The Protector (Jack Widow Book 17), page 2
I stopped at the rear and stood near the trunk. I bent down and peeked in through the rear window to survey the situation. The interior was dark, and the backseat was empty. No passengers. The only person inside was the driver. I couldn’t make out any details from this angle. I knocked on the trunk lid, hoping to get her attention.
But there was no response.
I knocked again.
No response.
I knocked a third time.
Nothing.
“Hello?” I called out.
The driver didn’t respond. So, I walked around the vehicle from the driver’s side and up to the window. I bent down and peered in. The dash lights illuminated the interior in a soft ambient blue light. It reflected an indigo color across the driver’s torso.
“Hello?” I asked again. There was no response.
I saw a few new key pieces of information that either I was wrong about before or I hadn’t known. First, the driver wasn’t a she. He was a man. And he looked knocked out but alive. He breathed at a normal pace. His chest expanded on inhales and shrank on exhales.
Second, a gun laid in the footwell, near his feet, under the gas pedal. It looked like a Glock 22, a .40 caliber pistol. It looked like it fell out of his hand. I peered down into the car and saw the passenger door was closed. There was no one in the passenger seat. I had been wrong about that. It was just the driver. He must’ve been bouncing around and the sight of it appeared to be two people struggling. But it was only him.
The engine spurted and coughed louder than before. It didn’t seem at risk of catching fire, but I didn’t want to take the chance. I reached in, turned the key, and killed the ignition. The engine noise died away to nothing.
I grabbed the guy’s suit jacket and shook him. Easy, not like I wanted to rattle his brain inside his skull, but hard enough to wake a man out of a deep sleep. I said, “Hey. You with me?”
The guy grunted and twisted like he might’ve been in a deep sleep, but he didn’t wake up. To be safe, I popped the lock on his door, opened it, and backed up as the door swung open. I reached down and grabbed him by the arm and hauled him out of the car. My hands are pretty big, the size of shovels. I used one to palm his head like a pillow, to keep him from banging it on the door pillar, or the ground, as I pulled him out of the vehicle.
The guy was probably five feet and nine inches tall. Nothing special about his height. His weight was a different story that belonged in an entirely different section of a library. He must’ve weighed two hundred and fifty pounds, twenty-five pounds more than me. For a guy his height, he was heavier than what was normal. Of course, I tried not to judge others on their lifestyle choices. Live and let live is my credo. Variety is the spice of life. However, in that moment, in that situation where I needed to move the guy to keep him safe, I wished he might’ve taken more stairs and ate less fast food.
I was tired. I struggled to get him out of the car. I set him down in some witchgrass and dragged him from behind his shoulders, until I got him to a decent distance away from the car; in case it caught fire.
I dragged him far enough and laid him down on the shoulder of the road with his head in what paramedics call: the recovery position.
He breathed normally.
I poked at his chest and said, “Hey.”
No response.
I poked again and said, “Hey.”
Nothing.
I felt his pulse. It was weak—weaker than it should’ve been. It was strong enough to be alive, but weak enough to need a hospital.
I looked around. Nothing in the distance but darkness. No oncoming headlights. No sign of nearby houses. There was nowhere for me to go to get help and no one passing by to flag down.
I shook the guy, soft at first, then a little harder and harder still.
No response.
I shook him a little harder still.
Nothing.
I looked down at the guy. His face turned a shade of blue. It was bloated. This guy needed an ambulance. I reached down and searched his coat. Maybe he had a phone I could use to call 911. The guy looked like he might’ve been an underpaid college professor. He wore stonewashed blue jeans and a tweed coat. It was whitish, or possibly gray. I couldn’t tell in the dark. He wasn’t wearing a tie.
I searched his jacket pockets for a phone. I found one in his inside right pocket, slipped it out. It was an iPhone in a case with a sports logo on it—a Dallas team. I touched the screen, and a lock screen popped up with a message that read Slide to Unlock.
