Burned Bridges

by A. J. Stewart

  Then he ran.

  He glanced at the elevator bank, noting the floor that each of the cars was on and calculating the approximate arrival time, and then added the return trip to his floor. He tacked on a margin of error and concluded that the stairs would be faster. He hit them three at a time, large lunges upward, like the starting sequence of a triple jumper. He dropped to two at a time as he hit the fourth floor, and completed the rest of the journey at that pace. Flynn ran to his room and used a card to get in the door. Then he froze. Only his eyes moved. He took in the space, as he had left it. Listened hard for a sense of biology, of someone in the room, and got nothing but the steady hum of the building.

  Flynn grabbed Beth’s work bag, a black leather item that looked like an oversized handbag. From it, he pulled her tablet computer, the same one she had been watching on the aircraft. Flynn pressed the little button to bring it to life, then typed in a numerical passcode that was supposed to keep the device secure. Beth was a cautious person. She didn’t have a banking app on either her phone or her tablet. She didn’t have a social media account. She said it was a professional thing. Her firm was conservative, and they wouldn’t look kindly on seeing her private life splashed across the internet. Flynn thought them wise for such a policy. But Beth had told him the passcode to her tablet, the way people in relationships do. And Flynn knew there were certain applications that came with the tablet, put there by the manufacturer, that could work to his advantage.

  He was constantly surprised that the citizenry, who had bought into the concept of individual rights so completely, who had become almost evangelical about personal privacy and freedom, had given up those freedoms so easily. No citizen would agree to the government tracking their communication, yet they happily emailed and texted and posted their most intimate details. No citizen would agree to the government videotaping their movements, yet cell phone video was part of every news bulletin. No citizen would agree to wear a transponder recording their location at all times, yet they all carried cell phones that did just that.

  Flynn opened an application on Beth’s tablet designed to find a lost phone. He stared at the tablet screen. It showed a map of the northeastern United States, and it dissolved and reformed as it closed in on its target. A blue dot, pulsing as if it were alive, centered on the map. Above the blue dot was a small image of a cell phone, and below the image were the words Beth’s phone. Flynn watched the dot. It wasn’t just pulsing, it was moving. Moving along a red line on the map. A red line that represented the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. The dot was moving through the greenbelt between the two cities, pulsing northeast toward Baltimore.

  He grabbed his backpack and pulled out the things he wouldn’t need. Extra clothes, stationery, file folders. He dropped Beth’s laptop into the pack and zipped it closed and threw it over his shoulder, grabbing her tablet as he went. The blue dot was still pulsing toward Baltimore. He tossed the do not disturb sign on the handle and made for the elevators. This time he waited. It gave him time to think. The how, when, where, who and why. In ascending order of importance. The how was more or less irrelevant. Information for debriefing and implementation in the future. The when was obvious enough. No less than thirty minutes earlier, no more than an hour. Their time through DC. traffic and their position on the map, combined with the time Beth had left the room, told him all he needed to know. The where was his present location, somewhere around the Watergate complex either by force or—more likely—subterfuge. Perhaps the rooftop bar was too cold, and the whiskey bar too full, and Beth’s client had suggested another option, so she had willingly gotten into a car. A vehicle big enough to fit extra men, with darkened windows to keep out those prying Washington eyes.

  The who was always the question people asked. Who would do this to me? Who could do such a thing? But the who was never the key. The key was always the why. Understand the why, and the who became infinitely easier to discover, and significantly easier to find.

  Why had they kidnapped Beth?

  Then his phone bleeped, and he found out why.

