Christmas Kidnapping

by Cindi Myers

  “Jack Prescott.”

  “What are you doing calling on Mark Renfro’s phone?”

  “It’s a long story. Did you get my message about our situation?”

  “Yes, and we’re trying to get someone in there to help you, but the only road in there is still blocked and we haven’t gotten approval to hire a helicopter yet. Is Renfro there with you?”

  “No. We found a backpack we think is his. At least, his wallet and ID and his phone were in the pack. We also found a box of plastic explosives we think Anderson and his bunch have stashed in the old mine where we’re hiding. There may be more. We need to get a team up here to go over this place. This could link Anderson’s bunch to Braeswood.”

  “What’s your situation now?”

  “The four of us are getting ready to spend the night in this abandoned mine. We had an altercation this afternoon with five men—not Anderson, but a man who is in our database, Gordon Phillips, and four others. They were wearing masks, so I couldn’t see their faces to identify them, but Gordo’s bad dental work gave him away.”

  “What kind of altercation?”

  Jack gave a brief summary of the afternoon’s events, glossing over Brian’s wild shooting. “We left Gordo tied up by the river, but the other four are still out here, searching for us. They’re bound to remember this mine sooner or later. I don’t think it will be safe to stay here in the morning.”

  “Are you in a position to hold them off?”

  Jack made a quick assessment—they had the two handguns he had taken from Gordo, plus Gordo’s rifle, but extra ammunition for only one of the weapons, a pistol that used the same ammunition as Jack’s Glock. The handgun Brian had fired had no more bullets. They had no more food or extra clothing, and their only source of water was melted snow. “We’ve got three weapons and a limited amount of ammunition. They have high-powered rifles, a helicopter and more men. We can hold them off a little while from our position, but we can’t move farther back into the mine. We do that and they could easily close off the entrance and trap us.”

  “Is there another way out of the mine?” Blessing asked.

  “I don’t know and it’s not safe to look. From what I could see of the mine tunnel past the point where we found the explosives and Renfro’s pack, some of the timbers have fallen and there’s a lot of rubble. My judgment is that the whole structure is very unstable.”

  “All right. Sit tight as long as you can and we’ll find some way to get to you. The local authorities must know that area. Maybe they can help. Are there any landmarks or distinguishing geographic features they can use to find you?”

  Jack studied the area around the mine, but the sun had set and the few exposed rocks looked like black smudges against a gray background. He tried to recall any features he had noticed on the way up. “It’s a mine, so there’s quite a bit of waste rock around the entrance—red and yellow rock that stands out where the snow has melted because it’s a different color from the other soil.”

  “Anything else?” Blessing asked.

  Jack peered down the slope and his gaze locked on a pinpoint of light. It was joined by three other lights, each bobbing gently, gradually moving toward him. Fear, sharp and hard as a bayonet, lanced through him as he realized what he was looking at, but he forced the emotion away. “You’re sure there isn’t a rescue team already out looking for us?” he asked.

  “I spoke to Search and Rescue less than half an hour ago and they said it would be tomorrow morning before they could get anyone to that area. They’ve been swamped.”

  Jack nodded, even though he knew Blessing couldn’t see him. “Then we’re in a lot more trouble than I thought,” he said. “I’m pretty sure the four men we met up with earlier are headed this way.”

  “You can see them?”

  “I can see their headlamps. They’re maybe a mile away but climbing fast.”

  “How did they find you?”

  He studied the tight formation of lights moving up the slope. The steady, organized way they moved hinted at a disciplined, determined group. “Do you remember the men Braeswood had with him in the Weminuche Wilderness—the ones who were hunting Travis Steadman and Leah Carlisle?” Though Jack had been in the hospital by then, he had read the team’s official report later.

  “Yes. But we captured them all.”

  “But you remember the type of men they were—ex-military and mercenaries, trained trackers.”

  “Yes.”

