Chapter 4

The rest of the summer flew by. Somehow, I managed to cram nineteen weeks of information into fourteen weeks. On my last day, I was surprised when Dan told me that I had finished and passed the class with a 94%. The only official criterion to be a Marshal that I hadn’t met now was a college degree or equivalent military service. Until I graduated in two and a half years, I would be a provisional, part-time Marshal, whatever that meant to the pencil pushers. Nobody I worked with seemed to know or care about the difference.

I got back to Raleigh near dinnertime on Friday. When I got to my apartment, I was surprised to find Holly there, along with a hot pizza for our dinner. We’d talked by phone several times during the summer, and she knew that I planned to come back the Friday before classes started. She was impressed that I passed the course with a 94%.

I was surprised when she asked if she could invite a friend over to spend the night with us. Holly explained that she had met Glenda after I left for Glynco and they now spent their free nights together, although both intended to settle down with a guy someday. “Maybe we’ll find a guy we can share,” she teased suggestively.

Despite the late hour when we went to sleep, we were up early since they had to be at work at 7:00. After breakfast, both kissed me goodbye and promised a repeat tonight.

At 8:00, I headed for campus and the bookstore. The waiting line outside the bookstore was ugly and it was 9:30 before I even got inside the bookstore. When one person exited, they let one person go in. At least they weren’t out of any of the books I needed. Inside, I heard several other students complaining that they were already out of the books for one or more of their classes.

Both Holly and Glenda called to let me know when they were off work. I offered to take them out to dinner. Holly wanted the three of us to go dancing after dinner and I agreed.

While we were eating dinner, Holly looked around and then whispered, “Captain Oliver told me today that someone fired an RPG at you during that big bust in New Bern. What happened?”

It took the rest of dinner to tell them about the fracas in New Bern.

“Now you’re an official tough guy,” Holly chuckled while giving me a hip check as we were leaving.

The dance club was rocking when we got there, and it took a few minutes to squeeze through the mass of humanity and reach the dance floor. Once there, the three of us danced together. It was a bit awkward since Glenda had to dance alone while Holly and I danced together, then I danced alone while Glenda and Holly danced, and Holly danced alone while Glenda and I danced. I found it humorous that another girl joined us, dancing with whichever one of us didn’t have a partner at that moment.

I watched some preppie-looking college guy walk up to Holly and whisper to her. She whispered back and he stuck his hand in the front pocket of his jeans and pulled it back out just far enough to show her something.

“Raleigh PD, you’re under arrest for possession with intent to sell,” she told him loud enough that everyone around us heard. When he tried to run, she tripped him, and he fell on his face. I saw a burly man moving towards her while reaching under the front of his loose shirt, obviously reaching for a gun he had there. Mine was out before his was and I pressed the barrel against his head.

“Do you have a death wish?” I asked him. He instantly relaxed and slowly moved his hands out to where I could see them. A second later, I saw his muscles tense right before he dropped into a crouch and tried to sweep my legs. Unfortunately, for him, I was ready and jumped over him, landing behind him. I gave his head a good push sideways and it hit the floor hard enough that I heard the thud of his melon against the wood floor.

With him out cold, I looked around for any further threats. Finding none, I handed Holly my cell phone so she could call for backup. The pants and shirts the girls wore were tight enough that they only brought a driver’s license and their police ID. When she got off the phone, I had her use my cuffs on the drug dealer and then frisk him. Then she frisked Mr. Unconscious and found two guns and a switchblade.

We let the responding officers clean out the dealer’s pockets since we didn’t have anything to hold the evidence. One pocket had small bags with ecstasy, The other had packets of heroin. His back pockets were loaded with greenbacks.

The evening was pretty well shot by the time I finished my reports and emailed a copy to Dwight. We were, however, still home early enough to continue last night’s bedroom bacchanalia, albeit an abbreviated version.

As usual, unless I was awake much later than usual, I woke up before dawn. When I finished my morning ablutions, I fixed breakfast.

Half an hour later, the smell of breakfast brought the girls out in search of food and coffee.

The girls had to leave after we ate lunch. Glenda had to get ready for a patrol shift tonight and Holly had errands to run. I had to finish unpacking my stuff and get ready for the first day of classes tomorrow.

For the rest of the semester, I dated two girls once or twice, but neither of them piqued my interest enough to pursue. Between Holly and Glenda, I had company most nights. Even though we all knew it would end someday, we enjoyed the relationship, as it was.

I was on my way home for Thanksgiving break. The professor in my 10 a.m. class today, Tuesday, took roll, gave us an assignment to turn in when we came back to school, and then turned us loose. The professors for my classes later in the day had already emailed or texted everyone that they had cancelled class today.

When my cell phone rang, I checked the caller ID and pulled over to the side of the freeway to answer the phone. It had to be Murphy’s Law since Dwight hadn’t called me all semester. When I stopped, I saw the big freeway sign in front of me start flashing an Amber Alert.

“Reynolds,” I answered the phone.

“You must be in your car. Where are you?” Dwight asked.

“Ten minutes from home,” I replied. I was sure I heard him cringe, even over the phone.

“There was a kidnapping this morning. The suspect shot the mother and left her for dead. Fortunately, she should survive. He kidnapped her two daughters, ages eleven and nine. Cops have an ID and license plate for the suspect, but they’re worried. He did something similar last year and they still haven’t found him or the two girls he kidnapped. When the FBI was called in, Larry, the agent in charge of our local station, asked me if they could use you. He was there at the drug busts you helped with.”

“Where do I need to be?” I asked.

“Probably Louisville. What’s the nearest airport to you?” he asked.

“Define airport. Do you need a long, straight stretch of road, a crop-duster landing strip, or a commercial field?” I asked.

