Silas stepped back from the chair and stood with his back to the door, facing Sasha, and cutting off any hope of escape.
"Now, go to the bathroom and then sit down over there for some breakfast," he said.
Sasha dutifully complied, not seeing any opening to try for another escape. When she came out of the bathroom, Silas motioned to the seat at the table farthest away from the door, where a bottle of water and a breakfast bar were placed on the table top. Sasha sat down and began eating.
"You know, you don't have that much longer to be here. Your dad will be bringing the money at noon, and you'll be going home. So don't try anything else, o.k.?"
Sasha continued to eat without saying anything. When she was done, Silas stood, blocking the door again, and motioned with his head to the captain's chair. Sasha went over and sat down for their now practiced routine as Silas secured her to the chair with yet more duct tape. Once that was done, he exited the RV to complete the preparations for the arrival of J.T. and the money.
Victor was waiting at the airport when Nick and company de-planed. Once they had rented the SUVs and exited the airport grounds, Victor told them to pull over next to a mini-van taxi that was waiting on the side of the road. The five other men from his team exited the taxi and loaded several large black duffel bags into the back of the SUVs. Victor got in the vehicle with Nick, Mia, and J.T.
The caravan took off, following a route that Nick had already laid out to their destination. He had printed off a map on the printer while they were flying, just in case the GPS on the SUV malfunctioned for some reason. He was leaving nothing to chance.
Victor turned to J.T. and held out a small black box with some wires extending out of it.
"This is a two-way radio transmitter. I'm going to put it on you so we can communicate while you make the drop. This piece goes in your ear so we can talk to you, and this piece will be positioned near your collar so that we can pick up anything you say."
"O.k.," J.T. replied as he watched Victor hold up the various parts of the device.
"Now take off your shirt so I can tape everything in place."
J.T. removed his shirt and Victor began securing the various wires and the box with a special type of tape. He placed the earbud in J.T.'s ear and worked the wire into place so that it was less visible. After he was done, he flipped a switch on the black box, and then he put on his headset and told J.T. to say something.
"Check, check," J.T. said into the microphone.
"That's good," Victor said. "I'm going to tap on this microphone; tell me if you hear it in your earpiece."
Victor tapped on the microphone and J.T. heard the soft tap-tap sound in his earpiece.
"I hear it," he replied.
"O.k., when you walk down the street into town, speak out anything that might seem out of the ordinary, anything that seems out of place. We may not be able to get eyes on you, depending on where we are positioned. If things go bad and you need us to come in after you, just let us know over the mic," Victor concluded.
It was one hundred and thirty miles from Roanoke to Toakama. The winding mountain roads slowed down their average speed to around forty-five miles an hour. It was almost twelve when they approached the bridge that crossed in to Toakama. Victor instructed Nick to pull off the road right before the bridge. He had studied the aerial photographs available on the internet and seen that, after crossing the bridge, the road took a sharp turn left. They would then be inside the town limits.
"We go on foot from here," Victor said. "Be quiet when we get out of the car, we don't want them to think we came in with this many people. Let's hope they don't have eyes on us already."
Once they exited the vehicles, Victor turned to his team and gave them hand signals indicating they should switch on their two-way radios and stay silent. The men quietly complied. Two men opened up the duffle bags and began handing out the weapons they had brought along, including two sniper rifles. They all put on camouflage hats and face paint. The team assembled next to Victor near the lead SUV at 11:57 a.m. Two of the commandos unloaded the cooler with the ten million dollars and put it beside J.T.
Victor handed Nick, Mia, James, and Laura two-way radios so that they could all communicate. He told them to leave the radios on so that they could hear if he needed them to bring the SUVs up to their position quickly. Nick walked over and handed J.T. his phone.
"Take this. The kidnapper said you should have it for the drop. Be careful out there, J.T.; Sasha is counting on you."
