The Warriors Series Boxset I

by Ty Patterson

  Silence, dusk and rubber ate the miles.

  ‘And when did you figure it out?’

  ‘I didn’t.’ To strangers, Zeb’s voice would’ve sounded conversational. Only Broker and Roger could detect the bitterness in it. ‘Not until that café guy started talking.

  ‘I then remembered that something had to have happened in the café for the whole kidnap to have worked.

  ‘All along, I was working on the premise that Zubia saw them in the hotel and decided to lift them for his trafficking. But the sisters didn’t spend any time in the hotel the first day. They checked in and left immediately to visit Town Square, and in the evening they went to Kelly’s house. Zubia must have spotted them the next day.’

  Roger got it. ‘But the timeline didn’t work for the next day. It was too short a window to organize a grab.’

  Zeb nodded. ‘The café was the only place they spent significant time; time for them to have seen or overheard something, or for someone to have seen or overheard them.’

  ‘Why didn’t the cops go through that recording?’

  Zeb shrugged. ‘They had enough eye witnesses telling them that nothing had happened anywhere. No reason for them to look at security cameras.’

  Zeb glanced at Broker’s phone, which gleamed in an armrest pocket between Roger and him. He reached out to pick it up.

  His arm stilled when Broker shouted from behind him, ‘I’ve got it.’ He gave them the coordinates to the ranch.

  Roger punched them in the navigation system. Two more hours.

  Broker whistled.

  ‘It’s not a dude ranch. It’s the real thing, all three hundred thousand acres of it. They’re into cattle ranching, stud horses, and supply beef locally.’

  He went quiet. ‘Jeez, this place will be a nightmare to get into. A central lodge, several cabins scattered nearby, a swimming pool, a horse corral, all of it surrounded by open space, and get this – its own private runway. There’s a Piper Archer DX aircraft registered to the ranch. The ranch has thirty people at any time, usually. The central lodge itself has several rooms.’

  Zeb timed it in his mind. Two hours to reach the ranch. Another hour to make it secure against an attack. Then the call from the ranch to them.

  Broker saw the tension in him and read his mind.

  ‘I’m on it.’ They heard his fingers flying over the laptop.

  Whatever the abductor was seeking, it had to be in Meghan’s camera or laptop.

  Nothing else made sense.

  If the girls had seen or heard something that had led to their grab – that could be easily discredited.

  It had to be harder evidence, like that in a memory disc on one of the two devices. Or maybe both.

  Zeb looked out at the tarmac as nervous energy and rage on wheels ran over it, the road below one continuous sheet of black.

  The sisters were probably discussing something they had saved, something that was innocuous to them, which was overheard by the men in the booth. That’s the trigger. The man couldn’t get the devices stolen because it was always with Meghan or in a very public place, like the hotel.

  He cleared his mind, Broker would find it, and focused on the ranch.

  He laid it out in his mind, played around with the location, and thought about the likely opposition strength. He considered the terrain, considered the innocents on the ranch – cooks, cleaners, help – and squelched the helplessness that reared its head.

  The odds were stacked against him.

  But they always were, in any mission.

  He looked at elements of surprise or shock to lower resistance. No ideas came to him.

  He thought of plain audaciousness. Nope.

  He thought about entries he had made in previous missions. He shook his head. Terrains were different; neighborhoods were different.

  He cast his mind wider, zoomed out the ranch layout in his mind.

  There. Something over there.

  ‘Pull over,’ Broker said from the back.

  There was something in his voice. Something Roger and Zeb didn’t question. Something they had never heard before.

  Roger eased the SUV to a stop, and they swung around.

  Broker’s face was ashen. That was the first clue that it was bad.

  He turned Meghan’s laptop around silently, brought up a video player, selected a file, and clicked on play.

  All of them were battle-hardened men who had witnessed others do unspeakable things in combat. All of them lived lives of violence.

  Death accompanied them.

  What they saw chilled even them.

  None of them spoke for a while when the video finished.

  Roger murmured, ‘This is worse than we thought.’

  Zeb’s eyes focused again as if something dormant had stirred. They saw a light in his brown eyes; they had seen that light only a few times before.

  It was the last light his opponents saw.

  Chapter 23

  Once the van was out of the city, a door separating the driver’s cabin opened.

  Beth’s hijacker came in dressed in a business suit and removed a pair of blindfolds from his pocket.

  Meghan looked at Beth.

  They launched themselves silently at the man.

  Their shoulders rammed into him, and he went down with a grunt. Meghan twisted her body around and punched him in the abdomen with her elbow.

  Her elbow jarred. His abdomen was lined with hard muscle.

  Beth kneed him in the groin and met a hard thigh. She bit him, and her teeth hurt.

  The man roared and plucked them away one by one like they were feather pillows and threw them back on the bench.

  Beth jumped at him again and slumped when his palm cracked across her face.

  Meghan’s face turned furiously red as she kicked at him, and then she lost consciousness as he punched her.

  When they came to, they were blindfolded.

  Beth knew they were heading south and were on a highway; the smoothness of the ride and the distant hum of tires told her that. She pushed across the bench toward Meghan for warmth and comfort as she realized the men had taken away their jackets, their shoes and their phones.

