Troubleshooters 04 Out of Control

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “That’s if everything goes according to plan,” Rose interjected.

  “I can’t make any promises,” Alyssa said, “but if my son were being held for ransom, I’d want Lieutenant Starrett and his team to be the ones to get him out. Have faith.”

  Rose chuckled. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this life, it’s don’t bury your chickens before you’re absolutely sure they’re dead. I shall spend the afternoon looking forward to tomorrow’s tedious airline flight home to New York with my son and granddaughter.”

  “Jules and I are about to board a plane for Jakarta since we’re not needed here anymore,” Alyssa told her. “Why don’t you have George take you over to FBI HQ, so you’ll know what’s going on as soon as it happens. Jules and I will meet you there in about an hour, hopefully slightly less.”

  “Thank you, dear.” Rose hung up the phone and burst into tears.

  George, bless him, was smart enough not to say a word. He just put his arms around her and let her cry.

  “I thought they were going to kill you,” Savannah whispered.

  “I thought I was going to be able to use that money as a bargaining tool,” Ken countered softly as they waited for the general’s helo to arrive.

  He’d already given Skinny and company his song and dance about the special lock on the attaché case, and how both Savannah and Ken would need to be kept alive to open it. He’d also spun wildly about who he was, and his relationship with Savannah. He was Prince Kenneth from Coronado, he’d told them—the princess’s fiancé. He’d told Skinny that Savannah was pregnant with his child, and that that would increase her ransom value, since his parents—the king and queen of Coronado—would no doubt pay an additional sum to ensure the royal fetus remained safe. But if Savannah were compromised in any way—in other words, curb your men and keep your freaking hands to yourself—both Austria and Coronado would declare war on General Badaruddin.

  Out of all the things Ken said, that seemingly wild threat was the closest thing to the truth. If they hurt Savannah, if they killed her, he would come back and decimate them. One at a time, right up the chain of command.

  Skinny was no fool, but royalty was clearly out of his realm. It seemed clear that his plan was to collect the money and deliver it, with them, to General Badaruddin. Let the big nutball sort things out.

  “Why did you let yourself get captured?” Savannah asked as Skinny moved farther out of earshot. The helo was coming. He could hear it throbbing in the distance. “I was purposely leading them away from you so you wouldn’t . . . but then you went and . . .” She shook her head in total disgust.

  “You’re mad at me,” he realized. “You gave up the location of the money—the one ace up our sleeve—and you’re mad at me.” He laughed in disbelief.

  “What was I supposed to do? Just stand there and watch them kill you?”

  “It’s going to take way more than a bloody nose and a kick in the ribs to kill me. Jesus, I wasn’t hardly even hurt. I was just making it look good.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Yeah, I guess we don’t really know each other all that well after all, huh? I mean, you’d think the fact that you’re a princess might’ve come up once or twice in the conversation.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m as much a princess as you are Prince Kenneth of Coronado. My grandfather was born an Austrian prince. Except Austria stopped recognizing titles and royalty in 1918. So he’s not a prince. Except some people get off on royalty, and make a big deal of it. Excuse me, it’s been almost a hundred years! Time to get a grip on what’s important. I’m an American with a few princess genes, which probably means I have a higher chance of having a son with hemophilia. What a bonus.”

  She looked at him, and he saw she had tears in her eyes. “I do know you really well, you jerk,” she whispered. “But I couldn’t stand there and watch them hurt you. I couldn’t.”

  “You should have come back to the blind,” Ken said, frustrated that he couldn’t hold her. Frustrated that he’d even let her leave the blind in the first place. What the fuck had he been thinking? He couldn’t keep himself from asking, “Didn’t you think I could keep you safe?”

  She made a sound that was almost like a laugh, and one of her tears slid down her cheek. Impatiently, she brushed it away.

  “I knew you could,” she told him. “I just didn’t think I would be able to keep you safe. I’d rather die than let anything happen to you, Kenny.”

  The helo was landing, and Skinny was shouting orders. The soldiers standing guard gestured for them to get their feet. Time to take another helo ride.

  He looked at Savannah. “Be ready for anything,” he told her, hoping she’d be able to read his lips because she sure as hell couldn’t hear him over the noise.

  She nodded, wiping her eyes with both hands and then, enunciating clearly so that he’d be sure to understand from reading her lips, she said, “I love you a ten.”

  The guard roughly jerked Ken toward the helo, and he turned to look back at Savannah.

  She had to be scared as she was pushed along, too, but she managed a smile as she met his gaze.

  Ken laughed as the guard shoved him again toward the helo.

  “I know you probably won’t believe this,” Ken said to the guy even though there was no way he could have understood even if he had heard him over the din, “but the past twenty-four hours have without a doubt been the best twenty-four hours of my life.”

