When he felt he’d put sufficient distance between himself and the cottage to prevent the kidnappers from overhearing, he removed his cell phone and pressed the auto-dial for Edie’s cell. He’d been concerned about a lack of cell coverage when he learned the location of the hideaway, but his worries had been baseless. The signal was strong. There was a cell tower somewhere close by, probably thanks to Winnipesaukee’s status as a popular vacation destination.
Jack was unsurprised when his call was answered almost immediately. He pictured Edie pacing his small living room, alone and terrified, and hated himself just a little more for what he’d done to her.
“Hello? Jack? Do you have Janie? Have you seen her? Is she okay?”
“Easy, Edie. Slow down. No, I haven’t seen Janie specifically but I’m one hundred percent certain she’s okay. Remember, they need her alive and unharmed or they lose their leverage over me.”
“I know. The waiting is just so hard.”
“I understand. It won’t be long now, I promise.”
“Okay.”
“Have you heard from Janie yesterday and today?”
“Yes. I started to get worried that she wasn’t going to call but she did, at about the same time both days. Around midafternoon. I barely got to speak with her each time but it was definitely her. She sounded scared but okay. She said she was bored and asked when she could come home.”
“That’s good. If her major complaint is boredom, it’s obvious she’s not being mistreated.”
“Other than being ripped from her mother’s arms and taken hostage in an assassination plot.”
“Other than that.” Jack felt his face redden with shame despite being alone in the woods. “Hang in there, Edie. She’s a tough kid, and she’ll be back with you very soon.”
“When are you going to get her? How much longer do I have to wait?”
Jack hesitated. Edie was suffering under a tremendous strain. It was obvious based just on this phone call that she was barely keeping herself together. If he told her he would have her little girl back in her arms by tomorrow and then didn’t deliver, he worried it might be more than she could handle.
Edie picked up on his hesitation and jumped on it. “What is it, Jack? What are you not telling me? Is something wrong?”
“No, nothing’s wrong. I was trying to decide how to answer your question, that’s all.”
“And?”
“And I promise I’ll have her back to you absolutely as fast as I can manage. But the most important consideration is Janie’s safety, so it’s critical I take my time and do this right. I’m only going to get one chance and I have to make it count.”
“Jack, they…they asked to speak with you when they called.”
“Both times?”
“No, just the second time. This afternoon.”
“And what did you tell them?”
“I said exactly what you told me to. I said you were off somewhere working on their assignment. I told them I didn’t know where you’d gone or when you would be back because you refused to tell me.”
“Perfect. You did great.”
Silence fell over the line and stretched on.
At last Edie broke it. “You’ll call again tomorrow, right?”
“Of course. I’ll call every day until I have Janie back to you, and that’s a promise.”
More silence.
“You know what you’re doing, right Jack? Please tell me you know what you’re doing.”
“Yes, Edie, I know what I’m doing. God help me, but I know what I’m doing.”
27
Dusk seemed to linger forever. The cottage began to fade from view as Jack resumed surveillance, its structural details losing definition with the disappearance of the sun. Eventually the building was swallowed up by the darkness but for the single light shining from behind the blinds covering the largest window.
As long as it had taken for the late-spring night to fall in northern New Hampshire, the appearance of the stars in the cloudless sky afterward seemed to occur almost instantly. And they were dazzling. With the absence of artificial illumination, the natural light show overhead was breathtaking.
Jack barely noticed. All of his attention was devoted to the mission, his focus entirely on the kidnappers of Janie Tolliver.
The temperature began to drop and Jack barely noticed that, too. Even though it was almost June, nighttime temperatures in this area routinely approached freezing, but he was prepared for that and more.
After completing his call to Edie, he’d unzipped his equipment bag and changed into layered survival gear from head to toe. The temperature could plummet all the way to zero degrees Fahrenheit before he would begin to feel a chill seeping through his clothing.
Even if that happened he would endure it if necessary. He’d gone through much worse to complete missions that meant far less to him.
Jack sat quietly, NVE over his head, watching the cottage and scanning the surrounding area. Neither kidnapper had reappeared since their separate treks onto the deck this afternoon. No one had come or gone. Were it not for the car parked in the gravel driveway and the ever-present dim light shining in the one window there would be no indication anyone was even inside.
But they were inside. Jack’s initial surveillance had revealed that the structure contained only one entrance. With the exception of his five-minute phone call to Edie, when he’d backtracked into the forest to avoid detection, he hadn’t taken his eyes off that door in better than twenty-four hours. Unless Mike Hargus and his anonymous co-conspirator had climbed out a rear window and rowed a boat across Lake Winnipesaukee, they were inside that cottage.
He forced himself to maintain concentration. Craved coffee but didn’t want to become jittery. Janie’s life might well come down to a single well-placed shot, and Jack wasn’t about to jeopardize an innocent girl’s life to satisfy his caffeine addiction.
Because he had already decided he would make his move tonight.
