Authors: John R. Kess
Laura’s name
popped up on Elly’s ringing phone. “Hello, Laura.”
“Elly, good
news! The radio station called and you get to sing a song that will go on their
sampler. It’s for charity, and it’s great publicity.”
“I’m not supposed
to be singing, Laura! I’m not even supposed to be talking to you!”
“It’s just one
song. You’ll be fine. They’ll record you at 2:00. Good luck!”
“2:00? I can’t
wait that—”
The phone went
dead, and Elly squeezed it in her hand as she considered throwing it. She found
her small plastic bottle, then swallowed another pill for her new headache.
* * *
Back at the
house, Jay poured a glass of orange juice and sat on the deck to watch the sun
set over the mountains. In Afghanistan, he’d watched many sunsets over many
mountains, but Jay didn’t have to worry about soldiers hiding in these peaks
waiting to kill him.
Five years as a Marine
had given him little control over his life. He’d dreamed of the day he could
come home and leave the war behind him, but now that the dream had come true,
he was left wondering what would be next. He knew the Marine Corps would
continue to be part of his life, but at the moment he wanted nothing more than to
go camping again, with Pender and Ben. Those were his demands. He just wanted things
to be the way they had been the fall before their senior year of high school.
Back then, Jay and Ben’s dads co-owned a plot of land north of Bitterroot National Forest that covered about ten square miles. Before Jay joined the
Marines, Ben wanted to hire Jay and himself out as guides to hunters, but Jay
had told Ben that he didn’t like the idea of bringing others onto their land.
Ben kept trying to convince Jay, but that was Ben’s dream, not his. Jay
remembered the day he’d told Ben he joined the Marines and how an angry Ben
shouted that he’d start the guide business without him.
As the sun
disappeared behind the mountains, it cast a chilly shadow on Jay, as if it were
covering his own life. The idea of returning to the place Ben had died filled
Jay with a cold numbness he hadn’t felt since he’d heard about Ben’s accident.
He kept waiting for the wound caused by losing his friend to heal, but war had
only opened it wider. Jay had sworn long ago he’d never go back to where Ben
had died, but the Marines had taught him that sometimes you must fight a war to
have peace.
SUNDAY
Jay pulled
the pin and threw the grenade at the entrance. Gunfire surrounded him as he dove
for cover behind the large boulder. The blast that followed rained rocks over
the valley. The sound of the explosion reverberated into the Afghanistan countryside. The cold silence that followed was broken only by a little girl’s scream
deep inside the cave. Everything went black, and then Jay saw Ben lying on the
forest floor in Montana clutching his bleeding stomach.
Jay awoke with a
start. Sweat had beaded on his forehead. It took him a moment to remember he
wasn’t in Afghanistan but instead was parked on a tarmac in Montana in his
dad’s floatplane. He closed his eyes and thought how great it was to be home
and then wished the other soldiers he’d left behind could come home, too. He
wished they could all come home.
The airport was
in west-central Montana, southeast of the Bitterroot National Forest. It had
three hangars in varying stages of disrepair and a small one-story office that
served as the control tower, not that the airport really needed one with so
little air traffic. The rest of the airport was quiet. A blaze-orange windsock
hung limply on its pole next to the newly paved long taxiway, which ended in
the middle of the concrete runway, forming a giant T.
Pender had
dropped Jay off early enough to make it to work on time, which meant it would
be another forty-five minutes before the controller would show up and Jay could
file his flight plan.
Sitting in his
dad’s floatplane brought back so many memories. Jay remembered his excitement
as he sat in the pilot seat for the first time with the instructor as they
taxied for takeoff. Even the musty smell of the cockpit was the same as when
he’d flown with his father years ago. Now he wanted to hear the engine roar
down the runway again.
A fuel tanker
truck drove into view and idled for a few minutes by one of the hangars, then
Jay saw a twin-engine turboprop plane appear in the sky, lining itself up for a
landing.
