Seventeen minutes later, along with eight heavily armed and experienced agents in full SWAT gear, Mahoney and I boarded an air force helicopter. We were all harnessed into jump seats, radioed up, and in direct contact with Carstensen and Rawlins, who’d identified the final phone number as that of twenty-two-year-old Jared Goldberg, a resident of Stafford, Virginia.
“I wonder what Jared’s doing down in Storck?” I asked.
Carstensen said, “We’ve got agents working on Mr. Goldberg right now.”
“Any luck getting us a tighter location on the call? Or Goldberg’s phone?”
“I’ve got you down to a five-mile radius,” Rawlins replied. “Sorry, there are only two towers in the area. Meantime, I’ll try to ping the phone.”
“Can you send that radius superimposed on sat images?” Mahoney asked.
“Already on its way to the pilot and to your e-mail accounts.”
We lifted off. Mahoney had an iPad, and he called up Rawlins’s link. The screen launched Google Maps and showed the circular search area, which was bisected by Virginia State Route 17, a four-lane highway.
Storck itself didn’t look like much. No stores. No gas stations. It was all farmland, small subdivisions, and dense forest.
“I pinged Mr. Goldberg’s number three times,” Rawlins said. “It’s been turned off.”
“We’re going to need him to turn it on and make another call or we’re looking for a needle in a haystack,” Mahoney said.
I said, “Rawlins, can you further refine what we’re looking at? Show us property ownership?”
“Give me a few minutes.”
The first gray light of a winter day showed in the east as we hurtled south beyond the nearly empty Beltway and over suburban sprawl that soon gave way to leafless wooded lots, farms, and the odd tract-home development. Shortly after 6:30 a.m., we passed Fredericksburg and flew over Civil War battlefields and then large stretches of forest broken up by farms.
“We’re three minutes out from the perimeter,” the pilot said.
“What are we looking for?” one of the SWAT agents said.
“Something out of place,” Mahoney said. “If we don’t see it from the air, I’ll fly in twenty agents and we’ll hit the pavement and knock on doors until we find something.”
That didn’t seem to satisfy the SWAT agent, nor did it satisfy me. Goldberg, or someone using Goldberg’s phone, had called that number in St. Petersburg not eight hours before, and…
“Rawlins,” I said, triggering the mike. “Can you do another sift? Seven to nine hours ago, any other international calls out of the Storck area?”
There was a pause before he came back, sounding stressed. “You’re next, Dr. Cross. Sorry, this map’s being a pain.”
We flew over Route 17 and headed west toward Storck. Out both sides of the chopper, I saw farms and cows and then, near the exit to County Road 610, a small business of some sort with a large steel building and a smaller structure set near a large paved parking lot.
There were two vehicles there. A wine-colored sedan was parked nose in to the smaller building. A tan panel van was parked a few feet away, pointing nose out. Its rear doors were wide open to a walkway and front door.
That was all there was to Storck. If I’d blinked, I’d have missed it.
We kept flying above the highway until we reached the southwestern edge of the search area. The pilot turned south, meaning to trace the perimeter so we understood the full lay of the land.
Our radios crackled.
“Link to the map with property owners on its way,” Rawlins said. “And, Dr. Cross, yes, there was a call from a phone near Storck a few minutes following the one made to St. Petersburg. That second call went to Pretoria, South Africa.”
“Pretoria?”
“Affirmative,” he said. “I’m trying to get a reverse ID on both the—”
Carstensen cut him off, excited. “Stafford police just called our hotline. The owners of a marina on the Potomac there found drops of blood on their dock and no sign of their young security guard, Jared Goldberg, or his burgundy Toyota Camry.”
“The Frogman got him!” Mahoney said.
“There’s a wine-colored car back there at that exit north of Storck,” I said, and I swiped Ned’s iPad with my finger until I could see the parking lot and the buildings and the name of the property owner.
“If he’s wounded, he’s in there!” I said. “It’s an animal hospital!”
“That is where the second call came from,” Rawlins said over our headsets. “Kerry Large Animal Hospital.”
Less than two minutes later, we circled high and well wide of the Kerry Animal Hospital. The tan van was gone, but the burgundy Toyota Camry was still there. We got an angle and binoculars on the license plate. It was the missing security guard’s car.
“Land right in the parking lot,” Mahoney said.
“We lose the surprise factor,” one of the SWAT agents said.
I said, “There was a tan panel van here when we flew by. I saw it. We need to know who or what’s in it.”
Mahoney said into his mike, “Cap, can you call Virginia State Police or the local sheriff? Get them to cordon off this area and look for a tan panel van? Don’t have a license plate.”
“Done,” Carstensen said.
The SWAT team went first, storming the veterinary hospital from all four sides.
They threw flash-bang grenades the second they were all in position and then went in.
Thirty seconds after they entered, our radios crackled with urgency.
“We’ve got two alive,” the SWAT team leader barked. “Goldberg and the vet. Rest of the place is clear.”
The pilot began to speak, but I cut him off.
“Get us back in the air!” I shouted. “We’ve got to find that van!”