Freeze Frame

by Judith Rochelle

  “It is me,” he told the person who answered. “I have some information.”

  “What kind?” Nando asked at the other end of the connection.

  The mechanic had gotten this job through the influence of Victor Herrera, in exchange for keeping his eyes and ears open. Over the past few years he had fed the cartel leader bits and pieces of information, justifying his situation. But today he was sure he had something that would earn him recognition with the man.

  “You will tell El Jefe that I was the one who called with this?” the man asked anxiously. “I want him to know it was me.”

  “Just tell me what you have,” Nando snapped. “For all I know it may be completely useless. Some of the things you have told me turned out to be nothing.”

  “But not this time,” Javier protested. “A big plane landed here yesterday. Gulfstream.”

  “So what? Plenty of them land at your airport. They mean nothing to us.”

  “But these people spoke to the pilots of the plane you told me to hide in a hangar,” he went on, his hand clutching the cell tighter. “To have someone call the manager and pretend to be one of those pilots.”

  There was a long moment of silence, before Nando spoke again. “What about them?”

  “I overheard them ask the pilots a lot of questions, when they finally showed up. They are here about the people who…are visiting you.”

  “And?” Nando prodded impatiently. “You called me about them yesterday. One would suspect others to be looking for them.”

  “Today another group of men arrived to meet with them. These people came in a brand new Black Hawk.”

  Javier could hear Nando cursing fluently.

  “Do you know who they are?”

  “I finally got a chance to check on the computer when the manager was out of the terminal. They are owned by a company called the Phoenix Agency.”

  The cursing became louder and more violent.

  “These people are a curse,” Nando spat. “They mean nothing good for us. I would rather deal with the government.”

  “So this is important?” Javier asked, still anxious that his contribution be recognized.

  “Important in a bad way,” Nando told him. “Along with the other news he received today, El Jefe will be in a rage. We will have to do some maneuvering. All right. You have done well. I must let El Jefe know about this new turn of events immediately. Son of a bitch.”

  The mechanic stood there, holding a dead phone, hoping somewhere in all of this was a reward for him.

  * * * * *

  Everyone was on edge as the Black Hawk flew over the foothills of the Occidental West Sierra Madres in Sinaloa. Mike took them down as low as he could without drawing suspicions from anyone on the ground.

  Troy Arsenault had the small video camera on, scanning right to left as they passed one area, then another. Troy shot footage first from one side, then the other, until they were all sure they’d covered the maximum area needed to pinpoint locations and plan an extraction.

  Mike took the plane higher and headed back to San Diego.

  * * * * *

  The hostages were sitting on the floor, backs against the wall, trying to make themselves as comfortable as possible. Through the high, narrow slit of a window they could see the sun had risen to its zenith and the heat in the small hut was again growing to an almost unbearable level. Mari though if they did manage to get out of this she might take a trip to Alaska where she could wrap the cold around herself for a week or so.

  Her clothes, like everyone else’s were sticky with sweat and they were all beginning to smell a little ripe. And despite everyone’s brave protestations, the sweat came as much from fear about their situation as anything else. If only she was a telepath, like some of Kat’s friends, she could be sending messages out to tell people where they were.

  Katherine’s friends will find us. I have to hang onto that.

  Eli’s nose had finally stopped throbbing and the swelling had gone down a little but breathing was difficult. Mari’s head no longer felt as if a jackhammer was trying to drive its way through it but in its wake she was left with a dull ache that kept her on the edge of nausea.

  Mari could see that Lissa was finally beginning to fray at the ages. She was surprised that the young girl had lasted as long as she had, showing a level of courage many young people didn’t have.

  “What’s that?” Lissa asked, as the sound of an engine straining stopped outside the door. Everyone jumped when the door slammed open with its usual ferocious sound and Mari wondered what was happening now. They had already had what she supposed was the noon meal of water and the dreaded tortillas, so why was Pedro standing in front of them with a vicious scowl on his face?

  As he’d done before, Eli pushed Lissa in back of him. Sydney stood on one side of him, and Mari moved to the other. Pedro and Enrique looked beyond unhappy. The pointed their rifles at the group.

  “We are leaving here,” he told them.

  For a minute no one said anything.

  Mari wet her dry, cracked lips. “Leaving? Where are you taking us?”

  “Shut up,” Enrique growled. He swung his rifle from side to side. “Move. Stand far apart from each other.”

  “Wait a minute,” Eli began.

  Sydney touched his arm. “Please. Let’s just do what they say. We’ll get through this. We will.”

  “Your wife is a smart woman,” Pedro chuckled. Then the smile fell away. “Now move.”

  As soon as they were lined up the way he ordered, two more men came into the room, also wearing khaki shirts and pants and the same heavy boots. They carried lengths of rope with them and quickly bound everyone’s hands behind their backs. Then they hobbled everyone’s ankles, leaving only enough play in the rope to allow them to walk in a jerky fashion. One of them took a picture of them, standing there bound and incapacitated and Mari wondered if they were going to take them out somewhere and shoot them.

