Houston, Texas
Senator James Halsey had just gotten back to his home state on a private jet and was picked up at Hobby Airport by his close friend, lawyer and advisor, Brock Winthrop. They were driving now in a black Ford Expedition from the airport to the hospital where Jim’s father was taking a turn for the worse, the lawyer behind the wheel.
“Have you been in to see him?” Jim asked his friend.
Brock sighed. “Yes, I have. And I’ve never seen such a change in so short a time. He seemed almost like his old self before leaving DC. Nearly jubilant.”
Jim knew what was going on. “He was going home, Brock. Putting up a good front so we’d let him get back to Texas. Buck Halsey always said he wouldn’t be caught dead anywhere but his beloved home state. Literally.” Something else was bothering his old friend and confidant. “What’s up?”
Shaking his head, Brock said, “Your father is dying.”
“I know that much. Quit being our lawyer for a minute and tell me what’s really bothering you.”
Reluctantly, Brock said, “He had me change his will before we left DC.”
Jim had a feeling that was happening. And it didn’t matter one way or another to him. “How does that bother you?”
The lawyer shifted in his chair.
“Come on, Brock. Unless my father completely cut me out, how does this matter?”
“Well, it’s not that bad. But he did split the assets fifty/fifty between you and your sister.”
“Good. It’s not like college professors make that much money. I’m sure she could use it.” Whether she could or not, his sister Sara had never been concerned with money. Her only interests were in history and mathematics. That hadn’t changed since their youth.
Nearly simultaneously both of their phones went off, indicating incoming text messages. Jim looked at Brock and shrugged. Then he checked his phone. It was a text from Jake Adams.
“Check your phone,” Jim said.
Brock looked at his phone and his expression changed from concern to grave in seconds. “My God! He had her and now he doesn’t have her.”
“Let me call him,” Jim said. He punched in the number for Jake Adams and waited.
Finally the phone clicked on the other end and a man said, “Yeah.”
“Jake? This is Jim Halsey.”
“I know who it is,” Jake said. “I never forget a face or voice.”
“What’s going on?” the senator asked.
“Can you put it on speaker?” Brock asked.
Jim fiddled with his phone until it went to speaker.
“Who is that with you, senator?” Jake asked.
“It’s Brock Winthrop. You’re on speaker phone.”
“Great. Why not just broadcast this on FOX News.”
The senator ignored the slight and said, “Listen, we’re in Texas. My father is dying and we need to get Sara home before he dies.”
“I’m sorry about that, senator, but we’ve got a bit of a problem here in Italy. Armed men came and took her from us. There was a shoot out, but Sara, I believe, is all right.”
“What,” Brock chimed in. “She was kidnapped. How is she all right?”
Jim put his hand on his friend’s arm to settle him down. “We’re not questioning your competence,” Jim assured Jake.
“I sure as hell hope not,” Jake said. “Because I took a damn bullet in the gut, and we had to shoot four Sicilian Mafia men.”
“My God,” Jim said. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, the bullet went right through my external oblique muscle, missing the ribs and the pelvis.”
“Did you say Sicilian Mafia? I thought the Greeks were after Sara.”
“They were here also. They took Sara and left the others to kill me and my friend here.”
“I’m sorry. Is your friend all right?”
“Yeah, senator, she’s fine. But you know what the Sicilians do to someone who kills their own?” Jake hesitated. “They hunt you down like a dog until they find you. Then if you’re lucky they just kill you. If you aren’t lucky, they keep you alive for awhile to make your last hours on earth a living hell.” He gave out a little wince.
“You all right?”
“Yeah, I twisted and it hurt a little. You ever been shot senator?”
“No, can’t say I have.”
“It’s not as painful as getting kicked in the nuts, but the pain lasts longer. I gotta go. Losing cell service.”
“Wait. Where do you think the Greeks took Sara?”
Hesitation. “I’d rather not say. But I have a feeling. I’ll let you know when I get her back.”
The line went blank.
Brock Winthrop turned the vehicle from the frontage road into the private hospital parking lot and pulled up to a VIP parking spot. “That man is the most arrogant man I’ve ever met.”
