Final Finesse

by Karna Small Bodman

  “I thought we were just going to use our last pig for another explosion. You know, pick a good line and go out with a bang,” Simon said with a guffaw.

  “Oh shut up,” Carlos said. “Juan knows what he’s talking about. If we get word from Rossi to do something different, we’re going to do it. That’s why we’re here. To follow orders. Not ask questions all day long.” He craned his neck to see around a line of cars in front of them. “This place sure has a lot of traffic. Looks like everybody is heading out of town away from the fires. Can’t say I blame them,” Carlos said, speeding up to pass a grey sedan. He glanced over and saw that there was a woman, a young boy and a little girl in the car next to them. The girl was holding a Barbie doll in a white dress.

  He thought about his own family back in Venezuela. He had a boy and a girl too. They lived in a crummy barrio. It was all he could afford. He had taken the job in the gas fields to try and earn enough money to get them a proper house, not some shack on the hillside with a flat tin roof. The money wasn’t much but when he showed the bosses that he could manage the rigs and handle a lot of odd jobs, they had recommended him when Diosdado Rossi had asked their advice about workers to hire for a special project.

  Now, when they finished these jobs, he would have lots of money. Plenty of money to get out of the barrio, find a nice house or maybe leave the country and go to a place like Trinidad and Tobago like Simon said. He could find work in their gas fields. They were major producers. Or he could forget about work altogether and just lie on the beach and drink rum.

  Just one more job. Probably a big job. He’d wait to see what Rossi told Juan to do. It would probably involve those canisters or whatever they were that Juan was carrying around with him like precious jewels. What could be inside those things? They almost looked like scuba tanks. Why would he haul tanks up here? Why couldn’t they buy whatever they needed here in the States and not carry those heavy things everywhere? And what were the other things in the small carrying case inside the duffel? He had gotten a glimpse of a couple of weird boxes, some wires, and what looked like clocks, but he couldn’t be sure. Whatever they were, they were a whole lot different from the things they had used on their other six jobs. Way different.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  EL AVILA–THURSDAY AFTERNOON

  A banana. Rafael had actually given him a banana with his coffee and bread. His stomach rumbled as it had been doing for days now. Tripp grabbed the fruit, peeled it and wolfed it down. Nothing has ever tasted this good. Best thing I’ve seen since the edge of the rainbow that appeared outside the dirty window yesterday morning after the thunderstorms. Okay, so there wasn’t a pot of gold, but a banana was as good a prize as I could expect in this hellhole.

  He was sitting on the edge of the bed staring at his watch. At least they had let him keep that on. Rafael had gone to some shop to get more food. As soon as he got back and tossed him the fruit, he had retreated to the other room where Eyeshade was shouting about another message on the cell.

  Once again it was obvious that Eyeshade was the real money man in this crude operation. He was always talking about dividing up the loot, getting it out of their Cayman account, and investing it in some clever way. No wonder he had garnered his nickname.

  “This is new,” Eyeshade said. “It’s from somebody we don’t know. They must have brought in new people. I don’t like this. We told them no publicity. No nothing. Just pay the money.”

  “We need money. This food cost a fortune. And we don’t have a fortune. Yet. So, what do they want now? We agreed to more time,” Rafael said, unpacking the rest of the groceries.

  “It says they want a meeting. Sounds like a trap.”

  “What kind of a meeting?”

  “They say they just want to be sure that their guy is alive. If we agree to meet some place they will give us a down payment.”

  “How much?”

  “I don’t know,” Eyeshade said.

  “Why don’t they just give us all the money, then we’ll give the guy back?” Rafael suggested.

  “I don’t know that either. Sounds like they’re stalling for time or something.”

  “They’re probably just trying to figure out where we are. They’ll send people to follow us back. We can’t do this.”

  “I know we can’t,” the leader replied. There was a long pause. Nobody said anything. Tripp strained to hear if they were whispering. But it had been their pattern to always speak in Spanish about the messages and the ransom and most anything else. He never let on that he understood anything they said unless they used broken English. Now he waited, tense, to see if they would fall for the meeting ploy.

