The Hostage (23 page)

“Because you’ll never go away. If you people don’t understand me, I’ll give you a chance to, and then, maybe, you’ll go away and leave me alone.”

“You serious?” Hank lowered his weapon again.

Sarah nodded.

“Rod told me to be careful, that you never bluff. I was instructed to take you at your word, even if I find it dangerous.” He started walking and said over his shoulder, “Follow me.”

Sarah kept close. “What’s going to happen to Drake?”

“Nothing. We aren’t concerned in filing petty charges when a man wants to protect his woman. My men are prepared for violence. Drake got the better of us.”

“Some of your men were really hurt back there,” Sarah said, her tone one of disbelief.

“How secret do you think my organization would be if we legally pursued infractions on my men? Sitting in court, trying to explain our presence there and what caused Drake, or you, to attack us. We run things behind a veil, and that means everything.”

Hank approached a black H2 Hummer. A driver hopped out and opened the back door. Hank motioned for Sarah to get in.

She turned to look at the restaurant.

Sorry, Drake. I promise we’ll have dinner again soon.

The back seat of the Hummer was a virtual prison. The doors were thick and bars separated the front from the back. The driver must have driven a Hummer since he was a child the way he handled the wheel.

At first she couldn’t tell where they were headed, but figured the airport soon enough. After fifteen minutes, Sarah recognized the fence surrounding the airport. The driver pulled up to a guarded entrance and was waved through. Seconds later, the driver stopped beside a Lear jet.

“This is it,” Hank said. He turned in his seat to address Sarah. “Are we going to have a problem?”

“No.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

The door beside her clicked. She got out and walked up the steps into the airplane.

After taking a seat halfway down, she asked, “Where are we flying to?”

Hank had stepped in behind her and was talking to the pilots. He stopped talking and turned to her. “To a unique facility where we will talk. That’s it. You tell me what you do and how you do it.” He stepped closer and sat in a chair opposite hers. “I’ll need a demonstration. Then we’ll talk again. If what you do serves our aims, we will discuss the future. If it doesn’t, I’ll have these pilots fly you wherever you want to go and you’ll never hear from the Sophia Project again. Sound good to you?”

“I want to get this over with more than you, I’m sure. Also, I’m confident that what I do will be of no use to you.”

“How so?”

“Because my sister only gives me details that fit a specific situation. Like the news anchor woman five years ago. I was told to bring a hammer and wait under the bridge. Once I saw the car accident, I did what any other human being would do. I ran for the woman drowning in her car and tried to get in. Because I had a hammer, I was able to break the window and save the woman. That’s it. What I do will not solve wars or tell you where hidden nukes are. If this is a way to add me to the payroll of the war machine, you have the wrong girl. Trust me.”

Hank seemed to hear her. He appeared to digest what she’d said as he formulated a response.

The engines revved and the plane advanced forward. Sarah closed her eyes and waited until they took off before she opened them again.

“You’re missing one thing,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“You said it’s Vivian who gives you these messages, right?”

Sarah nodded.

“Would it be safe to assume that even though what you do is dangerous, Vivian would never knowingly send you into a situation where you would outright die? Evidently, since you’re sitting here before me, living, breathing, I already know the answer to that question.”

“Where are you going with this?”

“Vivian loves you. She adores you.”

“Agreed. Your point?”

“She would never let anything happen to you.”

“You’ve stated that. Stop going in circles.”

“Meaning, I could threaten to harm you, or even harm you on purpose and Vivian would start producing.” He turned in his seat to talk face-to-face with her. “Do you see where I’m going with this? I could force her hand. I could make her talk through you and tell me what I want to know once I have you hooked up to an electric chair where, depending on the voltage, I could cause you great harm, or even kill you if she didn’t comply.”

A rush of anger surged inside Sarah as she struggled to keep it under control. Her foot twitched with an overwhelming desire to kick the mouth that just threatened her.

“See, that’s where you’re wrong,” she said. “I would probably kill you first and Vivian would rather see me dead. Then we could be together on the Other Side. You have to be careful. Pick your battles wisely and monitor what you say to me. We need to be able to get along because I don’t see how this’ll work if you’re dead.”

There was a moment of silence. “Point taken,” Hank said and turned away from her.

She’d committed to see this thing through, so she sat back and avoided belting Hank upside the face. When the time came, she would and she’d enjoy it immensely.

She fell into a light sleep, snapping awake as the jet began its descent.

“You going to tell me where we are yet?”

“You’ll see. Relax and enjoy the ride.”

In the darkness outside her window, nothing was recognizable. Based on the lights, they were landing just outside a small city.

The plane touched down and taxied to a stop. As they left the plane and walked toward a lighted stairwell a hundred meters away, Sarah talked to Vivian in her head. She told her that, more than ever she would need her to perform as if they were at a circus. She’d had too many years of violence and too many years of running to have the men surrounding her win. It was Sarah’s time. Vivian had put her there and now Vivian had to get her out.

Vivian, you have to bring an end to this chapter in my life. Help me get these men off my back forever.

The stairwell led down into a tunnel which went on as far as she could see. Intermittent lights were wired along both sides of the tunnel. Hank led the way and six armed men fell in behind them as they started down the tunnel.

