by Toby Neal
“On it.” Mahoe pulled the Toughbook laptop out of the glove box and booted up.
Movement in the container’s doorway. A man with a hat pulled low, wearing a light gray zip-front work coverall, stuck his head out, peering around. “Think he’s seen us, LT?” Mahoe asked. “We’re hidden behind the bushes . . .”
“Oh, I’m sure they’re aware of us.” Indeed, the man was looking right at Stevens. “Yep, he’s casing us right now. He knows we wouldn’t leave without eyes on them.”
The man kept his gaze on Stevens. Even with the binoculars, Stevens couldn’t make out his features behind sunglasses and the shadowed brim of his hat. Slowly, the kidnapper raised his hands—and then sidled out through the door, darted over and picked up the phone. In a moment, he was back inside the container and the door shut. “He’s taken the phone. I’ll call him now.”
“The van’s registered to the same company that owns the warehouse where they did the alterations to the container,” Mahoe said. “Interesting.”
“A shell company, Lei said.” Stevens took out his own burner and manually entered the number of the officer’s cell. He put the device on speaker and rang through.
“Yeah?” The kidnapper’s voice was gravelly when he answered—he was trying to disguise it.
“This is Lieutenant Michael Stevens of the Maui Police Department. I’m sure you’re aware that we’ve got you surrounded. Is that air conditioner on?”
“Screw you.” The man was breathing heavily.
“You can call me Mike, and I take that as a no. What’s your name?”
“We’re not going to be on a first-name basis, cop. We will kill one woman every half hour that we’re in here. So get your people the hell away from the entrance, and get us a helicopter.”
The hairs rose involuntarily on Stevens’s arms, and he exchanged a glance with Mahoe, whose eyes had gone wide. Stevens signaled his partner to call the captain for SWAT. Mahoe eased outside the cab, his phone in his hand.
Stevens kept his voice low and even. “Hey now. Whoa. No call for any violence. You saw that I got those officers out of your hair as soon as I got here and saw that those knuckleheads had backed you into a corner.” He blew out a sigh, as if weary of idiots—here they were, stuck in the same boat. “I don’t want this situation any more than you do. I get that you’re hot and uncomfortable, and this is a cramp in your plan. But right now, if you turn yourselves in, it’s no big deal. Most you’d get is six months for accessory to kidnapping, and the Maui jail’s a country club. I’ll put in a good word . . .”
“Obviously you’re not taking us seriously. Maybe I haven’t made myself clear enough.” The women began screaming—a simultaneously horrible experience. Cries came through the phone, while echoing off the metal walls of the container directly in front of them. Mahoe had returned, and his eyes met Stevens’s in shock.
The crack of a gunshot inside reverberated with the metal sides of the container.
Stevens recoiled. His hand was shaking so bad he almost dropped the phone. “What did you do, man? What did you do?”
“You know what I did. Now get me that chopper, or I’ll do another one in a half hour!”
The phone went dead in Stevens’s hand.
“Auwe,” Mahoe breathed. “Holy shit.”
Ahead of them, the door of the container creaked open. A woman’s body rolled out, arms flopping like a rag doll as she landed on the ground. A booted leg appeared, briefly, kicking her through the opening and out of the way of the door. Then a broom appeared, shoving the body aside, moving it so that the door could close once more.
The woman lay unmoving, her back to them, just to the side of the container’s entrance.
“Holy crap, LT! What do we do now?”
Stevens speed-dialed Captain Omura on her cell. She answered immediately, her voice crisp. “I’m on my way. I have called for our FBI backup liaison, who in this case is your wife. SWAT is also on their way.”
“The kidnapper shot a hostage. Rolled her outside the container and closed the door again.” Stevens gulped down the horror and made it disappear into that place where he kept such things. “She has short brown hair. I think it’s Priscilla Gutierrez.”
“Damn it! We’re at a whole new level then. Don’t escalate the situation. If he calls back, tell him his chopper is on the way.”
