Douglas Dorow - The Ninth District

The path offered some relief from the heat with the cooler night air trapped among the trees, but there was no breeze to evaporate the sweat from Jack’s skin and help to cool him. As he worked his way along the trail, he looked about twenty feet ahead for rocks, roots, and holes to avoid. He hadn’t sprained an ankle yet on a morning run on this trail and he wasn’t going to start today.

Jack also found that if he focused on the trail and where to step, that kept part of his brain busy and the other part of his brain found something else to keep it occupied, usually his cases from work. Patty hadn’t told him yet what she wanted to share with him and he was trying to decide if he should wait or push for the info.

“You were right, Miller.”

Jack yelled back over his shoulder. “What’s that?”

“This path down here is great!”

“Don’t tell anybody. I don’t want to share it.”

The sun was coming up, but the Mississippi River Gorge was still in shadows. The rays of color from the rising sun just touched the tops of the oaks and elms lining the top of the gorge on either side of the river. The river’s surface was ninety feet below the tops of the trees, carrying water from northern Minnesota to the Gulf of 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.

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.