“But—”
“Keep the phone I gave you. It has an open mic. Even when it’s turned off, the phone transmits everything you and anyone near you say, so don’t even think about warning your buddies at the FBI about what’s going on. If I even slightly suspect you’re playing games, the next video will show your fiancée’s ears being cut off.”
“I want a video report every half hour to prove Liz is alive and healthy,” he demanded.
“Every two hours is often enough. Remember, the world won’t end if the task force lets Nick go. But your world will end, if they don’t. Give me my brother, or I’ll give you your fiancée’s dismembered corpse.”
LIZ AWOKE TO POUNDING PAIN in her face.
Keeping her eyes closed, she reached to hold her burning cheeks, but her wrists were secured to something. She was slumped on a padded surface. As she struggled to remember where she was, the sound of voices penetrated her foggy mind. With a chill, she recognized them as those of her kidnappers. Drifting in and out of consciousness, she’d heard them talk to each other and to someone else, a woman, on what sounded like a speakerphone. The woman had addressed one of them as Rudy and the other as Max. Breathing deeply to fight the pain, she made herself focus on them.
“John J. was on TV last night,” Rudy was saying.
“?‘John J.’? What are you talking about?” Max asked.
“John Rambo. You know, First Blood,” Rudy said. “When I was growing up in Moscow, I got better at English by watching the movies.”
She noticed the slight hissing of his s’s, a characteristic of some English-speaking Russians.
“Rambo hardly says a word. How could you learn English from those movies?” Max asked.
“From the other characters.”
“After the way the third Rambo movie made us Russians look, I’m surprised you watched any of them.”
“I admit the third one isn’t the best, but that first one was great.”
She was learning nothing from them, so she forced her eyes open and saw that she was lying on a weight lifter’s bench beside a massive Nautilus machine. As her mind cleared, she realized that the plastic zip-tie cuffs on her wrists encircled one of the machine’s metal poles, holding her arms up. The restraint was so tight it cut into her skin. She studied the pole and the multigym station with its pulleys, handles, and weights, wondering whether there was a way to twist free. It didn’t look hopeful, and if she succeeded, she’d still have to deal with the two bastards who’d grabbed her.
“If you wanted to learn English from Rambo, you should’ve read the novel,” Max said.
“There’s a novel?”
“He dies at the end.”
“No, the police chief’s still moving at the end. You can see him twitch when they put him in the ambulance.”
“Not in the novel,” Max said.
“The police chief dies in the novel?”
“And Rambo.”
“Stop bullshitting me.”
Following the sound of their voices, she peered across the room and saw that this was some kind of security center—the two men were sitting in the middle of a long curved desk, while above and around them rose five levels of closed-circuit TV monitors displaying views of a steel gate, a driveway, the exterior of the log house, and a chain-link fence, most in dense woods. Because the majority of screens showed the fence, she guessed it surrounded the property and there must be many forested acres.
Carrying a coffee mug, Max swiveled in his chair and headed toward a kitchenette. “I’m telling you Rambo gets killed in the novel. Colonel Trautman shoots him.”
“No, no, no. Rambo can’t die.”
“That’s what Stallone said. That’s why the movie ends the way it does.” Max poured coffee.
“Then why would Stallone end the novel that way? You’re not making sense.”
“Stallone didn’t write the novel.”
“You’re starting to bother me.”
“I’m telling you.”
“Then who the hell wrote the novel?”
“I can’t remember.” Max returned to his chair and sat.
“You’re making all this up.”
As they talked, she studied the room.
On her left was an expansive gun cabinet in which a dozen M4 assault rifles stood neatly in a line. Boxes of ammo were piled on shelves. To her right a wooden staircase climbed upward. All four walls were made of concrete blocks. There were no windows. The place had the feel of not only being secure but underground.
She focused again on the men at the big console. They were watching a screen twice as large as the others. It showed a grid on which a green dot was slowly traveling along one of the lines.
“He’s on the move,” Max said.
Rudy laughed. “And he’s no Rambo.”
A phone rang somewhere in the chamber.
Max pressed a button on the computer, and a woman’s disembodied voice reported from a speaker, “We’ve got Simon Childs on a leash. I need you to e-mail me a video of Sansborough every couple of hours to keep him motivated, until he delivers the package.”
At Simon’s name, Liz tensed, feeling fresh pain roll through her. Now she remembered. The men had made her beg Simon for help. So Simon was involved and there was a “package.” What was so important that they’d kidnapped her to get Simon to do what they wanted?
“Not a problem,” Rudy said. He turned and grinned at Liz. “You want us to hurt her some more?”
“Not yet. Maybe later.”
Liz stared back at the asshole, refusing to show fear.
But they’d let her see their faces.
No way could they allow her to live.
AS SIMON STARED AT THE phone in his hand, a car horn startled him. He jerked his head up, abruptly aware of the restaurant’s parking lot. A taxi was stopping at the building’s entrance and the passenger was getting out. He ran to the taxi, veered in front of a waiting couple, and lunged into the backseat.
“Hoover Building,” he told the surprised driver.
While the taxi merged into the morning traffic, Simon examined the phone. The woman had told him it had an open mic. In that case Liz’s captors would now have heard where he was going. But he’d been ordered to use his influence, so his destination shouldn’t alarm them.
He hoped.
The time on the phone was 9:54 a.m.
Less than twelve hours remained.
He and Liz were scheduled to be married ten days from now, and by God he was going to make certain it happened.
The FBI’s headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue had been built with a rugged concrete exterior—to create a powerful, dominating impression. But after little more than four decades, the concrete was decaying, and nets enclosed the upper stories to prevent chunks from falling onto pedestrians.
Feeling that something might indeed crash onto him, Simon hurried inside the massive building. He tried not to arouse suspicion by looking impatient while he waited in a long line at the security checkpoint.