by Alex Ander
After tying his ankles to the chair legs, Dahlia removed her leather jacket and tossed it on the bed. She said nothing for several minutes, standing in front of Abdul, her hands on her hips. Shifting her weight to her right foot, she let the toe of her left boot come off the floor. Dahlia was sizing up her opponent, trying to ascertain his weaknesses. She thought about approaching the interrogation from a sexual standpoint, making him uncomfortable and keeping him off-balance, while she drilled him for information. She grinned. A better idea came to her mind.
Cruz watched Dahlia operate. She did not understand what her partner was doing. The silence was getting to her as much as it was getting to Abdul. She wanted to say something to her, but did not want to ruin the chess match taking place. She noticed the man was getting agitated. Even though the temperature in the room was cool, he was perspiring.
Dahlia approached the bed and fumbled around in the pockets of her leather jacket. Spinning around, she spoke to Abdul. Her words were sharp. “Tell me about Ashar Yamadi.” She methodically placed one foot in front of the other and moved closer to Abdul, her hands behind her back. She stared at him, making a show of every move she made. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Where is he? How do I contact him? And, don’t lie to me, Abdul. I know you’ve been in communication with him.”
“I swear…I do not know any Ashar…Yamadi. Is that what this is about?” Abdul glanced at Cruz for confirmation.
Dahlia slapped him across the face and his head whipped back toward her. She clamped onto his chin. “What did I tell about asking questions, Abdul?”
Cruz bristled when Dahlia struck him. She was not accustomed to hitting people during questioning. She had to remind herself that these were necessary means to bring about a favorable end, saving innocent lives.
“I do not know this man you speak of,” repeated Abdul, shaking his head. “Please, you must believe me.” A single tear ran from each of his eyes.
Dahlia shook her head slowly. Bending over, she stared into his eyes. Her long, bleach blonde hair fell forward, touching his chest. She saw his eyes flash down to her breasts. She squinted at him and lowered her voice. “I don’t believe you.” She touched the stun gun to his chest and the man’s body seized and rocked backward in his chair. Removing the stun gun, she added, “And, you’re going to wish you hadn’t lied to me.” She waited for the convulsing to cease. “How do I find Yamadi?”
Through labored breaths, Abdul replied, “I don’t know anyone—”
Dahlia pressed the stun gun against his stomach and let it remain there longer. She jerked her head away from him, when his head swung forward and almost hit her in the nose. That would’ve hurt. She retracted the stun gun. “Every time you lie to me, Abdul, I’m going to keep going lower and lower on your body.” She let the stun gun hover a couple of inches away from his groin and twirled her wrist a few times.
Abdul saw the device move in a circular motion, dangerously close to his private parts.
“Do you like game shows, Abdul?”
Abdul shut his eyes and rolled his head. His face was crinkled and his chest was heaving. He heard her question, but it made no sense to him. Game shows?
“Think of this as a game show. For every wrong answer, you get buzzed.” She continued twirling her wrist and the stun gun close to Abdul’s male anatomy. She saw his eyes move downward. She made a quick and loud ‘buzzing’ sound.
Abdul jumped and squirmed in the chair.
“Next question,” Dahlia snapped, grabbing the man’s chin in her right hand and squeezing. “Where…do…I…find…Yamadi?”
Abdul shook his head as much as he could and spoke. “I swear to you.” His voice was cracking and tears were running down his cheeks. “I don’t know the man.”
Dahlia stopped him from shaking his head and fixed her eyes on him. “Is that your final answer?” After a few seconds, she let go of him and observed his crotch. “All right, so be it.” She moved the stun gun closer and heard Abdul cry out.
“Stop! I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Just don’t use that thing on me anymore.” Abdul was half talking and half crying. He was staring at her hand and the machine in it. A bead of sweat ran down the bridge of his nose and dropped onto his penis.
“How do I contact Yamadi?”
Abdul did not respond right away. He took a couple of deep breaths.
“Tell me, Abdul.” She held up the stun gun and pressed the trigger, sending an arc of electricity between the contacts.
