Ransom Drop

by Mike Sullivan

  “It wasn’t too hard to figure out,” Seabury eventually said.

  “About my old man,” Greer said.

  Seabury nodded, staring back through the gloom at Greer. “Your father was a U.S. Army supply clerk with a wheeler-dealer attitude. He stole military ordinance and sold it on the black market to the highest bidder as if it came from his own private warehouse.”

  Greer laughed a little. “Yeah, that was Joe. He liked money.”

  “And he knew how to make a lot of it…illegally,” Seabury added. “He worked up his own system of supply-side economics. It worked by confiscating military small arms and selling them from inflated invoices where he’d get double the price—maybe even triple price—for each weapon. Later he started selling heroin. “How am I doing so far?” Seabury said.

  “Go on. I’m listening.”

  “Your father sold guns and heroin to Tony Sun’s father in Hong Kong. They made a lot of money, which Joe spent as fast as he could get his hands on it. Then one day the Army stepped in and shut down his operation. Joe was about to be court-martialed and tossed into prison, state-side, in Leavenworth, but by some strange turn of events, the case never reached trial. Someone higher up the military chain of command must’ve had his palms grease with a lot of money.”

  As Seabury spoke into the dark and ominous silence, he was aware of the Sig Sauer SP 2022 in Greer’s hand, aimed at the pit of his stomach. Greer waved the gun at him. Seabury froze, not moving a muscle.

  “Nice weapon,” said Greer, flashing the serpent’s smile. “I’ve seen it tear a hole in a guy’s chest the size of an apple. I like it for its accuracy and firepower.”

  Without missing a beat, Seabury swung his eyes off the gun, back onto Greer, and continued speaking. “Anyway,” he said. “The Army needed a way out. Joe was an airplane buff. He knew a lot about light aircraft, like the T-28 Trojans used for aerial reconnaissance missions against the North Vietnam Army and the Pathet Lao camped on the battlefield near the Plain of Jars—in America’s Secret War long ago.”

  Greer leered across the small space separating them. Seabury saw two knots of muscle tighten along the sides of Greer’s jaw. Seabury’s voice cracked as he went on, a twinge of fear in his belly. How much further could he push his luck?

  “To make a long story short,” he said, “there was no court martial. The Army agreed to forgive the crimes if your father agreed to fly a mission as a spotter in one of the T-28 Trojans. The Army knew the danger of flying one of these missions. The success rate was very low. But what could Joe Greer do under the circumstances but agree to go. The pilot was ace U.S. Air Force hotshot, Biff Brannan. This is the same Brannan who had a running feud with Howard Hatcher, presently U.S Ambassador to Laos. The T-28 was shot down somewhere near the Plain of Jars and Hatcher called the search off early. It was a classic case of your father being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He and Brannan were reported MIA and never heard from again.”

  Along the road light from nearby villages flashed in and out of the windows. The tires fought the sound of the engine and the noise hurled back up into the cab.

  Greer snickered. “Maybe I’ve underestimated you, Seabury. You’re not as dumb as you look.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself. It doesn’t take a genius to figure you out either. Hard macho exterior, now that you’re older, but a soft inner belly. I should know—”

  He laughed a little. “I beat the hell out of you a long time ago and made you quit like a yellow dog. We do that ten times out of ten, we get the same results every time. You and me, we go a long way back. But when I look at you, I’m not in the least bit impressed. A guy gets whipped the first time, it’s easier for him to get whipped a second time, especially if it’s with a guy whose got his number. Know what I’m saying?”

  Seabury swallowed hard. Butterflies danced in his stomach like a fighter entering the ring. Greer made him feel nervous. He’d been also sitting in the same position for hours cuffed to the O-rings. His wrists were chafed and the muscles of his back were stiff and sore.

  Greer leaned forward with a quick, bitter smile that faded quickly into the darkness. “I may not have the fancy college degree like you,” he said to Seabury, tapping his head with two straight fingers. “But I have a PhD from the streets, and that’s worth a lot more to me than some worthless college degree. Just so you know, I’ve made plans for you and the girl.”

  “This is the part where you let us go and we all go home and get a good night’s sleep,” Seabury said, trying a bit of humor.

