A Good Samaritan

by Jesse Jacobson

  “Bouncing around the world, saving lives,” Matty repeated.

  “What?”

  Matty shrugged, “I mean, it’s ironic. You could never say something like that about most career assassins.”

  “True that,” Red admitted, “but don’t forget, before he became an assassin, he was an Army Ranger for twelve years. He was a decorated war hero.”

  Matty nodded, “I get it. Still, I wouldn’t want to be that particular war hero when Lindsay finally catches up to him. There’ll be hell to pay. You know how she is.”

  Red chuckled, “It would be kind of funny to watch.”

  “Somehow, I don’t think your uncle would think of it as ‘funny,’” Matty replied, chuckling himself, “but I agree. I’d love to be a fly on the wall at that reunion.”

  The two friends looked at each other and laughed. Matty sneaked a glance in the rearview mirror. Jackie had on his headphones and was mesmerized by the portable DVD screen, fully engrossed in an episode of Paw Patrol.

  “What’s that up ahead?” Red asked, turning his attention ahead.

  “Looks like someone’s car has broken down,” Matty replied.

  “I see the driver,” Red noted. “She’s an older woman. We have to stop.”

  “Oh, no. We’re already late,” Matty objected. “Lindsay is going to shoot me.”

  “So . . . what? Do you plan to leave a little old lady stranded in the middle of nowhere?” Red asked.

  “No, of course not,” insisted Matty. “It’s just that . . .”

  “Don’t worry,” Red countered. “This is a good thing.”

  “How is it a good thing?” Matty asked.

  “We can tell Lindsay and Summer Rose we stopped to help a little old lady, of course,” he conferred. “It’s perfect. How can they be mad?”

  Matty thought for a second and nodded, “Oh, yeah, you’re right.”

  Matty and Red pulled the Jeep off the road into the emergency lane and pulled up behind the disabled vehicle, a 1999 Toyota Camry. The woman was standing near the front of the car. She appeared to be in her seventies. As the Jeep stopped, the woman smiled and waved.

  Matty killed the engine. The two Cheyenne stepped out of the Jeep.

  “Are you having some problems, ma’am?” Matty asked politely.

  The woman walked toward the two men, “Yes, thank you for stopping. My car’s engine just stopped and there’s no cell service out here. I was really getting worried. It’s been over thirty minutes and you’re the first car to come by.”

  Red studied the woman momentarily. She was Native American, but he couldn’t tell from which tribe. There was something unusual about her appearance, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. She had her gray hair tied into a bun. She was short and petite yet looked pretty spry and fit for a woman over seventy.

  “My name is Matty,” Yellow Wolf said. “This is my friend, Red Feather.”

  “Please to meet you both,” the woman replied. “I’m Gina Tall Bull. Please call me Gina. I live in Redstone. I was heading home from Plentywood when my car got stubborn on me. Do you boys know a lot about cars?”

  “A little,” Red replied. “You didn’t just run out of gas, did you?”

  She shook her head, no, “I filled up in Plentywood before I left.”

  “Did you smell anything funny?” Matty asked.

  “No funnier than normal for these parts,” Gina Tall Bull replied. “There are lots of cows grazing out this way.”

  Both men chuckled.

  “We’ll be happy to take a look, Gina,” Red volunteered. “Do you mind if I pop the hood?”

  “No, of course not,” she replied. “Please go ahead.”

  Red Feather opened the driver’s side door and reached under the wheel, finding and pulling the hood release. Yellow Wolf was already standing in front of the car and opened it when the familiar pop came.

  The two Cheyenne leaned over and began to examine the engine. Red Feather spotted the problem with two minutes.

  “The distributor cap is missing,” he noted.

  “Missing?” Matty repeated. “What do you mean . . . missing?”

  “I mean, there isn’t one,” Red insisted.

  “How could she have made it this far?” Matty asked.

  Red’s eyes widened. He took in a quick breath.

  “Holy crap,” Red murmured. “Now I know why she looks so familiar?”

  “What?” Matty asked.

  Red looked up and called out, “Gina?”

