by Glen Robins
Rob didn’t know why this was happening or what would come next. Likewise, he couldn’t explain why his mind was racing while his body was paralyzed. His eyes darted around, hopeful that someone would come to his aid, but he soon realized the gate was closed and the street was empty. The realization that he was hidden from view sunk in. There was not a soul around to witness what was happening. This quiet suburban enclave was the perfect place for this sort of sneak attack. He lay there desperately hoping someone would come by and help, but knew it was a futile hope as the two leather-clad riders soon gathered around him.
The pretty girl with the alluring smile stepped over him, her bow-shaped lips showing her perfectly straight and perfectly white teeth. She pulled her long black hair over her shoulder, away from the gentle ocean breeze. Her eyes were mesmerizing and they moved closer as she bent down toward him. Unwillingly, he let his eyes droop shut. Her face was a pleasant last image to take in as the narcotic pulled him into a dream-like state.
He felt his body being dragged and pulled and stuffed into the backseat, but felt no pain, no discomfort. His eyelids were too heavy to pry open, so he gave up. Instead, he dreamed of the pretty Asian girl and her smile, sensing they were near. The car doors slammed shut one at a time. Then he was gone, completely oblivious to the outside world, not knowing who she was or where she was taking him. All concerns got swallowed up as a tranquil fog enveloped his consciousness.
****
Los Angeles, California
June 17, 6:12 a.m. Pacific Time
“How are we going to follow this hunch of yours, Reggie?” asked his partner, Spinner McCoy. Spinner’s Texan drawl and boyish optimism usually softened Reggie’s hard-edged skepticism. Not this time. This time he was taking the hard-edged approach. “We got nothing to go on except a couple of people on a boat that was fired upon saying they saw a small plane heading north. That’s not much.”
“I know,” admitted Reggie Crabtree as he studied the computer screen. “I know.” Reggie wasn’t being his usual unflappable self. Normally, Reggie operated on facts and logic. Sure, he had his gut instincts, like every good detective. But he always made sure to check his gut against reality. This time, however, was an exception. This was all gut.
Spinner cocked his head, studying his partner. “So, what’s our game plan? I mean, where do we even start?” He walked around the desk and stood behind Reggie, leaning toward Reggie’s screen.
Agitated and jumpy, Reggie tapped repeatedly at a spot on his screen. “Well, I figured we should start looking at all possible points north of Providencia Island. Why don’t you try to figure out what the range is of a small aircraft? That should help us narrow it down.”
“You’re kidding, right? You do realize, don’t you, there’s no feasible way to narrow it down without something more to go on.”
“You have any better suggestions?”
“Does the term ‘needle in a haystack’ hold any meaning for you, Reggie?”
“All I know is that sitting here doing nothing won’t help us one bit. Waiting for a lead or an eyewitness account to fall in our lap doesn’t seem too productive, either, so I’m trying to do some detective work, you know, like we’re paid to do.”
“Ah, I see, doing something, no matter how futile, is better than doing nothing, eh?” Spinner walked back to the opposite side of Reggie’s desk, his cowboy boots thudding heavily on the low-pile carpeting, and stared at his partner for a long moment.
“Yeah. You have any better ideas?” Reggie tapped the computer screen again with his index finger.
“How about a ballistics report on the bullet from the wounded guy’s shoulder? Do we know if anyone on that boat took a video or pictures? Have we asked for any of that?”
“Be my guest, partner. Good luck getting any cooperation out of the Colombians. But, as you say, doing something is better than nothing.”
Spinner’s eyes narrowed, but he never broke his gaze until he abruptly exited the room without a word. Only the echo of his boots against the linoleum floor could be heard as they trailed off down the hallway.
Five minutes later, he was back in the room. Reggie looked up at him, brow furrowed in curiosity. “I thought you were going to get information out of the Colombians.”
“Not me. Lancaster’s on it.”
“Lancaster?”
“Yeah, he’s the one with the connections to the Colombian Navy—or his boss is. Let’s not waste our time. Let’s waste his.”
“OK,” said Reggie absentmindedly. It was as if he didn’t hear what Spinner said.
“What’s gotten into you, partner? Why’re you so . . . you know, not yourself?”
Reggie paused and returned Spinner’s gaze, collecting his thoughts and taking a deep breath. “Don’t you see? Doesn’t the fact that he has disappeared from the face of the Earth make you wonder about this guy? We can’t trace him. We have no idea where he went. He just vanished in a tiny plane, snatched from the middle of the sea in the dead of night, and whisked off to who knows where to do who knows what. Doesn’t that make you stop and question what’s going on here, at least a little bit?”
“What are you getting at, Reggie?”
“Maybe we’re looking at this all wrong. We’ve assumed he either needs help because he wasn’t right in the head or that he did something wrong because of the pictures of him with that Penh guy. All of a sudden, I feel like I’m on the outside looking in and what I see now looks and feels much different than it did before.”
Spinner didn’t say anything for a long moment. He just scratched his chin and stared at the floor. “Maybe he’s working for someone? Obviously he’s got some help.”
