by Tony Lavely
Jamse questioned Derek about finding the site: “All of us,” Derek said, “since I got ‘ere, ‘ave been scrutinizing topo maps of the area from ‘ere south. Almost all the canyons, large and small, ‘ave a stream flowing out of them. And many ‘ave a road or trail or path of some description passing close enough to meet the description.”
“And don’t forget,” deVeel added, “the files are five years old; could have been changes since then.”
That conversation segued into a several minutes discussion of special helicopters for the ‘guests’—Beckie didn’t want to use such a pleasant word for the clients, but she wasn’t talking—and again she tuned out of the ensuing debate about additional requirements placed on the helicopters to allow night flying. Yeah, this isn’t gonna be a slam dunk! I don’t know why I thought it’d be easy once I got here. She wandered to the fireplace, using the poker to push ashes around while she thought about the future.
When she heard a break in the conversation, Beckie turned to Jamse and said, “I think I need a family conference. I need to talk this over, kind of like we did in London.”
Jamse nodded. “Go ahead. We shall continue planning.”
Beckie took her mother’s hand and led the group back toward the cabin her parents shared.
“While I think I’m doing the right thing, I’d like us all to talk it over. Please?”
“Well, it seems like everything’s pretty well finalized,” Jean said. “While I haven’t said much, some of the things I’ve heard are a little frightening.”
“I think Mr. Jamse might say you are doing them a great favor, saying they are only ‘a little frightening.’ I am quaking in my boots.” She giggled, wiggling her toes in the grass in front of the cabins. “But it’s important to me to do this.”
Mom took her arm and smiling softly, started toward the cabin. “Now, be honest. Why do you really want us to talk? You left days ago with no word. Even when your father called to tell me he’d found you, no word from you. I love you always, and I’ll back you up as far as I can no matter what. But I’m confused about what you’ve done, what you’re planning. Can you help me understand that?”
While the words were soft, the meaning wasn’t; Beckie was taken aback by the feeling in her mother’s words.
“Are all of you…” She started again. “Do you all wonder, too? Is it that confusing to you, too?” She looked at each of them in turn.
Finally, her father took her hand. “I think, Beckie, that what confuses Mom is that you have feelings that she doesn’t and you haven’t explained them. That’s true for me, too. What you told me in London, well, I heard it, and tried to accept it, but…” He shook his head. “Mike and Melissa may have a better idea, but you left them out, too, so maybe not.
“And we’re all surprised that after not trusting us, even last week, you’re asking for approval now.” He squeezed her hand. “But we do want to help.”
Beckie frowned at him, then pulled away, finding a chair. For long moments she sat, blinking back tears as she tried to get her head past the injustice of her father’s words. Even though she knew they were completely accurate as well as justified.
Again she reflected on the past week and its surprises. Was this all a mistake? Should she wash her hands of it? She wasn’t responsible, after all. So maybe she should forget the girls and put the family back together. After all, what could she do that Jamse, Kevin and all the rest couldn’t? Maybe forcing Jamse’s hand would make it harder for him instead of help. All these thoughts ran through her mind, one after another, until they jumbled together and confused her even more. But then she looked around at them, all watching her. She knew, as she had always known, that the family wasn’t falling apart. It was okay.
She sat up in the chair. “Okay, I’ll do my best to explain it,” she said. “But first, is there anything to drink here? I need something to settle down, relax a little. And all of you, please sit down.”
Mike had been looking around. “Nothing but wine.”
“That’ll be okay for me,” Beckie told him. “Thanks,” as he handed her a glass.
“There’s plenty for all of us,” with a hint of a question in his voice.
“Sure,” Jim said. “Seems like you’ve all aged almost as much as Mom and I have. And no one’s driving.”
Beckie sipped slowly, waiting as Mike poured for the others and finally sat.
