Stronghold | Book 1 | Minute Zero

by Jayne, Chris

  “I won’t even ask you who you were going to call.”

  Angela didn’t answer. Anything she could say would make it worse. She slowly rose to her feet and faced Raoul Saldata fully.

  “As we speak it is almost morning in Qife,” Saldata stated, “and an electrician is waiting to visit your parents’ home. New wiring for them, courtesy of the village chief. I will be calling this electrician every twelve hours. Just to see how the work is progressing.” He paused, watching her. “Do you understand me?”

  “Yes,” Angela stated flatly. She stared at Saldata, afraid to drop her eyes, afraid not to.

  He continued. “If I miss one call, a friend of the electrician will go to your sister’s house and rape her in front of her husband and children. If I miss two calls, they will all be killed.” He paused, then asked again. “Do you understand me?”

  The images were so horrible she quite nearly could not speak. “Yes.” Angela licked her lips. “And what if I do as you ask? Everything you ask.”

  “Then you will go back to Washington and resume your good work for the FBI.” Saldata shrugged, his eyes cruel in his sallow face. “And your parents will have new wiring in their house.”

  With nothing else said, he turned and walked ahead of her to the plane with Garth at his side, leaving her to pick up her purse and its scattered contents from the concrete. Her wrist hurt; her face throbbed.

  The two men mounted the stairs.

  Desperate, Angela called out in Albanian, “Te lutem.” I beg you. “What if something happens to you? Something that has nothing to do with me.”

  Saldata turned and looked at her, his face twisted in an amused sneer. “As our American friends say, you better watch my six.”

  Angela followed the men up the ladder. He’d hit her low enough that she didn’t think she’d have a black eye, but she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to chew for a few days.

  The plane’s interior was gorgeously appointed, four huge leather recliners plus a sofa running along the back of the plane, but whatever small pleasure she would have gotten out of seeing it two minutes ago was gone. Now it was just a prison.

  The recliners, in their standard position, all faced forward. The front recliners also rotated 180 degrees, so all four could face the center of the plane, meeting-style. Saldata took a front seat; given no instructions and not wanting to sit next to him, Angela sat in one of the rear two seats.

  Garth went to the small galley at the front of the plane and retrieved ice from a dispenser, dumped it into a plastic bag, then wrapped the plastic in a cloth bar towel and brought it to Angela. “For your face,” he said flatly.

  Angela understood the gesture instantly for exactly what it was. This man had held a gun on her not two minutes ago. He didn’t give a damn about her. However, a massive mark on her face would be noticed, and that they could not have. She took the ice pack with the same matter-of-fact demeanor with which he offered it. Still, the touch of cold fabric felt amazingly soothing and for a moment she closed her eyes, savoring it.

  Saldata rotated his chair backward, smooth and silent on its expensive mechanism. Reaching into a briefcase, he retrieved a folder and passed it across to her. “You should have satellite internet as soon as we are in the air. Here’s what Rossi sent over about the sister.”

  The file folder was thin. Angela took it with her free hand, and as soon as she flipped it open, she saw why. The only things the folder contained was a Montana Division of Motor Vehicles report for Roger James Hale and a second for Louise Wilston Hale, both listed at 952 Sandy Pine Circle, Bowenville, Montana. She looked up at Saldata. “There’s not much here.”

  “It’s all Rossi could get on a Sunday, and it’s enough. Find out what you can. See if you can find a place where we can set up to watch the house.”

  Angela nodded, remembering the point she’d made, was it just this morning? Simply because Dovner had told her aunt they were going to Montana five days ago didn’t make it true.

  Suddenly, Angela had an inspiration, so cold, so clear, so vivid that she almost shuddered. Quickly she lowered her gaze, hoping she’d given nothing away, but Garth had returned to the galley and was mixing cocktails, and Saldata had turned back away, and reached into his briefcase, fumbling for papers.

