“Yeah, there were dozens of them. They rushed in and slammed her up against the wall. Like fifteen guys all had their hands on her, pressing her up against the wall so she couldn’t move. Everyone was pointing guns at her. I was yelling and screaming at them to leave her alone and not to hurt her.
“Then, as they were holding her against the wall, a whole bunch of black SUVs came roaring into the parking lot, completely surrounding us. About half a dozen of these guys in black with machine guns dragged me back and frisked me. They told me to keep my fucking mouth shut.”
“What about Angela?” Jack asked.
“They had her pressed flat against the wall. A few guys searched her while some others were putting handcuffs and leg irons on her. They took a gun out of a holster in her waistband in back. Another guy pulled a knife out of her right boot.”
“What was she doing? Did she say anything? I hope to god she didn’t resist.”
“No, she didn’t try to fight them. She looked like a rag doll in their hands. I felt terrible for not helping her, but I had half a dozen guns in my face. These fuckers weren’t fooling around. They told me that if I didn’t stay back and keep my mouth shut they would shoot me. I don’t think they were bluffing.”
“They weren’t,” Jack told him.
“Then four or five of them picked Angela up—picked her right up off the ground like a rolled-up carpet—and carried her to the back of one of those big black SUVs. Just before they got her there and stuffed her inside, she turned her head back and yelled for me to keep the bar open.
“I knew what she meant. Lots of the girls need the work and Barry is going to need to make a living—if he lives. But at that moment that was the last thing in the world I cared about. I was afraid for Angela. I have no idea who these men were. They didn’t have any markings and I sure as hell wasn’t about to ask to see their ID.
“As soon as she said that, they stuffed a gag in her mouth as they were putting her in the SUV. Then the whole lot of them piled into their vehicles and blew out of here.”
Jack stared off in fury. “Damn.”
“Do you know who they were, or what they wanted with Angela? Did it have something to do with that big explosion I heard about over in the old industrial area? I heard they have the entire area closed off and there are troops all over the place. They said a military plane had crashed.
“Do you know why they came in here and took her like that? I mean, putting her in handcuffs and leg-irons and all? These weren’t police. I’ve seen SWAT. This wasn’t SWAT. This was something else, some kind of armed-forces people.”
“I don’t know what’s going on, Nate.”
Jack really didn’t. His mind was racing, trying to think what to do.
“We’ve got to help her!” Nate sounded desperate.
“What time did this happen?”
Nate threw up his hands. “I don’t know. Right before we opened. Just before noon. Something like that.”
“That means they’ve had her for over fourteen hours.”
“I didn’t know what to do. The other girls started arriving, and customers were showing up, so I let the girls open the place up. I told them what happened to Angela—well, I only told them that she had been arrested—and that Angela told me to open the bar.”
Jack’s mind was racing, trying to decide on what to do next.
“Is there a federal building in Milford Falls?”
“Yeah, sure,” Nate said. “A small one. It has Social Security Administration offices there, things like that.”
Jack didn’t know why in the world they would have taken Angela prisoner, but since it had to be about the bomb, it would be some kind of high-level federal force.
That kind would probably want to question her on the spot before any more time elapsed or anyone else horned in on what they had claimed as their territory. Those kinds of men wouldn’t want to wait until they got her back to Washington. They would want to be in an obscure location, since their agency was being watched all the time by reporters looking for news or leaks about the mass terrorist attacks.
“Where’s this federal building?”
Nate gave him directions. Jack raced out to his car and took off. If they did take her to the federal building for the initial questioning, they might still be there.
FIFTY-SIX
Jack parked almost a block away in a spot at the end of a side street where he would be able to keep an eye on the small, local federal building. There were a half dozen black SUVs parked on the street. Since there was underground parking, there were likely more he didn’t see. They all had government tags but no agency identification. He hoped those vehicles meant that Angela was still in there.
He hoped, too, that he could find a way to get her out. They would never in a million years understand her and what she had done for the country. That was irrelevant to them. Otherwise they wouldn’t have picked her up and treated her like they had just captured Osama Bin Laden. They had their own agenda.
They’d had her in there for fifteen hours. He knew she wouldn’t be sleeping in a cell. These people had no intention of letting her sleep. They would be hammering away at her in a relentless interrogation. He didn’t know for certain why they had her, but he had his suspicions.
If they got her back to Washington she would vanish in a maze of bureaucratic organizations and secret locations. She would be at the mercy of elements of intel agencies and a justice department that were above the law or accountability. Because he had worked with some of those people he knew that this was his best chance to intercede before they took her to Washington.
There weren’t many cars parked on the street at the late hour. That made Jack uncomfortable, because he stood out like a sore thumb.
He knew that if he was going to accomplish anything, he was going to have to come out of the shadows. He had stayed off the grid for years. Now, if he was going to help Angela, he had no choice but to surface.
Jack checked his watch. It was 3:00 a.m., so that made it 10:00 a.m. in Israel. He pressed the speed dial.
Once he had coded in, Dvora immediately picked up.
“Dvora, I’ve got a problem.”
“What is it?”
“Federal agents snatched Angela. I don’t know who or why.”
“I can at least help with the ‘why,’ ” Dvora said. “We’ve been monitoring some of the deep chatter. We believe they think she was involved with the terrorists.”
“What? That’s bullshit. She’s the one who stopped them!”
“What do you want me to do?”
Jack’s grip on the steering wheel tightened. “I’m going to have to contact some people who think I’m dead. They may decide to make sure I stay dead this time. I need you to initiate our fail-safe protocol should anything happen to me.”
“Are you sure it’s that serious?”
“I have at least a half dozen snipers on rooftops zeroed in on me as we speak.”
Dvora paused for a moment. “All right, I’m patching it in now.” There was another pause. “Okay, it’s set. If you fail to check in every twenty-four hours, the packet will be released to all the places listed. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. When do you want the clock to start ticking?”
Jack checked his watch again. “I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get the person I need to speak with to answer his phone in the middle of the night. Let’s make it eight a.m.”
“You got it. At eight a.m. where you are, three p.m. here, the clock starts. You will need to call in by eight a.m. every day until you abort, or the packet will automatically go out.”
“Understood. Thank you, Dvora.”
She paused a moment. “Is this subject worth the risk, Jack?”
“I couldn’t even begin to explain to you how important she is, except to say that because of her alone, New York City won’t vanish under a mushroom cloud.”
Dvora let out a low whistle. “Wow. Okay, Jack, we have your back. Do what you need to do to get her out of there.”
When she hung up, Jack dialed another number. There was no answer. He hadn’t expected there would be. He dialed the number every fifteen minutes throughout the night.
It was seven thirty in the morning before a man answered. “This had better be important.” He sounded more than a little grumpy.
“It is, Angus,” Jack said.
“Who is this?”