Plains Crazy

by J. M. Hayes

  She had to start this. She knew it and it terrified her. But she could get help. There’d be a bomb squad at the main terminal. They could take over as soon as they arrived. She grabbed the cell phone off her belt and fumbled it with the leather gauntlets she’d forgot she was wearing. It hit the parking lot and came apart in a hundred pieces.

  She was alone, now. There would be no help. She had to do this by herself. If she made a mistake they might die like that woman in Tucson. But they’d die anyway, if she waited.

  Before she could spend too much time thinking about it, she stepped back and put a fist through the driver’s door window and pulled the honeycomb of shattered glass back out onto the pavement by her feet.

  They were still alive. That meant he hadn’t used a trigger that was sensitive enough to be set off by her blow to the window. None of the wires were attached to glass. It had been a chance, but…Well, she didn’t have time to think about it or not take chances.

  She peeled off the gauntlets and doffed the catcher’s mask and stuck her head in the window above the Heather in the front seat. Big eyes locked onto hers and, for a moment, she almost froze as they transformed into the ones from Tucson. She shook it off. She reached in, carefully avoiding the wires that led to the doors and to something under a patch of tape on the girl’s bare midriff. She worried the strip of tape over the Heather’s mouth—Heather English, she knew which was which by now—until it was clear.

  Heather said, “It’s on me. There’s nothing on Heather. Get her out before you try to disarm it.”

  Parker examined Two’s situation. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been. The doors back there, they were wired too, but the wires hardly covered the second Heather the way they did the first, and weren’t attached to the girl. Parker thought she could go in through the back window, cut her loose, and get her out without much risk.

  “Do you know what it is? Whether it’s got a timer or an antenna?” she asked One while she retrieved the catcher’s mask and the gloves.

  “I don’t know. It’s something malleable,” the sheriff’s daughter explained. “Other than that, no.”

  C4, but Parker had assumed that. She leaned over the trunk and took a swing with the mask. The back glass imploded. Square-edged shards of safety glass, unsplintered and not apt to cut you, littered the inside of the car. Just the same, she used the gloves to clear the worst of it away before she climbed onto the trunk, stuck her head in, and began disentangling the second Heather from the seat belts. She used her pocket knife, then sliced Two’s hands and ankles free. She didn’t bother with the tape across Two’s mouth, and neither did the girl, not until she was scrambling off the trunk.

  “Run,” Parker told her. “Get behind a car and stay down.”

  “No,” Two said. “I can help.”

  “You can help more by doing what I say.”

  Reluctantly, the second Heather obeyed.

  Parker went back through the rear window. It was awkward as hell. Her legs stuck out and her body angled down into the car. Gravity tried to slide her in further where she’d make contact with the wires. She got her toes down on the edge of the trunk and stopped herself just in time. Her face was inches from the gap between the front seats, and the patch of tape that was the focus for all those wires crisscrossing the car.

  Parker took a couple of deep breaths. How had they found time to do this? She hadn’t thought they could be that far ahead.

  “You ready?” she asked. Not that it mattered.

  “Sure,” Heather told her. “I mean, maybe there’s no detonator. Maybe this is all just an elaborate fake.”

  “Probably,” Parker agreed, knowing it wasn’t, and knowing Heather also knew that.

  She held her breath and reached out and began peeling back a corner of the tape with her pocket knife. If she screwed up this time, she comforted herself, she wouldn’t have the opportunity to fret over her mistake.

  ***

  It was a large metal building without indications of luxury on the outside. Mad Dog entered through wide doors that swung open in anticipation of his arrival. They revealed unexpected opulence—lush carpet, expensive and comfortable furniture, paneling with framed art that looked like originals rather than prints.

  A beautiful young woman in an elegant suit that showed off her long legs came through a door across the room. “Good afternoon, sir. How can I help you and your gorgeous animal?”

