“Yeah, they got the location of the storage unit out of him,” Dave said.
O’Brien’s cell rang. He looked at the number. “It’s Jason!”
“Put it on speaker.” Hunter said.
O’Brien hit the speaker button. “Jason ….”
“Sean! They’re holding me!”
“Where are you?”
“At an undisclosed location,” Yuri Volkow said.
“Who is this?” O’Brien demanded.
“I’m the man who can slit Jason’s throat. Are you near a computer, O’Brien?”
“Yes.”
“Very good. Go to Anonev.com. I will spell it for you. A…n…o…n…e…v.”
O’Brien typed in the address and an image of Jason sitting in a chair appeared. A man, only visible from the chest down, held a knife to Jason’s throat.
“Jas-” began Nick as O’Brien raised his hand for silence.
The others crowded around the screen. O’Brien held up one hand to make sure no one spoke. He said to Volkow, “Don’t hurt him. He’s a kid-not even twenty.”
“My father was only twenty-five when your people killed him.”
“I’m sorry to hear that … what were the circumstances?”
“Similar to what we have in the world today. The cold war never ended. It will never thaw as long as your country continues its world meddling.”
“Who is this?” O’Brien asked.
“How much do you want to see Jason live?” Volkow pulled Jason’s head back with one hand, placed a knife against his neck. “His carotid artery is less than one inch from the blade.” Then he began cutting.
“Oh dear God …,” Lauren whispered.
“Wait!” shouted O’Brien.
Jason screamed, his body visibly trembling. Volkow held the knife, and blood trickled down Jason’s neck, looking into the camera, tears spilling from his eyes.
“What do you want?” O’Brien asked.
“I want the rest of the cargo. It is rightfully ours. There are other canisters. We know this. You have forty- eight hours from now to deliver them to a destination I choose. If you do not, the next time you see Jason, you will watch him die. You cannot find him, but we can find you. All GPS and tracking devices on his mobile have been deactivated. But you can leave a text message to communicate. The clock starts right now.”
The screen faded to black.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Lauren Miles said, “Ron, I don’t care what that asshole says about deactivating Jason’s phone. Let’s see if we can triangulate a location from a cell tower. Maybe we’ll get something. I’ll call Mike Gates. We’ll see if the cyber team can get a trace from this computer to that website. Maybe there’s something there that will give us a location, lead us to Jason. They’ve got to be within a few miles of us. But where?”
Agent Bridges said, “The unsub’s voice. Did anybody notice the slightest hint of an accent? German? Russian, maybe? Didn’t sound Middle Eastern.”
“Not much of an accent,” said Paul Thompson. “Could be some German.”
O’Brien watched Eric Hunter as his eyes darted from Lauren to Thompson. Hunter said, “His hands, large, light skin. Very non-Middle Eastern in appearance.”
“I noticed that,” Lauren said. “Like the unsub had Scandinavian or German stock.
“He wasn’t Greek,” chimed in Nick. “And what the hell’s an unsub?”
“Unknown subject,” Dave said. “A frequently used FBI term.”
O’Brien shook his head. “It’s what the guy holding Jason said that might be our biggest clue. He said, ‘my father was only twenty-five when your people killed him,’ and he added, ‘It is rightfully ours … the rest of the cargo.’ If his father was twenty-five when he died, where did he die? How’d he die, and when did it happen? What was, or is, ‘rightfully ours?’ By ours, does he mean a country, a group of people, or is he talking about himself, like a claim on a property inheritance?”
“All good questions,” Dave Collins said.
“Yes,” added Lauren, “and right now we don’t have any of the answers.”
“Maybe some are outside,” O’Brien said. “Let’s take a look.”
“Wait a minute,” protested Thompson. “We have plenty of expertise here. We don’t need or want your assistance. Take your friends and go back to the marina.”
O’Brien ignored Thompson and started for the parking lot. He walked to the spot under the tree where the kidnapper’s van had been parked. He knelt down a few feet from the trunk of the tree and looked at the soil, his fingers touching a small dark spot about the size of a half dollar. He smelled the stained grains of sand.
The others approached, Paul Thompson visibly angry. “Go home, O’Brien.”
Thompson looked at Lauren. She said, “Sean, we can take it from here.”
Thompson said, “There’s no shoe or tire print. That’s enough, leave.”
“The stain is transmission fluid,” O’Brien said. “Their van probably has a leak. Maybe the lab can match the chemical analysis of this fluid with the van, if we find it-”
“We will find it,” Thompson said. “But we-”
“We’ll get forensics back out here,” Lauren said, dialing her cell. “Ron, stay here until they arrive. We’ll head back to the federal building.”
As the others started for Dave’s SUV, Eric Hunter walked to his truck. O’Brien pulled Dave aside and asked, “Who’s Hunter?”
“What do you mean?”
“Dave, I saw him recognize you. What nailed it for me was when you looked the other way. Who is he?”
Dave watched Hunter get in his truck and leave. “I can’t get into who he is. Suffice to say he’s deep undercover. Let’s just leave it at that, Sean, all right?”
“No. Hell, no, it’s not all right. A kid we both know has less than forty-eight hours to live. His girlfriend is dead. A storage manager is dead. Two men in a boat at sea chasing us are blown to hell out of the water. And, today, two guys were tailing Nick and me before I found the U-235 missing. I don’t think they were the hostiles who kidnapped Jason. I need to know who Hunter is and what’s going on.”
“Eric Hunter is one of the Agency’s best field agents. I don’t know what he’s involved in or how deep the layers are.”
“Then who’s this Paul Thompson?”
“He’s with the Agency, liaises between Homeland and the FBI.”
“And he has no clue who Hunter is, come on, or is all that a charade?”
“I doubt he knows what I’ve told you, if that.”
“But you can’t ask because there are only so many lies that a human brain is capable of processing before plausible denial doesn’t work. And the CIA is the best at this kind of-”
“Look, Sean-”
“I think Hunter tipped the media, maybe called the reporter Susan Schulman that day we found the U-boat and the cargo. Jason had called Hunter, a man Maggie, Jason’s mom, says she doesn’t know. I saw the number on Jason’s cell. Hunter knew we were bringing the boat back after the find. Maybe he contacted the Coast Guard. Maybe he had the boat blown up when we went back there and got the HEU.
“Remember, I’d radioed you guys that day you found it. You were on the bottom exploring the sub and Jason answered the radio. Coast Guard could have heard that.”
“How’d Hunter get here so fast?”
“He’s been here. Working undercover in Florida. This is a hotspot for hostiles. We saw that with 911. I do know he’d been part of the investigation that brought charges against Awwab Bakir.”
