Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
Sam drove. Harry wasn’t in any condition to. He said he needed to follow the GPS signal but all three of them knew it wasn’t that. He’d drive them into a tree or off a cliff if he was behind the wheel.
He called out directions to Sam because tracking a monitor and talking seemed to be the extent of his motor skills right now.
He had to get his head out of his ass, fast. They were heading toward a showdown and he couldn’t afford nerves, couldn’t afford not to have his head in the game. Even if he was shit scared.
Except Ellen was caught right in the middle. Lovely, gentle Ellen, who had no tactics in her, who wouldn’t know how to move, how to find shelter, how to defend herself…she was a gorgeous sitting duck and it was all too easy to imagine her catching a bullet to the head, caught in a crossfire.
All too easy to imagine her head exploding into a pink mist, imagine her doubled over, gut-shot, insides spilling out, imagine her shot in the back, unable to move.
God, he couldn’t think straight. It drove him crazy. He couldn’t even sit still in the same space with the images zinging around his brain.
“Easy.” Mike’s big strong hand reached out from the back seat and settled heavily on his shoulders. He’d seen Harry twist and turn with the horror of his thoughts.
He had to stop this.
He was dragging his buddies, his brothers, the men he loved most in the world, into a firefight where he could get them killed because he couldn’t focus.
And he couldn’t. Not even clamping down hard on his thoughts the way he’d done in rehab, concentrating so furiously sweat broke out. It didn’t work. His mind kept sliding to Ellen strapped to a chair, glorious hair gone, in its place a red cap…
His stomach wrenched hard, bile came up. He clamped his jaws shut.
“Don’t puke now,” Sam said, not taking his eyes off the road. Where traffic allowed, he shot over the 100 mph mark. If Sam weren’t such a goddamned good driver, they’d have killed someone by now. “Puking’s not going to do her any good, trust me on this one.”
Sam had barfed right into their fancy designer wastepaper basket when Nicole had been kidnapped over a year ago. “I know what you’re going through, buddy, believe me. But you’ve gotta keep your head, otherwise…” His own jaws clamped shut before he could say anything more.
They’d all seen that video. They could all imagine Ellen being skinned alive. Maybe…right…now.
Harry was sweating so hard he stank like a goat. He wiped his hands carefully on his jeans because whatever was going down, he needed his hands dry.
“We all set up back there, Mike?”
“Yeah, got everything handy.” While Harry was negotiating Sam through the streets on the tail of that fucker Montez, Mike had been lining his ducks up in a row.
Harry knew that right now, Mike could lay his hands in a second on whatever they could possibly need.
“We’ll be ready whenever we get a clear shot. ”
Harry glanced down at his handheld, watching the screen.
Mike looked down over his shoulder. “What’d you bug? Are they going to be able to find it?”
Harry knew what he was thinking. If there was a bug in Ellen’s purse or in a pocket, they could scan her and throw it out the window when they found it.
But he’d been smarter than that. Ellen had stepped out three times on smart men, including himself, just slipped away.
“They can’t find anything because it’s wrapped up in a special porcelain casing that gives off a signal on a very high frequency. They won’t pick up on it.”
“And if they throw her purse out the window or make her strip?”
“Be hard to find it. It’s embedded in her shoulder.”
There was silence in the van.
“Jesus,” Sam finally said. “You cut her open and placed a chip in her flesh? Man, you’re braver than I am. The only thing I managed to do was seed Nicole’s hard drive.”
A year ago Nicole had stumbled onto a terrorist plot and had been kidnapped together with her sick father. They’d followed Nicole because out of paranoia Sam had put a tiny tracking device in the portable hard disk she kept in her purse.
Otherwise Nicole’s bones would be at the bottom of the bay, still anchored by chains.
“I didn’t cut her open. She had a wound I stitched shut, remember? I just slipped the tracker in. It’s tiny and tissue neutral and it’s thanks to that we’re able to track her, so shut the fuck up. I was planning on removing it later, anyhow.”
When that fucker Montez was six feet underground or in a federal prison.
Harry’s jaw muscles clenched. With Nicole it had come down to a two second margin, where Sam and Mike had been able to pull the trigger first.
Please, Harry prayed. Let me pull that trigger first.
“Mike.” He kept his eyes glued to the display. The Mercedes was tracking steadily west. Montez and van der Boeke had a clear goal. So what the fuck was it?