Reggie absorbed that line of thinking and continued. “Now you’re looking at it differently, too, aren’t you? He’s got help, but from whom? And why? What is his objective? That’s what’s got me jittery. I don’t know any of that stuff. We can’t know his motives or his abilities until we know that.” He paused and ran his long-fingered hand across his face. “I’ve been going on the assumption this whole time—based on his parents’ pleas to find him and bring him home—that he was just an innocent guy caught up by mistake in some kind of trouble he didn’t deserve. Now, after all these near-misses and after eluding us and Interpol for months, I worry that he may be caught up in something more sinister and more dangerous than we thought.
“He’s involved in this thing—and not just as an innocent bystander, I might add—and it’s spiraling out of control. Look at what happened with his mom and girlfriend. They’re both in the hospital. What happens next? Who gets hurt next? He hardly seems to care, does he? And when something else happens, how does that make us look?” Reggie blew out a breath. “Damn right I’m nervous. Everything we thought we knew is out the window. We have to start thinking about this in a new light. Collin Cook isn’t who we thought he was. Whoever he’s teamed up with doesn’t seem to mind leaving a wake of destruction behind. We’ve got to get this guy before someone else gets hurt on our watch.”
****
Over the coastline of Belize
June 17, 8:31 a.m. Local Time; 7:31 a.m. Pacific Time
Collin had spent the last three hours staring out the window at the Caribbean Sea to his right and the jungles of Honduras and Nicaragua, ahead and to his left, noticing how abruptly the green jungle turned to the gold of the sand to the turquoise of the sea in such a narrow band as the three ecospheres collided. He had watched rays of light as they poked through a clump of pink-tinged clouds hovering over the eastern horizon. Yellowish bands streaked across the turquoise surface of the sea, only eight hundred feet below him as the sun began its daily ascent. It had been a magnificent and beautiful sunrise, but beyond his ability to appreciate at the moment. He was headed into an unknown situation with a very murky mission. He knew Lukas wanted to protect him, Penh wanted to kill him, and Interpol wanted to imprison him.
Lukas told him his best chance to stay alive was to go to Mexico City because
of the tracker Penh had installed on his laptop. Lukas and his teams could protect him there. Lukas was smart—brilliant, in fact—and was as loyal a friend as anyone could ever have. Even though he had not laid out a plan for Collin before takeoff, Collin knew one was forthcoming. But knowing something big was going down there, Collin sensed there was a high probability he would have to face Penh. The thought both scared him and emboldened him. Penh commanded untold resources, but Collin fostered a healthy dose of righteous indignation and dreamed of unleashing it on Penh. In his gut, he knew things would work out, but in his mind he had no idea how.
Despite expending all of his energy the night before diving to the sunken Admiral Risty, Collin found it impossible to sleep. The plane bounced and jolted frequently due to crosswinds and updrafts as the small aircraft traversed steaming land masses and sparkling blue bodies of water en route to Belize City, where, he was told, they would be able to land and refuel under some guise Lukas’s group had put together. It all sounded credible, but Collin wasn’t concerned about these minor details at this point. He was more focused on the looming potential of a confrontation with Penh. An eerie sensation fluttered in his stomach because Penh knew where he was right now and was probably anticipating his next move.
Still feeling anxious, angry, and resentful because of what Penh’s men had done to Emily and his mother, Collin worried about what Penh might do next. These emotions stirred him up inside and clouded his judgment, making his own responses less predictable and less logical than he would like. He was less worried about his own well-being and more concerned for those he loved. Lukas told him that the FBI was guarding his family, so he had nothing to worry about but himself. And yet an uneasy feeling had settled into his core and wouldn’t leave.
Collin’s fingers tapped on the phone in his pocket, the one he had taken from Stinky’s dead body. He stared at it and rolled it over and over in his hand, knowing it would play a role in whatever was about to take place, knowing Penh was on the other end of the line. A temptation lurked in the back of Collin’s mind: Just call Penh, give him whatever he wants as long as he’ll agree to leave me and my family alone. Let me go home and live out the rest of my days in blissful normality.
The thought of home brought a wistful longing to his hollowed-out insides. A feeling he had pushed aside for months as he lived in perpetual motion, running from Penh and the authorities Penh had deviously misled into suspecting Collin as a colluder. What would it be like to sit around the table at his parents’ home, eating dinner with them and his siblings? Or to watch TV on the couch, more concerned about the score of the Lakers’ game than anything else? How would it feel to live a life without the constant threat of capture, torture, or violence perpetrated on your loved ones?
Holding Stinky’s phone brought back memories of what Stinky and the other goons had done to him over the course of three days on the boat. Collin touched his swollen cheek bones and bruised jaw. Still sore to the touch and puffy, they were reminders that his enemies were anything but gentlemen. Although Stinky was dead and the others presumably lost at sea, he knew there would be replacements. Guys like Penh always had an endless supply of flunkies circling them, ready to do their bidding. Collin preferred to figure out a way to bypass the flunkies, but how? That was the burning question. Despite his athletic build and above-average pain tolerance, he wasn’t sure how much more abuse he could endure at the heavy hands of the hired help.