“Okay,” she started. “First, none of this happened because any of you did anything that was wrong. None of you upset me or anything like that, though I guess I’ve hurt all of you. But I do trust both of you,” indicating her parents. “I trust you to explain why all this is the wrong thing for me to do, since it’s what you’d have to do.
“So, given that I was going to do something you wouldn’t—couldn’t—agree with, it didn’t make sense to tell you what I was goin’ to do. Goes for you two, too,” she said to Melissa and Mike. “While I knew you’d agree with me, you wouldn’t want to be left out.”
“We so didn’t want to be left out,” Melissa agreed.
“But I had to. I’ve been watching you the last couple weeks. You still needed time. And if Nigel’d put us both on stage together again… Well, even Mike might have had a tough time.” She dropped her eyes. “I prob’ly shouldn’t have let you come along in April.”
Beckie looked up to see Melissa’s shocked expression. “And Mike, you needed to be there with Melissa, so I couldn’t take you without her.
“And that’s why I said nothing to any of you.” She looked around again, sipping again.
“The other girls. Why are they so important to me? I’ve tried to tell you, Dad, but let me do it again.
“You and Mom raised us both to do the right thing, even if it seemed inconvenient or hard to do. Church taught us that, too. I think that’s the reason we both did so well when Mr. Jamse took us to Hawai’i when those guys were trying to take over your company.”
He nodded. “I’d have given it up to not lose you, you know. And I still would.”
“Is that what you’re afraid of? Losing me?” She laughed gently. “Not gonna lose me, for sure. Mike either.” She became serious. “You know as well as I that anything could happen. Either of us could lose the other in a heartbeat, no reason, just dumb luck. But this, I don’t think anything bad will happen to me if anything they’ve taught us about God is true.
“Back to the subject: I learned a lot during that trip to Hawai’i. I learned things I might have needed to learn but that you’d never teach me. And that’s right; these aren’t things parents should teach their kids. What it feels like to be alone, how to help someone else even if you’re not sure you can, how to ignore being embarrassed and get on with what you need to do. What it feels like to be trusted.”
She stopped and grinned. “Maybe I am growing up, seeing things in shades. I also learned that a good person might do things you don’t like and that trust is easy to earn when everything seems okay.” She smiled at Mike. “I just now understand how hard it must have been for you to wash my hair that night. Thank you.
“So I learned those things in Hawai’i. Mike might have learned some of them, too, I guess.” He nodded. “It’s hard enough for me to keep track of me.
“Now, the trip to London.” She looked at her mother. “Don’t know what you know about it, beyond that Mr. Jamse, with a little help from us, was able to get Cari back where she belonged.”
“Not a great deal. Maybe that would help.”
“Okay. Without going into more detail than we need here, and besides, Dad’s probably heard all this from Mr. Jamse, Melissa and I worked a couple of days, nights, as exotic dancers, bait for the crooks who had kidnapped Cari.
“We were kidnapped, too, and then rescued. And some of the lessons from Hawai’i were refreshed. How it feels to be alone, how it feels to have a friend along even if you’re both in deadly trouble—or think you might be; how a good person can do things you don’t understand; that trust reward
ed is wonderful; how great it is to see your brother in a funny gogglely mask thing taking charge and saving your best friend.
“But the most vivid feeling I have from that trip is listening to Kevin tell us that a school bus full of middle school kids had been hijacked and a bunch of them, all girls like me, hadn’t been found. A really sick feeling, thinking about them, ‘cause prob’ly whoever took them would turn out to be more like Werner than Mr. Jamse.
“So I thought about them and decided that if I could do something, anything, to help them, I’d have to do it, like Mike and I helped each other on that beach, or like Mr. Jamse and his team helped Cari in Italy. I wanted to be on that team.
“But the team never asked for me to help. It’s been a couple months. Sue’s told me the problems they’re having, and I thought, I can help with this. So I went back to Nigel’s club to try and get more information for Mr. Jamse.