  He didn’t see her.

  “Gina?” Matty repeated, louder.

  Red looked up, “Where’d she go?”

  It was then both men heard the engine of their Jeep rumbling to life.

  “Dammit, Red, she’s in the Jeep,” Matty cried out.

  Both men raced toward the Jeep, but it was too late. The elderly woman had put the Jeep into gear and pulled away, making a U-turn back toward Plentywood.

  “Stop!” Matty cried out, vainly trying to catch up to the Jeep on foot. “My son is in the Jeep!”

  Matty and Red both chased the Jeep for thirty yards until they realized the exercise was futile. The Jeep sped away, leaving the two men stranded with a car incapable of starting.

  “Holy shit! No, no, no,” Matty cried out. “Jackie! She has Jackie.”

  “What the hell is going on?” Red barked. “Why would she do that?”

  “We have to find help,” Matty stated. “Do you have your cell phone?”

  “It’s in the Jeep,” Red realized.

  “Mine too,” Matty acknowledged. “It wouldn’t matter. There is no cell service out here anyway.”

  “Dammit, let’s get back to the car,” Matty urged. “Maybe we can find the distributor cap in the car.”

  The two Cheyenne ran back to the car. They rummaged through the vehicle but did not find the cap.

  “Any chance we can start the car?”

  “Not unless you can crap out a distributor cap,” Red snapped.

  “What’ll we do?”

  “The nearest town is Redstone,” Red noted. “It’s probably another five miles away. Do you remember seeing a farmhouse or any place that might have a phone?”

  “Not recently, no,” Matty replied. “Maybe a car will come along.”

  “I haven’t seen a car since we left Plentywood, have you?”

  Matty shook his head, “No.”

  Red looked to the north and west—he saw nothing. Also, nothing to the south. Off to the east he saw a grove.

  “We could head toward the tree line,” he proposed. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and find a cabin.”

  “Red, why did you say you knew why the woman looked so familiar?” Matty asked.

  “Because she was not an old woman,” Red explained.

  “What? Who is she?”

  Red started to reply when he saw a puff of white smoke at the tree line.

  A split-second later a bullet from a high-powered rifle ripped into Matty’s right shoulder. The impact spun him ninety-degrees.

  “Matty,” Red cried out. “You’ve been shot.”

  “Ahhhhh!” Matty yelled out as another gunshot could be heard. This time a bullet ripped into Red’s side. Two more bullets pelted Red’s body almost immediately after the first. One to his right arm and one to his thigh. Matty took two more bullets as well; one to the stomach and one to his left leg.

  “Get behind the car, quickly,” Red yelled, but Matty had dropped to his knees, holding the area of his stomach where the bullet entered.

  Red raced to his friend, pulling Matty’s arm around his shoulder, lifting the large Cheyenne up. Red grimaced as another bullet tore into the back of his calf as he helped his friend to safety behind the Camry.

  Matty was nearly unconscious. Red could hear two other bullets pelting his friend’s body—he didn’t know where. He managed to get himself and Matty behind the car. He heard bullets ripping into the metal doors of the Camry and shattering the glass windows. He leaned Matty in a
sitting position against the rear door of the Camry.

  “Matty, can you hear me?” Red cried out.

  Matty didn’t answer. He just sat there as a halo of blood formed around him—he was motionless. Red winced in pain and he saw blood oozing onto the ground under him.

  This is it, he thought to himself. Matty’s dead. I will be soon.

  Chapter 2

  Friday 11:16 pm

  Ft. Peck Indian Reservation

  Lindsay Vanderbilt checked the clock on her phone for the fourth time in five minutes. Summer Rose was pacing relentlessly, wearing a path out on the waiting room carpet at Sheridan Memorial Hospital.

  Summer Rose was Red Feather’s wife, a stunning woman in her early thirties, a brilliant lawyer of African American descent who now worked at the Lindhorse Foundation as Lindsay’s legal counsel. She met Red soon after her father’s death. He’d been working as a gardener on the ailing man’s ranch. Her name was actually Rosemary Summer but after she and Red married, she changed her last name to Red Feather and now went by Summer Rose. She and Red had two beautiful children, ages seven and three.

