by Geri Foster
It was common knowledge that security cameras surrounded Johns Hopkins Hospital. She held out hope that an employee, or a patient or visitor, saw her being abducted and caught the license plate number. With a little luck, the authorities might be showing up any minute and she would be saved. Regardless, she refused to stand around holding her breath. She had a weak plan.
Stall, and stall some more, for as long as possible.
Chapter Three
Garrett turned as the door to Susan Clarkston’s home opened. Two men, dressed in black suits stood staring at him. They wore sunglasses, shiny shoes, and placid expressions. They had FBI written all over them.
“You the Falcon guy?” One of them asked, removing his unnecessary shades. “The director of personnel at the hospital called and said you dropped by asking about Susan Clarkston. Then Bruce told us a Falcon agent showed up. He was really impressed. That you?”
Garrett stepped closer and held out his hand, clasping the other man’s in a quick shake. “Garrett Mann. Yes, I’m here checking into the kidnapping of Dr. Haley Kingston.”
The taller guy pointed to his short, but muscular partner. He’s Agent Levitt and I’m Agent Teller.”
Levitt tilted his head and grinned. “You’re a little out of your jurisdiction, aren’t you?”
Garrett didn’t abide by many rules, not working for Falcon anyway. He went where Frank sent him. And even though Frank had been talking to Greg Lambert, Garrett figured anything Frank had to say came from higher up. So, no, he wasn’t out of this jurisdiction. He did exactly as he’d been told.
“If you know anything about Falcon agents, you know I don’t pick my cases or where I’m sent. I go where I’m told, and I was told to check into the disappearance of Dr. Kingston. That’s exactly what I’m doing. I have no intention of stepping on anyone’s toes.”
Teller put his hand on his hip and shot his partner a quick glance. “Unless we get in the way. We all know how you Falcons operate.”
“That’s strange, because I sometimes don’t know how I operate myself. I simply adapt. And I do what’s necessary to get results. I’m certainly willing to go along to get along. I’ll share as much information or anything else I have. My main objective is to get to Dr. Kingston because we have information that Zareeb El Hashem might have her. That he might be the man injured at the airport.” He shook his head and flipped his wrist. “Of course, I can’t tell you where I got that information, but you can bank on it being pretty solid.”
Surprise filled Teller’s brown eyes, and if Garrett was right, maybe a little admiration. “You think her kidnapping had something to do with the attempted bombing at the airport?” The man’s brow wrinkled. “We were under the impression that was some renegade. A lone wolf. We had no idea El Hashem was involved in this.” Garrett saw a muscle in his jaw tic. “It would be nice if they’d share that information with us, seeing’s how it’s our case. I get so damn tired of working blind.”
Garrett knew exactly how he felt. There were far too many times when he’d been kept in the dark. “I’m sorry about that. I know it’s difficult. I feel your pain, but there’s nothing we can do, until all intel agencies get on one system and share information. Until then, we’re all kept out of the loop.”
Levitt step forward. “Hell, you can say that again. Damn Homeland pisses me off. Bunch of jackasses who think they rule the world.”
Garrett lifted a brow. “Well, sometimes they have the best equipment and the best info. Problem is, they don’t like to share. So, we have to do the best we can.”
“What do you have so far?” Teller asked, the scowl slid off his face. “If this is El Hashem, why would he kidnap the doc?” He narrowed his eyes and slowly nodded. “Unless he needed medical attention.”
Garrett had the exact same thought. “Not only does he need medical attention, I have a feeling he needs a damn good doctor. Let’s not forget, Dr. Kingston is one of the best surgeons in the area. From what I can tell on the hospital’s security monitors, the kidnappers went through a lot of trouble to get her. They weren’t just looking for any doctor.”
“Since we didn’t know that this was terrorism, we’ve been unable to put two and two together. We didn’t know that El Hashem was in on the bombing and we didn’t know that he or anyone else was hurt. So, we were unable to connect the dots.”
