The Warrior Code (21 page)

She was a couple of feet away, doing the same.

The room they were in was, as she had guessed, large, with several couches on a plush carpet. A massive wood-burning stove occupied one side and a large mantelpiece, the other

The ceiling beams and walls were all wood. The room looked old, it was laid out with care and love. It was a large, friendly room with yellow lighting that was kind on the eyes.

It was a living room, much larger than those found in cities.

Realization dawned on her as she looked back and outside the windows.

A vast expanse of darkness greeted her. No lights were visible.

They were on a ranch.

The three men who had abducted them stood behind her and watched her expressionlessly.

All of them were young, in their thirties, fit and short haired.

They had a little of Zeb and Roger’s feel but not the same.

A door at their left opened and a man walked in.

The sisters stared at the man.

He wore a balaclava over his face and was dressed in a light blue shirt tucked in black jeans. A wide leather belt and ornately decorated boots completed his outfit.

His eyes were dark behind the mask, they tried to peer through it, to see if they could recognize him.

They couldn’t.

Disappointment flooded them.

‘Find out everything about him.
Everything
,’ Zeb snapped at Broker.

‘I’m doing just that. Relax. We now know what he wants. He won’t harm them till he gets it,’ Broker grumped.

Roger squeezed Zeb’s shoulder.
Calm down.
He didn’t need to say it.

Zeb breathed deeply, cleared his mind of everything, and nodded.

He glanced at the phone beside them.

‘Any moment now.’ Roger read his glance. ‘The women should have reached him.’

Roger pulled out and resumed their drive, and after less than an hour, Broker called out from behind them, ‘I got his file.’

He read out the man’s history, went into detail about his achievements, and when he had finished, the hum of tires and the rare passing lights of other vehicles filled their universe.

Roger looked sideways. Zeb’s face glowed in the dark from the dim light of the dashboard.

‘This is one bad man.’

‘Yeah, that he is,’ Broker agreed. He snapped the laptop shut and asked Zeb, ‘What’s the plan, Wise One?’

The phone rang before Zeb could reply.

‘Major Carter, I’ve got the Petersen twins.’ The Voice was polished, an educated voice.

Zeb met Broker’s eyes in the mirror. The Voice was showing that he’d checked out Zeb.

The Voice also indicated he didn’t know that
they
knew.

How would he?
Zeb chided himself. He switched gears mentally.

‘Who are you, how did you get this number, and why should I believe you?’ Zeb made his tone bored, as if he was discussing the weather.

‘Major, by all accounts you are an intelligent man. Use that intelligence. How else would I have got this number if I didn’t have the twins? I will give you precisely ten minutes to confirm that they are missing and will then call you back. And by the way, surely I don’t need to repeat that
no cops
cliché.’

He hung up.

Broker snatched the phone, read out its number, and ran it through his tracking program.

‘He’s not even hiding where he’s calling from. The call is from the ranch.’

Zeb knew why. ‘That’s because he intends to kill us.’

Ten minutes later, the Voice called.

‘Yeah, the girls are missing. Now what?’ Zeb asked him roughly.

The Voice laughed. ‘No
who are you
?
Why are you doing this
? None of those questions?’

Zeb sighed. ‘Like you said, I’m not stupid. I can trace your call to its location, which is what you wanted me to do. So the
who
is answered. But what do you want?’

‘It’s a pleasure working with an intelligent man. I want Meghan Petersen’s laptop and camera which she tells me are in her hotel room. I would send my men to get it, but I’m sure you’ll do that errand for me, won’t you?’

‘Why do you want those?’

The Voice laughed. ‘Major, all in good time. Or maybe you’ll have figured it out by the time you get here. Shall we rendezvous at my ranch at nine p.m.? It’s seven now, that gives you enough time to pick the stuff up from their room and get here. You get the sisters, I get what I want, we all agree to forget one another and walk away into the sunset.’

Zeb didn’t reply.

One and a half hour
more
, Roger mouthed silently at him.

‘Major?’

