by Dale Mayer
“Okay,” he said. “I want all plans for the area, where she disappeared or was last seen. I believe several commercial buildings are in that area. What does the actual underground network here look like?”
“I’ll find out what I can,” he said, “but check out this first.”
And, with that, Diesel heard a chime and clicked the link he had in chat and was taken into the street views of Eva Langston’s home in Boston. It took him a moment, and then he saw her walk to her car. Another vehicle drove up, blocking hers. There wasn’t even a visible struggle. And the vehicle suddenly left, and she was no longer in view. “That’s the SUV that the Chinese Consulate denies was theirs, right? Even though they drove there, I understand.”
“We presume the Chinese used third-parties, so they could deny this initially. We tracked all their transport transfers, which were many, and most recently found her in Shanghai. See here.” Shane dropped another link, showing another black vehicle turn a corner into what looked like a huge commercial parking area.
“Near our hotel, I presume. And was that vehicle traced?”
“It was, and it was stolen.”
“Of course it was,” he muttered. “And who can park there?”
“Only those who work at this series of warehouses.”
“But it would be easy enough to steal a parking spot too.”
“Yes, and we find no other camera feeds showing her in or out.”
“It’d be too obvious that she’s in there though,” he said.
“Depends if they thought anybody would notice. The other thing is, she could have been moved out at any point in time further down the road,” Shane said.
“Yes. Any reason to suspect she’s in danger?”
“Not as long as she’s cooperative.”
“What’s her temperament like?”
“She lives for her science. She would not keep quiet about being pulled away from her projects, her research.”
“There could have been some consolation that she would continue to work.”
“Maybe,” Shane said. “She’s also a rebel, who doesn’t take kindly to authority, and only plays the game so she can get grant money.”
“Interesting. And her father?”
“He’s another big-name scientist, but he’s also very much an animal activist,” he said. “So she’s been raised with that similar attitude.”
“I guess,” Diesel said, “the question is, when we find her, if she would help in her rescue or if she will be a hindrance, and I’m better off to knock her out.”
“I would definitely give her at least a chance to let you know the answer to that on her own,” Shane said with a note of humor.
“I’ll give her at least three seconds,” he said. “First sign of trouble and she’s out.”
“She’s known to be very resourceful,” he said.
“So then the question is, is she doing anything to help herself?”
“When you find her, you can ask her yourself.”
“Got it,” he said.
As soon as he checked out the various related links, he brought up the additional history on Eva. A fair bit was in here. She lived a quiet life after her father was arrested for some activism, where he’d been arguing local politics. He’d taken his daughter on several of those trips. When he was arrested, it had been a traumatic experience for her, and she had stayed home more or less ever after and then had devoted her adult life to scientific research, rather than public protest.
Diesel could understand that. Especially as a child, that would have been rough.
On the other hand, she’d created a medical breakthrough, and mankind was desperate for it. She’d been working on a number of diseases from the basic building blocks of the malaria-carrying mosquitoes that started it all. And now she was working on something a little more definitive. He didn’t quite understand all this part, and it certainly wasn’t a disease currently emblazoning the world, but she had an awful lot of research that had somehow made a breakthrough with stem cells.
He wondered if it wouldn’t have been easier to just grab her research instead of taking her, depending on how well she was known to be a difficult person.
As he read through more, he learned she was single, had no children, had no living mother, was supporting her adult brother with known addictions. That would also be difficult for her as well. And since her father had retired and had moved away, she was left with nobody in Boston to defend her when she ran into trouble. Neither was anybody looking after her.
Frowning at that, he thought about what her life was like as a single person on her own, taking care of her alcoholic brother, trying to save the world from global diseases with no known cure to date. That couldn’t have been easy. At least the brother was living in a group home at the moment so that had to be easier on her.
When a knock came on the hotel door, he froze. But he got up, slowly walked to the side, and, as he got there, the door opened in front of him.
Eva Langston took a long slow deep breath, studied the keyboard in front of her, even as she watched the guard walk behind the three different scientists. He was busy talking on his phone—yelling into his phone was a better description. The other two scientists, another woman and a man, looked at Eva and frowned. She nodded and kept her fingers moving on the keyboard. They had to show some results, or else it would turn out very badly. It was important to keep their heads down and to make it look like they were compliant, working. They were guarded every minute of every day. The guards switched out every eight hours, and they had a guard at nighttime. They were given food, time on their own in their rooms, but they had no electronic devices in their rooms. No way to call out for help, no way to do anything, and all their time on the lab computers was almost always monitored.
A team of security guards on the other side of the lab’s observation window watched them, even as this particular gunman walked back and forth, yelling into his phone.
She didn’t know how much longer she could do this. The strain was showing. One scientist had committed suicide. She wasn’t even sure how he’d done it but presumably had found a way. At least he committed suicide according to the guards. It was a reminder that their livelihood was dependent on the guards’ goodwill.
