King's Ransom

by E H Jennings

  The man was laughing.

  “It’s you, isn’t it?” the man rasped. “Carson, Connor, and…Rachel, is it?”

  They all glanced around the table, their expressions grim. Carson wasn’t sure what he had expected but this wasn’t it.

  The man stopped laughing. “Enough with the introductions. Your brother Colton is in grave danger, I’m afraid. There is no time to waste.”

  Carson stood and leaned against the table, his hands clenched into fists. “What do you want?”

  The ghoulish laughter returned. “Sadly, it’s not about what I want. Your brother, it seems, is lost. Missing. Vanished.”

  Carson pounded the table. “Where have you taken him?”

  “You are not in a position to make demands, Mr. King. And I’m sorry to say that if you disrespect me again, our little arrangement will be voided.”

  “What arrangement?” This came from Connor.

  “Careful with your tone,” the voice warned.

  Sampson held both hands up and eased them down, giving the universal sign for calm. “What do we have to do to get Colton back?” she asked.

  “Finally some much needed civility,” the voice said. “I’m afraid the answer is both simple and terribly complex—all you have to do is find him. If you succeed in this task by oh-six hundred Saturday morning, his life will be spared.”

  The kitchen was silent. The rage flowing from the two brothers was palpable. Only Sampson remained steady.

  She took a calming breath. “Oh-six hundred Saturday morning is less than seventy-two hours from now. We politely ask that you extend the deadline.”

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Sampson,” said the man. “But such a decision is not up to me. I wish it were. As it stands, the deadline remains. For Colton’s sake, I wish you luck.”

  For an unseen reason the man laughed again. The sound was like that of a demon being tortured. His final two words were less than a whisper, but they would echo in Carson’s mind forever.

  “Happy hunting.”

  • • •

  “I have a contact at the NSA,” said Sampson, standing from her chair. “He may be able to help. I’ll at least get the seed planted.” She left through the front door and closed it behind her.

  Carson and Connor were left alone in the kitchen. Neither spoke. The situation was worse than they had imagined. It seemed they were dealing with something more than just simple vengeance. Colton’s captors were making a game of it.

  “What are we gonna do?” asked Connor.

  Growing up, Carson had always been the one with the plan. He handed out advice about sports, hunting, girls, even college. He always had the answers. But now, when his brothers needed him more than ever, he was drawing a blank.

  Until he remembered what he had in his pocket.

  He reached into his jeans and had a bad moment where he thought he had lost it, but then his fingers closed around it. He sat the item on the table.

  “We’re gonna start with this,” he said.

  Connor looked down at the rectangular piece of black plastic. It was an SD card.

  “Where’d you get that?”

  “Off Lee’s property in Wytheville. He had a game camera mounted on a shed near his house. My guess is he was using it for security purposes.”

  He slid the SD card to his brother.

  “And you think the camera captured pictures of the assassins?” asked Connor.

  “I sure as hell hope so. I nearly lost my head trying to get the damn thing.”

  Connor grabbed his laptop and gently slipped the SD card into the computer’s internal card reader. It took several seconds to register but eventually the screen went black and pictures appeared.

  There were over three hundred images, all catalogued by date.

  Connor scrolled down to the most recent photos. There were pictures of animals that had happened by the camera and triggered its infrared motion sensor; there were also several dozen blanks. The other pictures were of people. There were twenty-two images of what Connor guessed was Lee’s vehicle driving past, the most recent of which was taken the day before.

  They didn’t find anything of particular interest until they reached the final seven photos. They had all been taken between 1900 and 2200 the previous evening.

  The first image was of the black Tahoe coming down the gravel road. The time stamp was 1949.

  “That’s less than an hour before I got there,” said Carson.

  Connor clicked on the next image. In this one, the light inside the Tahoe was on and they could see the three men Carson and Sampson had killed.

  “Eastern European,” said Connor, scrutinizing the faces.

