by Dale Mayer
“They just needed a way to get out of the country,” Hudson added.
“And if they got a private flight out,” Mason said, “there would be absolutely nobody left here to follow.”
“True.” With that, they sat quietly until they landed on base. As they got off, Baylor turned to Mason and said, “I want to be on the team that goes to Europe or beyond.”
“You will be,” he said. “We’ll pull out in four hours.”
“Good. Do we know where?”
“Not at the moment,” Mason said, “but we will by then.”
With that, Baylor turned and headed back to his apartment. It was an odd thing to be sitting here when he was technically on an op, when they should just head right out again. But it gave the IT guys time to find more intel, while it gave Baylor just enough time to shower and to get changed, to double-check his to-go bag and to get on the move. He could only hope that, for the family, all this jockeying around while the SEALs waited for intel would still get Baylor and his team there in time.
By the time of their scheduled flight, they were already back on the base airfield and in the back of a carrier, heading for Germany. As they crossed over the Atlantic, the team studied the notes in the case files.
Baylor turned to Mason. “Why Germany?”
“Landing place,” he said. “We’re still looking for more intel.”
“Nobody’s been able to find the family?”
“No, but we do have a line on a small Learjet with Russian businessmen aboard that left from Monaco shortly after our little boat arrived, when more packages were transferred,” he said. “It arrived in Germany.”
“Interesting that it was Germany.”
“Yes,” he said. “It did make a stop in London first.”
“Huh. It wouldn’t be too hard to have removed the packages at that time either.”
“No,” he said, “and we’re assuming that might have been part of it because, of course, somewhere along the way, there could be a decoy.”
“Which means the governor’s family could be anywhere,” he said quietly.
“Yes, that’s very possible.”
Hudson sat here and pondered it all for a moment. “So why not just take them straight back to Russia?”
“If,” Baylor said, “they were heading to Russia, they probably don’t want anybody to know that’s where they are, and they probably don’t want anybody to know if it’s a contract.”
“Meaning?” Hudson asked.
Mason went on to explain further. “Well, what if we hired a contractor, and we wanted our goods delivered to the US? Chances are the contractor would take them to a neighboring country first and then slip them across the border, right?”
“Sure,” Hudson said, “easier to evade detection that way. So?”
Baylor pointed a finger. “I’m just wondering if this is a contractor who is looking for final payment before delivery.”
“And making sure that the final payment isn’t a bullet?” Hudson asked.
“Exactly,” Baylor said. “Depending on what this guy is like to work with and on what level he’s involved, I don’t imagine pulling the trigger would be anything that would bother him. Particularly so nothing leads back to him.”
“Well, it should lead back to the Russians though, no matter what, right?” Hudson asked.
“And it will,” Baylor said. “But still it seems odd.”
“Maybe,” Mason added, “but this is what we’re looking at.”
Just then the cockpit intercom buzzed. “Fourteen minutes.”
They quickly packed up their gear and double-checked everybody’s numbers to make sure that their contacts were synched and that their timing was up-to-date. As they buckled in for the landing, Baylor looked over at Mason. “Are we picking up any more of the team here?”
“Dane and Nelson, the last I heard,” he said.
“Five?”
Mason laughed. “Evan is here too.”
“Six then,” Baylor said, with a nod. “That sounds good.”
“Maybe. We’re also supposed to do a stint over here, looking at some weapons.”
“Is that our cover or something?”
“Yep, sure is,” Mason replied.
“I still can’t help feeling like we’re in the wrong country,” Baylor said.
“Well, if we are, we’ll find out in a few minutes.”
At that, Baylor had to be content. Still, it just didn’t feel right. No sense of right to this. As if his team were still waffling around in the dark, and he hated that. Intel should be concise. It should be readily available, and it should be exactly what they needed, not this half-and-half stuff. He had a few contacts of his own. Baylor didn’t work in this industry as long as he had without picking up a few resources of his own.
He pulled out his phone and sent off a few text messages, looking for parcels, three packages, all of the same type, delivered to London, with a connection to the icy north. And, with that, he left it. Hudson looked at him, with an eyebrow raised. Baylor shrugged and said, “I’ll just drop a couple lines.”
“Sounds good,” Mason said. “Let me know if anything pops.”
“You’d be the first,” he said, “because it would change our direction.”
“We’re supposed to keep this to official lines.”
“That we are,” Baylor said, with a bright smile at Mason.
Mason just rolled his eyes.
They all played the game. Everybody had to know that everybody was following the rules, but within those rules was an awful lot of leeway. And sometimes, just sometimes, they had to take a little more leeway than anybody would like, in order to get the outcome that everybody wanted. Nobody really wanted to know how they made things happen. They just wanted to know that it got done and that the good guys would win.
Just as they were about to land, Baylor got a text message back, saying three packages were delivered to a riverboat-type cruise ship. He whistled slowly, then held the text for Mason to see.
“Shit,” he said. “For real?”
