Oh, how I cried at the news. I knew it! I knew it! Hank was alive!
He’d been badly injured and taken east with German prisoners of war. He was still quite ill, and finally had been brought home to Vienna.
I was delirious with joy, and would have rushed off to begin packing up the babies, ready to leave for Vienna on the spot, but Anson stopped me.
“According to the report I read, Hank was found a month ago, Rose,” he told me.
“A month?” and I was being told about it only now? “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“We didn’t know,” he said. “Not until today.”
“But . . .” Why didn’t Hank try to get in touch with me? Surely he knew I would be nearly frantic with worry. It had been more than a year.
Solemnly, Anson took a newspaper clipping from his pocket and handed it to me.
It was from an English publication. A society type column, announcing the engagement between Elizabeth Barkham, the daughter of Lord Someone—I’ve forgotten his exact title—to war hero, Prince Heinrich von Hopf of Austria.
I had to read it three or four times before the words made any sense. And then they made too much sense.
The article went on to report that Heinrich von Hopf had recently returned home to Vienna. His parents were ecstatic at his safe return, and the entire city was giving him a hero’s welcome for his part in defeating the Nazi menace. Prince Heinrich was currently convalescing in his family’s summer home, but he was expected to come to London to claim his bride before the year’s end.
“I’m so sorry,” Anson said.
I couldn’t help myself. I started to cry again. “Thank God, he’s alive,” I said. It was all I could say. “Thank God, he’s alive.”
Hank had married me because he was so sure he was going to die in the war. I’d suspected that all along and now I knew it for sure. But now the war was over, he was still alive, and his regular life—with all its responsibilities—had returned.
I went to visit a lawyer that afternoon, and before the sun set, I signed the necessary paperwork for a divorce.
Savannah kept crawling. Every yard she was able to move farther out into the jungle meant that Kenny was that much more safe.
She’d already made it quite a distance, half crawling, half crouching, but it wasn’t far enough. Not yet.
She heard the sound of a low voice, calling out in a language she couldn’t understand. It came from back behind her, from the direction she’d just come, and she hit the dirt, burrowing more deeply into the brush.
Please God, go past her . . .
She could see the shape of a man through the branches and she held her breath. He was moving slowly, cautiously. And heading directly toward her.
He’d seen her. She could tell from the way he called out again, in that same low voice. She didn’t speak the language, but his meaning was obvious. “Hey, guys, over here! I need backup!”
Savannah’s ears were roaring as her heart pounded. Was she far enough from the blind? If they caught her here, would Kenny be safe?
She didn’t know.
So she bolted. She burst out from the underbrush.
The man who’d been tracking her screamed, startled, and fumbled his gun.
She screamed, too, and ran as fast as she could.
Ken heard Savannah scream and then heard shots fired, blasting through the stillness of the jungle.
He felt them with his entire body, as if he were taking the impact of the bullets himself.
Oh shit oh shit! He ran toward the sound, his fear for Savannah sharpening his senses. There were voices coming from the same direction and more movement—people running. Lots of people.
Please don’t let her be dead. Please God . . .
He silently crept as close as he could, aware as hell that there were guards in the jungle all around him. Uniforms. These were Beret’s men—General Badaruddin, according to the villagers and Jones.
Jesus, there were a lot of them. A full platoon, at least.
And there, in the middle, was Savannah.
He seriously compromised his position to get a better look at her.
She was on her stomach, on the ground, with her hands on top of her head, but as far as Ken could see she was unharmed. Alive. She was breathing hard as if she’d been running. Or as if she were scared to death.
No surprise there—right now, he was scared to death. She wasn’t dead, but all it would take was one asshole with a twitchy trigger finger and she would be.
“Does anyone here speak English? Or French? Parlez vous français?” Her voice rang out clearly over the din of male voices. She sounded cool and collected and completely in control, as if she weren’t a prisoner, but rather as if she’d called them all together for a meeting on her behalf.
This was the same woman who’d dealt so effectively with the bellhop in her hotel room. She’d been in the midst of an emotional crisis, yet she’d managed to communicate her needs and even smile.
Ken realized he was seeing her mother’s daughter in action. It might’ve been amusing if he hadn’t just had the crap scared out of him, and if he weren’t scared of a million different dangers. Someone in this bunch of Rambo wannabes could hit her in the head with the butt of their rifle to put her in her place. Or notice how great her ass looked in those shorts and decide to take advantage of the fact that she was female and helpless.
“Parlez vous français?” she called again.
Oh, fuck, Van. Not French. Don’t talk to them in French.
The crowd of soldiers argued among themselves. If there had been fewer of them, Ken would’ve silently taken out the guards around him, then used the Uzi on the rest to get her out of there. But there was no way he could win in a firefight against an entire freaking platoon.
