Mexico.
The Governor was sweating as he worked his way down through the trees from the street to the riverbank below. He was in a hurry to be set for when Jack ran by. Vadim’s surveillance said Agent Miller ran most mornings, leaving his house at five thirty. Vadim’s cohorts had also scouted out this spot for the Governor to shoot from.
He wrapped the rifle in a jumble of fishing rods he carried in one hand, a plastic pail filled with ammunition and his camouflaged gillie suit in the other. At the edge of the river, he checked the time. Jack should be running across the river from him in about five minutes.
The Governor stood in the sand along the riverbank and dumped the contents of the pail by a tree. He put the plastic pail upside down on the shore for a stool, and propped up a fishing pole next to it with the line in the water.
A large log was half-buried in the sand. Weeds and brush grew up around it. He pulled the gillie suit over his shoulders and lay behind the log. He was almost completely out of sight. He looked up and down the opposite bank of the river. Seeing nobody, he looked to the south, up at the Ford Parkway Bridge, the only place somebody may be able to see him as he was exposed from above.
Under the netting, leaning on the log, he felt secure, hidden. He wiggled and shifted to move the sand until it conformed to his body. The rifle barrel rested on a branch from the fallen tree. He held the stock against his shoulder and moved his eye to the scope. The trees across the river were suddenly in focus. The Governor looked through the scope and scanned slowly up and down the river to make sure he could move the rifle freely. He also assessed the path through the trees to identify the best spot to execute his plan. He didn’t want his prey to have a place to hide. He wanted him in the open, trapped. The Governor looked up and down the opposite bank, took a deep breath and exhaled to relax. Any minute.
The cracked blacktop path curved up the slope and merged with the bike path before turning back down into the woods farther ahead. Jack slowed and Patty caught up with him.
“Here’s your chance, Patty. We’ve gone a mile. You can turn around here or it’s another mile before we come out of the woods again up by the Ford Parkway Bridge.”
“Let’s keep going.”
“You going to tell me what info you found out?”
“Later.” Patty ran out ahead of Jack. “Follow me.”
Jack followed Patty into the woods. She was running faster than he had up to this point and he was breathing heavier than he had before. “So what was it… you found out?”
“Shut up, Miller, or I’ll run faster so you can’t talk at all.”
Jack stayed quiet and ran on the path behind Patty. Running with somebody else wasn’t so bad, if it was a beautiful woman and she was running in front of you. He tried to guess what she might have found out, running different scenarios through his head. Back down the slope in the trees, it was quiet again; the only sound was their feet pounding along the path. Jack felt himself pushing to keep up, running at a faster pace than normal.
“How can somebody as short as you run so fast?”
“I don’t have as much gravity pulling on me. Just move the legs fast, Miller.”
The walking path ran along the river about halfway up the slope between the river and the road above. A dirt path veered down the slope to the river.
“Follow the path down the hill,” Jack panted. “We’ll get down closer to the river.”
Patty slowed and worked her way down the steep dirt path to a path that ran along the Mississippi River. They ran in the same direction as the river flowed.
“This is great being this close to the river. I feel it’s pulling us along with it.”
“Down here can be a different world,” Jack said, having a chance to catch his breath as they slowed, coming down the slope. “I’ve seen deer, fox, and a coyote.”
Patty kept running ahead, her feet crunching across the dead leaves on the dirt path. “I haven’t seen the Ford Parkway Bridge from down here before,” she yelled back over her shoulder.
“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.
