by Dale Mayer
“Time to change vehicles.”
Gavin shrugged.
“Maybe a double-cab truck this time, enough to handle six of us?”
Gavin nodded. “I’ll see what I can find in the next few minutes.”
Luckily, ten minutes later they were in their new wheels and back on the road.
“One more town to go.” Lennox’s phone buzzed again, with the one-word text, Close?
Not close enough, he typed. We’re coming into the third town.
Got it. And the chat box disappeared. Lennox pocketed his phone and said, “They still haven’t got a final location.”
“How big is the area?”
“Last seen in a parcel about twenty square miles,” he said. “Lots of farms, old homesteads,” he said. “They could be anywhere.”
“Twenty isn’t bad though,” Gavin said. “We’ve hunted with way less information and a much larger area.”
“Isn’t that the truth?” Lennox admitted. He and Gavin had done many missions together when they’d both been Navy SEALs. And both had come to the end of the road where they knew it was time for a change.
Lennox had never in his wildest days imagined even more black ops though. And this one was different in so many ways.
Chapter 5
Helena groaned and shifted her position again. Part of the problem was the lack of a floor. The cage rested on the hard-packed dirt. Although it could be worse if there had been bars on the ground in this cage too. That would never be comfortable. How was the cage was secured to the ground? A quick check at the four corners and on both sides of the gate confirmed her fears. Steel rods inserted at each point were probably buried at least six feet into the ground. So no lifting up one side of this cage, she thought. Even if it could work, with twelve-foot-long sides, she’d have to get help from Sasha and John too, which was not likely.
Doubly frustrated now, she tried kicking up some of the earth to make a little bit of a pillow, but that didn’t help. She rolled over on her back again and stared up at the ceiling. This building was a sizeable machine shop, one of probably a thousand of them around the countryside. How could anybody find them in this nightmare? But she knew better than to doubt Lennox.
What had Lennox done? Or rather, what did this guy think Lennox had done? The guy had an obvious tell; he brushed his scarred neck whenever he had talked about Lennox. But she knew, if it had been a mission that had gone bad, well, it would have been gone bad for Lennox too. Right? And he had no burn scars that she had ever seen. And Carolina would have mentioned that, if he had had some serious injuries. Just because this guy had been burned in some event from the past, that didn’t mean that Lennox was to blame for this guy getting hurt. … That was a pretty strong causal accusation.
Lennox wasn’t the kind of man to do shit like that without a good reason. And what did betrayal mean to this burn victim? If it meant that this guy was caught stealing, and then Lennox turned him over to the authorities? Well, so be it. Because, in that case, hell yeah, Lennox would do no less. But then she would as well. That’s the way she rolled—straight up, straight forward. Everybody else and their little side trips into the gray areas of life weren’t for her.
That’s why Helena did well at her career. They went in, they did the job, and they got out. Unfortunately, it also reminded her that there was an awful lot of gray in life and it just brought all that shitty marriage stuff back again.
She glanced down at Carolina, seeing her eyes closed and her deep breathing. Helena shouldn’t be worried about her friend, but there was something about her five-foot petite stature that made everybody look at Carolina as if she were a child. But Carolina had a steel core and a heart of gold.
Now Helena wasn’t much taller at five-four, but those extra four inches seemed to make a lot of difference. In many ways, they wore the same clothes. Helena was a little bustier and of course a little longer, but that length was more in her legs, whereas Carolina had a longer torso. They often played around with each other’s tops and sweaters and even some of their dresses and skirts, borrowing them when needed. Wouldn’t it be nice if they were doing that right now? It sure beat sitting here as a prisoner.
Helena would need the bathroom again. She winced and shifted her position to see if that would ease her bladder. But she was already lying flat. When she stood, it would get even worse. She sighed and then called out softly, hoping to not disturb the others. “What about a bathroom trip?”
A gunman immediately stepped in from the open door to the building, confirming her suspicion that they weren’t ever alone. He nodded and asked, “Just you?”
“Yes,” she said, gently getting to her feet. “The others are asleep.”
“You can’t sleep?”
She shrugged irritably. “No, I’m finding the ground a little too hard for my old bones.”
He made a scoffing sound. But, in truth, she’d taken enough blows during her lovely abusive marriage that she found it hard to lie in certain positions now. Her guard led her to the bathroom. After relieving herself, she opened the door so he saw her; she turned on the water and washed her face and hands, then bent her head down and took a long drink.
“Are you out of water?”
She nodded. “Yes, the bottles all disappeared with the food.”
“Of course, with potatoes and bread, you need water for those.” He stepped aside, pointed behind him at a bucketful of ice water and bottles nearby, and said, “Grab another bottle.”
She hesitated and asked, “May I take one for each of us?”
He nodded.
Helena pulled out four bottles from the bucket sitting there, and she walked back to the gate of their cage. The gunman unlocked it, let her in, and then locked it back up again. She sat down with the water, opened one, and had a long drink.
Sasha opened her eyes, saw the water, and asked, “Is there more?”
Helena tossed her a bottle and said, “One for each of us.” She threw another one and said, “Give that one to John when he wakes up.”