A skinny man with a scarf around his throat approached, clearly, from his manner and attitude, the platoon’s CO.
“Where’s the money?” he asked Savannah in perfect English, as if he’d just stepped off a bus from Ohio.
“I don’t have it.” Savannah lifted her head to look up at him. “The man I was with—he took it and left me here last night.”
What?
“He’s long gone,” Savannah continued, and Ken realized what she was doing. She was protecting him—making sure they didn’t catch him, too. “I have no idea which way he went.”
Skinny and the other platoon leaders had a discussion.
“Excuse me,” Savannah said. “I have some questions for you, too. Who are you? And can you help me get to safety?”
Oh, shit, this was it. Skinny was going to give her a swift kick in the head with his boot.
“And may I please get up now?” she asked. “This is a little uncomfortable.”
“No,” Skinny said shortly, clearly irritated, then went back to his discussion.
Keep your mouth closed. Ken tried to send the thought to Savannah telepathically. He also said a quick prayer to God to strike her temporarily mute. Don’t piss this fucker off, Van. This is not a man you want to make angry.
Miraculously, she stayed silent.
And Skinny finally turned back to Savannah. He gave a command to several of his men, who hauled her to her feet.
She was covered in dirt, but there was definitely no blood on her clothes, thank God. One knee was scraped and bleeding, but that seemed to be the worst of her injuries.
Skinny, meanwhile, was looking her over in a way that made Ken’s skin crawl. And now he tried to send a telepathic message in his direction. Touch her, and you will be so fucking dead, so fucking fast . . .
The rebel leader finally spoke. “You don’t look much like a princess.”
“Excuse me?” Savannah said. Obviously she’d misheard that, too.
“We have been ordered by General Badaruddin to find Princess Savannah von Hopf. Unless there’s more than one American woman running around on Parwati Island, I’ve got to assume you are she. But perhaps I shouldn’t assume. Allow me to ask—are yo
u the princess?”
Okay, the general was a bona fide nutball. Just what the world needed—another crazy lunatic with aspirations for world domination.
But Savannah’s answer stopped Ken short. “Yes.”
Yes?
“I am.”
She was?
Holy fuck. She’d said her grandfather was Austrian royalty. Was he some kind of prince? And if so, yeah, that would probably make her a princess. Or at least, like, a half princess.
“How do you know who I am?” she asked, with a shitload of royalty in her attitude.
Skinny smiled. He had a ghoulish smile that wasn’t very nice. “You’re very popular on Parwati. There are a lot of people looking for you on this island.”
“I’m aware of that,” she said. “And I’m grateful that you’re not Otto Zdanowicz’s men. They tried to kill me. They did kill my uncle, Prince Alex von Hopf.”
Prince Alex? Jeez, this was weird, but yeah, it made sense in a very Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous way.
Skinny laughed, and Savannah got haughty. “I don’t see the humor in my uncle’s death.”
Ken braced himself for a backlash, but interestingly, Skinny bowed to her slightly. “Prince Alex isn’t dead, your highness. He has been ill, but his health is improving.”
The information just didn’t stop coming. Savannah was a highness, and Badaruddin had Alex von Hopf. No, he had Prince Alex von Hopf. Ken’s head was spinning. Was it possible the general’s private army had snatched Alex from the start, and the Zdanowicz brothers had been simply trying to get money from nothing—calling Savannah to capitalize on the fact that Alex had gone missing?
As much as Ken hated the Zdanowiczs, he had to admire the motherfuckers for thinking way outside of the box on that one.
“Where is he?” Savannah demanded. Easy, babe. Highness or not, don’t push too hard.
Skinny stepped closer to her. Too close, and Ken achieved a whole new level of cold sweat.
“Please, I want to see him,” Savannah said. “If you take me to him, and then take us both to Jakarta, I’ll see that you get a reward. Two hundred thousand dollars. At least.”
“The general has asked for far more than that for Prince Alex. Surely he can get even more for the pair of you,” Skinny said.
So there already had been a demand for Alex’s ransom. This was good. Because as soon as Alex von Hopf had gone missing, U.S. professionals had surely been brought in. With Rose von Hopf’s clout in Washington, the folks at the Pentagon were probably in a screaming hurry to bring Alex safely home. They’d probably sent the FBI to Jakarta to assist either special operations or special forces—maybe even the SEALs. Yeah, it was even possible SEAL Team Sixteen’s Troubleshooters had been called in.
But whoever was out here beating the brush for Alex was no doubt aware that Savannah—no, Princess Savannah, God damn—and Ken had been crashing around in the jungle, too, for the past few days.