  When the FBI pulled Rainhorse from prison because they needed his particular skillset to track down his former boss, Barnabas Quince, and avert a nuclear disaster in Seattle, it was Summer Rose who negotiated the terms of his permanent release from prison once the job was done.

  None of that was on Summer Rose’s mind at the moment as she continued to pace the ER waiting area.

  Red and Matty had been due back at five o’clock. When they hadn’t arrived by six o’clock and weren’t answering texts, she got worried. Summer Rose called the Plentywood General Store and spoke to the store owner. The two Cheyenne left the store long ago, he insisted—heading west on MT-5. Even if they stopped for gas or to let Jackie use the bathroom, they would have been home long before now.

  Still, the worse thing Lindsay thought of at the time was the Jeep broke down on the side of the road and they were out of cellular range.

  “Something is wrong,” Summer Rose snapped.

  Lindsay knew she was right. She called the Sheridan County Sheriff, Jason Tilden, who she knew well. She’d contributed money and campaigned for his election. She convinced him to drive the forty-mile stretch of MT-5 Matty and Red would have taken home.

  It was the sheriff who discovered the two Cheyenne, near death, around eight o’clock. He’d radioed for the medical choppers to bring them into Sheridan Memorial. They were barely clinging to life. Both men were now undergoing emergency surgery.

  When Tilden told her that the toddler was nowhere to be found, Lindsay called Special Agent Jim Andrews with the FBI and told him her son was missing, likely kidnapped. She knew Andrews well. He was the agent who’d collaborated with Rainhorse to help solve a drug and sex trade problem on the Ft. Peck Reservation six years ago.

  Andrews promised to set all the wheels in motion and meet her at the hospital as soon as possible. That was nearly three hours ago.

  Sheriff Tilden had been in, taking statements from herself and Summer Rose. Detectives from Sheridan County were at the site, gathering information, taking photos and securing the scene. It was an ambush, Tilden confirmed, but it was too early to tell much more.

  Tilden said they were setting up roadblocks and placed all points bulletins throughout the county to locate Matty’s Jeep. Tens of thousands of cell phones in the county were beeping amber alerts.

  Tilden assured Lindsay that the Sheridan County Sheriff’s Department was doing everything they could. He told her the FBI had arrived on the scene, and the good news was, rather than fighting for control, the Sheriff’s Department and FBI were collaborating to get the job done.

  Lindsay thanked Tilden for all he was doing.

  A male nurse appeared. Lindsay looked up but saw he was walking toward someone else in the waiting room. After the nurse finished speaking, she saw Summer Rose approach him and inquire about their husbands.

  They were still in surgery, the nurse told her. He didn’t know anything else but cautioned that Lindsay and Summer Rose should be prepared for a long wait. The damage was extensive. He also apologized as he reiterated what they’d been told earlier. The prognosis was not the best.

  “Have you reached your mother yet?” Summer Rose asked.

  “No, I haven’t called her at all,” Lindsay replied. “I’m not going to call her until I know more.”

  “Why?”

  “She and my step-father are back on the ranch in Livingston,” Lindsay said. “They couldn’t get here tonight if they wanted to and you know how my mother is . . .”

  “Oh yeah,” Summer Rose interjected. “She can be a handful.”

  “That’s putting it lightly,” Lindsay agreed. “And you’ve never seen her when she’s stressed. She’d be calling and calling and driving me crazy. I’m a wreck already.”

  “You’re holding up better than I thought,” Summer Rose observed.

  Not as well as it appeared, Lindsay thought. She was despondent, holding it together by a thread. She felt like she could break down into uncontrollable tears at any second, but she knew it wouldn’t help matters—it would make them worse. There would be no tears coming from her. She thought about Rainhorse, who’d been with her through so many traumatic moments in her life. She learned many things from him. She knew she needed to maintain her composure despite her desire to cry and scream at the top of her lungs. She thought about him now. She wanted nothing more than to call him, to have him here now, by her side. He’d know what to do. He always knew what to do.

