by Rick Mofina
When they’d returned, and replaced her next to Cole, they’d removed her hood and the tape over her mouth. Once more they locked one handcuff around her wrist and threaded the second cuff to a long chain, as was the case for Cole.
Their chains were fastened to a steel beam.
Sarah and Cole had been put on ripped, stained mattresses that reeked of urine. They were given torn blankets, bags of chips, doughnuts, bottled water.
Their chains reached into a small bathroom. It had a battered, ill-fitting swinging door that shut, offering some privacy, but the handle was missing so it wouldn’t lock. Inside, the cramped room had filthy walls and an air vent the size of a milk crate wedged into patched-over, crumbling drywall. There was a discolored toilet that still flushed, a sink with running water, paper towels and several bars of soap still in their packages.
Their mattresses were pushed against a wall.
Sarah found a broken broom handle to fend off the rats. The floor was encased with bird shit from the pigeons that had entered through the holes in the roof. Often the birds made aggressive raids for their food.
Across the vast factory floor, dirty with islands of crumbling half walls, were steel drums of trash and scraps of rotting lumber. Forests of cracked concrete columns and rusting steel beams rose from the waste. Webs of wiring and broken light fixtures drooped from the great ceiling. Daylight dimmed because it was filtered through the lines of weathered factory windows yellowed with age, filth and bird droppings.
Sarah and Cole could see their captors in the far section. Twenty in all, she guessed. There was a lot of movement and Sarah saw an array of new computers and electrical equipment along with crates of components, supplies, weapons.
She also saw what looked like wardrobe racks with official-looking uniforms, and the wheels of several vehicles that were covered with tarps.
There were tables bearing maps, charts, books, binders, cell phones, walls with more maps and radios kept low with emergency chatter. She knew from Jeff’s firefighting work that they were police scanners. There were fridges, large TVs and cots.
The few times the leaders spoke to her it was in accented but strong English. They were disciplined and intelligent men. This was a small army, she thought, and they continued to terrify her as they did since that moment they stole them from the street.
At first they were only interested in taking Cole. Sarah fought them but her struggle ended as quickly as it began when they took her, too.
“I have a gun pointed at your son’s head! Say nothing, cooperate and no one will die!”
It had all happened so fast.
Inside, they’d handcuffed them, put hoods on their heads and pushed them down to the floor of the vehicle as they drove through New York City. Twice they’d switched vehicles before they arrived in this hellhole.
Sarah was certain they were plotting something massive, something terrifying. Her fear deepened when the news conference ended and their arguing intensified.
A glass was smashed.
Now, some of the men began shoving others until a small group started directly toward Sarah and Cole. You did not have to understand the language to know the worst was coming.
“Mom?” Cole said.
“Shh, shh, honey. It’s going to be okay.”
Several men, with full thick beards, dark pants, T-shirts, their eyes bulging with rage, stood over them. One had a large flag, which Sarah did not recognize. One had a video camera. One seized Cole from the mattress. Cole’s chains jingled as the man positioned him before the flag. One of the men held Sarah down.
“Mom!” Cole’s eyes filled with tears.
The fourth man, the leader, kept his hands behind his back.
“Your husband failed to obey our instructions.”
The leader nodded to the cameraman, the red record light came on and Sarah’s heart nearly exploded. The leader suddenly displayed his pistol, prepared it for firing and pointed it at Cole’s head.
Sarah screamed and struggled in vain. Cole cried out.
“Your husband gambled with your lives and lost.”
One of the men began reciting a manifesto in a foreign language as they prepared for the first execution.
CHAPTER 30
Somewhere in New York City
As Cole’s death sentence was read out the gunman pressed the muzzle against Cole’s head.
Cole shook as he cried. His eyes found Sarah’s.
She screamed and fought against the captors.
“This execution is the result of failure,” the man with the gun told Sarah.
“No! He’s just a boy, an innocent boy!”
“It is a result of your husband’s failure to return our property—” the man raised his voice “—the failure of your government and all governments to—”
A boot kicked the man’s hand, sending the gun scraping across the floor.
A larger group of men had materialized and overtook the others. Cole was released, Sarah was released. She scurried to Cole, held him tight and calmed him as they watched.
The men of the execution effort were punched and kicked by the others who then hauled them before a line of men brandishing guns.
The beaten men were forced to their knees.
All attention went to one man. Sarah had not seen him before.
His head was shaved clean. He had a bushy black beard and a commanding presence, as if he were supreme leader.
He stood a few inches over six feet. He had a muscular build that strained his New York Yankees T-shirt. The grip of a pistol was visible from his shoulder holster. He wore blue jeans and an ice-cold expression as he looked down upon the man who was going to kill Cole.
“Tell me, Zama,” the new leader said in clear English to the ringleader. “Was it not your responsibility to secure the component?”
“Yes, Bulat, but—”
“Stop. Your job was to secure the component and help with the setup, correct?”