J.T. nodded his head, then picked up the handle and began pulling the two-wheeled cooler behind him as he approached the bridge. Three commandos followed on one side of the road, three on the other. Nick, Mia, Laura, and James all stayed behind in the SUVs so they could quickly drive into town should they be needed.
The bridge was barely a hundred feet long. The frame was made of steel, with wooden cross-planks that served as the road surface. The steel was rusted with patches of the original red paint still visible here and there. The wood looked sturdy enough in most places, but J.T. noticed several spots where it had begun to rot. The cool mountain air and the sound of the stream running under the bridge provided a peaceful setting, but J.T. was sweating nervously as he stepped off of the bridge and began walking slowly around the corner.
Victor and his men had quietly slipped off of the road and into the woods as J.T. rounded the corner and the first buildings came in to view. The sign on the side of the road read, Welcome to Toakama, population 312.
"Just keep walking down the center of the road slowly. We'll keep eyes on you from here," J.T. heard Victor say through the earpiece in his ear.
J.T.'s heart was beating faster as he continued walking down the road into Toakama, and he wondered what was going to happen next.
Chapter Forty-Four
Silas saw J.T. Thornbacker through his binoculars as he rounded the corner from the bridge to Toakama at 12:03 p.m. He appeared to be alone and pulling the cooler filled with cash, but Silas knew better than to think that Nick didn't have some hired guns nearby. Fortunately for Silas, he was prepared for such an eventuality.
It took J.T. the better part of five minutes to walk the entire length of the street and arrive at the cul-de-sac at the end. When he arrived there, he saw a chair with a note taped to it and a cable with a hook on the end which led off to the right-hand side, through an alleyway and behind a building. The note read: Hook the cable to the handle of the cooler, then back away from the chair ten paces and wait for further instructions.
J.T. read the note out loud for the benefit of the listeners on the other end of the two-way radio, and then he took the rope and tied it to the cooler as indicated, backing off ten paces as instructed when he was done. Once he began backing away from the cooler, he heard a distant whining sound and the cable grew taught as the cooler began moving along the ground and down the alleyway, out of sight from where J.T. was now standing. About a minute later, the whining stopped.
Silas un-hooked the cooler from the winch and cut the tape so that he could open the lid. He smiled as he saw bundles of one hundred dollar bills. He took one out and examined it more closely to make certain that it was a genuine one hundred dollar bill. He was no treasury agent, but he had gotten pretty good as a cop in telling the genuine article from a counterfeit. Satisfied it was the real thing, he re-taped the cooler top closed and pushed it up into the back of the Jeep via the ply-wood ramp he had constructed, securing it with several elastic tie-downs for safety. He glanced down the alleyway to ensure that no one was there before he got into the Jeep and started the engine. He reached over to where Sasha was seated in the passenger's seat and cut loose the duct-tape from her feet. Then he cut her hands loose from the tape that held them to a bar that ran along the side of the doorframe of the jeep.
"Get out and go down the alleyway; your father is waiting for you," Silas ordered.
Sasha got out of t
he car and began running down the alleyway, tearing the tape away from her mouth as she ran, and yelling, "I'm here! I'm down here!"
Silas gunned the engine of the Jeep and headed up the old mining road, out of town and in the opposite direction from where Sasha was running.
When J.T. heard Sasha calling out, he ran towards the alleyway and towards Sasha. He immediately recognized her from the pictures he had seen. "Sasha!" he cried as he reached her and hugged her in his arms. She had recognized him from the pictures Nick had shown her and didn't resist as J.T. embraced her.
"She's safe!" he said into the two-way radio microphone.
As soon as he had uttered the words, he heard Victor respond. "Bring the SUVs up now!" Nick hit the accelerator on the lead SUV and the wheels spun wildly as the vehicle sped forward, closely followed by James and Laura in the other two SUVs. They rounded the corner into town to see Victor and the rest of the commandos quickly working their way along opposite sides of the street, clearing each alleyway and moving towards Sasha and J.T. Nick roared past the commandos and came to a quick stop, pulling up alongside Sasha. Mia and Nick jumped out of the vehicle and embraced Sasha.