  There was no way for Zeb and Broker to track them.

  After what felt like an hour more of driving, the van turned, and the jostling told her it was now running on an unpaved track. Another hour of twists and turns and the uneven ride smoothened out and the van came to a halt.

  She heard muffled voices from within the cab, their door slid open, and they were hauled out.

  She tried to look around, but the cloth across her eyes cut off light and sight. She knew it was nearing dark, and from the way the breeze moved and smelled, they were somewhere remote.

  Their shoes scraped on gravel as they were shoved ahead, rough hands guided them over steps, and they went inside.

  The floor below her feet felt soft, it was carpeted. The room they were in was large; there was a feeling of space. It smelled of wood.

  The entrance door closed behind them. From the way it slammed shut, it sounded like a large door.

  Hands went behind her head, and the blindfold came off.

  She blinked a few times, wiped her eyes against the sleeve of her T-shirt, and looked around for Meg.

  She was a couple of feet away, doing the same.

  The room they were in was, as she had guessed, large, with several couches on a plush carpet. A massive wood-burning stove occupied one side and a large mantelpiece, the other

  The ceiling beams and walls were all wood. The room looked old, it was laid out with care and love. It was a large, friendly room with yellow lighting that was kind on the eyes.

  It was a living room, much larger than those found in cities.

  Realization dawned on her as she looked back and outside the windows.

  A vast expanse of darkness greeted her. No lights were visible.

  They were on a ranch.

  The three men who had abducted them stood
behind her and watched her expressionlessly.

  All of them were young, in their thirties, fit and short haired.

  They had a little of Zeb and Roger’s feel but not the same.

  A door at their left opened and a man walked in.

  The sisters stared at the man.

  He wore a balaclava over his face and was dressed in a light blue shirt tucked in black jeans. A wide leather belt and ornately decorated boots completed his outfit.

  His eyes were dark behind the mask, they tried to peer through it, to see if they could recognize him.

  They couldn’t.

  Disappointment flooded them.

  ‘Find out everything about him. Everything,’ Zeb snapped at Broker.

  ‘I’m doing just that. Relax. We now know what he wants. He won’t harm them till he gets it,’ Broker grumped.

  Roger squeezed Zeb’s shoulder. Calm down. He didn’t need to say it.

  Zeb breathed deeply, cleared his mind of everything, and nodded.

  He glanced at the phone beside them.

  ‘Any moment now.’ Roger read his glance. ‘The women should have reached him.’

  Roger pulled out and resumed their drive, and after less than an hour, Broker called out from behind them, ‘I got his file.’

  He read out the man’s history, went into detail about his achievements, and when he had finished, the hum of tires and the rare passing lights of other vehicles filled their universe.

  Roger looked sideways. Zeb’s face glowed in the dark from the dim light of the dashboard.

  ‘This is one bad man.’

  ‘Yeah, that he is,’ Broker agreed. He snapped the laptop shut and asked Zeb, ‘What’s the plan, Wise One?’

  The phone rang before Zeb could reply.

  ‘Major Carter, I’ve got the Petersen twins.’ The Voice was polished, an educated voice.

  Zeb met Broker’s eyes in the mirror. The Voice was showing that he’d checked out Zeb.

  The Voice also indicated he didn’t know that they knew.

  How would he? Zeb chided himself. He switched gears mentally.

  ‘Who are you, how did you get this number, and why should I believe you?’ Zeb made his tone bored, as if he was discussing the weather.

  ‘Major, by all accounts you are an intelligent man. Use that intelligence. How else would I have got this number if I didn’t have the twins? I will give you precisely ten minutes to confirm that they are missing and will then call you back. And by the way, surely I don’t need to repeat that no cops cliché.’

  He hung up.

  Broker snatched the phone, read out its number, and ran it through his tracking program.

  ‘He’s not even hiding where he’s calling from. The call is from the ranch.’

  Zeb knew why. ‘That’s because he intends to kill us.’

  Ten minutes later, the Voice called.

  ‘Yeah, the girls are missing. Now what?’ Zeb asked him roughly.

  The Voice laughed. ‘No who are you? Why are you doing this? None of those questions?’

  Zeb sighed. ‘Like you said, I’m not stupid. I can trace your call to its location, which is what you wanted me to do. So the who is answered. But what do you want?’

  ‘It’s a pleasure working with an intelligent man. I want Meghan Petersen’s laptop and camera which she tells me are in her hotel room. I would send my men to get it, but I’m sure you’ll do that errand for me, won’t you?’

  ‘Why do you want those?’

  The Voice laughed. ‘Major, all in good time. Or maybe you’ll have figured it out by the time you get here. Shall we rendezvous at my ranch at nine p.m.? It’s seven now, that gives you enough time to pick the stuff up from their room and get here. You get the sisters, I get what I want, we all agree to forget one another and walk away into the sunset.’

  Zeb didn’t reply.

  One and a half hour more, Roger mouthed silently at him.

  ‘Major?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m here. I was thinking just how stupid you could be.’

