by JT Sawyer
She dodged the first blow but caught the second attempt in her left arm, lowering it in time to prevent her ribs from being smashed. Dev knew she couldn’t afford another blow like that and her arm struggled to parry the next swipe. As the man swung, she angled off to her right and drove her open palm into his chin, shoving it upward; then she stomp-kicked him in the chest, sending him into the door frame, the impact forcing him to drop the poker. His head was contorted from the punishing palm strike but he grit his teeth and emitted a guttural shout.
Jesus, he’s like a robot. As he rushed forward, Dev reached for a steel rifle magazine on the table and swung it at his head, connecting with his left temple. She heard something crack and was sure it wasn’t the magazine. The man paused as a red fissure of bone was exposed near his eye socket. She struck him again as he staggered towards her.
“Tell me what you’ve done with Mitch,” she yelled, hitting him again in the skull.
He managed to let out a crooked smile. “He’s gone. You’ll never find any of them again.” His English had a slight accent. The man tried to punch her but his coordination had faded and he tottered sideways.
On the fourth strike, Dev powered everything she had into her swing. The man fell to the side, his bloody head impacting the woodstove in the corner. The bones in his battered skull rippled like a tsunami had rolled across his forehead. He let out a dull gasp then collapsed on the wooden floor.
The adrenaline surging through Dev’s veins was more overpowering than she could ever remember feeling. She whipped the magazine at the wall and then hissed out a deep breath, slamming her fist on the table. Dev knelt down and checked his pulse, hoping there was some sign of life, but he was gone. She needed more information but the man just wouldn’t stop coming. She had responded according to her training but now the opportunity to interrogate him had passed.
Dev crouched lower and withdrew the pistol from behind the woodstove. She slid out the magazine to check the round count then re-inserted it and stood up. Walking over to the table, she studied the items that were now jumbled all over the surface. There was an open laptop that revealed a series of what looked like six separate sets of GPS coordinates. The lat/long numbers were very similar to each other, indicating that each of the sets were located in close proximity to one another.
She scrolled down the screen and found six names associated with each group of coordinates. Mitch’s was at the bottom preceded by other names, only two of which she recognized from her discussion with Petra. The doctor and the warden, but who are the rest? What the hell is going on here? She thought back to the high-end satellite dish outside and then examined the weapons and magazines, which didn’t bear any serial numbers. She recalled Petra’s description of the former Stasi men who had arrived in Denver. A three-man snatch-and-grab team just like the kind covert abduction units use for securing high-value targets. Why here, though, at Mulhere’s house, and how are Mitch and these other people on the list tied up in all of this? Her mind reeled from the terror of the unknown and feeling so helpless apart from her company’s resources. Where was Mitch and was he still alive? She had briefed families of kidnap victims before but never thought she’d find herself being swallowed up within that nebulous world where your psyche is torn between hope and despair.
Beside the laptop was a topographic map of a narrow canyon. The southern section was highlighted with six “X” marks while an area many miles to the north held the words, “End Point.”
She dialed Petra, instructing him to see if he could locate the six GPS signals she was sending along with decoding the other encrypted files on the laptop. “There has to be a connection with everyone on this list and the arrival of the three former Stasi guys,” Dev said. “Mitch told me about his involvement in the case of Anton Kruger. This must somehow link back to his death—a revenge killing or some sort of retribution by his organized crime syndicate back in Europe—I don’t know.”
“Why wouldn’t they just discretely kill each person they were after then,” said Petra. “You know all too well how risky it is abducting people in public. This is a pretty elaborate operation.”
“Especially for just three guys to pull off—there might be other players involved who haven’t reared their heads yet.”
“I’ll keep digging away at the records and old photos to see what else I can turn up.”