Abdul’s body lurched backward and he spat his answer. “I have his number in my cell phone. I usually send a text and he contacts me within twenty-four hours.” After a few seconds, he added, “There are no direct calls.”
Dahlia sensed Abdul was lying to her, but she let it go. She had him talking and wanted to keep it that way. Besides, a text message would work, too. Scanning the room, she saw his phone on the nightstand. She grabbed the phone before fishing around in the pockets of her jacket and retrieving a small USB flash drive.
Standing in front of Abdul, Dahlia pulled up her mini skirt, spread her legs apart, took two small steps forward and plopped onto his lap. He grunted. She leaned forward and put one elbow on each of his shoulders. She held Abdul’s cell phone behind his head. Inserting the small flash drive into his phone, she toyed with him, while working. “That wasn’t so hard now, was it? I’ve always said communication is the basis of a good working relationship.” After she finished with his phone, she brought it to where he could see it. “Which one’s Yamadi’s number?” She scrolled down the contact list, watching Abdul’s eyes.
Abdul was trying to find a way out of this mess. If he gave this woman Yamadi’s number, Yamadi would kill him. If he did not give her the number, she would…well…she would do something very bad to him. Abdul decided to take a chance. “There,” he said, stopping her from scrolling. Gesturing with his chin, he added, “That one—the 626 number.” He looked away and exhaled a breath of air. “I usually just tell him we need to talk—nothing specific.”
Dahlia touched the number on the screen and typed a text message similar to what Abdul had said and sent the message. She got off Abdul and dropped the phone onto his lap. Picking up her coat, she addressed Cruz. “We’re done here. Let’s go.”
Dahlia and Cruz left the house and made their way to the Renegade. Dahlia was walking fast, breaking into a short trot every third or fourth step, wanting to get to the vehicle as soon as possible. Cruz was almost jogging to keep up with her.
Once the women were inside the SUV, Dahlia plucked a laptop computer from the backseat and set it on her lap. She lifted the screen and began hitting keys and tapping the touchpad, until she got to the screen she wanted.
Cruz watched her. “What are you doing?”
Dahlia held up her finger.
“How do we know he gave you Yamadi’s number?”
“He didn’t.” Dahlia stared at the screen. “He wouldn’t have given that up without a lot more persuasion from me.”
Cruz held up her hands, palms up. “Then, what was all that for? Why did you send a text to the number he gave you, if it wasn’t Yamadi’s number?”
“That was just to keep the ruse going, so he wouldn’t suspect anything.”
Growing more frustrated by the moment, Cruz peeked out her window at the house. “I still don’t see how any of this gets us closer to finding Yamadi.”
Dahlia was trying to focus on the computer screen and Cruz was distracting her. Turning her attention away from the screen, she rattled off a few sentences to bring Cruz up to speed. “Abdul is going to give us Yamadi’s number, and his location, just as soon as he calls Yamadi. I uploaded a program to his phone that will allow us to monitor his calls from this computer. As soon as he makes the call, we’ll know where Yamadi is.” She went back to staring at the screen.
Cruz had seen Dahlia insert the USB drive into Abdul’s phone, but she did not know what Dahlia had done. Pretty clever. “How is h
e going to place the call? We left him tied to a chair.”
Dahlia shook her head. “I didn’t tie his restraints that tight. I just wanted to buy us some time to get back here and—” she stopped talking, when the laptop’s speaker came alive. “This is it. He’s calling someone.” She moved the cursor to another area of the screen and double-tapped the touchpad to record the call. Opening a separate window, she started a program that would translate the call into English. Dahlia put her forefinger to her lips and pointed at the screen.
When the call was connected, a voice said, “Ashar, it’s Abdul.”
“You fool!” replied a very deep voice. “I told you never to call me on this number. You have broken protocol.”
“Ashar, this is important.”
“Stop using my name and go through the proper channels, you idiot!” The man disconnected the call.