He’d learned all he could through surveillance, and watching the cottage another day would gain him nothing of value. But although the night was already as dark as it would get, Jack forced himself to wait a few more hours. Anyone familiar with the techniques and tactics of guerilla warfare knew the best time to execute a nocturnal assault was between the hours of three and four in the morning, when natural human biorhythms were at their ebb.
Jack was familiar with those techniques and tactics. They’d kept him alive in the past and he was counting on them to do so again tonight.
So he waited. Conditions were generally favorable for what he had planned with one exception: the moon was nearly full. With almost no clouds to provide cover, the moon and stars combined to throw far more light than Jack would have preferred.
If Hargus or his buddy picked the wrong moment to glance out a window, Jack’s advantage of surprise would disappear in an instant and he would likely find himself face-down and bleeding out before he ever got within twenty feet of the kidnappers’ hideaway.
There was nothing he could do about the lack of cloud cover, so he disregarded it. He would make up for the less-than-optimal lighting by exercising extra caution.
Or he would die.
Worrying about it would change nothing.
***
Three a.m. came and went. Jack was in no danger of falling asleep despite the fact he’d been awake almost continuously for close to forty-four hours. Adrenaline buzzed through his body and he was thankful he’d foregone the coffee he considered drinking earlier.
He pushed to his feet, conscious of his cracking knees and stiff back. His body served to remind him—as if he stood any chance of forgetting—that he was ancient by operator standards although not even middle age by normal measures.
He warmed up, soundlessly running in place, doing a half-dozen squats and then dropping to a prone position and whipping off a quick dozen pushups. In less than a minute he’d generated a thin sheen of perspiration and gotten his blood pumpin
g again. His joints felt loose—more or less—and he decided he was ready to proceed.
He pulled a pair of latex gloves out of his pocket and slipped them on. Then he started walking, moving straight through the trees, concerned more about being heard than seen. There was no way the sentry across the road could be using night vision equipment. The light burning inside the cottage would render him effectively blind if that were the case.
However, it was certainly possible a window had been left cracked for airflow, and in the funereal silence of the Lake Winnipesauke shoreline, a cracking branch would sound almost as loud as a gunshot to anyone paying attention.
Jack took his time, picking his way around and over obstacles, finally reaching the side of the narrow road at a point approximately seventy feet northwest of the cottage, on the side of the house farthest away from the window with the light on. He crossed the road, not quite sprinting but moving quickly, and then began working back toward the cottage.
By three-thirty he’d arrived at a point almost directly across from where he’d been conducting surveillance for the last day-and-a-half. He flattened himself against the trunk of an ancient oak tree and caught his breath.
Planned his next move.
Prepared to recover Janie.
He lifted his Sig out of its holster and chambered a round. Then he crossed the open side yard, keeping the kidnappers’ vehicle between himself and the cottage. Ducking behind the car, Jack took two deep, calming breaths and then continued moving.
Seconds later he’d flattened himself against the side wall next to a closed window. The blinds were drawn—of course—and Jack wondered if Janie was just inches away, huddled on the other side of the wall, afraid and alone.
Hang in there, kid.
He slowed his breathing and listened for anything that might give him some idea of Hargus’s location, or of the wiry black speed freak the operator had brought in to keep him company. A conversation, or a radio turned down low, or a cough or the flush of a toilet or maybe the scrape of a chair on the floor.
But there was nothing.
He began moving again, sidling toward the rear of the home and the lakeshore he could hear lapping against the granite boulders.
A second window indicated the presence of either a second bedroom or possibly the bathroom. The blinds were drawn and this window was as dark as the previous one had been. Jack repeated the procedure he’d just attempted, slowing his breathing and listening intently, but was rewarded with the same disappointing result: absolutely nothing.
He shook his head and continued.
He rounded the cottage’s southwest corner and climbed onto the boulder. Then he lifted himself over the deck railing and dropped soundlessly to the other side. It only took one small step to convince Jack he would have to use extreme caution. The deck boards felt soft and spongy underfoot.
He inched toward a massive picture window that offered what was likely a breathtaking view of Lake Winnipesaukee and the surrounding wilderness. But Jack wasn’t interested in the view.
He crept to the corner of the picture window. It was old, had likely been installed sixty or seventy years ago, and consisted of one large pane of thick glass flanked on each side by a traditional double-hung window. The configuration would permit the resident to lift the windows on either side to allow cooling lake air into the cottage, while still permitting blinds to be drawn over the picture window when the sun’s rays were beating down on that side of the cottage.
It was a sensible configuration.
It was also the source of Jack’s first break.
Because the double-hung window closest to Jack was cracked open—not much, only a couple of inches, but the kidnappers had obviously felt safe unlocking a rear window in order to remove some of the stuffiness from a structure that had probably not been inhabited in quite some time.
To allow the air inside they’d had to lift the blinds. Again, not all the way. Only a couple of inches. Most of the window was still covered.
But two inches was all Jack needed.
He bent and peered through the narrow slit into the cottage.