“Copy that. I’m staying put here at Mulhere’s house until I can ‘pick up the trail,’ as Mitch would say.” She tried to take some comfort in the words and she could almost hear Mitch uttering the lines as if he were beside her. Instead she looked out the open door at the rain washing over the sloped surface of stone beside the guest house and felt alone. She hung up and stepped outside, standing under the eaves of the porch while the heavens unleashed a fury of thunder.
Dev typed in Ed Roth’s phone number, her finger hesitating for a moment as she contemplated the coming deluge of events that would unfold once the authorities were called to Mulhere’s place. She glanced over at the motorcycle, pondering her options. What if Mitch is already… She stopped herself in mid-thought then shifted back to a more positive outcome. He and the others had to be taken for a reason. Maybe I should wait and see what Petra can find—those coordinates could be nearby. As these theories ran through the ruffled landscape of her mind, she realized that outside support was going to be needed. To delay involvement would put Mitch at further risk as she tried to navigate the mystery of his whereabouts in a region she hardly knew.
She felt the chill of the cool air stab through her coat. “Mitch, where are you?” she whispered as her finger depressed the send button on her phone.
Chapter 8
Approaching the swinging figure suspended from the tree, Mitch’s eyes were focused upward and he nearly missed the tangled lump of arms and legs hidden in the knee-high vegetation on the ground. He jumped sideways to avoid crushing a slender hand then traced its form up to a dark-haired woman lying in a fetal position next to an older man who was starting to stir.
Mitch pried his eyes away from the startling sight and looked skyward at the now flopping figure of the bound man. The rope holding the man’s ankles was nearly unfurled and there wasn’t much time before he fell headfirst into the jagged rockpile.
Mitch yelled to his rear as Lisa and Brian arrived. “Two more in the grass here—help them out.”
He continued running forward, getting to the tree where the rope was secured on an angle. He noticed the same Vibram pattern from earlier in the loose soil at the base of the tree.
The tie-off point was twelve feet up and Mitch dropped his club and started climbing up the branches of the massive spruce tree, his hands getting coated in sticky sap.
“Cut me loose, dammit,” shouted the thrashing man, whose body was now twirling from his jerky motions. “Cut me the hell loose.”
“Stop moving, the rope around your ankles is coming apart.” Once Mitch had climbed high enough to reach the lashing on the tree, he stopped and glanced over at the writhing figure. “What’s your name?”
“My name? My name is Freddy Fucking Lawsuit to whomever put me here.”
The man didn’t listen and continued to wriggle. Mitch examined the rope at his end and saw it was wrapped one time around the trunk and secured with a new carabiner and an ascender which would make lowering the man easy. “Unless you want your brains spilled out like pudding on the rocks below, I recommend you stop moving.”
The man ceased struggling and canted his ashen-colored face at Mitch as the look of terror erased his façade of bravado.
Mitch had used such ascenders before and was grateful he wouldn’t have to muscle the rope in his hands while risking tearing up his skin. The device was olive-drab and resembled the exact type he had used in the military. He unclipped the carabiner and began feeding the rope through the ascender. The man began moving towards the ground, his head nearing the rocks.
“Brian, I need you to grab this guy and set him down,” yel
led Mitch.
The prison warden pulled himself away from the others and stumbled over the gnarly terrain, getting there just in time to cradle the bound man’s head as Mitch completed the descent.
Once the rope was untethered from around the man’s ankles by Brian, Mitch yanked the line down from the branches and removed the carabiner and ascender, dropping them onto the forest floor before climbing down from the tree.
“Welcome to earth, Freddy Fucking Lawsuit,” said Mitch as he walked past the terrified man, who was rubbing his sore ankles from the rope burn.
“It’s Nicholas, but we’ll discuss that soon enough.”
The rest of the group was huddled together as Lisa tried to calm the terrified woman, who was rubbing her glazed eyes in between shrill screams. Once she had calmed down enough to catch her breath, Mitch heard her identify herself as Julie. The other man was leaning against a tree with his head hung low like he was about to vomit. As Mitch walked up, he saw the guy’s face as he straightened up, his tawny-colored fishing vest barely clinging to the green button-up shirt underneath. Daryl Warner—holy shit!