  If he’d had time for it, Mad Dog would have been slightly awed. There was a small restaurant to the left of the lobby—cloth napkins and fresh-cut flowers on each table—and a lavishly decorated waiting room on the other side where half a dozen people read magazines or watched news or weather on plasma screen TVs.

  He was reminded of the first time he visited an airport with his mother as a child. It was in Hutchinson, and the facility had a technological elegance that both awed and welcomed. He’d been able to go out and watch the single commercial flight that came and went while they dined. One of the crew members had given him a pair of shiny wings to pin on his shirt. No one made him stand in a line or submit to being searched. He’d thought those days were gone. Apparently not, if you could afford your own plane.

  “I’m looking for Brad Davis. I think he just came in.” He didn’t know why, but he was sure it was Davis he was looking for, not Haines.

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know anyone by that name.” She seemed genuinely regretful and anxious to be of assistance. He wondered if her patience would disappear when she discovered he wouldn’t be parking his Learjet here.

  “He couldn’t have been five minutes ahead of me,” Mad Dog persisted. “Good looking guy, about my size, dark hair turning silver on the sides. He was wearing a pair of cargo pants and a beige polo shirt and fancy hiking boots.”

  “That sounds like Mr. Haines,” she said. He was amazed that she hadn’t said anything about heeling his dog or getting her out of the building. Hailey had trotted down a hall that led toward the other side. Maybe he should simply follow her, but if he did, this young woman would undoubtedly call security and have him removed. And then it hit him. Haines! She’d said Haines.

  “Jud Haines?” The description didn’t fit, but maybe Haines and the director had switched identities.

  “Yes,” she said. “Ms. Jorgenson and the Windreapers jet have been waiting for him.”

  Janie. What did that mean? Was she waiting for her son? Had they planned to revenge themselves on him together? Or was she at risk, expecting Jud Haines and about to get her violent son instead?

  But Haines was violent too. He’d been setting off bombs, had stolen money. Did Janie know that? Mad Dog started edging toward Hailey’s hallway. “I’ve got to catch him,” he told the woman. “Family emergency. Urgent.” He bolted down the corridor after his wolf.

  Restrooms opened off it, and a variety of offices. At the end was another glass door where Hailey stood, peering intently. He reached her before any guards arrived to escort them from the premises. He tried the door and it didn’t budge. There was a numerical key pad just above the handle. The young woman appeared at the end of the hall behind him.

  “I’m sorry, sir. You have to have the access code to unlock that door. We only give it to our customers.”

  “Really urgent,” Mad Dog tried again. “Life and death.”

  “It’s too late anyway,” she told him. “Look, you can see they’re already rolling.” A sleek white corporate jet was indeed pulling away from the building toward the runway beyond.

  “Come back to the office,” the girl said. “I can get you patched through to their radio.”

  Mad Dog seethed in frustration. What to do? Should he try that? Would his son want to kill him badly enough to come back? Not likely, he thought. Too many witnesses. Should he go back and help Parker with the Heathers? Might Englishman need him at the main terminal? He needed spiritual guidance. He let his hand slip down to the little sack of ochre Bud Stone had given him and clos
ed his eyes in silent supplication. The door swung open and Hailey shot through.

  “Oh dear, I’m sorry,” a man said. “I just wanted to come see your wolf.”

  “It’s all right,” Mad Dog said, wondering whether his natural shaman’s powers or Hailey’s spooky ability to get through locked doors had guided the man to them. It was miraculous either way. He slipped through and followed her.

  Hailey surprised him. She didn’t follow the plane. She turned south where the hallway ended and raced past a series of hangers where all manner of private aircraft were being serviced. Maybe she knew a shortcut. Mad Dog didn’t. He followed the jet, hoping Janie or his son might glance out and see him and stop. And then he could…Well, then he could hope for a little more aid from the spirit world—with a plan, say. Yes, a plan would be nice.

  ***

  The sheriff heard people yelling behind him. He didn’t look back. He had an advantage. They hadn’t taken his badge, and he held it up so the crowd parted ahead of him instead of making an effort to restrain him. Two airline personnel, who looked like they might pay more attention to the shouts than his badge, let him go when he looked them in the eye and added a shout of his own. “Police business! Stand aside!”

