Ben had been working on the blueprints with Chip when Cassy’s call came in. She’d been abducted. But the man who had taken her had not been smart enough to disable her cell phone and to this point he was hearing everything: her screaming, his impersonating a cop, the traffic noises, and the ambulance. He’d jotted down the time it had passed Cassy’s position.
Chip, knowing that something was happening, had looked up from the drawings but said nothing.
“Donni doesn’t have anything to do with this, and Hardy and Masters both know it,” Cassy shouted.
Ben put his hand over the phone’s mouthpiece. “I need a jet up to LaGuardia ASAP, and a chopper standing by to get me over to the Hudson Yard heliport.”
“You’ll need a car,” Faircloth said, as he made a call.
“Yes.”
“A driver?”
“No, but I’ll need a Beretta and a couple of mags.” The 9mm Beretta 92F was the old standard-issue military pistol. It wasn’t sophisticated, but it was reliable out to around ten feet, the range of most successful sidearm gun battles.
“On it,” Faircloth said.
Ben heard something that sounded like a car door opening, then Cassy’s voice, much calmer now.
“Where are you guys taking me?”
“We mean you no harm, Ms. Levin,” the man said. “Trust me.”
“You’re not cops,” Cassy said. “You’re goddamn Russians.”
“If you don’t start cooperating, I’ll have to hurt you. Do you understand this?”
“I understand that you’re kidnapping me. But why, for Christ’s sake? I don’t have any money.”
The sounds changed, and Ben realized that she was inside the car now.
“But if you guys are spies for the KGB or something, I don’t have the flash drive. I gave it to my boss.”
The Russian said nothing, but the car door was shut.
“You might as well let me go, and you can tell Butch Hardy for me that he’s a fucking idiot, and I quit as of right now.”
“Yeb vas! Det telefon!” Fuck off! The telephone! another man said.
“A car is coming to get you to Andrews,” Faircloth said. “A crew is scrambling a V-SP, it’s the best we can do on such short notice.” The aircraft was an older Gulfstream designated a C-37A/V that was used for VIP transport. Cruising at nearly five hundred miles per hour, the flight time to LaGuardia would be around a half hour, including takeoff and landing.
“Bastard!” Cassy shouted, and the signal from her phone ceased.