Taken
I snapped awake. I slowed my breathing and took stock of my surroundings without opening my eyes. I was on the ground in a sleeping bag on a backpacking trip with a group of boys. I listened to see if there was something out there that had caused my sudden alertness. I heard the chirp of crickets and the hum of other night insects. I smelled the remnants of the campfire from the night before. The boys had been tired, but they had also been glad they’d made it to the first camp. They hadn’t been thrilled about the meager dinner of jerky and dehydrated mashed potatoes, but they had been excited that they’d found the instructions for the next rendezvous point. They’d been even more energized when they’d read, “Find the fastest, most direct, but safest route to the main highway and wait to be picked up.” They’d searched their maps and actually consulted with each other on the best path out in the morning. JR had even deferred to Peng and Joey to make sure they hadn’t made the same mistakes as before. Eric had fantasized about spending two full days at Ron’s condo, playing in the pool and gorging himself on Easy Cheese and crackers.
The most direct way out looked to be over the top of a mountain. Following the main trail would take a lot longer but also looked much easier—and was probably a lot safer. The boys decided on a compromise between the two. They would follow a trail to where the contour lines on the map began to space out a bit and then hike over a pass and out to the main road. If the pass didn’t look safe, they could always revert back to the trail. Either way, it looked like we would be at Ron’s condo by tomorrow night.
I opened my eyes to slits. The light of dawn was just beginning to break through the trees. I’d slept restlessly the night before. For some reason, I kept worrying about Hope and Jin. I told myself that they were home in a warm, comfortable bed and they should be worrying about me, not the other way around. Still, something was bothering me.
I listened to the forest noises again. There was some scurrying in the underbrush, and a squirrel chattered in a faraway tree. Nothing that seemed out of place. Nothing that should have awoken me. Then I found it—the cause of my interrupted slumber. The alert was not coming from the outside but from within me. My stomach was turning over like a cold engine trying to start. Apparently the dehydrated potatoes and jerky didn’t agree with me. Or maybe it was a touch of altitude sickness. Either way, I needed to get into the woods, and I needed to get there fast.
I groaned and got up. Ron was sleeping a few yards away in what looked to be a professionally built shelter made from a piece of tarp. This was a man who carried his condo with him wherever he went. It didn’t matter the environment. Wherever he was, I was convinced Ron would be comfortable.
I rummaged inside the large pack, looking for toilet paper and a shovel to dig a cat hole, and came across something hard and plastic, but it wasn’t the shovel.
“Need to make a call?” Ron asked. His voice sounded fully awake. I wondered how he knew my hands had just come across the satellite phone. I also wondered why, deep inside of Ron’s pack, there was another holstered weapon. What did he expect to encounter out here in the woods? I wondered if he was really a paranoid maniac under his cool composure. I looked at him again. He was the picture of contentment. I decided I was probably the one being paranoid.
“I don’t need to make a call,” I said. “I need to answer one. Mother Nature is ringing, and she’s being pretty insistent.”
“The spade and paper are in the side pocket. The boys created a latrine area up behind those rocks a few hundred yards away.”
“If it’s all the same to you, I don’t think I want any part of the boys’ latrine area. I’m going to walk a ways and find my own private space.” I located the spade and paper exactly where Ron had said it would be. “I may be a while. Don’t leave without me.”
“Don’t get lost.”
I walked as deep into the trees as I could until I began to think that I really would get lost. Now that I was relieved of carrying a pack, the sounds of the mountains took me back to a time several years ago when I had run over twenty-five miles through the dark in a place not too far from here. It had been my experience with my ultrarunner terrorist roommate. But somehow the memory was still a fond one. I realized I had not been in the mountains much since then. Maybe it was time for me to start running again.
On the way back, I took my time, enjoying the sunlight filtering through the aspens and the feel of damp pine needles under my feet. I heard voices up ahead and thought that maybe I would skirt around the camp and come in from the back side. Ron was right. Peng had shown leadership the day before. I wanted to observe him this morning in his interactions with the group, and I wanted to do it without him seeing me.
As I crept up in a stand of pines behind the camp, some of the voices I heard were not familiar. A male voice was laughing, but nobody else seemed to be laughing with him. Needles began to rise up the back of my neck, and I wished I’d grabbed the weapon in Ron’s backpack instead of the latrine spade. Where was Ron in all of this?
I answered the question when I made a small slit through the pine boughs to see the scene in front of me. The man and the woman we had seen through the binoculars yesterday were standing in the middle of the boys’ campsite. They were both armed and pointing guns at the boys, who were my responsibility to protect. The tall, smiling man had a handgun sticking into Peng’s back, and the woman was holding a pistol next to Joey’s head. She looked like she really wanted to use it.