  When she’d bought the phone, all she could think about was warning her family - somehow. But she didn’t have to do that. Angela knew that, from a practical standpoint, she was an extremely valuable asset that had been cultivated over nearly two decades. If Lori Dovner wasn’t in Montana, if they could not find her, this was over. They would have to let her go back to Washington, go back to work. They could not afford to burn her to the ground on a failed mission.

  She didn’t need to warn her family. She needed to warn Lori Dovner. Her entire body went still as she considered the implications.

  Somehow, she would do it. But now she had to convince Saldata that she was absolutely, utterly in line. She raised her eyes and saw she was correct: he was staring at her. She stared back. “When did you say we will have internet?”

  “After we take off.”

  “Good,” she said. “Because I want to get started.”

  Chapter 37

  Louise

  Monday

  8:00 AM Mountain Time

  Hobson, Montana

  * * *

  The phone in the living room rang, and Louise dived for it, almost losing her coffee in the process. “Lori? Where are you? We were so worried.”

  “I tried to call. Last night, a couple times.”

  “And you got a busy signal?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Shit, I am so sorry. The phone got knocked off the hook. What happened? Why didn’t you make it?”

  “There was a terrible wreck on the interstate in Wyoming and we sat for a couple of hours. Then they routed us off, and then there was another wreck on that highway. By the time I got to Sheridan it was after 8:00 PM, and we still had almost 300 miles to go, so we stopped. I’m sorry you worried. I did try to call.”

  “No, it’s okay. Just terrible luck about the phone. Where are you?”

  “We’re just now leaving Sheridan. GPS says 280 miles. We should be there by 2:00 or so.” As she said the words, a sense of shock flowed over Lori. This really would be over, very soon.

  “Listen, Lori. Roger’s been after me to get a phone number from you.”

  “I didn’t want to give it to you, Lou. I didn’t think it was safe. I still don’t. Every time I’ve called I’ve called from a pay phone.”

  “But you do have a number?”

  “I have this pay as you go cell phone, but I don’t want to give the number to anyone.”

  “Roger asked me.” Louise thought of who else had insisted, but she didn’t want to say the name. That was the last complication they needed right now. “If you have the number, give it to me. But we won’t call unless it’s an emergency.”

  Lori fished in her handbag, withdrew a scrap of paper she’d written the number on, and read it to her sister. “I promise I’ll call if we have any more problems. Otherwise, I’ll see you around 2:00.”

  As Lori had read the number, Louise had cast about the living room for anything to write with. Seizing a coloring book, she wrote the number on the inside of the front cover with a crayon. “See you then.”

  Louise hurried out of the house into the cool fall morning. Not too many more of these days, she reflected; soon it would be nothing but cold. She wanted to tell Roger and Deacon immediately that Lori had called. She saw no sign of them, but this was the time of the morning Roger typically drove out to the pasture to check on the stock. She assumed Deacon had gone with him.

  Sandy stood by her car, suitcases on the ground. She was packing up. Louise had talked to Sandy at breakfast, and Sandy had completely concurred that leaving today instead of early tomorrow morning was a much better plan. She’d confessed she’d even been thinking of it. She’d told Louise to thank Deacon for the generous off
er of his credit card to preserve her anonymity, but felt that Roger’s opinion was correct. Willie Bowen would assume they were long gone from the state and she could see no risk in checking into an airport hotel in Billings under her own name.

  Sandy smiled as Louise approached and put her hand on the roof of the car. “I’m going to be sorry to let the old family truckster go, but the car Tom kept in Illinois is newer and more fuel efficient so it makes sense to keep that one. And now there are only four of us.” At the mention of her husband’s name, her eyes welled with tears, and she shook her head to force the emotion away. “I wonder how many years it’s going to take before I don’t do that every time I say his name,” she asked, her voice bitter.

  Louise reached out and touched her friend on the arm. “Probably a lot.”

  “Yeah,” Sandy agreed, looking terribly vulnerable. “Probably.”

  Without warning, a piercing scream came from the barn. Their eyes wide with horror, both women turned and sprinted towards the barn, Sandy making greater speed than pregnant Louise. Louise knew that Hannah was playing in the house, but the other four children were outside. What could have happened? The screams persisted.