“With the assistance of TSA,” Garrett offered, hoping to ease over any hard feelings, “however reluctant it might be, we were able to determine that El Hashem and Mehaza Nagi were both at the airport. That’s always bad news. Then we learned there was a shooting involved and possibly one of the men hit. I’m assuming that was El Hashem, because a regular soldier would have been left behind. And that includes his second man, Nagi. When they took Dr. Kingston, we surmised El Hashem was seriously injured. Could be life or death.”
“Okay, so where do we go from here? Because you got a lot more information than we do.”
Garrett figured that. The FBI had been in such disarray lately that most other agencies didn’t trust them. With all the political mess going on, people didn’t want to stick their necks out only for the information to end up on the news or in the paper before getting to the right people.
People didn’t know how much or who to trust anymore. Right now, they were involved in a scandal and he thought that took up more time then cracking cases. Garrett needed complete total absolute dedication. He looked at the two men and wondered if they were capable of that. Could he trust them?
“I’m going to find out the license plate number of the van and see who it belongs to and where it’s at. That may be our only clue right now.” He looked at the men and held out his hand. “I suggest you guys go back to your base and work the phones to find out where El Hashem and Nagi are holding up. And find out who saw them last. That would be a great help.” He took out his phone. “Give me your numbers and I’ll call you later.”
The FBI agents removed their phones from their pockets and shared numbers. With that, Garrett left and got in his vehicle. As he turned to look at the house, he wondered about Susan Clarkston. She’d been completely innocent in this and Garrett hated when innocents suffered.
Haley sat quietly in a chair while the man in charge sent his minions to do his bidding. She looked up at him. “My name is Dr. Haley Kingston. What’s yours?”
“None of your business. You will not be here long enough to know anyone. As soon as El Hashem is ready, we are leaving the country.”
She found it strange that he would give her the name of his boss, or the man dying, but refused to tell her who he was. She’d clearly heard the injured man call him Mehaza, but that meant little to her. By their straggly beards, filthy clothes and heavy accents, she deduced they were terrorists, here to harm Americans anyway they could.
Terrorism confused her. She couldn’t imagine having a desire to randomly hurt people, nor could she fathom their hatred and misplaced loyalty. None of it made sense to her, hopefully it never would.
She simply could not comprehend an ideology that called for blowing up another person. Perhaps the Hippocratic oath made her feel differently. The phrase, ‘first do no harm’, made it impossible for her to understand violence.
Suddenly, memories she’d buried for so long she’d thought they were gone forever came rushing back and her heartbreak felt like it had happened yesterday instead of two years ago.
Garrett Mann.
How does one explain their relationship? He was a man of extreme violence. He had been a Navy SEAL for eight years and, while he never talked about a mission, she knew that he killed for a living. Oddly, he seemed okay with that, and his being able to do so bothered her to the point she had asked him to leave. Some soldiers typically suffer from PTSD after deploying. He, however, had none. He had simply done everything out of a sense of duty, and felt no guilt.
At first, she thought she could live with that. After all, she had fallen in love with him. He was the man she’d dreamed of all her li
fe. Tall, dark, and handsome didn’t even come close to describing his appearance. He was gorgeous enough to turn a woman’s head no matter whose arm they were on. He never noticed, though. When he and her were together, he only had eyes for her.
And she loved that about him.
After leaving the Navy, Garrett had gone right to work for Falcon Securities. She thought she’d feel better about that. It meant he wouldn’t be in constant danger, that he’d left war zones behind. He didn’t have to always be looking out for the men in his unit. He simply went on assignments and came back to her loving arms.
Then one day she met a young senator whose son had been rushed to the emergency room because he broke his leg in four places and needed immediate surgery. Afterwards, the man said a Falcon agent had saved his son. For a moment she felt proud, then the man went into detail.
He explained what Falcon agents did, how they did it, and why. They were little better than assassins. Hard, ambitious, determined, and they always got their man. Dead or alive.
