuffs. The van’s open doors sent another wave of shock through her.
This isn’t happening, Elly thought. The hooded men stared up at her, and a tremor shot through her chest as her knees turned to jelly. Elly frantically looked around, but there was no one else to be found.
Oh, my God, I’m being kidnapped.
Elly gasped as Kevin rammed his shoulder into the man on his right and then turned and kicked the man with the automatic weapon in the groin. Kevin slammed his elbow into the back of the man’s neck, dropping him to the ground. The first man got up, and Kevin rammed his knee hard into him, knocking him over.
The hooded man pulling Elly down the steps held onto the chain of her handcuffs with one hand as he pulled out a handgun with the other. He aimed it at Kevin and pulled the trigger.
“No!” Elly screamed.
Kevin stumbled as the round passed through his left calf. An instant later the tension on Elly’s handcuffs disappeared. She looked down and saw red spots on her arms and T-shirt. The man in front of her grasped his bleeding neck with both hands. The hooded man buckled at the knees and rolled down the stairs onto the tarmac. The grinding noise from under the stairs stopped.
Kevin got back up and used his good leg to lunge at the man with the automatic weapon.
“Run, Elly!” Kevin screamed.
Elly flew down the steps to the tarmac and jumped over her downed captor. The rest of the airport seemed deserted, except for a red floatplane. She decided the floatplane might be unlocked and she could lock herself inside. She hoped it had a radio.
The man who’d been using the grinder jumped out from under the stairs and chased after her. Elly screamed when she saw him, and then heard a gunshot. She turned to see the man who’d been chasing her was now facedown on the pavement. Elly kept running and she spotted a rifle barrel sticking out of the passenger window of the floatplane. She looked back at Kevin as she ran.
The pilot emerged from the top of the steps of the turboprop and aimed his pistol at Kevin.
“No!” Elly screamed.
The pilot fired three times, hitting Kevin in the back. Elly watched Kevin fall and felt the air get sucked out of her lungs.
They shot him! They shot Kevin! Oh, my God! This isn’t happening!
The engine of the floatplane groaned and started with a puff of smoke. She ran to it as fast as she could.
The passenger door opened and a young man shouted, “Get in!”
In that instant all that registered for Elly was that the man didn’t have a hood and, though he had a rifle, he wasn’t pointing it at her. She jumped in and closed the door. She heard the ping of a bullet hitting the floatplane and then another. Elly folded over, making herself as small as possible. The young man leaned over to cover her as bullet after bullet hit the floatplane.
* * *
Jay slammed the throttle wide open, and the plane increased speed. Just before they ran out of taxiway, he pulled back on the yoke, and the plane lifted off the ground.
“They shot him. Oh, God, they shot Kevin!” She put her face to the window.
Jay maintained a steady climb as the young woman moaned while trying to control her breathing. She glanced around the airplane in a daze, holding her head.
A stream of white smoke billowed past her window. She pointed at it. “What is that?” Elly closed her window.
“It’s a coolant leak,” Jay said.
“Are we going to crash?”
Jay did not answer. He glanced at her and saw the blood on her white T-shirt. “Are you all right? Is that your blood? Are you hit?”
Elly looked down. “No. It’s not my blood.”
Jay focused on the gauges. The engine sounded okay, and the oil pressure read normal. The engine temperature was rising, but the gauge still showed that the engine was cold.
He banked the plane hard to the north and raised the nose to gain altitude. After a few minutes, the white smoke slowly thinned, but the engine temperature continued to rise. Jay backed off the throttle.
“What are we going to do?” she asked.
“We’re going to look for someplace to land.”
“Where?” she asked, looking out the window. “There’s nothing but hills and trees out here.”
“There’s a small lake about fifteen miles ahead. We can make it.”
A popping sound made them both jump. The engine groaned, and blue smoke poured out on Jay’s side. A clanking sound filled the cockpit as the engine seemed to tear itself apart. A spray of engine oil hit the windshield and streaked off to the side.
“What was that?” she shouted over the noise of the engine.
“We lost a cylinder. Put on your seatbelt!”
Jay pushed the throttle forward to make up for the lost power as the young woman fumbled with her handcuffs to connect her seatbelt. His gauges told him the oil pressure was good, but he could see the needle on his engine temperature gauge moving toward the red.
The young woman covered her ears as the clanking noise grew louder.
“Hey!” Jay pointed out the window at a small blue dot on the horizon. “We’re going to make it.”
A burst of orange flame shot out of the engine at the front of the plane. A thick cloud of black smoke streamed past the passenger-side window.
“We’re on fire!” the woman screamed.
Smoke from the burning oil filled the cockpit, and Jay cracked open his window and told her to do the same. The blue dot on the horizon was growing in size. “We’ll make it,” he said again, with more determination.