She didn’t know who was behind this, but they were in China, so it wasn’t hard to guess. But it was easy to blame the Chinese government, and she had no way of knowing if that were the case or not. But she’d heard enough horror stories of some of the things going on over here to make her blood curdle. Including the fact that the resistance and other religious groups opposing China had been plowed underground and were used to harvest organs for transplants for the Chinese citizens who could order up what they needed.
It was a scary thought, and one that made her blood run cold. If that were the case, that’s what their end would be as well.
Unless she could get the hell out of here.
She had no clue how to do that, and she had nobody in Boston who would call in the alarm or give a crap. Although she had a decent job, it was still just a job. And, if she didn’t show up one day, a few might cry about it for several minutes, but her five minutes of fame would quickly die out. And they had her research, so it’s not as if they would care about her personally.
She had had some major breakthroughs on the work that she was doing, but that didn’t mean that anybody there couldn’t just carry on with her research. That’s also the problem here; they had provided her with copies of a lot of her own research, which didn’t make her happy because it had been put in the wrong hands. Although she was a firm believer that, if her findings healed anybody, then they were in the right hands. But, if it were to hurt anybody, then it was in the wrong hands, and that seriously sucked.
She wanted her work to help people, not be weaponized into a global disease to be utilized against chosen civilizations. She kept working and then pulled her hands off the keyboard and rubbed her eyes.
“Are you okay
?” Marge asked, beside her.
Eva smiled and nodded.
But the guard snapped, “No talking.”
Marge immediately turned her head back to her keyboard. Neither of the women handled any of this very well, and Paul, on the far side, was even worse. He just glared at the guard, and the guy raised his rifle, as if to hit him in the head with the butt.
“She just asked if I was okay,” Eva said immediately.
He again glared at her and said, “No talking.”
She sighed and turned back to the keyboard. It was hard to do what she needed to do when they didn’t have the same lab setup. She had told him that she needed certain equipment, and they hadn’t gotten it for her yet. Apparently it was coming, but, in the meantime, she was writing up her reports as best she could. But what she really wanted was to get the hell out of here.
She checked the timing, knowing that the guards would change out in the next two minutes. And, sure enough, just like clockwork, there they went. She smiled at that and relaxed a little bit, as she watched the smaller man come in. The dude was not really abusive, like the other one, who just seemed to enjoy pushing his power around.
Eva felt the other two scientists relaxing slightly as well. But this replacement guard was a little more agitated today. He told them, “No talking,” then walked to the security guards in the observation room next door, had a conversation with them, and then returned to the lab, where she and the other two were working.
“Make sure,” he said, in a ringing voice, “that you do not have anything to do with any strangers who have just arrived in the country.”
She looked at him in surprise. “Sorry?”
He glared. “They are coming to rescue you. If you leave with them, we find you, and we kill you,” he said succinctly.
She blinked several times. “We don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
He nodded. “Good.” At that, he turned and walked away.
But inside, hope flared. Was somebody actually coming to look for them? How would the Chinese even know? Did that mean they were watching all the airports to see who came and went? That would mean that this rescuer was somebody well-known to China. Was that even possible? Did they keep track of every anti-terrorist group out of the US? Surely they couldn’t do that. But then, thinking about the technology out there—once the faces, names, physical descriptions were input—it wouldn’t be all that hard to keep track of people. And that was a sobering thought.
This guard walked to the far side, on his phone as well, playing games, it seemed.
Marge beside her asked, “Does that mean somebody’s looking for us?”
“I don’t know,” she said in an equally low tone. “I wouldn’t count on it.”
Marge’s shoulders sagged.
“But we could get lucky,” Eva murmured, hating to see the older woman lose hope.
Marge nodded. “Anything would be better than this,” she whispered. She reached up a shaky hand to brush the gray tendrils of hair off her face.
“I’m sorry,” Eva said. “You’ve been here longer than I have.”
“Too long,” she said, “way too long.”
Eva thought Paul had mentioned how Marge had been here for about six months—Paul even longer—but Eva couldn’t be sure. She knew that the woman was suffering from her captivity regardless. The time didn’t matter; it was all about the effects of the time on someone under these adverse conditions. It was hurting Marge in a big way, and that would be hard. Eva nodded and smiled. “Keep strong,” she said.
“Don’t know if I can,” Marge said very softly. “It’s tough.”
“It is. I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“You’re younger,” Marge said. “I’m almost done.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Eva said, her voice a little sharper than she intended.
Instantly the guard raced back over. He reached out and pummeled her shoulder with the rifle.
Almost immediately her arm went numb. She winced, holding back the cry, as her arm fell from the keyboard, and she lurched forward.
“I said, no talking.”
