by Trevor Scott
“Are you just trying to get closer to me?” Elisa asked him.
Jake’s ears were ringing now, so he guessed hers would be as well. One of the men screamed in pain out in the corridor. “Maybe a little,” he said. “Hey, tell them if they leave now we’ll let them live.”
“Are you trying to taunt them?”
“It might work. They have two down. I’m guessing they’re just guns for hire. Tell them there’s no profit from dying.”
She did what he said, her voice echoing off the limestone walls.
Jake had a feeling the only thing these guys would object to is being told what to do by a woman.
The response was easy for Jake to interpret. They called her a fucking bitch, and they’d rape her in every hole just before they killed her.
“Now that was uncalled for,” Jake said aloud in English. He turned on the light on his watch and decided they needed to make a move or the Greeks would be too far ahead of them, even though he had a feeling he knew where they would take Sara. “Listen,” he whispered to Elisa, “I’ve gotta do something on my own here. It’s the only play we have here.”
“No. We can wait them out,” she pled.
“They’ve got us trapped without lights, without water, without food. They could hold us off with just one guy for days, changing the sentry every four hours. That’s what I would do. Now I’m guessing they either killed the man who let us in here or they have some pull with him to keep his mouth shut. Maybe they just threatened his family. That’s the Mafia way in Sicily, as I’m sure you know. But we have one advantage. If we can’t see, then they can’t see. I’ve been down that corridor and know what it looks like.” This was only partially true. Just before the lights went out, he remembered that the corridor angled to the right up ahead. He explained his plan to her very carefully. It would require shooting discipline and patience.
She protested, “I don’t know, Jake. Is this the only way?”
“Yes. Check your watch.”
Elisa turned on the light on her watch.
“Exactly two minutes from right now.”
Jake got to his feet and quietly slipped out into the dark corridor, moving to the far left edge and barely touching the wall with his left hand. Then he moved forward as if he was back in the mountains of Montana trying to sneak up on a bull elk through the noisy aspens. But this was much easier, since the ground was soft stone and wet sand. He tried to tick off the seconds in his mind and then raised his gun as the two minutes got closer.
Suddenly the sound of gunfire behind him was followed by the flashes from Elisa’s barrel. Then two flashes came from the Italians ahead and Jake started running and shooting simultaneously at those figures.
More shots from Elisa.
Jake was now upon them and his gun stuck back, out of bullets. He dove at the first man, hitting him right across his chest and knocking him back against the wall and losing his gun at the same time. Rolling to his side, the two of them struggled for the Italian’s gun. Jake smashed the man with his elbow into his jaw.
As Jake heard the other Italian yelling a few feet away, he rolled the man onto him just as the bullets flew from the man’s gun.
Then from closer behind him, Elisa shot twice and the man dropped a few feet away.
She got to Jake and said, “Are you all right?” Then she turned on her pen light and scanned the corridor. Three men lay variously about the dirt floor, their guns next to their bodies.
Shoving the dead man off of him, Jake said, “Collect their guns and extra magazines. I think we might need them.” He tried to get to his feet but felt a sharp pain in his stomach at the right side, buckling him back to his knees.
“I can’t believe we just had a gun fight with four men from the Mafia and came out without a scratch,” Elisa said as she got their guns. She turned the light back on Jake and gasped when she saw him on his knees. Rushing to him she said, “Jake, are you hit?”
He held his hand over the wet spot on his right side and said, “I think so. But the bullet was slowed by the other man’s body. I don’t know if the bullet went through and through. Can you check my back?”
Elisa shone her light on him and let out a quiet yelp. “Yes, you’re bleeding there also.” She put her hand onto the exit wound. “We have to get you to the hospital.”
“No, no, no. There was a first aid kit in the Fiat trunk. I saw it when we put our bags back there. Just patch me up.”
“You need a doctor,” she said. “The bleeding won’t stop.”
