Power Play

by Joseph Finder

  Bodine gave me a fierce look. "Yeah? When?"

  "Soon as we can. Soon as this is over."

  "When's that going to be?"

  He didn't expect an answer, but I was surprised he'd said it. It was a sign of how far he'd fallen, how demoralized he was. Hank Bodine was always in charge.

  Buck yelled to me, "Time's up. This ain't a church social."

  I said softly to Bodine, "Depends on how we play it."

  Bodine nodded once.

  I said, "There's blood and stuff all over your pants. Let me see if they'll get you another pair from your room. Least they can do."

  Bodine had pissed himself during the attack. I could see the large wet area and smell the urine. I felt a pang of embarrassment for him, and I didn't want him to know that I knew.

  He watched me as I got up.

  "Hey," he said after a few seconds.

  "Yeah?"

  "Thanks."

  31

  The whole place smelled of cigarette smoke: Verne was chain-smoking at the other end of the room as he frisked Ali, taking his time of it. I had a feeling he was maybe paying a bit too much attention to areas on her body where she wasn't likely to hide a weapon. Her back was to me; I couldn't see her face, but I could imagine the look of grim resolve.

  The middle of the room was a chaotic jumble of furniture: tables on their sides, chairs upended on top of sofas. Russell's men had shoved the furniture away from the wall on either side of the great stone fireplace to make room for the hostages.

  We sat on the wideboard floor on either side of the fireplace, in two groups. On the other side-which might as well have been miles away-were the manager, the other lodge staff, and Danziger and Grogan. All the lights were on, giving the room a harsh, artificial cast.

  Verne had wound the ropes around my wrists a little too tightly, before tying the ends expertly with a couple of overhand knots. "There we go," he'd said. "Try and get out of that. Harder you pull against it, tighter it gets. Give yourself gangrene, you're not careful."

  Geoffrey Latimer, next to me, tried to shift his hands to get them more comfortable. "I wonder if I'm ever going to see my wife and daughter again," he said softly. He looked ashen. His face was flushed, and he was short of breath.

  Cheryl said, "This damned rope is too tight. I'm already losing circulation in my hands." She looked weary, suddenly ten years older. There was what looked like a dirty handprint on her long, pleated skirt, as if one of Russell's men had pawed her. Without her big earrings and necklace, she looked somehow vulnerable, disarmed.

  "I wish I could help you," Slattery said. "But my hands are tied."

  If that was his attempt at black humor, no one laughed.

  I said, "You want me to call one of them over here to retie you?"

  Cheryl shook her head. "The less we have to do with them, the better. I'll get used to it. Hopefully this isn't going to be too long." She paused, looked at me, spoke quietly. "How's Hank?"

  Bodine lay on the hard floor, dozing. His closed eyes were bruised and bloodied, his face a patchwork of red and white: Travis, who I had become more and more certain was Russell's younger brother, had thoughtfully taped up some of the more serious wounds with strips of white adhesive tape and a variety of Band-Aids he'd found in a first-aid kit.

  I doubted she actually cared, but I said, "He might have a concussion. A broken nose. Maybe a broken cheekbone, too."

  "My God."

  I smelled her perfume, strong and unpleasantly floral, like a funeral home.

  "Could have been a lot worse."

  "We have to get the word out," she said. "Somehow we have to tell the outside world what's going on."

  I didn't think our captors could hear us. Russell was outside somewhere, and his brother, Travis, was patrolling the room, his gun at his side, a good distance away. The blond crew-cut lunk was upstairs grabbing loot. The other two-Buck, the vaguely sinister black-goateed one, and Verne, ex-con and speed freak, were at the far end of the room.

  "How?" Kevin Bross said. "You have a sat phone you're not telling us about?"

  Cheryl glared at him. "No, I don't have a satellite phone. But the manager has one. He keeps it locked in his office. I know, because I've used it." She glanced at the stone wall that made up one side of the fireplace. "Maybe one of us can sneak over there."

  Bross snorted.

  Upton Barlow straightened his shoulders. "Now, isn't that interesting," he said with heavy sarcasm. He'd eased one of his shoes off with the other. I could see his Odor-Eaters insole. "And I thought we were all supposed to be 'offline,' as you put it."

