9 Seconds of Freedom, Original Suspense, Part 33, links to earlier episodes
I stepped behind him, the nail gun against his back.
“Seriously? It would be better than the last three years,” he said. “Soup and jello for every damn meal. There are other soft foods, but that’s what they brought, every damn time.”
“Get in the car,” I said.
“I won’t be a part of this. That kid has a home and a family,” he said.
“Yeah, well, that wasn’t for you to decide,” I said.
story continued after chapter links!
If you haven't read earlier chapters, get caught up!
Jensen sighed. He got in. I got in, one hand on the wheel, one on the nail gun.
When we got to the Whippoorwill, the crowds were gone. A few older men were stacking tables, and the women were clearing up.
“Looking for Leeanne?” a boy asked.
He was about twelve and looked serious.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Who’s this?” the kid asked.
“Dr. who knows where Leeanne’s baby is,” I said.
“No kidding, alright. I’ll take you to her,” he said.
“Your mom okay with that?” I asked.
The kid sneered at me. “I’m my own man, I do what I like. You want me to take you, or not,” he asked.
We climbed into the Sunbird and the kid directed me around the side of the mountain Leeanne and I had gone up to overlook The Farm. We ended up on a forestry road, heading down through territory that I thought would tear the poor Sunbird apart. Jensen looked nervous.
“What’s the matter Jensen?” I asked. “You’re looking a little green.”
“Yeah, well, that will happen when the fastest ride you’ve had in three years, is being pushed in a wheelchair race, by somebody’s grandkids,” he said.
Finally, we pulled into what looked like a hunting camp. There were two large, prefab sheds outfitted as cabins. A row of four-wheelers waited at the edge of the clearing.
The kid jumped out. Dr. Jensen looked nervous.
“I’ll just wait right here,” he said.
There was a crowd of people in front of the first cabin. I walked over to it.
“So, what’s going on?” I asked.
“Waiting for assignments,” the guy next to me said. “I see you came prepared.”
He pointed to the nail gun and laughed.
I shrugged. “Just nailed Sheriff Crawford’s nuts to his leg,” I said. “Works for me.”
The man moved away looking at the gun with a pained expression.
“Damn, that’s cold,” he said.
“So, who would know where Leeanne went?” I asked.
“Inside,” he said.
I climbed onto the porch and skirted around the guys standing there. Inside the cabin, a guy at a table looked up. It was Shorty.
“Hey, Dalton,” he said. “Leeanne told me to let her know when you get here.”
He picked up a radio.
“Base to vixens, base to vixens, do you copy?” he said.
“Vixens here, come in,” the radio said.
“Tell Leeanne, Dalton’s here,” Shorty said.
There was a pause. “Send him down,” the radio said. “Vixens out.”
“Okay, go see Billy Ray,” Shorty said. “He’s at the lip, right behind this cabin about twenty yards.”
I walked out. I saw the guy I’d been talking to.
“What’s The Lip?” I asked.
“Ah, you’re in for a treat,” he said. “Follow that path behind the cabin into the trees about sixty feet, turn right. Look for Billy Ray, in a orange cap.”
I collected the doctor and looked around for our guide. He was nowhere to be found. I left the keys in the cupholder of the Sunbird and slipped the nail gun behind the driver’s seat. We walked through the woods to the edge of a steep drop. ‘The Lip’ I guessed. Through the trees I saw an orange cap. Must be Billy Ray.
Billy Ray was the largest man I’ve ever seen. He had to be seven feet tall. His shoulders looked a full four feet wide and his hands almost entirely engulfed the two helmets he tossed to us.
“Put those on. You Dalton?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Possum, harness these boys up,” Billy said.
A short, wiry guy, with thick glasses walked up. He had a camo pack. Inside were climbing harnesses. He started fitting one on me. I did my best to cooperate.
“Who’s this?” Billy asked.
“He’s with me,” I said.
“That may be, but nobody heads down my line, unless I know who they are,” Billy said. “So, if he’s going down, I need a name.”
“Doc Jensen,” I said.
The doctor looked nervous. He was obviously out of his element. Possum finished with me and moved on to the Doc. Had there been fewer firearms visible, he might not have cooperated. He obviously didn’t want to.
“Hey, Dalton, I’ll just wait here,” he said.
“Like hell,” I said. “Brave enough to do their dirty work, you’ll survive this. Besides, you might even be useful down there.”
“You’re a medical doctor?” Billy Ray asked.
“Retired,” Jensen said.
“Good enough,” Bill said.
Possum tossed him a camo bag with a big red cross on the side.
“Keep this close, you’re company medic as of now, you copy?” Billy Ray said.
He handed Jensen the first aid bag.
“Uh, yeah, uh, copy, okay,” Jensen said.
Possum finished the harness and clipped us in. He handed us leather gloves.
“You brake on the wire, got it?” Possum asked.
I’d done it once over by Turner Falls one afternoon a couple months back. I was excited.
“Yeah, got it,” I said.
Jensen said noting. Then Billy Ray threw us off the side of the drop.
We sailed through the scrub oak forest. It felt almost straight down at first.
The harness bounced and swayed from side to side. The view in the clearings was amazing. I kept my eyes forward.
“Okay, I can see the platform, so, just put that thick pad of leather up on the cable and grab on to slow yourself, got it?” I said.
Jensen nodded. He was starting to relax a little. This was quite a stretch for a guy that had sat in a wheel chair pretending to be basically brain dead for years.
As we approached our next stop, the cable rose, slowing us further. On the platform, another man was waiting to help us off.
“Okay,” he said. “You Dalton? Doc Jensen?”
I nodded. Jensen gave him a thumb’s up.