Overhead, Stevens could hear the sound of the helicopter approaching.
“What about the woman? She might still be alive.”
“Is she moving?”
Stevens squinted. “No.”
“We can’t approach the container until we have reinforcements in place. Any movement on our part could escalate the kidnappers, and now that they showed they’re capable of deadly force, we have to operate on a cost-benefit analysis as far as saving lives.” He could hear Omura’s fast breathing. She was running.
“I didn’t think he’d go this far.” Stevens pushed the words out through frozen vocal cords. “I thought these guys at the container would have been lower echelon soldiers, moving the human merchandise. But this kidnapper . . . he seemed to take it personally.”
“You did all the right things: moved the officers who got this confrontation started out of play, established a line of contact with the kidnapper, and set us up to come in and support you. You had no idea how prepared he was to act—most people in this kidnapper’s position would have given us more time, negotiated more.” He heard the beep of the captain unlocking her vehicle. “Stop second-guessing yourself. That can be deadly.” Omura ended the call.
Stevens cursed, long and fluently, his gaze on Gutierrez’s unmoving form.
“What did she say, LT?” Mahoe’s voice was wobbly with stress.
Stevens recapped the plan Omura had laid out. “I’m sure the FBI will be deployed from O`ahu, but it’s going to take them time to get here. Lei is their representative for the moment, per her contract with them.” Stevens picked up the binoculars and trained them on the woman.
They would probably kill Mrs. Peterson next, saving the young girls, most valuable as hostages, for last.
Gutierrez faced away from him, lying on her side. He couldn’t see where she had been shot, but her hair was darkening with blood, and a pool of it was forming on the asphalt under her upper body.
And then she moved.
Just a little, at first, one of her arms reaching forward, then she flopped onto her belly. She reached the other arm forward, with excruciating slowness, and dug her fingers into the asphalt. She drew up a leg, digging her foot, clad in a white tennis shoe, into the pavement, and pushed herself forward.
She was crawling away from the door area.
“Gutierrez is alive. She’s moving!” He had to help her! Stevens handed the binoculars and his phone to Mahoe. “Call for an ambulance. Monitor the kidnappers’ phone for a call from them, and report in to the captain if anything else happens. I’m going to get her.”
Chapter Nineteen
“What the hell are you doing, LT?” Mahoe’s voice had gone squeaky with alarm. Stevens ignored his partner. He jumped out of the Bronco, ran around to the back of the truck, opened the hatch, and scrambled frantically around in his toolbox. He grabbed a pair of bolt cutters and a beach towel, and headed for the fence.
The kidnappers would not be able to see him immediately, if he approached from further down than the opening at the front of the container. He just had to hope that they wouldn’t hear the sound of him cutting into the chain links. He moved to the left of the entrance and approached the fence, staying low and keeping the bushes as cover.
Using the towel to muffle the sound, Stevens clamped the bolt cutters over the heavy gauge steel. The crack of the heavy steel wire separating, even with the towel over it, sounded as loud as a gunshot to his ears. No help for it—he was committed. He grabbed the next link in the bolt cutter’s teeth, covered the area with the towel, and cranked down on the handles.
He glanced over at Gutierrez. That to
ugh lady was continuing to drag herself in his direction, inch by agonized inch, along the narrow opening between the container and the fence in no more than eighteen inches of space. The gap was so narrow he hadn’t originally thought he could fit into it. He had to, now.
Their eyes met. “Hang on. I’m coming for you,” he whispered, mouthing the words in an exaggerated way so she could understand. She shut her eyes for a moment, clearly getting the message.
These were the moments when Stevens felt most alive. His blood was pumping, his vision had focused to laserlike detail. Colors were brighter, sounds sharper. Nothing existed now but this moment of life or death, for himself or another.
No movement from the front of the container as he glanced at it, making his next cut.
He could feel Mahoe’s gaze on his back.