  They burst through the open door of the barn. Tony, Frankie, and Beth clustered around something on the ground who, by process of elimination, could only be nine-year-old Marie. Her shrieks were ear splitting, and the situation was not helped by the fact that the other three children were now also crying.

  Louise knelt down next to the howling child. Marie clutched her right forearm and rocked back and forth.

  “I’m so sorry, Mommy. I’m so sorry,” wept Beth, watching her screaming sister. She pointed at the tire swing that Roger had hung from the barn’s rafters. “We were swinging and then she said she wanted to play trapeze and she hung by her legs and then, then she fell.”

  “It’s not your fault, it’s not your fault,” Sandy reassured her older daughter desperately. She knelt down next to Marie and tried to get a look at the arm, then looked at Louise.

  Louise shook her head. She was a midwife. Any training in orthopedics was both minimal and years in the past, but the arm was already swelling and from the way she was holding it, this was beyond a sprained wrist. She raised eyes to Sandy. “Broken,” she mouthed.

  “No!” Sandy cried in a desperate whisper. “Are you sure?”

  Louise pressed her mouth tight and nodded, a short sharp jerk. “Pretty sure.” She forced herself to take a deep breath. Broken arms, while scary and obviously very painful, were rarely life threatening. This would be fine; she just had to get control of the situation. She stood up and looked at Beth. “Beth, I want you to listen to me. Your sister’s going to be fine, but I need you to take Tony and Frankie into the house and watch Hannah. Put a DVD in the player, anything they want to watch. There are Oreo cookies in the jar, and they can have some. No fighting. Tony, do you hear me? No fighting. Let Frankie pick the DVD.”

  “Yes, Mommy,” Tony whispered, obviously so taken aback by what had just happened it didn’t even occur to him to disobey. “I’m scared of blood.”

  “I know honey, but there’s no blood. Just go in the house.”

  “Come on, guys.” Beth grabbed the two little boys’ hands and drew them out of the barn with one terrified backward glance at her sister.

  “Okay.” Louise looked at Sandy. “I want you to sit here, with Marie.” Louise shrugged out of her sweatshirt and wrapped it around the now hysterical child as carefully as possible, doing her best not to jostle the arm. “Keep her warm, try to keep her as still as possible. I need to go find Roger and Deke.”

  Louise rushed out of the barn and ran for her crossover. Roger’s pick-up was gone, but all that meant was that the men had driven it up into the field, carrying hay. But no. Louise squinted. That was Roger down by the paddock fence, toolbox at his side, and no sign of Deacon or the truck. Jumping in her car, she covered the hundred or so yards to where her husband was working in a matter of seconds.

  Roger straightened from where he was repairing the fence at the sound of the vehicle’s frenzied approach and moved towards her as she jumped from the car. “What’s wrong? Lou? Is it the baby?” he called out.

  “No. No!” she reassured him, and quickly explained the situation.

  “You sure it’s broken?”

  “Pretty sure,” she replied. “No way to know for certain without an x-ray, but yeah. It’s broken. Unfortunately. Someone needs to go the hospital with Sandy.” Louise forced herself to slow down, aware that she was close to the babbling stage. “Where’s Deacon?”

  “I sent him to the feed store.”

  “Shit. How long ago?”

  “Barely fifteen minutes.”

  “I was hoping he could take Sandy to the hospital, but,” Louise shook her head, “we can’t wait for him to come back. I’ll go with her.”

  Roger hesitated. “I guess I could go.”

  “No. I’m the medical person. I’ll know if she’s getting the run around. I might even be able to pull a few strings and get her seen faster. If it’s just a simple break.” She exhaled a deep breath. “Of all the things we didn’t need today.” She left the thought unfinished.

  “Just don’t go into labor,” Roger advised.

  “Don’t even say it,” she said over her shoulder.