“Where is this?” Sarah asked.

“You’re in a city called North Bay,” Hank said. “We’re in Northern Ontario.”

“We didn’t fly to the states? I’m surprised.”

“You won’t be when you see this facility.”

“Why? What’s so special about this facility?”

Hank turned around and walked backward. “Have you ever heard of NORAD?”

“I’ve heard the name but I’m not sure what it stands for.”

“North American Aerospace Defense Command. They built this place in the early sixties. It’s sixty stories beneath the surface, about six hundred feet.”

“Why are we here?”

“Because it’s empty,” Hank said and turned back around.

“I’m not following you.” The tunnel didn’t seem to be ending anytime soon.

“This tunnel is the north entrance which is about 6500 meters long. The south, or city entrance, is shorter. Then we go down to the main complex. This place was built to take a direct hit from a bomb 267 times more powerful than the one that hit Hiroshima.”

“If it’s that deep, what about earthquakes?”

“The three-story main building inside was built off the ground on specially designed pillars. North Bay was hit with a 5.2 on the Richter Scale over ten years ago and no one in the building felt a thing. You have nothing to worry about.”

“Why is it empty?” Sarah asked.

“They moved the headquarters to Winnipeg. Since late 2006, the complex has remained empty. The power cavern heats and ventilates the complex to avoid decay. My organization borrows it from time to time. You know, the Americans paid over half to have this thing built, and many Americans were brought up to work and train here for dozens of years. It’s almost our property, so I use it as often as I need.”

“Lucky you.”

They made it to an elevator. Hank swiped a card. The men following them created a semicircle around Sarah and maintained a five-foot distance.

“No, lucky you.”

“Why me?” she asked. “What’s this big rock got to do with me?”

“I want to see if Vivian will come to you sixty stories down. I want to see how psychic you are. And what better place to do it but where you have no hope of escape.”

She watched his chiseled face and his built body under the suit jacket, and wondered how often he worked out to create such a look.

“What makes you think I can’t just walk away right now?”

“These friends of mine wouldn’t allow that.”

The elevator door opened. Sarah looked inside and for the first time realized that she may not be coming back up.

She stepped on and considered trying to get away, but then dismissed the idea as soon as it developed. She had come here for a reason. Witnesses saw Hank come for her. Drake and Parkman would be relentless if she didn’t show up in a few days. Somehow, someway, Sarah would be coming up the elevator again.

The doors closed. She couldn’t help but feel trapped.

“Oh, and, the other reason there will be no escape is we have special doors on the facility downstairs.”

“Special doors?”

“As an added measure of security and the possibility of a nuclear strike, the builders added three nineteen-ton steel vault-type doors to the entrance downstairs. Nothing gets through them. Not even you, Sarah, not even you.”

“You know what you remind me of?”

Hank turned to face her. He smiled. “Okay, I’ll bite. What?”

“A priest writing a sermon on humility and then filing it away to be pulled out at a special event where you could impress a lot of people.”

He frowned and looked at the men standing at his sides. “What? A priest?”

“Never mind.”

The elevator stopped and the doors opened to a huge corridor.

They stepped out as a group. The men guided Sarah to a room. She entered it and they closed the door behind her.

Without another word, Hank and his men left her there, alone, to wait until they decided the waiting would end.

I am so sick and tired of being held against my will. This is going be the last time.

She looked in every corner of the empty room. On the floor in the middle of the room sat a thick pad of lined of paper and three pens. Other than that, the square room was empty.

Sarah walked over to the pad, grabbed a pen and lay down on the floor. A moment later she was unconscious.

When she woke up, the pad was littered with words scrawled out in her handwriting.

Sarah got up and crawled to the wall where she leaned her back against it. After all the years together, her sister had never abandoned her. She had come through for her.

The first page read:

Sarah. Our connection runs deep. I’m committed to getting you out of there. Hank’s wife. In six days she’s going to be killed by a random mugging in the Eaton Center, downtown Toronto. But you can’t tell Hank yet.

Sarah flipped the page and continued reading.

I will send you five days of accidents and together we’ll save a couple lives. You will be able to prove to Hank that you only do good things. When he wants a message of anything specific, you will come up empty. He will be frustrated, but he’ll believe in you by then. He will have too much proof. Then you tell him about his wife and explain that only you can attend to the mugging. That will be the deal.

Sarah flipped to the next page.

Rod Howley will learn of your incarceration in two days. He will be the one who devises the plan against Hank’s wife to get you out. He won’t kill her, he is only threatening her. The morning of the mugging, Rod Howley will call Hank and order your release. Hank will already know about the mugging because of you. He will put it all together. If he doesn’t bring you, he loses his wife. He will also learn that you weren’t bluffing and understand the gravity of the situation. He will feel you’re more an ally than Rod. His downfall will be putting his trust in you.

Sarah flipped to the last page.

Hank has already killed seven others down here that didn’t prove to be psychic. At least not in the way he needed them to be. Hank is preparing the cyanide that will kill you as we speak. There’s nothing that can stop him. If you and Rod don’t successfully get you out of this underground complex, you will be murdered in seven days by Hank Frommer and he will file you as a missing persons.