Revenge Story

by Julia Broussard

  “Okay.” She got out of the truck and climbed into the back. Slipping the MP-5 from her shoulder, she peeked through the back window of the truck. Her heart was pounding like a runaway train. Whoever was coming, they were not yet in sight. She lay down in the bed of the truck and took a deep breath.

  Ben waited calmly. The little caravan was now only two hundred yards or so from the bend in the road. His mind raced, searching for the proper tactics to use against the vehicles. He aimed his rifle at the lead vehicle for a few seconds and then laid it against a nearby tree. No, he thought. Not the rifle. The F.B.I. rig is the biggest threat. He picked up the LAWS tube and pulled the tube to extend it. The front and rear caps dropped away. Kneeling between two trees, he aimed at the rear vehicle and waited for it come closer. As the caravan reached the bend in the road, he let them continue around the curve until the lead vehicle could spot Ray in his uniform and the Forest Service truck.

  The lead vehicle stopped at once. Two rangers started to get out of the truck. Ben fired the rocket at the F.B.I. rig that had come to a stop directly behind them. The black SUV exploded into a blazing mass of broken metal and falling glass. He dropped the tube and stepped out into the open with his M-16. He put a single burst into each of the rangers before they could react. They dropped to the ground like puppets cut from their strings. Walking over to the burning SUV, he glanced inside and saw four men. They looked dead. Just to make sure, he pulled the pin from one of the grenades and tossed it inside. It exploded as he was walking away. As he passed the two rangers on the ground, one of them groaned. Ben put another burst into both of them as insurance. Brass casings tinkled to the ground.

  The whole thing was over in less than twenty seconds.

  Ben walked up to Ray, who had not even picked his rifle from the top of the engine yet. “That’s it. They’re all dead. Let’s go.”

  “Jesus,” said Ray.

  “Yeah. Well, better them than us. We’d better get out of here. I don’t have any more rockets.” He waited for Karen to climb into the middle seat and then got in and shut the door. Pulling the now-empty magazine from his rifle, he slammed a full one into place.

  Ray Morris started the truck and headed off again toward the main highway. He drove along the edge of the road to avoid running over the dead rangers. The smoke from the burning SUV was rancid in his nose.

  “Sir?” said the pilot.

  “Yes?” McKenzie replied from his rear seat.

  “I see black smoke at ten o’ clock.”

  McKenzie leaned over in his seat for a better look. A heavy black column of oily smoke was rising through the trees about three miles away. “Head for it,” he told the pilot. “That’s no campfire. And keep an eye out. Our perps are supposed to have a Stinger missile and rockets. You see anyone aiming at us from the ground; you get us the hell out of there.”

  The pilot turned toward the smoke and got on the radio. “Jenna Six Kilo to base and all ground teams,” he called, “black smoke spotted on the ground in the search area. Stand by for GPS coordinates. We are approaching now. ETA one minute.”

  “Shit,” said Ben. “I hear a chopper coming. They’re like fucking maggots. Pull over into that brush there and stop!”

  “What the hell can we do against a chopper?” said Ray. “You know we’re out of rockets. We should just make a run for it!”

  “They saw the smoke. They’ll go right past us on their way to it. You think you can outrun a helicopter with this truck? Just do what I say!”

  Ray crashed the truck into the brush to give it some cover. It bounced to a stop. He shut off the engine. “Now what?”

  “Grab that M-16 and follow me.”

  The two men ran back to the dirt road. The whop-whop-whop of the helicopter’s blades grew closer each second. Ben pointed to a line of trees just off the road. “They’re going to pass right over us. Wait for them. When they go over that tree line, give them a three-length lead, and then fire your whole magazine into the same spot. You know the drill. Hurry up! Lock and load, man!”

  “This won’t work,” said Ray. He took one knee and aimed his rifle just above the tree line.

  Ben did the same. “It’s all we’ve got. Go for the nose. It has the avionics and the pilot. Let them fly right into the bullet pattern.”

  They waited as the chopper drew closer. Suddenly, it popped over the tree line, moving fast, barely a hundred feet off the ground. “Now!” Ben shouted. Both men sprayed a total of sixty rounds into the same spot just ahead of the helicopter. Hot brass casings from their rifles flew into the air. As the helicopter passed overhead, Ben quickly popped another magazine into his rifle, whirled around, and emptied it at them again with a roar.