Carolina rolled over, groaned, and said, “Man, why aren’t we in a five-star hotel?”
“We would be,” Sasha said, in a hard voice, “if it wasn’t for you.”
“That’ll hardly help the situation,” Helena said, her voice in a carefully neutral tone. Sasha wasn’t making friends with her accusations. “None of us knew this would happen. It could just as easily have been somebody you knew.”
Sasha shrugged, took a drink, and then laid back down again. “But I don’t know anybody who would be in a situation like this.”
“Well, now you do,” Helena snapped.
Sasha looked at her and frowned.
“You’re already in a situation like this,” Helena added, “so now everybody in your sphere knows somebody who’s been in situations like this.”
At that, Sasha shot her a disgusted look, closed her eyes, and rolled over.
Carolina laughed. “You don’t need to defend me. You know that, right?” she asked.
“Maybe not,” Helena said, “but nobody needs to be blaming anyone right now.”
“But it makes people feel better,” Carolina said.
Her best friend had taken a whole pile of psychology courses after her divorce to try to understand not only her husband’s behavior—which both Carolina and Helena did more or less understand—but about Carolina’s lack of responses, why she had taken the abuse. The two best friends had discussed that issue many, many times. This wasn’t the time for another discussion now, but at least her education gave Carolina a chance to understand why Sasha was acting the way she was.
For Helena, she didn’t give a shit; she just wanted Sasha to stop all these unproductive verbal attacks.
Carolina and Helena heard a commotion outside the building, and then two gunmen stepped inside, one of them the scarred man from before. They glared at the four prisoners, walked around their cage, checked to make sure that no loose bars were found and that nobody had come ins
ide. “Did you see anybody?” the scarred man snapped at her in English.
Helena answered, “No, I haven’t seen anybody but the one guard and you.”
The scarred man glared at her, as if searching for the truth, then gave her a nod. “Better not. If you aid in your escape,” he said, “we’ll take that as a mark against you, and we will shoot you the next time.”
She took a long, slow breath, trying to reach for some control, so she didn’t snap at him. “We’re trying to be cooperative,” she said calmly.
“No point in trying,” he said. “We have the upper hand. You are our prisoner, so you’ll do what you are told.”
She didn’t say anything, just stared at him, her gaze flat.
He snickered. “You don’t like that, do you?”
“I doubt anybody does,” she said, once again reaching for some serene calmness as she searched for anything that might get them released. “Lennox should be here soon, I gather?”
“I hope so,” he said. “I don’t plan on feeding you for too long.”
She winced at that. “We do eat a fair bit, don’t we?”
“You do,” he said, “but that’s all right. We’re okay for a few days. After that, if he’s still not here, we’ll shoot you.” And he turned and walked out.
Beside her, Carolina whispered, “Shoot us?”
“Yeah, but whether that was a scare tactic or not, I’m not sure,” Helena said. She looked over to see tears in Sasha’s eyes. “Take heart,” she said. “It won’t get that bad.” Sasha stared at her. Helena saw the vulnerability on the woman’s face.
“I don’t know this Lennox guy,” Sasha said. “I don’t even know for sure that he’s coming.”
“Well, we do know him,” Helena said, nodding toward Carolina. “And he is coming. The problem is, these guys know it too, and they’re waiting for him.”
Sasha nodded, her long hair drifting in the dirt, but she didn’t seem to care. It wasn’t a high priority at the moment. “Is he the kind of person to make it past those armed guards out there?”
“Absolutely,” Helena said, thinking about Lennox. “If anybody can help us, he can.”
“I hope you’re right,” Sasha said, “because we won’t survive if he doesn’t.” And she rolled over, away from the two women, and ignored them.
Carolina nodded beside her. “She’s right. Our kidnappers don’t have the tolerance to wait for a few days. If this isn’t done with by tomorrow, you know what’ll happen.”
“Maybe not,” she said.
“Count on it,” Carolina whispered. “These guys don’t have any intention of playing around. If I’m not a big-enough lure to bring in Lennox, they won’t waste their time and resources with guarding and feeding prisoners. They’ll shoot us one by one until we’re all dead.”
Helena had to agree, but she didn’t want to even talk about it.
Still, the commotion got her hopes up that Lennox had arrived. But now, since no gunfire had immediately erupted or no bombs went off or no truck on fire broke through a weak spot in the walls of this shop—what she considered Lennox’s style in her mind—she decided it was not Lennox-related at all. Probably some wildlife in the area. Or just jumpy gunmen outside, seeing every moving shadow as a two-legged threat.
She had to trust that Lennox was coming. She knew his relationship with his sister was something that Lennox would bend over backward to save. What Helena didn’t know was whether anybody would get hurt in the process. There were four prisoners. And any number of armed guards. Plus Lennox wasn’t stupid enough to come in here unarmed. With all that imagined firepower, Helena knew it would be just too damn easy for one of them to get shot accidentally. The last thing she needed was to have anyone here die because of their own rescue attempt.
“We need intel,” Lennox snapped into the phone.
“I know,” Keane said. “We’re still looking.”
“They couldn’t have completely disappeared off the face of the earth.”