The needle on the temperature gauge was now past the red and out of the gauge’s working range. The oil pressure had dropped to nothing. The flames on the right side of the engine were still burning strong, which meant the plane was also leaking fuel. The engine sputtered along for another ten seconds and then abruptly lost power as the pistons melted and seized in their cylinder bores. The propeller came to an abrupt halt.
The cockpit went silent for one long second.
“Oh, my God!” the young woman cried.
Jay pushed forward on the yoke, allowing the plane to maintain its airspeed as they slowly glided back to earth. He saw the approaching ground and thought of all the bullets that had been fired at him in the past few years but had missed. After all that, Jay decided there was no way he was going out in a plane crash. He reached down and flipped the switch on the emergency locator transmitter mounted on the dash. Next, he put on his headset and made a distress call. He swo
re when no one replied. He flipped to another frequency to do it again but heard no response.
Jay saw the terror in the young woman’s face. “We’ll make the lake,” he said. The truth was he didn’t know if they’d make it. He decided this wasn’t a good time to tell the young woman his pilot’s license had expired.
The burning plane hung on the wind as they steadily descended in an eerie silence. Through the haze of smoke in the cockpit they could see tall trees on the edge of the approaching lake. They were huge, and Jay knew they wouldn’t yield at all if the small plane flew into them.
He pulled back ever so gently on the yoke. The plane slowed but climbed slightly, the trees now dangerously close.
“Put your hands on the dash and brace yourself,” Jay said.
She did as he said.
The plane leveled and held altitude for a few more seconds. Its pontoons creaked as they scraped the top branches. Jay groaned as he pushed the yoke forward to keep the plane from stalling. The young woman screamed as the plane dove toward the water. Jay pulled back quickly on the yoke to level the plane. They hit the water with a loud slap, both pontoons hitting water at the same time. The plane swayed side to side but stayed upright.
* * *
Elly felt like she’d been bucked off a horse and had the wind knocked out of her. It took a moment for her breathing to return to normal.
“Are you okay?” the young man asked.
Elly nodded as she coughed and fought to get air into her lungs.
They came to a stop thirty feet from shore. The flames coming out of the engine grew larger.
The young man quickly grabbed his camping gear, backpack, and rifle from the rear seat.
“We need to get out now.” He made sure Elly found the door handle and then opened his door and slid out of his seat onto the pontoon, then jumped into the shallow water, holding his gear above his head.
Elly fought with her door latch but finally slid from her seat and stepped out onto the pontoon. She struggled to keep her balance while fighting her handcuffs and the heat from the fire. She took one step on the wet pontoon and slipped, falling away from the floatplane. She hit the water screaming. The cold water sent a jolt of pain through her arms and legs. Gaining her balance on the rocky bottom, Elly stood, coughing up lake water and pulling at her soaked T-shirt. She trudged through waist-deep water to dry land, where she collapsed on the shore and watched the fire consume the floatplane.
Elly didn’t even feel the sharp bits of gravel and stone that dug into her scalp and arms. She shivered and turned onto her side, chilled as much from the cool pine breeze as from the vivid image of Kevin lying on the tarmac. This isn’t happening, she said to herself again and again.
* * *
Jay stared at the black plume of smoke rising high into the air above the floatplane. He thought about how much his father had loved that floatplane and how excited Jay had been any time his dad took him flying.
He broke his stare. The burning smell made Jay think of a supply truck in Afghanistan that was still smoldering when his unit arrived. He instinctively panned the shoreline, looking for enemy snipers. Then he dug through his backpack, reloaded his rifle, and dropped extra shells into his pocket. He clipped a large knife to his belt, then powered up his handheld GPS navigation unit and marked their location. He scanned the sky in the direction from which they’d come and saw it was clear.
Jay watched the young woman struggle frantically with her handcuffs to pull out a small plastic bottle from her pocket, pour two pills into her hand, and quickly swallow them. After that, she curled into a ball and started shaking. She was breathing so fast Jay thought she was going to hyperventilate. She covered her head with her arms. At first she was only whimpering, but soon she burst into tears. Jay knew she was likely in shock from both what happened at the airport and the realization of how close they’d just come to crashing. He watched from a distance and let her have a moment.
She was wearing thin canvas sneakers, and he wondered how far she could walk before her feet would get sore. He reached into his bag and pulled out two rolls of athletic wrap bandages and medical tape.
* * *
“Hey, are you okay?” the young man finally asked.
Elly wiped her tears as he approached. She sat up to see what he had in his hands and was forced to ask herself if he was a kidnapper just like the others. Maybe he had double-crossed them and was going to take her all for himself. Goosebumps formed on her arms and legs. Elly doubted she could outrun him.
He crouched down next to her. “What’s your name?” he asked.
