Douglas Dorow - The Ninth District

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.

Jack put his thumb and second finger just inside his lips and blew, whistling a high-pitched shriek, just as his uncle had taught him thirty years before. He had to get the attention of somebody working at the locks or somebody passing over on the bridge. He didn’t have many options left. Swimming east, past the locks would put him in a position where the river would carry him over the dam, almost certainly killing him as the churning water would hold him in its grip at the base of the dam until he drowned. Here in the calmer water in front of the lock, he was open to a shot by the Governor. Jack swam to the lock door and positioned himself in the corner between the steel door and concrete wall between the two locks. His exposure to the Governor was minimized. He treaded water, shivered, and whistled.

The Governor took one last shot at Jack, aiming more for the steel doors, certain he wouldn’t hit him from this distance. But he wanted Jack to stay pinned in the corner by the steel lock doors. After the shot, the Governor turned the scope back up stream to see what the woman was doing. She was still behind the tree, using it for protection from the shooting.

The sound of a horn echoed up the river gorge walls. The lock operators must have learned somebody was in the water and sounded the alarm. The Governor decided it was time to leave and pulled the camouflaged netting off. Then he stood, wiped the sand from his clothes, and threw the rifle, netting, and fishing equipment into the river.

He took a last look towards Agent Miller and then his running partner before turning and walking through the trees, and then entered the opening of a storm sewer that emptied into the Mississippi River.

The St. Paul police cordoned off West River Road and were investigating the trees along the riverbank with dogs, trying to find the shooter and the site from where the shots had come. The Sheriff’s department had launched a boat from the University of Minnesota two miles upstream and was patrolling the river from there to the Ford Parkway Bridge, looking for signs of the shooter. The shooter had to go up the bank to the road or north along the river. The only way south was the way Jack had done it, in the water, and from the east side of the river, a swimmer would be swept over the dam.