Revenge Story

by Julia Broussard

  Ben kept his own pistol aimed at the girlfriend. He didn’t turn around to look at Morris. “I know you have that gun pointed at me Ray,” he said calmly. “Put it away or I’ll kill the girl, too. It had to be done. There’s only room for four of us in that plane. We couldn’t leave someone here to find their way to the police.”

  “You crazy son-of-a-bitch!” Ray screamed. “Do you have to kill everyone you see? What the fuck is wrong with you? We could have tied them up in their car or something, like we did to that ranger!”

  Ben was nonplussed. He lowered his gun and turned to face Ray. “Shut up, man. I told you a long time ago they aren’t taking me to jail. And now I’m the only one who can get us out of here.” His expression was like a stone statue. “You want to shoot me? Go ahead. Take Karen and that Subaru, or maybe that hot Forest Service truck, and try to make a run for it. See how far you get. And when they catch you and she gets the needle, you can think about that while you’re waiting for your turn to get that same needle. If that’s what you want, go for it.”

  Ray was panting hard. He took a step forward. “I should kill your psycho ass right now. I should have done it after you shot that cop in the face.”

  Ben laughed. “No. You never should have called me or showed up at my ranch on the run. That’s what. You shouldn’t have beaten the shit out of a state cop and then handcuffed him to his own patrol car. Then none of this would have happened. The truth is, you were the one who got the ball rolling on all this.”

  Ray lowered the Beretta and hung his head. He said nothing. He glanced down at the woman, who was cradling her boyfriend’s head in her lap and crying quietly.

  “That’s what I thought,” said Ben. “Now let’s get out of...”

  “Please,” said the woman. “If I tell you something, will you help?”

  “What is it?” said Ben without looking back at her.

  “He’s still alive. My David. He’s still breathing. You aren’t going to shoot him again, are you?”

  Ray quickly shoved Ben Cummings aside and knelt down next to the blond-headed pilot. He pulled open the man’s shirt and saw the bullet had entered up near his collarbone. He was unconscious, but breathing steadily. Lifting the pilot up a bit, he looked for an exit wound and saw a hole high up on the back of the man’s left shoulder. The bullet had passed clean through and the bleeding was minimal. He looked back at Ben. “He’ll live. Looks like the bullet missed his heart and lungs. No thanks to you.”

  Ben shrugged and tucked his pistol away. “Fine. We do it your way. What do you want to do with them? Besides killing them, which in my opinion is still the best option for us.”

  “We disable the vehicles and leave them in that Subaru. By the time anyone finds them we’ll be long gone.”

  “You’d better hope so. I think we should hurry though, don’t you Ray?” Ben said sarcastically. “Sooner or later the cops are going to show up here. You fuck around with these two for long and the cops will catch us on the ground.”

  “Help me get him over to the car then.”

  Special Agent Ryan McKenzie sat in the rear seat of the black SUV and stared out the window. Next to him was the chopper pilot, and in the front seat sat two FBI agents. They had just reached the main highway and were on their way to a medical clinic in Weaverville. McKenzie said nothing. He was thinking about how he was going to break the news to the families of the agents who were killed in the crash, as well as the ones gunned down on the Forest Service road. This unpleasant job was his alone, and he did not relish it. He knew he was no longer objective about this case, but he wasn’t about to let anything slip about his personal anger against the Morris couple and Benjamin Cummings. To do that would mean his instant removal from the case, and he wanted his chance for revenge.

  “Anything on the radio about them yet?” he asked the driver.

  “No, sir. They haven’t tried passing through the roadblocks. We know that,” said the agent.

  McKenzie reached up across the seat and waved his one good arm. “Let me see the search map,” he growled.