As he’d suspected, this portion of the interior was a combination kitchen/living area. A low wattage bulb burned inside a table lamp that was probably old enough to be an antique. The lamp sat atop a scarred kitchen table placed directly in the center of the room.
A ratty couch ran along the wall just below the window through which Jack peered, and a gas cookstove that had to be older than Jack sat in the corner next to an equally ancient refrigerator. A couple of bags of groceries had been thrown haphazardly onto a chipped Formica counter. One of the bags had tipped onto its side, and a jar of spaghetti sauce had tumbled out next to a carton of cigarettes.
A case of cheap canned beer had been dropped onto the floor next to the doorway, which was off to Jack’s right. The kidnappers had worked steadily through the beer and now maybe eight cans remained unopened. The empties had been tossed haphazardly around the living area.
The pungent scent of cigar smoke wafted through the open window and Jack shook his head scornfully. These guys were so overconfident they were treating a felony kidnapping—not to mention conspiracy to commit murder—like the weekend at a frat house.
Seated at the kitchen table was the wiry black man Jack had seen outside the cottage earlier in the day. The speed freak. A deck of cards and a handgun lay on the table in front of him and he sat in an uncomfortable-looking wooden chair with his head back, eyes closed, softly snoring.
There was no sign of Mike Hargus. Presumably he was sleeping in one of the bedrooms behind the pair of closed doors to Jack’s left, with Janie restrained behind the other.
Jack watched for several minutes as the kidnapper slept on. Then he ducked away from the window and got to work.
28
Jack crouched on the deck below and just to the side of the open window.
Reached into his jacket pocket and removed a Sig Sauer SRD9 titanium sound suppressor.
Threaded it onto the muzzle of his pistol, working with practiced efficiency.
Then he placed the gun on the deck beside his knees—readily accessible should his situation change rapidly—and pulled a utility knife from his other pocket. The knife featured a razor-sharp blade, extendible via a thumb switch.
He deployed the blade and eased his eyes over the window sash. Inside, the kidnapper snored on, head still tilted back and against his right shoulder. Nothing appeared to have changed inside the cabin.
Still no sign of Janie or Hargus.
Jack reached up and began sawing through the screen, working quickly but quietly with a compact cutting motion. He sliced the mesh at its outer edges, where it attached to the aluminum frame, which he supported with his left hand to minimize noise. In less than two minutes the screen lay on the deck planking and all that stood between Jack and the cottage’s interior was the partially open window.
He picked up his now-silenced Sig and rechecked the interior of the cottage.
No change.
He reached under the window and pushed it up on its tracks slowly, prepared to go to Plan B the moment he heard any screeching or squeaking. But noise was minimal and was covered nicely by the sentry’s snores. In seconds Jack had pushed it as high as it would go.
He now had a means of entry into the cottage.
And still the sentry slept.
Jack supported his Sig against his right hip, aiming it inside the cottage—not directly it at the sentry, but close enough—as he sat on the window frame. He ducked under the window he’d raised and then pivoted, swinging his feet into the kitchen/living area. He slipped to the floor and was in.
The “plan”—although calling it a plan was probably doing a grave disservice to the term—was to cross the room and place his gun against the sentry’s head. Jack would then wake the man and force him to reveal which bedroom contained Janie and which contained Hargus.
Then he would secure Hargus and recover Jan
ie.
Simple. Also risky.
He’d taken two steps, covered roughly one-third of the distance between the window and the sleeping man, when without warning the sentry straightened his head and opened his eyes. The man stared at Jack for a half-second, his mouth hanging open in shock, as if he couldn’t quite convince himself he wasn’t dreaming.
Then he reached for his gun with a lightning-quick motion.
Jack squeezed off a shot. The silenced slug ripped into the man’s shoulder, knocking him off his chair and onto the floor with a heavy thud.
Dammit. That was too much noise.
He stepped forward and grabbed the sentry’s weapon. Shoved it into the waistband of his trousers at the small of his back as the sentry writhed in pain on the floor.
Then he spun to face the closed bedroom doors but it was too late.
One was no longer closed.
In the doorway stood Mike Hargus. He’d positioned himself directly behind the sleepy, terrified Janie Tolliver and he held the barrel of his gun flush against the side of her head.
How he’d gotten into this defensive position so quickly Jack had no idea.
Maybe Hargus had seen Jack approaching the cottage.
Maybe he’d rigged some kind of rudimentary alarm system to the windows. Jack hadn’t noticed one but that didn’t mean much.
How he’d managed it didn’t matter at this point. Things had gone sideways in near-record time and now Jack’s only advantage—surprise—was gone.
“Funny,” Hargus said. “I don’t see Jim Studds in this room. You should be hundreds of miles away from here completing your assignment.” His voice was cold and hard.
Jack ignored him and focused on Janie. Her eyes were fearful, darting between Jack and the bleeding sentry, who continued to thrash on the floor in pain. He was afraid in her panic she might try to wrench out of her captor’s grasp and catch a bullet in the back.
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