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Eighteen

  “I’m sorry,” Molly told Otto Zdanowicz for what was probably the fourteenth time. She reached for Billy’s arm and squeezed it, to keep him from saying something. That’s all they needed, for Billy to get into a shouting match with eight heavily armed men. “But you’re wrong. The people you’re looking for were never here. Would you like some mint with that?”

  They’d come into the open-sided tent that was their kitchen and dining room, and Angie had even poured them each a glass of iced tea. She’d set it down alongside the enormous handgun Otto had put out on the table as a threat.

  “Enough of this bullshit!” Otto swept all of the glasses onto the ground. It was less dramatic than it might have been, because they were all plastic and they bounced instead of shattered, but still Molly flinched, her shirt partially doused. “My brother is dead!”

  She reached across the table for him, instinctively going for his hand. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  He slapped at her and picked up the big gun.

  Oh, Lord, had she pushed him into doing that?

  “Where are they?” Otto demanded. “Where’s the money?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said again, and he sharply brought the gun up and over, aiming it directly between Billy’s eyes.

  “You have ten seconds to decide if you are sorry enough, or if you want to be even sorrier,” Otto told her.

  “I took them to see Jones, but he wouldn’t help them,” she told him, just as Jones had told her to. “They must have bought a map from someone in the village, though, because last I saw them, they were heading toward Port Parwati.”

  “Molly, don’t,” Billy hissed. Of course, he didn’t know the truth—that Ken and Savannah had gone north instead. It was good. It added a certain realistic edge to her story.

  She looked at Billy. “I’m not going to let him shoot you for some strangers!” She turned back to Otto. “Their plan was to travel parallel to the mule trail—near it but not on it.”

  There was a flicker of something—recognition of a realistic-sounding plan, please God?—in Otto’s eyes. But he cocked the gun as if he were going to shoot Billy anyway.

  “Please,” Molly said, talking even faster. “Please don’t. I know where the money is. They hid it up at Jones’s camp. Don’t kill him and I’ll take you to it.”

  Otto nodded. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  Savannah was kept on the
opposite side of the helicopter from Ken, but she watched him as they lifted into the air.

  Be ready for anything.

  Please God, don’t let him take any unnecessary chances. His nose was swollen and his shirt was covered with blood, but when he met her eyes, he smiled.

  She wanted to cry.

  I love you a ten. She couldn’t quite believe she’d actually gotten up the nerve to tell him, but she was glad she had. Now if something happened—to either of them—at least she would know that he knew.

  The sound of the helicopter’s blades made her heart beat much too quickly. Or maybe it was the way Kenny was looking at her. He was thinking about sex. She could see it in his eyes, in the little smile that was playing about the corners of his mouth. They were sitting here, surrounded by men who would kill them without batting an eye, and he was thinking about . . .

  Not sex. Making love. About the way he’d kissed her and touched her and filled her so exquisitely last night. About the way he’d made her laugh one minute and then gasp with pleasure the next. About the way he’d breathed her name as if she were all he’d ever want or need.

  Savannah looked into Ken’s eyes and smiled, too.

  It sure beat worrying about what was to come.

  Jones’s Cessna was gone.

  Molly didn’t know whether to feel worried or relieved as she dug through the dirt, searching for the attaché case.

  That engine part must have come. Jones had probably done the repairs first thing this morning, and headed out to take care of business.

  He probably had quite a lot he needed to catch up with, since he’d been without transportation for so many days in a row.

  Her fingers hit the metal of the case, and her relief was nearly overwhelming. It wasn’t until she held proof that her suspicions were wrong that she even realized she’d had suspicions in the first place. Jones hadn’t taken the money and run.

  The guards dragged both her and the case back to Otto, who was waiting with Billy on the runway, in the shade of his helicopter.

  Billy looked considerably relieved, since Otto had made it more than clear that he’d be dead if the money wasn’t there.

  Otto himself opened the case. He didn’t finesse the lock the way Jones had. He just broke it open.

  And threw the case onto the ground in disgust. Empty.

  “No!” Molly said. “Oh, God!”

  Then everything started happening too fast.

  Otto simply nodded to his men, who dragged Billy away from the helicopter. He raised his gun and—

  “Wait,” Molly sobbed, catching his arm and pulling it down. “Please! This is my mistake! The money was here, I swear. If you kill anyone, it should be me, not Billy!”

  Fear and anger and outrage made her mouth taste bitter. She’d been wrong about Jones—so terribly wrong. Otto hit her in the face with his gun, and she went down, but the pain was nothing compared to the anguish in her heart.

  “Please,” she begged, clutching at Otto’s leg as he lifted the gun and aimed once again between Billy’s eyes.