  The agent on the passenger side quickly handed it back to him. McKenzie checked it, his thoughts racing. Where did they go? All of the Forest Service road entrances were now covered. There were solid roadblocks on both the east and westbound lanes of the highway. He examined the areas south of the highway. Not much out there, he thought. No route to any roads leaving the area. Then he saw a symbol of a tiny airplane marked on the map. It was the location of an old airstrip. Cummings had a private pilot’s license. He considered this for a moment and thought of Occam’s Razor: All other things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one. Maybe Cummings knew someone who owned a plane. He handed back the map. “See that little airstrip marked on the map? The one about fifteen miles south of the highway?”

  The agent examined the map for a moment. “Yes, sir.”

  “Forget the clinic in Weaverville. Get me to that strip and have anybody that’s nearby meet us there, too.” McKenzie looked over at the chopper pilot sitting next to him in the back seat. “You okay with that for now?”

  The pilot nodded. “I’m okay. I can wait on seeing a doctor. All I have is a bump on my head anyway. I’d like to catch these fuckers, too. Some of those guys in that chopper were my friends.”

  As Ray and Karen trudged from the Subaru back to the plane, they glanced at each other. “What?” said Ray. “What is it?” He was carrying the heavy bag of money on his shoulder. He saw Ben had lifted the tail of the Cessna by himself and flipped it around for takeoff.

  “We have to get away from him,” Karen said. “He’s psychotic. You know that, right?”

  “We will. I already have a plan. As soon as we get to Seattle, I’ll split the money with him and we take our chances on our own. I think that idea of buying the sailboat is the best shot, but we still need him for the passports. Otherwise, we’ll never make it out of the country.”

  “If he doesn’t kill us first,” she replied.

  Ben had already finished his pre-flight and the engine was running when they got to the plane. He threw open the door across from his seat and waved for them to come inside. “Let’s go, let’s go!” he shouted over the roar of the engine.

  Karen climbed in first and got in the back. Ray handed up the moneybag to her and she dumped it next to her on the seat. Ray got in and shut the door.

  “Sorry Karen, there’s only one extra set of headphones. You might want to find something to stuff into your ears,” said Ben. “Maybe tear a couple of pieces off your blouse.”

  “You sure you can fly this thing?” said Ray.

  “Well, my pilot’s license is expired,” said Ben. “Don’t worry, though. I have good skills, man. Put on your headphones and plug them in over here.” He pointed.

  “I hope you’re right.” Ray slipped on the headphones.

  “Taking off is easy. Landing is the hard part,” Ben joked. “Here we go.” He ran up the engine and the Cessna began rolling along the dirt strip. As it gained speed, he pulled back on the control yoke and a few seconds later the plane leaped into the air. He turned southward.

  “I thought we were going north,” said Ray.

  “We are. But I want those two you left on the ground to think we went south. After we’re out of sight, I’ll turn us north again on a roundabout route.”

  Twenty minutes later, an army of F.B.I. agents descended on the little airstrip, racing up to the two vehicles parked at the far end of the field. Agents rolled out of the vehicles with automatic weapons and surrounded the Subaru wagon and the stolen truck. They heard a high-pitched voice, a woman’s voice, shouting from the back seat of the wagon.

  “Don’t shoot! They’re gone! They’re all gone!” she said.

  McKenzie took the lead, approaching the wagon with a pistol in his hand, the hand that still worked. He saw a young woman sitting in the back seat with a man’s head across her lap. The man’s eyes were closed and there was blood on the fron
t of his shirt. He was unconscious. McKenzie lowered his pistol.

  “They shot him!” the woman shouted hysterically. “They took the plane! Please! He needs a doctor!”

  McKenzie swore to himself. They had beaten him again. He opened the back door on the Subaru. “Take it easy, lady. Help is on the way.” He turned around and holstered his gun. “It’s clear,” he said. “Get an ambulance out here.”

