Plains Crazy

by J. M. Hayes

  And then another complication occurred to him. To go around the terminal, they had to pass it. That meant Mad Dog would have to run by all manner of airport personnel. Some were bound to be security types. The woman from the private terminal had probably called in a report about him by now. Mad Dog wasn’t likely to get past the main terminal. Knowing that inspired him to an extra burst of speed.

  A 737 was leaving one of the gates ahead. The Windreapers jet slowed a little and for a moment he was nearly parallel to it. He thought he saw faces at the windows. He raised his hands and waved madly and stepped in a hole and went tumbling.

  Mad Dog bounced up quickly enough, at least for a man his age. He got his feet under him and discovered he’d hurt his knee again. He could still run, sort of, but it had turned as weak as wheat futures and he was a lot slower than only moments before.

  It didn’t matter. The Windreapers jet stopped. Someone opened the hatch and a dark head with a hint of gray protruded. It was Brad Davis, or the man he’d thought was Davis. He had a gun and it was pointed at Mad Dog. The gun made a popping noise and one of the blue lights near Mad Dog’s feet shattered.

  Well, Mad Dog thought, at least Janie hadn’t lied about everything. The man who’d claimed he was her son wanted to kill him. On the other hand, it was sad to realize he wasn’t likely to live long enough to find out whether she had been honest about the rest of it.

  The second shot plucked Mad Dog’s sleeve. His boy was getting his windage. And Mad Dog was ready for that plan to occur to him.

  The third shot probably would have done him serious damage, except a massive concussion rolled across the field from back in the parking lot and spoiled junior’s aim. The detonation didn’t do Mad Dog’s imagination any good either.

  ***

  Sometimes, the miracle department is open. The problem, the sheriff later decided, was that it must be part of a bureaucracy. You needed one very specific miracle. You got something else, not built to your specifications.

  The sheriff got three—bureaucratic triplicate, perhaps. The first was an explosion. Considering his experience with explosions today, he had every reason to think this was related to the ones in Buffalo Springs. That meant it had probably been directed at his brother, his daughters, or his deputy. Still, it was loud enough to be heard over the roar of the departing 737, and it drew the attention of the armed security guard as well as Jud Haines.

  The armed guard glanced toward the blast and Haines looked at his watch. “Shit,” Haines muttered. “Bastard promised me twenty minutes.”

  It was the chance the sheriff needed. He scrambled up and threw himself at Haines.

  The second miracle got in his way. Maybe Judy had been faking it, or maybe the blast pierced her diminishing consciousness and drew a reaction. In either case, she swung a vicious elbow into Haines’ groin. It must have missed, because he didn’t double over in helpless agony. But it had been close. Haines lost his balance on the stairs and dropped back to the concrete. That put Judy directly between the sheriff and his target. Still, the sheriff managed to get an arm around her and a hand on the cord. He yanked it away from Haines.

  At which point, the third miracle arrived. Like Mad Dog, the sheriff had often wondered at Hailey’s ability to appear in unlikely places from which she should have been securely barred, and at the most unlikely times. Here she was again, sudden and improbable, with her teeth firmly imbedded in Jud Haines’ butt.

  Haines screeched. He tried to turn and kick at Hailey, and ended up on his hands and knees because Hailey was just as suddenly and improbably gone, tearing back between the wheels of the jet Haines and Judy had been about to board.

  The Marquis of Queensbury might have objected, but the Marquis hadn’t watched Haines strangle his wife. The sheriff tore the cord from Judy’s throat, stepped around her, and kicked Haines in the same spot Hailey had bitten. Haines let out a second shriek and went down face first, in a manner that did his boyish good looks no favor and would require the efforts of a dental surgeon to reconstruct his winning smile.

  The sheriff might have done more, but Judy threw her arms around him and said, “You came.” Her voice was hoarse, but it was obvious Haines hadn’t seriously injured her.

  “I love you.” The sheriff couldn’t think of another way to explain it.

  “I know. And I knew you wouldn’t let me go without you,” Judy said.

  That’s when the miracle department shut down. One of the security people shoved a muzzle in the nape of the sheriff’s neck. “Nobody’s going anywhere,” the man said, “except into a windowless cell until Kansas gets oceanfront property.”

