Ransom Drop

by Mike Sullivan

  “Now,” he snapped at her.

  When Edena refused, the leader slammed the butt of his rifle off the side of her head. She crashed to the ground and rolled over on her side. She felt her womb jolt as a wave of pain shot through her. The leader reached down and yanked her back onto her knees. The two other soldiers stood off to the side, grinning. Edena’s friends, held at gun point, cowered like tiny field mice, whimpering and crying. The sound of their fear squeezed out of them into the sudden warmth of morning air.

  On her knees now, Edena watched the leader unzip his fly and expose his organ. His hand flew up and grabbed the hair at the back of her head and forced her mouth down on it. Her head recoiled. She lunged back and turned away. She spat on the ground at his feet. It was enough to embarrass him in front of his men, enough for the anger to boil under his skin and send him into a loud, brutal rage. He grabbed Edena by the throat and flung her on the ground. He bent over, reached down, and ripped off her dress. He forced her legs apart and raped her.

  She slapped him hard across the face. He took the blow and laughed out loud. She began to cry as he moved over her, his ass and hips working now in a hard, steady rhythm. His hands were large. His face was dark and cruel and full of power and domination. He forced her down, pinned her shoulders to the ground, while she thrashed and squirmed, trying to wrench free.

  Tears flooded her eyes. They spilled over onto her cheeks and ran down her face. She was staring now through the wet, thick glaze of her own tears. She stared out across the field thinking about her baby, wondering how long she would live and if she would ever see her husband again when the leader’s body jerked and shivered and stopped moving over her.

  He stood up quickly. Yanked her half naked body off the ground and turned her back around. He pointed across the stream to a clearing in the forest on the other side. There they found a large banyan tree. Long, leathery leaves hung down from the branches. The men placed a rope—barely more than a piece of twine—around Edena’s neck. Separated pieces of twine looped around the necks of Edena’s friends. They swung the ropes up over the limbs of the tree and hoisted the women up off the ground. Edena felt her baby kick inside her.

  Kanoa Lee remembered seeing straw baskets filled with vegetables scattered across the ground. Edena and her friends had vanished from sight. A pain stabbed his heart and his eyes searched along the ground until he found footprints going back across the stream. He followed them to just inside the timber-line where the forest opened into the large clearing. And there he found her, with her friends, hanging from the tree.

  He remembered going into a rage as he screamed out loud and his body started to shake all over. He remembered feeling stunned, then sad and sick, and going into shock as he saw her there. Her eyes were still opened. A bluish tint covered her cheeks, and down along the sides of her face. This was how he’d found her.

  This was what he remembered and tried hard to forget. He wanted to shove the terrible tragedy far back into a dark corner of his mind—to forget about what had happened, to forget about Edena hanging from the tree, to get on with his life somehow without her. Like a bad dream, there was nowhere to go, no place to hide when the soldiers returned unexpectedly the next day.

  He should have gotten them all out, every person, man, woman and child, in the village. It was his fault—his mistake—for staying there. For days afterward, he blamed himself. They came up on the village so fast, like a mongrel horde, and the tragedy continued. They came with guns and killed everyone, all except him and a small boy he’d pulled back into the forest, hiding there as flames shot up over the long house, and the village burnt to the ground.

  He remembered it happening this way, with the resentment smoldering there deep inside his heart—and with it came a feeling of hatred and revenge. It was all he could think about for years; it tore at him, it roused him from sleep in the middle of the night. His eyes filled with hot, bitter tears glinting in the darkness.

  He moaned and lamented. Oh, Edena. Why, my darling, why? He choked out the sobs, looked at himself in the mirror. Lost and lonely eyes, red with tears, stared back at him. Why? When we had so much? We had the baby. We had each other. Our lives were happy. How can I face the next day and the day after that without you? Oh, why, Edena? Why?

  They left the motel room, Lee and Makan and the other soldier, and walked out to the rented black SUV, parked outside. They loaded bags into the trunk and got back into the car. In a cruiser nearby, the cops watched them.