  “I think these are the same type of men. Braeswood isn’t trusting ordinary babysitters with this one. These guys probably have night-vision goggles and scoped weapons.”

  “Try to hold them off until I can get help to you.”

  “Yeah. I’ve got to go now.”

  Not waiting for a response, he ended the call and took a last look at the lights below. They were strung out in single file now, having reached a narrower, steeper section of trail. At the rate they were traveling, he estimated they would be here in fifteen minutes or less.

  * * *

  ANDREA SANG SOFTLY to Ian, running through every lullaby she could remember in an effort to both soothe him and take her mind off their situation. Ian rested with his head against her chest, either sleeping or merely being quiet. She cupped her hand over his forehead. It felt hot.

  Jack rejoined them and she looked up, her spirits lifting with his presence. Having him to lean on made all of this bearable. After she’d been alone for so long, it felt good to have someone to stand beside her in times of trouble.

  “We’ve got to leave,” he said. He zipped up Renfro’s pack and handed it to Brian, then opened the other pack and removed the smaller of the two handguns he had taken from Gordo. “Take this,” he said, thrusting it at Andrea. “Use it if you have to.”

  Andrea eased Ian to the floor and stood. His grim expression sent a chill through her. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Did you reach your boss on the phone? What did he say?”

  “There are lights headed this way. Probably men coming for us.” He thrust the gun at her again. “Take this.”

  She did as he asked, the weapon heavy and cold as she slid it into her waistband at the small of her back. The kidnappers had taken the weapon Jack had given her earlier. She hoped the same thing didn’t happen again.

  “Maybe it’s a search party looking for us.” Brian had risen also, though the pack still sat on the ground. “I mean, if they have lights and everything, they’re not trying to hide.”

  “They’re not trying to hide because they know we’re trapped.” He suspected the lights were also intended to intimidate, to let them know what was coming and paralyze them with fear. But he wasn’t going to sit here and not act. “Put the pack on and get ready to leave.” Jack looked to Andrea. “Can you carry Ian? I need both my hands free.”

  In answer, she wrapped Ian in the blanket, then picked him up. “What did your boss say?”

  “He can’t get to us before these men do,” Jack said.

  “We outsmarted them once. We can do it again,” Brian said. “They’re bullies when there are more of them, but they’re not smart or even particularly strong.”

  “These aren’t Andy and Leo, or even Gordo by himself,” Jack said. “These are trained hunters. Former soldiers. Mercenaries. They’ve probably got high-powered weapons. They’ve done this kind of thing before.”

  “How do you know?” Andrea asked.

  “Because that’s how these people operate. I’ve seen it before.” He checked the load on the larger of the two confiscated pistols, which took the same .44-caliber bullet as his Glock. “We’ve only got a few minutes,” he said. He plucked the flashlight from the floor and switched it off, plunging them into darkness. Ian began to whimper and he heard the rustle of fabric as Andrea shifted to comfort the boy.

  “What are w
e going to do?” Brian asked. His voice shook. “How are we going to get away from them?”

  “We’ve got to climb, up and around the side of the mountain until we’re out of sight. Then we have to head back down before they realize what’s happening.” He couldn’t see their faces in the darkness, but he could feel their fear, like a cloud surrounding them. The plan wasn’t a good one. If the men below had infrared goggles, they might be able to track their movements or figure out what they were doing. If they had thermal-imaging scopes or goggles, they would be able to track them, even in pitch blackness. Climbing in the darkness, they could fall or be injured. But staying put only to be trapped and shot like rats in a bucket wasn’t an option. “Come on.” He reached out and found Andrea’s hand. “Let’s go.”

  While miners and others had worn a path to the mine over the years, the only trail leading up had probably been made by deer or mountain sheep. A quarter moon cast a silvery glow over the snow, allowing Jack to pick out the narrow line of the path that led almost straight up from the mine entrance. “Brian, you go first,” he instructed. “Crawl if you feel more stable. Move as quickly as you can, but take the time to feel for good hand-and footholds. Andrea will be right behind you with Ian, and I’ll bring up the rear.”

