“I told you, everything is different down here.”
The Governor caught some movement through the scope. He blinked hard and settled in behind it. The runner in the crosshairs was a woman. She was attractive, and ran smoothly along the trail. She turned her head and it looked like she was saying something. It was almost as if she was talking to him.
He stopped tracking the woman and saw his target, as Special Agent Jack Miller ran into his view. The Governor was surprised to see him running with somebody else this morning. He needed to think quickly. He had planned options, but two runners hadn’t been one of them.
His plan wasn’t just to shoot Jack without warning. He wanted to toy with him. Draw out the fun so Jack knew the Governor was in control. He focused on controlling his breathing and caressed the trigger with his finger.
Jack entered the shooting zone, the area where the running path squeezed between the steep wall and the river with no place to hide. The Governor centered the cross hairs on his target and then pivoted the gun on top of the log it was resting on, tracking to the left to keep pace with the runner, and moving the crosshairs slightly ahead just as he had with the tires during practice. He slipped off the safety, took a deep breath, exhaled part of it, and squeezed the trigger.
Chapter 35
Jack continued to watch his step, but he was also watching Patty. Her strong legs carried her ahead of him down the trail. The straps of her jogging top framed her shoulders. He could see the muscles shift under the skin as her arms pumped forward and back.
“Rock!” Patty shouted back over her shoulder.
Jack saw it as she passed over it and stepped quickly around it.
“We have to run back up there?” Patty asked, nodding at the bridge ahead of them sixty feet above.
“I didn’t say it was a flat six-mile run.”
Patty held up her right hand and flipped him the bird. Jack was laughing to himself when Patty screamed and went down on the trail ahead of him, rolling across the dirt. A bang sounded and echoed in the river gorge. Jack ran up to Patty, suspecting she’d sprained her ankle, but then the sound registered. Jack pushed Patty’s head down onto the ground and shielded her body. “Stay down.”
“I’m bleeding!” Patty yelled. She was holding her leg. Blood covered her hands and ran down her thigh.
Jack pulled off his tank top and wiped off her leg. A small dot showed in the hamstring on the back of her leg. “I think you’ve been shot. Put this on it.”
“Shot?” Patty asked, confused and in pain. She tried to sit up.
Jack held her down. “Stay down.” He scanned the far bank of the river from the water to the trees to the road above the river gorge. “I don’t know what happened, but you need to stay down until we figure out what’s going on. It’s not bleeding too bad, so we stay down for a little bit.”
“Somebody shot me?”
“Shh, you’ll be OK,” Jack tried to calm Patty. “Probably some freak accident. Just hold my shirt over the wound.”
Jack tried to assess their situation. This wasn’t some freak accident. People didn’t shoot guns down in the river gorge early in the morning and accidentally hit somebody who happened to be running by. She had definitely been shot. He could tell by the entrance wound in her leg. Small caliber, meant to hurt. It had to be the Governor.
He didn’t like where they were. He went back through all of his training and experience as an agent. He had to assess the situation and make some decisions. There were a few trees around, but they were on a part of the path down by the river with the steep wall behind them. They were kind of in the shadows, but in a short time, the rising sun would expose them in a brighter light, making them easier targets. The path was worn enough that it was a small trough. With Patty lying flat in it, it offered some protection.
Why did he shoot Patty? He’d been waiting for him to go out on his morning run. The Governor had been watching him. Patty being here was a surprise. She wasn’t the target. The Governor was playing some sick game with Jack.
“Jack. I’m going to kill whoever shot me,” Patty said between clenched teeth.
“Listen. I think he wants me, but we can’t just sit here all morning. We’re off the usual path down here, but somebody else might come along.”
“They can go for help for us,” Patty said.
“Or he’ll shoot them too.”
Patty continued lying on the path, sucking breaths between her teeth against the pain. “Not good. So what do we do?”
“I’m going to run a little farther down the path. When he starts shooting, you go back the other way and try to get behind a tree. Stay in the path. Stay down.”
“He’s going to shoot at you? Why hasn’t he shot you sitting here?”
“He either can’t see me or he’s toying with me. I don’t think he was shooting at you. I think he was shooting at me. But with us running it threw him off.”
“I’ll kill him,” Patty said.
“You ready?” Jack asked. He wanted to move while Patty was worked up and mad, using her anger to get past her pain.
“Yeah.”
“Stay low.” Jack jumped up and ran farther along the path, away from her. The wall of the gorge ahead of him puffed dirt as a bullet hit it and Jack heard the report of the rifle echo down the river. Jack kept running. A second bullet hit a branch on a tree to his right. The Governor had hit Patty when she was running. Jack didn’t want to give him the chance. He hoped Patty had used this chance to run the other way for cover. Jack veered left in his run and after three strong paces, dove from the riverbank into the river.
The shallow dive brought Jack out into the river away from the riverbank. The cold water instantly gripped him and carried him along with it as it made its way south towards the Gulf of Mexico. When Jack surfaced, he looked back and saw Patty scrambling and limping the other way. She quickly became smaller as he was carried the other direction in the current. She’d be safe.
Jack did a dive and got below the surface, out of sight, where the water could carry him safely farther downstream away from the Governor. He held his breath and counted, trying to imagine how far he had moved down river. He wanted to get back to shore and get out near the base of the Ford Parkway Bridge. From there, he could make it up to the road for help.
When his head broke above water for the second time, Jack wiped the water from his eyes and looked back across the river, trying to see if he could tell where the Governor might be. He heard another shot but couldn’t tell where it hit. He turned and swam hard towards the bank. He made some progress, but was moving downstream much faster than he had anticipated. For each stroke towards the bank, he moved further downstream. It didn’t look like he would be able to reach the riverbank at a point where he would be able to crawl out.
The river pulled him towards the locks on the west side of the river. There were two locks side-by-side for moving barges and boats past the dam used to provide electricity to the Ford truck plant. He floated by the concrete walls along the riverbank below the bridge. There was no way to get out of the river from here.
A loud bang sounded as a bullet ricocheted off one of the steel lock doors. The shot wasn’t close to him, but served notice that the Governor was still there and Jack was still within range. Jack dragged his hand and foot along the wall, trying to slow his progress, trying to allow himself time to examine the wall for a ladder, a hand hold, something to help him get out of the river. He floated below a red button on the wall. The button was used by boat drivers to signal the lock operators to open the locks for the boats. Jack kicked his legs to propel his body out of the water and stretched his right arm up the wall, but he was still four to six feet short of reaching the button.