Hostage Zero

They knew that Guinn had a kid somewhere, and research led them to a school in a little Virginia town that no one had heard of. The most logical solution was to grab him and hold him hostage, but that strategy came with huge risks-not the least of which was the involvement of the FBI, whose mission it was to solve kidnappings. This one would be rendered even more challenging by the need to constantly remind Guinn of the stakes. Snatching someone and disappearing with him was difficult but doable. Keeping them disappeared while at the same time remaining in frequent contact raised the stakes enormously. Each new communication created an opportunity for the FBI to dial into the chain of evidence-and there was always a chain of evidence, no matter how careful you were to prevent one.

The solution came from Troy Flynn, the man who nominally succeeded Arthur Guinn after his arrest. (Jesus, you think too much about this stuff, and it starts to sound like a royal chain of succession.) Flynn suggested an offshore kidnapping. He said that he had assurances from very reliable sources that if they chose the country carefully, the FBI would be unable to follow, and if they did, they’d be unable to secure extradition.

And wouldn’t you know it? One of the leading countries suggested was the very one in which Mitch Ponder had a number of existing business interests that were always looking to prosper from an addition to the labor pool.

Mitch read that as a guaranteed safe zone to spirit the kid off to after they snatched him. But first they had to get their hands on him, and for that Mitch needed a team. He hated working with teams. The extra players posed that many more opportunities to screw things up, and that many more people whose loose lips could sink the Steamship Ponder.

In this case, though, having a third party involved actually helped Mitch with another problem. Because of the complexity of what they were attempting to pull off, and the fact that Leger and his contacts were going to be giving him some backup, he needed a way to communicate directly with the secretary. Troy Flynn and Sammy Bell didn’t want to be seen in the halls of the Pentagon any more than Leger would have wanted them there. For all the same reasons, the further away Mitch could stay from direct contact, the better off he was going to be.

Enter Jerry Sjogren, the hulking Bostonian who, as far as Mitch could tell, feared no one. Mitch had never worked with him before, but he certainly knew the name. Sjogren looked and sounded like a barroom bouncer. He’d approached Mitch, in fact, and, without actually saying the words, made it extremely clear that he considered himself to be Secretary Leger’s go-to guy.

Sjogren was the one who’d first noticed that Marilyn Schuler’s kid went to the same school as the Guinn kid, and brought word that his boss wanted the Schuler boy snatched at the same time. Mitch had argued against it if only because of the daunting logistics of snatching two at once and getting them out of the country. When you double the scope of an operation like that, you square the logistical hassles. To risk success with a high-value target like the Guinn kid by snatching a low-yield target like the Schuler boy-honestly, what were the chances that the kid knew anything that could hurt Leger? — was a special brand of foolishness.

But Sjogren had been firm. Besides, he’d argued, Mitch would never have to worry about the second kid because they were going to pop him after they snatched him. For Mitch’s little corner of the operation, nothing would change.

Yeah, right. Never in the history of Murphy’s Law had so many things gone perfectly wrong at precisely the worst moments. Everything Sjogren touched had turned to shit, up to and including the capping of a child. Good God. And he’d already been drugged, to boot.

The litany of things gone wrong swirled through Mitch’s mind with such intense clarity that he nearly missed the arrival of his guest, who announced himself by casting a shadow over Mitch’s untouched beer.

“Good evening,” said the new arrival in heavily accented English.

Mitch looked up, at once pleased that his guest had finally arrived, and concerned that he had allowed himself to drift so far away from the present. Inattentiveness was a fine way to get yourself killed.

Mitch rose to greet the man and shook his hand. “General Ruiz. How are you sir? Thank you for joining me.” He gestured to the seat across from him. “Please sit.”