Even though he knew he wasn’t solving any problems, and as much as he needed sleep, he couldn’t shut off his mind. Despite the droning of the engine and the constant thrum of the propeller doing their best to lull him into sweet oblivion, the wheels in his head kept churning through the images of Tog being shot, of Stinky punching and kicking Collin’s face and chest, of his mother bound and gagged, and Emily tied to a table with a knife-wielding demon hovering over her. Rage bubbled anew as each remembrance scrolled through his thoughts. But the ones that kept him awake were the ones of Stinky struggling for his life as Collin squeezed his victim’s midsection between his knees. The feeling of Stinky’s mass slumping, heavy and lifeless, knowing he’d snuffed out a man’s life, made every muscle in his own body tense up. Even the pilot noticed Collin go rigid and shot him a quizzical look. Collin waved him off and tried to think of something more pleasant.
Collin forced his eyes shut, trying hard to escape into some other world. He relaxed and thought about playing Frisbee with his dad on the beach. He thought about the dog he had as a little boy. He thought about surfing. Each of these peaceful and happy memories was interrupted by a ghastly, more recent experience like bumping into Stinky’s grayish, bloated corpse as he was attempting to escape the sinking sailboat. Or the spurt of blood and bubbles when he speared the diver that was looking for his laptop. Or the sound of his mother’s voice, all frail and weak, when she told him to “do what Ronnie would do.”
These memories parted like a curtain, making way for the most visceral of all of his nightmares: the shriek he heard over the phone as his wife, Amy, watched an out-of-control semitruck careen into the hillside and roll over onto the minivan carrying her and their three small children. That panicked, helpless cry haunted him still, nearly a year later, every time he tried to sleep.
Finally, he gave up on sleep and just stared out the window some more.
The pilot gave him another long look, then keyed on his mic and spoke for the first time since takeoff. “You all right? You seem pretty fidgety over there.”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine. Just can’t seem to get comfortable.”
“You sure there’s not something eating at you?”
“Yeah, no. I guess I’m just too tired to sleep. You know how that is.”
“Happens to the best of us sometimes. But we’re going to be flying for quite a while today and I know you didn’t sleep at all last night, so find a way to get some shut-eye if you can.”
“How much longer to Belize?” said Collin, trying to shift the attention away from himself and onto something less probing.
“I reckon another half hour or so.”
“How’re we doing on gas?”
The pilot was silent as he studied his gauges. “We’re all right.”
“That wasn’t too convincing. What does that mean?”
“It means one way or another, we’re going to be fine.”
“That means you’re not sure we’re going to make it, are you?”
“No, no. We’ll make it. The question is, will it be Plan A or Plan B?” said the pilot with a manufactured air of confidence. His eyes scanned the landscape below, then the gauges in front of him, then the ground again.
Sleep was now out of the question for Collin. The attempted nonchalance by the pilot didn’t work and Collin found himself leaning toward the pilot’s instrument panel, trying to decipher the gauges and indicators. Not knowing where they were going to land this airplane created a new set of worries. At least the haunting images of the past few days were gone. While Collin didn’t quite rejoice at the prospect of shifting to Plan B, which he knew nothing about, he was glad to have something else occupy his mind for a while.
Chapter Five
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
June 17, 10:37 p.m. Local Time; 7:37 a.m. Pacific Time
Pho Nam Penh loved nothing more than the element of surprise. Watching people’s reactions when they got caught doing something wrong or when their crimes were exposed brought a sinister kind of joy to his heart. Friend or foe, it didn’t matter. Sudden appearances, unexpected outbursts, and blindside attacks were among the favorite arrows in his quiver. These tactics also served to teach him about his victims. Their reactions revealed inner weakness or strength. A person could remain calm or completely lose control. Wherever they landed on that spectrum showed him how that person handled stress.
That’s why he was smiling before he even barged into the crowded “war room,” where his hand-picked cadre of hackers worked around the clock. These seven men spent a
ll day every day in front of computer screens doing Penh’s bidding. When he burst through the door and called for attention, the two men asleep on the cots in the corners jumped out of bed and tried to pretend they weren’t asleep. One nearly fell over as he took the first step toward his work station. The other put a hand to his chest as if trying to quell a fluttering heart.
Chairs skidded backward as three of the men stood abruptly at military-style attention. One man snubbed out a cigarette as fast as he could before he reached his feet. The last one to stand was the foreman, who sat at the end of the table opposite where Penh stood, sweeping his menacing gaze back and forth around the semicircle of blurry-eyed, pungent men. The foreman’s eyes were slow to leave his computer screen. It was obvious he was deeply engrossed in his work. Unrattled and calm, the man stood at attention, giving a slight bow in deference to his leader.
Penh glared at him. He deflected the glare as he pointed to his screen. “Sir, I think you will want to see this,” he said with absolute confidence.
Penh’s eyes narrowed as they continued to bore into the man’s chest, but his focus remained true. “For your sake, I hope you are right.”
The foreman cleared his throat and projected his voice with sureness. “Sir, this is a report from the municipal airport in Belize City.”