Victor ran over to where they were standing. "Are you o.k.?" he said to Sasha.
"Yes, I'm fine," she responded.
"I heard a vehicle drive off; which way did it go?" Victor asked.
Sasha turned and pointed down the alleyway. "Down there is an old road leading up into the mountains."
"How many people were there in all?" Victor continued.
"It was just one man," she responded.
Victor turned and pointed to two of his men, "You two stay here with them. The rest of you come with me."
He motioned to James with his thumb, indicating he should exit the SUV he was driving. As soon as James was out of the seat, Victor jumped in. Once his men were in, he hit the gas and tore down the alleyway and up the old mountain road, following the path Silas' Jeep had taken. Victor took a tracking device out of one of the utility pouches on his uniform and turned it on. A blinking dot appeared towards the edge of the screen. He knew he had to keep that dot within a two-mile radius or the transmitter that he had put in the bottom of the cooler would be out of range.
Silas stopped the Jeep and got out. He probably only had a few minutes head start before some of Nick Bartonovich's hired guns would be storming up the mountain to hunt him down. He walked to the uphill side of the road, to a large pile of logs that were being held in place by three upright posts supported by a rope tied between two large trees. Silas took out his knife and quickly sawed through the rope, making sure to stand behind the tree and out of the way of the soon-to-be rolling logs as he did.
Once the rope was severed, the mass of logs quickly rolled down onto the road below Silas' Jeep, hopelessly blocking the road for any following vehicles. Silas jumped back in the Jeep and drove away. He wanted to be long gone when his pursuers arrived. While they couldn't pass this point with a vehicle, they could still shoot him if he didn't make it around the next bend in the winding road first.
The SUV Victor was driving lurched up the mountainous road at a speed almost too high for safety, tearing around the corners and on up the next incline in an effort to gain on the man they were pursuing. As Victor rounded the next bend, he saw the mass of logs up ahead and brought the vehicle to a stop about twenty yards away. He peered through the window, looking around to see if there was someone positioned nearby to ambush them.
"You two take the upper side; Miles and I will take the lower side," he ordered.
The men exited the vehicle with their weapons drawn, immediately taking cover behind the available trees as they worked their way forward and beyond the pile of logs that blockaded the roadway. Once they had ascertained there was no one waiting in ambush, they re-grouped on the far-side of the log jam from where they had parked their vehicle.
Victor looked down at the mass of logs, estimating several of the logs weighed in at four or five hundred pounds each. There was no way they were going to move them quickly, especially since their SUVs didn't come equipped with winches. The forest above and below the road was too steep and forested to drive around the log jam. He spoke into his two-way radio.
"Tommy, is everything stable back down there?" he asked.
"Yes. We've searched practically the whole town. No one else is here but us," he replied.
"Good. You and Vlad get up here ASAP. We need to move some logs that our man blocked the road with."
"O.k., we're on our way."
Forty-five minutes later, Victor's team was finished clearing the road so that the SUVs could pass. The exhausted team re-entered their vehicles and continued the search for the kidnapper. Victor periodically checked the tracking device on the off chance that the kidnapper's location would re-appear on the screen. After about thirty minutes of driving, a blip suddenly appeared.
"We've got our target on the tracking screen, a little over two klicks out," he said to the rest of the team.
As they approached the target, Victor began to slow down. He and his men were scanning the surrounding areas, trying to get a visual on the target. They were practically on top of the signal, but still they could see nothing. Victor stopped the car and said into his microphone, "Fan out and find this scum bag. We're practically on top of the transmitter."
The team exited the vehicles and fanned out in practiced fashion, with three men sweeping uphill and three down. They located the cooler in a few minutes, discarded and empty on the downhill side of the road. They quickly re-entered their vehicles and resumed the drive along the mountain road, which had leveled off and begun to descend slightly. Around the next bend, the road intersected a paved road. Victor slammed his fist down on the dashboard of the SUV, realizing that their chances of finding the kidnapper had just plummeted.