  But Billy was fighting, and when Otto fired, he was hit in the shoulder, not the head.

  It pushed him back and down. Molly screamed and Otto swore.

  The men who had been holding Billy had let go and ducked when Otto fired, and now Billy pushed himself back, skittering on his rear end as he held his bleeding shoulder.

  Otto moved toward him, dragging Molly, who was clinging to his leg. He aimed again, intending to finish Billy off.

  Molly was sure she was going to throw up, but when she opened her mouth, “Grady Morant!” came out.

  It was as if she’d uttered the magic words.

  Otto turned away from Billy and looked down at her. “What did you say?” She’d gotten the attention of his men, as well.

  “Don’t shoot him, and I’ll tell you how to find Grady Morant.” Her voice shook, but her eyes were suddenly dry as she did the one thing she’d swore to Jones she’d never do. “What he looks like these days, the kind of airplane he flies—a red Cessna. He’s going by the name Jones and he’s the one who took the money,” she told Otto and his men. “Grady Morant was right here, on this airfield as of yesterday afternoon.”

  They came up over a ridge, and then there was Jones’s airstrip.

  The Cessna was nowhere in sight, but—oh, fuck!—Otto Zdanowicz’s helo was sitting out there.

  And yet they were coming in for a landing. Weren’t Badaruddin and the Zdanowiczs mortal enemies? What the hell were they doing?

  Skinny was barking orders over the din, and Ken watched the soldiers assume what had to be battle positions at the open door of the helo. They weren’t going to land, they were going to blast the crap out of what was looking to be a very pretty sitting target.

  He dove across the helo to pull Savannah down, to shield her with his body as they attacked.

  Molly felt a slap and heat in her arm and she knew she’d been shot.

  It didn’t hurt. Not yet anyway, so she dragged Billy farther away from the attacking helicopter, toward the welcoming shadows of the jungle, away from the ragged sound of automatic weapons.

  It seemed impossible that she’d been hit only once.

  She saw Otto Zdanowicz fall, his chest riddled with blossoms of blood and she tugged Billy even harder. How could he be so heavy?

  “Molly, run,” Billy begged her. “You can make it without me!”

  “I’m not leaving you!”

  The attacking helicopter was twice the size of Otto’s. A great, huge war machine, it made another pass, and she threw herself on top of Billy as a line of bullets hit dangerously close and kicked up sharp little shards of concrete.

  Savannah was screaming.

  Ken didn’t blame her. She hadn’t been through BUD/S, hadn’t lived through countless training sessions, hadn’t ever experienced a battlezone up close and personal the way he had. He was a hardened warrior, and the sound of all those machine guns and automatic weapons going off was almost enough to make him want to scream.

  He put his mouth up close to her ear. “Savannah. Listen to me. Listen to me. Listen to me.” He just kept saying it until she quieted down. “Are you listening?”

  She nodded. Put her mouth up close to his ear. “Kenny, I don’t want to die. Not now that I’ve finally found you.”

  “I’m not going to let you die,” he told her, and a bullet from one of the Zdanowicz gang’s guns hit the bulkhead right above their heads.

  She squeaked and he tried to make them an even smaller target. “Get ready to run, okay?”

  She nodded again.

  “As soon as we touch down, most of these guys are going to exit the helo. If we’re ready there might be an opportunity in the chaos to make a run for the jungle. Are you with me?”

  She nodded.

  “Take the shortest path. Do you understand?”

  Another nod.

  “Wait for me to say go.”

  The helo made a tight turn, and Savannah clung to him as if for dear life.

  All of Zdanowicz’s men were dead. Or if they weren’t, at least they’d stopped shooting. Molly saw one of them waving a handkerchief—a white flag, and she searched her pockets for something to wave, too, finally settling on holding her hands in the air in the international gesture of surrender.

  “I’m so sorry,” she told Billy. “This is all my fault.”

  “Yeah,” he said, teeth clenched against the pain. “You’re definitely responsible for all the gang warfare in Indonesia.”

  The helicopter landed, and uniformed men rushed out, efficiently making sure Zdanowicz’s men were dead or disarmed.

  The one with the white flag was talking, very earnestly, first to a soldier, and then to a very angular man who stepped down from the enormous chopper.

  The flag waver talked and talked, and then pointed. Directly at her.

  Four soldiers ran across the runway toward her and Billy, guns held at ready.

  “Put your
hands in the air,” Molly said. “Show them you’re not armed.”

  Billy’s hands were garishly bright with blood as he held them up.

  The soldiers grabbed them both, hauling them to their feet.

  “Be careful,” Molly said and then said again, in the two major local dialects. “He’s wounded.”