Francis and Evelyn left in the morning for town and
returned in the afternoon. Francis called for Emily to look after a
distraught Evelyn Haxx and gestured for John and Craig to join her in
her upstairs apartment. She held up an audio tape cassette. “We made the
call from a mall pay phone.”
“Did he agree to the meeting?” John said.
“In three days. Evelyn asked for a private meeting at the
ranch. The conversation was quite brief. I think we caught the Senator
off guard. He seemed surprised, or maybe puzzled hearing from Evelyn
after so long, but that fits in with what Evelyn has said about the man,
cold-hearted to the bone.”
John had Craig listen to the tape. “Your call, buddy. How
do you want to handle it?”
“I’ve been a one-man operation my entire life,” John
said. “You’ve had military training. I’m game for suggestions.”
“How much time do you need with him?”
“Ten, twenty minutes should be enough.”
“So, he's going to expect Evelyn and he's going to get
you and me instead,” Craig summarized. “That's not going to go down well
with a United States Senator and his security.”
“They won't be expecting us. We'll have to take and keep
them off guard. Any suggestions?”
“I suggest we reconnoiter, before we make plans,” Craig
said. “We rent a plane, take some photographs from the air. We’ll need
an idea of the layout of the ranch and surrounding terrain. We’ll need
to poke around the perimeter to feel out the security.”
“A plane,” John said.
Craig grinned. “A flying machine. Wings and all. The best
way to look down upon the world.”
“You know how to fly a plane?”
“My parents owned a Piper Cub. I flew it solo at sixteen.
Without their permission. I've since been properly licensed.”
Jennifer and John had taken up residence at the castle.
Alone with the girl in their upstairs apartment in the afternoon, John
poured himself coffee and pulled the shades to the windows. “Ever been
up in a plane before?” he asked casually.
“Me and Francis flew to Chicago from Los Angeles and back
once.” It was then that she noticed his upset. “Haven’t you ever flown?”
“I’ve never been this far from the hood before. I sure as
hell never been in a plane.”
“I’m going with you, aren’t I?”
John eye her with a pained expression. “Kid, you gotta go
with me. I need someone to hold the barf bag.”
Francis called for a meeting in the evening and announced
her decision to take the entire group to confront Senator Caliph Hacks.
“It wouldn’t be safe to leave anyone behind.”
“Gabby, too?” Bertha asked.
“He’ll come in handy as a go-for and extra muscle,”
Francis said. “Craig suggests that we go in two groups. Jennifer and
John and Evelyn and Craig will drop the Ford off in town, take a taxicab
to the airport, and rent an airplane. The rest of us will rent a van,
drive to the area and find accommodations for our stay in the area. We
leave first thing in the morning.”
John lay staring at the ceiling for most of the night.
Craig had filled two heavy duffel bags and tossed them in the trunk of
the Ford by dawn. With John at her side and Craig and Evelyn riding
shotgun, Jennifer drove and returned the car to the rental dealer. They
called for a taxi to take them to the small airport on the Iowa side of
the river .
Jennifer watched John’s reaction as Craig rented a sleek,
late-model Cessna using his own money. As she grew to know John with a
deepening level of intimacy and watched him turn into an ordinary mortal
before her eyes, she expected to see a flaw or two emerge, perhaps an
expression of bitterness or resentment toward Craig’s familiarity with
the larger world around them. Instead, he gave Craig a pat on his back
when he returned from the office gesturing victory with a thumbs up.
“Way to go, partner.”
Pleased by John’s support, Craig’s grin reached from ear
to ear. He draped an arm across Evelyn’s shoulder and circled the plane
to make a preflight inspection. “We’ll be up for about two hours. If
anyone’s gotta use a john, do it now, or you’ll be hanging your butt out
the door at ten thousand feet.”
Evelyn took him up on his offer. Craig rummaged through a
duffel bag and handed John a camera. “Not much more than point and
shoot. I’ll bank for the shots you need to take when we arrive.”
John examined the camera. “It's got a screen on it.”
“Digital. I’ve got a laptop packed away.”
“I don’t live in that century,” John muttered unhappily.
Evelyn returned and glanced up and down the runway as
they piled aboard, more afraid of the world around her than the aircraft
that would carry them into the morning sky.
Craig pulled the doors closed. “Seat belts, people.”
He fiddled with the controls and started the engine. He
donned headphones and spoke briefly with the tower, then gave the plane
some throttle and pulled out onto a runway.
“You pretty good at this?” John called out over the
noise.
“Fair to middling! Nobody’s star student!”
Craig gave the plane full throttle. Jennifer tried not to
bother John with the fact that he was crushing the delicate bones of her
hand. The plane buzzed with the vibration of the engine, raced down the
strip of concrete, and then all but dived into the blue morning sky.
Only when the world became a beautifully patterned carpet of farmland
far below and the aircraft settled down to a melodic hum did John
recover and pat her hand in apology.
They followed the snaking course of the river, and then
swung a bit further east. From time to time, Craig muttered something to
some distant authority on his radio, then announced that they were just
under an hour from their destination. Within a half hour, Evelyn began
pointing out familiar landmarks of the southern part of Illinois, and
finally landmarks of personal interest from her early childhood.
Craig consulted a small map on a clipboard from time to
time, and then let Evelyn point out their destination on a rolling
terrain of wooded hills. “There. I see the ranch.”
“Show John the main house,” Craig said.