  The helicopter veered off hard to the right.

  “We missed!” shouted Ray.

  “You think so?” said Ben. He pointed. “Look.”

  Instead of the helicopter reversing its course to give chase, it was now moving in a slow circle, tail first, with the nose slightly above horizontal. It was in trouble. Smoke poured from the tail rotor. “Holy shit,” Ray said.

  “What the hell’s going on?” McKenzie shouted as the helicopter spun slowly on its axis. Everyone had taken a death-grip on their nearest handhold to prevent being tossed around like puppets.

  Alarm buzzers blared and red caution lights were flashing on the instrument panels. “We’ve been hit by ground fire!” yelled the pilot. “Hang on everybody. We are going down.” He threw a switch on the radio. “This is Jenna six Kilo calling mayday. Mayday any station, Jenna six Kilo is going down. Sending our GPS now. Mayday, mayday, mayday. We are going down. Jenna six Kilo going down.”

  It was like a crazy amusement park ride. The tail of the helicopter spun around as they lost altitude a few feet at a time. Seconds later, they dropped into a small clearing between the trees. The main rotor chopped a few branches loose and tossed them around like green confetti. McKenzie saw the ground rushing up and then heard a terrible sound like two boxcars from a train slamming together. He grabbed hold of his seat and had time enough for one quick thought.

  He wondered if it had been the Stinger missile.

  “Did you see that?” said Ben. “They went down in the trees over there.”

  “I didn’t hear any explosion,” said Ray.

  “Maybe they got lucky and didn’t catch fire,” said Ben. “Let’s get out of here quick. I don’t think we should stick around to see if there were any survivors.”

  The two men ran back to the truck and jumped inside. Ray turned the key and backed up quickly onto the dirt road. He floored the accelerator and threw dust off the tires getting up to speed. “We’re only a couple of miles from the highway,” he said.

  Karen had climbed back into the cab after the shooting had ended and now sat between them, staring straight ahead and saying nothing. Both her hands and the barrel of the MP-5 she held were shaking.

  The paved highway suddenly appeared up ahead. The dirt road simply ended on the shoulder of the highway, with a sign pointing two ways. One arrow pointed right toward Weaverville and Arcata, the eastbound arrow pointed to Redding. They turned west toward Weaverville and quickly merged with the heavier-than-normal Labor Day traffic. At the same time, they saw four black SUV’s racing in the opposite direction. “Duck!” Ray yelled.

  Karen and Ben crouched down in the truck as the FBI vehicles zoomed past.

  Ray watched them pass in the side mirror. No one inside the rigs gave the Forest Service truck more than a cursory glance. The SUVs turned hard at the dirt road access and raced into the hills.

  “They’re not turning around. They just went up the same dirt road,” Ray said, letting his breath out in a whoosh. “They must not know we switched trucks yet. You can sit up now.”

  “Damn. That was fucking close. We just missed them,” said Ben. “If they had spotted us coming off that road, they would have been on our asses for sure. How far is it to the turnoff for the airstrip?”

  “Just
a few more miles,” said Ray grimly. “Hope we don’t run into any roadblocks.”

  “Same here. All I have left except this rifle are a couple of grenades. And I don’t think we can blast through a roadblock with just them.”

  He heard a voice from somewhere far away, as if someone was shouting to him from inside a deep well. He struggled to understand the voice.

  “Agent McKenzie! Can you hear me? Are you all right, sir?”

  McKenzie opened his eyes. He was flat on his back on the ground. The smashed remains of the Bell 407 lay a dozen yards away. “Yes,” he said with some difficulty. He looked up and saw the pilot kneeling next to him. “What happened? Is everyone okay?” He struggled onto his elbows and felt blood running into his eyes. He brushed it away.

  “You’ve got a head wound sir,” said the pilot. “It’s not bad, though. And judging from that bump on your wrist, I’d say it’s broken. Help is on the way. The other air team is diverting to our position, and two of the ground teams. They’ll be here in a few minutes.”

  “What about the others?”