I swiped across the screen. Another screen popped up, asking for a passcode or fingerprint. It was an older iPhone. I knew the newer ones used face recognition and not fingerprints. So, I grabbed the guy’s hand and put his index finger on the phone’s only button.
The phone shook like a scolding parent saying: No. Try again. Then I saw the word Emergency written at the bottom of the screen. I pressed it and a call screen came up. I dialed 911.
A voice said, “911. Fire, Ambulance, or Police?”
Before I could answer, a cold hand grabbed my wrist. I looked down, and the guy was awake. He muttered, “No…No…Help.”
He was having trouble speaking, like he was drifting in and out of consciousness. His eyes rolled in and out of his head, like they were being called back to sleep, and he was fighting it.
I looked at him and said, “You need an ambulance.”
He shook his head and said, “Have to stop them.”
I stayed quiet.
He said, “Have to save her.”
The guy reached slowly into his other inside jacket pocket, but his head plopped back down onto the hard ground, and his eyes rolled back into his head. This time they didn’t come back out.
The emergency operator said, “Hello? 911. Fire, Ambulance, or Police?”
I put the phone to my ear and lips and said, “Better send paramedics. There’s been a car accident. I pulled the driver out of his vehicle, but he’s not looking good.”
The emergency operator asked, “Where are you, sir?”
I paused, looked around, but there were no recognizable landmarks. Not to me. I wasn’t intimately familiar with Arizona. I’m sure a local could’ve looked at one of the looming rock mountains and knew the name. But I wasn’t a local. So, I said, “I’m on Route 66, somewhere west of Flagstaff, but south of Las Vegas. The Grand Canyon is north, I think.”
The emergency operator went quiet for a moment, then she asked, “Are you still on I-40?”
“I don’t think so. This isn’t an interstate. It’s more like a highway.”
The emergency operator said, “Okay. Got it. I think I know where you are based on that information and your GPS signal. Leave your phone on, we’ll find you.”
I stayed quiet.
The emergency operator typed some keystrokes and said, “Sir, the computer is showing that this phone is registered with Homeland Security. Are you a federal agent? Can you tell me your agency and badge number, please?”
I paused, looked down at the guy. He was still unconscious. I said, “It’s not my phone. I found it on the driver. He ran his car into a tree. I’m just a pedestrian.”
“I see. And sir, what’s your name?” the emergency operator asked.
I paused a beat. It was instinctual. My brain asked if I really wanted to give away my name like that. Before my civilized brain could answer the question, my primal brain answered for me. I said, “John Capone.”
In the past, I used dead presidents, baseball players, basketball players, and Olympic gold medalists names as aliases. But I ran through them all. Out of boredom, I started using famous gangster names. Only, I couldn’t use many of them as they were. No one would believe me if I said my name was Al Capone or John Dillinger, so I started mixing and matching them. Today, I was John Capone.
I heard keystrokes. The emergency operator typed something into a computer. The line crackled like it was a radio. The emergency operator asked, “Is the driver conscious?”
“No. He’s out cold.”
“Is he breathing?”
“Yes.”
“Do you see any physical injuries on him? Is he bleeding anywhere?”
I glanced back at the car and down at the driver. Blood trickled out of his nose. There were cuts on his face, but nothing life-threatening.
“The airbag deployed. It bloodied his nose a bit. But it doesn’t look broken. He’s got some cuts and scrapes on his face. Nothing that bad. It’s all superficial.”
“Is there anyone else in the vehicle with him?”
“No.”
“Are you injured?”
“No. Like I said, I wasn’t in the car. I’m just a pedestrian.”
The emergency operator paused a long beat, like she was keying the information into the computer.