“Yo.” God, it felt good to hear Mike’s steady bass. He knew that Harry was shaken. Mike didn’t have a woman he loved on the line and could be counted on to stay cool.
Harry didn’t dare take his eyes off the display and the road ahead. “Call the FBI SD Field Office. Number’s 858-565-1255. Ask for Special Agent Aaron Welles by name. Give him a sitrep. I want him where we end up, fast as possible, with the whole cavalry. SWAT, Hostage Rescue, the works.”
“On it.” Mike’s phone bleeped softly as he keyed in the numbers. “Special Agent Aaron Welles, please. It’s urgent.”
While Mike gave a concise report, Harry frowned at the moving dot. Where the fuck were they going? He scrolled up the map, extrapolating a few miles ahead of the Mercedes and saw something he vaguely recognized. Where—?
“Fuck!” he shouted.
Mike stopped talking into his cell. “What?”
“They’re heading for an airfield! Tracy Municipal Airfield. Fuck!” Harry slammed the armrest between the two seats.
“Shit,” Mike breathed.
Sam didn’t say anything but the van leaped forward.
“If she gets up in the air, she’s lost. We’ll never find her.
They can push her body out of the plane at any point they want.
They’ll fly over desert and forest, she’ll be lost.” He turned around and looked Mike in the eyes.
“Tell Aaron to call it in to the airfield. To block every outgoing flight. Tell him to do what it takes, there’s a kidnapping across state lines by a man who’s killed three times. ”
Mike simply said, “Hear that? Roger.” He closed his cell. “They’re coming in force, Harry. As fast as they can make it.”
“But we’re the front line,” Harry gritted.
“Yeah.” Mike’s eyes met his in the rear view mirror. “We’re the front line. Tip of the spear. If we don’t stop them, she’s gone.”
They seemed to go off the main roads, over a few bumps in the road, then were off again, racing over unpaved roads.
Lying down in the footwell, all Ellen could see was empty sky.
No telephone poles, no street signs, no buildings, nothing.
They drove for maybe a quarter of an hour over roads so rough she could hear and even feel rocks pelting against the underside of the car, and could see plumes of the dust they raised outside the window. Finally, they slid back onto asphalt.
The two men upfront weren’t talking. She had no idea what their plans were, except that she would never survive them.
Oh God. How could she have made this mistake? And how could Gerald have been just waiting for her? She’d barely stepped outside Harry’s building, hadn’t even had time to flag a taxi and that blond guy had come running after her. A second later, the big black Mercedes rolled up to where they were.
They must have been waiting in the car right outside the building. But how? How did they know?
However they knew, it was too late to worry about it.
Actually, it was way too late to worry about anything.
She’d reached a dead end, a place where nothing she could do would influence the outcome.
She was in the hands of two clever men, strong men.
For just the few seconds in which the blond man had gripped her arm, hard, and pulled her against him, she’d felt tough, hard muscles, the kind Harry had.
There was no way she could overpower one of these men, let alone two.
She didn’t even have her wits about her. Her thought processes were slow, sluggish. Making any kind of plan required clear thinking and that was beyond her. Whatever they’d given her made it almost impossible to think straight.
Gerald was driving really fast now. Too fast. What kind of road could he be on that would allow him to race like this?
Though the car had that exceptional sound-proofing of expensive vehicles, the occasional dull roar filtered its way into the cabin, a sound that started low and increased in pitch. And a sharp smell penetrated, a smell both chemical and familiar.
With a wrench of the wheels, the car drove into some kind of shelter.
The sun cut out immediately. As the car slowed down, it passed under something.
Something long and metallic…a wing. An airplane wing.
The car came to a stop, rocking her painfully forward then backward.
She looked up out the window and saw the curved metal and rounded portholes of an airplane hull.
Even her dulled, hurting head was able to put it together. They’d reached an airport. Somehow they’d bypassed security and gone directly into a hangar and, oh God, a plane was right there.
Ellen shook. Somewhere in the back of her mind was the idea that somehow, she didn’t know how, but somehow Harry would find her.
Would just come galloping to her rescue and prevail, because he was a good guy and the good guys always won, right?
Superharry to the rescue, swooping down and saving the day.
Wasn’t going to happen. Couldn’t happen.
Gerald and his—what? minion? henchman?—whatever he was, they were going to bundle her into a plane and she’d be lost forever. This wasn’t a scheduled flight on a plane belonging to an airline.