Hopefully he’d called for an ambulance already. And wouldn’t it be great if Mahoe remembered to have them keep their sirens off . . . but likely Omura would have called for one. She seemed confident in her protocol.
His thoughts floated by, each one as separate and distinct as if it were in its own little bubble.
Finally Stevens had cut enough of the heavy, stiff wire to peel it back, making a triangular opening. He bent the chain link aside and crawled through the opening, then stood up and turned sideways, sliding along the fence, avoiding touching the container in case he made any sound or vibration.
Gutierrez had only made it a couple of feet in his direction, but that was enough for her to be out of visible range of the front of the container, unless the perps intentionally stuck their heads around the corner to take a look.
A heavy blood trail marked her agonizing progress. Hopefully they’d just assume she’d crawled a little way and died . . .
There was no time for niceties as he squatted beside her. “Stay quiet. This is going to hurt.” Stevens grasped Gutierrez’s wrists, dragging her forcefully along the gap in the fence as he backed as fast as he could toward the opening he’d made. Gutierrez whimpered, biting her lips, tears streaming from her eyes, her tan bleached to a sickly yellow—but they’d reached the hole in the fence.
Stevens backed through the triangular cut and bent to whisper in her ear. “Just a few more minutes, and you’ll be safe. I’m sorry I have to hurt you.” She gave a tiny gasp, and fainted as he wrestled her through the tight opening in the fence.
Once on the other side, he scooped her up into his arms. Unconsciousness had made her completely limp, and he broke into a run, crashing through the bushes, passing the Bronco, and jogging down the rough dirt track to the small frontage road beyond.
Sure enough, an ambulance was waiting for them, the doors open, a gurney ready, the EMTs standing by. Relief swamped Stevens as he laid Gutierrez on the padded transport bed.
He stared down at her, getting his first real look at the woman he’d rescued.
Priscilla Gutierrez’s round, pleasant face was ashen, her lips bleeding where she’d bitten them, likely to keep from crying out when he dragged her. She had been shot in the upper right chest. The team swarmed around her, covering her face with an oxygen mask, punching an IV into her arm, taking a pulse and blood pressure, speaking to each other in codes.
He stood back as they strapped her down, lifted the gurney into the ambulance, and roared off, lights going but no siren.
With any luck at all, she’d make it.
A touch on his arm. Captain Omura gazed up at him, her dark eyes wide, her jaw set. “I told you to stay put, Michael, and wait for orders from me.”
He shook his head. “I had to try to save her. I just hope I wasn’t too late.”
“Well, you pulled it off, so I hope so, too.”
SWAT arrived in their black van. Omura strode off to meet their commander.
A silver Tacoma truck drove up from the other direction, dirt and gravel flying from its tires as his wife braked beside Stevens. Lei leaped out of the driver’s seat, leaving the door ajar. She grabbed his arms, her eyes wild. “Are you shot?” She cried. “I’ll kill you if you’re shot.”
Stevens glanced down.
The entire front of his pale blue shirt was soaked with blood. “Not mine. The victim’s. Priscilla Gutierrez. Kidnapper shot her and threw her outside the container. She was alive, so I went and got her.” He met Lei’s eyes. “I have to get back to my phone in case he calls.”
He turned, and sprinted for the Bronco.
Chapter Twenty
Lei ran after her husband as he headed for his SUV. Technically, she should wait to collaborate with the captain and the SWAT team, as she was not only a team member on the case, but the liaison for the FBI on Maui.
But she couldn’t stand to let her blood-soaked spouse out of her sight. No telling what he would do next, and he was right—he had to get back to that phone. He was the familiar voice that had already established contact with the kidnappers.
The Bronco was parked in a nest of beach heliotrope and naupaka bushes, hardy shrubs that thrived in sandy, arid areas near the ocean. The vehicle was shaded by an overhanging ironwood tree. Dead ahead, behind a tall chain-link fence with a triangular hole cut in it, brilliant sun blazed down on a rust red metal container with Matson boldly emblazoned on the side.