  Andrea clutched at his arm. “Do you really think this is better than staying and fighting?” she asked. “Or surrendering to them.”

  “Surrendering isn’t an option,” he said. “I don’t think they’re going to waste any more time holding us hostage.”

  She let out a small cry as his meaning sank in.

  “Mom, you’re squeezing me,” Ian protested.

  “I’m sorry, honey. Put your arms around my neck, okay? And your legs around my waist. Now hang on tight. When we get to the top, I’ll let you off for a minute.”

  She squeezed Jack’s hand, then began climbing up the rock in front of him.

  He checked below them. Their pursuers were moving more slowly now as they reached the steepest section, but they were making steady progress. If only he had a better weapon than a pistol and a rifle with only one magazine, he could try to mow them down. As it was, he might take out one or two of them, but the others would figure out where he was about the time he ran out of ammunition. If the waste rock were bigger, he could have shoved boulders down onto them, maybe started an avalanche.

  The image of boulders careening down into the men below sparked an idea. There’s enough explosives here to level this mountain.

  He ordered the others to go ahead, then ran back into the mine, pausing only to switch on his flashlight once he was in the tunnel. Thirty seconds later, he stood in front of the box of explosives. His hands shook as he tore open the cardboard box of detonators and he forced them to steady. Focus. Remember your training.

  He’d had a crash course in explosives at Quantico, primarily in order to familiarize himself with those used by terrorists, from suicide bombs to infrastructure sabotage. But part of the training had involved learning how to build a bomb of his own. He switched off the flashlight and willed that training to come back to him as he carried the detonator and the brick of C-4 to the mine entrance.

  Their pursuers were close enough now that he could hear their movements—boots scraping on rock, the soft percussion of a dislodged pebble bouncing from rock to rock as it descended. He moved to the side of the mine entrance, to the shelter of a boulder, and forced his own breathing to become quiet and deep. In the dim moonlight, he carefully unwrapped the brick of explosives and molded the puttylike material around the detonator. He used only half of the brick, wary of taking out too much of the mountain and endangering himself and the others. He wanted to cause damage close to the kidnappers, but the destruction needed to be limited.

  He forced himself to wait as long as possible. He wanted Andrea and the others to be as far from the mine entrance as possible when his homemade bomb went off. But he needed enough time to make his own getaway before the explosion.

  He could make out faces beneath the headlamps the hunters wore—nothing recognizable, but the suggestion of chins and noses and human forms. They had removed their masks, probably to avoid hindering their peripheral vision. Their figures were bulky and dark, suggesting they wore packs and probably ballistics vests. The silhouettes of rifle barrels protruded from a couple of the packs.

  When he judged that they were almost within firing distance from him, he took out the lighter and lit the end of the detonator cord. Then he stood and lobbed his makeshift bomb into the midst of the climbers.

  Shards of rock exploded around him as bullets slammed into them. Jack scrambled up the slope, grabbing for handholds and hauling himself up, lurching from tree to boulder to depression—whatever he could find for cover. Bullets riddled the rock below him, but he had moved out of range. Not looking back, he made a mad dash for the top, propelled by a vision of the mountain collapsing beneath him.

  “Jack, over here!” Brian’s words, low and urgent, beckoned him. He moved toward them and found the teenager, Andrea and Ian huddled in the lee of the broken tower from an old mining tram.

  “We’ve got to get out of here.” Jack grabbed Andrea’s arm and pulled her forward. “Move! Now!”

  His lungs burned and the ache in his leg sent shock waves of pain through him with every step, but he ignored the pain, willing himself to focus on nothing but survival and protecting the people in his care. They had reached a false summit and were running along a high plateau when the ground shook beneath them. Brian stumbled and fell, and Andrea screamed. Jack launched himself on top of her and together they fell.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Andrea broke her fall with her hands and knees and rolled to bring Ian between her and Jack. The first shock wave was followed by a second. Then everything stilled, the silence like a roaring wind in her ears.

