Snatched

by Michael Arches

  Then, they stopped and backed up.

  A rumbling vibration came from under the floor. Someone was pulling out the ramp. Next, the tailgate opened. Bright light flooded in, almost blinding Athena. But at least, the suffocating darkness was gone.

  To her surprise, their truck had backed up next to the side of a large silver bus. The words Galway Expeditions were spelled in big letters on the side. The truck’s ramp led directly into the bus’s open door.

  “Everybody up!” Misha yelled. “No time to dawdle. Get on the bus now. As you walk across the ramp, drop your bag to one of the men. Go, go, go!”

  Athena glanced at Maggie who was close by.

  The older woman shrugged and came close. “We don’t have much choice. No point to slow walking now.”

  “I’m a born rebel. Not doing any bastard any favors,” Athena whispered back.

  The older woman smiled. “Good attitude. From now on, we resist every chance we can without catching a beating.”

  At that moment, Athena didn’t need to fake resistance. She really did have a hard time standing without losing her balance. She, Jackie, and Maggie ended up at the rear of the pack again.

  The ramp between vehicles was four feet off the ground, and a few of the women before them had teetered and whimpered. Everyone’s nerves were jangled beyond belief. One girl screamed as she lost her balance. Misha yelled at her, but her foot slipped on the ramp. Thankfully, a strong woman right behind her wrapped her arms around the girl and kept her from plunging to the ground.

  Misha shut up, apparently realizing he was making things worse. A tiny victory for the Resistance.

  Through gritted teeth, he said, “Okay, ladies, nice and easy. We don’t want anyone getting hurt. Keep the line moving slow and steady.”

  When only three women remained in the truck, Maggie walked behind Athena, whose legs were still screaming in pain. Maggie held her upright, so Athena looking around when she got the chance. The two vehicles had been parked in an empty dirt lot next to a large metal shed filled with hay. They were surrounded on all sides by empty fields. No people or other vehicles nearby.

  As she’d been told, Athena dropped her bag filled with blankets. One of the guards caught it and tossed it into the bus’s storage compartment.

  When she reached the bus, one of the guards was standing next to the driver. He pointed to the back. “You can lay down on the rear bench. Enough room for both you and Jackie.”

  That seemed like a small blessing in the middle of this hell.

  Maggie returned to the truck and helped Jackie reach the bus.

  As soon as all of the women were on board, Misha and Rick pushed the ramp away from the bus. Then, the men jumped on board the bus.

  Misha said to the driver, “Take off. I’ll give you directions.”

  Maggie, Athena, and Jackie staggered toward the back seats as the bus jerked forward. But for once, they could see where they were going. And the seats were thickly padded and reclined. Tray tables were built into the back of the seat in front, like on an airplane.

  The women and girls whispered to one another until Misha’s voice rose over the murmur. “Settle in, ladies. It’s going to be a long drive. There’s a bathroom in the back. Each seat should have a bottle of water waiting for you.”

  Athena whispered to Maggie, “We need a spy upfront to hear what goes on.”

  Maggie whispered to a young blonde woman who looked to be only a few months pregnant. She nodded and moved toward the front of the bus.

  -0-0-0-

  Misha was relieved by the relatively quick switch. Things are finally looking up.

  The driver slowed when he reached the county road and put on his right turn signal. Misha stood beside him. The RRT fuckers still hadn’t told Misha where the new compound was, but Sabin had said that the bus needed to proceed north from Durango on US 550. “Go left,” Misha told the driver, who looked to be in his mid-sixties and was thirty pounds overweight.

  He shook his head. “The fastest way to Vegas is on the main road just south of us, CO 172.”

  Misha removed a pistol with a silencer from his briefcase on the seat right behind him. After waving it in front of the driver to make sure he knew it was the real deal, Misha placed the barrel against the guy’s temple. He kept his voice even. “This gun says we aren’t going to Sin City. Instead, we’ll be taking the back roads to bypass Durango then drive north on US 550.”