Dahlia tapped the laptop’s touchpad a few times and waited. She curled up the right side of her mouth in a half-grin and slowly rotated her head toward Cruz.
“Did we get it? Do we know where he is?”
Dahlia nodded her head one time and said, “Denver.”
“That’s where Abby was kidnapped.” Cruz scrambled for her phone and hit the speed dial number for Hardy. Waiting for the call to be connected, she glimpsed Dahlia out of the corner of her eye. She was impressed by her tactics. Unconventional as they may have been, they were effective. “Do we know exactly where in Denver?”
“The program I used isn’t that sophisticated. It can only narrow it down to a city.”
Cruz heard Hardy answer. She held the phone away from her mouth and spoke to Dahlia. “Make a copy of everything and we’ll send it to the FBI.” She brought the phone back to her mouth. “We found Yamadi.”
Chapter 16: Good News
7:49 a.m., Washington D.C.
Aaron Hardy caught a break when he arrived at LaGuardia Airport. He hitched a ride on a Gulfstream V flight scheduled to fly to Washington, D.C., cutting his travel time to a little more than twenty minutes. After the plane landed, he disembarked and met Charity halfway between the jet and her SUV. The first thing he noticed under her long winter coat was her red skirt and high heels.
Hardy raised his voice, so he could be heard above the noise of the aircraft. “I thought you were going to change into some street clothes?”
Charity wrapped her hand around his elbow and escorted him toward the SUV. She leaned into him. “There was no time. I’ll tell you about it when we get to the car.” The temperature in Washington, D.C. was thirty-nine degrees. A stiff wind was making it feel fifteen degrees colder.
Once they were in the quiet and warm confines of the four-door Chevy Tahoe, Charity slid out her laptop from its protective case and lifted the screen. Biting on her gloved middle finger, she yanked her hand from the fabric, so she could bring up the video she wanted to show Hardy. While the program was booting up, she undid the scarf around her neck and partially unzipped her winter coat.
Hardy shifted in his seat to get a better view of Charity’s laptop. “Have you contacted Layla’s host family? Do they know we’re coming?”
“Yes, they’re expecting us around nine o’clock.” She tapped the touchpad on the laptop a couple of times before rotating the laptop to her right. “Okay, this is a video from a surveillance camera outside a restaurant in downtown D.C.” Charity held up her hand. “Let me back up a minute. After our earlier conversation, I decided to upload Layla’s image to my software algorithm…the one that scans for facial recognitions from any and all sources of video and images from all across the country.”
Hardy was familiar with the algorithm. She had used it on numerous past missions to get valuable information on potential targets. He nodded his head and gestured for her to continue.
“So, after I uploaded it, I was going to go home and change clothes. Before I could leave, however, I got a hit.”
“On Yamadi?” asked Hardy.
“I think so, but it’s only a seventy-five percent match, and…well, it’s better if I just show you.” She pushed a key on the keyboard and a video played. She held up two fingers. “This is from two days ago.” She tapped another key and the video paused. Charity pointed at the screen. “You see this man here.”
Hardy leaned forward and squinted. “All I see is the back of someone’s head.”
“If you look at the rear window of that car parked directly in front of him, you’ll see a reflection.”
Hardy had to get closer to the screen to make out a faint image in the glass. “Yeah, I guess so. You’re telling me that’s Yamadi. I can’t tell if that’s a man or a woman.”
“You can’t, but the algorithm is seventy-five percent certain it’s Yamadi.”
Hardy stared at the image before leaning back in his seat. “So, we have Yamadi in D.C. one day before Abby is kidnapped in Denver.” He held up his hands and waited for Charity to tell him the significance of the discovery.
Charity re-wound the video and stopped it before pointing out a woman on the right half of the screen. “That is Layla.” Letting the video play at normal speed, she added, “walking into the restaurant.” Fast-forwarding the video and stopping it, she glanced at Hardy. “Watch this next clip.”
