Ransom Drop

by Mike Sullivan

Let’s see, Vientiane to Phonsavan—374 kilometers. Ten hours on poor roads by bus or car, on a motorcycle…longer. He shook his head, disappointed. Five hours on the road already and we’ve traveled only 160 kilos. That leaves 214 more to go before reaching Phonsavan. He figured three hours tomorrow to the junction at Phou Khoun, then another three into Phonsavan. But the trip didn’t end there. It would take another two hours to get out to Jar Site 3. He was looking at no less than eight or nine hours traveling the roads tomorrow. We’ll have to leave early, he though, no later than five. The clock was ticking. There wasn’t much time.

  * * * *

  At the cabin the woman leveled the gun on Stark. She motioned him around the side of the building and further back into the woods. She held a flashlight in one hand and a 357 Magnum in the other hand. The gun looked bigger than she looked. She was ugly as sin. Maybe the ugliest woman Stark had ever seen. She was short and dark and European looking. She had black hair worn in a masculine cut, pale white skin, and a long pointed nose with a red boil that had started to fester on the tip. Her eyes were the cold blue color of a mountain lake. He saw cruel and remorseless eyes as she continued to stare at him.

  Aided by her fire power, she spun Stark around and jammed the Magnum into the middle of his back. She smelled like an unwashed animal. The wind blew the wrong way, and the putrid stench of her body filled his nostrils as she marched him to a spot behind the cabin.

  They stopped at the far end of the yard. In the dark he could barely see the object in front of him, but as they got closer he recognized the wood chipper and the sight of it made his blood to turn to ice. It was the same machine he had seen once in a horror movie where a man’s entrails and bones were crushed and ground up into a bloody red powder.

  “Come on. Let’s talk, let’s use our heads here, okay?” Stark attempted to reason with her but her eyes grew intense, wild and excitable. The more he talked, the more he tried to mollify her. She waved the gun back and forth, motioning him closer to the wood chipper. She told him to get undressed.

  “Now,” she said, keeping her voice low, but firm.

  He removed his shirt, then his pants and stood there in front of her in his underwear.

  “Them too,” she said, checking him over as he removed his underwear and stood naked in the flashlight beam in front of her.

  “You’re not very well hung,” she said. “I bet you don’t stay hard very long either, and come too fast.”

  She laughed at her own sick joke. He shuddered, feeling his stomach wrench in fear.

  “I want you to sit down on the ground while I decide what to do with you.”

  He sat down and she shone the flashlight in his eyes. When he looked up, she cracked the barrel of the 357 Magnum across the bridge of his nose, breaking it. He rolled over on the ground, holding his face, squealing in pain, as blood leaked through his fingers. The more he screamed, the more she laughed, and took a sadistic delight in seeing him suffer. She really was enjoying herself.

  Reaching down, she grabbed at his cock, but he was able to squirm free. She was up on her toes now—and quick on her feet, as she moved behind him. The heel of her boot came up fast and crashed down the middle of his back. Delirious, he pitched forward, face-first on the ground, half out of his mind, crying out in pain and fear.

  “I thought so,” she said, shining the light down on him as he attempted to roll over on his back. “What are you? A wimp? A Fag? You sure aren’t a man. Nothing about your reminds me of one. That small little cock. Those bony shoulders. Like Hyde said, in prison you’d be someone else’s bitch. Know what else he said? He told me you’d sooner suck a dick than lay with a woman.”

  “I don’t know what you want,” Stark said. There were tears in his eyes as he pleaded for his life. “What do you want, please, please, tell me. Money? Is that it? I can get money, lots of it. I don’t want to die. What can I do?”

  “Nothing,” she said calmly and pulled the trigger.

  For a small wiry woman she was very strong. She hoisted Stark’s dead body up to the mouth of the wood chipper, got his head going down inside the hopper and started the engine.