  The driver’s voice rose an octave. “Don’t shoot, but we won’t get five miles before my boss calls to bitch about how I’m deviating from the shortest and fastest route.”

  “Turn off the navigation system.”

  “Can’t,” the driver said. “It’s controlled back in Montrose, where our office is located.”

  The bus stopped at the road.

  “Turn left,” Misha said, “or you’re a dead man.”

  The driver did. Sweat broke out on his neck, face, and on the bald spot atop his head.

  He drove in silence for a few minutes until Misha noticed an abandoned farm. “Pull in here. Stop right next to that flagpole.” Then he turned to Leo. “Shimmy up the pole and climb onto the roof. Break off the antenna. Shoot it off if you have to.”

  The driver opened the door so Leo could exit but said, “Not going to work either. As soon as they lose contact with me, they’re going to call me. Part of our anti-hijacking protocol. If I say the nav system is broken, they’ll tell me the name of the closest big rig repair shop. There has to be at least one in Durango. If I don’t show up there within a few minutes, they’ll report this vehicle as stolen to every state and federal law enforcement agency.”

  Misha had expected something like that. “When they call, you give them the all-clear password, or you’ll suffer from terminal lead poisoning.”

  The driver’s voice stuttered badly. “Y-you’ve been watching too much TV. T-there’s no p-p-password anymore. Exactly for this…uh, r-reason. Won’t matter what I say. If I don’t report to the c-closest r-repair shop, they assume the…uh, w-worst.”

  The dude’s skin was pale, and hands were shaking so badly that Misha wondered whether he could drive. He certainly seemed too scared to lie. Might even have a heart attack at any moment.

  “Look,” Misha said, “let’s be crystal-clear about one thing. If any cops show up, or you disobey any of my orders, the first bullet I fire is going into your head. Do you understand?”

  “Y-y-yes, sir. I’m not lyin’ to you.”

  “I hope not, for your sake.”

  Misha waited in silence for Leo to return.

  He hopped up the steps into the bus and handed Misha a foot-long black antenna encased in rubber. The base had been broken off. A couple wires hung loose.

  “I took the whole unit,” Leo said. “We’re officially under the radar.”

  Misha grinned at him and said in Russian, “Excellent.”

  He turned to the driver. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  The man didn’t hesitate. He turned left on the county road and drove north.

  That was commendable, but the driver was proving to be more difficult than Misha had expected.

  He asked Leo, also in Russian, “Could you drive this bus if necessary? This man is sure to be an ongoing thorn in our side.”

  “Not sure,” Leo said. “I’ve driven many trucks, but no buses. They’re similar in size, but I don’t understand what some of the switches on the control panel to the driver’s left do.”

  “Then, watch him carefully and learn,” Misha said. “I will spare him for now, but you may need to take over at any moment.”

  -o-o-o-

  CO 172, Oxford, Colorado

  As Costello approached the tiny town of Oxford, he slowed. Beau received more specific directions about where to go from the liquor company’s manager. When they approached one county road, they turned right.

  A quarter-mile ahead, Beau saw what he and Costello
were looking for—a large truck plastered with beer ads parked in an empty lot.

  “Son of a bitch!” he said. “I’ll bet that’s it.”

  “Dammit!” Costello said. “They’ve already made the switch. Christ, that was fast.”

  It sure looked like it.

  Costello pulled into the large dirt parking lot next to a giant hay shed. The beer and wine distributor’s truck sat empty with the back tailgate open. Its ramp stuck out into the air like a diving board. Beau could see tracks in the dirt where another large vehicle had moved perpendicular to the truck. “They loaded into some vehicle with a side entrance. Probably a bus.”

  “Agreed. Goddammit! We must’ve just missed them.”

  Both agents scanned the horizon for a moment, but no sign of any people or vehicles nearby. And the exit from the parking lot was paved near the road, so it was impossible to tell which way their new vehicle had gone.

  “What do you think?” Costello asked.

  “It’s a total crapshoot. They’ve been using back roads instead of driving on the main highways. Maybe they’ll switch things up now. I say we take the main route to Durango. From there, they could go in any direction.”