  It wasn’t until Louise was halfway to the hospital that she even remembered the original reason she had gone out of the house: to tell Roger that Lori had called and that she finally had a phone number for her sister. For one second, she wondered if she should call Roger and tell him where she written the number down. But what difference did it make? she asked herself. It was too late now for Deacon to go and meet Lori somewhere.

  Once Lori arrived, they could make their decisions. If they decided it was safer to move her to a motel, they could do it then.

  She pushed the thoughts of her sister out of her head, trying to focus on keeping her driving safe. Marie continued to sob. Never had the 20 miles to Lewiston seemed so long.

  Chapter 38

  Lori

  Monday

  10:45 AM Mountain Time

  Greystone Rest Area – I90 - Montana

  * * *

  Lori piloted the Escalade into the interstate rest area, coming to an incredible realization. This would be their last stop. Seven days and nearly 2,400 miles, they were almost to Lou and Roger’s. It didn’t seem possible, but neither her odometer nor her watch lied.

  They’d gotten up at the hotel and grabbed a quick breakfast at the hotel’s complimentary bar, which, with nothing but cold cereal, suspect hard-boiled eggs, and stale cinnamon buns, had been a disappointment. It had been enough, though, that no one wanted to stop anywhere else, so they’d driven nearly three hours. Now, however, the children were complaining about hunger and Lori realized she could eat as well, so an early lunch seemed the smart choice.

  Barring the quick (and probably inevitable) potty stop that Brandon would require, they could make it to Hobson with no more long breaks. They’d have dinner with her sister, and finally she would have real help in deciding what to do next. This had been the objective when she left Miami, and now that they were so close, it was starting to seem surreal.

  “Mommy, I really got to go,” Brandon announced as he raised his head and realized they were at a rest stop. “Right now. Really.” His voice took on a note of desperation.

  “Okay,” Lori responded, assessing the layout of the area. How a five-year-old boy’s need to urinate could go from an unknown to an emergency in less than ten seconds was a mystery that Lori knew would go down into the ages as unsolved.

  Most of the interstate areas had dog yards and a quick glance verified that this one was no different: a brick building, clearly containing restrooms, was at the front of the rest area and towards the back, off a second parking lot, there was a fenced dog run.

  Lori pulled the car directly in front of the restroom building. No point in making Brandon wait. “You g
uys just go in,” she instructed Simone, “and I’ll park in back and take Sasha to the dog yard.”

  Nodding, Simone got out of the car, motioning for Brandon and Grace to follow, letting the two children precede her.

  “Simone,” Lori said quietly as the au pair stood in the door of the Escalade, just getting ready to swing it shut.

  Simone looked up.

  “Two more hours,” Lori reassured her. “Hang in there. We’re almost there.”

  Simone let out a sigh, and whispered, “J’espere.” Lori’s French kicked in quickly to translate: I hope.

  Ten minutes later, Lori sat on a bench in the dog run, watching Sasha sniff every fence post carefully. The spot had to be just right, and clearly Sasha was taking no chances on choosing poorly. Lori shook her head in semi-amused disgust as she became aware of what she was doing; she’d gone from planning dinner parties for rock stars to entertaining herself by speculating about the urinary practices of German shepherds.

  In addition, with more than a little chagrin, she realized how much time she had actually been spending on her smart phone. Like many in her over thirty age group, she had nothing good to say about others who checked their phones every five minutes, but now, this last week, without one, she saw just how much time she herself had actually been spending checking the news, the weather, Instagram and Facebook. Even though no one but herself could know her thoughts, if truth be known, she was a bit embarrassed by it.

  Brandon and Grace ran up to the fence, Simone directly behind them. “Mom,” Grace announced, “there’s a map in the building on the wall, and there’s a big river right over there.” She pointed vaguely behind the rest area.

  “It’s the Yellowstone River,” Lori supplied. “We crossed it on a big bridge about half an hour ago. I should have told you.” Lori had actually gotten frequent glimpses of the river as she was driving for the last hour or so, as the interstate seemed to be more or less following the river, but in the oversized seats of the Escalade, the children could not see the scenery unless they actually sat up and made an effort.