‘Yeah, I’m here. I was thinking just how stupid you could be.’

Negotiators took the friendly approach with kidnappers. It gave them an opportunity to establish a relationship, however tenuous, and occasionally win over the kidnappers.

Zeb believed in taking the opposite approach. But in his world, kidnappers did not walk away into the sunset. Not alive.

Meghan and Beth drew a sharp breath as the man looked disbelievingly at his phone.

He had ignored their questioning expressions when he’d walked in the room. He had ignored their rapid
Who are you? Why are you after us?
at him.

The women were held back roughly when they approached him, and when they resisted, they were knocked down.

He had watched silently and had thrust out a hand.

A flunky handed him the twins’ sat phones.

He studied them and turned one of them around to the sisters.

‘This is Zeb Carter’s number?’

They were still reeling in shock and dawning horror and didn’t answer.

He casually slapped Beth. She fell, and when Meghan growled deep, he slapped her too.

Heavy slaps that split their lips.

The flunkies pulled them upright.

‘I can go on all night. Is that his number?’

Beth nodded.

‘Is he alone?’

She hesitated, and he rose again.

‘Two more with him.’

He smiled like it was a social conversation in a bar. ‘That wasn’t hard, was it?’

He dialed the number, placed the phone on speaker, and lounged on a couch.

‘Say what, Major?’

‘I said you are a stupid man.’ Zeb’s voice came flatly through the speaker.

‘If you had any sense, you’d have traced my number and checked where I am right now. I’m nowhere near Jackson. I am nearing Salt Lake City. There’s no way I can reach your ranch in two hours. Your ranch is a good eight-hour drive, maybe even ten depending on traffic, from where I am.’

The man’s lips tightened.

Zeb’s disbelief came through the phone. ‘Dark? You should be meeting us in broad daylight when you can
see
our approach and cover us with a hundred guns. You should meet us early morning so that we don’t have any rest.’

A dull flush spread across the man’s face. ‘Major, you seem to be forgetting I hold the women.’

He rose swiftly, strode across the room, and slapped Beth hard. ‘Heard that, Major? I would go easy on the insults. Come in the morning, at nine, and it had better be just the three of you.’

He disconnected the call and snapped out at his flunkies, ‘Take these two to one of the rooms and two of you stand guard over them.’

‘Scott?’

A man entered the room cradling an HK MP-5. His arms were heavily tattooed, and he moved with the assurance of one who has seen everything.

He looked questioningly at the Voice.

‘I want a seven-man perimeter and one on the roof.’ He jerked his head at the three men behind the twins. ‘Two of these will be standing guard over the women.’

Scott nodded silently and looked in the direction of the three flunkies, who urged the women forward.

‘We’ll get company in the morning,’ the Voice shouted after them.

He unclenched his fingers when he was alone, damped down his rage, and called another number.

Zubia listened silently and, when the Voice had finished, told him simply, ‘You can’t let them go away.’

‘They won’t. This is a one-way ride.’

Chapter 24

They planned to hit the ranch at night.

The moment he had seen the Voice on the security camera, three things had gone through Zeb’s mind.

He knew that the man would either try to recover the camera and laptop or would demand an exchange. He also figured the man would want to trade immediately, and he had to buy time. Sending the phone with Mark Feinberg to Salt Lake City had bought time for him.

With the expectation of a morning exchange, Zeb would have a thin element of surprise in their favor when the three of them attacked at night.

As they drew closer to the ranch, a pale moon accompanying them, they had discussed the number of men the Voice would have by his side.

Roger considered the size of the ranch, its layout and decided. ‘Ten or fifteen at the most. Good men, all ex-military or mercenaries. Any less and they will be spread thin. Any more and they will have issues of coordination and friendly fire.’

Broker nodded. ‘If I was him, I would let go of all the help. They would hamper the exchange and the kill.’

They reached the outskirts of the ranch and continued on the uneven track.