“Yes, but circumstances changed.”
“Stop. I am informed that your courier picked up the wrong bag at LaGuardia, is that not a fact, Zama?”
“Yes, as we reported. But we terminated him and took corrective action, sir. Immediate corrective action.”
“Corrective action? Is that what you call it?” He threw the printed pages of an online news article at Zama’s face. “You’ve alerted U.S. law enforcement to our presence! This changes everything! But that is not all, Zama. Is it?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t because you’ve proven yourself a fool.”
“I am dedicated to the mission.”
“You have jeopardized our entire operation!”
“No.”
“It changes everything!”
“I should never have allowed our sponsors to convince me that you should be part of our brigade.”
After a long silence, Bulat lowered himself, looked the frightened ringleader in the face and adjusted his fury to a whisper.
“All of the dying, the souls of our children and martyrs, all are now at risk of being meaningless because of you, Zama.”
“That is not so. I give my life to our mission.”
“No, Zama, like your courier, you are a liability.”
“Please.”
“Don’t worry. I need you.”
“Thank you.”
“We are now forced to scramble to change our operation completely in order to salvage it. But I still need you.”
“Thank you, Bulat.”
Zama tried to show his gratitude by kissing the back of Bulat’s hand but the leader withdrew it.
“I need you to be an example to others that fuckups like you will be erased.”
Bulat unholstered his pistol, took one second to prepare it for firing, drilled the gun into Zama’s skull. The sound—like an enormous firecracker—was deafening. Sarah and Cole flinched.
The body fell forward to the filthy floor.
Bulat regarded Sarah and Cole for several seconds before stepping over the corpse and lowering himself to face them. Their chains chimed softly as they trembled.
Bulat inhaled deeply and let his breath out slowly.
“It is futile to fear what is inevitable.” He tapped the still-warm muzzle of his gun on Cole’s head. Then he tapped it on Sarah’s head. “Sooner or later, we all must die.”
CHAPTER 31
Manhattan, New York City
Sarah’s eyes were ballooned in a silent scream as her face filled the large flat-screen TV in Jeff’s hotel room.
Her mouth was sealed with tape, her hair snaked wildly. Fear creased her face as she struggled between her captors with their gruesome masks and Jeff in the back of the fleeing van.
Detective Lucy Chu, an NYPD forensic artist, typed again on her laptop keypad. The image on the screen shrunk, the focus zoomed out and Chu continued displaying the three photos taken by detectives from the pursuit earlier that morning.
Frame by frame, section by section, Chu enlarged them, examined them intensely with Jeff, striving to pinpoint any identifying details. The photographs were helpful but so far had failed to yield a lead. The kidnappers were silhouetted or in shadow.
And they stayed that way.
The technical experts had already gone full bore to enhance the images but with little success. Chu repositioned her chair so that the TV screen was behind her and Jeff was looking at it while facing her.
Chu picked up her drawing pad, eraser and graphite pencil.
“All right, watch the pictures,” she said, “and take me back inside the van.” She left the three-photo slide show flowing, to keep Jeff’s attention on the interior of the van. She’d already interviewed him at length. Her goal was to use composites, image modification, whatever it took to mine Jeff’s memory for potential evidence.
“Let’s start with hands.”
Again and again Chu asked him about body parts, necks, hair, tattoos, jewelry, scars, clothing, footwear, characteristics of the van and items in the van. Over and over she drew, erased and redrew each time a nugget of detail surfaced.
It was painstaking, exhausting work and they pressed on.
Jeff took brief breaks by glancing around his new room. After his clash with the suspects, the NYPD and FBI moved him to this hotel, near Grand Central, in the shadow of the Chrysler Building. The location was undisclosed, for security reasons, they said, while they processed his old room for evidence and leads to the suspects.
This was a larger, more luxurious hotel. The task force had arranged to have Jeff’s original hotel room number deflected to a phone they’d set up here, and they’d given him a new cell phone that maintained the Griffin family’s cell number, in case Sarah, Cole or the kidnappers called him.
Detectives Cordelli and Ortiz were there observing but revealed nothing whenever Jeff plied them for details.
“What’s so important about the toy plane?” he asked.
“I don’t know. That’s still being analyzed,” Cordelli said. “Everything’s still being processed for any possible trace evidence from Hans Beck.”
Jeff sensed an undercurrent of anger toward him because he had disobeyed police orders and set out on his own to meet the suspects.
They would’ve done the same thing I did. Any man would have.
“Let’s go back to what items you saw in the van,” Chu said.
“There was something in there but I can’t remember.”
“I know it’s hard but you said something about takeout?”
“A bag and a cup, maybe two cups.”
A cell phone rang, breaking Jeff’s concentration.
As Cordelli turned to take the call, Chu frowned and Jeff used the interruption to go the bathroom, locking the door behind him.
Inside, he turned on the cold water, letting it fill the sink.
