Chapter 22
John walked farther up the bank before he got into the water. The river current wasn’t very strong, but he wanted to make sure he didn’t get swept downriver before he reached the barge.
Even when John was close enough to see the barge in more detail, he saw no signs of Dillon or Teddy. He figured they were both inside one of the structures on the massive platform.
John reached the barge and then clung to the side for a moment. The big pontoon-like floaters keeping the barge above water provided him with the opportunity to take a breather.
John didn’t know how he was supposed to get up, but he eventually worked his way around the barge’s sides and found a ladder, which he used to climb aboard.
Cold and dripping wet when he finally set foot on the barge, John lingered for a moment to get his bearings.
The barge was larger than John expected, very wide and long.
There were three structures on the barge; one of them looked like a wheelhouse, and the other two were big storage sheds.
John figured the safe was in one of the sheds.
“Okay,” John said, calling out to Dillon. “Show yourself! I’m here.”
There was no movement on the barge, no sound. He remembered how Parker was certain that Dillon would double cross John, and he braced himself for an attack as he reached for the weapon in his waistband.
“Good of you to come out,” Dillon said, his voice sounding far away. “I wasn’t sure if the current would take you under. That certainly would have ruined some of the fun we’re about to have.”
“Let me see Teddy,” John said.
“So quick to get to the point,” Dillon said. “Don’t want to do any foreplay? Aren’t you curious as to how this barge is working while everything else is shut down?”
“You like to hear yourself talk, don’t you?” John asked.
“I mean, it’s pretty impressive, right?” Dillon asked. “I had to move the barge out of the EMP zone in order to ensure it would still work. It required a lot of planning.”
“Are we doing this or not?” John asked.
For a long time, there was nothing, but then, finally, Teddy appeared from around the back of one of the sheds on the far side of the barge.
“There he is,” Dillon said. “Healthy and alive. For now.”
“Let him go, and I’ll leave the key,” John said.
Dillon laughed. “I don’t even know if what you have really exists. So, we’re going to need a show of good faith.”
John tried to regain control of the negotiation, but that had never been his strength. “Let him go, and I’ll stay on the barge with you and?—”
“No,” Dillon barked. “You will open the safe to make sure the key works. That’s the deal if you want your precious little friend to survive.”
Teddy was shaking, and John knew he didn’t have a choice.
“Where is the safe?” John asked.
“Inside the shed,” Dillon answered. “Door is unlocked. You go inside, you open it, and you toss out some money to prove it worked.”
It seemed a simple enough transaction, but John knew the moment he entered that shed that he could be walking into a death trap. But considering Teddy’s life was on the line, John considered it a small price to pay.
“All right,” John said.
John walked over to the shed, moving quickly. He didn’t see the point in drawing this out. The door was unlocked as Dillon said it was, and John slid the pair of doors open, parting the middle like the Red Sea.
The safe was inside. It was smaller than John expected it to be but still considerably large. How Dillon was able to steal the entire safe out of the reserve was still a mystery to him. But he didn’t care how it was done so long as all of this came to an end.
John reached into his pocket for the key and remembered he still had the gun and the knife. Because Dillon couldn’t see John, he decided to remove the weapon from his waist and keep it handy.
Once John had both the gun and key in hand, he approached the safe. John inserted the key into the lock and turned it until it disengaged.
John then used the lever to open the massive door, and when it swung open, he saw the stacks and piles of bills inside.
It was like something out of a movie. John had never seen so much cash in his entire life.
It was unreal, but John grabbed some of the money and walked back outside to show Dillon.
But when John exited the shed, Teddy was gone. John wasn’t sure if Dillon was still behind the shed or not, but he tossed the money in that direction, and it landed where Dillon could have seen it if he was still there.
“It’s open,” John said. “Now, let him go.”
John watched the money, gun in hand, but nothing happened. All John heard was the sound of water running beneath the anchored barge.
John slowly approached the money, knowing Dillon was most likely up to something. He kept both hands on the pistol, finger on the trigger, because John knew when the fighting started, Dillon would be shooting to kill.
But when John finally turned the corner, he saw Teddy unconscious on the barge. John rushed forward, forgoing his shooter’s stance, and that was when Dillon pounced.