“Listen, you saw the scars on my body last night,” he reasoned. “I know a bad shot and a good shot. This one isn’t that bad. It missed all major organs, including my kidney. It’s just all muscle tissue there.”
“And blood vessels.”
“Hey, I’m doing much better than those four. Now help me up. We’ve gotta get going if we plan on getting Sara back.”
Exasperated, Elisa did as Jake said, helping him up and out to the entrance. When they got there, the weather had changed from a calm, warm morning, to a torrential downpour. Somehow Jake expected to find a back-up crew of Mafia waiting for them there. But the small parking lot outside the old church contained only three cars, the one Jake had taken the night before, the one the Italians had escaped in after the shooting at the pension, and he assumed the third car was from the other two Italians.
Since they had not gotten the keys from the dead men, they would have to take the Fiat. Elisa put Jake into the back seat of the car and got the first aid kit from the trunk. In short order she had both sides of him patched up, first using butterfly-strips and glue, and covering that with four-inch trauma bandages. Then to keep both patches from falling off, she ran gauze and tape around Jake’s stomach a number of times. She took the rest of the spare bandages and shoved them into her bag.
“So,” Jake said, getting out of the car into the rain. “I guess you should drive.”
She laughed as she opened the front door. “I think so. But to where?”
Jake found his way around to the front passenger side and sat down with some discomfort. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Just get us out of the city for now. My blood will be all over the place. I hate leaving my DNA everywhere, so we’ll have to get rid of this car eventually.”
“Where would they take Sara?” she said desperately.
“Directly to Petros Caras. Find him and we find Sara. Let’s go.”
Elisa cranked over the car and found the fastest way out of the city of Siracusa, Jake hoping like hell the Polizia had pulled back their road blocks.
20
Houston, Texas
Senator James Halsey had just gotten back to his home state on a private jet and was picked up at Hobby Airport by his close friend, lawyer and advisor, Brock Winthrop. They were driving now in a black Ford Expedition from the airport to the hospital where Jim’s father was taking a turn for the worse, the lawyer behind the wheel.
“Have you been in to see him?” Jim asked his friend.
Brock sighed. “Yes, I have. And I’ve never seen such a change in so short a time. He seemed almost like his old self before leaving DC. Nearly jubilant.”
Jim knew what was going on. “He was going home, Brock. Putting up a good front so we’d let him get back to Texas. Buck Halsey always said he wouldn’t be caught dead anywhere but his beloved home state. Literally.” Something else was bothering his old friend and confidant. “What’s up?”
Shaking his head, Brock said, “Your father is dying.”
“I know that much. Quit being our lawyer for a minute and tell me what’s really bothering you.”
Reluctantly, Brock said, “He had me change his will before we left DC.”
Jim had a feeling that was happening. And it didn’t matter one way or another to him. “How does that bother you?”
The lawyer shifted in his chair.
“Come on, Brock. Unless my father completely cut me out, how does this matter?”
“Well,
it’s not that bad. But he did split the assets fifty/fifty between you and your sister.”
“Good. It’s not like college professors make that much money. I’m sure she could use it.” Whether she could or not, his sister Sara had never been concerned with money. Her only interests were in history and mathematics. That hadn’t changed since their youth.
Nearly simultaneously both of their phones went off, indicating incoming text messages. Jim looked at Brock and shrugged. Then he checked his phone. It was a text from Jake Adams.
“Check your phone,” Jim said.
Brock looked at his phone and his expression changed from concern to grave in seconds. “My God! He had her and now he doesn’t have her.”
“Let me call him,” Jim said. He punched in the number for Jake Adams and waited.
Finally the phone clicked on the other end and a man said, “Yeah.”
“Jake? This is Jim Halsey.”
“I know who it is,” Jake said. “I never forget a face or voice.”
“What’s going on?” the senator asked.
“Can you put it on speaker?” Brock asked.
Jim fiddled with his phone until it went to speaker.
“Who is that with you, senator?” Jake asked.