  It growled back at her as a red swatch of blood hit the side of the hopper and sprayed back into her face. She screamed in perverted joy, tasted the blood on her tongue and tasted it again on the tips of her fingers. She threw her head back and roared with laughter, shoving the remains of Stark’s body—arms, legs, shoulders, ass, feet, all of him down into the hopper. The damp, shrilly sound of the engine tore back into the night. It carried the wet, slippery sound of bloody tissue and grinding bone.

  Grinning, she licked the blood and bone from her fingers. She wiped her face clean with the back of her hand and stood back to admire her work. A while later she noticed a light come on in one of the back bedrooms. Crossing the yard, she headed toward the cabin, cackling into the night like a strange old lady.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  At 6:30 p.m. a foreboding mist hung in layers over the area. By now the fire was out but thick gray clouds of smoke and soot rose from the carcass and rubble that had once been the Financial building, choking the air and making it difficult to breathe. Fire engines parked under the lights inside the parking lot. Gallons of water shot out from nylon hoses in a steady stream up toward the front of the building. Fire-fighters and soldiers scurried back and forth in a tireless flurry of activity, moving the body bags out of the building. Ambulances stood close by.

  Doors swung open. Attendants and paramedics appeared, hoisting the dead bodies on board. Sirens screamed out of the parking lot into the night. Looking straight ahead in a watchful gaze, Maran Tint surveyed the area. He shook his head disgusted when a man came up beside him.

  “Done?” Tint asked, noticing the man before he even got close.

  There was a controlled sense of angst in Tint’s voice. Muscles knotted at the side of his narrow jaw and then released.

  “With a little extra,” said the dark, swarthy figure.

  Half of the Hezbollah’s face was in shadow, the other half in the light. Part of Tint’s vision took in the slabs of stone and concrete piled high in a war-torn picture of violence and destruction. When the bomb went off it took down the front part of the building and half of the left side facing east toward the boulevard. Gazing down at his side, Tint caught a glimpse of the Hezbollah pressing the envelope containing the money down deep into the pocket of his jacket as if to check to see that it was still there. His face was dark and set, void of emotion as he stared out at Tint from the shadows of the parking lot.

  “What’s extra?” said Tint.

  “A seamless delivery, brought off without incident.”

  “For which you were paid well.”

  The man nodded. “Ah, yes, this is true. But I doubt you will ever see a repeat of the tragedy which occurred here today.”

  The man took a step closer. Tint turned toward the shadows, his interest suddenly perked by what the man was about to tell him.

  “I have proof that this Kanoa Lee was linked to the bombings.”

  Tint said nothing, waiting for the man to continue.

  “As I said, it was a seamless delivery, but there’s more. I knew the motel room was empty when I broke into it and bugged the place. I figured this terrorist was responsible for the bombings. Turns out, he was.”

  The Hezbollah went into the pocket of his jacket and brought out a cassette recording and handed it to Tint. His hand slipped back slowly into the darkness.

  “It’s all there. The arrogance and the stupidity of the commander’s men—they talked about the bombings and boasted about being released after one of the general’s received a payoff.”

  Tint put the cassette into the inside pocked of his uniform. In a dismissive tone he said, “As you can see, there is much to do.”

  When he glanced back into the shadows a moment later, the man had already gone. Beyond the yellow strip of crime scene tape that cordoned off the area, the police cruiser waited. Tint
walked toward the car and got inside. He nodded to the driver who started the engine and eased out of the parking lot back into the traffic.

  At police headquarters twenty minutes later, Tint got a pen-knife in under the strip of magnetic tape and started pulling. A brief whirling sound filled the private air-conditioned office as every shred of tape was extracted from the cassette, bundled up, and set on fire in a metal waste basket on the floor next to his desk.

  Tint opened the window in back of his office and let a trail of smoke escape back into the night. He was tired and his face showed signs of stress and fatigue. He wasn’t a heavy drinker, but kept a half pint bottle of whiskey in the bottom drawer of his desk buried under a pile of case files and old newspaper clippings.

  He drank straight from the bottle, shivering as the whiskey went down. Soon the alcohol entered his blood stream and relaxed and warmed him. For the first time in several hours he was alone and happy. He had a very good reason.