He was willing to bet that if there had been a ransom note, the FBI had traced it to its source. There were probably already teams of operatives hidden around the perimeter of Badaruddin’s camp, just waiting for the right moment to go in and snatch Alex to safety. What might come in handy was having an operative—like, say, Ken—on the inside.
An additional bonus was the money they’d hidden. As long as Ken and Savannah knew where it was and Badaruddin’s men didn’t, they could use it as a bargaining tool.
Or maybe they could strike a private deal with Skinny. If Skinny made sure Savannah remained safe until the ransom money was delivered and she was released, they could deliver him a nice little bonus that General Badaruddin didn’t need to know about.
There were guards patrolling the jungle, coming right toward Ken. With very little effort, he could prevent them from seeing him. With even less effort, he could make them think they’d apprehended an intruder.
He hid the Uzi—no use making them shoot him—and prepared to be found.
Molly shaded her eyes as the helicopter approached the village center and prepared to land.
“That’s it,” she said to Billy who’d come to stand beside her. “We’re planting trees here tomorrow. Big trees.”
“Shit,” he said. “It’s Otto Zdanowicz and his hired guns.”
Shit, indeed. Dust swirled around them.
“What do they want?” Billy asked, raising his voice over the din of the blades.
“I don’t know, but I think we can assume they’re not here to attend church services.” It wasn’t like her to be a pessimist, but Molly knew in her gut that whatever Zdanowicz wanted, it wasn’t going to be good.
“It seems we found your friend,” the skinny officer with the bad breath said, and Savannah’s blood ran cold.
She could hear shouting, and what sounded like a struggle, and then five men manhandled Ken into the clearing.
He was covered with blood, and he went down, hard. He lay face first and motionless in the dirt.
She ran toward him. “Kenny!”
She was jerked back before she could reach him, held down by the two soldiers who’d held her before, and she fought, kicking and hitting, struggling to get free. She connected purely by chance with someone’s sensitive part, a nose or maybe a lip, and got slapped for her efforts—a brain-shaking, ear-ringing blow that knocked her on her butt and made her cry out.
And Ken pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. His nose was bleeding, she saw, as he looked directly at her. “Don’t fight them!” he said.
“Excellent advice,” the English-speaking officer said. “You might want to follow it yourself.”
“Tell them to let go of her,” Ken ordered.
“Tell me where the money is.”
The men holding Savannah pulled her roughly back to her feet.
She wouldn’t have thought it was possible for a man who was covered with blood and unable to stand to look dangerous, but Ken somehow managed. “First tell your fucking goons to get their fucking hands off of her!”
“Kenny, don’t!” Savannah said, but she was too late.
The officer gave a nod, and Ken got kicked in the ribs hard enough to send him into the air. He landed with a sickening thud and a groan.
“Stop!” Savannah sobbed. “Stop! The money’s buried fifteen paces from the southwest corner of the Quonset hut on an airstrip that belongs to a man named Jones! It’s near a village about a half day’s walk from here!”
Ken rolled onto his back and, with one hand, wiped the blood from his face. “Perfect,” he said. “Just fucking perfect.”
When the phone rang, George was sitting outside the hotel suite, on the veranda.
Rose picked it up as he stepped back into the room, through the gauzelike curtains. “Hello?”
“Mrs. von Hopf, it’s Alyssa Locke. Good news,” the young woman said, without having to be asked. “We’ve pinpointed Alex’s location. He’s being held in the guest quarters of General Badaruddin’s estate, on an island just north of Parwati.”
“He’s alive.”
“Yes, ma’am. Lieutenant Starrett reported visual contact.”
Thank you, God.
Rose reached behind her blindly for the sofa, and George was right there, helping her to sit. Fear often kept a person standing, while relief could make one’s knees fail utterly.
“They’ve seen Alex,” she told George and he squeezed her hand. “I was so afraid,” she admitted.
“I know,” Alyssa said, her voice warm over the telephone line. “You didn’t show it, but, he’s your son. I have a niece and, well, I know it’s not the same, but I can imagine what these past few days have been like for you.”
“I’m a little light-headed right now,” Rose admitted, with a laugh.
“Is George there?” Alyssa asked. “Are you sitting down?”
“Yes and yes,” Rose told her.
“There’s more if you can stand it,” Alyssa said. “We think we’ve located Savannah as well. We intercepted a radio messa
ge from one of Badaruddin’s lieutenants saying that he found her on Parwati, and he’s bringing in her and her companion—and their money. Now, we haven’t verified this, but this is very good news. This means we’re going to have a Navy SEAL right inside the camp. If he can connect with Alex, he’ll be able to prep him for the rescue. It’ll be covert, of course, and it’ll be helpful if he’s expecting that. The SEALs will go into that camp and pull Alex and Savannah out without a single shot being fired.”
Troubleshooters 04 Out of Control Page 46