Elly was confused by the question. Someone trying to kidnap her would already know her name. She realized that it had been over a year since someone had asked her that. It had been an elderly employee at the DMV back home in Baltimore, when she got her driver’s license renewed, not that she drove anymore. That was the last time she hadn’t been recognized.
“I’m Elly,” she said in a hoarse voice.
“My name is Jay. Do you know who those men were?”
Elly shook her head.
“I’m sorry about the man who was shot. Who is he?”
“His name is Kevin. He’s my bodyguard. And my friend.” Elly choked as she fought back a sudden swell of emotion.
“What about the pilot. Did you know him?”
“No.”
“What did they say to you?”
Elly wiped her eyes again. “Nothing, really. They put handcuffs on both of us and … I can’t … I can’t believe they shot him.” Elly stared at the ground and covered her head with her hands. Her head pounded as the pills had yet to kick in. She thought about taking more and looked away, embarrassed. “Do you have a cell phone?”
“No, I don’t. Even if I did, there wouldn’t be any reception.”
“What do we do now?”
“We hike out of here.”
Elly’s eyes met Jay’s to see if he was serious. Walking handcuffed into woods that stretched to the horizon with a strange man wasn’t the plan she wanted to hear.
“Elly, earning trust takes time, and we don’t have time. If we’re going to get out of here alive, I need you to trust me right now.” Jay held up the bandages. “Take off your socks and shoes. I need to wrap your feet with these for protection. We’ve got a long walk ahead of us, and you’re going to need it.”
Elly was about to protest, but she remembered the way he’d thrown himself on top of her when the bullets ripped into the floatplane. She removed her socks and shoes, and Jay wrapped her right foot, unwinding the bandage from the top of the foot to the bottom and then behind the ankle, forming a figure eight. He secured it into place and then did the other foot. Elly fought with her handcuffs as she put her wet socks and shoes back on.
“Next to your brain, your feet are the most important parts of your body right now,” Jay said. “Watch where you walk and keep your eyes focused on the path.”
Elly nodded.
“Now, let me see your wrists,” Jay said.
Elly slowly held out her cuffed wrists, half expecting to be wrenched to her feet. Instead, Jay gently rotated her wrists as he inspected the handcuffs. His hands were rough, and she noticed his skin was well tanned. She guessed he worked outside and wondered if he worked in construction.
“We need to tape your wrists or these are going rub your skin raw,” Jay said.
Before Elly could respond, Jay ripped off a strip of tape from his roll.
“Hold this up,” Jay said, motioning to her handcuff.
Elly used her opposite hand to grab the handcuff Jay had slid up her left arm. He carefully wrapped the tape around her wrist.
“Is that too tight?” he asked.
“No.”
Jay was almost done wrapping the other wrist when they heard a distant buzz. Elly noticed a thin outline of an approaching plane.
Jay finished taping her wrist as the plane got louder. “That’s your plane. They followed us here. We need to go.�
� He stood and extended his hand to help her up. Elly let him.
Nothing made any sense at all. She was dizzy and shivering as she glanced once more at the approaching plane. He was right. It was her plane. She thought of Kevin and her family. The pills she’d taken were starting to work, and her headache began to fade. She felt like her brain was going on autopilot as she turned and followed Jay into the forest.
* * *
Michael Belgrade circled once over the small lake. The burning floatplane was easy to spot. He radioed back to the remaining men on the ground and gave the coordinates of its location. Belgrade pointed his plane west and gained altitude.
Belgrade cursed his partners, the morons who’d let the girl get away. He was furious and had to fight the urge to pound his fist on the panel of gauges in front of him. He had let them all know their lives depended on finding her quickly, and the clock was ticking.
Belgrade set his altitude to 12,000 feet. Twenty minutes later, he zipped into a jumpsuit and strapped on his parachute and goggles. He looped a thick wire over the door-release mechanism and yanked on it. At first it wouldn’t move, but then with a violent motion the handle slammed into the open position and the door whipped open. In a fraction of a second, what little metal remained of the hinges snapped, and the door disappeared, scraping the fuselage as it fell.
Belgrade steadied himself against the rushing air. With careful movements, his gloved hands gripping the walls, he reentered the cockpit and punched the button to activate the autopilot feature, which he’d preset for 30,000 feet. The dead bodyguard had been strapped into a chair next to the door, and the two team members who’d been killed by the guy in the floatplane had been stuffed into the back. Belgrade gave the dead bodyguard a quick salute and jumped out of the plane.
The free fall and the opening of the chute were flawless, and Belgrade guided himself to his prearranged landing spot near a gravel road. He easily found the Yamaha motorcycle he’d hidden earlier in the day. He stuffed his gear into a backpack he’d left with the motorcycle and was gone.