The turboprop
was small, but Jay figured it could carry six to eight passengers. In all his
years of coming to the airport with his father, Jay had never seen such a nice
plane at this airport, and he wondered if it was a corporate turboprop. He
wondered who was in it and why they’d chosen this airport as a place to land.
The turboprop
touched down and slowed to a crawl. The two propellers whined as it turned down
the taxiway and finally stopped in an open area of tarmac about fifty yards
from the floatplane. The fuel tanker moved in and parked beside the turboprop
as its propellers came to a stop.
* * *
Kevin glanced
out his window at the fuel tanker and checked his notes. He and Elly had left Baltimore hours ago, but there were no refueling stops scheduled as they flew to Seattle for System Override’s next concert. Normally the information he received from the
company that scheduled Elly’s flights was accurate. He was confused and annoyed
that they had to stop for fuel. The pilot removed his headset, and Kevin asked,
“Where are we?”
“Western Montana. I landed here last time on the way to Seattle. It’s a gem of an airport
isn’t it?” The pilot smiled. “I swear they’d route us through the Arctic Circle if fuel was one cent a gallon cheaper up there.” He opened the door, which
hinged at the bottom, and carefully lowered it down to the tarmac, then disappeared
down the steps integrated into the back of the door.
Kevin saw the
pilot talking with the fuel tanker driver as they hooked the fuel hose to the turboprop.
He looked at Elly, who was sleeping, and thought about all the people employed
because of her band. Everyone relied on her, and Elly relied on him, and that
kind of responsibility is what had made him want to become a bodyguard.
It had been two years
since Elly had hired him. At the time, Kevin thought the job would be easy, as
Elly was fairly unknown in the music industry. Everything changed as Elly’s
popularity soared. He remembered thinking she radiated a presence that made
everyone around her feel like they were part of something special. Now he
wondered if it had faded away for good. Physical changes were becoming more
pronounced as the stress seemed to suck the life out of her. She had lost
weight and complained of stomach pain. He wondered if both were due to her Vicodin
addiction. It was a helpless feeling knowing he couldn’t protect her from any
of it. He’d hoped her parents would see the changes in her, but nothing had
been said. Kevin didn’t feel it was his place to interfere with her life, so he
hadn’t brought it up with them. He wondered if he should have.
Kevin had always
thought of musicians as having an easy life, but watching Nick, Elly’s twin brother,
scream at her during their father’s birthday party the night before made it
clear there were consequences. Nick made it known that the disruption in his
life due to Elly’s rapidly rising popularity was unwelcome and he hated being
treated differently because of his sister. Nick pulled no punches as he yelled
at her and told her how she’d ruined his life.
Last night, Kevin
watched over Elly as she cried herself to sleep. It wasn’t the first time he’d
done so, and he figured it wouldn’t be the last. He knew Elly would be happier when
she was back with “The Three Stooges” in Seattle.
In the same instant
it took Kevin to register the click of a handgun being cocked, the pilot
reappeared, pointing a gun at Kevin’s chest. “Hands up!”
Adrenaline rushed
through Kevin as he raised his hands.
“Move anything
else and you’re dead,” the pilot said.
Another man, wearing
a black hood and carrying a gun, appeared at the front of the turboprop. The
pilot held a small radio to his mouth. “We’re clear.”
“Hey, wake up,”
the pilot called to Elly. “Now you’re really going to be famous.”
* * *
Jay watched the
tanker driver pull a black hood over his head and remove a pistol from his
jacket. As the man ran up the stairs into the turboprop, Jay heard the engine of
another vehicle. A white van screeched to a halt next to the turboprop. The
first man out of the van also wore a hood and carried a small automatic weapon
over his shoulder. He watched as the second man, the hooded van driver, bounded
up the steps into the turboprop with his gun drawn. The man with the automatic
weapon spun around in a circle to see if there was anyone in the area. He turned
his gaze toward the floatplane. Jay ducked out of view as he scrambled to get
his .338-caliber rifle from its case on the floor behind him. He tore into his
bag to find shells. When Jay turned around, he saw the man with the automatic
weapon now had his back to the floatplane.