  In the third picture, the light had been extinguished and the SUV was headed in the opposite direction, leaving the property.

  “Look,” said Carson. “Behind the car, over to the left.” There were two shadows creeping off into the night. “Those are the men that killed Lee and his family. The driver dropped them off.”

  Connor looked closer. “What’s that one carrying?”

  Carson leaned toward the screen. “It’s a chainsaw. The bastards used it to drop a tree on the road, that way I’d have to approach Lee’s on foot.”

  The last four pictures were all of Carson.

  The first three caught him running through the woods, his dim flashlight illuminating the darkness. When they got to the last one, Connor balked.

  “Shit, man.”

  The image had actually captured the brick exploding around Carson’s head as the first rifle round slammed into the building. Both brothers marveled at how close Carson had come to death. It had genuinely been a matter of centimeters.

  Carson sat back, looking pensive. “So there were three men. Two went to Lee’s house to carry out the hit and the third guy drove back to the main road to wait it out.” His shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “What doesn’t make sense? Seems simple enough.”

  “I never once saw them. The sniper that shot at me was positioned on a ridge just beyond the building this camera was attached to. I ran to my truck and drove like a madman back to the road. I bet its four miles or more from that building to the highway. And they beat me there, Connor. How’d they do that if they were on foot?”

  Connor shrugged. “Maybe they weren’t on foot.”

  As Connor went back through the camera images a second time, Carson carefully thought about the satellite image of Lee’s land. There was a single access and exit point. He remembered that explicitly because it had made him nervous. A single exit route was a death sentence; an operator with any appreciable tradecraft avoided such a situation whenever possible.

  On the map, there had been the gravel road and the creek. The creek had run perpendicular with the road until it wound east of the ridge, at which point it doglegged and ran off Lee’s property to the north.

  The brothers had their epiphany at the exact same moment. Though they had just discovered two totally different things.

  Carson went first. “They had a damn boat.” He face palmed, frustrated he had grown so rusty. “They either pre-planted a boat in the creek or they took one of Lee’s.”

  It made perfect sense. If they had taken the boat up the northern arm of the creek, it would have bisected the road about two miles east of the turnoff that led to the Jacobs. That bisection point, likely a bridge, was where the driver of the SUV had gone to wait for them.

  “Yeah, that’s great,” said Connor. “But we got bigger problems over here.” He was pointing at an image on the screen. It was the second picture of the assassins, the one where the Tahoe’s dome light was on.

  “What is it?” asked Carson.

  “There,” he said, pointing at the driver. “Do you see that?”

  “To be honest, Connor, I don’t see a damn thing.”

  “Look! On his neck.” He put his finger on the screen. “Right…there.”

  It was tiny and Carson was impressed his brother had ever seen
it at all. There was a tattoo on the man’s neck and Carson recognized the symbol immediately.

  Two swords, the blades crossing at the hilt.

  The driver had the symbol of The Muslim Brotherhood on his neck.

  The brothers were still speechless when Sampson burst back into the room.

  “We were wrong,” she said, breathless.

  Carson stared at her. “Wrong about what?”

  “My contact at the NSA ran a search on the name Div and got a hit.”

  The King Brothers forgot about The Muslim Brotherhood for the moment.

  “Div isn’t a name,” she continued. “It’s the abbreviated version of a nickname. Divljak. Which is Serbian for Savage.” She looked directly at Carson. “The assassins we killed in Virginia weren’t Croats. They were Serbs.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Sampson took a moment to let the news sink in, then continued relating the intel she had gathered from her contact at the National Security Agency.

  “His real name is Drago Ancic,” she said, referring to the man they now knew as Div. “For the last thirteen years he’s been the leader of a prominent group of mercenaries operating out of southwest Serbia. The group is known among intelligence circles as Crna Kuga. The Black Plague.”

  Carson absorbed the disturbing news and apprised Sampson of what they had found on the SD card.

