Hostage (37 page)

Connor had no idea whether anyone would spot
his discreet hand signs or even recognize them as signals. But the act itself afforded
him a small sense of control over their situation. And this helped fend off his feelings
of powerlessness.

After the video recording, their captors
escorted them back to their cell and locked the door once more. Alicia, who’d
fought so hard to hold back the tears, collapsed on the threadbare mattress and sobbed
her heart out. Connor sat down beside her, put his arm round her shoulders and let her
cry.

During Hostage Survival class, Colonel Black
had told them they would need to control their emotions, stay calm and keep a level
head.

Easier said than done
, thought
Connor, glancing at Alicia and then around their tiny prison cell. If he didn’t
have Alicia to protect and look after, he’d probably be falling apart himself.

At the time, the colonel’s advice had
seemed somewhat hypothetical. Being kidnapped was a situation that would
never
occur – or so Connor had believed. But now he and
Alicia were held hostage he had to deal with it.

He tried to recall the other vital pieces of
advice Colonel Black had given them.

Don’t offer resistance … Say as little as possible if questioned … try to stay
fit and healthy … keep your mind active … set goals … plan on a long captivity to
stave off disappointment and depression … and, most important of all, maintain the
will to survive.

Colonel Black had reiterated this last
point. Despite all temptation to cave in and succumb to despair, it was essential to
believe the situation would come to a positive end eventually. Sustaining hope was the
key to survival.

‘Don’t worry, Alicia, we
will
get home,’ said Connor.

Alicia sniffed and looked up at him with
eyes red from crying. ‘How … can you be so sure?’

‘We’re worth more alive than
dead to our captors. They’ll need to prove we’re unharmed to get what they
want.’

Alicia nodded, seeing the sense in his
words. ‘You’re right. It’s just that knife and the filming were all
too much for me.’

‘I understand,’ said Connor,
shuddering himself at the thought of the leader’s vicious blade. ‘But we
need to appear strong to these terrorists. We can’t let them think they’ve
beaten us.’

Alicia sat up and composed herself, tying
back her hair and wiping her eyes dry.

‘I won’t give them that
satisfaction,’ she said, the steel in her voice returning.

‘That’s more like the Alicia I
know,’ said Connor, smiling.

She returned his smile but struggled to
maintain it. ‘I just can’t help thinking about my parents. They’ll be
beside themselves with worry.’

‘True,’ said Connor, his own
thoughts going to his mother and gran. If they’d seen the broadcast, they could be
utterly devastated too – and they would have the shock of discovering his double life.
‘But just keep in mind your father will be doing everything in his power to
negotiate our release.’

‘The United States Government does
not
negotiate with terrorists,’ declared Jennifer Walker, the US
Secretary of State, who sat opposite President Mendez at the conference table. She wore
a dark green business suit, her auburn hair cut short and her face, icy hard at the best
of times, was fixed in a fiercely determined expression.

‘But we’re talking about my
daughter here!’ implored President Mendez.

Jennifer’s gaze softened a little.
‘I’m wholly aware of that, Antonio. And I’m deeply sorry for your
predicament. But you know full well our position on such matters.’

The President sank back into his chair and
nodded with great reluctance. He realized he was no longer acting like the
commander-in-chief. In truth, he was a father out of his mind with worry because his
little girl was in some grim basement with a gun at her head. And he would do
anything
to bring her home.

‘Can’t we even offer them
money?’ suggested the First Lady, wringing her hands in desperation.

‘We could try via an intermediary, but
that’s not what they’re seeking,’ said Karen.

‘Karen’s right,’ concurred
Dirk. ‘If it was only money the terrorists wanted, they’d have selected an
easier, less prominent target.’

‘Surely every terrorist has a
price.’ The First Lady looked hopefully round the table for agreement.

Omar shook his head. ‘The
Brotherhood’s motives are purely political. We’re dealing here with
fanatics, willing to kill or be killed for their cause.’

The harsh reality of the lengths the
terrorists would go to numbed the First Lady into silence.

George stepped in. ‘Then we have to
open a dialogue with this group and stall for time to allow our forces the best chance
to trace their hideout. As our initial response, we could ask for the names of the
prisoners the terrorists want released and what proof they need.’

There was some consensus round the
conference table at this.

‘Perhaps even release some of them in
return for Connor,’ he continued. ‘The handover might give us vital
information on Alicia’s location.’

‘That’s too steep a price to
pay,’ argued General Shaw. ‘We’re talking about men directly
responsible for 9/11 and hundreds of dangerous terrorists that our forces have
sacrificed their lives to capture. We simply can’t contemplate freeing them to
wreak more devastation on our nation.’

‘As much as I want Connor back, I
agree with the general,’ said Colonel Black. ‘And, given their meticulous
planning, they’ll avoid any links to their hideout in such a
handover.’