  ***

  Mad Dog fancied himself a natural-born shaman. Sometimes. Sometimes he thought he was a fraud. Just now, he was leaning toward shaman. After all, his son had taken three shots and missed him with every one. He felt like one of those Native American warriors the cavalry’s bullets couldn’t find because they’d purified themselves and donned their ghost shirts. Mad Dog didn’t have a ghost shirt, but he did have a little sack of earth from the Cheyenne’s sacred mountain.

  He can’t hit me, Mad Dog told himself. If I focus my spirit on him, I’ll cause his aim to be untrue. This holy earth and my shamanistic powers will protect me.

  As if to prove him right, his son popped off another round that whined close by, another miss.

  That was four bullets. He only needed those powers and his talisman to work twice more. Mad Dog let out a war whoop that would have done his ancestors proud. Like a Cheyenne Dog Soldier of old, he contemptuously charged his enemy. And rattled him in the process because the fifth shot went wide as well. As did the sixth, wild and way off target because someone in the plane was grappling with Davis, or Sam, or whoever the man with the gun really was.

  It was Janie, coming to his rescue. He couldn’t see her, but he knew it. He reached out with his mind to give her strength. The pain in Mad Dog’s leg was gone—healed as he drew on his powers and pulled them about him like a cloak. I am strong, he told himself. I am invincible.

  Somewhere in the back of his head, he heard Helen Reddy chime in with the next line, and the title to her career-defining song. I am woman.

  It was one of those loss-of-focus moments that had tripped up this master shaman throughout his career. He had to maintain his concentration to control the forces of the universe. One little slip, and they weren’t his anymore. They were random, or acting on their own agendas, and he was back at risk like any other mortal.

  The hatch on the side of the plane swung open just before he reached it. Sam or Brad or the mad bomber of Benteen County stood there, one arm around Janie’s throat, the pistol to her temple.

  “Daddy,” the man said. “How nice that we can have this brief family reunion.”

  He swung the gun to point it at Mad Dog.

  “Please don’t shoot him,” Janie pleaded.

  “He can’t,” Mad Dog reassured her. “He hasn’t got any bullets. He’s fired six shots. I counted.”

  “Jesus, did you really mate with such a moron?” Their son turned the gun sideways for a moment and let Mad Dog see it. It was a semi-automatic, not a six-shooter.

  “Oh,” Mad Dog said. Well, he could stand there and take a bullet or he could do something about it. He was still too far away to do anything physically, but maybe he could recoup his grasp on those universal forces he’d been wielding only moments before. But he had to concentrate. He had to banish everything else from his mind. He closed his eyes.

  “And too much of a coward to watch,” his son said. The words hardly registered. Mad Dog had been in situations like this before. He needed to find some psychic weapon and hurl it. So he did.

  Mad Dog didn’t realize Hailey had already been part of another family miracle. But his mind sensed her and knew she would be part of his. And he suddenly understood what Bud Stone, the old Cheyenne, had meant—Hailey, she was his nisimon, his guardian spirit. He opened his eyes in time to see her leap into the d
oorway. It was a long way up there, but he’d seen her clear higher fences. She set her teeth in his son’s leg. The man tumbled down onto the taxiway as Hailey and Janie tangled with each other and fell, inside the plane. Before Mad Dog could stop it, his son reached up and slammed the hatch shut, leaving Hailey inside. And he threw a punch at Mad Dog. Mad Dog had slipped many a punch in his time. That was why he was so surprised when this one caught him in mid-charge and sparked a nova behind his eyes.

  Mad Dog found himself sitting on the tarmac. His son had bent and picked up the gun Hailey caused him to drop. He turned and shoved the muzzle in Mad Dog’s face.

  “Sorry, Dad,” he said. “If you’d given me a b-b gun, I might have shot my eye out. You didn’t, so I’ll shoot out yours.”

  He pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened. He pulled it again, and still the pistol wouldn’t fire. Mad Dog rolled woozily to his feet. Pieces of the gun’s mechanism lay scattered on the yellow concrete. It wasn’t jammed. It wasn’t a misfire. The pistol was broken, another miracle Mad Dog would gladly accept.