  It fell on deaf ears as Greer’s face contorted in a hard grimace. “Ha. Dream on, pal.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Hours later Greer bent over, whispered something in Tony Sun’s ear and slumped back down in the seat. Outside the vehicle the headlights carved an eerie path through a dark corridor of trees bordering the side of the road.

  Seabury had no idea where they were, but ever since leaving Phonsavan, they’d traveled over switchbacks and steep mountainous terrain. That could only mean one thing—they were driving northwest deeper into the mountains. Here the air temperature was harsh and cold. Patches of scrub brush froze in icy crystals along the road the further north they went. The only city large enough with a commercial airport in that direction was Lao Prabang. The airport had daily flights back to Vientiane and by Seabury’s calculations, they would arrive there in a few hours—that was, if he and Tory lived that long.

  I have plans for you and the girl.

  Somewhere along the road, out in the dark night, Greer stopped the SUV. Yes, even now, even though they’d driven half the night and nothing had happened to them, Seabury could see it happening now, before they reached Lao Prabang. He and Tory would get out of the car and move off the road quickly. Maybe to the edge of a steep ravine. Maybe two or three steps further down the hill. Then Greer would nod his head and give his partner the signal, and Tony Sun would use the Glock on them.

  Hyde had the money, all of it now, stashed in the cargo bin behind them. One million dollars in unmarked bills. One million reasons why Victoria Hong wasn’t here. One million kudos for Hyde Greer. He might be crude and rough around the edges, but he was also shrewd and cunning, a clever sociopath with a clever bit of deception that he, college boy Sam Seabury, had fallen for.

  I’m okay, Sam. Please, please do what he says.

  Greer had pulled off the ransom drop. He’d turned Seabury’s failure into a moment of personal triumph, just like the day he’d trashed him after school in front of his friends. Maybe Greer did have his number after all.

  Seabury sat back in the gloom and the darkness feeling as low as he’d ever felt in his entire life. He tried hard to think, tried to find some way for them to escape so he could get Tory Kwan to safety. Everywhere he turned, he came up empty like a tank without a drop of gasoline.

  * * * *

  They stopped the car a while later. Greer got out and urinated by the side of the road. Seabury watched him get back into the car and nod at Tony Sun. There it was—the signal to draw his gun. He drew it without hesitation, switching it back and forth between him and Tory.

  They’d chosen the perfect spot, a dark deserted place along the road, in the middle of the night. The perfect spot for a murder. Seabury held back the chilling thought and searched for a way to escape. It was Tory Kwan who made the first move. She complained about having to go.

  “Come on, Hyde, I’m about to burst. I can’t hold it any longer.”

  Greer tossed his head back, laughing at her pain and discomfort. Seabury saw him wave a hand and motion her outside. Tony Sun followed with his Glock pressed to the middle of her back. Holding a flashlight, his eyes bright and filled with glee, Tony watched her relieve herself in a patch of bushes near the edge of the road.

  “You creep,” Tory snapped at him as they got back inside the car, “you could have looked the other way.”

  Tony Sun laughed
out loud. Hyde Greer joined him in chorus of laughter that rocked the inside of the car. Tony was the first to ease off the laughter as he switched on the engine and got the car back on the road.

  In the impending darkness, Seabury sat thinking. How long they would survive was anyone’s guess. With a psycho like Hyde Greer, no one knew for sure. As the car sped through the dark night, he felt a reprieve. He was still alive…for now. He closed his eyes and entered a place between sleep and wakefulness; a place where instinct and intuitive insight rushed forward to form a single horrifying vision.

  Somehow the act would wipe the slate clean, make everything right. He saw it now in his mind’s eye, a final, fateful picture of murder and revenge.

  Howard H. Hatcher….beaming at the large cheering crowd outside the U.S. Embassy in Vientiane; about to be appointed Secretary of State back home in America. Hyde Greer out there too, somewhere alone, hidden in the sweltering depths of the city, watching, waiting for the right moment to kill Hatcher.

  The picture strayed a while longer and then flickered out. In the silence and darkness inside the car the picture sent the cold dreadful chill of a lingering trepidation streaming through Seabury’s body.