  “What’s the link?” asked Connor. “The jihad isn’t exactly raging in Serbia.”

  “No,” said Sampson. “But there are Muslims in Serbia, especially in the southwestern regions where Crna Kuga is headquartered. That said, I think there’s more going on.”

  “Like what?” Carson asked.

  “These guys are mercenaries. By definition, they kill for money. According to the people I spoke to at NSA and CIA, Crna Kuga has a long history of performing contract work for Muslim extremist groups like Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Their role in proxy warfare has increased instability throughout the entire Middle East. And word is, they’ve carried out several assassinations in Israel and been linked to terrorist activity throughout Europe.

  “They have no loyalties. Their only allegiance is to profit. They slaughter indiscriminately and are known for taking on high profile assignments, like those I mentioned in Israel.” She gave Carson a meaningful look. “These are some nasty fuckers.”

  Connor looked confused. “But one of Drago’s men was a member of The Muslim Brotherhood. Does Cirina Kruga, or whatever the hell it is, actually recruit jihadists?”

  Sampson nodded. “They’ve been known to recruit talent from all over the world. Drago himself came from Russia. He’s ex-KGB. When the USSR fell, he was recruited and quickly climbed through the ranks. He earned his nickname by being the worst of the worst.” She grimaced. “My guy at NSA says the son of a bitch used to kill targets then eat them in front of their families. He’s sadistic, but evidently that’s what it takes to climb the hierarchy of an international mercenary operation.”

  Connor spit his dip but said nothing. Carson looked at Sampson.

  “So one of the terrorist organizations we targeted with Mirkwood hired these Serbian Black Plague dickheads to hunt us down?”

  Sampson shrugged. “Maybe. It certainly seems the most likely scenario. Drago knew all our names and he knew about Colton. As for who hired them, I have no idea.”

  “Did your NSA guy know when Crna Kuga was last seen?” asked Connor, spitting again. “If we can get a handle on their most recent activity, we may be able to narrow down their list of potential employers.”

  “Unfortunately, their most recent confirmed activity was nearly twenty months ago. They were linked to a series of car bombs in Ukraine that killed over a hundred people.”

  Carson looked down. That would do them no good.

  “But,” Sampson went on, “he did say there’s been wide speculation that Crna Kuga has a role to play in the current conflict in Syria. There’s no hard data, but they’ve worked closely with both Hezbollah and Hamas in the past, both of which are major players in the Civil War.

  “Of course, we also know Al-Qaeda and Islamic State are active in Syria. And we can’t write off the possibility that Crna Kuga could actually be working for the Syrian government.”

  Carson took a deep breath and released it slowly. “We’re definitely closer than we were two hours ago. But there are still too many avenues. We better hope we can find something in Paris to narrow the playing field. If not, come Saturday morning, we won’t be within a thousand miles of Colton.”

  “There’s one more thing,” said Sampson. “The CIA did manage to get a photograph of Ancic.”

  “When and where?”

  “It was taken at a deli in Gaziantep, Turkey.” She locked eyes with Carson. “Eleven days ago.”

  “Now there’s some actionable intelligence,” said Connor.

  Sampson nodded. “It’s the best we have. Before that, Ancic was a ghost. No one had laid eyes on him in several years.”

  “Do we have the image?” asked Carson.

  She pointed at Connor’s computer. “Care if I use that? I asked him to send it to my secure email.”

  Connor pushed her the computer and she attacked the keys.

  “Who exactly is your contact at the CIA?” asked Connor. “I think we deserve to know who fed you all the data on Mirkwood. That information’s plutonium for us.”

  Sampson kept typing and didn’t look up. But, after a pause, she surprised them. “Associate DD Teresa Ferrell.” With a final tap of the keys, Sampson motioned for them to come around the table. “Here it is.”