“It’s Brock Winthrop. You’re on speaker phone.”
“Great. Why not just broadcast this on FOX News.”
The senator ignored the slight and said, “Listen, we’re in Texas. My father is dying and we need to get Sara home before he dies.”
“I’m sorry about that, senator, but we’ve got a bit of a problem here in Italy. Armed men came and took her from us. There was a shoot out, but Sara, I believe, is all right.”
“What,” Brock chimed in. “She was kidnapped. How is she all right?”
Jim put his hand on his friend’s arm to settle him down. “We’re not questioning your competence,” Jim assured Jake.
“I sure as hell hope not,” Jake said. “Because I took a damn bullet in the gut, and we had to shoot four Sicilian Mafia men.”
“My God,” Jim said. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, the bullet went right through my external oblique muscle, missing the ribs and the pelvis.”
“Did you say Sicilian Mafia? I thought the Greeks were after Sara.”
“They were here also. They took Sara and left the others to kill me and my friend here.”
“I’m sorry. Is your friend all right?”
“Yeah, senator, she’s fine. But you know what the Sicilians do to someone who kills their own?” Jake hesitated. “They hunt you down like a dog until they find you. Then if you’re lucky they just kill you. If you aren’t lucky, they keep you alive for awhile to make your last hours on earth a living hell.” He gave out a little wince.
“You all right?”
“Yeah, I twisted and it hurt a little. You ever been shot senator?”
“No, can’t say I have.”
“It’s not as painful as getting kicked in the nuts, but the pain lasts longer. I gotta go. Losing cell service.”
“Wait. Where do you think the Greeks took Sara?”
Hesitation. “I’d rather not say. But I have a feeling. I’ll let you know when I get her back.”
The line went blank.
Brock Winthrop turned the vehicle from the frontage road into the private hospital parking lot and pulled up to a VIP parking spot. “That man is the most arrogant man I’ve ever met.”
The senator laughed. “I guess you haven’t spent that much time on Capitol Hill.” He knew this wasn’t really true.
“You know what I mean. The man is a gunslinger.”
“Exactly. And that’s precisely who I want on my side under these circumstances.”
“Do you really think he knows where to find Sara?”
“If he says he knows, I’ve gotta believe him. You’ve seen the man’s credentials. I mean, come on. If he can take down an entire Kurdish terrorist group, he can surely handle a Greek kidnapping. Now, let’s go see if Buck Halsey is upstairs smoking a cigar.”
Jim was putting up a good front, but deep down his concern for his sister was coursing through every corpuscle in his body. Soon she would be all he had on this earth. Besides his wife, of course.
●
The Navy SH-60 Seahawk cruised over the Mediterranean Sea south of the island of Sicily at 60 knots, the bank of clouds ahead becoming more ominous with each turn of the rotors. Lieutenant Max Stevens piped through a medley of Rascal Flatts tunes through the headset, and Toni was just about ready to have him switch to something a little more edgy. She liked the country music group, but too much of a good thing could get monotonous.
“You all right, Toni?” the pilot asked as the helo shook with the wind. They looked to be heading right into a huge thunderstorm.
“Are you sure we can make it through that?” she asked.
“No problemo,” Max said. “Before I joined the Navy, I used to fly roughnecks to oil rigs in the Gulf. Now those were some crazy times.”
Toni glanced behind her into the troop transport area of the Seahawk and noticed the two sailors appeared to be sleeping through the turbulence, their submachine guns cradled over their laps.
“How much farther?” Toni asked the pilot.
“Just ahead.” He aimed the nose down and they broke free from some cloud cover.
She finally saw the large yacht ahead. Jesus, it looked as big as a coast guard cutter. Bigger, perhaps. The yacht rocked in the heavy seas but seemed to be having no problem cutting the waves.
“We can’t land on that, Toni,” Max said. “You’ll have to go down in a harness. You ever do that before.”
She nodded her head. “Unfortunately.”
