Total Control

by David Baldacci

  He sucked in huge amounts of the frigid air and his nausea quickly passed. The HRT members stumbled off, several of them sitting down on the ice-sheathed tarmac, breathing deeply. Jackson was the last off. A recovered Sawyer eyed him. "Damn, Ray, you almost look white." Jackson started to say something, then pointed a shaky finger at his partner, covered his mouth with his other hand and silently headed off with the HRT members to the vehicle waiting nearby; a Maine state trooper stood next to it, waving his flashlight at them as a guidepost.

  Sawyer leaned his head back in the plane. "Thanks for the ride, George. You gonna hang tight here? I don't know how long this is gonna take."

  Kaplan couldn't hide the grin. "Are you kidding? And miss the opportunity to chauffeur you guys back home? I'll be right here waiting."

  Grunting in response, Sawyer closed the door and hurried over to the vehicle. The others were gathered around waiting for him.

  When he saw what their transport vehicle was, he stopped dead in his tracks. They all eyed the paddy wagon.

  The state trooper looked over at them. "Sorry, guys, it's all we had on such short notice to accommodate eight of you."

  The FBI agents climbed into the back of the paddy wagon.

  The vehicle had a small window of chicken wire and glass communicating with the front. Jackson slid it open so the trooper could hear him. "Can you turn some heat on back here?"

  "Sorry," the man said, % prisoner we were transporting went nuts and busted the vents; they haven't been fixed yet."

  Huddled on the bench, Sawyer watched clouds of breath so thick it looked like a fire had broken out. He laid his rifle down and rubbed his stiff fingers together to warm them. A cold draft from some invisible crevice in the truck's body hit him right between the shoulder blades. Sawyer shivered. Christ, he thought, it's like someone turned the air-conditioning on full-blast. He hadn't been this cold since investigating Brophy's and Goldman's deaths in the parking garage.

  At that instant, Sawyer recalled his other recent encounter with the frigid effects of air-conditioning--the slain plane fueler's apartment.

  The look on his face became one of utter disbelief as he made the mental connection. "Oh, my God."

  Sidney figured there was only one way for the men who had abducted her father to contact her. She pulled in to a convenience store, got out and hurried over to the phone. She dialed her home in Virginia.

  When the answering machine came on, she tried her best to recognize the voice, but she didn't. She was given a number to call.

  She assumed it was a cellular phone rather than a fixed location. She took a deep breath and dialed the number. The phone was immediately answered. It was a different voice than the one on the answering machine, but again she couldn't place it. She was to drive twenty minutes north of Bell Harbor along Route 1 and take the exit for Port Haven. Then she was given detailed directions that took her to an isolated stretch of land between Port Haven and the larger town of Bath.

  "I want to talk to my father." The request was refused. "Then I'm not coming. For all I know, he's already dead."

  She was met with an eerie silence. Her heart thumped against her rib cage. The air rushed out of her as she heard the voice.

  "Sidney, sweetie."

  "Dad, are you all right?"

  "Sid, get the hell out of he--"

  "Dad? Dad?" Sidney screamed into the phone. A man coming out of the convenience store carrying a cup of coffee stared at her, looked over at the heavily damaged Cadillac and then back at her. Sidney stared back at him as her hand dipped instinctively to the 9mm in her pocket. The man hurried to his pickup truck and drove off.

  The voice came back on. Sidney had thirty minutes to get to her destination.

  "How do I know you'll let him go if I give it to you?"

  "You don't." The tone of voice brooked no opposition.

  The attorney in Sidney, however, stomped to the surface. "That's not good enough. You want this disk so bad, then we're going to have to agree to terms."

  "You've gotta be kidding. You want your old man back in a body bag?"

  "So we meet in the middle of nowhere, I give you the disk and you let him and me go out of the goodness of your heart? Right!

  Under that proposal you'll have the disk and my father and I will be somewhere in the Atlantic providing nourishment for sharks. You'll have to do a lot better than that if you want what I've got."

  Though the man had covered the receiver, Sidney heard voices on the other end of the line, a couple of them raised in anger.

  "It's our way or nothing."

  "Fine, I'm on my way to state police headquarters. Be sure to stay tuned to the evening news. I'm sure you don't want to miss any thing. Good-bye."

  "Wait!"

  Sidney didn't say anything for a minute. When she did, she spoke with far more confidence than she was feeling at the moment. "I'll be at the intersection of Chaplain and Merchant Streets smack in the center of Bell Harbor in thirty minutes. I'll be sitting in my car. It should be easy to spot--it's the one with all the extra air-conditioning.

  You blink your headlights twice. You let my father out. There's a diner right across the street. I see him go in there, I open the car door, place the disk on the sidewalk and drive off. Please keep in mind that I'm heavily armed and more than prepared to send as many of you as I can straight to hell."

  "How do we know it's the right disk?"