Daryl worked as an intel guy with the Department of Justice in Denver. He had been the go-to guy on anything related to Anton Kruger and Eastern European crime syndicates operating in the western U.S. Mitch had only met Daryl once at the field briefing in Durango before he embarked on the manhunt for Kruger. Daryl was a sharp guy but lived in a cerebral world that rarely extended beyond his computer keyboard. First Barbara Mulhere, whose son was killed by Kruger then Lisa, who was in the ER when Kruger arrived after his car accident—I’m pretty sure she’s the one. Mitch looked around at the other terror-stricken faces in the group. Then there’s Brian, who worked at the same prison Kruger was held at. Now, Daryl is a part of this somehow. Shit, this is giving me a headache on top of the one I already have. So far, Kruger is the common denominator, only who are these other two? he pondered while staring at the man and woman to his right.
The petite female looked familiar and was clearly someone from the big city with her high-end blouse, painted fingernails, and pricey Italian ankle-high boots with silver buttons. As for the brash figure with the shifty eyes that Mitch had untethered, he seemed like the type of slick salesman that skulks around a used car lot trolling for gullible clients.
“You the fucking cop in charge out here?” said Nicholas, who stumbled up to the crowd and pointed a finger at Mitch. “You look like a cop.”
“I’m not. I just woke up out here like the rest of you.”
“Where are we and who the hell are you people?” said Daryl, who was still leaning on the tree to steady himself. The color in his face was slowly returning and he kept squinting to make out the others around him. His striking blue eyes contrasted with his pale skin.
Mitch walked into the center of the group. He pulled his eyes away from the ground and craned his head up to the canopy. “I’d say we were lowered over the edge of the canyon with the winch system near this immense concrete wall that I saw earlier then carried over to our respective spots.”
“This could be the new dam—north of Durango,” said Lisa. “There’s a concrete dam that was just completed. That is, if we’re still even in Colorado.”
He strained his head back, peering up at the massive stone walls of the canyon. “There’s no trail up and out of here from this location, it seems. From what I can determine from the few tracks on the ground, there were two other people who were involved in carrying each of us to our locations.”
“And how did you come to this conclusion?” said Nicholas. “For all I know, you’re in on this and just feeding us a line of BS to distract any suspicions from yourself.”
“So, I just went from a fuckin’ cop to a deranged killer.”
“In some cases, there’s not much difference anyway,” snapped Nicholas. “Trust me, I know.”
“Spoken like a lawyer,” said Julie as Nicholas shot her a surprised look. “I thought I recognized your face from the Denver Post. You’ve been involved in a lot of high-profile cases over the past few years.”
“That’s right, Nicholas Danbury—I’m a prosecuting attorney for the state.”
“You were connected with the trial of Anton Kruger last summer, weren’t you?” said Brian.
Nicholas nodded then glanced at Brian’s uniform and nametag. “You from the prison in Denver?”
Brian slowly nodded.
“Kruger—the guy who killed a deputy near Durango?” muttered Lisa as her eyes widened. “I was the attending physician in the ER when Kruger arrived. I handled his treatment.”
“Except you botched it and nearly killed the guy from an overdose,” said Julie.
“Bastard like that would’ve been better off in the grave earlier on,” mumbled Brian.
“What the hell are you talking about?” replied Lisa, thrusting her hands on her hips and glaring at the woman.
“I covered the story for the LA Times—on Kruger’s connection to organized crime and the whole manhunt.”
Lisa gasped. “I remember you now—you’re that pesky bitch who kept the hospital phone ringing off the hook, trying to get an interview with me and my staff.”
Daryl snapped his fingers together. “Yeah, you’re the journalist who wrote that book, 48 Hours, about the manhunt and all the infighting between the agencies who were trying to get to Kruger.”