  But Rainhorse hadn’t been in contact with her for five years. She knew he was in some third-world country with Neha Littlebird, probably without cell coverage, undoubtedly building a community water system or running local drug dealers or sex traders out of some depressed village. Still, it was as if she no longer existed to him.

  She shook off those thoughts and turned her attention back to the matter at hand—Jackie, Matty and Red.

  “I’m going back up to the nurse’s station,” Summer Rose commented, “and see if they know anything.”

  Lindsay nodded, watching Summer Rose walk away.

  She breathed a huge sigh of relief when FBI Special Agent Jim Andrews bounded through the door. She forced a tiny smile and stood to hug him as he approached.

  “Thank you for coming in person,” she said. “I’m so worried.”

  “I’m sorry it took so long,” Andrews replied. “How are Matty and Red?”

  “They’re still in surgery,” Lindsay replied. “They were shot multiple times. It might be a long time before I know anything. What can you tell me about Jackie?”

  “Very little, but I have a team on it,” Andrews reported. “It’s early but the good news is, we found out about it fast.”

  “What can you tell me?” Lindsay wondered. Her voice cracked and her hands trembled.

  “It was a set-up, an ambush. Red and Matty stopped to help someone who had car trouble,” Andrews described, “probably a woman who was set up to look helpless. The car she was driving was stolen. We’re giving it the once over, but it was wiped clean. No prints found yet. Whoever played the role of the helpless driver lured the two men to the disabled car. I’m guessing she slipped away and into the Jeep while Matty and Red were looking under the hood. Three to four men from the tree line begin firing at Matty and Red with sniper rifles. The driver then takes off with your son still in the back.”

  “Jesus,” Lindsay exclaimed. “This was a designed kidnapping. Whoever did this wanted to take Jackie and kill Matty and Red.”

  “It’s likely,” Andrews said. “Your family has a lot of money. Jackie would be a prime kidnapping target.”

  “And you have no leads?”

  Andrews sighed, “Lindsay, I do have a person of interest in mind, but I have nothing yet to connect him to your son’s disappearance.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Hank Rattling Thunder,” he said.

  Lindsay ga
sped, “HRT? That can’t be. He’s in prison.”

  “No, he isn’t, I’m afraid,” Andrews responded. “He was released three weeks ago.”

  “Three weeks ago?” Lindsay bellowed, fighting back tears once again. “And no one told me?”

  “His release slipped through the cracks,” Andrews confessed. “I didn’t hear about it until tonight. When you first told me that your son had been kidnapped, I pulled up all known convicts in the area. The computer automatically sweeps for those recently released from prison. His name popped up immediately.”

  Hank Rattling Thunder, aka HRT, was the Sioux criminal overlord who ran the drug and sex trade operation that terrorized the people of the Ft. Peck Indian Reservation for many years. He and a man named Tony Apollo were responsible for hooking the young people of Ft. Peck on drugs and stealing their children to support their human trafficking business.

  “How can that be, Jim? It’s only been six years,” Lindsay questioned. “HRT was sentenced to life in prison.”

  “He’s been appealing his conviction since day one,” Andrews informed. “His lawyers contended that authorities violated protocol, collecting evidence illegally while he was living on the reservation.”

  “And did you?”

  “I won’t lie. Between the FBI, the Tribal Police and the Sheriff’s Department we botched the collection of evidence pretty good. We held him off as long as we could, but he finally got a judge to listen.”

  “Hank Rattling Thunder . . . free? This is bullshit, Jim and you know it,” Lindsay barked.

  “I know it is,” he agreed. “I should have been told right away so I could have warned you. How this happened, I don’t know, but . . .”

  “What about Tony Apollo?’ she asked.

  “Still behind bars,” Andrews assured.

  “What about Hank Rattling Thunder’s daughter?”

  “Rose Rattling Thunder has been out for months,” Andrews said.

  “And the hits just keep on coming. How the hell can that be?” Lindsay demanded to know.