There were two other armed men in the camp. Both of them had guns leveled at Ron, who stood a few yards away with his hands in the air. Ron was wearing another loose shirt, this time a garishly colored Hawaiian one, which meant he probably still had his weapon tucked behind his waistband.
For some reason, I thought of how I would explain the situation to Hope in a “good news/bad news” fashion. First the bad news. You know those boys you told me to protect? Well, it looks like they’ve been kidnapped by well-trained militants with nasty-looking guns. Oh, and the good news? Well, the bad guys didn’t know the Scoutmaster was probably an ex-Delta Force operative trained to deal with exactly this type of situation. I’d been invited to attend Delta training exercises on one or two occasions, and if Ron was given the slightest opening, the four kidnappers would be on the ground in a matter of seconds. I guess the other piece of good news was that I was still free—and I had my latrine spade.
Whatever optimism I had was dashed in the next few moments.
“Search him,” the smiling man said.
The two other men carefully approached Ron. One of them, a huge man the size of a giant, covered him while the other man patted him down. He came away with the gun from the waistband, another small gun strapped to the ankle, and a wicked-looking knife that hung down Ron’s back.
“Wow, Brother K. You . . .” Eric was staring at Ron’s assortment of weapons. As Eric spoke, he seemed to catch himself and put his hands over his mouth as if to stop more words from coming out. He looked nervously at the smiling man.
“It’s okay, Easy. You and me are compadres. You can speak whenever you like.” He put his hand on Eric’s shoulder. At first Eric beamed, but his smile halted as he looked around at the guns pointed at his Scout troop.
The man turned his attention back to Ron. “So tell me, Brother K, where’s the other leader?”
“It’s just me,” Ron said. “The other leader went home. He was feeling ill.”
The punch caught Ron square in the stomach. He stepped back but didn’t go down. He was one tough dude. They had pulled his hands behind him and zip-tied them, but he still looked to be in control. At this moment, however, Delta Force or not, there wasn’t much he could do. The laughing man smiled and hit Ron again. This time Ron went to his knees.
“Your dad thinks he’s a tough guy.” The man was looking at Peng when he said it.
As I asked myself why these men would assault a group of Scouts in the mountains, the answer came as clearly as the stars had shone last night in the darkened sky: they were here because of me. My past was finally catching up to me. More than that, it was catching up to the innocents around me. It seemed as if Eric’s “Brother K” comment had made them think Ron was me. And Ron was more than willing to play along. But what would the boys do?
The smiling man picked up Ron’s knife, unsheathed it, and placed it against Peng’s cheek. “Our orders are to bring you and your son back alive. But alive doesn’t mean undamaged. I could carve a nice memento in his face if you want to play it that way.”
“We could waste the little fat one,” the woman said, putting the barrel of her gun closer to Joey’s forehead. “There’s nothing in the job that says we need to bring out all the brats.”
The man took the knife away from Peng’s cheek and looked at the woman with admiration. “Jillian doesn’t much like kids. And she’s right. We don’t need to bring out all these boys. Just you and your son. So why don’t you tell me where the other leader went before your Scout troop starts to get a little smaller.”
“He went to dig a latrine,” Ron said, his eyes focused firmly on Jillian. “And if you so much as lay a finger on any one of these boys, none of you will make it out of these mountains alive.” The words were calm, quiet, and utterly believable. I felt a chill run down my back, and I thought I saw the woman named Jillian ease up a bit on the trigger.
The tall man went back to Eric and put his hand on his shoulder again. “So. Easy. Why don’t you tell me about your other leader?”
Eric’s eyes widened as he looked back and forth between the man and Ron. He seemed torn but finally he started talking. Under pressure, Eric always started talking. I groaned inside. It wouldn’t be long before he gave up all our secrets.
“He’s just a teacher,” Eric said. “Kind of nerdy. Not very good with Scout skills. He probably got lost going to the bathroom.” Eric laughed nervously. He was going to say more, but the man interrupted.
“Thank you, Easy. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Thank you, indeed. Nothing he’d said was critical. If I could make it back to the satellite phone to call Zack . . . I looked back at Eric and groaned inside once again. The man had taken his hand off Eric’s shoulder and was turning away, but I could see by the look on Eric’s face that he wasn’t done babbling.
When Peng made the signal, I was surprised. I didn’t even think he knew what it was. JR was always the one who initiated things. But the signal was clear, three distinct coughs. After years of practice in Sunday School, Eric should know that it was now his job to create a scene—something to distract the adults in charge from what they were trying to do. But I wasn’t sure that Eric had recognized the signal in time. He’d already started talking again.