The senator laughed. “I guess you haven’t spent that much time on Capitol Hill.” He knew this wasn’t really true.
“You know what I mean. The man is a gunslinger.”
“Exactly. And that’s precisely who I want on my side under these circumstances.”
“Do you really think he knows where to find Sara?”
“If he says he knows, I’ve gotta believe him. You’ve seen the man’s credentials. I mean, come on. If he can take down an entire Kurdish terrorist group, he can surely handle a Greek kidnapping. Now, let’s go see if Buck Halsey is upstairs smoking a cigar.”
Jim was putting up a good front, but deep down his concern for his sister was coursing through every corpuscle in his body. Soon she would be all he had on this earth. Besides his wife, of course.
●
The Navy SH-60 Seahawk cruised over the Mediterranean Sea south of the island of Sicily at 60 knots, the bank of clouds ahead becoming more ominous with each turn of the rotors. Lieutenant Max Stevens piped through a medley of Rascal Flatts tunes through the headset, and Toni was just about ready to have him switch to something a little more edgy. She liked the country music group, but too much of a good thing could get monotonous.
“You all right, Toni?” the pilot asked as the helo shook with the wind. They looked to be heading right into a huge thunderstorm.
“Are you sure we can make it through that?” she asked.
“No problemo,” Max said. “Before I joined the Navy, I used to fly roughnecks to oil rigs in the Gulf. Now those were some crazy times.”
Toni glanced behind her into the troop transport area of the Seahawk and noticed the two sailors appeared to be sleeping through the turbulence, their submachine guns cradled over their laps.
“How much farther?” Toni asked the pilot.
“Just ahead.” He aimed the nose down and they broke free from some cloud cover.
She finally saw the large yacht ahead. Jesus, it looked as big as a coast guard cutter. Bigger, perhaps. The yacht rocked in the heavy seas but seemed to be having no problem cutting the waves.
“We can’t land on that, Toni,” Max said. “You’ll have to go down in a harness. You ever do that before.”
She nodded her head. “Unfortunately.”
“Good. Then head back and the guys will strap you in.”
Toni got up to go and tapped the pilot on the shoulder. “Thanks for the ride, Max.”
“Any time. But next time schedule a little better weather.”
Moving into the back, the two sailors had heard the pilot and were preparing the harness. She stepped into it and they tightened it all around her. Then they clicked the harness to the cable and gave her a thumbs up. She smiled at them.
One of the sailors said, “When you hit the deck, make sure you bend your legs and release the cable immediately. Otherwise with the pitching deck and our helo popping up and down in the wind, you could break a leg.”
“Understand,” Toni said. This wasn’t her first time dropping down from a helo, but it was the first time under these conditions to a pitching deck.
Seconds later and she was on her way over the side, the cable reeling down and the wind whipping her body around in circles. Simultaneously the Seahawk descended until it reached a respectable distance above the yacht, its massive rotors keeping pace with the boat. She hoped like hell her Agency had properly coordinated her visit. Otherwise who knew what kind of reception she would get.
As she got closer to the helo pad in the aft of the yacht, her goggles completely blurry with rain and fog, she kept her right hand at the release clip ready to hit the deck.
Then for some reason she jerked upward and then quickly downward, bouncing her off the deck, her arms instinctively flaying out to grasp anything. Big mistake. Pain shot through her right leg and to her left shoulder, which had taken the majority of the crash.
Laying on the deck, she looked up and saw the Seahawk closing in on her. If she didn’t move it might crash into her. But instead she clicked out of the cable and shoved both arms up into the air, her thumbs giving the signal she was free.
With that, the pilot twisted his aircraft to the north and pulled up toward the sky, the cable whipping behind it like a long tail.
Toni immediately felt the swaying of the yacht in the heavy seas, the wind and rain pelting her into submission. Within seconds two men were at either side of her helping her to her feet. But she couldn’t place any weight onto her right leg. Her ankle was shot. But the men practically carried her toward a door, their progress hampered by the rocking deck.