  But then the men manhandled them out of the hut and she bit down on her lips hard to keep from asking any questions as they shoved them into the black panel truck that had brought them there. They were roughly tossed inside the empty cargo area, doors slammed and in a moment the van began moving down a bumpy road. Mari wondered if she would ever see her sister again.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ron Pelley rode in the car with Anthony Delaware, one of four cars doing a “follow and drop” on the signal coming from the envelope with the bearer bonds. One car had finally caught up with the motorcycle and relayed the position back to the others. In staggered movements that car dropped back, another took its place and so on. The motorcycle hadn’t entered the Interstate, instead taking side roads.

  Delaware had placed a hand radio on the seat between himself and Pelley so they could both hear what was happening.

  “I’ve still got him,” the agent picking up the signal on a laptop told him. “Everyone keep heading in the same general direction.”

  “No one for more than five or six blocks at a time,” Delaware warned.

  He glanced over at the man sitting next to him. He could tell his nerves were on the ragged edge and he had a very bad feeling about what was going to happen next.

  “Boss, he’s stopped,” the man with the laptop said, interrupting the agent’s thoughts. “The signal shows him dead ahead of us.”

  “What do you see?” Delaware asked.

  “He entered the parking garage on Houston Street. We’re gonna have to follow him or we’ll lose him.”

  “Just watch yourself,” Delaware warned. “Don’t let him spot you. Go past him and radio back to me. Everyone else fall back and wait for my orders.”

  The silence stretched out with no sound from any of the other agents. Finally a voice came over the radio.

  “Boss?” The man sounded none too happy.

  “Yeah?”

  “We…ah…that is, we lost him.”

  “What?” Delaware screamed. “How the hell could you lose
him? Didn’t you follow him into the garage?”

  “Yes and we watched the down ramps while we were going up. I’m telling you, he just disappeared.”

  “That is absolutely not possible. Check again.”

  “He’s not here,” the agent insisted.

  “Damn it all to hell.” Delaware wanted to throw his radio through the windshield. Instead he clicked the Talk button. “Everyone meet me at the garage where we lost the motorcycle. Pull up to the first level and watch for me.”

  They went through the place with a microscope but in the end they came up with nothing. They’d been outfoxed.

  “He must have had a closed van waiting,” one of the agents said. “Just pulled right into it. It could be sitting on any one of these levels, locked tight and looking empty.”

  In the back of his mind Delaware wondered if Pelley had passed along the information about the prototype GPS chip to the other two men. Or even directly to the kidnappers. So they’d know how to block the signal. How the hell was he supposed to find that out?

  As they pulled out onto the street again, Pelley’s cell phone rang and a text message popped up on his screen. Cursing, he showed it to Delaware.

  You made a mistake. Now everyone will pay. Check for new email.

  All the FBI agent could think was, Shit.

  * * * * *

  Kat tried to control her impatience as they flew south from San Diego and headed along the coast of Baja California. The bobbing sailboats, Jet Skis, ski boats and other watercraft might make a beautiful picture for tourists but she wanted to get where they were going and see if they could find where Mari and the Wrights were being held. All she needed was an approximate area and coordinates and she felt inside that she could “view” a clear picture of what was going on.

  They cut east across the coastline, passed over scattered signs of civilization and then up the foothills of the Sierra Madres Occidental Range. Everyone was poised and ready, waiting for the right area to come into view. They’d been in Sinaloa air space for less than twenty minutes when Ed turned around a yelled back, “We’re coming into range, according to your best guesstimate. Get ready.”

  Then Kat gave an excited cry and pressed a finger against the window.

  “There,” she called, trying to contain her excitement. “Right below us. See it?”

  If they hadn’t been looking carefully they might have missed it, hidden among the acres of what could only be marijuana plants and copses of native trees. The red tile roof of what seemed to be a massive estate house peaked tentatively through the foliage, the hint of other buildings scattered at either side of it.

  “Got it,” Troy said, working the video camera. Mark was at another window snapping stills as fast as he could.

  “See up there on the hill?” Faith pointed. “Oh, damn. We’re already past it. I could have sworn there was a small outbuilding up there.”

  “It’ll show up on the pictures and the video,” Dan assured her. “I don’t want to take the chance of making another pass and calling attention to ourselves.” He raised his voice and hollered to the cockpit. “Mike. Haul ass out of here right now. Before someone below gets out their own binoculars.”

  “Hauling away,” Mike shouted back.

  He lifted the nose of the plane slightly, it began a smooth ascent and then they were away from the Herrera land and heading toward the coast.

  * * * * *

  Lying on the hard metal floor of the van, Eli heard Pedro and Enrique conversing in Spanish in low tones. With a working knowledge of the language, he strained his ears to try to make out what they were saying. It appeared they weren’t being transported very far, just to another area of their captor’s land. He wondered why they were being moved at all. Had someone found out where they were? Tried to rescue them?

  No, he would have known if anything like that had happened. But something was wrong. Both the men seemed agitated and he kept hearing the Spanish word for double cross, then ransom, then trap.

  What the hell was going on? Who had they contacted for the ransom? It had to have been Ron Pelley. No one else would be logical. So had Ron screwed up somehow? Had he called in the FBI and they had made a mess of things?