‘But when this goes public the
pressure from the media and the American people to get Alicia back will be
overwhelming,’ noted the press secretary. ‘We might have no choice
but
to negotiate.’

‘Absolutely not!’ countered
Jennifer. ‘If we bow to one terrorist organization, we’ll open the
floodgates and never be able to close them again. We can’t allow terrorism to
dictate our foreign policy.’

‘You’re right, Jennifer,’
sighed President Mendez. ‘Besides, it’s inconceivable to withdraw our troops
from the Middle East. The delicate balance of nations would likely crumble into a
full-blown war.’

‘So, you’re just going to
sacrifice our daughter?’ said the First Lady, staring at her husband in
disbelief.

‘No. We’ll find another way to
get her back.’ He took her hand and squeezed it reassuringly. ‘I promise
you.’

Colonel Black glanced up at the clock on the
wall and coughed for attention. ‘Then we’ve got less than seventy-two hours
to find them.’

‘Connor’s in
serious
trouble,’ said Amir, staring in disbelief at the overhead flatscreen monitor in
the Buddyguard operations room. Colonel Black had forwarded the ransom video via a
secure satellite link and Alpha team had viewed it in shocked silence. Charley, Marc and
Ling all wore the same distraught expressions, struggling to come to terms with
Connor’s dire situation.

‘Let’s just pray the terrorists
don’t discover who he
really
is,’ remarked Bugsy, scrunching up his
last packet of chewing gum in frustrated anger and tossing it in the bin.

‘Why? What difference would that
make?’ asked Ling.

‘He’d become a threat to
them,’ explained their surveillance tutor, his tone grave. ‘It’s rare
for a bodyguard to be kidnapped alongside their Principal. They’re normally killed
straight away.’

Amir exchanged an uneasy look with
Charley.

‘Then we had better find them
fast
,’ said Charley, wheeling herself over to her workstation.
‘Bugsy, how can we trace the source of the email?’

The tutor pursed his lips thoughtfully.
‘You can try stripping the header info for the original sender’s IP address,
then run a reverse DNS lookup,’ he suggested. ‘There’s a geo-location
tool on our system that’ll track down the ISP and provide us with a geographical
area that the IP is
believed
to be used in.’

‘You don’t seem very
certain,’ remarked Ling as Charley hammered away on her keyboard.

‘Such a trail can be easily
spoofed,’ admitted Bugsy. ‘The IP address might be that of an innocent
person or organization who’s had it hijacked by the terrorists. And I’ve no
doubt they’ve used a server relay to bounce the signal around the
world.’

‘You’re right,’ said
Charley, slumping back in her chair. ‘The trail dead-ends at a legitimate book
publishers in London.’

‘Hang on a minute,’ said Bugsy,
hurrying over to his terminal, a sly grin detectable on his lips. ‘I do have a
beta program that might be able to trace the ghost image left behind by the real server.
It’ll take a bit of time, though.’

While Bugsy ran the tracer application,
Charley organized the rest of the team.

‘Ling, I need you to check the CCTV
camera footage around the Jefferson Memorial – before, during and after the ambush. We
might pick up some clues – a face or a vehicle reg. Marc, Colonel Black says they found
the dead Secret Service agent in a disused hangar near Stafford Airport. Execute a
digital sweep of the surveillance satellites we have access to and find out if any were
over the vicinity
at the time. Amir, I’ll need your help
analysing the ransom video. Scan its audio track for background noise, accents, anything
that might indicate the location of the terrorist’s hideout.’

Amir sat down at the terminal next to her
and logged on. ‘But won’t Secret Service be doing all of this anyway?’
he questioned.

‘Of course, but locating Connor and
Alicia will be like hunting for a needle in a haystack,’ replied Charley,
expanding the video to fullscreen and searching for visual leads. ‘There’s
every chance they might miss a vital clue. So the more eyes, the better.’

At least two days had passed … or so Connor
thought. It was difficult to judge the time, trapped in a windowless cell where the
light was never switched off. He and Alicia slept fitfully, a razor edge of fear and
uncertainty making it impossible to rest for long. Every so often the door to their cell
would be flung open and they’d tense in anticipation of what was to come:
humiliation … torture … death … or possibly freedom?

But any such thoughts of release were
quashed each time the shrouded face of one of their captors appeared. Armed with a gun,
he’d bring in a small tray of food: some flatbread, a thin stew and more water,
but no cutlery, nothing that could be used as a weapon. Connor would make an attempt at
conversation, hoping to find out what was going on. He recalled Colonel Black saying it
was important to build a rapport with any hostage-taker –
by winning their respect,
this reduces their inclination to hurt their victims
. But their captor would
say nothing and answer no questions. Just set down the plate and leave. Whether he
didn’t understand English or purposefully
ignored him, the lack
of information was almost as torturous as their confinement.