  The driver was used to the traffic. He lived in traffic. It was as natural to him as the flow of water is to a river otter. It was not something to cause anger or joy. It was what it was. His partner was more highly strung. He fidgeted and swore under his breath at other drivers for their obvious tactics designed to delay him and him alone. The driver could see him sitting in the third-row seat, full of constant tiny movements. It was a colossal waste of energy in the opinion of the driver, but his partner was one of those wiry guys who used a lot of energy performing even the most routine tasks. When he drank coffee, he sipped at it a thousand times, putting the cup down in the cup holder between sips, multiplying the effort required by a factor of ten. He picked at imaginary tufts of fabric on his shirt, and he tapped his toes inside his shoes constantly. Even when the traffic thinned as they pulled north beyond the Beltway, he sat in the back coiled and wary, as if the enemy were around every corner.

  But the enemy wasn’t around every corner. The enemy was in the back of the van, in the row between them. He didn’t know why she was the enemy, but it wasn’t the first time he hadn’t been told everything. He never considered it part of his job to know. His job was the drive to the nation’s capital, to collect the cargo, and to return. What his mission was beyond that, he didn’t know and he didn’t care to think about. All he knew was that driving a van was more fun than washing dishes, and the pay was generally better.

  The driver aimed for downtown Baltimore but banked away before reaching the inner city, onto I-95 and across the harbor and on northward. He glanced in the rearview mirror at his partner, and his eyes fell on the woman. Her face was set hard. She said nothing and didn’t look out the window at the city lights as they breezed by. Then she looked up at the rearview mirror and caught his gaze. Her eyes were cold and sent a shiver down him, but he found he couldn’t look away. Then a horn from an adjacent vehicle grabbed his attention, and he jerked the wheel. The driver refocused his attention out the windshield, anything not to look in the rearview again. He had no desire to look into those eyes any more than he had to. He pushed a little harder on the accelerator and focused on getting to New York, and getting this thing done.

  Chapter Four

  The taxi guy drove fast. Perhaps he felt immune to the radars and patrol cars of the United States Park Police. Perhaps it was the two hundred-dollar notes that Flynn pulled from a sewn-up compartment in his pack and gave him up front that stoked his fire. Either way, he wasted no time weaving his way through the surface streets and out onto the Washington-Baltimore Parkway. The southern section of the road was maintained by the National Park Service and patrolled by their own police force. It kept a lower speed limit than the section closer to Baltimore. There were no trucks allowed on this part of the parkway, which made for a pleasant drive through a tunnel of yellow and brown and red autumnal trees during the day. At night it was nothing more than a tunnel of darkness punctuated by on-coming headlights.

  The taxi guy was a small olive-skinned man who paid no attention to the cars around him or the speed limit. Flynn let him walk the tightrope. If they were pulled over, it would not be Flynn who was fined or arrested, although they would lose time. As it was, the park police paid them no mind, and they hit the junction with State Route 175 in record time. Beyond the intersection, the parkway was maintained by the state of Maryland, and it opened up and the speed limit increased. The guy mashed down harder on the pedal and Flynn stared at his phone.

  He had replied to the text. The expected response would have been Who are you? or What do you want? Flynn replied with one word: Why? He didn’t expect a literal reply. But their response might tell him something about the why. From experience, his was the kind of response that put the asker of the question off-kilter. And putting alternative thoughts in their minds meant there was less time for thinking about what they might do to Beth. So he watched the screen and ignored the darkness outside his window
. But no message came.

  That was unusual. A knee-jerk reaction was common in such situations. People who believed they held all the cards were often easily upset by the line of questioning diverting from their expected plan, and they often responded from their subconscious. Traces of their personality might be uncovered. So the lack of immediate response led Flynn to two possible conclusions. Option one: they were very calm and, having expected such a question, they were letting him sweat, which suggested they were professionals. Alternatively, they couldn’t figure a response and were arguing amongst themselves about how to proceed. That positioned them as not professional. Both options had their pros and cons. Flynn would focus on those when one path had shown itself more likely than the other. Until then it was wasted energy.