Dillon emerged from the far side of the structure, firing at John and Teddy the moment John rushed to help the young man.
The pair exchanged gunfire, but John was at a disadvantage as he hurriedly pulled Teddy back behind cover. Thankfully, John’s random gunshots forced Dillon back behind cover before he could do any real harm.
Once John had Teddy secured, he checked to make sure the kid was still breathing. There was a gash on the back of Teddy’s head where Dillon had struck him, but Teddy was still breathing and had a strong pulse.
John checked the backside of the structure to make sure Dillon wasn’t going to sneak around and then worked his way to the front.
When John poked his head around the front side, Dillon was there, ready to shoot, and he didn’t waste any time.
Four gunshots pushed John back behind the corner for cover, and he moved into a more defensive position, struggling to remember how he was supposed to react in a shooting scenario.
He’d had training, but it was very different in real life.
The adrenaline, the sounds, all of his senses were in overdrive.
John remembered his priority, which was to get Teddy and himself off of this barge alive.
As John quickly prepared to move Teddy, he made sure he could still shoot with one hand.
He then quickly dragged Teddy to the next structure, providing his own cover fire.
By the time Dillon shot back, John and Teddy were safe behind the new structure.
With Teddy unconscious, there was no way John could swim with the kid to the river before Dillon shot the two of them. They’d be sitting ducks out in that open water.
“Think, John,” he said to himself.
And that was when John glanced over at the wheelhouse on his left.
John had worked a barge one summer in his early twenties.
He had bounced around a lot of jobs before he settled on carpentry.
He was familiar with the controls, but even though it had been years since he’d worked them, John prayed his memory hadn’t rusted.
John readied himself to pull Teddy one more time toward the wheelhouse. Once John was inside, he could steer the barge toward the shoreline, bringing himself, Teddy, Dillon, and the millions in the safe right to Agent Parker.
“Hang on, Teddy,” John said, and then he scooped Teddy up in his arms and sprinted for the wheelhouse as fast as possible.
At first, there was nothing, but then John heard the unmistakable noise of automatic gunfire. But John never stopped running toward the wheelhouse, hoping to reach it before he caught a bullet to the head.
The noise of the gunfire was deafening, but it was slowly replaced by the sound of John’s pulse pounding in his head as he neared the wheelhouse door and crashed through it.
John and Teddy both sprawled out on the floor, skidding over the hot plastic. John was quick to kick the door shut, but Dillon kept up his massive gunfire.
Bullets tore through the wheelhouse, but John didn’t have time to wait until Dillon ran out of ammunition. He hurried toward the controls, hoping to get the massive barge moving, but first, he needed to detach the anchor.
John searched the controls, which were difficult to read but were all properly labeled. He eventually found the buttons for the anchor and disengaged it.
A heavy clanking sound thundered through the barge, louder than the sound of gunfire, which suddenly stopped.
“Okay, now we just need to fire up the engine,” John said, scanning the control board. And he found two sets of engine ignitions, and he started both.
The big diesel motors fired up, humming efficiently, and then Dillon reached for the wheel and found the throttle.
“Easy does it,” John said, and he gently pressed down on the throttle, and the big barge lurched forward.
John had been so distracted by moving the barge that he’d lost track of Dillon. And as the barge crawled at a glacier-like speed toward the shore, John realized he wasn’t out of the woods yet.
John glanced back to check on Teddy and made sure he was still alive. Once Teddy was secure and safe in the wheelhouse, John decided to put himself on the offensive.
Dillon wasn’t going to quit until he was caught or dead, and in that moment, with John’s heart pumping and the adrenaline coursing through his veins, it was clear to John he didn’t care whether Dillon was still breathing by the end of this fight or not.
John poked his head out from the wheelhouse, the door riddled with bullet holes.
John believed Dillon had stopped shooting at him because he wanted to salvage the controls of the barge.
Dillon still believed he could navigate it down the river to freedom.
But they were already on a clear path toward the riverbank, albeit they were moving slowly.
John scanned the barge from his position, searching for Dillon, but the bank robber remained elusive. But not for long.