The ranch was bounded by barbed wire in some places and by natural demarcation, a stream or a tree line, in others. The main entrance to the ranch had a simple arch with no gate on it. The unpaved track led to the entrance of the central lodge, behind which were sprawled out several cabins, unevenly laid out, and a central swimming pool.

A thin strip of tarmac, the runway for the aircraft, was half a mile away from the accommodation.

They figured the exchange would happen in the central lodge, in the living room.

‘He wouldn’t want to give us a tour of the place,’ Zeb mused.

They reached the outskirts of the ranch at nine p.m. and continued ahead without branching off on the dirt track that led to the ranch. They ate four more miles before Roger swung the SUV on a dim uneven trail, a faint vehicle track that made its way to the airstrip.

An hour of slow driving, this wasn’t the time for them to have a broken axle, brought them to a point five miles from the ranch buildings.

He found a deep thicket and drove into it.

In less than a minute they had outfitted themselves with combat vests and comms gear, an AR-15 for Zeb and HK MP5s for Roger and Broker. Each one of them had handguns strapped in holsters, spare magazines and blades. Zeb knew they would all have pistols strapped to their ankles and have various other goodies on their bodies.

Zeb gave the signal when they had slapped on their night vision, and they started jogging toward the airstrip, Zeb ahead while Roger and Broker lugged a heavy kitbag behind.

Starlight and the pale moon observed their every move.

Every fifteen minutes they rotated the lead and shared the bag. It contained what Roger called, straight-faced, ‘essentials.’

Roger grinned at Zeb, a white flash in a dark night, as they ran steadily at a pace they could sustain the whole night if they had to.

‘You plan to blow the whole danged ranch?’

Zeb’s face was all shadows when it turned to him.

‘Just the right parts.’

Ten p.m. and they dropped to the ground and observed the tiny airstrip.

There wasn’t much to it, a long stretch of tarmac on which the white aircraft was secured by nylon lines, and further away was a small hangar, its door shut. There didn’t seem to be any patrol about.

Ranch is too big for them to patrol every inch. They’ve got a perimeter around the central lodge, most likely,
Zeb guessed.

When he was sure they were alone, he slapped a Leupold scope on his AR-15, sighted, and the aircraft jumped out at him.

‘Ready,’ he murmured in his mouthpiece, and two shadows darted out and approach the aircraft.

Eleven p.m. and the airstrip and the hangar were behind them, and they were approaching the first line of cabins.

There were seven of them, two of them on either side of the pool and closest to the central building, two others laid out in a line behind the first two, and the remaining three laid out parallel to the lodge.

Accommodation for help, visitors, one of them a repair shop, another a store
, Zeb thought.

Tractors and SUVs lay silently in the night parked close to the outlying buildings.

The last three cabins were about four hundred yards away from the central lodge.

They ghosted inside the ones that were open, checked that they were empty, and when Zeb whispered, moved forward.

Eleven thirty p.m., almost five hundred yards away from the central lodge, the first of the remaining cabins two hundred feet away from them, and they slid to the ground.

Still no one.

The perimeter, if there was one, hadn’t extended to the cabins.

I would do the same in his position.

Zeb gave the signal to proceed and froze suddenly.

He saw why there wasn’t a perimeter.

Zeb was carrying one of Broker’s toys, an infrared alarm detector; the device vibrated in his hand, and when Zeb looked down, he saw the perimeter bathed in infrared light less than a hundred feet away from them.

The Voice had set up an electronic perimeter further away from any human perimeter. Infrared light bathed the area like floodlights, and it was too risky for them to cross without setting off alarms.

He motioned for them to turn back.

‘So much for our plan.’ Roger ran his fingers through his hair in frustration once they’d reached the sanctuary of their vehicle.

Zeb knew the frustration wasn’t directed at him. Plans often failed when they came up against ground reality. In every other mission they had backup plans. In this one, the lack of time meant that they had no fallback option if Plan A failed.

Which it had.

They fell silent as they thought through their options, and Broker finally looked at Zeb.

‘We’ll have to do it the hard way, buddy.’