Stevens jumped into the front seat of the Bronco. Lei yanked open the back door behind him, just as Mahoe, in the passenger seat, handed her husband the ringing phone.
The young man’s face was pale and shiny, and he smelled of stress and sweat. “You got here just in time, LT. The phone started ringing—I didn’t know what to do.”
Stevens took the phone and answered it on speaker. “This is Stevens.”
“You’re running out of time before I blow away the next hostage. Where’s the chopper?”
“On its way. Listen, man, I’m doing my best. It takes time to get things approved. No one wants to mess up in a situation like this, and I can tell you mean business. Just give me a chance to talk to my captain . . .”
“I gave you a chance. Fifteen whole minutes. You wasted those minutes!” The kidnapper was yelling now. Lei heard the bone-chilling sound of screams in the background—both coming from the phone, and muffled on the inside of the container. “I’ve got another one here. This one’s worth more—the Peterson wife. Think people will be happy that you let her die?”
“NO, please, no. No!” Stevens bellowed, his voice echoing with old pain. His eyes were wide and blank, the hand holding the phone trembling—he wasn’t even here right now.
Stevens was back in a hotel room with his ex-wife, she was dying before his eyes, and he couldn’t save her. Lei recognized the stuff of his nightmares—she’d witnessed them too many times.
Lei reached over and grabbed the phone out of his hand. “This is Special Agent Lei Texeira of the FBI. We are taking over this case.”
She turned off the speakerphone feature as she shoved the Bronco’s back door open, ignoring Stevens’s howl of rage as she slammed it. She pressed the phone against her ear and ran through the screening bushes until she stood in front of the container in an open area, clearly visible from the slit of the container’s open doorway.
Lei had donned her navy blue FBI ball cap when she got the call from Omura about the standoff. The hat’s bold white letters made a perfect target of her head as she stood in the line of fire. Her heart pounded and her breath strained against the tight constriction of her protective vest, but she kept her voice strong and commanding. “I’m authorized to negotiate with you.”
“Screw you! I didn’t ask for the FBI!”
More screams. Emma Peterson appeared in the door of the container.
The kidnapper, barely visible in the opening, held the woman by a handful of blonde hair, a gun trained on her temple. Mrs. Peterson’s hands were at her scalp, trying to keep the strain off, but she lowered them and pushed the door of the container wider with a screech, writhing and weeping in the man’s brutal grip.
“Calm down, sir. We’re all going to get what we
want.” Lei breathed deeply and deliberately, tapping into a core of calm within herself that she’d worked years to build. “What do I call you? I’ve told you my name.”
“You can call me your worst nightmare, bitch!” the kidnapper yelled. He was clearly losing it. “Where’s my goddamn chopper?”
“The bird is on its way.” Lei was thankful that the whump-whump-whump of helicopter blades overhead backed up her words—but the truth was, she had no idea what was going on with SWAT. She hadn’t taken the time to get wired up with a mic or gather with the team for a plan. She was going to hear about this later, no matter the outcome. “I can tell that you mean business, sir—we are taking you very seriously. Your first victim has got our full attention. No need to add another. In fact, why don’t you give us a sign of good faith, and let this one go?”
“Why don’t you fuck off?” Without warning, the man fired out the door of the container in her direction. Lei instinctively threw herself to the ground, but too late—she felt a burn at her shoulder. “The next one’s going in this woman!”
Lei glanced at her shoulder. The fabric of her shirt was frayed by a black crease mark. He’d almost hit her!
She stayed down on her belly, shutting out anything but the man’s voice on the line as she clutched the phone to her ear. “You’ve made your point, sir. You are in charge of everything that’s happening.” She slid her ball cap off. No sense giving him a bigger target. “The chopper you asked for is approaching.”
In fact, a chopper was directly overhead—but instead of the commercial Bell Jet she’d anticipated, this bird was a heavy military model in green camo. A line snaked out from its belly and two black-clad SWAT members were already rappelling down.