I stayed quiet, and let her do her thing. She said nothing for a moment. Then a new voice came on the line. A male voice. He said, “Sir, this is Lt. Daniel Moreno. I’m the night watch CO here in Ash Fork. We’re about twenty-five miles east of your position. That phone’s GPS shows us you’re near Cedar Springs. Our nearest ambulance is fifteen minutes out. I’ve dispatched them. They’ll be with you shortly. Our nearest sheriff’s deputy is coming from here as well. He’s leaving now. He’ll probably get there after the ambulance.”
I asked, “Why are they coming from Ash Fork?”
“What’s that?”
“If I’m closer to Cedar Springs, why not send help from there?”
“Cedar Springs is on the Hualapai Indian Reservation. They can’t help you. It’s not their jurisdiction.”
I shook my head. Jurisdictional crap, in emergency situations, was always a head scratcher to me. It’s an artificial pissing contest between two manmade factions, supposed to help each other. But I stayed quiet. My mind moved off the jurisdictional absurdity and wondered about why this guy’s phone was registered with Homeland Security.
I asked, “Lieutenant, why is this guy’s phone listed with Homeland Security?”
Moreno said, “The phone that you are using is registered under a United States Marshal.”
“Marshal?”
“Yes. I’m sure he’ll be grateful for your help.”
I ignored Moreno and looked down at the driver. I cradled the phone between my shoulder and cheek, like it was a portable house phone from an ancient time. I used both hands to search the guy’s other jacket pockets. I found his wallet, took it out, and opened it.
A younger picture of the guy stared back at me from a picture ID that was behind a milky clear plastic window. Across from it was a gold badge. It was a circle of gold with a five-point star in the middle and the US Marshal seal on the center of the star. The ID was a US Marshall Service identification card. The card identified the driver as Patton Fry: Retired.
3
The Cedar Springs paramedics arrived closer to twenty minutes later and not fifteen.
Their time was better than I expected, but not much. A small town with limited resources a good distance away from my location wouldn’t be the fastest imaginable savior in a rescue situation. However, a couple of paramedics on-call all night with nothing to do might be inclined to respond fast. They probably waited with a combination of coma-inducing boredom and eagerness for action. That’s small-town life. I know. I grew up that way. They got the call and not just from anyone but from the night watch commander from the nearest sheriff’s office and the subject of the call was more than just an automobile accident. It involved a retired US Marshal and a tree and an unknown, middle of the night passerby.
The paramedics arrived, sirens blaring, lights strobing. They jumped out of a blue square van with medical emblems plastered all over the sides and the back. They leapt straight into action. They were like power tools that had been neglected but were eager for action.
They went right to Patton Fry and lifted his head slightly and checked his pulse and talked to him. He didn’t respond. He was out cold. One paramedic held Fry’s wrist and looked at his watch, like he was counting Fry’s heartbeat while the other guy readied a stretcher for extraction.
I stood on the highway shoulder and looked around. No sheriff cruisers came at us. Not yet. I returned to the paramedics and asked, “Where’s the sheriff deputies? I was told they’d come out here?”
The paramedic taking Fry’s vitals ignored me. The other didn’t look back, but he said, “They told us you should wait here for them.”
I stayed quiet.
He said, “They told us you should stay and wait.”
I said, “Where are you taking him?”
The paramedic said, “Cedar Springs is closest.”
“Is there an ER in Cedar Springs?”
“Yes. It’s small. Just a couple of floors of a federal building. As long as this guy doesn’t have major internal bleeding or extensive head injuries, then we’ll keep him there. They’ll take care of him.”
“And if he has those things?”
“We’ll send a helicopter for him out of Flagstaff for anything worse.”
I nodded and asked, “Can I ride with you guys into town?”
The paramedics began lifting the guy onto a stretcher. The one said, “We don’t care what you do.”
The other finally spoke. He said, “The cop wanted him to stay behind.”
Then, the same guy hushed his voice to a lower octave, but not low enough to where I couldn’t hear him. He said, “He could be dangerous. He could’ve attacked this guy.”
The first paramedic looked at me and shrugged. He said, “Help us put him in the back.”