  Negotiators took the friendly approach with kidnappers. It gave them an opportunity to establish a relationship, however tenuous, and occasionally win over the kidnappers.

  Zeb believed in taking the opposite approach. But in his world, kidnappers did not walk away into the sunset. Not alive.

  Meghan and Beth drew a sharp breath as the man looked disbelievingly at his phone.

  He had ignored their questioning expressions when he’d walked in the room. He had ignored their rapid Who are you? Why are you after us? at him.

  The women were held back roughly when they approached him, and when they resisted, they were knocked down.

  He had watched silently and had thrust out a hand.

  A flunky handed him the twins’ sat phones.

  He studied them and turned one of them around to the sisters.

  ‘This is Zeb Carter’s number?’

  They were still reeling in shock and dawning horror and didn’t answer.

  He casually slapped Beth. She fell, and when Meghan growled deep, he slapped her too.

  Heavy slaps that split their lips.

  The flunkies pulled them upright.

  ‘I can go on all night. Is that his number?’

  Beth nodded.

  ‘Is he alone?’

  She hesitated, and he rose again.

  ‘Two more with him.’

  He smiled like it was a social conversation in a bar. ‘That wasn’t hard, was it?’

  He dialed the number, placed the phone on speaker, and lounged on a couch.

  ‘Say what, Major?’

  ‘I said you are a stupid man.’ Zeb’s voice came flatly through the speaker.

  ‘If you had any sense, you’d have traced my number and checked where I am right now. I’m nowhere near Jackson. I am nearing Salt Lake City. There’s no way I can reach your ranch in two hours. Your ranch is a good eight-hour drive, maybe even ten depending on traffic, from where I am.’

  The man’s lips tightened.

  Zeb’s disbelief came through the phone. ‘Dark? You should be meeting us in broad daylight when you can see our approach and cover us with a hundred guns. You should meet us early morning so that we don’t have any rest.’

  A dull flush spread across the man’s face. ‘Major, you seem to be forgetting I hold the women.’

  He rose swiftly, strode across the room, and slapped Beth hard. ‘Heard that, Major? I would go easy on the insults. Come in the morning, at nine, and it had better be just the three of you.’

  He disconnected the call and snapped out at his flunkies, ‘Take these two to one of the rooms and two of you stand guard over them.’

  ‘Scott?’

  A man entered the room cradling an HK MP-5. His arms were heavily tattooed, and he moved with the assurance of one who has seen everything.

  He looked questioningly at the Voice.

  ‘I want a seven-man perimeter and one on the roof.’ He jerked his head at the three men behind the twins. ‘Two of these will be standing guard over the women.’

  Scott nodded silently and looked in the direction of the three flunkies, who urged the women forward.

  ‘We’ll get company in the morning,’ the Voice shouted after them.

  He unclenched his fingers when he was alone, damped down his rage, and called another number.

  Zubia listened silently and, when the Voice had finished, told him simply, ‘You can’t let them go away.’

  ‘They won’t. This is a one-way ride.’

  Chapter 24

  They planned to hit the ranch at night.

  The moment he had seen the Voice on the security camera, three things had gone through Zeb’s mind.

  He knew that the man would either try to recover the camera and laptop or would demand an exchange. He also figured the man would want to trade immediately, and he had to buy time. Sending the phone with Mark Feinberg to Salt Lake City had bought time for him.

  With the expectat
ion of a morning exchange, Zeb would have a thin element of surprise in their favor when the three of them attacked at night.

  As they drew closer to the ranch, a pale moon accompanying them, they had discussed the number of men the Voice would have by his side.

  Roger considered the size of the ranch, its layout and decided. ‘Ten or fifteen at the most. Good men, all ex-military or mercenaries. Any less and they will be spread thin. Any more and they will have issues of coordination and friendly fire.’

  Broker nodded. ‘If I was him, I would let go of all the help. They would hamper the exchange and the kill.’

  They reached the outskirts of the ranch and continued on the uneven track.

  The ranch was bounded by barbed wire in some places and by natural demarcation, a stream or a tree line, in others. The main entrance to the ranch had a simple arch with no gate on it. The unpaved track led to the entrance of the central lodge, behind which were sprawled out several cabins, unevenly laid out, and a central swimming pool.

  A thin strip of tarmac, the runway for the aircraft, was half a mile away from the accommodation.

  They figured the exchange would happen in the central lodge, in the living room.

  ‘He wouldn’t want to give us a tour of the place,’ Zeb mused.

  They reached the outskirts of the ranch at nine p.m. and continued ahead without branching off on the dirt track that led to the ranch. They ate four more miles before Roger swung the SUV on a dim uneven trail, a faint vehicle track that made its way to the airstrip.

  An hour of slow driving, this wasn’t the time for them to have a broken axle, brought them to a point five miles from the ranch buildings.

  He found a deep thicket and drove into it.

  In less than a minute they had outfitted themselves with combat vests and comms gear, an AR-15 for Zeb and HK MP5s for Roger and Broker. Each one of them had handguns strapped in holsters, spare magazines and blades. Zeb knew they would all have pistols strapped to their ankles and have various other goodies on their bodies.