  An ambulance finally arrived and whisked away the pilot, whose name was David Gordon. He was from Sacramento, and his fiancée Dorothy Watkins lived with her parents on a small ranch not far from the airstrip. She had insisted on accompanying her boyfriend to the hospital, but before she did, she told McKenzie what had happened. “They took off and headed south,” she said. McKenzie let her go as soon as he verified it had been the fugitives who were responsible. There was nothing more she could add to the manhunt right now. The boyfriend provided the N-number on the Cessna before passing out again. McKenzie noticed that someone had put a bandage on both the entrance and exit wound suffered by the pilot. When he asked about it, Watkins told him it was Mrs. Morris who had done it. Strange, McKenzie thought. They help the pilot, but kill just about anyone else who crosses them.

  Air Traffic Control centers in both northern California and Oregon were immediately alerted to track, and then attempt to contact by radio any aircraft not having a transponder signal. An aircraft with a working transponder would show certain identifying information to the controllers, and could be eliminated as the stolen aircraft. The missing Cessna had a transponder installed, as most U.S. aircraft now did, and within minutes, the F.B.I. had relayed its identifying information to all controllers.

  “What did you just do?” said Ray.

  “Turned off the transponder,” Ben said. “And you’d better hold on to your seat, because I’m taking us down within a hundred feet of the ground to try and dodge radar. It can get a little hairy.” He had turned east a few minutes ago and now they were roaring along at low altitude, following a narrow river valley. He dropped lower until they were barely above the river and moving at more than a hundred miles an hour.

  “Oh, Jesus.” Ray said. “Be careful, man.”

  “Don’t talk to me. We’re going to make a run for the east side of the Cascade range, turn north, and then try and stay low enough so any radar will miss us in the ground clutter. Right now, I’m keeping us less than fifty feet off the water to avoid the radar.”

  “You hope.”

  “Quiet now.” Ben concentrated on making slight turns as he worked the plane along the river. Trees flashed past the wings, and boulders seemed to leap up at them at every turn.

  Ray heard a faint thump, then another. “What was that?”

  “Nothing,” said Ben tersely. “Bird strikes off the water. Dippers. Little ones. We’re fine.”

  “This is fucking crazy,” said Ray. He grabbed his seat as Ben rolled the plane hard left to miss an overhanging tree.

  “Shut up, Ray. I’m trying to concentrate here.”

  “You’re going to kill us.” As they rounded a turn in the river, large trees that had partially fallen over were hanging over the water on both banks, leaving a section suddenly too narrow to negotiate. “Look out!”

  Ben pulled hard on the control yoke and the Cessna climbed away from the river, barely missing the trees. A moment later, he dropped the plane back down near the water. “Okay, that was a little close,” he said.

  “Come on, man. Stop it. Take us up a little,” said Ray.

  “We get spotted on radar we’re fucked. Here’s my advice. If you can’t take it, close your eyes and make-believe you’re on a ride at Disneyland. I can do this.”

  “You’re using up all the fuel,” said Ray. “We should be cruising. Even I know these things use less fuel at cruising speed.”

  “See these controls next to my knee, down low?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Homeboy had a couple of auxiliary tanks installed. Twelve extra gallons in each wing. We can make it all the way to Seattle, although we might be on fumes by then. If we can’t make it all the way there, I’ll find us a place to land and we can get other transportation. Now shut up and let me fly this thing.”

  “Okay.”

  “Relax. We’re almost to the interstate now.”

  Suddenly, the hills around them turned to flatlands and Ben pulled back the yoke until they rose to a hundred feet off the ground and into open air. He laughed. “Look out the window. There’s the freeway. I can’t go too low here or someone will call it in. We’ve got to get across before anyone spots us and figures out who we are.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then we turn north and head along the east flank of Mount Shasta and work our way up into Oregon. As long as we stay below three hundred feet or so, chances are no one will ever spot us on radar.”