“No. They didn’t. We found signs that the vehicle went toward a farmhouse, then drove across the neighboring land. But some black zone is out there. Yet we picked up the truck on the other side, and it appears to still have all the same people in it.”
“Anything like that’s an anomaly,” Lennox said. “Tell me where it disappeared in the first place.”
“I’ll send you the GPS coordinates,” Keane said. “Remember though. It isn’t necessarily the final destination.”
“Maybe not, but we’ll start there, and, while we do, you’ll keep the Mavericks working hard to find out exactly where they’ve ended up.”
“Yes.” And they hung up.
Lennox explained what had happened to Gavin.
“That’s odd. I wonder if a big repeating station is here or if some power plant is sending off weird energy that’s causing a glitch in the satellite feeds.”
“Possibly. Let’s take a drive out there and see.” The GPS coordinates were not very far up ahead. When they took the left-hand turn, they saw other tracks ahead of them. “Well, somebody’s been through here recently.”
“Exactly. But it’s anyone’s guess who.”
When they got to the spot, the dot on Lennox’s phone buzzed and beeped. “Okay, my phone doesn’t like this location at all.”
“No, but as you can see,”—Gavin pointed out a big transformer station off to the side—“we never really understand the effects from these big power plants,” Gavin said, “but everybody knows there’s a hole in some areas because of them.”
“And having this here means what though?” Lennox studied the area, realized the tracks continued, and said, “We might as well keep driving and see if anything suspicious is here.”
“Alternatively,” Gavin said, pointing to a hill, “we can go up there and take a look at the bigger picture and see if we can see anything of interest below us.”
“Let’s do that first, then follow the tracks if need be,” Lennox said. A few minutes later they crested the top of the hill, parked, and hopped out with binoculars to take a look around. “Lots of small farms, little villages dotting the countryside,” Lennox said. “I’m not seeing anything indicative of our missing people.”
“No, I’m not either. I think we’re too far away.”
“Where do the tracks go from here?”
Gavin pointed them out. “They’re coming around this hill and going down again. A road of sorts cuts through there. I think the power plant skewed the videos.”
Lennox nodded. “Enough buildings and outbuildings are along here for any number of prisoners to be kept.” He motioned to the barns, machine sheds, garages, even small houses, and what looked like a couple warehouses. “We’re not short on places to search, and we’re wasting time, so we need to make sure that we narrow it down as much as we can.” Lennox assessed the area in front of them and said, “Probably got a good ten-mile area here. That’ll take time to search on foot.”
“True enough but we can hit almost every one of those buildings within the next couple hours.”
“Maybe, but we should have a shorter time frame than that. Once we’re moving around and checking out places, we’re not foolish enough to think we won’t be seen, not considering how many places we have to hit. The kidnappers will get word, and they’ll be waiting for us.”
“Hell,” Gavin said, “they’re already waiting for us now.”
Lennox nodded. “I know it,” he said. “And, of course, that’s what this is all about. It’s a trap.”
“Which is why we have to be smart,” Gavin said. “I get that you want to go tearing in there after your sister. But it’s you who they want.”
“Me they can have,” Lennox said, his voice icy hard. “But they don’t dare touch my sister.”
Gavin smacked him lightly on the shoulder. “We’ll find her,” he said. “You know that.”
And Lennox nodded. He knew that. But the ultimate question remained. Would they get there before these assholes h
urt her or even killed her? It depended on whether they thought she was a sound bargaining chip because, if Lennox got there and found her dead, he’d make sure that not one of them walked again. Hell, he’d be happy if not one of them breathed again. But he’d have to see just what went down first. If the kidnappers fought, they gave him a perfect excuse to take them out. And, if he saw anybody in any way involved in the kidnapping, well, that was good enough for Lennox to retaliate in kind.
The two men made their way back to the truck and drove down the hill to the small village. Just as they reached the first property with a massive farm, a barn, and a tractor machine shed, Lennox saw half a dozen people moving big machinery around and stacking up hay inside the barn. “This doesn’t look like a good option.”
“Too noisy, too many people, no visible guns,” Gavin agreed. His phone buzzed at that point. He checked out the message. “Keep going one mile. You should come upon a right turn. The Mavericks lost sight of them there.”
“Why?”
“A blink in the satellites as they connect to the next one, and it didn’t catch that signal. Be careful.” Very quickly they hit the spot. They got out, walked on foot, studying the area. “Well, here’s fresh tracks,” Gavin noted. “I suggest we drive ahead to that pullout and the couple little tourist signs for that river, and we head back on foot.”
Lennox didn’t want anybody to have any idea they were coming. But, of course, everybody was waiting for them. Parking the vehicle, they quickly disappeared into the tall grass and bushes. They came along the neighbor’s side, keeping an eye on the property in question as well as the one beside it. By the time they made it to the far side of the properties, Lennox saw multiple buildings, but there was no sign of anyone. He frowned, hunkered down into the brush, made himself a small area where he could lay down and use his binoculars, and peered through them. “I’ll scan the east side. You take the west.”
“Got it,” Gavin said as he backed up to Lennox, facing the opposite direction and protecting his partner as well.
“People,” Lennox whispered.