I went to the ambulance and held the back doors open wide, preventing them from swinging closed. I didn’t need to move too far back, because of my arm span I could hold both doors open through the whole procedure. There was plenty of room under my arms for the paramedics to maneuver.
The paramedics wheeled the guy and the stretcher onto the floorboards of the ambulance and pushed him all the way forward along a track. The first paramedic hopped in after Fry and tapped his foot on a mechanism at the base of the back wheels and I heard a rusted sounding snick. The wheels locked in place to keep the stretcher from rolling all over the place.
The paramedic said, “Hop in if you want to ride with us.”
I climbed in the back and sat across from the first paramedic on a bench that stretched the wall. The second paramedic shut the doors behind us. Then, he scrambled around the outside of the ambulance and opened the driver’s side door and hopped in. The engine was already on. The paramedic took the gear out of park and hit the gas. We were off the shoulder and back on the blacktop, headed for Cedar Springs.
4
Retired United States Marshal Patton Fry woke up and repeated his earlier concerns. He looked at me with weak eyes. He faded in and out of consciousness. He reached over to me and grabbed two fingers on my hand and squeezed them like a newborn and said, “You’ve got to get to her first.”
I asked, “Who? Get to who? Who is she?”
He repeated, “Got to get to her first.”
The first paramedic said, “He needs to stay calm.” And he put an oxygen mask over Fry’s mouth, but Fry reached up with a shaky arm and grabbed the guy’s hand. He shook his head slow and mechanically, like it took all the muscles in his neck.
The paramedic said, “Sir, it appears you’ve had a cardiac event. I need you to stay still and calm.”
A cardiac event?
I looked at the paramedic and realized that must’ve been why Fry swerved all over the road. He probably was speeding to help whoever this girl is that he keeps mentioning, and then, he saw me on the road and was hit with a mild heart attack, all like a perfect storm. It caused him to drive recklessly and crash into that tree.
He was both a lucky and an unlucky guy. Unlucky because of the heart attack. Lucky because the tree was there to save his life. It stopped the car and stopped him from ramming into a ditch and flipping. Or, worse yet, slamming into another car on the road and killing someone. Either way, he could’ve been dead and, in my book, any guy who survives a career in law enforcement, a heart attack, and a car accident to boot, was a pretty lucky guy. No matter which way you cut it.
Fry said, “Wait. Wait.”
He breathed heavily, like he was gasping his first breaths from being deep underwater. Fry squeezed my hand again, tighter, and pulled, like he wanted me closer. He stared into my eyes and said, “You. I need your help.”
I scooted down the bench past some medical equipment, some of which was foreign to me and some I had seen before. I neared the edge of his stretcher, as close as I could. Fry relaxed his squeeze on my hand.
The ambulance sirens were off because there was no traffic or even a car on the highway, but the lights swirled through the air, ricocheting red beams through the front windshield and into the rear of the vehicle.
The red lights flashed across Fry’s face as he spoke, taking quick, deep breaths between pauses, slurring his words. He said, “Help her.”
I asked, “Who? Help who?”
He said, “Kara. Kara. She’s in danger. They know where she is. They’re coming. Now.”
I said, “Who is?”
“I don’t know. Them. Men, who want her dead.”
“Who is she?”
He said, “Kara is a witness. She’s in protection.”
I glanced at the paramedic. He looked up at me. He was processing what Fry was saying, but he stayed quiet. I asked, “Where is she?”
“Six years,” Fry said, and he took another breath. The paramedic strapped an oxygen breather over his face. It was a plastic face cover with hoses leading to a tank.
The paramedic said, “Take it easy.”
Fry took deep breaths from the breather, and then, he said, “She’s been off the books for six years. I promised her she’d be safe, and her son.”
“I can call her for you.”
“I tried. She won’t answer me. She might have a new phone now.”
I asked, “Where are they?”
