Page 23 of Bridles and Bribery

Tension radiated through his shoulder blades, tightening the muscles there into knots.

Another pocket of turbulence shook the small airplane, making it bounce like a basketball across the sky. At one point, the aircraft was so buffeted by the wind that it was flying nearly on its side. As Dave gripped the arms of his seat, he wondered again why there wasn’t a co-pilot present.

Lord, please direct the eyes and hands of our solo pilot.Way down deep, he didn’t feel any major alarm. As a man of faith, he was a firm believer he wouldn’t leave this earth until it was his time, and tonight didn’t feel like his time. Not a mere few hours after marrying Jillian. Not on his way to begin working a new case. All available evidence suggested that God still had a plan for his life.

The skinny steward made a gagging sound, making Dave’s sympathy kick in. He sounded motion sick, and anyone in the air this evening who was prone to motion sickness was in real trouble.

The pilot’s voice crackled over the speakers again. He informed them they were experiencing some sort of mechanical issue in the cockpit that made no sense to Dave. “We’re being rerouted to the nearest airport, where we’ll make a short stop for servicing.”

Since Dave didn’t recognize the name of the airport, he assumed it was small and private, like the one they’d departed from in Heart Lake. Though he didn’t relish a delay in reaching Dallas, he appreciated the fact that the pilot was doing everything he could to get them there in one piece.

He felt the plane start its descent. A few short minuteslater, the wheels touched down on the pavement with the mildest of bumps.

Dave drew in a deep breath. Though turbulence didn’t normally bother him, he was mighty glad to be back on the ground. Rain sheeted down against the windows, and a blast of wind nearly blew them off the runway. He expected they would remain grounded until the storm passed.

Lightning flashed and thunder rolled as they coasted to a stop. He peered out the window, but couldn’t see much through the rain. There were no outlines of buildings, no lit-up skyline in the distance. Only when he heard the clicking sound of a gun being cocked did he return his attention to what was happening inside the cabin.

To his astonishment, the skinny steward and the unsociable passenger were pointing guns at him.

Dave slowly raised his hands, palms facing out. “Y’all wanna tell me what’s going on?” Nothing good, that’s for sure. His mind raced over the possibilities and quickly discarded the idea of a robbery. He never traveled with much cash, and anyone attempting to swipe his credit card for out-of-the-ordinary transactions would soon find themselves holding a frozen card. Nope, this was something else. Considering the number of criminals he’d helped put behind bars, his best guess was that someone was seeking revenge.

“Your flight’s been diverted, buddy.” The beefy fellow in the black shirt motioned with the butt of his pistol for Dave to stand.

His patronizing tone made something inside of Dave snap.Buddy?What kind of moron held a person at gunpoint and called them buddy? It was an insult on top of injury. Forthcoming injuries, in his case, since the bullets had yet to start flyingin his direction.

As he unclasped his seatbelt, he cast a furtive look at the exit door to his left. The pilot was opening it and lowering the stairs to the ground. As best as Dave could tell, the guy wasn’t armed like his two associates were. Either that, or he was too busy getting ready to disembark to pull out his gun yet.

“Don’t try anything stupid,” the skinny steward warned. “Just do as we say, and this will all be over soon.”

I bet it will.The picture of his bullet-ridden carcass in a ditch briefly flashed across Dave’s mind. On the upside, the two men didn’t seem to have any interest in shooting him inside the plane, probably due to how messy forensic evidence was to clean up. Whatever they had planned for him would be taking place after they exited the aircraft.

Which meant his best chance of survival was regaining control of the situation before leaving it.

“Oh, come on,” he cajoled, stalling for time as he mentally assessed the distance between him and the two men. “What kind of charter service are you running here? You didn’t offer me a pillow or a blanket. I didn’t even get my beverage and peanuts. Talk about cheap!”

His words were initially met with stony silence. Then the skinny steward broke into a chuckle that held a note of hysteria. “Sorry about that. It was too turbulent to?—”

“Shut up,” his companion barked. He gestured at Dave again with his weapon. “Turn around and start walking.”

“Sure thing,buddy.” Dave infused an extra dose of snideness into his retort as he stood and slowly spun around. “Where are we going?” He kept his head averted as long as possible to watch his would-be assailants from the corner of his eye.

He saw the beefy fellow hand over a burlap sack to the steward, presumably to place over Dave’s head.

You can’t be serious!Did they honestly expect him to stand there meekly while they acted out some mobster movie fantasy? He was so angry that he snarled, “You’d better throw in a steak dinner or something when we get to wherever we’re going. Otherwise—” The rest of his blustering became muffled when the skinny fellow made a fumbling attempt to pull the burlap sack over his head.

He pretended to gasp and flounder for a second or two, just long enough to play up the drama of the moment and make the thugs behind him feel like they had the upper hand. Then he made his move. He pivoted and crouched into one of his old football stances, then charged.

Back in high school, he’d been nicknamed the D-Dave Invasion in honor of his legendary tackles. A classmate on the school newspaper staff had coined the phrase, claiming it reminded him of the D-Day Invasion tactics on Normandy Beach in France. A frontal attack with no mercy and no retreat.

Dave plowed through the skinny steward, knocking him over like a bowling pin. He must have stepped on one of the guy’s arms, because he started screaming that Dave had broken it. He continued forward, shoving the beefy guy’s gun hand into the air as he body slammed him. The gun went off as they flew through the air together and crashed to the aisle.

Growling like an animal, Dave head butted the man to further stun him and delivered a few punches for good measure.

“Should’ve worn a helmet,buddy.” Man, but the term buddy rubbed him every which way but the right way! He spun around and discovered the screaming steward scrambling to pick up the gun he’d dropped. Dave kicked it out of reach and kneed him in the temple on his way to the door.

The steward slumped back to the floor, blubbering faintly.

Dave kicked the handle off the storage bin and yanked out his carryon. He probably should’ve left it behind, but he was too mad to think straight. Adrenaline was pumping through his blood, making the veins in his neck throb.

---