Haley discovered she couldn’t tolerate being with a man surrounded by violence. She didn’t want someone who she worried would never come back when he went on a mission. Or worse, lying awake at night wondering about his next target. She couldn’t live like that. She refused.
Mr. Jason Bourne could go find somebody else. She broke up with him as soon as he returned from his assignment. It was ugly, difficult and heartbreaking. That old saying that one doesn’t know what they have until they lost it proved true in her case.
She had loved him more than life itself. She hadn’t realized how entwined her life had become with his. How she waited for the phone to ring, the doorbell, any sign that he was returning home. That had been the most difficult part of her life.
Nevertheless, she had moved on. She left Dallas and relocated to Baltimore. She worked long hours and exhausted herself so that sleep came more easily. Night after night, she’d lay awake pondering her life while fighting the urge to pick up the phone just to hear his voice. For two years she’d managed to resist that desire. Now, more than ever before, if she was going to die, she wanted to hear him say he loved her one more time.
Her captive came over and grabbed her by the shoulders. Lifting her forcibly out of the chair, he took her into another room, and unceremoniously shoved her onto a different chair in an empty room that smelled of bleach. Then he tied her feet. “Why?” she looked pointedly at her feet and back up at him, confused at his behavior. She was no threat to him or the others in the house.
“You can’t be allowed to just walk around,” the mysterious man growled.
“I wasn’t just walking around. I was sitting.” She gritted her teeth. “Where do you think I would go? I don’t know where we are. You think I’m going to run out the door and right into the arms of a policeman? I have no place to go.”
“You will still be tied. El Hashem has insisted. If you get away, everything will be ruined. We cannot afford that. We must have him ready to travel tomorrow.”
He must be crazy to think the man lying in the other room could be moved that soon. “You won’t be able to do that after surgery.”
“Allah has sent us on a mission. We must obey and that means leaving this city tomorrow. We cannot be late.”
“What if he’s unable to travel?” She tilted her head and scooted the chair over in order to get his attention. “I’m going to have to perform surgery on him. To move him so quickly could be very dangerous. He might die if you move him into another room.”
“That’s why you will be coming with us, Dr. Kingston.”
“What? Why would you take me? There would be very little I can do in a vehicle.”
“It’s your job to keep him alive. He has a destiny he must fulfill.”
She let out a frustrated breath. “You simply don’t understand. He cannot have surgery today and be allowed to travel tomorrow. I can’t do that, it’s too dangerous.”
The man shrugged. “Then, Dr. Kingston, I will have the pleasure of slitting your throat. You only have two options, keep him alive or die. There’s nothing else.”
“You are asking the impossible. I know I have a reputation and you’re obviously well aware of it, but I’m not God. I can’t pull off miracles, and even without examining the wound that closely, I can tell you that he’s in mortal danger. He might very well die before I even have a chance to operate.”
“Oh, that’s very bad news for you, Dr. Kingston.” He looked around. “It would be a shame to leave your body in a dirty hovel like this.” He leaned close to her face. So close she smelled his foul breath. “But I won’t hesitate.”
Chapter Four
Garrett slid into the car just as his phone rang. “Garrett here.”
“Hey, it’s Mac. I have a number on that license plate. It’s from the rental place less than a mile from the hospital. I checked it out and the man who rented it used a fake ID.”
That didn’t surprise him. “So, we basically don’t have any leads? I think I may go back to the hospital and try to retrace exactly what happened. On the security camera it shows several men throwing her into the back of a white van. You say the guy had a fraudulent ID? Do you think it was Nagi?”
“Yes, that’s the conclusion that Tony and I came to. Evidently, a TSA officer at the airport shot El Hashem. The members of his gang got him to a safe house, and it appears the idiots must have realized that his injury was so serious he needed medical attention. It only took a few keystrokes to find out who happens to be the best doctor in the area. They must’ve done enough digging to find out where she worked and the time she got off duty. Then they waited for her.”