  "I want my father back. It'll be the right disk. I hope you choke on it. Do we have a deal?" Now her tone of voice brooked no opposition.

  She waited anxiously for the answer. Please, God, don't let them call my bluff. She let out a sigh of relief when it finally came. "Thirty minutes." The line went dead.

  Sidney got back in the car and gripped the dashboard in frustration.

  How the hell had they tracked her and her father? It was impossible.

  It was as if they had been watching Sidney and her father the entire time. The white van had also been at the gas station. The attack probably would have occurred there except for the timely arrival of the state troopers. She lay down across the front seat as she fought to keep her nerves in check. She moved her purse out of the way and then opened it, just to make sure the disk was still there.

  The disk for her father. But once the disk was gone, she would spend the rest of her life running from the police. Or at least until they caught her. Quite a choice. But there was really no choice about it.

  As she sat back up she started to close her purse. Then she stopped, her thoughts drifting back to that night, the night in the limo. So much had happened since her terrifying escape. And yet it hadn't really been an escape, had it? The killer had let her go and also had courteously let her keep her purse. In fact, she would have forgotten it entirely except for him tossing it to her. She had been so happy to get out alive, she had never really considered why he would have done something so remarkable .... She started to claw through the contents of her purse. It took a couple of minutes, but she finally found it, at the very bottom. It had been inserted through a slit in the lining of the purse. She held it up and stared at it. A tiny tracking device.

  She looked behind her as a shiver thudded up her spine. Putting the car in gear again, she sped off. Up ahead, a dump truck converted into a snowplow had pulled to the curb. She looked in her mirror. There was no one behind her. She rolled down the driver's-side window, pulled up to the truck and cocked her hand back as she prepared to toss the tracking device into the back of the truck. Then, just as quickly, she stopped the swing of her arm and rolled her window back up. The tracking device was still in her hand. She hit the gas, leaving the truck quickly behind. She looked down at her tiny companion of the last few days. What did she have to lose? She quickly headed toward town. She had to get to the arranged drop-off spot as early as possible. But first she needed something from the grocery store.

  The diner Sidney had mentioned in her telephone conversation was filled with hungry patrons. Two blocks
over from the prearranged drop-off spot, the Cadillac, lights out, was parked at the curb next to the impressive bulk of an evergreen surrounded by a calf-high wrought-iron fence. The interior of the Cadillac was dark, the silhouette of the driver barely visible.

  Two men walked quickly along the sidewalk, while another pair across the street paralleled their movements. One of the men looked down at a small instrument clutched in his hands; the small amber screen had a grid stamped on it. A red light burned brightly on the screen, pointing directly at the Cadillac. The men quickly moved in.

  One weapon flashed through where the passenger-side window had once been. At the same instant the driver's-side door was torn open.

  The gunmen looked in astonishment at the driver: a mop with a leather jacket over it, a baseball cap perched rakishly on top.

  The white van was parked at the intersection of Chaplain and Merchant, its motor running. The driver checked his watch, scanned the street and then hit his headlights twice. In the back of the van, Bill Patterson lay on the floor, his feet and hands tied securely, his mouth taped shut. The driver jerked his head around as the passenger-side door was thrown open and a 9mm pistol was pointed at his head. Sidney climbed in the van. She cocked her head toward the back to make sure her father was okay. She had already seen him through the back window when she had spotted the van a minute earlier. She figured they had to be prepared to actually hand her father over. "Put your gun down on the floorboard. Take it out muzzle first. If your finger goes anywhere near the trigger, I will empty my entire clip into your head. Do it!"

  The driver quickly did as he was told.

  "Now get out!"

  "What?"

  She shoved the pistol into his neck, where it pushed painfully against a throbbing vein. "Get out!"

  When he opened the door and turned his back to her, Sidney swung her legs up on the seat, coiled them back and kicked him with all her might. He sprawled on the pavement. She closed the door, jumped into the driver's seat and hit the gas. The van's tires turned the white snow black and then it rocketed off.

  Ten minutes outside of town, Sidney stopped the van, jumped into the back and untied her father. The two sat for several minutes holding on to each other, their bodies quivering with a heavy mixture of fear and relief.

  "We need to get another car to drive. I wouldn't put it past them to have bugged this one. And they'll be on the lookout for the van," Sidney said as they hurtled down the road.

  "There's a rental place about five minutes away. But why don't we just go to the cops, Sid?" Her father rubbed his wrists. His swollen eyes and cracked knuckles testified to the struggle the old man had put up.

  She breathed deeply and looked over at him. "Dad, I don't know what's on the disk. If it's not enough..."

  Her father looked at her, the realization sinking in that he might lose his little girl after all.

  "It will be enough, Sidney. If Jason took all the trouble to send it to you, it has to be enough."

  She smiled at him and then her face went dark. "We have to split up, Dad."