“But he’s not really—” Eric blurted out before he could stop himself.
The smiling man was turned away from Eric, but his head snapped back. “He’s not really what?”
At first I thought Eric would panic. But then I saw the look in his eye that I had seen a thousand times during class. He was good at distractions, and he knew it. It was maybe his greatest talent. He almost smiled.
“He’s not really good in the woods,” Eric finally said. “If we left right now, he probably won’t even be able to find his way out.” Eric’s eyes steadied, and he looked directly up at the tall man. “By the way, did you say you had Easy Cheese?”
The man patted Eric on the shoulder again and said, “I’ve got some in my pack. And because you’ve been such a good sport, maybe you can share some with me later.” He looked up, motioning to those with him. “Have the boys clean up their camp, and then let’s get ready to move out.”
Jillian was staring at Joey, a look of disgust on her face. “We’re just making it harder with the extra baggage.”
The man just shook his head and chuckled. “You’re going to make a great mom someday, Jillian.” Then his tone turned serious. “We’re taking them all with us. The last thing we need is the body of a dead kid calling attention to us.”
He turned his gaze back to Ron. “Look, Knight. This is nothing personal. We’re doing a job here.”
“And you do it so well,” Ron said. “Did they teach you how to terrorize little boys in ranger school?”
The man shook his head and chuckled again. “Nice try. But ranger school isn’t even the half of it. Look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. The easy way is that we all walk out of here and I deliver you to the client, who wants you and your boy alive, and that’s what they’re going to get.” He moved closer to Ron and looked down into his face. “But if you want to play the tough guy, if you want to mess with us and make our jobs more difficult, then I’m inclined to give Jillian what she wants. We could walk out of here a lot easier with fewer boys to attend to. I’m sure we could hide the bodies so they wouldn’t be found for weeks. It makes no difference to me. But you should also know that you and the boy are only half the package. A second crew is on their way to pick up your wife and little girl. So if you all want to meet up as one big, happy family, I suggest the best way will be to cooperate.”
My hand gripped the pine branch I was peering through, and I felt the rough bark and needles pierce into my palm. This wasn’t just a kidnapping in the mountains. They weren’t just taking Peng and me. They had Hope. They had Jin. Or they soon would if I didn’t do something to stop it. I needed to get to the satellite phone in Ron’s pack. I needed to warn them. I needed to act now. The situation here was dicey, but it didn’t seem to be deadly at the moment. Hope and Jin needed my help.
Besides, the boys had Ron to take care of them.
I scanned the scene in front of me, but I didn’t see Ron’s pack. It must still have been at our campsite. Maybe he’d heard a commotion with the boys and had come to investigate. Or maybe he’d just come to check on them before they started the day’s journey. Either way, apparently he hadn’t brought his pack with him.
I heard the smiling man say, “Woolhead, Tiny, go find the other leader. Catch up to us when you have him.”
“Why do we even need him?” one of the men said. “Like you say, he’s not part of the package. Wouldn’t it be better to just extract the man and his kid?”
“C’mon, Woolhead. You know the rules. We don’t leave anyone behind.”
“I thought that rule was only for us? In case one of us got into trouble?”
“It is, you idiot,” Jillian said. “Jackson is messing with you. He just doesn’t like to leave any loose ends.” The woman’s voice was monotone. Just listening to her made the skin on my neck prickle. A few minutes ago, she’d been holding a gun to Joey’s head. I had no doubt she wouldn’t have hesitated to pull the trigger.
“I thought we decided to use nicknames,” the man who I now knew was called Jackson said. He was still smiling, but there was no humor in his voice.
“Should have thought of that before you outed me a few minutes ago,” Jillian said. “But I don’t think it’s really going to matter.” Her tone made it clear to me exactly what she meant. Whether Peng and I were delivered to the client or not, she did not expect any of us to survive the ordeal, and she didn’t plan on leaving any witnesses.
“Maybe you’re right,” Jackson said, his tone softening a bit. “Sorry, I didn’t realize I said your name.”
“That’s because you treat this like a game. But I agree with you on one thing: we need to find the other leader. Tiny, Woolhead, you go take care of him like Jackson said, then catch up with us. We’re not waiting.”
“Take care of him like Jackson said, or like you would?” one of the men asked.
“You know who the boss is,” Jillian replied. But her tone was ambiguous. I began to back away from the tree. Not only was I about to have two thugs on my trail, but because they didn’t know my real identity, they might decide they wouldn’t want me along for the ride.
I needed to get to that phone before they did. And I needed to stay alive long enough to warn Hope.