  The woman behind the desk at Judy’s gate was telling a microphone that this was the last call for the flight. He showed her the badge and tossed her his papers as he flew through the gate. He was a little surprised to find himself at the top of a flight of stairs that led down to the tarmac. Apparently this flight didn’t generate enough passengers for something as big as a 737. This regional jet looked like one of the big guys, only scaled down to subcompact size. Room for maybe forty passengers, he guessed, as he scrambled down the steps. Then he stopped thinking about stuff like that because Judy and Jud Haines were near the back of the line waiting to climb more stairs and board their flight.

  “Judy!” he called.

  His shockingly blond wife turned. There was such a look of joy on her face that, for a second, he felt like everything should slow down and turn into one of those slow-motion scenes in which lovers run across a field into each other’s arms. Only Haines turned his way too, and his look had nothing to do with joy.

  Judy took a step toward the sheriff and was brought up short when Haines whipped a cord out of his jacket and looped it around her neck. People around them scattered. The flight attendant at the top of the stairs got wide-eyed and the sheriff slowed to a jog.

  “Stay back!” Haines warned him. “I’ve got nothing to lose.”

  The sheriff held his hands up so Haines could see they contained nothing more dangerous than his five-pointed star. “Nobody’s been hurt yet. Don’t make a mistake and spoil that.”

  “That’s bull, Sheriff, and you know it,” Haines replied, backing toward the plane’s stairs. “I blew up your office while Mrs. Kraus and Chairman Wynn and Supervisor Finfrock were in it. I heard the grenade go off, saw the smoke. No one could have survived in that confined space.”

  “All of them did,” the sheriff said, still advancing. “Finfrock got screwed when he bought that grenade. It was some kind of fake. Lots of noise and a bunch of smoke, but no shrapnel. No one even got burned.”

  Judy was making little gurgling sounds and trying to get her fingers under the cord. It looked like something that might attach a cell phone to an earpiece. They’d seize a pair of nail clippers or a miniature pocket knife at the security checkpoint and call them weapons. A cord suitable as a garrote, however, had passed without a thought.

  “I don’t believe you,” Haines said. Behind him, the flight attendant at the door began trying to close it. It took Haines a moment to notice over the roar of a 737 backing away from a nearby gate.

  The sheriff used the opportunity to narrow the gap. He might have closed it altogether but the security guards cleared the gate above him at that moment. One of them shouted, “Halt or I’ll shoot!” The sheriff thought he was likely the one being addressed, not Haines. They might not have even taken in what was going on just beyond the sheriff. But Haines didn’t know that.

  He pulled Judy around so she was between him and them. Haines must have had the garrote pretty tight. Judy’s struggles were getting frantic, wild and panicky in her need for air. The sheriff was getting panicky too. She might die right there in front of him. Desperation, not logic, persuaded him he could make it. He launched himself, went for Haines’ arms and missed and heard the explosion of the pistol and the whine of a bullet singing past his ear. He got tangled up with Haines’ feet and lost his balance and went down on his hands and knees as Haines managed to back onto the bottom of the stairs. Judy wasn’t struggling anymore.

  “Move again and you’re dead,” the security officer yelled. The sheriff believed him. It wouldn’t have mattered if he’d had a chance of knocking Judy free from Haines in the process, but Haines had gripped both ends of the garrote in one hand and grabbed the stair rail with the other. He was pulling the two of them up and there was no way the sheriff could get to him before the idiot from security put a round in his back because he hadn’t noticed a murder taking place a few feet beyond his suspected terrorist.

  Options. The sheriff flashed them through his head. It didn’t take long because he couldn’t come up with any. What he needed was one of Mad Dog’s miracles.