  “I don’t know,” Rafael said. “Maybe we show the guy, and we tell them they can only have one person at the meeting. Then one of us stays there, maybe you stay cause you’re the boss, and I take the guy back up here. But you stay there and keep him covered until I get away. Hold him there a long time and then you make him leave, and then you get away and go somewhere else.”

  “It’s too risky. They could have other people hiding out. They’d track you back here.”

  “But if you make the rules and say we won’t meet unless they follow the rules …”

  What is this? Good cop, bad cop? Tripp wondered as he listened to the continuing arguments. A meeting would be fantastic. First, they’d have to take the damn chain off. He could walk around, try to get some strength back. Stop the chaffing on his leg. Maybe it could heal a bit. If there were a meeting, maybe they’d bring him some decent food.

  Back when he had worked for Greyfield, he and Joe had put together a couple of rescue missions, and they had always brought food, candy bars, whatever they could stuff in their pockets. He had been through this drill before, but always on the other side. Just thinking about some of their exploits gave him some hope. Hope that they had stopped relying on that idiotic negotiator, whoever he was. Hope that GeoGlobal was finally getting some help in this whole fiasco. Hope that this whole nightmare might come to an end.

  He had thought about other ways to escape. Other ways to try and attack Eyeshade and Rafael. But as soon as the messages came in, he figured he’d hold off and see if an exchange was really in the works. Besides, one of the things he’d had to learn, one of the toughest things when it came to negotiations and rescues was simply patience.

  He sat up straighter as he heard Eyeshade finally make another point. “I don’t like it. I’m going down the hill to send another message. It’s time to pay up or they’ll never see their vice president again.”

  “Wait a minute,” Rafael said. “Remember, I said I had an idea about something else we could send along that would help them make up their minds?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  THE WHITE HOUSE–FRIDAY MID-DAY

  “Hi there, Hunt. What’s the latest in your shop?” Evan Ovich said, settling into one of the wooden chairs around the staff table in the White House Mess.

  Hunt Daniels looked up and said, “Busier than ever. You’d think things might calm down a bit during Christmas week. But they’re not exactly celebrating the holidays in North Korea. All they seem to be celebrating is their latest development to stage an EMP attack on us.”

  “That idiot has been threatening an Electro-Magnetic-Pulse for over a year now. Of course, if he ever tried to detonate one of his nukes in the atmosphere so it would knock out half our electronics, he knows we’d flatten Pyongyang. And then some.”

  “Exactly. And speaking of threats and problems anything new on that kidnapping in Venezuela? You’re the expert on that place,” Hunt said.

  “Nothing yet. The guy’s company is trying to negotiate something. As for the country, while their president continues to decimate the economy, the wealthy ones have left and the rest of their people must feel like they’ve missed the last chopper out of Saigon. Well, maybe their parents remember that one,” Evan said, picking up the blue menu at his place.

  “What about the elections, the riots
, and all of that?” his NSC colleague asked.

  A waiter approached, pad in hand.

  Evan looked up. “Could I have one of the hamburgers? Medium rare. But hold the fries. And an iced tea please.”

  “Very good sir,” the blue jacketed Filipino waiter said, jotting down the order and hurried to the kitchen.

  Evan turned back to Hunt. “We’re trying to help in any way we can without raising a ruckus. You know with communications especially. We’ve got this new site up trying to get some real news to those folks. Ever since that dictator took over the radio and TV stations, the people don’t have a clue what’s going in the world, except for a few shows on CNN that the censors check and let play on a delayed basis once in a while. All the president does is make speeches that they have to listen to. Well, those and a few soccer games.”

  “In addition to kidnapping” Hunt said, “I saw that summary of crime stats and how the place is riddled with more corruption than ever. They’re playing footsy with FERC, the Narco crowd, Iran. I see that Iran’s QUDS force is now training terrorists to operate in South America. I mean it’s a nasty situation, and I’m not sure enough people are paying attention.”