Evelyn pointed at the tiny landmark when Craig banked at
one thousand feet and put it in clear view through the side window.
Jennifer caught sight of a large, ranch-style house on broad lawns and a
collection of smaller buildings among some green pastures. Dozens of
horses stood like plastic toys on carpets of green velvet.
“Start snapping away,” Craig said to John. “You can take
five hundred shots, so snap anything interesting. I’ll do three passes,
one to each side of the estate, and one around the perimeter.”
“I think I got everything we need,” John announced at the
end of the third pass, and Craig took the plane west.
Jennifer hated to see the ride end. John turned green
about the gills as clouds moved in to buffet the plane. The glass-like
circle of the propeller pulled them slowly through the drifting clouds.
Craig set down on a deserted runway of a rural airport
and cut the engine in front of a hangar. He escorted Evelyn through the
hanger to take care of the paperwork and call a cab. John and Jennifer
waited out front. “You okay?” Jennifer asked of him.
“I’ve never seen the world from the air. It’s all so
damned clean and neat.”
“I’ve never flown in a plane that small before,” Jennifer
said, trying to put him at ease. “You should try one of the big jets
packed with three hundred other people.”
John rejected the notion with a shake of his head. “I
can’t even imagine it.”
Craig and Evelyn made their appearance. Craig led the way
to a waiting taxi. Evelyn asked the driver to take them to a multiple
star motel beyond the city limits of the largest town in the area.
Craig paid for two doubles side by side on the second
floor balcony of the motel’s inner court. John and Jennifer watched
Craig unpack his laptop and download John’s pictures. The monitor showed
a succession of razor-sharp images. Evelyn named the major roads leading
to the ranch.
“John, we’ll run into town for some electronic supplies
I’ll need when the girls get here,” Craig said. “You teach me some of
that fancy footwork of yours and I’ll teach you a thing or two about
modern security systems. I can get through a tight defense, but I’ll get
my face busted if I can’t move half as fast as you do.”
John grunted satisfaction with the arrangement. The
morning’s camaraderie had taken a bite from Evelyn's characteristic
haughtiness, although she still treated the spot John stood as generally
unoccupied. Neither was she a breathtaking beauty dressed in jeans and a
simple white blouse. Without her expensive cosmetics, she looked like a
pretty, but rather ordinary woman to Jennifer’s eyes.
John sat at the window and stared out over the court,
watching children playing in the pool. Their high-pitched shouts and
screams echoed through the early afternoon. “I’ve never seen kids have
so much fun,” was his only comment. Jennifer refrained from voicing her
thoughts on what the future might hold for her in the way of children.
Francis arrived an hour later, accompanied by a
grim-faced Emily and her sidekick, Sally. “I turned Bertha and Gabby
loose to find us a place to rent closer to the ranch, preferably a
house. Emily, Sally and I will be staying nearby for the night.”
Jennifer and Evelyn accompanied the men on their shopping
expedition. Craig drove to two electronic supply stores, a military
surplus store, and a hunting store for nothing she recognized. John lay
with Jennifer in the darkness that night, caressing her absently. “I
would never have gotten this far on my own. This part of the world is
more than I know how to handle.”
Emily showed up with the van in the morning and they all
climbed aboard. They drove to a small town after a twenty minute drive,
made a turn halfway along the highway bisecting the business district
and pulled into the drive of an aged, wood-frame house surrounded by
trees. Francis came out the back way with Sally at her heels. Bertha and
Gabby standing side by side on the back porch seemed for all the world
to be native to quaint house and town.
The house was furnished, but it didn’t look as if it had
been lived in for the past decade. Francis had stocked the pantries and
bathroom with her usual thoroughness. By the time Craig and John had
settled in, Jennifer was beginning to appreciate the cozy home tucked
among the trees. “We’re going to live in a place like this someday,” she
announced. “Or do you want to go back to your hood?”
John nodded to indicate a doe in the edge of the
property. “Rats were never that big in the hood.”
The group gathered in the kitchen to hear John and
Craig’s plans for the balance of their mission. Craig turned to John
with a furrowed brow. “You take it from here. I can anticipate the
security, but you’re the expert in locking horns one on one.”
“Someone’s liable to get hurt,” John warned the group,
ending the last of the hushed chatter among the women. “but if we miss
this opportunity, we won’t have another. We won’t know where to look for
a counterattack or when to expect it.”
John eyed Emily. “You and Sally to pay a visit to the
ranch. Play coy. Bump a friendly head with security. Let us know what
sidearms they carry, how they’re dressed and behave, number and kinds of
traffic on the property.”
Emily nodded enthusiastically, appreciative of John’s
recognition of her potential usefulness.
He looked to Evelyn. “Draw us some maps of the rooms in
the main house and the buildings near the house. When we’re ready to go
in, you’ll call your father and announce your arrival. They’ll be
expecting you. They’ll get Craig and I instead, although your father
shouldn't object once I’ve had a few minutes to explain our situation.
“When we go in, we’ll be outgunned,” he said to Craig.
“The element of surprise is all we’ll have to pull this off. We don't
want anyone getting hurt.”
“Your father will be surprised by the crowd you are
keeping these days,” Francis said to Evelyn in an attempt to lighten the
mood. “He may need a change of underwear after we’ve left.”
“He wears boxer shorts,” Evelyn said bitterly. “I’ll
remember to take along diaper wipes for the bastard.”
Novels by
William G. Tedford