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“Brothers Talbot and Mr. Short, you seem to be missing something, and we have it. You have all received a separate e-mail this morning, with three different Swiss bank account numbers. The Talbots will have to pay a great deal more to get their sons back, Mr. Short, your ransom will be sizably less. All of you must pay within three days, and all of your sons will be returned. If one of you fails to pay, then all of your sons will die. It is simple. To show that we are sincere, we will give you a small taste of what’s to come.”

He turned and barked in Turkish to someone off-camera, telling them to take the hoods off the college boys. Two men came into the frame, both wearing ski masks, and took the hoods off. The young men had been roughed up.

“Bring me one, I don’t care who,” the leader said in Turkish. “And bring me a table and knife.”

Ryker winced. He was almost a hundred percent sure he knew what was going to happen.

Please let it only be a finger and not a hand.

When one of the terrorists brought over the middle kid who was wearing blue boxer briefs and shoved him over the table that another guy had set down, a third guy brought over a wicked-looking scimitar.

“I said a knife, not a sword, you fucking idiot! Someone get me a knife!” he shouted in Turkish. The kid was sweating, but there was no begging, no pissing his Calvin Kleins. There was more to him than Ryker had been expecting.

In moments an equally wicked-looking knife was slapped into the leader’s hand, and he turned to the camera once more. “Remember, you have three days. Seventy-two hours.” He nodded at the man holding the college boy down on the table and motioned for one of the others to grab his hand. He did. The kid balled his hand into a fist and started to struggle, but it didn’t matter. The leader simply cut into his fist and was soon holding up the bloodied, amputated pinkie finger.

The kid gave an ear-splitting scream. Then he gasped before he spit out the words, “Holy hell, Robin! You cut off my finger!” The kid screamed the words at the top of his lungs.

The leader slammed his fist into the side of the kid’s head with a vicious punch, knocking him unconscious.

He turned back to the camera. “Three days, otherwise I’ll be cutting off all of their heads. Do you hear me?”

The video ended.

“Batman.” Jase and Kostya said simultaneously.

“You’re right,” Commander Clark said. “That’s what the intelligence agencies came up with too. The city of Batman in Turkey. They have operatives on the ground, as well as local sources trying to find out if there has been any suspicious activity there, but it’s a big city.”

Batman, Turkey? What in the hell kind of name is that for a city in the Middle East?

“We figure by the time you have boots on the ground there, we will have something for you.”

“When did the clock start?” Ryker asked.

“Fourteen hours ago, that means we now have fifty-eight hours. It’s going to take you twelve hours to fly to the Incirlik Air Base. From there we’ll immediately get you on a private civilian flight into Batman. All in all, that will get you there with forty-six hours to spare, worst case scenario.”

Bullshit, that’s best case scenario. There’re too many civilians involved for this to work smoothly.

Linc gave him the side-eye and Ryker could see he was thinking the same thing. Commander Clark had been out of the game too long.

“Commander,” Kostya interrupted professionally.

“Yes?”

“Where will we be getting our intel from?”

“You’re going to have a liaison on-site. She’s a Turkish citizen who has been working with the CIA for the last seven years. She’s top-notch.” Clark turned to Gideon. “I’m going to be asking for frequent updates from you that will reach the President. So make yourself available.”

Gideon nodded.

Ryker had seen both Jonas and Linc’s heads fall downwards toward the tables they were sitting at when Clark had mentioned their liaison. He knew Linc’s issues with the CIA, but he hadn’t heard Jonas’s. They better fucking suck it up, the last thing they needed was anybody carrying their goddamned baggage on a mission.

“There will also be an interpreter waiting for you when you get to Batman. She’s an American that’s lived over there for the past three years. She’ll meet you at your hotel. That’s it, your plane is waiting.” Commander Clark left the room.

Kostya looked over his group of men. “Hit the lights, Jase.”

He looked down at his watch. “According to the commander, the e-mails arrived at precisely noon, yesterday. I want all of you to start your timers on your watches with a countdown of fifty-eight hours and thirteen minutes starting….now.”

He looked around the room again. “Go suit up, and let’s double-time it to the plane.”