  As long as he had a trace on Beth, he was content with the silence. Every fifteen minutes, he opened Beth’s tablet and noted the position of the pulsing blue dot—heading out of Maryland and toward Delaware. His taxi slowed a little around Baltimore Harbor, and Flynn looked up to see they were approaching Fort McHenry, the site of the battle that became the basis for “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It was a bittersweet song to him, an anthem of a time he had never known, about a place he had never been fully able to comprehend. He craned his head to catch a glimpse of the fort, but his view was jolted away as the taxi sped into the tunnel that took them under the harbor.

  The taxi guy told Flynn they would need gas, and they stopped at a service center shortly after crossing over the Delaware River in New Jersey. Flynn handed another two hundred to the taxi guy, and he pumped the gas as Flynn stood in the harsh artificial light of the gas station forecourt and watched the pulsing blue dot race away up the New Jersey Turnpike. As he did so, his phone beeped again. A response. Whoever was sending the messages had taken their time to respond, but when they had, they had answered the question Flynn had asked.

  Find the shipment.

  They had closed the gap to thirty minutes, give or take, by the time they reached the signs for Trenton. The taxi guy made noises about how long they were going to continue, and Flynn handed him another two hundred. He had a gut feeling about where they might stop, and he hoped his last few hundred would get them there. He always kept a thousand dollars in cash hidden in his pack, sewn into the base between the rubber outer and the nylon inner. He was prepared to blow it all to get wherever the blue dot stopped.

  He mulled over the text he had received. He was fairly certain what the text referred to, but he also knew that clarification was a good delaying tactic. All the major hostage response teams around the world used it. If the captors wanted a vehicle, clarify what kind of vehicle. If they wanted cash, clarify what denomination of bills. Get them talking, keep them talking. He punched in his question. What shipment? Then he settled in to wait.

  He waited about ten seconds. Long enough for them to read and respond. Not long enough for discussion. So not professional, but whoever held the phone held the power, however slightly. The response was fast because it was one word.

  Iraq.

  Further clarification was pointless. The single-word answer was definitive. There was no repetition, no the shipment in Iraq. The response was to the point and closed the matter. They knew that he knew exactly what they meant. So the why had led him to the who. Which was impossible.

  Because the who was dead.

  Flynn typed in a demand of his own and hit send. If clarification didn’t work, then the next step was to request POL. He watched the speech bubble on his screen, his last text, proof of life, hanging like a line in an unfinished song. He waited for twenty minutes and twenty-six miles. But his phone didn’t beep. It rang. It sounded like an old-fashioned rotary telephone bell. Urgent and unwilling to be dismissed. Flynn closed his eyes and took the call with a deep breath.

  “Beth?”

  For a moment, he heard nothing but white noise. He concentrated hard on it, seeing the spikes of sound in his mind. Sharp peaks and troughs, variations in pitch and decibel. Then a voice.

  “John?” was all she said. A mix of uncertainty and fear. No discernible pain. No hapless sobbing. Clear with a hint of anger.

  “John, what’s happ—”

  Then the phone went dead. No repeat of demands, no taunting or gloating. So not professional, but well drilled. Flynn dropped back into his seat and let out a long breath. The call told him that Beth was alive, at least for now. Which left him with one more question. Where the hell were they going?

  He played with the idea as the taxi sped along the turnpike. There was only one rational reason for the kidnappers to run this far. They were running home. From the unknown to the known. To their turf. To cover. The animal kingdom proved it time and again. When preyed upon by a predator, animals would make for cover. Only if the predator got too close would they change tactics, to zig and zag. Which left Flynn with twin questions: If they felt the need for cover, then they considered him some kind of threat. A predator, even though they held the cards. And if they weren’t zigging and zagging, then they didn’t know he was close behind. They were heading for trees with a level of confidence. Confidence that wasn’t due.