“Good. Then head back and the guys will strap you in.”
Toni got up to go and tapped the pilot on the shoulder. “Thanks for the ride, Max.”
“Any time. But next time schedule a little better weather.”
Moving into the back, the two sailors had heard the pilot and were preparing the harness. She stepped into it and they tightened it all around her. Then they clicked the harness to the cable and gave her a thumbs up. She smiled at them.
One of the sailors said, “When you hit the deck, make sure you bend your legs and release the cable immediately. Otherwise with the pitching deck and our helo popping up and down in the wind, you could break a leg.”
“Understand,” Toni said. This wasn’t her first time dropping down from a helo, but it was the first time under these conditions to a pitching deck.
Seconds later and she was on her way over the side, the cable reeling down and the wind whipping her body around in circles. Simultaneously the Seahawk descended until it reached a respectable distance above the yacht, its massive rotors keeping pace with the boat. She hoped like hell her Agency had properly coordinated her visit. Otherwise who knew what kind of reception she would get.
As she got closer to the helo pad in the aft of the yacht, her goggles completely blurry with rain and fog, she kept her right hand at the release clip ready to hit the deck.
Then for some reason she jerked upward and then quickly downward, bouncing her off the deck, her arms instinctively flaying out to grasp anything. Big mistake. Pain shot through her right leg and to her left shoulder, which had taken the majority of the crash.
Laying on the deck, she looked up and saw the Seahawk closing in on her. If she didn’t move it might crash into her. But instead she clicked out of the cable and shoved both arms up into the air, her thumbs giving the signal she was free.
With that, the pilot twisted his aircraft to the north and pulled up toward the sky, the cable whipping behind it like a long tail.
Toni immediately felt the swaying of the yacht in the heavy seas, the wind and rain pelting her into submission. Within seconds two men were at either side of her helping her to her feet. But she couldn’t place any weight onto her right leg. Her ankle was shot. But the men practically carried her toward a d
oor, their progress hampered by the rocking deck.
Inside, the atmosphere changed from the drastic to the dramatically opulent. Leather benches lined one wall and matching plush white leather chairs sat across from those. At the far end was a bar, which seemed to be locked down now so the bottles wouldn’t go flying around.
She sat onto a bench and removed her helmet, goggles and then slipped out of the nylon harness. Then she removed her small backpack, and set it on the bench next to her.
An older man appeared from another room and she recognized Petros Caras from his Agency file. “That was quite a dramatic entrance,” he said, with only a slight British accent.
Toni rubbed her ankle lightly, but she could barely touch it without extreme pain. This wasn’t good. “I’m afraid I’ve broken my ankle.”
“I’m so sorry Miss Contardo,” the Greek said.
“Toni, please.”
“Toni. I don’t have a doctor aboard, but I do have a man who was a medic in the Greek army. He can at least put that ankle in a walking cast.”
She nodded. “That would be great.”
Petros Caras turned to his two men and said something to them in Greek. Then he switched back to Toni. “They will take you to a compartment and I’ll have our man come to you with his medical equipment. Once he’s done, they’ll bring you to me and we can take care of our business.”
One of the men went to pick up her backpack and Toni grasped it before he could. She slung it over her shoulder and took the man’s arm to help her up. “Thanks,” she said.
“These men don’t speak English,” the Greek billionaire said. “Our medic speaks only a little English.”
She nodded and the two men helped her to her room. When they set her onto the bed, she glanced around the compartment, which looked like a high-end room on a cruise ship.
Once the men were gone, she opened her backpack and found her satellite phone. She tried to turn it on, but it wouldn’t fire up. Then she shook the phone and heard something rattling around inside. Great. That’s what had broken her fall when she smashed the deck against her shoulder. She still had her cell phone, but, as she suspected, there was no service. Then she found both of her guns and made sure they were still all right. No problem. She shoved the guns back into the pack when she heard a slight knock on her door.
