Sears and a squad of five hard-core protectors from the EXECPROTEK roster were grouped near the footbridge under a cypress free hung with Spanish moss. Winds blew, ruffling the dank black canal waters, agitating the free branches.
Sears reflected sourly that the kidnappers had chosen their site well. The footbridge was too narrow to allow the passage of a motor vehicle, thwarting any possible pursuit from that direction. The tract of deserted houses was set far enough back from the canal to leave a belt of open ground between it and the footbridge, forestalling a buildup of backup forces for an ambush or counterattack.
Presumably the kidnappers were somewhere on the east bank, but if so, Sears was damned if he could tell where they were; the area seemed deserted.
He stared at his cell phone with irritation. He couldn't call the kidnap gang chief, he could only wait for the kidnap gang chief to call him. He'd had a devil of a time keeping the all-important contact cell away from Susan, finally convincing her of the necessity of his having possession of it for immediate handling of all fast-breaking developments.
With Susan on the line, she'd have wound up agreeing to anything, pledging five, ten, twenty, a hundred million dollars if that's what the kidnapper demanded for Raoul's safe return.
The kidnapper himself kept changing cells, using a different one for each call to ensure their unfraceability.
Sears looked across the canal at the cemetery on the knoll. A more mournful sight would have been hard to find, even in New Orleans, lately a showcase for so many scenes of devastation and destruction.
The city was famous for its aboveground cemeteries; persistent floods cause bodies buried below ground to rise from their graves and float away. The dead are generally interred in aboveground mausoleums.
Our Lady of Sorrows had seen its peak a century and a half ago. It had been on the decline back in the late nineteenth century; it had been closed in the 1920s. The remains were removed from their crumbling mausoleums and reburied elsewhere. It was a necropolis gone to seed, the remains of ruined stone tombs, catafalques, and monuments peeking out from a tangle of weeds and scrub brush.
Sears's downbeat reflections were suddenly interrupted by the jangling of the cell phone. His nerves were so taut that he found himself catching his breath for an instant at the sound of it. But only for an instant. Now that he was in action, trained reflexes took over; he was all business.
He hauled it out of his pocket and answered it. 'Yes!'
The kidnapper said, 'You have the money.' Not a question, a statement, delivered in the mechanical tones of the electronic voice changer. Somehow, that flat, denatured mechanical intonation was more hateful to Sears than would have been the leering, preening tones of a crook who knows he's holding the whip hand.
Sears said, 'Where's Garros?'
The kidnapper said, 'Where a million dollars will allow him to resume his interrupted life.'
'Let's make the exchange, then.'
'Soon, soon,' the kidnapper soothed. 'One more point: Miss Keehan will deliver the ransom money personally.'
Sears had been more than half-expecting something like that, some new quantum jump in escalating demands to demonstrate the kidnapper's control of the situation. Susan would have done it, too, in a heartbeat, but Sears was having none of it. He said, 'Not a chance.'
The kidnapper said, 'I suggest you talk it over with Miss Keehan. She may have a different perspective on it, especially when she hears her fiance screaming during the removal of certain vital body parts.'
Sears hung tough. 'Nothing to talk about. It's a nonstarter.'
The abductor came back strong: 'Then Garros dies.'
Sears fired back, 'So does your shot at a million-dollar ransom. No way in hell that Miss Keehan is going to take part in this exchange. I'll never agree to it. She can't fire me, I'm not working for her, I'm working for her father. He'd have my head if I agreed to that.
'Don't overplay your hand. Wilmont Keehan's not that crazy about Garros to start with. If something happens to him, he'll be able to control his grief. She can always get another fiance, he can't get another daughter.'
The abductor said, 'This is no bluff.'
Sears said, 'You can chop him up on a live webcast for all I care; that's nothing compared to what Mr. Keehan would do to me if I put his daughter in harm's way. It's a deal breaker, so don't even bother mentioning it again. I'll restrain her by force if necessary, rather than let her take the risk.
'You've played it like a pro up to now; the money's almost in your hands, don't blow it at the last minute by trying to get cute.'
The abductor paused, as if thinking about it. Finally he said, 'I take your point.' Like he was magnanimously ceding some major concession.
He added, 'You make the exchange instead.'
'Me?'
'Yes, you, Mr. Sears. You hand over the money and make the exchange.'
'Done,' Sears said, without hesitation.
The kidnapper said, 'If anything goes wrong, you'll be the one to pay the consequences.'
'Fine.'
'You — and Garros,' the kidnapper said. 'Remember, no tricks. If I don't like the look of things at the exchange, Garros dies. If there's interference from the police or FBI, Garros dies.'
Sears said, 'No outsiders have been notified. We don't want those bunglers around any more than you do.'
The other went on as if he hadn't heard him. 'Any suspicious persons or vehicles in the area, Garros dies. Any helicopters or low-lying planes, he dies.'
Sears said, 'We want Garros alive, that's all.'
The kidnapper said, 'You'll get him, as long as you follow orders. When I tell you, take the money and bring it to the middle of the bridge. You, alone. Keep your cell ready for further instructions.'
He broke contact.
Sears was doing it the hard way: no gun, not even a flak jacket. His jacket was off and he was in his shirtsleeves. Characteristically he still had his tie on, and it wasn't loosened, either.
He was doing it to allay the abductors' fears of a double cross. He told his men, 'I want to show them I'm unarmed and that there's no tricks. Don't want to panic them at the last minute. But if they try to pull a fast one on us, shoot them.'
He had a couple of sharpshooters posted around under cover, too, as a last resort.
His only sideman in the open was Deauville, an A-1 trigger puller. A clean-shaven face of hard planes and angles, with the cold-eyed, alert gaze of the hunter. He wore a gun in a shoulder holster.
Sears said, 'Here goes nothing.'
Deauville said, 'One million is a lot of nothing.'
That it was. Heavy, too. Sears held the briefcase with the money at his side, his other hand holding the cell phone to his ear.
He and Deauville stood at the west end of the footbridge, facing the other side. The opposite, east end of the bridge remained empty.
There was a pause, a long one, by Sears's reckoning, but then he was in no position for objective timekeeping.
Then, across the canal, higher up on the slope, there was a stir of motion in the graveyard. Three figures stepped out from behind the standing wall of a collapsed tomb, moving into view.
All three had hidden faces: two masked, the third hooded. The masked men wore dark baseball caps pulled low over their faces and knotted bandanas covering them below the eyes. One was of medium height, athletic build; the other was a head taller, a big, heavyweight bruiser. They flanked a third man who stood wedged between them.
A black hood covered the head of the man in the middle. Opaque, impenetrable, it had no holes for eyes, nose, or mouth.
He wore the clothes that Raoul Garros had worn earlier today, when last seen at the Mega Mart building.
