Chapter 14

The minutes ticked by slowly. Ben held the shotgun like it was a prayer book. I wondered if he was praying for a chance to put a bullet in Tina’s kidnappers.

I was.

The anger inside me was building by the second and when I heard one of our grove drivers on the radio I thought I’d get a chance to exercise my fury. “Michael ... I have a brown Buick running through the grove road heading for Highway Sixty. No one should be out here on your land, and this guy is running like someone is after him. He has no clue that I’m behind him because of the amount of dust he’s stirring up. If you can find a Sheriff out on sixty, have him cut east and shut down the road between the ROMP and the natural gas plant.”

Ben was all over our problem, using the radio to have Henson call the Sheriff’s Office to coordinate the trap, while I blasted down through the groves, flying towards a cut off where we might meet Tina’s kidnappers before they got within sight of Sheriff Cowell and his men. We had installed powerful boosters in our radio transmitters and used even more powerful ones in our towers to give us instant communication with all our operations. That allowed us to keep in contact with Henson and give the information that Cowell and his men would need.

“Mr. Ben ... I’m going to give you a chance to bail out of here before we cut those kidnapping bastards off. I have no intention of turning them over to the police while they are still breathing. If you don’t want to be in – all the way in – I hold no spite on you for it, but I have got to do what I have to do to show everybody else that they can’t hunt and hurt my family and live to tell about it.”

There was silence from his side of the truck. Just when I decided to stop and let him out, he turned to me, and said, “There is no way I’m walking away from this fight, son. I respect you for giving me the choice, but those kidnapping, low-life, baby stealing, thieves have got to die for what they did to our Tina.”

And that was that. We did not speak about it again.

As we neared Highway Sixty, I saw the dust cloud that our driver had told us about and cut across a berm to cut them off. The noise the truck made as we slammed and bounced down the row was worrisome, but I could always buy a new truck. Nothing could replace Tina.

The dust cloud maintained a path that would intersect the highway. We were going to be about fifteen seconds ahead of them. “I’m going to cut across the road and block them at the squeeze point. The only way out of our trap is to ram us, which won’t work because we are so much heavier than them, or turn around and meet our big flat-bed that’s had their rear blocked. You will want to get clear of the truck in case they ram us, but I intend to stand right in their way. When you shoot, keep it low to avoid hitting Tina. I’ll do the same.” Ben’s grunt was all the answer I expected and more than I needed.

It worked just as I intended. The Buick was running too low to the ground and I could hear the telltale whine of an overheating transmission. No matter how this turned out, they weren’t going very far in that Buick.

When they came in sight of our blockade, the driver hesitated, tried to turn around, but saw the flat-bed blocking them about a quarter mile behind them. The driver looked panicky and thought he would try cutting through the drainage ditch, which buried his front passenger wheel to the hub. When he attempted to free it to keep running, two handguns fired at once.

We both saw the blanket tied around a small figure lying on the floor of the back seat and didn’t have to be told to avoid shooting in that direction. I could hear her crying as I steadied my grip on the handgun.

Before I could fire, Ben shot the kidnapper sitting in the right seat. He had stuck his head and arm outside of the car trying to line up a shot at Ben. His head snapped so hard against the window that his skull caved in where it impacted the edge of the open vent window. My shot hit the driver near the collar bone and since I was shooting downhill and towards the front of his body, the bullet slammed through his heart on the way past, killing him instantly.

We had two dead kidnapers and one live girl. Ben never hesitated. He threw open the back door, untied the bundle and helped Tina kick herself free of her prison. She scampered into my arms, crying, hugging and talking all at the same time. Ben used the grove radio to have Henson inform Sheriff Cowell that we had both kidnappers and recovered Tina with no apparent injuries.

Before Cowell and what appeared to be the entire County Sheriff squad arrived, Ben found a ransom note in the pocket of the dead passenger. He carefully preserved it for the Sheriff in case anyone decided to come after us for using lethal force.

As we calmed down, Ben took a long look at the driver, and said, “That’s Mac Olsteen. He used to work for me. The story I was told recently is that this stupid bastard used to date Francine behind my father’s back and got fired for his trouble.” He took a hard look at the dead passenger and surmised his identity, too. “I will give you odds that this is his no-account, brother Clyde. That drunken fool couldn’t organize a trip to the ice box, much less a successful kidnapping...” That was as far as we got, because the entire Law Enforcement community arrived like an armada preparing to engage Napoleon’s army at Waterloo.

Sheriff Cowell handled everything from the second he stepped out of his truck. Before anyone got their own ideas of how the kidnappers wound up dead, he set the tone forever by saying, “I see you had to defend yourselves, as these kidnappers attempted to run you down.” He looked at the driver, gave Ben a penetrating look and called for the coroner.

To his detectives, he said, “I don’t want the press, or the neighbors trampling all over our crime scene. The kidnappers tried to kill Ben and Michael when they were driving through their grove and got more than they intended in the bargain.”

He looked around one more time, and said, “Clean this mess up and get some of these Deputies off of overtime before we have to ask for more money to pay them.” That fast, the case was closed.

When he and Ben stepped off to have a private conversation, one of the Deputies asked me for my handgun since it was evidence. Sheriff Cowell quickly walked back to us and quietly took both firearms and marked them for safe keeping, then stood over the same deputy while he ‘test fired’ both firearms that were in the Buick and then bagged them, marking them as used in the commission of a felony.

Tina clung to me throughout the aftermath of her ordeal. Ben radioed Henson and asked him to let Tara and the girls know that we had Tina safe and sound, and would be bringing her home soon. Cowell suggested we leave the reporting of the incident to his Detectives and quietly leave before the newspaper guys showed up.

From the tone of his voice and the words he said, I was pretty sure the report given to the State Attorney would be cut and dried. Since the State Attorney was up for reelection in the fall, he wasn’t about to rock the political boat over a couple of dead kidnappers.

As we pulled the truck around and head through the grove back towards home, Ben said, “I’m sorry, Michael. This is my fault. Those rotten ... Uuuggggg ... the men who took Tina did it to hurt me, not you. Mac hated my father and Clyde was just pure stupid, clean through. I hope you can forgive me ... someday.”

“There is nothing to forgive. Tina here knows that her Papa Ben helped her daddy save her from those awful men, don’t you sweetheart?”

Tina did something so perfect that it couldn’t have been scripted by a Hollywood director. She threw her arms around Ben, kissed him very hard on the side of his face and crawled into his lap. “Thank you for saving me Papa Ben. I knew Daddy wouldn’t let them take me far away and when I saw you with him, I knew those guys had no chance.” They hugged for a long time and I noticed Ben had a tear in the corner of his eye when they separated.