  "One of us had to be reachable, Upton," Cheryl said icily. "I am the CEO, after all."

  "Hmmph," Barlow said. One little syllable conveyed so much-ridicule, skepticism, condescension.

  Cheryl turned slowly to face him. "I wouldn't get too high-and-mighty if I were you, Upton," she said. "Wasn't it you who made Russell an offer-put the whole ransom idea in his head? Brilliant."

  "That idea was already in his head," Bross said. "He and his thugs broke in here to rip us off."

  "Forgive me for my clumsy attempt to save your life," Barlow said, his syrupy baritone dripping with contempt. "Or maybe you've forgotten that he was pointing a gun at your face at the time? I should have let him pull the trigger."

  "Cheryl," said Lummis, "he was about to kill you and me both."

  "And wasn't it you who told him about our K &R insurance?" Cheryl turned to face Lummis. "In violation of our strict secrecy agreement with Lloyds of London? Do you realize the policy becomes null and void if you reveal its existence to anyone outside the executive council?"

  Lummis's plump, pink cheeks were slick with sweat. "Good God Almighty, I'd say this qualifies as a situation of extreme duress."

  The fact that we had a kidnap-and-ransom insurance policy was news to me, too, but I didn't get what the big deal was about revealing its existence. So what? Would knowing about it encourage potential kidnappers to escalate their demands? Hammond Aerospace was a multibillion-dollar company with very deep pockets anyway; who cared whether some insurance company paid us back?

  "Hey, folks, let's all just count to ten," said Bo Lampack. The red mark across his face had begun to fade. "I know tempers are short, but we need to work together as a team. Remember, if we all row together, we'll get there faster."

  "Oh, Christ," said Kevin Bross. "Where'd this knucklehead come from?"

  Lampack looked bruised. "Hostility's not productive."

  "In any case," Cheryl said, "it would be grossly negligent of me as CEO to allow us to give in to this extortion. I have a responsibility to protect the corporation."

  Lampack, ignored by everyone, now just watched in sullen defeat.

  "You have a responsibility," Barlow said, "to protect our lives. The lives of the people who run this company."

  "We wouldn't be in this position if it weren't for your negligence," Bross said to Cheryl.

  "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Cheryl snapped.

  "You know exactly what I mean," Bross said.

  I caught Ron Slattery giving Bross a quick, furtive look. Annoyed, maybe, or warning: It was hard to tell. I wondered what it meant.

  Then Slattery said, in a reasonable voice, "Cheryl, you know, we lost a whole lot more than that last quarter on the telecom satellite we're building for Malaysia, right? If we have to take a hundred-million-dollar charge for an extortion demand, or ransom, or whatever we call it-"

  "Which I'm sure is covered by our K &R insurance anyway," Lummis put in.

  Cheryl was shaking her head. "This is not how it works, Ron. You should know as well as anyone here. In Latin America, when the secuestradores kidnap an American executive, they never get more than thirty percent of their initial ransom demand. It's expected. If you pay them any more, they'll think they didn't ask enough."

  "Well, Danziger handles all the special risk coverage for me," Slattery said. "I don't really get into the weeds."
<
br />   "The point is, this guy's demanding a hundred million dollars-now," she said. "But the moment we go along with him-the moment we agree to wire out a hundred million dollars-he's going to think, Well, why stop now? If a hundred million was that easy, why not a billion? Why not four billion? Why not demand every last goddamned dollar we have in our cash reserves? And then what do we do?"

  I nodded; she was right.

  "We don't know that, Cheryl," Slattery said. His glasses were smudged, the frames slightly askew. "He's not necessarily going to escalate his demands. I don't think we have any alternative but to give him the hundred million and take him at his word."

  She shook her head. "No, Ron, I'm sorry, but one of us has to say no, and that's got to be me. We're going to hang tough. Refuse to give in to his demands."