  His son looked around wildly. Mad Dog thought he considered the Windreapers jet, until he remembered Hailey. He seemed to consider killing his father with his bare hands, too. Mad Dog might be getting old, but he was still a big man, and a strong one. And he was back up, ready to defend himself.

  “Give it up,” Mad Dog said. “There’s no way out. Your daughter’s dead. Let it end here.”

  “You think I care about Jackie? She was just a tool. And she nearly screwed it all up this morning. Whatever happened to her after that, she deserved.”

  His son reached into a pocket and pulled out what Mad Dog realized must be another bomb. “I’m tempted to use this and make it a clean sweep of the whole family,” the man said. “But I’ll bet this and the gun will buy me a way out of here. Then you and I, we’ll finish this another time.”

  Mad Dog’s son turned and sprinted, limping from Hailey’s tooth-work, toward the main terminal, toward where the 737 was taxiing to a runway. He got in front of the plane and waved the gun so the pilot could see it, then leveled it at the Boeing’s cockpit.

  Mad Dog followed. It took him a bit to get up steam, but he was determined. His son couldn’t be allowed to hurt anyone else.

  Sam planted himself square in the 737’s path. The pilot didn’t know that the gun pointing at him had been damaged. He had to assume it was a real danger. He had to act accordingly.

  The 737 pivoted to the right with surprising agility. The pilot must have slammed on the brakes on one side while he gunned the engines. The big plane didn’t spin on a dime, but it roared into a turn far more rapidly than Mad Dog would have expected. Or than Sam had.

  But Sam had something else to worry about. Maybe he’d inherited some of his father’s ability to sense what he couldn’t see. Or maybe he was just smart enough to realize there was nothing to keep his old man from pursuing him. He turned far faster than the plane, just in time for Mad Dog to lower his head and lead with a shoulder—the way he had when he and Janie were young and he was the star of the Buffalo Springs Bisons and mammoth linemen were between him and a goal line.

  Sam slipped him, and caught him with another roundhouse that crashed into his chest just below his chin. It hurt like hell, but Mad Dog spun and got ready to throw a punch of his own. Only he couldn’t pivot as easily as he’d expected because something was attached to his neck. Sam had caught his fist in the thong that held the sacred Cheyenne earth. It threw both of them off balance before Sam tore his hand free. And then they were dodging the 737’s fuselage. A great wind plucked at Mad Dog. It ripped at Sam’s hair and whipped his clothing. And then Sam seemed to vanish into thin air. The howling engine under the wing brushed by Mad Dog and changed its note as it began throwing pieces of itself, along with a crimson mist, onto the tarmac behind. Mad Dog knew where his son had gone.

  ***

  The FBI agent returned the phone to its cradle. “I’ll be damned,” he told Sheriff English. “All your stories check out. Including the bomb in your courthouse.”

  “All?” The Chief of Security for Mid-Continent Airport—the only other man in the room and the guy whose day the sheriff had ruined—still appeared to want English put behind bars indefinitely.

  “Yup! We had a call reporting bombs and terror threats from Benteen County. The agent who logged it asked the Highway Patrol to check it out. Of course, by then, the festivities had moved here. It even turns out the guy who went through that jet engine had plastic explosives and a gun on him. Pieces have been found and identified.”

  “Shit,” the security chief muttered.

  “We’ll hang on to Mr. Haines, of course,” the fed continued from the seat he’d appropriated, along with the security chief’s desk. The sheriff considered objecting, but thought he was about to get out of this a lot easier than he’d expected. He buttoned his lip and nodded.

  “You’ll be relieved, Sheriff, to know he’s already admitted everything. He blames the guy he knew as Davis for talking him into changing this from a simple con into a deadly ripoff. He’s confessed to setting some of the bombs, and told us where we’ll find a few more he says Davis left for your brother. He wired your county’s funds to a bank in the Caribbean. He gave up the access codes, though. We’ll be getting it back to you, when we get around to it.”

  The sheriff pocketed the badge and wallet the agent tossed across the desk to him. “What made Haines so chatty?”