“Now we’re here. Please don’t tell me all the things I’ve maybe done wrong, or not thought out enough. Maybe I’m not so grown up after all. I can still go off with a half-baked plan…” A little embarrassed chuckle almost covered her next words. “I am so able to do that.”
She held up her empty wine glass. “A little more, please.
“So, that’s my reason for doing this. I feel in my gut the fear and helplessness those girls feel. I honestly believe this is the right thing to do. I can’t sit back and depend on someone else to do it, even Mr. Jamse, when I can help. Excuse me a second.” She went to the bathroom.
“Well, Beckie,” her mother said when she returned, “this is an example of the law of unintended consequences, I suppose. Now what I need to understand is how you can help them, and then how we can help you.”
“Oh, Mom!” Beckie dissolved into tears and dropped into her lap to hug her. “Thanks so much.”
After a minute or so, she wiped her cheeks and faced the others. “You okay with it? This has gotta be unanimous. No split opinions.” She waited until each of them nodded.
“The plan for today is for Kevin to try and make a deal with this guy Werner. Kevin’ll offer me, since we think Werner might want revenge either on me or on Mr. Jamse. Or the both of us. So we want to be careful to make sure we find him and the place he’s got the girls without either of us getting back into his hands.
“What they were talking about, in case it didn’t make much sense, is to convince Werner that I’m actually the one he’ll get, Kevin will take some pictures of me to send to Werner. We think he’ll recognize me.”
“So those are the photos they were talking about?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t connect you with them. Maybe because I wasn’t thinking of my daughter, the exotic dancer. They did say nude, didn’t they?”
“Some of them.”
“Seems like I’m the one can help you best,” Melissa said.
“No, no, no. That puts you back into it, and I’m—”
“That’s so selfish,” Melissa said. Beckie felt her chest constrict in fear for Melissa. She glanced to see the others staring at her friend. “Okay, maybe selfish isn’t the right word. But I don’t think you can protect me if I can’t protect you, too.”
“Mom, Dad?”
“Don’t look at us,” her father said. “The question is: does Melissa really want to help you, or is she trying to get you to stop? If she wants to help you, you’ve been hoist on your own petard,” he explained.
Jean nodded, then added, “However, acting in loco parentis as we are for Melissa, we strongly recommend against her being involved. But that’s not a prohibition; merely the same recommendation we’ve already made to you.”
“What!”
“If we allow you to do what you think is right to protect those girls, how can we tell Melissa she can’t do what she thinks is right to protect you? And if you’re talking about photos, I don’t know how any of us but Melissa can help.”
“While I am honored beyond words that both of you trust me sufficiently to make this offer,” Jamse said when he heard the request, “my preference is to hold Melissa in reserve in case some difficulty arises with the plan using Rebecca alone. I hope this will be satisfactory?” The look of relief on Beckie’s face settled him.
But after all the discussion, pleas and anguish, the next morning brought joy and hope along with the waffles and scrambled eggs. Kevin reported an apparent contact with Wendy Grove via instant messaging.
“Jaime, one of the kids we hired, was sitting there when the IM program popped up: ‘your buddy wendynotpeterswendy has signed on.’ He ‘bout fell over before he started to go through the script, meanwhile pushing the button so Sue would come quick and start the trace. Worked, too, at least to the ISP.”
“It’s in Arizona,” Sue said.
Kevin nodded and continued, “Better get some practice riding; Ian says we don’t need photos in the new plan, thank heavens, but he hopes you’ll be able to do some horseback riding for us. Once a tasty morsel, always a tasty morsel, I suppose.”
“I’d love to do some riding. Been too long,” Melissa enthused. Beckie agreed. Even Mike, more at home on rollerblades, was willing. “So you didn’t really want to take pictures of Beckie?” she teased.
“’Course not. I’d much rather—” Beckie grinned as Kevin’s face changed. Maybe he’s thinkin’ about… me? She blushed a little, and was grateful no one noticed. “Actually, as you can guess,” addressing Beckie as well as Melissa, “I’d have liked it very much. But not for that purpose. Now, let me point you toward the stables.”