  It had been four hours since McKenzie had alerted Air Traffic Control about the stolen Cessna, and not a single report of an unidentified contact had come into the F.B.I.’s mobile command post in Eureka. He sat behind his desk inside the trailer and pondered his options. Four other agents were with him, one on the telephone, another speaking into a radio. McKenzie’s left arm was in a cast, and he now sported a dozen new stitches on his forehead. He had refused the pain medication, not wanting it to dull his senses. He had the search map laid out on the table in front of him, studying it.

  “They have to be flying low to avoid radar,” said one of the other agents.

  “No shit,” said McKenzie. “The real answer isn’t where they are, though. It’s where the hell they’re going. Do we have anything yet on Cummings’ known associates? Or family for the Morris couple?”

  “Nothing on Cummings,” said one of the agents. “He was pretty much a loner. We know the Morris couple is from Portland. Maybe they’re headed there.”

  “Maybe,” said McKenzie. “You know, that woman said they took off and headed south. Could have been a red herring to throw off the search.”

  “That’s true. If they had gone south, chances are good someone would have spotted them by now. Maybe they cut east and headed for the Mount Shasta area. They might be trying to cross into Oregon following the mountains. Less people out that way, too.”

  “Yeah,” said McKenzie. “I think you’re right. Alert all units that the suspects are probably heading north by now. We may have to get permission to start scrambling jets from every available base to look for them.”

  “Fighter jets? Why?”

  “Because,” said McKenzie, “those military jets have radar that can look down from above. If they’re trying to dodge the air traffic guys, the military might still be able to pick them up.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. And at this point, I think we can get authorization to shoot down that goddamn Cessna the minute it’s spotted,” he said. “We need to get the director on the phone.”

  Jim Kelso, former bank robber, former partner to one Benjamin Cummings, was handcuffed and sitting in the back of a police cruiser in the parking lot of the Eureka police station. He had tried robbing a nearby liquor store, a stupid move considering the amount of criminal activity in the area of late. The cops had forced his stolen getaway car into a ditch less than a mile from the scene of the robbery and taken him into custody without incident. Kelso was a lowlife, a scraggly man who had been stealing all his adult life, and being caught occasionally was just a matter of normal business. Nevertheless, he had a smile on his face as two cops opened the door on the cruiser and ordered him out.

  Kelso scooted across the seat and got out of the car. “You better treat me right,” he said with a smile. “I’m your number one guy.”

  “Yeah?” said one of the officers. “How’s that?”

  “You know that guy you’re looking for? The one running with that married couple?”

  “Yeah. What about him?”

  “I used to be his running partner. You better let me talk to someone about a deal.” Kelso smirked
. “I saw on the news he killed some of your buddies. He does that.”

  One of the patrol officers lost his temper and slammed Kelso into the side of the car. “Shut your fucking mouth. You’re lying!”

  “Hey. Take it easy,” said Kelso, the smile still on his face. “I know the guy real well. We used to rob banks together. You want to know where he’s going? I know exactly where he’s headed. I know his backup plan because he told me once. I can give him to you.” Kelso leaned forward until his face was a couple of inches from the cop’s face. “So get me a fucking lawyer and someone who can make a fucking deal for me!” he shouted.

  Chapter 12

  This is like a bad scene out of the television show Law and Order, Agent McKenzie thought. He was sitting at a long table at the Eureka County Jail. Next to him was a county prosecutor, and next to the county prosecutor was a Federal prosecutor named Warren Cosgrove who had raced over from the courthouse. Next to Cosgrove were two more F.B.I. agents.

  On the other side of the table sat a ratty-looking lowlife named Jim Kelso and his public defender, Karen Underwood.

  “My client is willing to provide information on Benjamin Cummings in exchange for full immunity for all crimes he has committed, both past and present,” said Underwood. She took several large photographs from a briefcase and slid them over for examination. “These are security camera photos taken from two separate bank robberies in Eureka. As you can see, they show my client and Mr. Cummings together. So obviously he’s telling the truth when he says he was Mr. Cummings’ partner in crime.”