  He lit a cigarette and sent a stream of blue smoke into the air. In his mind he traced the steps that led to the phone call he’d received earlier from General Racha, just moments before the second bomb went off at the Financial building.

  A little celebration is in order, don’t you think, the General said, to which Tint replied, I’ll meet you at the Officer’s Club tonight, no later than nine. You can tell me all about the 50K you wired into my Zurich account, over drinks.

  They shared a brief moment of laughter, and the phone went dead.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  At 8:00 p.m. Tory returned to the room and undressed with her back turned to Seabury. Minutes later, she got into bed.

  “Change in plans,” he said, crawling in beside her. “We’ll leave at five. That means being on the bike and out the door at five. No long good-byes with your girlfriends. I’m figuring six hours into Phonsavan, then another two out to the Jar Site. Tomorrow’s gonna be long…and hectic.”

  “Has anyone ever told you that you worry too much?”

  “Yes. You just did.”

  She managed a smile. “I’m concerned about traveling an hour before daylight. As we’ve experienced first-hand, the roads aren’t safe up here. They’re downright dangerous.”

  “Not as dangerous as missing our deadline.”

  “He called. Didn’t he?”

  Seabury’s eyebrows knitted in a puzzled look.

  “Come on, don’t keep secrets. The kidnapper called, didn’t he?”

  “The guy’s a nutcase. I don’t want to push his buttons…any more than I already have.”

  She turned around to face him. The sheet pulled back and he was rewarded with a view of her silky black pajamas, obviously on loan from her friends. The buttons of the top were loose exposing the curve of her small yet firm breasts. She saw him looking but made no move to button up.

  “There’s a lot of the trip still left. That’s what concerns me,” he said, moving his gaze to her face with difficulty. “The roads aren’t going to get any better either, this far north. This guy’s a loose cannon. I trust him as much as I’d trust Charles Manson. So we need to reach Jar Site three on time. A little earlier if we can make it. I’m figuring about two-thirty. No later.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  The mattress sagged and the bed squeaked as she rolled over and turned her back to him. He switched off the light and the room went dark and quiet.

  A moment later she said, “In case you’re wondering, my friends like you. They think you’re handsome. Alani thinks you’re bright and sensitive, beneath the hard masculine edge.” She turned around and touched his face gently. “I agree.”

  He shifted under her touch.

  “Afraid?”

  “A little.”

  “I’m not asking for more than a night, Sam. I’m a big girl. I can handle it.”

  He covered her hand with his, kissed her fingertips and planted her hand on the mattress between them. “We have a long trip tomorrow. Better get some sleep.”

  Ignoring him, she sat up and he heard the rustle of satin as she removed her pajamas. For a moment she lay there naked, facing him. Seabury felt a wave of exhaustion after hours on the bike. He knew what her invitation meant and he would turn it down because he knew exactly where it would lead.

  Seabury raked a hand through his hair. He tried hard to resist but the hours of having her tantalizing body pressed up against him through the twists and turns of their journey had taken its toll. He was more attracted to her than he cared to admit.

  “This is a bad idea,” he said.

  “You think too much.” She snuggled closer until her body was aligned with his. He smelled a scent of lilac coming off her skin, and felt her soft lips kiss his mouth, lightly.

  Seabury lost the battle as her hands worked their way under his shirt, around to his back and played down his spine. He felt his control slipping and accepted her invitation.

  Deeply satisfied, they fell asleep only to wake up again later and make love again. She stayed in his arms until the alarm went on in his head and he got up.

  In the dim light over the bed he watched her sleeping. It would be so easy now to get lost in someone like Tory. A dangerous thought he realized for a man whose heart belonged to the sea and who valued his freedom. Shunning the temptation, he tramped down to the bathroom at the end of the hall, shaved and showered, and went back to wake her.

  “Time to get up, Princess. You okay?” he said and turned up the dial on the light switch at the side of the bed. The light brightened above her head.

  She nodded, half-asleep, but stared up at him with a dreamy look in her eyes.