He met himself in the mirror. The tiny veins in his eyes were red with strain. Anguish carved deep into the wounds on his face. He hadn’t slept. He was still shaky from his fall. Adrenaline still rushed through him. His head throbbed and he shook out three aspirin from a new plastic bottle and swallowed them.
Events replayed before him.
Everything.
Holding Sarah. Holding Lee Ann. Losing Lee Ann. Losing Sarah.
Was I wrong? Did I make a horrible mistake not giving the killers their property? But they did not show him Cole. Where was Cole? Oh, God, tell me what to do.
It was all Jeff could think of as he emptied the sink only to refill it again and again.
“Jeff.” Chu was knocking on the door. “Are you well enough to resume?”
“Yes,” he said. “I need a minute.”
He splashed cold water on his face, dried it and returned to his chair.
“Good. Now, you were recalling details of items in the van.”
Jeff took a moment as his thoughts veered.
“There was something about the shoes. One man had a fine, bright red line where the top was stitched to the sole.”
Chu flipped to a new page. She knew to go with the flow of her witness’s recollection, to not disturb it but guide it, coax it along. Her hand whisked over the paper, working fast as Jeff described the dark round-toed boot with the bright red stitching.
“Like this?” Chu flipped a sketch.
“Yes, that’s it.”
“Anything more on the boots?”
Jeff shook his head.
Chu made notes, then went back to her pad and flipped to a new page.
“What about the items in the van, the take-out bag and cups?”
“They were coffee cups, like paper or Styrofoam coffee cups.”
“Were they from one of the big fast-food chains, or coffee chains?”
Jeff concentrated, slowly shaking his head.
“I don’t think so.”
“Anything distinctive you can remember?”
“An L, a stylized L.”
“Printed or cursive?”
“I think cursive.”
“Any other letters, symbols, colors?”
“I’m thinking a word, a partial word, like Lasa, or Laksa. Blue lettering or black letters in a white or yellow-colored cup, I think. I can’t be sure.”
“Okay, what was the attitude of the cups and the bag? Standing up, on the side, crushed? Were there lids?”
“Black lids, they were on their sides, like they were empty and the bag was tossed on its side, a used white napkin at the top. I think that’s it. Everything happened so fast.”
“I understand.” Chu nodded, concentrating as she drew.
She and Jeff worked that way for the next ninety minutes, going over detail after detail, and one by one, Chu’s images piled up.
CHAPTER 32
Neverpoint Park, the Bronx, New York City
Sheri Dalfini was at her kitchen table, raking her fingers through her red frizzy hair and going out of her mind.
Damn you, Donnie. What the hell am I supposed to do, huh? Saleena can’t stop bawling. “Where’s Daddy?” Benjamin thinks we’re getting a divorce. Quit being an asshole and call me.
Sheri lit another cigarette, dragged long and hard on it. The smoke filled her lungs, helping her relax, but not enough.
It had been too long since she’d last heard from Donnie. Those NYPD pricks had threatened to take her kids.
This was serious shit.
Sheri calculated the time before her next shift. She needed another beer
to help her think. She’d seen the latest news, how their SUV was tied to this double homicide and kidnapping.
Beside the overdue bills and collection notices were copies of the Post and Daily News. This Omarr Aimes, who died in their SUV, had to be Big Time, the name she’d gotten from Donnie, the name she’d given up.
That guy—Jeff Griffin—who was in her yard, was on TV. It was all part of this big case with his wife and son.
Oh, Jesus.
Sheri was scared.
She took a long pull on her beer and tried to relax.
A few reporters had called her. She told them to go to hell and took Saleena and Benjamin to Belva’s place. But what was she supposed to do now? Get a lawyer? She’d helped police, told them what she knew. That should be the end of it.
Oh, God. I told you this was a stupid, stupid idea, Donnie.
To have the truck stolen for the insurance and some cash to get out of debt? Dumb. Donnie’s jackass friends didn’t have a clue who this Omarr Big Time was, or how dangerous this guy could be.
The doorbell rang.
From the side window Sheri recognized the detectives on her doorstep. The quiet one and that prick Brewer.
Sheri cursed, then took a long drag on her smoke, stubbed it out and went to the door.
What do these assholes want now? Can’t they leave me alone?
“Hello, Sheri,” Brewer said. “Can we come in?”
“This is not a good time. I got to go to work.”
“It’s important that we talk to you.”
“I told you everything I can tell you, Brewer.” Sheri sniffed. “I helped you, so back off and leave us alone.”
She started to close the door. Brewer stopped it.
“We think it’s very important right now that you let us come in, Sheri.”
“Did you come to charge me?”
“No.”
He looked at her, steady, resolved. And in that moment she knew.
A chill coiled up her spine, cutting through her beer-induced haze. It was Brewer’s tone, almost human, and his face, almost compassionate. It was the same with his partner, Klaver. With him she found a weary sadness.