  Flynn turned on the tablet and watched the pulsing blue dot approach the island of Manhattan from New Jersey. Then it stopped in place as if taking a break in Hamilton Park, just before the Hudson River. For a couple of minutes, the dot lay dormant as the taxi sped toward it. Then for a moment, it disappeared, reappearing on the other side of the river, having passed through the Holland Tunnel. The dot crept across lower Manhattan, first north on Broadway, then east along Houston. Flynn’s taxi was in Jersey City, following signs for the same tunnel, when Flynn saw the dot head up Avenue D and come to a stop near the Con Edison plant at East 12th Street. He watched the dot pulse in place as the taxi dropped below the surface and hit the Holland Tunnel.

  New York City. It was simultaneously the best and worst place to hide on the Eastern Seaboard. Even in the heavily populated tristate area, Manhattan was a forest, thick with man-made towers and the massive canyons that ran between them. A place where a person could be one of millions of faces, hidden by the constant ebb and flow of humanity. But a place that was itself such a target that it wore a matrix of technology that was designed to find those hiding among the faces.

  The taxi headed down Houston. Even in the early hours, the thoroughfare was busy with traffic. Flynn directed the taxi toward the dot on the tablet’s screen, which had turned from blue to gray. The gray solid dot told Flynn that the phone had been turned off, and the dot was its last known position.

  Traffic on Avenue D was steady but lighter, mostly heading for FDR Drive. The taxi turned onto East 10th Street and pulled to the curb. Flynn took the remainder of his cash and handed it to the guy through the Plexiglass barrier. He counted it and waved it in the air with a smile.

  Flynn stepped out into the cold night and the taxi pulled away. He was standing outside a self-storage facility. Across the street was a darkened asphalt playground in the shadows of the smokestacks of the power plant. To the east there were tall residential towers, the Riis Houses, project housing squeezed in between Avenue D and FDR Drive. Over a thousand families lived in the nineteen buildings, but few were out after midnight. Steam lifted from street vents, and the windows on the parked vehicles were already frosted. Flynn hooked his arms in and hoisted his pack onto his back. He rolled his shoulders from habit and then walked up Avenue D.

  Flynn rounded the corner by the playground. Basketball hoops were held aloft by twin sets of hardy steel poles, chipped and rusted. He marched on toward the stacks of the Con Edison plant billowing steam into the cold night sky. He stopped at the corner of East 11th Street, which was more of a paved lane than a road. It cut the basketball courts off from another playground that was attached to Franklin Delano Roosevelt School. The school itself resembled a county lockup. It was gray and hard and squat. There was no grass and few windows, and painted gates made of thick bars closed off any access to it aft
er hours.

  It wasn’t a building befitting one of the union’s greatest leaders. Flynn recalled reading about him in battered secondhand textbooks, flown in for military brats to learn from. He had liked what he had read about FDR. Roosevelt was quoted as saying we have nothing to fear but fear itself. Polio, the Great Depression and the Second World War were the milestones of his life, and yet he was still regarded by many as one of the better presidents, maybe top three. Flynn concurred. He leaned against the cold brick wall of the school and watched the power plant.

  He watched for twenty minutes. His breath was visible on the air, but he wasn’t cold. He had lived a long time in the heat, but his training had seen him subjected to such cold that giants of men froze and shook without restraint. New York in the fall was pleasant by comparison. But there was nothing happening. There were no people about, not in this neighborhood. Even in the city that never sleeps, the apartments bunker down at night. Here people had jobs, kids went to school. He watched the corner where the blue dot had stopped and turned gray. A yellow streetlamp flickered as if on its last legs, covering parked vehicles in a sickly glow.

  He could see three vehicles from his vantage point. On the corner was a white sedan—Japanese or Korean—behind which sat a dark-colored minivan. The kind of vehicle families used. Tucked in behind the van was a large black car that looked like an imitation of a Lincoln Town Car but with softer lines. He couldn’t see if the black car had livery plates or if it was a private vehicle, but it had blacked-out windows. It was the kind of car that Beth might have gotten into without question in DC. The kind of vehicle that could hide anything and anyone behind its tinted windows.