  “Sorry sir. The rest of the team is dead.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, sir. I checked them. You’ve been out cold for a few minutes, sir. They’re all dead inside the fuselage. Looks like you and I were the only ones thrown clear when we hit.”

  “Do you know what happened?” said McKenzie. “I mean who did this to us?”

  “I checked the nose.” The pilot took off his helmet and tossed it away. He sat down next to McKenzie and put his head in his hands. “We took some hits into the avionics, and I think the tail rotor, too. Someone shot just enough of it away that I lost control. I don’t how they managed it. It was a one-in-a-million shot, sir.”

  “Unless you’ve been trained in that sort of skill,” said McKenzie bitterly.

  “What?”

  “The guys we’re hunting are Army vets. One’s actually a fucking officer, if you can believe that.” McKenzie groaned. “God I hurt everywhere.” He lay back down and stared up at the tree canopy. This manhunt is turning into a farce. At every turn, the Morris couple and Benjamin Cummings were making fools of them. He suddenly realized that the people he was pursuing had broken the old record once held by the Prohibition-era gangster Lester Gillis, otherwise known as Baby Face Nelson.

  They had now killed more Federal agents than anyone else. As his left wrist continued to throb with pain, he had another thought. I will catch these assholes if I have to chase them to the ends of the fucking Earth.

  Chapter 11

  Ray Morris put the truck into reverse and eased it backward into some bushes near the end of the old airstrip. He shut off the engine. “Well, we made it.”

  A soft wind caused the long grass along the edges of the runway to dance back and forth. At one end of the strip was a windsock on a pole. There was nothing else visible. It was definitely an out-of-the-way landing zone, and at present, unoccupied.

  “No one’s here,” said Karen. “Maybe no one is coming.”

  “Patience,” said Ben. “It’s Labor Day weekend. Someone is bound to show up here sooner or later.”

  “Yeah? What if the F.B.I. figures out they should drop by this place, too?” said Ray. “There’s only one way out of here, and that’s back down the road we came.”

  “It’s still early,” said Ben. He glanced at his watch. “Only nine-thirty. If no one comes by noon, I guess we’ll have to figure out something else.”

  “Shit, Ben. By noon, the whole U.S. Army and half the goddamn F.B.I. will be combing this whole area. They’ve got to know by now we aren’t north of the main highway anymore.”

  “Yeah? So what?”

  “If they’ve got both ends of that highway blocked, it won’t take them long to figure out the only way we could have gone is south,” said Ray. “After that, you know they’ll show up here to stake out this airstrip. You just better hope someone comes along soon.”

  Ben stared out the passenger window at that portion of the sky where a small plane would make its approach. The sky was empty. “You’re right. But just in case someone comes along, we’d better be ready for them when they...” He stopped and pointed. “Look!”

  On the other side of the airfield, a small blue Subaru wagon was pulling up near the end of the runway. It stopped. Ben opened the glove compartment and took out a pair of binoculars. He put them to his eyes.

  “Who is it?” said Karen. “Can you see them?”

  Ben watched as someone got out of the car and sat down on the hood. “It’s a woman,” he said. “She’s looking at the sky. Oh, yeah. She’s waiting for somebody to arrive. Has to be.”

  “You sure?”

  “Look around, Ray. See any bus service here? Anyone using this airstrip would have to have a ride waiting. I told you. It’s fifteen miles to the nearest town. She’s here waiting for somebody.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  Ben rubbed his chin and tried to think. “Okay. I think I know the best way to approach without spooking her. Karen and I can hide in the bed of the truck. You’re the one with the uniform. You drive up on her real slow and friendly. I’ll take care of the rest.”

  “You’re not going to kill her, are you?” said Karen.

  “Nah,” Ben said. “But we need to get control of her so whoever is flying in will cooperate. I don’t think the Forest Service truck is going to spook the pilot, as long as he doesn’t see any guns.”

  Ben and Karen got out and climbed into the back of the truck, staying low to the bed so they couldn’t be seen. “Okay, let’s do it,” said Ben.

  Ray started the truck and brought it out of the bushes at a gentle pace. He turned left and skirted the edge of the runway, working his way closer to the woman sitting on the hood of the car. He drove at a leisurely pace, and when he got closer, he waved to her.