  A panicked expression flashed across Slattery's face, then disappeared. But he said nothing. You could see his loyalty warring with his survival instinct. Russell had promised that he'd be the first to be killed if we didn't cooperate. Yet he was Cheryl's man, the only one here who owed his job directly to her. Her only ally on the executive council. Except for maybe Geoff Latimer; but La-timer seemed to be the sort who was quite careful not to take sides.

  "She's going to get us all killed," Bross said, shaking his head.

  "How easy it must be for you to issue orders," said Upton Barlow. "After all, you're not the one he's going to shoot first if we don't cooperate." His eyes shifted from Cheryl to Slattery. He'd sensed Slattery's panic the way a dog smells fear. He'd seen daylight between Cheryl and her toady, and he was determined to widen the crack.

  "Oh, come on," Cheryl said. "These buffoons aren't actually going to kill anyone. They're trying to scare the hell out of us, and I can see it's working like a charm on you men. But Russell's not going to carry out his threats."

  "Oh really?" Bross said. "And what makes you so sure of that?"

  "Human nature," she replied brusquely. "I can read people. They may be thugs, but they're not murderers."

  "Oh, Jesus Christ," Bross snapped. "These are a bunch of trigger-happy outlaws with guns. You are so out of your league here, Cheryl."

  I agreed with Bross, but I wasn't going to say so. I didn't particularly like the woman, but I sure wasn't going to join the other piranhas circling her because they smelled her blood in the water.

  "They're hunters who got lost," Cheryl said. "They're tired and hungry and all of a sudden they see this lodge, and they get the big idea to try a holdup. See if they can pull it off. If it wasn't us, it could have been a convenience store. These men aren't actually going to do anything so stupid as to kill one of us."

  "They look mighty serious to me," Lummis said.

  "There's a bright line between trying to bully a bunch of unarmed businessmen and cold-blooded murder," she said. "And they're not going to cross that line. They're hunters, not hired killers."

  I couldn't hold back any longer. "I don't think they're hunters," I said softly.

  "Why don't we find out what your CFO has to say about this," Barlow said with a malevolent smile. "You feel like staking your life on Cheryl's ability to read people, Ron? You're the one who gets his brains blown out first."

  Slattery looked at Barlow, that panicked look returning, but he didn't reply.

  Bo Lampack was trying to get everyone's attention, so we stopped and looked at him.

  "If I may say something?" Lampack said. There was silence, so he went on. "Let's face it-a gun is really a phallus. Men like these who insist on waving guns around are really just waving their dicks around. They're compensating for their inadequacies. To challenge them outright is to emasculate them, which could provoke a really hostile and defensive reaction-"

  "Will someone tell Russell to get in here and shoot this guy?" said Bross.

  Lampack looked around for support, and when no one came to his defense, he sat back, looking deflated.

  "They're not hunters," I tried again, a little louder.

  Finally, Cheryl looked at me. "What makes you so sure of that, Jake?"

  "For one thing, they're not equipped like hunters."

  "And you know this how?"

  "Because I hunt. I shoot."

  "You shoot?" Bross said. "What, paintballs?"

  "You want to hear me out or not?"

  "Not especially."

  "Let the kid talk," Barlow said wearily. "I've got to get to the john before my bladder bursts."

  "Start with their outfits," I said. "The camouflage."

  "Plenty of hunters wear camo," Lummis pointed out.

  I nodded. "But they're not wearing the kind of camouflage you get at a hunting store," I said. "It's old military-issue." The pattern was the old six-color chocolate-chip camouflage, which the army had discontinued around the time of the first Gulf War. "They're also wearing genuine military tactical vests, with gear clips and mag pouches. Those sure aren't regular hunting vests." Hunting vests were normally made out of smooth acrylic so you didn't get snagged on brush or whatever.

  "Well, so maybe they picked up their outfits at some Army-Navy surplus store somewhere," Cheryl said.

  "That's possible," I said. "Sure. But they're carrying banana clips on their vests. I've never heard of a legit hunter carrying a banana clip. And that gun that Russell was waving around was a Glock 18C."

  "Yeah," Bross said with heavy sarcasm. "We were all impressed by your knowledge of firearms."