  They drove on endlessly, entered and exited small towns, left them for steep mountain passes and broad, expansive valleys far below on the other side. The engine purred silently beneath the hood. Wide, black tires gripped the road. They screeched around every corner. They turned back again into the dark night in a steady stream of white smoke and endless protest.

  Seabury’s eyes were open now and he stared across at Hyde Greer, who looked calm, almost serene now, in the digital glow coming off the dashboard. He was more relaxed, cunning and confident now than Seabury would have imagined. In Greer’s hand, the gun was aimed at the pit of Seabury’s stomach.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  They drove another hour. Finally, the vehicle turned off the main highway onto a dirt road on the outskirts of Lao Prabang. It was 5:00 a.m. They drove deep into the forest and stopped in a driveway in front of a log cabin. A used blue sedan, dented, scratched and chipped with the primer showing through the paint, was parked at the side of the building. Tory and Seabury got out and ushered inside at gunpoint.

  The cabin was large and spacious. A full kitchen. Two bedrooms in back. A bathroom down the hall off to the left of the front door. A sofa. Club chairs. A Persian rug scattered across a polished hardwood floor.

  Victoria Hong sat up handcuffed to a bed in one of the back bedrooms. A deep purple bruise colored her left eye. The right side of her face, clawed and scraped, revealed dark, ugly scabs crusted over. The bruises around them had turned yellow. As she slumped forward, a hand flew out. A short, grotesque, brunette with cold wintery eyes and a body like a withered twig shoved her back onto the headboard.

  Inside the open door to the bedroom, Greer hugged her. Turning back to Seabury, he let loose a foxy smile. It brightened his eyes and puffed his chest. It elevated his display of hubris to a new level.

  Greer took out his cell phone. A tiny recording unit lay at the bottom of the receiver. He clicked it on. A voice sprang out into the room.

  “I’m okay, Sam. Please…please do what he says.”

  “Fooled yah,” Greer said and kept grinning as Seabury turned away, his muscles slack, his body unresponsive.

  The brunette backed them into the bedroom with the long blue barrel of her 357 Magnum. Tony Sun shoved them inside and closed the door.

  “Over there,” the brunette said to Tory.

  Tory crossed the room in handcuffs. She took a spot on the floor to the left of a small wooden bed where Victoria Hong sat propped up on pillows. She stared out with dull, lusterless eyes at a vague, imaginary spot a few feet in front of her. Seabury exchanged glances with Tory and shook his head sadly.

  He was ordered into another corner opposite the bed. He sat down in handcuffs and kept quiet, glancing up now and then at Victoria Hong. She’s alive, thank God, he thought and then he thought again about how much he despised Hyde Greer.

  The bastard never kept his hands off her. He had no idea that most of the damage to Victoria’s face was done not by Greer, but by the woman.

  There was a barred window at the back of the room and a bathroom off to the side in a near corner where Seabury sat. Glancing at his watch, he noticed it was almost six o’clock. A glimmer of morning light streamed in between the bars covering the window.

  Now the woman stepped around a huge recliner and slumped down into it, facing them. Her long blue-barreled revolver leveled on them. Seabury recognized the handgun immediately and shuddered at the thought of it. The gun was a Taurus357 Magnum with a six-shot cylinder and a vented 8 inch barrel. A sturdy, reliable weapon. Very deadly. In the hands of the wrong person it could do a considerable amount of damage, especially at close range. The woman’s hands gripped it, strong and menacing. Seabury’s eyes stayed glued on the revolver.

  It might take two of her hands to hold onto the gun to fire it, but the effect would be the same as firing a 12 gauge shotgun into a broom closet. He cringed a little thinking about the damage a gun like that could do. There wouldn’t be much left of the victim after the trigger was pulled.

  As Seabury sat in the corner, the woman noticed him staring at the gun. She grinned, flashing her cat-like eyes at him. Exposing sharp pointed teeth. Seabury saw what looked like a small feral cat sitting up in the big chair. She grinned at him now with a Cheshire smile and a new-found sense of superiority. She leveled the gun directly at him.

  “Poof!” She pantomimed pulling the trigger, and laughed out loud. “It won’t be long now,” she said. “No, not very long now.”