  She waved back.

  Pulling up about a dozen feet from the Subaru, he called out, “Hi, I’m with the Forest Service. Are you waiting for someone?”

  The woman was about twenty-five, with long dark hair and a pretty smile. “Oh, just my boyfriend. He’s flying in for the weekend.”

  Ray made no move to open the door on the truck. “Okay,” he said. “You take care now.”

  “Okay. ‘ Bye.”

  As the truck passed in front of the Subaru, Ben stood up and hopped out with his M-16 leveled at the woman’s chest.

  Ray stopped the truck and shut off the engine.

  “Don’t scream, and don’t move lady,” said Ben. “Otherwise, you’re dead.”

  The woman’s mouth formed a big ‘o’. “Please...”

  Ben walked up to her and put the barrel of the rifle against her throat. “I don’t want to hurt you, but if you give us any trouble, I’ll kill you. Understand?”

  “Yes. Please don’t hurt me.”

  “Don’t make me hurt you then. How long until your boyfriend gets here?”

  “He should be here any minute,” she said. “Why do you want him? You’re not here to kill him are you?”

  “No. It’s his plane we need. What type of aircraft is it?”

  “It’s a Cessna.”

  “What kind of Cessna?”

  “A Cessna172.”

  “Perfect. Four-place. But that means one person has to stay here,” said Ben. “I guess that would be you, lady. We need your boyfriend to fly the plane.”

  “I thought you said you had a license,” said Morris.

  “I do. But it’s been a few years since I’ve flown and I’ve never flown a 172 before, just the smaller 150. We might need the pilot, I’m not sure yet.”

  Ray and Karen got out of the truck.

  Ben tossed the rifle to Ray, who caught it with one hand. “Hide that,” he said. He took out a pistol and gestured to Karen. “Put that MP-5 in the back of the truck. Pistols only. We don’t want her boyfriend to see anything funny when he lands; otherwise he might not even land.”

  “You’re those peopl
e from the TV news, aren’t you?” said the woman. “The terrorists.”

  Ben laughed. “Is that what they’re calling us? We’re just bank robbers, baby. We don’t want to overthrow the government. Put your hands down. Just stay there on the hood of the car and do what you’re told.”

  “Yes, sir.” The woman placed her hands flat on the hood.

  A far-off drone caught Ben’s attention. He looked up and saw a red-and-white single-engine plane coming in for a landing at the far end of the field.

  Ben walked up and poked the woman’s arm. She flinched away. “Wave,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Wave at him.”

  She did as she was told, waving her arm high at the plane.

  The plane’s wings waggled up and down just a bit as it made its approach. It touched down smoothly and bounced along the dirt runway until it reached the end of the airstrip. The engine chugged to a stop.

  “Stay here, Ray,” said Ben. “Karen, you come with me. You’re coming too, lady. It’s time for a little meet-and-greet with your boyfriend. And if you do anything stupid, I’ll shoot him, and then you. Got it?”

  “Yes. I won’t try anything. I promise.”

  “You’d better not,” Ben said. “All we want is the plane. Now let’s walk out there.” He stuck the pistol into his waistband and covered it with his shirt.

  The three of them started the long walk across the field toward the plane.

  Ray Morris leaned against the truck and watched as Ben and the two women approached the parked airplane. A strange feeling rose up from the pit of his stomach. Ben was unpredictable and Morris hoped the pilot, whoever he was, wouldn’t try to be a hero. A man about thirty years of age, with blond hair and a big grin opened the door on the Cessna and hopped out. He waved to his girlfriend and trotted toward her. Ben suddenly shoved the girl to the ground, took out his pistol, and a loud crack rang out over the field. The man dropped to his knees and fell on his face. Morris pushed himself off the truck and started running. “Ben! Goddamn it!” he shouted. “What the fuck are you doing?” He struggled to reach the little Beretta in his back pocket as he ran. That’s it, he thought. I’m killing this crazy fucker right now! As he ran onto the scene, he saw the woman crouched over the body of her boyfriend, sobbing. He leveled the Beretta at Ben. “You crazy bastard! You didn’t have to shoot him!”