  He glanced at the women, trying to make themselves as comfortable as possible under the circumstances. Lissa was trying hard to blink back tears, Mari’s eyes were closed but lines of pain scored her face and the long cut along the length of Sydney’s face looked as if it might be getting infected.

  Shit!

  Wherever they were being taken, he’d have to try to figure something out. Maybe there would be a larger window they could squeeze through. Or maybe…

  Before he could finish running through scenarios in his mind, the van jolted to a stop. A minute later the side panel slid open and hands pulled them roughly from the vehicle.

  Eli blinked at the building in front of him. It could have been a duplicate of the one where they’d been held, except this one was completely surrounded by trees. And there were no other men with enormous guns hanging from shoulder straps lounging in the area.

  Pedro pulled open the door to the hut and one by one each of them was shoved inside. Eli looked around. The first thing he spotted was the window, high up like the last one but a lot larger. It was protected by trees and foliage, not completely exposed. If he could figure out the guards’ schedule and if anyone was left to keep an eye on things, maybe, just maybe, they had a way out of here.

  For right now he just needed to keep everyone’s spirits up and make sure they didn’t deteriorate physically. He wondered idly how long a person could subsist on a diet of water and tortillas.

  * * * * *

  The first thing Anthony Delaware had Ron Pelley do when they returned to his office was check for the promised email. A sick feeling gripped him as he saw the photo of the hostages, hands bound, ankles hobbled, bruised and damaged and lined up as if facing a firing squad. He could only hope that the threat was implied rather than real and that all the hostages were still alive. He printed out the message, then assembled all the people who had been involved in the ransom drop in Pelley’s conference room.

  “As you read this, Señor Rasgon, I remind you that we had a deal. You have stupidly made a bad mistake,” he read from the printout. “Even so, I have outwitted you. But the price is now fifteen million. No more tricks, no attempts to locate the hostages or we’ll be sending you their bodies. We have been forced to move them to a different location. New instructions to follow.”

  Everyone sat looking at Ron Pelley.

  “What?” He threw up his hands. “I was the one who told you not to play games with these people. Remember?”

  “I’d like to know how they were aware of the tracking device,” Luisa Alvarez said. She’d been in the original trail car. “You were the only one who knew about it.”

  “Maybe they have more sophisticated equipment than the FBI does.” His tone of voice was surly, his posture defensive.

  “And who the hell is Señor Rasgon?” Boyd Delco, another agent, threw in. “Is this someone we’re supposed to know? This is the first time a specific name has appeared in any of these messages. Why is he giving us a clue now?”

  “An interesting point,” Delaware told them. “Maybe he’s sending a real warning.” He looked at Pelley accusingly.

  The man in question snorted. “Not me. You know I’ve been with you every minute. You know that. You even had someone sleep on my couch and you’ve tapped my phones and computers. And I have absolutely no idea who this Señor Whoever is.”

  Delaware held his eyes until Pelley looked down, a flush staining his cheekbones.

  He’s hiding something but what the hell could it be? If he’s the one who set this up, we’d better find out damn soon. And is Señor Rasgon an alias for whoever set this up?

  As soon as he finished with this briefing he’d call his office and have them run it through every database they had access to.

  “I can’t think w
here else it would have come from,” he said to Pelley at last. “If you’ve got any ideas, now would be a good time to let us have them.”

  “I don’t understand why we haven’t even been able to find out who the kidnappers are,” Luisa Alvarez put in. “We’re running blind here.”

  “Don’t think I don’t know it,” Delaware told her. He looked at Pelley again. “If we knew who their contact was, we could squeeze him and find out. I’m not used to a situation where I don’t even know who’s pulling the strings. Maybe identifying this Rasgon will give us some answers. Finally.”

  Again he let his eyes travel to Pelley. Despite being allowed to shower and change in his private bathroom, the man looked rumpled and used, strain drawing lines on his face, his hair disarranged from running his fingers through it. The image of the high-powered, high-priced executive had long disappeared. God, he’d love to pin all this shit on him. With great, great pleasure.

  “I’m telling you again I don’t know anything,” Pelley snapped. “And besides all this, what’s happening with the people from the Phoenix Agency? Shouldn’t you be calling them? Katherine Culhane’s sister is a hostage and I’m sure she’d like to know what’s going on.”

  “The longer I can keep them out of it, the better off we are,” Delaware snapped. “My gut tells me they’re not waiting for us, however. They aren’t the kind of people to take a backseat. I just hope they don’t make a mess of things playing cowboy.”

  “What about the rest of the money?” Luisa asked, turning to Pelley. “Can you gather it quickly? And turn it into more bearer bonds?”

  “It will take a little doing but I can arrange that,” Pelley snapped. “In fact, if you’ll let me go to my office, I’ll get started on it right now.”

  “Fine. Luisa?” He looked at Alvarez. “Keep him company and don’t let him out of your sight. The rest of you? We’ll start breaking this down and try to figure out what happened.”

  “I need to make a quick pit stop,” Pelley said. “Do you want Agent Alvarez to accompany me there too?”