“No,” she said, “if I can’t talk, then I can’t work, and, if I can’t work, then I’m no good here.”
“Then we kill you,” he snapped.
“Then kill me,” she said. “If you keep hurting this arm, I can’t work anyway.”
He just glared at it, hanging limp by her side, backed up a little bit, and said, “Stop talking.”
She rubbed her sore shoulder, while she pulled on whatever little bit of reserves she had. Marge was right. It was hard to stay positive when you had been through this day after day after day. And the longer it went on, the more that victim mentality overcame you. Eva needed to stand strong.
Because the mental strain was the worst.
Just as she checked her watch, she realized it was almost time for the day to end. They worked in the lab ten to twelve hours, but today they’d started late. So she didn’t know if they would be forced to stay late too.
A knock came on the door, and immediately the gunman was there, his rifle ready. The door was opened, and two businessmen stood there and snapped out orders in Chinese. Immediately the gunman raced toward the scientists, held up the rifle, and told them, “Stand up. Stand up. Stand up.”
Chapter 2
Eva stood up immediately, her hands in the air.
The three of them were led out of the lab and immediately taken back to their rooms.
Not a sound was made as they followed obediently along. There were other white doors, potentially other labs; she didn’t know for sure.
There might have been other kidnap victims too, but again she didn’t know.
When she was back in her room, the door was locked, and she was left alone. She sagged down on the single cot and buried her face in her hands, wondering how long this would be. How long before the world found out, and, even if it did, did anybody give a shit? The last thing she wanted was to be here until she was old and gray. She figured that she’d end up with a bullet before then anyway because they weren’t the easiest to get along with.
As it was, she sat quietly in her room, and a tiny rap came on her wall, and Eva knew it was Marge. It was the equivalent of holding hands. She rapped back ever-so-softly. And, of course, Marge didn’t rap again. Eva just guessed that Marge would have laid down and relaxed now.
Eva flopped back down on the bed and crossed her arms over her chest. She didn’t even know how to put out a warning. She had no window in her room, no way to contact the outside world.
Apart from the little knock between her and Marge’s rooms, there was no communication at all. Paul was also here, on the other side of Marge.
Until her food was delivered, this would be her world. She had a small bathroom, where she could shower and use the facilities, but that was it. She had a ten-by-eight-foot space, where she tried to do some exercises, tried to walk and pace, but it was pretty hard to do in such a small space. Mentally she needed it though. And, with that in mind, she slid upright in bed, crossed her legs, and worked on her yoga. If nothing else she needed to cut her stress. Because her heart and mind were just screaming at her. What had just happened with the strangers expected here, and was there any hope that someone was coming to rescue her and the others?
Diesel stepped back, behind the door, as it opened up.
When nobody entered, a man called out, “It’s me.”
Diesel sighed and stepped forward and said, “You should have given me a warning.” But seeing him, he realized why he didn’t. His arms were full. “What the hell?” he said, as he opened the door wider to let Jerricho in.
He quickly dumped his armloads on the bed. Then, in his hand, underneath everything, was a bag. He handed that over to Diesel and said, “Takeout.”
Diesel brought it to the table and quickly emptied the food. “All this?”
“When I placed the munitions order, I decided to get everything at the sa
me time,” he said, “so this is what you asked for.”
He stared at Jerricho and then at the bed. Immediately he walked over and opened up several cases. One was a box with grenades, the other contained C-4 and ammo, and they had nice little techno goodies. He stared at Jerricho, surprised. “That was fast.”
“Yeah, it’s fast. It was a cash deal, and, of course, I suspect he tried to follow me. After all, this is a lot of weapons here. Plus, he’s curious and greedy. I had to try to lose him. I highly suggest that, after we eat, we change rooms.”
“I’m up for that. I suggest we change hotels,” Diesel said.
“Even better.”
The two men sat down, quickly scoffed down the food, hardly even tasting it. And yet street food was some of the best food in the world, as far as Diesel was concerned.
By the time they had emptied their plates, Diesel quickly packed up the little bit that he had, and, taking half of the gear that Jerricho had brought back with him, the two men slipped from the room and locked up. They even took the food containers with them to ensure nothing was left for DNA tests.
As soon as they reached the back street, Jerricho asked, “Where to?”
“I sent Gavin and Shane a message,” Diesel said. “We’re a block up and around the corner.”
“Perfect,” he said.
They quickly made it into the front entrance, which led into a dark shadowy hallway.
Diesel’s phone buzzed. He pulled it out and said, “Room 157. First floor at the far back.”
“Perfect.”
Diesel and Jerricho headed down the hallway to their room and found it empty and open. They quickly stepped inside and shut the door. Diesel kept his phone line open, putting it on Speaker now. They unloaded everything onto the two beds. This time he put the firearms together and quickly loaded then. He filled his pockets with spare ammo and asked, “Do we have a location?”