  The image on the screen was black and white and grainy. Sampson used the zoom feature to hone in on Ancic. He was standing near the counter at a busy deli, one hand pointing at whatever meat he wanted on his sandwich.

  By all accounts, he didn’t look anything like what they had expected. He wore slacks and a collared shirt and his dark hair was combed straight back, clinging to his head by an obnoxious amount of gel or hair spray.

  “Doesn’t look like a guy that eats people,” said Connor.

  “No,” Sampson conceded. “But look at that.” She pointed at a spot near Ancic’s throat and zoomed in further. It was blurry, but the man’s neck was clearly deformed.

  “Did someone bite him back?” asked Carson.

  “The man drinks vodka like water. Vodka is caustic and can do serious tissue damage over time. Ancic was diagnosed with throat cancer while he was still with the KGB. Surgeons had to go in and remove several sections of his esophagus and vocal cords to keep the cancer from killing him. I guess that’s why he laughs like satan.”

  Carson regarded the man with pure hatred. “I’ll be sure to remove the rest of his throat as soon as we find him. And we will find him.”

  They were still scrutinizing the image of Ancic when Alyssa bounded back downstairs, her backpack bouncing on her shoulders. Audrey, her older sister, was right on her heels.

  After tossing their backpacks on the counter, both girls attacked Carson with vicious bear hugs. He laughed and dramatically checked his watch.

  “Uh oh,” he said. “Looks like you made it just in time!”

  As Carson led the girls into the kitchen and got out the omelet skillet, Connor looked over at Sampson. “We should get cleaned up and try to get some rest before the flight. It’s gonna be a long three days.” He pointed down the hallway. “There’s a bathroom with a shower at the end of the hall on the right. Feel free to use it. And there’s a perfectly good couch to sleep on in the living room.”

  Again, Sampson felt awkward. “I really appreciate it, but—”

  “But nothing,” Connor interrupted. “If you’re going on this op with us, you need to be rested. We can’t afford mistakes or sloppy work. So you’ll either shower and sleep or you’ll keep your ass stateside. Is that understood?”

  Her eyebrows rose and fell. “Yeah, it’s understood.”

  He smiled. “Good.”

  As Connor left the
room, Carson turned and yelled after him. “Don’t shave!”

  Connor grinned. Where they were going, having a thick beard was quality tradecraft.

  “Got it,” he yelled back, and went upstairs to shower.

  Still seated at the table, Sampson glanced at the time on the computer screen. They were supposed to meet Troy Mendez at the airport in a little over five hours.

  After that, their schedule would get a lot more complicated.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Columbia, Maryland

  Colonel James Day cinched the paisley robe around his waist and ambled slowly to the door.

  Opening it, he stepped onto the porch and breathed in the clean scent of the autumn morning. Two of his neighbors jogged by on the sidewalk and he waved to them. John and Julia Dawson; good people.

  The Colonel bent down and scooped up the newspapers piled on his front steps, then made his way back inside. He sat the papers on the granite countertop in the kitchen. There were three—The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The Baltimore Sun. At eighty-seven, Colonel James Day was sharper and better informed than most men a third his age. In reality, few people understood the world like the Colonel.

  Moving to the fridge, he poured himself a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. He took a refreshing drink, then tossed a handful of pills in his mouth and washed them down with another swig.

  His pharmacist had told him it was important to stop taking his medications with juice, that he should use water instead. The Colonel didn’t give a damn. He was eighty-seven and he liked orange juice; if it killed him, it killed him.

  On the counter by the newspapers, the coffee was steeping in a French press. Despite leading a privileged life, the Colonel had never been terribly particular about things. In fact, he had seen enough misery and suffering to know just how spoiled most Americans were. His coffee, however, he liked a certain way: Guatemalan beans, freshly ground and French pressed, a dash of powdered cream, and a Splenda.

  He’d been drinking it the same way for twenty years. It was how his wife had once made it for him. After her death, it had taken him months to get it just right.