A third hooded man
exited the van with a video camera and a tripod, which he set up facing the turboprop.
He returned to the van for a small generator and an air compressor, both of
which he hauled under the steps leading into the turboprop.
“What is he
doing?” Jay muttered to himself. He got his answer when the man’s final trip
from the van revealed an air grinder. The morning sun glinted off the cutting
wheel of the handheld power tool as the man approached the door. A shower of
sparks poured from under the stairs as the man started cutting away the door
hinges. The screeching noise from the grinder echoed off the nearby hangars.
Jay surveyed the
roofs of the three hangars and then swiveled in his chair, checking what parts
of the perimeter he could see. He’d been doing the same thing for the past few
years everywhere he went in Afghanistan. No snipers. No apparent backup.
“Amateurs,” Jay
said, as he pointed his rifle out the passenger window, aiming at the guard
covering the steps.
A hooded man
walked down the stairs backward, motioning for someone to follow. A large man
in handcuffs emerged at the top of the stairs, and the hooded man behind him
gave him a shove. Sparks were still flying from the grinding going on beneath
them. Jay knew the loud noise would mask the sound of a gunshot, which could
give him an advantage if he had to start shooting.
“I got your
back, buddy,” Jay murmured.
Jay froze as a
beautiful young woman wearing handcuffs appeared at the top of the steps. Her pink-streaked
brunette hair hung down to her shoulders. With a quick motion she flipped her
hair out of her face, and Jay registered her terrified look and realized this
was a kidnapping. The side doors on the van were opened as a hooded man pulled the
girl down the steps by the handcuffs. Jay aimed his weapon at him.
* * *
“Kevin!” Elly
screamed. Kevin reached the tarmac, and two men held him, one on each arm. She
realized he couldn’t hear her because of the horrible noise coming from under
the steps. The high-pitched buzz tortured her ears, and the smell of jet fuel
made her gag. Her wrists were jerked forward by the hooded man in front of her
pulling the chain of her handcuffs. The van’s open doors sent another wave of shock
through her.
This isn’t
happening,
Elly thought. The hooded men stared up at her, and a tremor shot
through her chest as her knees turned to jelly. Elly frantically looked around,
but there was no one else to be found.
Oh, my God,
I’m being kidnapped.
Elly gasped as Kevin
rammed his shoulder into the man on his right and then turned and kicked the man
with the automatic weapon in the groin. Kevin slammed his elbow into the back
of the man’s neck, dropping him to the ground. The first man got up, and Kevin rammed
his knee hard into him, knocking him over.
The hooded man
pulling Elly down the steps held onto the chain of her handcuffs with one hand
as he pulled out a handgun with the other. He aimed it at Kevin and pulled the
trigger.
“No!” Elly
screamed.
Kevin stumbled
as the round passed through his left calf. An instant later the tension on
Elly’s handcuffs disappeared. She looked down and saw red spots on her arms and
T-shirt. The man in front of her grasped his bleeding neck with both hands. The
hooded man buckled at the knees and rolled down the stairs onto the tarmac. The
grinding noise from under the stairs stopped.
Kevin got back
up and used his good leg to lunge at the man with the automatic weapon.
“Run, Elly!”
Kevin screamed.
Elly flew down the
steps to the tarmac and jumped over her downed captor. The rest of the airport
seemed deserted, except for a red floatplane. She decided the floatplane might
be unlocked and she could lock herself inside. She hoped it had a radio.
The man who’d
been using the grinder jumped out from under the stairs and chased after her. Elly
screamed when she saw him, and then heard a gunshot. She turned to see the man who’d
been chasing her was now facedown on the pavement. Elly kept running and she spotted
a rifle barrel sticking out of the passenger window of the floatplane. She looked
back at Kevin as she ran.
The pilot
emerged from the top of the steps of the turboprop and aimed his pistol at
Kevin.
“No!” Elly
screamed.
The pilot fired
three times, hitting Kevin in the back. Elly watched Kevin fall and felt the air
get sucked out of her lungs.
They shot
him! They shot Kevin! Oh, my God! This isn’t happening!