Hardy never took his eyes off the screen. A few seconds passed and he saw Layla again exiting the restaurant and walking in the direction she had come from before she entered the restaurant. Thirty seconds later, the man who had been caught in the reflection of the rear window of the parked car emerged from the restaurant and went in the same direction as Layla.
Charity stopped the video. “What are the chances the girl who was kidnapped with Abby and the man who we suspect kidnapped her would be at the same restaurant the day before the kidnapping? Is that just a coincidence?” Charity watched for Hardy’s expression.
Not believing in coincidences had kept Hardy alive and helped him capture or kill the enemy on many missions. He fixed his eyes on Charity, not really seeing her. His mind was running through the possibilities. Thinking aloud, he said, “We don’t really know if he was following her. All we know is that they were there at the same time.” A few moments passed. “Do we know when Yamadi arrived at the restaurant?”
Charity shook her head. “We don’t have him on video; however, the restaurant has a back door with no camera coverage. He could have slipped in and we’d never know it.”
“What about the restaurant? Do they have any CCTV footage?”
“I contacted the restaurant and they do have closed circuit television, but the system is on a twenty-four hour loop. All of the footage of when these two were there has been recorded over.”
Damn. We need a break. Hardy checked the time. “All right, we need to get moving if we’re going to keep our appointment.”
“I thought you should have this information before we meet the host family.” She glanced down and touched her coat. “That’s why I didn’t have time to change clothes. We have a little time before the meeting. We can stop at my place. It won’t take me long to throw on some jeans and a shirt.”
Hardy shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. You won’t be running and gunning anyways.” Pointing to the man in the driver’s seat, Hardy raised his eyebrows at Charity.
“Agent Thompkins,” she whispered.
“Agent Thompkins, we’re ready—let’s go.”
The man adjusted the rear view mirror, so he could see his male passenger. “Yes, sir,” he said, stepping on the brake pedal and shifting the transmission into ‘drive.’ The vehicle rolled forward.
Hardy felt his phone vibrating in his pocket. He saw the caller and spoke to Charity. “It’s Cruz. Maybe she has some good news for us.” He slid his finger across the phone’s screen and put the device to his ear. “What have you got for me, Cruz?”
Chapter 17: Ashar
5:46 a.m. (Mountain Time)
Ashar Yamadi disconnected the call from Abdul, broke the cheap prepaid phone in half and dropped it. He
cursed his operative for being so careless, while he stepped on the two halves of the phone. The device shattered into many pieces. Yamadi knew the monitoring capabilities of the United States Government. The call had been short, but it was long enough to leave a digital footprint that a skilled computer analyst could find and track to his current location. He had to abandon the hideout, move his operations and ‘the package’ to the next site, ahead of schedule. The whole purpose of using backdoor channels of communication was to stay off the radar of the Americans. One call from a spooked operative had threatened his entire plan.
Yamadi walked down the hall of the antique shop he was using for cover and found his assistant leaning against the wall near a closed door in the basement of the shop. He told the man the location might have been compromised before instructing him to get everyone ready to move out.
After the man had left, Yamadi took another prepaid cell phone from his pocket and activated it. Once he had a signal, he sent a coded text message. The message read: The egg must leave the nest. Is the bird ready? Seconds went by that seemed like hours, while Yamadi waited for the reply. He wiped his fingers across his forehead before drying them on his pants. The phone vibrated in his meaty hands and he read the reply. The bird is ready and waiting for her chicks. Yamadi closed the phone and peered through the small window at the top portion of the door in front of him.
Inside the room, at the far corner, he saw two young girls handcuffed to a very narrow bed. One was awake, but the other one was still unconscious from the drug she was given, many hours earlier. The foolish girl thought she could escape from my men. Smiling, he inwardly admired her spirit and determination. Most girls her age would not have thought about doing what she did, let alone attempt the escape. He headed down the hallway, back the way he had come, worrying about the pushed-up timetable. Each time he moved the girl, the risk of being detected by law enforcement skyrocketed. Because of Abdul, Yamadi was forced to employ an additional hideout location before taking her to the final destination, the launching point.