  Costello headed south to CO 172, then turned west.

  Beau called Yang, the Denver boss, to update him. His team remained in the air, about halfway to Durango.

  “Maybe you’ll get lucky and chase down their new vehicle,” Yang said, “but we haven’t had much luck in this investigation yet. If you haven’t caught up to the unsubs by the time you reach town, we’ve probably lost them. In case, start calling charter companies in town. I doubt there are many places in your area where someone can charter a bus capable of dozens of people at a time.”

  “Yes, sir,” Beau said. He hung up and relayed Yang’s comments to Costello.

  The older man didn’t respond. Instead, he drove ninety miles an hour, this time with no lights or siren.

  Beau appreciated the silence. Yang hadn’t unloaded on him for their latest failure, but that was only a temporary reprieve. This was turning into an epic disaster, complete with multiple corpses, lots of pregnant girls and women in mortal danger, and at least one dirty cop. Various government agencies would soon begin investigating everything. One of the first questions they were likely to ask was, why hadn’t Beau protected Chris?

  Worst of all, he had no good answer to give them.

  Chapter 13

  Florida Road, Northeast of Durango

  The bus continued to skirt around the city. Then, the driver’s cell phone rang. “Just like I told you,” he said.

  Misha noted that it had taken the company fifteen minutes to contact them. Slower than expected. During that time, he’d come up with a plan. “You tell them you had no idea anything was wrong. When they tell you to take the bus in for repair, you tell them okay. Buy some time.”

  The driver shrugged, and the call went as he’d predicted. He pulled over, wrote down the name of a repair shop, and hung up.

  “Keep going west to US 550 north,” Misha said.

  When they made it to the highway, Misha told the driver, “Call your manager. Tell him I want to speak with him.”

  The driver nodded. He called, followed Misha’s instructions, and handed his cell phone to Misha.

  “Yeah, the driver told me there’s some problem,” Misha said to the man’s boss, “but everything seems to be running fine. And time is of the essence. We have Cirque du Soleil tickets tonight. I’m talking forty-eight tickets—front row seats. Even with a group discount, they cost me almost ten grand. Are you going to reimburse me for missing our show because your bus has some teensy-weensy problem that nobody here has noticed?”

  “Ah, I see,” the manager said. “Unfortunately, we have a strict policy against operating defective equipment.”

  “Sure,” Misha fired back, “then you can write me a check for $9,763. Wait, no, even better, you buy us new tickets for tomorrow night. That’ll probably set you back even more because you’ll be buying seats at the last minute. Or, I can give you one more option. You could send a new bus down to Cortez to meet us there. We probably wouldn’t have to wait for you for more than an hour. We switch buses and go on our way, can still make tonight’s performance.”

  Misha could almost hear the agony the guy was enduring as he decided whether he’d spend ten thousand dollars or agree to a slight deviation in company policy.

  “Put our driver back on,” the manager said.

  After handing the phone back, Misha carefully watched the guy’s face—looking for any hint of deception. All Misha saw was terror.

  After a moment, the driver said, “Okay, makes sense. Have Jorge call me when he gets close to Cortez.”

  The driver hung up and said, “They bought it. They’re sending a bus and new driver from our office in Montrose. It’ll take about two and half hours for him to get to Cortez.”

  “You did good,” Misha said. “I see you prefer to stay alive. Wise. And because you might run into some unpleasantness when they find out that I tricked them, I have five grand in cash to make it up to you.”

  He opened his briefcase and took out a bundle of fifty Benjamins. The driver accepted it with a frown and stuffed it into an overnight bag next to his seat.

  -o-o-o-

  US 550, near Purgatory Resort

  Athena laid on the bus’s back bench until the second round of ibuprofen kicked in. It hurt too much to sit, but she could stand next to Maggie in the row ahead for a few minutes at a time. Athena’s shivering had stopped, maybe because all of her muscles were worn out. Just like her mind. She felt too discombobulated to help the others.