“Alright, down this rope ladder. Leave your gear at the bottom of the tree, insertion team is waiting about two klicks West,” he said.
I must have looked confused, because he explained.
“It’s easy, stick to the bank of the creek and head toward that big outcropping. You’ll run right into them. We’re silent from here, copy?” he asked.
I gave him a thumb’s up and started down the ladder. About halfway down, Jensen got hung up and ended up hanging from his ankles, twenty feet above the forest floor. The guy looked irritated, but he dropped a rope to Jensen and got him right side up. After that the climb was fine.
We hiked along the bank of the creek for about twenty-five minutes. Stopping frequently to catch our breath. After another five minutes, Jensen stopped.
“This doesn’t feel right,” he whispered. “We’ve gone further than two kilometers.”
At that moment, a pair of hands wrapped itself around his mouth, while another grabbed his arms, and a third his feet. They hustled him into the trees and sat him on the ground at the base of a tree. Leeanne strode up and without hesitating, grabbed Jensen by the throat.
“Yeah, I remember you,” she whispered. “You remember me?”
He nodded.
“Did my baby die that day?” she asked.
He shook his head.
Leeanne scowled. “You are one lucky SOB, if you didn’t know where my baby was, I’d leave your body for the wolves,” she said.
“Hey Dalton,” she whispered. She kissed my cheek. “Thanks.”
Two of the women that had grabbed Jensen, tied his hand behind his back to the tree trunk. Then they tied his feet. A third one ran duct tape over his mouth. Jensen glared at me.
I leaned close. “It was your idea for me to break you out, remember?” I said.
“You said you’d do anything, well, this is anything.”
I followed Leeanne. She led me to an area at the edge of a clearing and motioned for me to stop. She handed me a pair of binoculars. I put them to my eyes and focused the lenses. About a hundred yards from where we stood, the edge of the cage was visible. It stood in sunlight slightly raised from our position.
The stream that ran through The Farm, ran along the right side of it, with a kind of dam along the base of the fence, to keep the water out. I could see guards at the corners of the fence and inside the cage, I could make out bodies, laying in different positions, around the enclosure.
Leeanne pulled me back into the trees. We walked for about two minutes to a clearing.
“Okay,” she said. Her voice was low. “Tell me everything.”
“You have a son,” I said. “He lives in Kansas City with an adopted family.”
Leeanne bit her lip. A single tear appeared at the corner of her left eye.
“Really?” she said. She smiled. “What’s his name?”
“He thinks its Paul,” I said.
“When can I see him?” she asked.
“I don’t know, I brought him straight here,” I said. “I had to shoot Crawford in the junk to get out alive.”
“What?” she smiled. “That’s amazing. I wish I could have seen that.”
“Yeah, no, it was a horrible thing to do to another human,” I said. “Even if he deserved it, it was just awful.”
“Aww, I love you for that,” she said. “Most guys are so macho about that stuff, even the ones that don’t mean it. You’re sweet.”
“So, what’s the plan?” I asked.
“Soon as the sun’s down, we make our way through that swamp you saw, and wait for the signal,” she said.
We went back to the tree where Jensen was tied. He had his eyes closed. He looked like he was sleeping. Might as well.
“Ugg,” Leeanne whispered. “I wish I could just leave him there.”
“Yeah, but then you never meet your son,” I whispered.
She smiled, and closed her eyes. She wanted to scream and jump up and down. I could see it.
The mood was tense as we waited. Once, a guard came outside the fence and squatted down in the woods. He had a roll of toilet paper suspended on a branch.
It was hard not to laugh, as we watched him from the shadows. Shorty was right. This guy looked like he’d left his gun in the compound. They were a soft target.
As night fell, the shadows were blinding. After half an hour of sitting in the dark, though, your eyes adjust. I could pick out individual leaves from ten feet away. It was pretty amazing.
I’d heard once that pirates wore eye patches for this very reason. Keeping one eye in the dark, made it easy for them to go from sunshine above decks, to darkness below. They simply switched eyes with the patch.
As the last of the light faded, the woods came alive. Scurries and flaps and screeches came from every direction as small animals and birds woke up to start their nights. There was a lot of nocturnal life out here.
“You better wake up Jensen,” Leeanne whispered, finally. “He can’t be groggy when we throw him on a four-wheeler.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Get him and bring him up to the edge of the clearing,” she said. “Here’s a pair of night vision goggles so you can watch the action. We have to get into position.”
I checked my watch. It said 10:30, I had time. I put on the goggles and watched as the women came out of the forest and started across the swamp, low to the ground, belly’s first. The water was bitter cold. They didn’t seem to notice.
They went slowly. I tracked Leeanne. She led the team to a point about twenty feet from the dam I’d seen earlier, then they split in two. The goal was to go in at two locations, as soon as the guards had vacated the cage.
They settled in to wait and I went back to find Jensen.
“Okay, wake up,” I said. I held my hand over his mouth.
Jensen’s head lolled to one side. He didn’t move. Shit. As it did, a neat round hole in his temple was revealed, oozing blood. He’d been shot. I froze. My ears roared. My throat constricted. Someone was here. Or, had someone on our team killed him?
Wow... very nice to read... now I will start to read previous parts! Thanks for sharing.
Thanks, I had a lot of fun writing it.
Please keep going... There is nomuch posts to enjoy around these days. I am really enjoying while reading your one. Have a @funworlding ... When you completed, please let me know, I will resteem it to my blog.
This one is a little over halfway done. I've finished the writing, but I have about 20-30 more episodes to share, depending on how I break it up.
I will be waiting next episodes, but reading previous parts will take time.
Thanks for upvote. I upvoted your post, too... it is very small but from my heart! :)
@originalworks