Prince Walker
More at Stake
The aircraft engines drowned out the sound of the men in the cargo hold. It had been a long time since I’d traveled this rough, but it didn’t bother me. Eight hardened mercenaries shared the space with Andy and me, and I was struck by how well he fitted in with these guys now that we’d been issued with battle vests and weapons. I’d spent enough time on the shooting range to know my way around an assault rifle, but I had to admit, it was never more than entertainment. Boys getting off on playing with big guns. These guys handled theirs like they were extensions of themselves. It was at once intimidating and reassuring. There was no room for amateur hour.
“We’ll be touching down in 20,” a big guy up front yelled back at us. Bryce Decker was a retired colonel who’d moved into the private security sector, and I had no doubt that the man knew exactly what he was doing. When Andy had introduced us, I’d found myself dwarfed by another human for the first time in my life.
Towering at around 6’5” and built like a line-backer, Decker was a giant. He was also hard as nails. Within minutes of meeting him, I’d been briefed on the entire mission. They’d traced Gutierrez to a compound near the Mexican border. Their previous interaction with the man when they’d released Sasha’s brother had given them an opportunity to monitor cellphone activity among his crew. Razortip may have used a burner phone to communicate with us, but his men hadn’t done the same. Probably didn’t realize how easy it would be to pinpoint their calls and make a note of them.
It wasn’t something we’d asked them to do, but Andy told me it was done as a matter of protocol – Decker’s team liked to know what they were up against. They’d kept the details on file, and when we asked them to go in again, they’d pulled up records and within hours had enough data from incoming and outgoing calls to have a good idea of where Gutierrez was holed up. Satellite imaging had provided a good idea of the layout of the property, and infrared camera imagery had told them how many we’d be up against. It was like something out of a spy movie, but I could get my head around the process. It wasn’t as if the technology was foreign to me.
Within 20 minutes – just as Decker had advised – we had wheels down on a small runway in a rural area that was far enough from Razortip’s base to avoid drawing attention. Once we’d transferred the funds to Decker’s account, he’d taken over the logistics, which had been a relief. Sourcing aircraft and vehicles at short notice would have stretched my frayed nerves to snapping point. As the men disembarked, we were met by a string of SUVs and, minutes later, were bouncing down a dirt track to a remote cluster of rustic buildings that turned out to be a guest farm.
“Found it on Airbnb,” Decker said with a grin as I stared curiously around the beautifully appointed accommodation. I’d expected a warehouse filled with ammunition. “Nobody will expect us to be here,” he went on, and I figured it made sense.
One of the others – a dark-skinned guy who was introduced to me as Jack-Knife for reasons I could only guess at – had spread a map out on a dining room table that overlooked rolling fields and cattle. Our “mission headquarters” was practically in a farmyard; it felt surreal. The map was marked out with thick arrows and crosses, and within minutes, I’d been told of the plan. We’d be moving in at dawn and hitting them while they were least expecting it.
Another of the other men, a strapping youngster they oddly referred to as Obie One, had been keeping track of cellphone activity. The kidnappers showed no indication that they were aware of what we were up to. Obie had set up a bank of monitors in one corner of the house we’d booked into. He had been listening in to “chatter” on a headset and monitoring all incoming and outgoing calls from the compound.
“Nothing unusual, boss,” he told Decker, glancing up from his station. “Just calls to girlfriends and buddies. The usual crap. One asshole just blew fifty dollars on a sex chat line,” he chuckled.
Decker rolled his eyes, then turned back to us. “We’ll move in at oh-three-hundred hours,” he said. “Jacko and I will take out the guards at the left entrance. Muller and Tyco will come over the back wall…” He went on at length, giving each man an assigned role. Andy and I would come in last, once the area had been cleared. I wanted to rail against it. If I’d had my way, I’d have charged in guns blazing. But I knew that was madness. These men knew their jobs.
We’d just about reached the point where Decker explained what would go down once we’d cleared the main residence when my phone vibrated on the table. I glanced down and set my jaw when the screen lit up with an anonymous call. It could only mean one thing. Razortip was checking in.
“Take the call,” Decker said.
I hit reply and put the phone on speaker.
“You’re running out of time,” the slimy voice said on the other end. “My attorney is growing impatient. And so am I,” he went on.
Fuck!
We’d known our stalling tactics wouldn’t buy us much more leeway.
“It’s complicated,” I tried to explain. “You’re dealing with the Swiss government. They need to dot every ‘I’ and cross every ‘T’,” I told him. It was bullshit. We hadn’t submitted documents to anyone. Horst hadn’t even taken our proposal beyond the meeting level, and we knew that pressing the issue would be a fuck-up.
“Ah…but what you don’t want tocrossis me, my friend,” Razortip said coldly. The man was no idiot. He was suspicious.
“There’s nothing I can do about it,” I said firmly, praying it would stick. “You’ll have to be patient. It’ll be worth the wait, I assure you.” Controlling interests in a multi-billion dollar business should be incentive enough to keep the man waiting a couple of days. It killed me, though. Knowing they were days that Sasha might be stuck with that bunch of psychopaths. My only consolation was that I knew we’d be going in much sooner than that.
“Your little dove has something she wants to say to you about patience, Mr. Walker,” Razortip said, and my gut clenched.
“Leave her—!” I began, but his voice was replaced by another.
“Alec!” It was Sasha. “Alec, I love you!” Her voice was strangled, as if fighting back tears.
“Sasha!” I practically shouted down the line. The men around me remained impassive. “Sweetness, don’t—” My words were cut off by Razortip’s accented voice.
“As you can tell, she is in good health,” he said, though it didn’t comfort me at all. There was no indication of her state of health at all, aside from the fact that we knew she was alive.
“If you fucking hurt her—!” I yelled. Decker held up a hand that I knew was telling me to tone it down. It was impossible. If I could have closed my hands around the fucker’s throat, I would have crushed the life out of him. I was on my feet now, hovering as I tried to control my emotions.
“Ah, but I would never allow any harm to befall her, Mr. Walker,” he went on. “She is valuable to me.”
I swallowed hard, barely holding it together. Losing my shit now wouldn’t do any good. I had to keep control.
“A woman of her beauty will fetch a high price from the right buyer,” he said. I felt the air seize in my lungs. “Of course, who knows what will come of her baby. There are men who appreciate such things.”