Inside, the atmosphere changed from the drastic to the dramatically opulent. Leather benches lined one wall and matching plush white leather chairs sat across from those. At the far end was a bar, which seemed to be locked down now so the bottles wouldn’t go flying around.
She sat onto a bench and removed her helmet, goggles and then slipped out of the nylon harness. Then she removed her small backpack, and set it on the bench next to her.
An older man appeared from another room and she recognized Petros Caras from his Agency file. “That was quite a dramatic entrance,” he said, with only a slight British accent.
Toni rubbed her ankle lightly, but she could barely touch it without extreme pain. This wasn’t good. “I’m afraid I’ve broken my ankle.”
“I’m so sorry Miss Contardo,” the Greek said.
“Toni, please.”
“Toni. I don’t have a doctor aboard, but I do have a man who was a medic in the Greek army. He can at least put that ankle in a walking cast.”
She nodded. “That would be great.”
Petros Caras turned to his two men and said something to them in Greek. Then he switched back to Toni. “They will take you to a compartment and I’ll have our man come to you with his medical equipment. Once he’s done, they’ll bring you to me and we can take care of our business.”
One of the men went to pick up her backpack and Toni grasped it before he could. She slung it over her shoulder and took the man’s arm to help her up. “Thanks,” she said.
“These men don’t speak English,” the Greek billionaire said. “Our medic speaks only a little English.”
She nodded and the two men helped her to her room. When they set her onto the bed, she glanced around the compartment, which looked like a high-end room on a cruise ship.
Once the men were gone, she opened her backpack and found her satellite phone. She tried to turn it on, but it wouldn’t fire up. Then she shook the phone and heard something rattling around inside. Great. That’s what had broken her fall when she smashed the deck against her shoulder. She still had her cell phone, but, as she suspected, there was no service. Then she found both of her guns and made sure they were still all right. No problem. She shoved the guns back into the pack when she heard a slight knock on her door.
“Come in,” she said.
The man who came in was an extremely handsome Greek with dark hair and a short beard trimmed along a strong chiseled jaw. He couldn’t have been more than thirty-years-old and might have had another career as a model. He carried a large bag and set it on the deck next to the bed. If she had to have someone work on her body, this man would do nicely, she thought.
“You speak English?” Toni asked.
“A little.”
“Parlate italiano?” She knew that a lot of Greeks also spoke Italian.
“Si,”
So the two of them spoke Italian as this man took off her boot and sock and examined her ankle with a gentle touch. He seemed very concerned.
“I believe it is broken,” he said in Italian.
“Hey, at least the bone isn’t sticking out. Do you have casting material?”
“Yes, but the swelling is too great right now. We will have to put a temporary cast on it for now. Then if you are still with us, I will cast it.”
She was only supposed to be aboard the yacht until they got into port in Siracusa. She could wait for the cast until then. “I can wait on the cast. But do you have anything for the pain?”
“Si.” He pulled out a bottle of pills with no indication of what they were and gave her two. Then he went to a small refrigerator and found a bottle of water for her.
“What are these?” she asked.
He said something in Greek and then smiled. Then he tried to figure out the term in Italian but it wasn’t coming to him. He finally settled on English and said, “Tylenol with codeine.”
“Nice.” She could live with that.
First he placed some ice around her ankle to bring down the swelling. While they waited they talked about many different things. Toni was able to ask without seeming to interrogate, but she knew she would get much more straight information from this man by just making small talk. He told her everywhere they had gone in the past month. When it seemed to him that she might be flirting with him, he told Toni he was gay. She said that was too bad and smiled at him, even though he was almost young enough to be her son. Before this gorgeous young Greek left her cabin, he wiped down the cold, wet ankle and then put it into a walking cast. He said he would bring her some crutches later, but she should lay down with her leg up for a while first.
Alone in her bed, she lay now and thought about how she wanted to approach this Greek billionaire. He was obviously used to doing things his own way, getting whatever his money could buy. But the Agency had made him and he needed to remember this. Damn, she hated having to clean up messes from before her time.