A Thousand Pounds of Dynamite (Kindle Single) by Adam Higginbotham

Author:Adam Higginbotham [Higginbotham, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: The Atavist
Published: 2014-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

Twelve

The Bell Ranger was running on fumes when FBI agent Joe Cook touched down on the runway at Lake Tahoe airport. The extortion note was very specific: Land at 23:00 hours, wait under the light by the gate in the chain-link fence; further instructions would arrive via taxi or the pay phone near the fence at exactly 00:10.

But Cook was late. Getting hold of a helicopter to deliver a multimillion-dollar ransom to potentially armed extortionists had proved difficult, even for the FBI. The local agencies had all refused to help. In the end, Cook had flown up that night from the FBI office in Los Angeles, navigating for 400 miles using a Texaco road map. When he landed, he radioed the tower for a gas truck and walked to the fence. The phone rang almost immediately. Cook answered on the second ring. It was eight minutes past midnight.

“Hello,” said a young man with a Southern accent.

“Hello.”

“Who’s this?”

“Who’s this?”

“OK. Your instructions are under the table in front of you,” the caller said. His Southern accent had vanished. “You have three minutes.”

Cook felt something taped to the underside of the phone booth: a thin sheet of aluminum and, under that, an envelope.

“To the Pilot,” the note said. “I remind you again to strictly follow orders.” Cook hurried back to the helicopter. He handed the piece of paper to Dell Rowley, hunched out of sight behind the seats with his submachine gun. As Cook prepared for takeoff, Rowley read him the instructions: Follow Highway 50 west in a straight line. Stay below 500 feet. After 15 minutes, start looking for a strobe light on your right. Land facing south. Two hundred feet away, you’ll find further instructions nailed to the trunk of a tree. Cook took the helicopter up and flew along the highway, following the curves as it wound through the forest. When he reached the 15-minute mark, he began circling.

Rowley’s orders were simple: Protect the pilot. Rowley was a SWAT team leader who had come to the FBI after serving in the U.S. Army and then the Border Patrol down in El Paso, Texas. He was an excellent shot, and he wasn’t going to take any chances. If he saw someone raise a weapon, he wouldn’t give him the chance to fire.

Down in the moonlit clearing, a breeze sighed in the treetops. Big John and Jimmy listened for the chop of rotor blades. Once, Big John thought he heard something, took the cables, and turned the strobe on for half a minute. But it wasn’t a helicopter. No one came. It was cold; the ski jackets weren’t warm enough. Big John emptied gunpowder from some shells and started a fire. Miles away, in entirely the wrong place, Joe Cook scanned the darkened landscape for more than an hour. He circled wider and wider. Nothing. Eventually, he and Rowley gave up and flew back to Tahoe with the three bags of scrap paper and the thousand dollars. The SWAT team stood down.

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