  “Very long before what?” Tory had to know.

  The woman glanced down at her. “Before you die…what else?” she said, almost nonchalantly.

  “Let me ask you something,” Seabury said. “I’m just curious. How far are we from Lao Prabang?”

  She swung her eyes back on him. “Six miles. Why?”

  “No reason,” he said. “Just thinking.”

  “About what?”

  “Hyde Greer,” he said. “If he wanted to kill us, he had plenty of time to do it last night. He could have stopped anywhere along the road and turned Tony Sun’s Glock loose on us. But instead he chose not to. I’m wondering why, that’s all.”

  “Well, don’t wonder too much, Big Boy,” she said, still grinning, still looking him over with a surly expression. “Don’t trouble yourself. We’ve already figured that part out.” A cold blue light flashed inside her eyes. “There’s a wood chipper out back,” she said. “One by one you go in. One by one the machine grinds you up into compost for my garden. That’s the way it’s going to end.”

  “Sounds good, but count me out,” Seabury said. “I have other plans.”

  “I’m with you,” Tory said, chiming in from her corner of the room. “It looks like

  the piranhas are out in force today.” She looked straight at the woman and with a tone that surprised Seabury, added. “Let me tell you something, lady. I’m not cashing out inside a wood chipper. Count on it.”

  “I don’t think you have much choice,” the woman said. “I’m the one holding the gun.”

  “And I’m the one needing to use the bathroom,” said Tory, squirming on the floor, pointing at the door across the room. “I need to go—and quick—or you’ll be cleaning a mess up off the floor.”

  The brunette led Tory across the room at gunpoint and into the bathroom. She closed the door and stood beside it.

  Seabury sat up and listened. Outside in the other room, he heard the commotion. Voices shouting. Yelling back and forth. Cursing. Hyde Greer and Tony Sun, arguing outside. Their voices, loud and boisterous, carried back into the bedroom in a hail of angry insults. Then, as quickly, the shouting stopped. Tempers seemed to cool.

  “Okay, okay, I’ll do it,” Tony Sun blurted out. “But I need my cut. I need to see it first.”

  There was a lo
ng pause. Seabury heard the front door open and slam shut. Moments later the door opened again. Footsteps clunked across the wooden floor and then stopped. Seabury heard the sound of a chair being kicked out of place. A duffle bag being ripped open. Stacks of money slammed down hard on a table.

  “There. Take it,” Greer said. “Satisfied now?”

  “I only meant—”

  “I know what you meant.” Greer bellowed. “I also know what a cheap asshole you are sometimes, Tony. Did you think you weren’t going to get paid? You know I’m not like that. I’ve treated you fairly, all these years, haven’t I?”

  Silence.

  “I’ve gotta go,” said Greer. “I can’t waste time, standing around arguing with you.” Pause. “Just do the fucking job, Tony. The one I’m paying you to do.”

  Tony followed Greer out the front door. He tried to apologize, going across the yard with Greer to the SUV. Greer checked his watch, but continued to talk to Tony. Being a control-freak, he gave instructions on how to use the wood chipper, and where to scatter the remains in the flower garden after they’d killed the victims. Tony listened patiently, hanging on every word.

  “They do this all the time…argue,” the woman said to Seabury. She shrugged shoulders. A look of weariness crossed her face. “Sometimes it gets so bad,” she said, “I have to leave the house. I have to drive into Lao Prabang until things cool off.”

  She stood broadside near the door, staring down at Seabury, not paying attention when the door flew open. It caught her flush up on the side of the head in a loud crash that sent her reeling back into the room. Her eyes were dazed. Her small withered body struggled to stay upright. Still in cuffs, Tory Kwan sprang at her, kicked the woman in the stomach and heard the air gush out of her. The woman sank to her knees and the gun dropped out of her hands. Tory picked it up and held it on the woman, warning her to silence.

  “Now,” Tory kept her voice low. The long-barreled revolver pointed at the woman’s chest. “Nice and quiet,” Tory said and watched the woman release the cuffs. Seabury’s handcuffs came off next. He crept over to the door. He cracked it open and looked outside.