  “We’ll escort you out to the airport,” one of the cops yelled across through an open window.

  They exited from the highway onto Sithong Road and fifteen minutes later swung into the terminal parking lot next to the rental company when Lee heard his cell phone go off. He pressed the phone to his ear. “Good afternoon, Mister Lee,” said Heron, chuckling into the receiver. “And goodbye.”

  “What, what is this…?”

  The words were the last ones Kanoa Lee would ever speak.

  Across the parking lot a freelance assassin and, former Hezbollah demolition expert, used his Blackberry to trigger the explosion. The car shot up off the ground in a violent explosion. A plume of fire swept over the top of the roof and destroyed what was left of it. Windows shook and shimmered on the outer wall of the airport terminal and people ran for cover. The IED, made from high-impact explosives was hidden on the car’s undercarriage. No one would have looked for a car bomb under the rental car, certainly not Lee or his men.

  Later at police headquarters, the assassin, a short, bald, wiry man with a hooked nose and large hands, took the envelope from Heron.

  “A tidy sum.”

  “Five thousand U.S., I won’t complain,” the dark, swarthy figure said. He flashed a faint smile under the dim lights.

  “Good work,” Heron congratulated him. “But I must confess the idea to use a car bomb was not mine.”

  The assassin’s eyebrows arched into a tight frown but he said nothing and waited in the silence for an explanation.

  Heron looked at him and said, “The ingenious idea came from my supervisor, Colonel Maran Tint. We’re so fortunate to have him here in Laos. I think the bar for national security was raised to a new level once he crossed the border and decided to work here.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The technician signaled to her from another room inside the studio. A neon light signaling On the Air flickered on and off in the background.

  “Hello. Kamea Bee Live at Five on All-News Action Radio. If I sound rushed, it’s because I am. I’ve just returned from the Financial building. The disaster that occurred there just a little over an hour ago has left me feeling depressed—” editorializing as she went on. “Believe me the place is in total ruin. I’ve recorded an on-site interview with Colonel Maran Tint. He’s in charge of the on-going investigation taking place there. I will share it with you now.”

  Beyond the glass window of the recording studio, a technician switched on a dial and a recording reel whirled into motion Colonel Tint’s voice over the air.

  “As you can see, Kamea, from beyond the cordoned-off area, much of what was once the Financial building is completely destroyed. The terrorist’s car-bomb struck the center of the building, took out the entire front and most of the foundation facing south along Xang Lane toward the Presidential Place. Loss of life is estimated at over two hundred people.”

  “How could this happen again, so soon after the Telecom building was bombed this morning?”

  “The terrorists are well-organized. You have to understand their psyche. These people are fanatical and use hit-and-run tactics to achieve their object, which is to create an atmosphere of fear within the city.”

  “How safe is Vientiane now, Colonel? Already, the people are alarmed and in a state of panic. Some, as you can see from the roads, have started to evacuate the city. Will another bombing take place anytime soon? What more can you tell me?”

  “I can say now that a state of martial law exists in
side Vientiane. Troops are on the streets patrolling areas around government buildings, which seem to be primary targets. We have set up roadblocks going in and out of town. Part of the 2nd Army Division has been flown in from up north to help with the lockdown. As I speak, a curfew has been imposed and, as you can see, the streets are now entirely empty.”

  “Colonel, is there anything more you can tell us?”

  “Yes. One other thing. Just this afternoon we arrested three men with handguns and phony identification cards in their possession. They were brought into police headquarters, for questioning. Shortly thereafter, in what I can only explain as a bizarre twist of events, one of the gunmen overpowered a police officer and opened fire inside the police compound. A shootout occurred and all the suspects were instantly killed. We now believe that this group is part of the terrorist group called the Red Wall and have been responsible for the bombings.”

  “There you have it, folks,” the soft voice came back on live inside the studio. “We will keep you updated on further developments as they come in.”