  “We better go,” he said. “It’ll be light in another hour.”

  * * * *

  Tory got up, yawned and stretched. She moved quickly to the shower down the hall, then back, surprising him. He thought she’d linger like most woman did. The light was on behind her as she re-entered the room. Shadows hugged the corners of the room and beneath the light her pale skin looked rosy and well-scrubbed. The clean smell of soap came off her naked body and the black woolen patch between her legs was there for his eyes. Seabury looked longer, desperately ignoring the invitation in her eyes. She gave him another look before she turned away and changed into her clothes.

  She dressed hurriedly into traditional Hmong clothing: a dark blue felt shirt and red pants, tight at the waist, tapered at the legs. The girls had provided Hmong garb for Seabury as well.

  Orange Tree and Baby Doll were awake downstairs. They had eggs and toast ready, coffee and orange juice. The cook had packed ham sandwiches, bottled water and apples in a brown paper sack.

  After they’d eaten, Seabury trundled out the front door with their bags. He hefted them onto the motorcycle and lashed them down next to the saddlebags. He swung the bike to the side of the building where the cook gassed it up. When he returned, the girls were waiting inside the front door; a light was switched on above them. They hugged, they cried, they worried and then they parted.

  In the darkness of the doorway, Orange Tree and Baby Doll pressed against each other, one short, one tall, one head higher than the other. Good women, good friends. Seabury glanced at them and waved. They waved back and he climbed on the front of the bike. Tory climbed on behind him. They thanked their hosts, waved good-bye and were back on the highway ten minutes later, heading north toward the Plain of Jars.

  Roaring up the highway, Seabury kept hearing the song lyrics from the popular old American movie, Smokey and the Bandit in his mind. A long way to go. And a short time to get there. The roads were full of police, bandits and other dark unsavory characters. They’d be lurking in the shadows of doorways in small, isolated villages or on the road going up to the Plain of Jars.

  Out there, he thought, trouble’s all around.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  At 5:30 a.m. in the luxury apartment overlooking the Mekong River, two blocks west of the Presidential Palace, Colonel Maran Tint sat up in bed. The woman beside him s
aid, “I’ll be up in a minute.”

  “Why not sleep a while longer. You were at the studio late last night. You must be exhausted.”

  “No more than you,” Kamea Bee said, circling her arms around Tint, kissing his lips softly. Besides, I have a script to write. The BBC’s coming in today for an interview about the bombings and I want to be prepared. You don’t know what an interview like this means—and what it could do for my career.”

  Tint smiled a thin, pitiful smile. He knew what the interview would do for her career. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Kamea Bee was sensuality gift-wrapped in the voice of a fat woman. Without the voice she was ordinary. No matter how hard she tried to lose weight, it never seemed to happen. And the thirty-eight year old woman was well past the age where local television producers would ever consider putting her in front of a camera.

  At the window, Tint removed his shorts and stood naked staring down at the ring of lights that ringed the banks of the Mekong River far below. Sensing Kamea’s eyes moving all over him, he abruptly turned around facing her. She smiled. She seemed to like what she saw of his lean brown body, his manhood getting hard.

  “Want to fool around?” she asked playfully from the bed, exposing a large honey-colored breast with a hard brown nipple for him.

  “No—” the voice almost harsh and cruel in its tone. “I have a million things to do.”

  “But can you give me a little information…for my interview…before you leave?”

  Her voice was soft and attractive now. Small chestnut eyes stared out inside a round, smooth plump face as she batted black lashes at him trying to win him over.

  “If the questions aren’t sensitive.”

  “Not sensitive,” she said. “Not in any way sensitive.”

  “Okay, later,” he said, “if it doesn’t take too long. I know how talkative you get sometimes. And I’m not going to spend half the morning answering your questions for some BBC reporters.”

  Grabbing his testicles in his right hand, he began a slow five minute jog, pumping his knees higher into the air as the fury of his running increased. Next came pushups, setups, and deep-knee bends, and at the end of the twenty minute workout he circled the floor in a five minute walk-off.