Garrett prayed it turned out to be that simple. He kept pushing away the thought that Haley was in the hands of those monsters and what they might do to her. It nearly drove him insane.
“I’m leaving Susan Clarkson’s house now,” Garrett started the car. “From the looks of the mess left behind, someone broke in and cut her throat. As the only person who saw Haley being taken, I’m suspicious. They must’ve left one of their militia at the hospital to make sure if they were observed, he’d take care of the problem. I suspect he hung around and followed her when she headed home. She was killed before she had a chance to change out of her scrubs. I have to assume this is the work of El Hashem’s men.”
“That’s so senseless.” Mac cleared his throat. “I talked to Susan Clarkson earlier on the phone before she left the hospital. She didn’t recognize them. They killed her for no reason. Poor woman didn’t have a damn thing to report.”
Garrett thought for a few minutes trying to gather all the information he had. “Okay, let’s assume they took Haley from the hospital because El Hashem needs surgery. We know you can’t do that just anywhere. That means they must have a building, a warehouse or a piece of property somewhere. I suspect it can’t be too far from the hospital. You’d have a hard time driving all over the place with a kidnapped doctor. Triangulate between the hospital, the rental car place, and the airport. My guess is they are somewhere in that vicinity. That’s where they took Haley.”
The line fell quiet for a few moments as he heard Mac tapping on his keyboard. “Going by that theory she would be somewhere in the southeast corner of Baltimore, but that’s about a three-mile radius.”
“What else is in the area? Anything that you can think of. This is all we have to go on.”
Again, the line went quiet, and Garrett prayed that Mac would pull a rabbit out of his hat. He’d done it before. Mac McKenzie just happened to be one of the best agents Falcon had. It was almost diabolical the way he could figure out the way criminals and fugitives thought.
“It may not be important but...”
“What, man? I’ll take a grain of salt, right now. Give me something to go on.”
“How about a small, private airport?”
“That might make sense. They’re going to eventually want to get out of the country. And with half the country looking for them, it’s
not like they can drive around freely. At least, not with a critically injured man. And we know they can’t stay holed up for long. Their faces have been splashed all over the news.” Garrett grew somber. “You’re not going to like this.”
“What?”
“The FBI is way behind on the attempted bombing at the airport. They don’t know a thing.”
“Damn. Frank’s the one that’s not going to want to hear that.”
“Neither will the president.”
Mac let out a tired breath. “We know there’s a lot of holes in the system. We’re right back to most departments having no idea what the others are doing. Dammit, everyone should know who’s responsible for the bombing at the airport. Do these idiots ever listen to the news?”
“It’s only been out a few hours. Those two FBI agents at Susan Clarkson’s house were completely clueless. They have no idea what’s going on. And my guess is they were there to speak to Miss Clarkson for the first time. Can it be there were other agents from the FBI that interviewed Miss Clarkson and didn’t share that information with their own co-workers?”
“We’re right back where we were before 9/11. Big egos.”
“Yeah.”
Garrett sped up as he pulled onto the freeway. “You know, Mac. If El Hashem has been shot, they’re going to need medical equipment and some surgical supplies might be hard to come by on the open market.”
“That’s right,” Mac’s voice grew excited. “You might need a license or have to go through a supplier.”
“I know a doctor there in Dallas who might be able to help me out. Let me call him. I’ll get back to you.”
“Out.”
Garrett prowled through his phone until he found Dr. David Shelton’s contact. He punched in the number and when he didn’t answer, Garrett left a message for him to call back.
In the meantime, he decided to check back at the hospital. Maybe a person saw Haley being taken and didn’t realize what was going on. The rain had let up, but the streets were slick as ice. Twice he’d nearly slid off the road. He drove to the emergency room and checked in with the front desk. A curvy woman with black hair piled high on the top of her head sat behind the counter.