  “That’s what we’re working on. Getting people to pay attention. At least with the election coming up, we’ve been talking to a lot of our allies, and they’re now demanding that they be allowed to send election observers. Not sure if el presidente will let ‘em in the country though. That guy has control of the military, the peasants, the oil and gas companies that he’s taken over, along with all the other ones. And now with the pipeline explosions causing price hikes, he’s gotta be taking in more profits to fund his programs and pay off his cronies.”

  “Who the hell is blowing them up?” Hunt asked, taking a bite of his own sandwich.

  “We’ve got DHS, the FBI, Energy, Transportation folks all over it. I did hear from Ken that we finally got a bit of a breakthrough.”

  “What was that?”

  “We’ve been trying to get it squared away so we could use our domestic satellites to check on activity around the pipelines, but you know how it works. You’ve got to go through hoops to use our own technology for God’s sake.”

  “I hear you. But you got it through?” Hunt asked.

  “Yeah. They’ll be getting the photos and comparing them to a map of the lines. Had to deal with Senator Jenkins on that one though.”

  “Hop-a-long Cassidy came along for the ride?” his colleague asked with a slight grin.

  “Not really. She bitched and moaned about spying on Americans and all that nonsense. I mean, here she’s the one screaming the loudest about how the sabotage is jacking up gas prices, and yet she tries to tie our hands when it comes to finding the bastards. Well, anyway, Ken was able to push it through so we should start getting some action in the next few days.”

  “Well, that’s something,” Hunt said.

  The waiter brought Evan’s order. Hunt asked for a cup of coffee and a few chocolate chip cookies.

  “On a lighter note,” Evan said, “are you still seeing that knock-out scientist who works on missile defense projects? I’ll bet she’s all over that EMP threat.”

  “For sure. She and everyone else in the business. And to answer your question, we try to get together whenever we can.”

  “Got any future plans with that one?”

  “It’s kinda hard to find the time to plan our future. They keep sending me from here to Timbuktu so often she said I had too much in common with Robert E. Lee’s horse.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Evan asked, tasting his burger.

  Hunt leaned back and shook his head, “Horse’s name was Traveler.”

  Evan chuckled. “I see what she means. Well, hang in there. I think she’s a keeper.”

  “I’m trying. Believe me, I’m trying.” The waiter brought Hunt’s coffee and cookies and slipped away. “By the way, did you see Greg Barnes on CNBC talking about the price of oil and gas and what we’re supposedly doing about it?”

  “Yeah, I caught a bit of it. He didn’t look as smooth as he usually does. His deputy is out of town, so he’s got to write his own talking points.”

  “Without Samantha, maybe he’ll be relegated to ‘Dancing with the Stars’.” Hunt quipped.

  “I wouldn’t put it past him. I wonder why politicians are so anxious to go on dumb TV shows?”

  “I think it all started when Nixon went on Laugh-in,” Hunt said. He took a sip of his coffee and grabbed a cookie. “These are great. I’ll leave one for you. But back to the situation in Venezuela, it seems like you’ve got an awful lot on your plate right now.”

  “We all do,” Evan said, as he wolfed down the last of his hamburger. “You’ve got to worry about nuclear proliferation, the Iranians, the North Koreans. And I’ve got to worry about all the crap going on down in Venezuela. With the kidnapping, the crackdowns, the Cubans moving in, the narcotics moving out, I sometimes feel like the skipper of a little boat seeing a perfect storm on the horizon.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CARACAS–SATURDAY AFTERNOON

  “Okay, strategy time,” Joe Campiello said, as a dozen people pulled up chairs. They were huddling at the end of a long, shiny conference table at GeoGlobal’s Caracus headquarters. Victor had turned the room over to the Greyfield team to use for their planning sessions and said he’d be in his office if they needed him.