“Commercial, somewhere I can charter a plane for you.”

“I can be at Dinwiddie Airfield in twenty to thirty minutes. I know they have a charter service there,” I replied.

“Okay, call me when you get there,” he said.

“Hang on a minute,” I said. “Can you ping my cell phone for the GPS coordinates?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Just a sec,” I answered, flipping through the apps on my cell phone. Finding the one I wanted, I aimed the arrow on the screen towards the danger I just started feeling.

“Plot this vector from my current location,” I said, giving him the direction my cell phone app calculated for me. “I’ll do it again from the airport to see if we can get a fix on him,” I suggested.

“Okay, got it,” Dwight replied. “Looks like he’s traveling south from Louisville,” he guessed.

I made a quick call home to warn them. I told Mom that I had to hurry to the airport, and that I’d call again as soon as I had a minute.

Once I parked at the airport, I called Dwight, getting the information I needed to meet the plane and pilot. Then I gave him the new vector and had him ping my cell phone’s GPS.

“Rats,” he cursed a minute later. “According to this, he’s already fifty miles east of Lexington. I was going to fly you into Louisville. Instead, have your pilot take you into Mount Sterling. I’ll have someone meet you there. Oh, do you have your weapons with you?”

“Yeah, both rifle cases, extra rounds, and my thin vest,” I replied.

“Take them with you. The pilot knows that you’re federal law enforcement,” he instructed.

I called Mom again as I walked towards the charter service. “Hi, Mom, I got called in to help with the kidnapping of those two girls this morning.”

“Will it take all week?” she asked, almost plaintively.

“No, I should only be a day or two, three tops,” I promised.

“We haven’t seen you since last Christmas,” she complained.

“I know. I told you that I had to take that course this summer. They made special arrangements just so I could,” I reminded her. I didn’t say anything about missing Spring Break since I had no good excuse.

“You seem to be getting caught up more and more with this Marshal thing,” she commented questioningly.

“It just seems like it. This is the first time this semester that they’ve called me,” I replied.

I promised to be home as soon as I could and hung up at about the same time as I reached the charter service office. The pilot was waiting. He had the plane ready and had even done the preflight. He stowed my rifle cases, vest, and the duffel bag with my clothing. As I was climbing into the plane, I told him that they wanted me in Mount Sterling instead of Louisville.

An hour and twenty minutes later, we were on final approach, and he was talking to the tower. He turned and gave me an odd look for a second before returning his attention to the fast-approaching runway.

“You must be some sort of big shot,” he said once we landed. “That’s your ride,” he said as he taxied near a waiting helicopter. “That’s one of the Special Operations Blackhawks,” he informed me. I thanked him and got his business card in case I needed him to fly me home when we were done here.

Four FBI agents and another Deputy Marshal met me. All five men were dressed in BDUs. The FBI team leader introduced himself as Ralph, and proceeded to introduce the other four men. “We’re not exactly sure why they called you, but the director of the FBI personally called me and told me to listen to you. I already got the lowdown on the raid in New Bern, so you’re cool under fire,” Ralph said as we headed for the chopper.

Before we took off, I located the direction of the trouble and asked the navigator to plot it. “Our target is somewhere along there,” I told the navigator. “It appears that he is moving or has moved in the last two hours.” I showed him the coordinates Dwight had sent me and had him plot the first two vectors. There was no intersection, except with Interstate 64.

“These two were calculated about half an hour apart,” I explained. “This third one is two hours after the second one. It appears that our target is moving east by northeast. If you can take me north, I can get another vector and plot his current location.”

“If you have a locator on him then why are we playing games like this?” the navigator asked tersely.

I motioned Ralph over. “I’m trying to get a fix on the kidnapper’s location and need to fly north and then set down for a couple of minutes,” I told him.

“Just do it,” he told the navigator. “The director of the FBI personally called me and told me to listen to this guy.”

Fifteen minutes later, we set down in an abandoned parking lot. This time, the lines intersected somewhere east of us, in the middle of a mountainous forest.

“That’s the Carter Caves State Resort Park,” Ralph commented.

We flew farther east and set down in a meadow in a small valley. The line from there also intersected the other two, well, almost. There were two different intersections, but they were within a tenth of a mile of each other, so we had the kidnapper pinpointed. Ralph began calling in troops while the pilot lifted off and headed for the intersections.

Half an hour later, we were within five miles, and had a final triangulation on the location. It was a small home built against the south face of a low, tree-covered hill.

“Any volunteers to hike in with me?” I asked and learned that all five men would be going with me. I had changed into the camouflage BDUs that they brought for me, holstered my Glock, and shouldered both rifles.

“Are we ready?” I asked. The other men had their rifles ready, too, and nodded.

The navigator tapped my arm. “We can get you closer. We’ll drop you behind a hill about two miles away,” he said.

“Too noisy, he’ll hear us,” I protested.

“No, he won’t,” the navigator assured me, grinning. When we took off, I finally noticed that the helicopter was unusually quiet. As the navigator had promised, they set down quietly about two miles away from the house, and shut down to wait for us.

The other Marshal was former Force Recon and took point, watching for trip wires and booby traps. We didn’t find any and we reached the house just before dark.

We heard back from higher-ups as we approached the house. The property belonged to a fictitious company. Three more shell companies covered up the ownership before our kidnapper’s name showed up. The address he listed was one of those places that rents out mailboxes and assigns a suite number instead of a box number. They forwarded his mail once a week to another place like that and they forwarded the mail to another mailbox. It was in Mount Sterling, and they reported that he had picked up his mail yesterday evening.

With the suspect tied to the house, they got a warrant. Otherwise, we would have needed to peek into the garage to find the car that had been reported or would need to entice him to open the front door.