  "There's no way I'm leaving you now."

  "Your being with me makes you an accessory. I'll tell you one thing: We're not both going to jail."

  "I don't give a damn about that."

  "Okay, then what about Mom? What would happen to her? And Amy? Who would be there for them?"

  Patterson started to say something and then stopped. He frowned as he looked out the window. Finally he looked over at her. "We'll go to Boston together and then we'll talk about it. If you still want to split up then, so be it."

  While Sidney sat outside in the van, Patterson went in to rent a car. When he came out a few minutes later and walked over to the van, Sidney rolled down the window.

  "Did you rent a car?" Sidney asked.

  Patterson nodded. "They'll have it ready in about five minutes. I got us a roomy four-door. You can sleep in the back; I'll drive."

  "I love you, Dad." Sidney rolled the window back up and drove off. Her stunned father ran after her, but she was quickly out of sight.

  "Christ!" Sawyer peered out the window into near-zero visibility.

  "Can't we go any faster?" he yelled through the window to the trooper. They had already seen the devastation of the Patterson beach house and were now desperately looking everywhere for Sidney Archer and her family.

  The trooper yelled back, "We go any faster, we're going to end up dead in some ditch."

  Dead. Is that what Sidney Archer is right now? Sawyer looked at his watch. He fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette.

  Jackson was looking at him. "Damn, Lee, don't start smoking in here. It's hard enough to breathe as it is."

  Sawyer's lips parted as he felt the slender object in his pocket. He slowly pulled the card out.

  As Sidney headed out of town, she decided to keep her emotions in check and let longtime habits take over. For what seemed like forever, she had been merely reacting to a series of crises, without the opportunity to think things through. She was an attorney, trained to view facts logically, look at the details and then work them into an overall picture. She certainly had some information to work with.

  Jason had labored on Triton's records for the CyberCom deal. That she knew. Jason had disappeared under mysterious circumstances and had sent her a disk with some information on it. That, also, was a fact. Jason was not selling secrets to RTG, not with Brophy in the picture. That also was clear to her. And then there were the financial records. Apparently Triton had simply handed them over. Then why the big scene at the meeting in New York? Why had Gamble demanded to talk to Jason about his work on the records, particularly after he had sent Jason an e-mail congratulating him on a job well done? Why the big deal of getting Jason on the phone? Why put her in an impossible situation like that?

  She slowed down and pulled off the road. Unless the intent all along was to put her in an impossible situation. Making it appear as though she had lied. Suspicion had followed her from that very moment.

  What exactly had been in those records in the warehouse?

  Was that what was on the disk? Something Jason had found out?

  That night Gamble's limo had whisked her to his estate, he had obviously wanted some answers. Could he have been attempting to find out if Jason had told her anything?

  Triton had been a client for several years now. A big, powerful company with a very private past. But how did that tie in to all the other things? The deaths of the Page brothers. Triton beating out RTG for CyberCom. As Sidney thought once more of that horrible day in New York, something clicked. Ironically, she had the same thought Lee Sawyer had experienced earlier but for a different reason: A performance.

  My God! She had to get in touch with Sawyer. She put the van in drive and got back on the road. A shrill ring interrupted her thoughts. She looked around at the interior of the van for the source until her eyes alighted on the cellular phone resting on a magnetized plate against the lower dashboard. She hadn't noticed it until just that moment. It was ringing? Her hand went instinctively down to answer it and then pulled back. Finally she picked it up. "Yes?"

  "I thought you weren't interested in playing games." The voice was filled with anger.

  "Right. And you just forgot to mention that you had a bug in my purse and were just waiting to jump me."

  "Okay, let's talk about the future. We want the disk and you're going to bring it to us. Now!"

  "What I'm going to do is hang up. Now!"

  "If I were you, I wouldn't."

  "Listen, if you're trying to keep me on the phone so you can lock on my location, it's not going--" Sidney's voice broke off and her entire body turned to putty as she listened to the small voice on the other end of the line.

  "Mommy? Mommy?"

  Her tongue as big as a fist, Sidney could not answer. Her foot went off the accelerator; her dead arms no longer had the strength to steer the van. The vehicle slowed down and drifted into a pile of snow on the shoulder.

&nbs
p; "Mommy? Daddy? Come over?" The voice sounded frightened, pitiful.

  Suddenly sick to her stomach, her entire body swaying uncontrollably, Sidney managed to speak. "AA-Amy. Baby."

  "Mommy?"

  "Baby, it's Mommy. I'm here." An avalanche of tears poured down Sidney's face.

  Sidney heard the phone being taken away.

  "Ten minutes. Here are the directions."

  "Let me talk to her again. Please!"

  "Now you have nine minutes and fifty-five seconds."

  A sudden thought occurred to Sidney. What if it was a tape?

  "How do I know you really have her? That could be just a recording."