  Then she caught herself. Don’t be a chicken shit. That does nobody no good.

  She rubbed her face to wake herself up. That seemed to help. She gazed out the large windows and couldn’t believe one tiny bit of good luck. They could actually see where the monsters were taking them.

  The highway climbed steadily into the magnificent San Juan Mountains. She knew the area well because she spent most of her free time hiking or four-wheeling in the high country. She’d moved to Durango precisely because of these mountains.

  But Misha wasn’t interested in doing his prisoners any favors. She asked Maggie, “Why do you think they’re letting us see where we’re going?”

  “We had to leave in a hurry, before anyone could black out the windows.”

  That made sense, but Athena had a darker thought. “Maybe he doesn’t care what we see because he won’t let anybody leave our next hiding place, not even for doctor’s visits.”

  “Good point, but that means he’ll have to bring an OB/GYN to us. Misha has always insisted upon regular checkups and testing for the babies.”

  Something wasn’t adding up, but Athena had no idea what.

  She wandered over to check on Jackie again. The poor woman was lying on her back, taking up half of the bench seat. Her face was covered with sweat. Erica sat next to her.

  “How’s mom-to-be?” Athena asked.

  Jackie forced a tight smile. “Never better. Just need some rest.”

  Athena looked at Erica for confirmation.

  Her smile was just as fake. “As long as things settle down, she’ll be fine. I hope we get wherever we’re going before the baby decides to say hello to this cold, cruel world.”

  “Amen,” Athena said.

  -o-o-o-

  US 160, Durango

  To Beau’s dismay, Costello didn’t catch up to any large buses on the way to Durango. Shit happens.

  Instead of wailing and gnashing their teeth, they headed out to the airport. Not long afterward, Yang and his team landed.

  On the plus side, they’d already obtained a search warrant for the offices of the La Plata County Sheriff. The Bureau was finally firing on all cylinders.

  Three agents, including Costello, drove straight to the sheriff’s office in Costello’s official vehicle to execu
te the warrant. They needed to confirm that Steve Maddox was corrupt and find out whether he was the only dirty one.

  Yang, Beau, and a redheaded female agent in her forties named Heather Monroe drove in a rental vehicle to the FBI’s local office. Using a conference room there, they worked with their phones and laptops to discover the source of the bus being used to transport the women and girls.

  -o-o-o-

  US 550, North of Silverton

  The bus continued on the highway, climbing up over ten thousand feet high. Athena couldn’t figure out what Misha had in mind. One bit of good news was that the pain in her legs was slowly subsiding, and her mind was clearing.

  They’d passed through tall, thick forests until they reached the timberline. Giant, jagged peaks white with snow surrounded them on all sides.

  But the spectacular scenery didn’t hold her interest like it usually did. Why did Misha keep going? These remote mountains offered lots of excellent hiding places.

  The longer they rode, the quieter everyone became. Faces turned pale, and lips formed tight, worried lines. Many of the women complained of nausea and lightheadedness. Maggie walked forward to tell Misha, and the driver gave her a large box of barf bags she could hand out.

  One of the reasons there were so many hiding places was that the entire region was pockmarked with hundreds of abandoned mines. If Misha was looking for somewhere to truly get lost, these mountains presented the perfect opportunity. Yet they remained on the main highway continuing north.

  The road narrowed, and the corners tightened. Women gagged, and the sweet bouquet of vomit filled the bus. They had to open the windows to let in fresh air.

  Maybe Misha was worried that winter was coming. In this part of the world, it arrived with a vengeance. Silverton was famous for getting over a dozen feet of snow each winter, and the high mountains surrounding it got much more. Most of the back roads would remain snowbound until May or June.

  A half-hour past Silverton, the bus approached eleven-thousand-foot high Red Mountain Pass. The bus crept through a dozen switchbacks and wound its way along sheer cliffs hundreds of feet high. In these craggy mountains, it was surprisingly easy to imagine the driver missing a turn and sending them all into an abyss.