She let out a lilted smile. “That’s me. I was actually on an author tour in Denver.” She paused, looking at up the cliffs and trees. “Before I ended up wherever I am now.”
Mitch recognized the woman now that he’d heard who she was. She was the annoying reporter hovering around the incident command post by the hospital after the manhunt for Kruger ended. She kept badgering him for a quaint soundbite for her news story but he spurned her requests. Later, he received dozens of messages on his work phone asking for an interview for her upcoming book. Even though her physical features were easy on the eyes, he detested her parasitic nature. Mitch half-wondered, if she had been the one dangling from the rope, whether he would have been as hasty to rescue her.
“Kruger, eh?” said Daryl, scratching his chin. “I worked his case—actually I headed up a task force out of Denver tracking him for a long time, even before he was apprehended in Durango.”
“Unless I’m missing something, each of us here appears to have Anton Kruger in common,” said Mitch, who was holding up his arms.
“So is this an act of revenge?” said Lisa. “Is the crime family he worked for planning to kill us here?”
“Seems like a lot of effort to go through just to drop us here,” said Brian, whose wild eyes were constantly searching through the dense foliage around them as he spoke. “Maybe they’re gonna hunt us down.”
Julie was squirming. “Or maybe the whole place is booby-trapped.” She bit her lower lip and stared at the ground beside her. “God, I don’t want to die here.”
“Look, it’s no accident that we’re all here,” said Daryl. “And if Kruger’s associates are behind this then they plan to see us suffer. That’s the only reason we’re alive.”
Everyone grew silent and stared in horror at Daryl then out at the rugged landscape around them, which seemed more silent than before.
“I agree,” said Mitch. “They’ve already had plenty of chances to kill us or torture us when we were drugged and abducted. Whatever is in store for us, it seems like it’s going to be played out here in this canyon.”
“Jesus,” said Lisa, moving in closer to the group while zipping up her blue down jacket as if it afforded her protection.
Mitch studied the clouds above, noting they were darkening. “Looks like we’re in for some weather. Let’s get to a better location and we can finish hashing things out afterwards. No point staying here and getting soaked.”
“There’s a little cave or something beyond those bushes,” said Daryl, pointing to a faint alcove at the base of the cliff to his right.
“We can hole up there fo
r a bit and figure out a plan for getting out of here,” Mitch said, pointing with his chin to the location.
“Some water would be good too,” said Julie, rubbing her temples.
“Maybe we can find a spring or puddle,” said Daryl, rummaging through the empty pockets of his tan fishing vest, hoping to find something from his former life.
“And get some bug or virus in our guts, no thanks,” snapped Nicholas.
“Julie’s right, we all need to get some water in us and stay hydrated. It’ll also help clear out whatever drugs are in our systems,” said Mitch. “Besides, the average incubation time for giardia is nine days so we’ll be long gone from here by then.” He tried to speak with confidence despite the uncertainty of their predicament. He knew whoever had put them here and staged all of this had some grand scheme and that this was just the beginning of their ordeal.
“What, are you some kind of prepper or survival nut?” said Nicholas.
“Yeah, something like that. Guess it’s your lucky day,” said Mitch, standing up and leading the way to the alcove.
Chapter 9
Out of habit, Mitch led the way, scanning the ground for tracks of any kind: scuff marks, toe digs, heel imprints, or compressed debris. He didn’t notice any boot prints but did see what looked to be a swath of the trail that was brushed out around the alcove entrance. An old trick used to cover one’s tracks, but all it provided was another clue that someone had recently been in the area. He raised his fist in a hand signal for the group to stop but then realized that the rest of them probably wouldn’t recognize his gesture.
He turned around. “Everyone stop and stay put while I check out the entrance for any booby-traps.”
He squatted down and examined the twenty-foot-wide entrance. There weren’t any patches of disturbed soil to indicate a buried trap and no above-ground wires or filaments for a footsnare so he proceeded inside.