“Wait, why the stables?” Beckie asked.
“Ian’s come up with a plan,” Kevin repeated. “And part of it has you guys on horseback, questing through Arizona scenery. Details to follow. Go on, get over to the stables!”
They spent a couple of days practicing with the new style, to them, of horses and tack. On the third day, Jean-Luc ferried the advance contingent, consisting of Kevin, Sue and the three kids, to Springerville, in eastern Arizona. To keep passengers—Me, I’ll bet—from dwelling on the helicopter as a mode of personal transport, Kevin updated them during the flight. Having to use the helmet mounted intercom did little to alleviate Beckie’s concerns, though off and on, she did pay attention to Kevin’s briefing.
“We tracked the ISP. They provide wireless coverage out where we’re going. But the only location we can get from them is their antenna, where the signal came from. Since it’s not hardwired, we have about, what, Sue?”
“Depending on terrain and how high the antenna is, a circle about three or four kilometers across.”
“Wow. How will we pin it down?”
“We’ll use sniffers, radio receivers tuned to the system frequency. We hope,” Sue said with a wry smile, “to pick up their signal.”
Kevin betrayed his concern by twisting in his seat to look at Sue directly. “Be just our luck to find a subdivision of houses, all using this wireless system.”
“Not there. The ISP said they put it in ‘cause there are plans for development, but so far, there are only a few links with that antenna. But undoubtedly, they’ll all be off while we’re looking.”
The rest of the trip’s conversation dealt with mundane logistics, like how close they could get. Melissa and Mike held each other’s hands tightly. Beckie went back to screwing her eyes shut, hoping that the helicopter could indeed fly the distance.
The next days were frustrating even with the riding. The kids rode out each morning with the sniffers. Sue had identified the antenna’s characteristics and, with the help of local topographic maps, she had determined that the area of interest was somewhat larger than they had hoped. The radius of the coverage area was likely to be about twice her original estimate.
“But,” she reminded them, “it’s pretty much line of sight, which means if you have a hill between you and the antenna here, move along until you can see it again. But also, we don’t know how high the receiving antenna is, either.” In response to the question: �
�If it’s the same height as the ISP’s, and about the same power transmitter, it could be as much as eight kilometers distant. And it needn’t look much like an antenna tower, either.”
“Seems likely they’d go to some trouble to disguise it, with everything else they’ve hidden,” Mike said.
“That does seem likely,” Sue agreed.
But at least the riding was fun, even though temperatures were steadily hitting the low nineties. The wranglers at the small stables near the motel Sue had commandeered had first been amused by the girls’ attempts to get comfortable with the large western saddles these quarter horses were used to. Smaller, sturdy, sure footed and quick when pushed, they weren’t much like Hoshi and Dusky Rose, their Thoroughbreds back home. Once the girls got used to throwing the heavy saddles around, the wranglers were impressed with their riding ability and enjoyed watching them work in the corral, teaching the horses a few new tricks.
And Mike: “Hey,” Beckie said to him with a big grin, “you haven’t fallen off!”
“Yeah,” with a sneer. “But I’m glad for the hot tub! Sure feels good.”
Beckie smiled to herself. She also felt a lot less tight and stiff after a stint in the steamy room. And I guess I know why Lissa’s been soaking there, too!
Jamse had assigned the trio to horseback, explaining that he hoped they would look more like local kids out riding for the day than agents looking for hidden brothels or terrorist organizations. And hidden it certainly was; Jean-Luc had flown several passes over suspected target areas with photo, radar and thermal imaging gear. They had examined the images in detail and found at first blush, nothing.
With the aerial investigations failing to produce useful data, Jamse had begun plan B: youthful riders out for a day-long trail ride. Kevin tracked them from a distance of about two miles, close enough for the ear mounted radios to work most of the time.
The first day, they rode out at mid-morning, packs full of water and enough food for them and the horses to spend the day checking the quadrant.