  * * * *

  At four o’clock that afternoon, Jarrett Stark put down the phone after talking to Colonel Tint about Kanoa Lee’s sudden death.

  “It’s all over the news,” Stark said.

  “Yes.” Tint added but said nothing more and encouraged Stark not to call him on his private line. “Anytime soon. We need to keep a lid on things,” he said before ringing off.

  Later Stark boarded a plane to Vientiane. It was four-fifteen when he cleared customs and booked a joining flight to Lao Prabang, Laos’ second largest city and once the stronghold of the late revolutionary figure, Vang Pao. On his mind were thoughts of reprisal.

  He’d given Hyde Greer money to do a job and he was sure the job had not been done, otherwise he would have heard of something by now from Greer. Like he just disappeared into thin air, Jarrett thought as credit card cleared at the car rental company. He entered the lot with the keys to the tan-colored sedan and quickly fired up the engine. He drove out of the terminal onto the highway that led directly west of the city toward a mountain cabin in a secluded white pine forest fifteen miles away.

  At the edge of town he found a large open market selling handguns, straight up, no questions asked. Just hand over the equivalent of two hundred U.S. dollars and the Glock 9mm was his. He paid the man and got back into the rental.

  The countryside rolled out before him now in the approaching twilight, in a spectacle of dense forests bordering the road and the silhouetted shapes of rolling foothills further back in the distance. The sun had set a few minutes before, and the air fresh and clean and cool at this hour.

  He breathed deeply inside the car, focusing his attention on Hyde Greer. In the game of revenge he had proven to land on his feet more times than he’d had the tables turned on him. No way in hell is that fucker who used to be my errand boy, going to take my money and disappear. Disappear, what a laugh, because he already knew where Hyde was hiding out or would eventually turn up. At the cabin. Stark had heard about Victoria Hong’s kidnapping. It was plastered all over the news and he wasn’t sure if Greer had killed her already. Kidnap victims don’t usually make it back home alive. But that wasn’t what was bothering Stark. The bastard ran out on me without so much as a word. Now he’s gonna pay.

  He turned off the highway onto a dirt road as the sun went down and the road between the trees gradually descended into darkness. Driving another mile, he pulled the car inside a stand of trees and got out, closing the door quietly behind him until he heard the sharp, metallic click of the lock fuse with the latch inside the door.

  He got out a pen-light and switched it on. The air was cooler now and, as he walked up the road for half a mile, he began to shiver inside his windbreaker. He worked the zipper higher under his throat and kept going until a few minutes later he spotted the cabin. It was a three-bedroom made entirely of logs and set in a small clearing behind a stand of tamarind trees. No lights on. The windows dark and dreary. The shades drawn over them. No one home. Good. He had a key—one Greer had mistakenly given to him when they were friends. He would wait inside. Stay there a few days if necessary until Greer showed up.

  A beat up old SUV stood at the side of the cabin. Creeping up behind it, he poked his head in a side window. By now it was completely dark and the sharp sound of a twig snapping behind turned him quickly around. In the pen-light he saw the dark figure of a woman standing there with a gun leveled on him. She must have known who he was because she called out his name.

  “Good evening, Mister Stark. We were expecting you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  They dined on barbecued shrimp and wild rice. Staring across the table at Tory and Seabury, Orange Tree said, “For the most part, the Plain of Jars is a remote uninhabited area. There are busloads of tourists . Still, it’s wild and isolated up there. I wouldn’t advise wandering off alone once you get there. It’s a dangerous place.”

  She took out her cell phone. “I know a man in Phonsavan,” she said. “He’s a tour guide named Mabri. He takes a tour van out to the Plain of Jars all the time. He can show you around up there.”

  “You’re forgetting something,” Seabury said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Colonel Tint.” Seabury paused while Orange Tree’s face twisted in a puzzled look. “He’s Genghis Khan on a search and destroy mission once you become his enemy.”

  “I’m not worried,” Orange Tree said and dialed the number.