  A pitcher of ice water and six glasses sat on a silver tray in the middle of the table and a carafe of espresso along with a set of tall narrow cups had been placed on a side cabinet. There was a series of photos in matching frames circling the wall, scenes of men on drilling rigs in a wide field, pipelines snaking along a valley and platforms in the middle of oceans somewhere.

  Samantha sat on one side of the table, while Joe was at the head. She had told him she wanted to be included in any planning meetings. Although Joe said he didn’t usually want outsiders messing with his team, she had put together the payment schedule with GeoGlobal, so he figured he owed it to her to be here.

  She watched carefully as he welcomed the other members of his group and introduced them to her. Most of them had some sort of military background. Two had been in Special Forces, two were pilots, one of them flew helicopters, the other fixed-wing aircraft. The youngest, Dick Stockwell was their resident computer expert, head of the Greyfield Geek Squad as they called it. Then there was Joe, about five feet ten, she surmised, with broad shoulders and muscles that seemed to strain at the fabric of his cotton shirt. His nose looked slightly off-center as if someone had moved it over a notch. Probably trained as a boxer at some point. His hair was almost black, cut short, and his grey eyes were guarded. They told no stories, just took in every element in the room. He looked tough, a bit weathered, and he obviously was in control of this group. Then again, he had selected these men. They now looked to him to lay out a plan.

  “So here’s what we’ve got. You all know Tripp.”

  Every man at the table nodded.

  “That’s why you’re here. You know how he works, how he thinks, how he reacts. That’s why you’re on this drill. Samantha Reid, here, she knows him too.” He gestured toward Samantha. “She may not know him as well as we do, but still, she might have ideas to contribute along the way. And besides, she got us this assignment. So we keep her in the loop.”

  Samantha started to speak, but thought better of it. Joe continued. “Now then, the only way we have to communicate with these guys, whoever they are, is to send a text or email to Tripp’s cell. Other messages were sent by the GeoGlobal people, their negotiator, but that didn’t go too well. In fact, I think he really screwed things up.” There were a few snickers around the table. “So, now it’s up to us.”

  “What about the agency?” one man asked. “Will they be trying to put something together and getting in our way?”

  “I hope to hell not,” Joe said. “You don’t have anything new from your contact at Langley, do you?” he asked Sam
antha.

  “No. Last time I talked with him, he said they were checking their sources on the ground here. There was no discussion of a rescue attempt. At least not yet.”

  “Okay. Good. Let’s proceed on the assumption that we’re the only ones in the game right now,” Joe said. “About contacting the kidnappers, I sent a text yesterday when you all were on the G-5 flying down here. I bcc’d Victor. I asked for a meeting. That’s always our first step, to get a visual. Verify proof of life.”

  Samantha caught her breath. They need to verify proof of life? Oh God. That means that they think there’s a chance Tripp may have already been killed. She sat forward in her chair, hanging on every word.

  “So we get their reaction to that. Should come pretty soon. They always answered other messages within a day or so. I’m guessing that wherever they’re holed up, they go somewhere else to send messages. They’re probably afraid we’ll triangulate and figure out their location. Trouble is, it’s not that easy to do anyway since we’re getting no help from the government here. But that’s okay. We have our own ways to pinpoint their hideout.”

  “You do?” Samantha asked.

  “That’s our business,” Joe said. “Now then, we’ll get their answer. If they don’t agree, we make another offer. They want money. They’ve got no use for Tripp. So we’ll offer to send one guy in. That would be me. I’ll take a chunk of money with me, make sure Tripp is in decent condition. That’s when we’ll work a little Greyfield magic.”

  “Magic?” Samantha asked.

  “Right,” Joe said.

  “Are we gonna use the glasses this time?” Dick asked. “That was a great ploy when we did that deal in Nigeria.”

  “That’s the plan,” Joe said. Turning to Samantha he added, “We’ve developed miniature tracking devices that we put in prescription or sun glasses with a GPS transmitter embedded in the frame.”