The team split up, taking opposite directions on the paved road. They drove for another hour before Victor called off the search and headed back to Toakama.
Chapter Forty-Five
"Are you o.k.?" Mia said to Sasha, looking at her bruised eye and cut lip. All she felt for the kidnapper at that moment was hatred. She prayed he hadn't sexually assaulted her daughter. God help him if he had. On second thought, she hoped God wouldn't help him in that case.
"I'm o.k.," Sasha said, giving Mia another hug. "I'm just so glad to be free now."
"Sasha, I need you to be honest with me," Nick said. "Did that man touch you inappropriately? Did he rape you?"
"No. No. he didn't," she replied.
"Guys, you should come see this," James yelled from down the alleyway that Victor had driven down earlier.
Everyone walked en masse down the alleyway to where James and Laura were standing. There, behind the building, was the RV where Sasha had been held captive.
"That's where he kept me hostage," Sasha informed them.
Mia left Sasha's side and walked determinedly towards the RV. She went to the driver's door, opening it up, and began to look around the cab.
"What is she doing?" J.T. asked Nick.
"She's looking for clues to who this man is or where he went. She's quite good at it, actually. It's a skill she developed years ago when she used to track down some of our more recalcitrant debtors," Nick replied. "I'd wager, if there is anything he left behind that indicates who or where he might be, she'll find it."
"I think I can help you with that," Sasha replied.
Nick and J.T. both turned to look at Sasha.
"Do you know who he is?" asked J.T.
"Not exactly, only that he said that he had been ripped off by a gambling website that you owned, Nick. He also mentioned that he used to be a cop," Sasha continued.
Nick's face showed a glimmer of recognition, which he quickly hid. "Describe him to me," he said.
A quick description of the kidnapper from Sasha confirmed Nick's suspicions.
/> "We'll get a sketch artist to help draw a picture of him so that we can identify him and stop him from doing things like this to anyone else," Nick said with finality. He was going to find him alright, and when he did, there would be hell to pay.
Back in the RV, Mia had conducted a thorough search and collected all the receipts and paperwork that she could find. A quick review of the material indicated that the kidnapper had paid cash for everything except the RV rental, which had required a credit card. The RV rental paperwork she found in the glove box listed the name of Silas McGruder.
Leaving his real name on the rental agreement was either stupid, sloppy, or a planned deception. Mia had encountered a few of the people she had tracked for Nick in the past who had used this tactic. They had deliberately used their real names to lead her off of their trail just enough to buy an airline ticket using an alias and temporarily escape to some far-off destination, supposedly out of her reach. If that was what Silas had planned, she knew just what to do. Whatever the reason for using his real name, she was anxious to find him as soon as possible.
Mia exited the RV and walked back to where Nick, J.T., and Sasha were standing.
"We need to get back to New York, now."
Nick nodded in agreement. He turned on his two-way radio, but got nothing but static when he tried to reach Victor. He tried Victor's phone, but it only went to voice mail. He left a message telling Victor to call him with a report as soon as possible, and let him know they were returning to New York. If Victor had apprehended Silas, they would know soon enough. If not, they needed to get back to New York and start tracking Silas down from there.
They collected James and Laura, who had finished a cursory search of the remaining town. They had found nothing else that might be of help in tracking down the kidnapper. Everyone piled in to the remaining SUV and headed back to Roanoke. Three hours later, they were in Nick's plane and headed back to New York.
The next day, James, Laura, and J.T. boarded Nick's plane and went back to the Cayman Islands. Even with their new identities, they reasoned it wasn't safe to stay too long in the States. Before they left, J.T. arranged for Sasha to fly down and visit him in Grand Cayman on her spring break. J.T. and Sasha shared a tearful goodbye as he boarded the plane.