“Apparently. Let me get more details.” He quickly managed to get a response by asking for identification, for an additional ticket for the cruise. Then he pocketed his phone and quickly exited the plane. By the time they made it to their vehicle on the US base here, where they would be working from, he had another message.
No tickets available. All sold out. Not friendly or your kind of cruise anyway.
He frowned at that. So not friendly, as in Russian? Destination?
End result? Don’t know. Heading out by air to begin with.
“Good enough,” he muttered. “We have a location or a starting point at least.” Baylor sighed.
“We’ll take that,” Mason said. “Let’s get to the IT center here and see if we can get more intel.”
“I’ve got mine already locked into the satellite surveillance system,” Hudson said. “Looks like a lot of cruises going out.”
“I highly doubt it’ll be much of a cruise ship,” Baylor said.
“Meaning, not too many people,” Hudson replied.
“Too much of a chance to get caught,” Baylor muttered.
“Retired or private maybe?” Hudson asked.
“Maybe,” Mason said. “We’ll direct the satellites that way to see what we can come up with.”
They spent another four hours on the base, going over intel as it was gathered and shared and getting more pictures and details. By the time he snagged just enough, Baylor said, “I’m wondering about this one,” tapping the satellite imagery. It showed a vessel, watertight, but looking a little more like a cruise ship that had already had her day. But riverboat cruise ships were not the same thing as the big North American monstrosities that ran in the Caribbean. This was much smaller, much sleeker, and sat lower in the water, but it putted along the coast gently.
“Well, it looks possible,” Mason said, “but got to be a million like this out there.”
“Yeah,”
Baylor said, as he tapped the screen to freeze it, widening the freeze-frame, and said, “but how many of them carry that?” As they watched, some men walked around the upper deck. It wasn’t easy to see until one of them suddenly pulled something off his shoulder and dropped it down, revealing a rifle.
“Well, that looks promising,” Hudson said, with a low whistle.
“It does, indeed.” Baylor quickly sent off the details to their IT people, and then he looked to Mason. “It’s too far to drive, so we’ll need to fly again.”
“That’s fine,” he said. “Everything here is at our disposal. I’m hoping we can come up behind them.”
“I’d rather hop up a little farther and see if we can get ahead of them.” And that’s what they did. With a helicopter at the ready to take them out, Baylor looked around the landing area, then smiled and lifted a hand, as their six-man team climbed into the chopper. He greeted Evan with a big smile. “Hey, I hear life is pretty decent in your corner.”
“It absolutely is,” he said. “I hear you’re still single, but that won’t last.”
“Sure it will,” Baylor joked. “I’ve been single for a long time.”
“Yeah, but you haven’t been in Mason’s crosshairs for that long,” he said. “Every one of the single guys who work for Mason end up going down the pipeline.”
“Hell no,” Baylor said. “I’m not into that.”
“Doesn’t matter if you’re into it or not,” Evan said, then looked over at Hudson. “You’re single too, aren’t you?”
Hudson, who only recently joined the team, nodded slowly and said, “But I have heard the rumors,” he said. “It’s just not my thing right now.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Mason said. “It’s not something we do deliberately.”
“Except in my case,” Baylor said, with a roll of his eyes.
Mason grinned. “Hey, I owe you one.”
“No, you bet me on that one,” he said. “I’ll take my beer when we get back, and, man, are you ever gonna owe me a ton.”
“Maybe,” Mason said, “but I doubt it.”
“We’ll see,” Baylor said.
Mason started to whistle.
Baylor grinned. “You’re just too cheeky for your own good, Mason,” he said.
“Nope. I’ve just seen it happen time and time again.”
“Maybe there’s nobody on this mission to worry about.”
“Maybe, but there is that twenty-five-year-old woman, you know?”
“I wouldn’t wish this kidnapping mess on her or anybody else,” Baylor said, “but especially a woman. There’s too much time and way too many men involved in these long boat rides.”
Hudson nodded. “But it’s way worse, depending on the men holding her captive.” They all knew what that meant.
Baylor lost his smile as he thought about it. “We need to get there and fast,” he said. “Mercenaries are well-known for taking liberties.”
“Not if it’ll cost them money,” Mason said comfortably.
“I know,” he said, “but I’m not sure that she was ever meant to be there.” Everybody looked at him.
“What do you mean?” Mason asked.
“She changed her plans at the last minute,” he said, “so she was never expected to be on that ship.”
“Ah, hell,” Mason said. “In that case you’re right. An unexpected bonus.”
“And we know how some of those guys feel about bonuses. They don’t like to share.”
Chapter 3
Gizella wondered if anybody had found the notebook. She’d been sketching off and on for a couple decades. She had often wondered about making a career out of it but hadn’t really ever thought she was good enough. It hadn’t been hard to capture that first guy on paper though. Although she hadn’t seen him since, and that worried her. She didn’t know who these current assholes were at all, and she hadn’t been given access to any tools to do more sketching, so it would be hard to render their images. But she did her best to memorize who and what was here. Because it was just that bad. And she was afraid she wouldn’t get an opportunity later.