  "Excellent," I said. "That was my whole point-to impress you, Kevin. Then again, maybe I was trying to figure out how much he knew about it. Maybe even where he might have gotten it." I said to the others: "See, the Glock 18 is banned for sale to anyone who's not in law enforcement or the military."

  "What-what are you saying, they're soldiers?" Slattery said. "Ex-soldiers?"

  "Were you in the Army?" Barlow asked.

  "The National Guard Reserve for a year. But my dad was a Marine," I said.

  "Maybe they're one of those homegrown militias," said Slattery. "You know, those crazy survivalist gangs that turn up in places like Michigan and Kentucky?"

  "Jesus, I've got to take a leak," said Barlow.

  "A couple of them also look like they've done time in prison," I said.

  "I wonder if they're fugitives of some sort," Geoff Latimer said. "Who maybe pulled off a bank robbery, and they're on the run. Remember that old Humphrey Bogart movie called The Desperate Hours? These escaped convicts are looking for a place to hide, and they break into this suburban house and they hold the family hostage-"

  "What difference does it make who they are?" Cheryl said. "Their threats are hollow."

  "You're partly right," I said. She gave me a wary look. "It doesn't really make a difference who they are or where they're from. But their weapons tell me two things. One is that Russell knows what he's doing. He's no amateur."

  "More speculation," Cheryl said.

  "And what's the other thing?" Slattery asked.

  "That these guys aren't here by accident," I said.

  32

  A long time ago I'd learned that you can pretty much get used to anything.

  There was no privacy at Glenview, even at night, in your own room: a surveillance camera mounted near the ceiling, its red eye winking in the dark. No doors on the toilet stalls. But you got used to it.

  You learned to create your own zone of privacy, hide your emotions behind a mask of stoicism. To show emotion was to show weakness, and weakness got you hurt.

  You can get used to pretty much anything if you have to. The food was inedible-rubbery fake scrambled eggs, bright artificial yellow, sometimes with a coarse human hair coiled around one of the curds; unsalted boiled potatoes with dirt-crusted peel mixed in; slices of stale white bread; rancid bologna, slick and green-tinged-until the hunger pains grew too strong.

  If you needed to piss at night, you had to knock on your door until a guard came. Sometimes he'd come, sometimes not. You learned to pee into a towel in the corner of the room.

 
You learned to fight when challenged. Which happened over and over until your place in the hierarchy was established, until the other kids learned to leave you alone.

  But you also learned to respect the natural order.

  In the chow hall one day, Estevez "accidentally" bumped into me. I ignored him, kept moving. A mistake: Estevez took it as a sign of fear. But I was hungry, and they only gave you twenty minutes for lunch, which included waiting in line and bussing your tray.

  He bumped me again. My orange plastic tray went flying, spilling brown gravy and gristle and peas everywhere.

  This time I didn't wait. I drew back and slugged him in the mouth so hard that he actually rose a few inches off the floor. My fist throbbed in pain: A tooth was lodged between two knuckles.

  Estevez crashed against one of the stainless-steel tables, spitting teeth. I saw my opportunity, went after him again, and then my lower back exploded in pain.

  Someone had hit me from behind. I sunk to my knees, gasping.

  Glover was swinging his baton. "Go back to the dayroom and wait for me," he said.

  I sat on the bench in the deserted dayroom and waited.

  When Glover arrived, ten minutes later, he approached me slowly, as if he were about to confide something. Instead, he grabbed my hair, gave me a hard backhand slap on one side of my face, then the other. Rhythmic, almost: one two.

  "Hey!" I yelled.

  "How's that?"

  He kept at it, one side, then the other. One two. "How's that? How's that feel?"

  "I didn't start it," I croaked.

  "I want to hear you cry, bastard," he said.

  His fist crashed into one side of my face, then the other. One two. Blood seeped into my eyes, from my nose.

  "Cry, bastard," he said.

  But I wouldn't.

  One two. One two.

  I knew what he wanted, even more than he wanted me to cry. He wanted me to hit him back. That would get me confined to solitary for three months. But I refused to give him the satisfaction.

  "I'm not stopping till you cry, you bastard."

  I never did.