  ***

  Parker had to pee. She wondered why. She couldn’t remember when she’d last had time to take a drink. She was so soaked in sweat it seemed impossible that anything could be left over for her bladder. But there it was. And the condition was aggravated by the way the back seats pushed into her lower abdomen in just the wrong place, and because she had to wiggle around and add still more pressure as she traced this wire and that, and began peeling away the next layers of tape over what she assumed was the bomb on Heather’s belly.

  Well, she didn’t have time for a restroom break. If she wet her pants, she thought it was less than fifty-fifty anyone would ever know. The fireball would probably dry them out, and when they scooped her up with a spatula and a sponge, or found her torso a hundred yards from her foot, and maybe never found the other foot at all, they wouldn’t notice a little thing like a bit of damp uniform.

  “How’s it going?” Heather asked. She must be really uncomfortable, lying across that armrest. She was sweating too, and Parker would wager she’d want to visit a bathroom as well, as soon as this was over. Fear does that to you. That, she realized, was the source of her own need.

  “Slow, but good, I think.” Parker had unpeeled enough tape so she was almost there. She could feel where the ends of the wires were twisted. They couldn’t be under more than another layer or two. But she had to be extra careful getting to them. Letting one touch the other might complete the circuit.

  “Keep me posted,” Heather said. “Unless it’s bad news. Then, I suppose I’ll be the first to know.”

  “Probably wouldn’t feel a thing,” Parker said, hoping that was true for both of them. “But that’s not a problem because I’m gonna have you out of here in a minute. Count on it.”

  She got the edge of the next layer started and realized this was the one. There was bare wire right beneath her fingers. She held it down as she removed the tape, making sure it didn’t budge until she uncovered it completely.

  Nothing! The wire was fastened to nothing. She made sure it didn’t ground against anything as she pulled the tape away from the second one. It wasn’t attached to anything either, except the end had been stuck through the corner of a Windreapers business card. On the back, someone had written. “Bang, you’re dead.”

  The wires, the elaborate spider web that linked all the car doors, had simply been for show. There was no bomb attached to them. But there was still something under another few layers of tape. Two possibilities, Parker told herself. A transmitter activated device or a timer. The possibilities those conjured made her begin ripping tape away.

  And then, there it was, staring her in the face. Small and digital, two zero
s followed by a colon after which two numbers flashed at her in threatening red. As she watched, they changed from twenty-four to twenty-three to twenty-two. She ripped the rest of the package off Heather’s stomach. Too many bits of tape still attached it to the car. She had twenty seconds to back her butt out the rear window, get to the door, and drag Heather far enough before what was maybe a kilo of C4 tried to send them to eternity. She didn’t think twenty seconds was enough.

  ***

  Since a balmy breeze was blowing out of the south, unusual only in that it was just a breeze and not a full-fledged Kansas wind, Mad Dog had expected Windreapers’ jet to turn left and head for the north end of the nearest runway. Instead, it turned south. For some reason, the jet was being diverted around the main terminal to the parallel runway on the west side of the airport. It was the kind of thing that made him think Hailey must have known that from the moment she cleared the executive terminal.

  The jet wasn’t moving very fast, not much faster than an aging former jock could run after it. And it had to stick to the taxiways. Now that he knew where it was going, he could head cross country, maybe cut off a couple of hundred yards before they got to where they were going.

  Mad Dog concentrated on his breathing. He’d have to pace himself if he was going to chase them that far. Besides, concentrating on his wind kept him from thinking about what to do if they saw him and stopped.

  Had Janie been straight with him? Or had Brad Davis? Or neither one? He tended to believe Janie because he’d been in love with her once, and the bomb with the Heathers wasn’t a pro-Davis argument. But even if he was evil, that didn’t mean she might not have turned evil too. Which was better, trailing a psycho whose presence put Janie’s life in danger, or a mother and son team involved in an elaborate scheme to fleece Benteen County and maybe kill him and his nieces?

  Inquiring minds, he told himself. But the answers would make a huge difference in what he had to deal with if they saw him, or whether they’d stop if they did.