  “We showed him that leather badge case his partner fixed him up with. Turns out it was another bomb. Davis persuaded him to use it to get on that flight with your wife. That way, he could eliminate his partner, and maybe kill another member of the family as well.”

  The agent paused for a moment, pursing his mouth as if what he had to say now would leave a sour taste. “The only remaining member of your wild bunch who may be involved in a crime is Ms. Jorgenson, but all that took place on your turf. If you and your posse, including Chief Crazy Horse’s Ass out there, hadn’t come charging into this airport, she would have just flown off to somebody else’s jurisdiction. I’m letting you take her with you. You’ve put too big a hurt on several budgets already.”

  They had indeed. It was three hours since the sheriff had been taken into custody and Mid-Continent Airport was only now beginning to let passengers return to the terminal as arrivals and departures were rescheduled. It was a big building to cover, even with the aid of every bomb dog in the Wichita area.

  “We’ll let Benteen County decide what to do with her, and pick up the tab if you prosecute,” the man said.

  The airport’s security chief protested. “You mean you’re not going to charge this hick lawman with anything?”

  “Well,” the agent said, “I suppose we could charge Sheriff English with violating your security, but then he’d have to defend himself by explaining how you failed to heed his warning that your security was already breached. I don’t see where telling the public how you let the bomb in a badge case slip through will do anybody any good.”

  The chief sputtered, but he didn’t argue.

  “Does that mean I’m free to take Ms. Jorgenson, my family, and my deputy and go home?”

  “All of them. Your punk-rock wife, your twin daughters who conveniently share the same name, your space-case brother, and his pet wolf. Take the whole crazy lot. Except that deputy of yours. You can leave her.” He turned and glanced at the airport’s security chief. “I might know where there’ll be a job opening.”

  The sheriff got to his feet and went to the door. Just before he reached it, the agent made one last request.

  “Sheriff.”

  The sheriff turned and looked back.

  “Do us both a favor. Any of you want to fly somewhere in the future, don’t come through security in my jurisdiction.”

  ***

  Heather English rose as her dad entered the room.

  “We’re all going home,” he told them. They had been waitin
g in a windowless area to which access was rigidly controlled after they’d each been questioned. She and Heather had been hovering protectively on either side of their mother, regaling everyone with testimony about the heroism of a pleased but embarrassed Deputy Parker.

  “Start sorting out who’s going in what vehicle,” Englishman said. “That includes you, Ms. Jorgenson. I’m not charging you with anything yet, unless that’s what it takes to get you back to Buffalo Springs. But you’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”

  Janie Jorgenson sat beside Mad Dog. Her eyes were red and her makeup a mess, but she’d stopped crying. “No excuses, Englishman,” she said. Heather knew her dad must kind of like the woman, since he didn’t interrupt to insist she call him Sheriff or English. “I’m responsible for most of what happened in Buffalo Springs today. I wanted revenge on the town, so I bought one of your supervisors to help me get it. And I arranged to have my granddaughter, Jackie, be there to help with our little scam.”

  “How’d you do that?” Englishman wondered.

  “I’m a big contributor to PBS. I just gave a little more…” She shrugged and Heather thought the woman might lose it again. She didn’t. “We planned to force you into selling Windreapers exclusive rights by setting up a fake terrorist attack. Jud told me he could trade for all the explosives we needed if I’d get him an antique rifle. I made one available where Jackie could get it to him.

  “But no one was supposed to be hurt. Jud was going to get a nice commission and come work for me, and I was going to make sure neither Windreapers, nor any other company, ever built a thing or created a job in Benteen County. I was going to sit back and enjoy watching you collapse into bankruptcy.”

  “What about your son?”

  She sighed and Mad Dog reached over and took one of her hands. “Funny,” she said. “I didn’t have a clue he was there. Not until Jackie hinted at it. And I never knew he was a film producer or that he’d finagled his way onto This Old Tepee. I think it was a coincidence that we decided to take our vengeance at the same time. Then he played long-lost daddy. Persuaded poor Jackie to let him in on my plans and piggy-backed off us. No, Sam’s part in this came as quite a shock.”