  “What happened?” she asked, the words half-sobbed.

  Brian crawled over to them. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “The snow cushioned our fall. I’m okay.” He looked at Jack. “Was that a bomb?”

  “I used some of the plastic explosives we found,” he said.

  “You built a bomb?” She gaped at him.

  “Something like that,” he said. “It was the only thing I could think of.”

  “That should slow them down,” Brian said.

  “Slow them down, but it may not stop them.” Jack sat up. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “I don’t even know where ‘here’ is,” Andrea said. “Or where we can go that’s safe.”

  “Now is when we need a smartphone,” Brian said. “With GPS and a map. Do you think they have an app that would help us avoid crazed terrorist killers?”

  “You mean like a video game?” Ian asked.

  “Uh, yeah. Just like a video game.” He reached into the pocket of his jeans. “I’ve got a little piece of chocolate left,” he said. “Do you want it, Ian?”

  “Yeah!” The boy reached for the treat.

  “Thanks,” Andrea said. Brian had a good head on his shoulders, and he was holding up pretty well, considering the circumstances.

  “So what do we do now?” Brian asked.

  Jack looked up at the tram tower. “Where do you think this goes?” he asked. “I mean, where do you think it went when it was in working order?”

  “I guess down the mountain to the river or a road or a railroad, or to a mill or something where they processed the ore,” Brian said.

  Jack kicked at a rusted length of iron cable that lay at the base of the tower. “There are probably more of these towers, then,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Brian said. “I see them all the time when I’m out hiking. And pieces of cable, too. When they abandoned the mines and mills, they left all this stuff up here. Some of the iron stuff was collected and sold as scrap during World
War II, but most of it is still lying around.”

  “Then we’ll follow the tramline as far as we can,” Jack said. “When we get to the end, hopefully we’ll find our way back to civilization.”

  Andrea suppressed a moan. Stumbling down a mountain in the darkness, carrying a child who grew heavier by the minute, seemed an impossible task. “I don’t think I can do it,” she said.

  Jack knelt beside her. “You can do it,” he said. “You’re strong. And the longer we stay on the move, the less the chance that those murderers will find us.”

  “Maybe none of them are left,” she said. “After that explosion...”

  “Duane Braeswood has the money and the resources to keep hunting us. If he doesn’t hear from this bunch when they’re supposed to check in, he’ll send more men. Another helicopter. Weapons. We can’t assume he’s going to stop until we know we’re safe.”

  She shuddered, remembering the masked faces and cruel voices of the five men who had captured her. Their casual talk of murdering Ian and Brian, not to mention Jack, made her sick to her stomach.

  But the memory of their words also made her angry. She struggled to her feet. “All right,” she said. “I’ll keep going.” If Jack wasn’t ready to surrender, then neither was she.

  * * *

  AFTER THREE HOURS of walking steadily downhill, the group came to a plateau scattered with rusting metal ruins. Moonlight cast eerie shadows over twisted cables and rusting pulleys, broken timbers and the shell of an old boiler rising from the snow. “This must have been where they processed the ore from the mine,” Jack said. He leaned on the tree branch he had cut several miles back to use as a crutch. The fact that he had resorted to using such an aid told Andrea how much his leg must be paining him.

  Brian, a sleeping Ian in his arms, joined them. The two men had taken turns carrying Ian most of the way, after Andrea had almost dropped him from exhaustion. As it was, she was pretty sure she could have been perfectly cast as an extra in the latest zombie film. She’d willed herself for the last hour to stop thinking about anything but putting one foot in front of the other. “I took a geology course last semester and we visited a site like this,” Brian said. “The professor said they hauled away most of the stamp mills to other locations when the mines played out. I guess they were worth enough money to make moving them a good idea.” He looked around them. “But there should be a road around here somewhere. They would have hauled the processed ore by wagon or train to someplace else.”