  She spoke into the phone and nodded her head a few times. She talked a while longer then clamped her cell shut and looked back at Seabury.

  “All set,” she said. “He’ll meet you tomorrow. Call when you get in. He’s in Pau Chan, a hillside resort, a few miles out of Phonsavan.” She wrote down the address and handed it to him. “It’s after six now,” she said. “Why don’t you relax a while then turn in early. You can leave by six-thirty tomorrow morning. It starts getting light then.”

  “Okay,” Seabury said.

  They finished dinner and Baby Doll took them to a room on second floor of the bar and guesthouse. Seabury put their bags and the ransom money down next to a small bed, inside a small room with a desk and a closet. No bathroom. There was one down at the end of the hall.

  “Oh, I have so much to tell you,” Baby Doll said to Tory.

  Seabury saw them scoot from the room and he closed the door behind them. Another minute later, his cell phone rang. As he picked up, he knew it wasn’t Mae Mongkul calling him. Mae would have gone home by now, taking work home with her to compile the information he needed. So, getting back to him this early would not happen.

  “I warned you,” Hyde Greer said. “I told you no cops, no games, didn’t I?”

  “How’d you get this number?”

  “Never mind about that. I told you no cops, didn’t I?”

  A wet, heavy sound squeezed out of Greer’s lungs. The phlegm-sodden voice dropped lower, wrestling for control. “You screwed up, Bright Boy,” he said. “Bad. Real Bad. I should just kill the girl.”

  “I have the money,” Seabury said. “Stop acting paranoid.”

  “Yeah, you got the money but you screwed up. And I’m not acting paranoid. Who the fuck you think you’re talking to? Now you got the police involved.”

  “It wasn’t my plan,” Seabury said.

  “It wasn’t your plan. How nice. It wasn’t your plan to get the police involved. But they are involved, idiot. They’re on your ass like a dog in heat.”

  “Do you have to swear so much?”

  “Yeah, I do,” Greer said. “The police follow you up to the Jars, you got a major, big-time problem, Cowboy.”

  “I don’t think they will. I’m no longer in Vientiane. News travels slow up here.”

  “I know all about the news. I have my sources. Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “I’m wearing a disguise. I’m dressed like a little old man.”

  “I’ll forget I heard that.
”

  “I have the money,” Seabury said again, trying to mollify him.

  “Yeah, you also got an APB out on you too. You and the girl.”

  “What girl?”

  A slight ridiculing chuckle came over the phone. “Come on, Seabury I didn’t crawl in off the first boat. The girl you’re traveling with. You getting any mud for your duck with her?”

  “No, but you better keep your hands off Victoria.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Victoria Hong. I see your hands all over her. That needs to stop.”

  “What’d you mean, Psychic Boy. It needs to stop? Yeah, I remember how you used to predict things when we were kids. Only one thing you couldn’t predict was the outcome of our fight. Remember? The time I kicked your ass.” He was trying hard to rub it in.

  “Then you admit laying hands on her?”

  Another chuckle.

  “You’re forgetting something. You don’t ask questions or call the shots. I do. I’m the man. I call the shots.”

  “Hands off the girl, that’s all I’m asking.”

  “Oh, you’re asking now, are you?”

  “I am,” Seabury said, trying to act civil. “Our main concern’s the girl’s safety. We want her back alive. We don’t want a basket case coming back either. I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this.”

  “Okay,” Greer said. “But you got less than twenty-four hours to get me the money. You miss the deadline—even by one second—the girl dies.”

  “How’s the ransom drop going down?” Seabury asked.

  “I’ll call later. Give you the info. You’re a long way from the Jars. Better pour on the coal, Cowboy, and get up here fast.” He rang off.

  A while later on the edge of the bed, Seabury felt his heart-rate slow. The room was quiet now. The dark limb of a tree branch scratched against the window, startling him. His nerves were as taut as coiled springs. Turning back from the sound, he began to calculate times and distances.