When she’d woken up that morning, it was to the sights and sounds of men barking orders. She and her parents had been given a trip to the bathroom, and they’d been given a little bit of food and water. She’d sat with her parents, as she helped them to eat and drink and to keep their spirits bolstered. Her father looked haggard. He tried to smile and encourage the rest of them, but she could tell from the way he acted that he was worried.
“So, if this is a hostage thing,” she asked him quietly, “will they bargain for us?”
“It’s hard to say,” he said. “I mean, the US will do their best because of my position,” he murmured. “But we just took two Russian businessman hostage ourselves,” he said. “We don’t call it that obviously, but we’ve detained them.”
“And we weren’t planning on letting them go free?”
“No. They’re involved in money laundering, as far as we can tell, but they’re very high up in the Kremlin.”
“How is it the Kremlin and businessmen?”
“Two brothers of somebody high up in the Kremlin.”
“Well, so now family is involved, which is really ugly.”
“Everything in Russia is ugly,” he said quietly. “Money can buy damn-near everything, including the position at the top.”
“Nice,” she whispered. “Well, if it’s an exchange issue, then we should be safe, right?”
He gave a one-arm shrug. “They generally keep political prisoners in decent shape,” he said slowly.
He wasn’t telling her something. “But?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I just can’t be sure that anybody even knows we’re missing.”
“Of course they do,” she said. “We had to let everybody know that we were taking holidays and where we were going,” she said, “and now you’ve disappeared off the face of the earth. That’s a big clue right there.”
“Yes,” he said, “but think about that. Don’t you realize they ran the yacht into that cargo ship on purpose?”
“Maybe, but wouldn’t it have caused some damage to the cargo ship itself? Like when one car runs into another and leaves paint behind?”
“No,” he said, “not in this instance. I think they just crushed the yacht, so we would be assumed lost at sea.”
“Well, then they can’t exchange us, can they?” she said in exasperation. “What would the point of that be?”
“Well, you’ve already thought of it yourself,” he said. “I know you have.”
“Well, I considered it, but there was no point in doing that.”
“Except for the fact,” he said quietly, “that they would try and keep us under wraps, until we’re where we belong.”
“Meaning, in Russia?”
“If that’s who’s behind this, yes,” he said, “though I don’t understand then why we’re on this boat.”
“Except to keep us quiet, to keep us out of the public eye,” she said.
“But why not just fly straight into Russia?” her mother asked quietly. “Something else is going on here. I just don’t know what. And I don’t like anything that doesn’t follow normal logic,” she said.
“Wouldn’t the military come after us?” Gizella asked her dad.
“Absolutely, and I’m wondering if that’s why the kidnappers are doing all these evasive tactics, in order to avoid getting caught.”
“Well, of course they’ll do something to evade their own capture,” she said, “but surely the US can find their way through all those little tricks, can’t they?”
“Well, we’ll have to believe that they can,” he said. Then he looked at his daughter with a smile. “Just look at you, Gizella. It’s so good to have you here with us.” Then he stopped, closing his eyes and shaking his head, as if wondering at his words. “Man,” he said, “I’m so sorry I said that.”
“It’s all right, Dad,” she said, recognizing the politician smar
miness and the words that fell glibly off his lips but didn’t reflect the inner person. “I know you would rather I was somewhere else just now.”
“I really would,” he said. “This could get rough.”
She wanted to point out that, if that were so, it would contradict what he had just been saying, but there was no point in mentioning that because he didn’t know what would happen any more than the rest of them did. All she could do was hope that somebody was coming for them. “It should be Navy SEALs,” she said suddenly.
“And they will be called,” he said. “But?”
“No buts,” she said, nodding slowly. “I did know one,” she mentioned. “His name was Baylor. I met him at a port one day.” Her mother looked at her askance. Gizella just smiled and laughed. “Nothing happened,” she said. “He was just a really nice guy, and we enjoyed the evening together.”
“Well, maybe it’ll be him,” her mother said.
“Not likely,” her father answered. “There are thousands of Navy SEALs.”
“I only know that much from the guys in the group he was hanging out with. They were all SEALs, and somebody was blabbing about it, even though the others were trying to shut him down.”
“Yeah, they don’t tend to advertise the fact.”
“No, I don’t imagine they do,” she said, remembering the guy with a laugh. “I haven’t thought of him in years. It was in Coronado. Remember when I went down there with Julie, one of my college friends?”
“Of course Julie took you down there,” her mother said in exasperation. “That’s such a Julie place.”
“Julie did like to have a lot of fun,” Gizella admitted. “But she was harmless in her fun, and she never did heavy drugs or got all crazy. She did like her guys though.” But that was hardly a crime in this day and age.
Just then came a shout from up above. Men came scrambling down; two of them with guns stood at each side of the door, guarding them.
She looked at her parents. “Well, this sounds like progress,” she said.
“How do you figure that?” her dad asked.
“Anything that hurts them,” she said, “is bound to be good for us.”