In his thirty years with Dwight’s Farm Services, Gibson had never complained about his job, but he was tired of truck maintenance at the company being a low priority. Just last week he’d been hauling a load of fertilizer to a farm down in Blacksburg when the bearings on the drive axle seized, leaving him stranded for three hours out in the middle of nowhere until a tow truck made it up from Roanoke.
He rolled down the window, but the wind didn’t help. Not with this humidity. The sweat continued to pour down the back of his neck, and his shirt was completely soaked. At least the radio worked, although there was only one country station.
It had been ten minutes since he’d turned off the state highway headed for a farm west of Deerfield. In that time he’d been passed twice by cars that didn’t want to wait behind his groaning rig. One of them even jumped the gun and didn’t bother to wait for a passing lane. Probably some doped-up college kids who were going to get themselves killed someday.
And now behind him was lucky vehicle number three, this time a white van. It was accelerating fast behind him on the first flat section Gibson had seen since the highway. There wasn’t another car in sight, so he waved the van around and pulled over onto the shoulder to let him by.
The van shot past and roared ahead. Gibson pulled back onto the road and tried to coax a little more speed, hoping to get a bigger dose of the natural breeze. He poked his head to the side to get closer to the airflow, then snapped it back when he saw the van weave back and forth three times and then stop dead across the road, blocking the way.
What in the world?
Gibson stuck his foot on the brake. The truck shuddered to a stop less than twenty feet from the van. Though they were sopping wet, the hairs on the back of his neck pricked up. If the van had a flat tire, why didn’t the driver just pull over to the shoulder? Something wasn’t right.
The van door slid open, and two men clad in black from head to toe jumped out holding M4 assault rifles. They wore balaclavas, so Gibson could see nothing but eyes. He lunged for the Smith amp; Wesson. 38 revolver he kept in the glove compartment for emergencies, but the passenger door was thrown open before he could get to it. He stared into the black depths of the barrel that could introduce him to his maker.
An accented voice yelled, “Get out now!”
Gibson put his hands up.
“Now!”
He unlatched his seat belt and opened the driver’s door. A hand snaked in and yanked him out, tossing him to the ground.
The passenger door slammed, and the one who had pulled him out said something Gibson didn’t understand, but he’d certainly heard the language before on TV. Arabic, or at least something along those lines.
Terrorists? What would they want with him? He was a middle-aged, overweight nobody.
“I don’t have-” he started.
“Shut up!” the man yelled, and punched him in the back with the butt of the rifle. Gibson went down on his stomach, sucking for air. The knee in his back made breathing even harder.
The taller of the two walked over to the plain silver trailer, reached under the metal chassis, pulled out a white box the size of a pack of cigarettes, and pocketed it. That’s why they’d shown up in the middle of nowhere. They’d used some kind of tracking device.
The other one grabbed Gibson’s hands and twisted them behind his back. He felt cool plastic zipcuffs locking his wrists together. The two of them hauled him to his feet, hustled him to the van, and pushed him inside. He fell to the floor. Another set of zipcuffs went around his ankles.
The first gunman raised his rifle above his head and shouted, “ Allahu Akbar! ”
“ Allahu Akbar! ” the other cried in response. Then he ran back to Gibson’s truck. The van door slammed shut.
This was a hijacking? It seemed crazy, but the sound of his truck revving told him that it had to be true.
Although the past few moments had seemed like a lifetime to Gibson, they couldn’t have been more than thirty seconds. Whoever they were, his kidnappers had planned this well.
The van took off, rolling Gibson against the back doors. His phone was still sitting on the passenger seat of his cab, so calling for help wasn’t an option. He struggled to sit up, but the winding roads tossed him down every time he made any progress. In twenty minutes he was exhausted. He asked where he was being taken, but he was met with stony silence.
Twenty minutes later, the van slowed and turned onto another road. Instead of the smooth hum of asphalt, Gibson could feel the tires crunching over dirt. He thought it must be some kind of driveway, but it kept climbing uphill, and the ride got rougher, bouncing up and down over deep ruts and potholes. They didn’t stop for another half hour.
When the van came to a halt, the driver, still in his balaclava, wrenched open the door and held a Beretta 9 mm on Gibson. He then unsheathed a wicked-looking blade, but he did nothing more with it than cut the ankle ties.
“Out,” he said.
Gibson draped his legs over the side of the van and stood briefly before falling to his knees. His feet had lost all feeling. It didn’t matter, though. He could see where he was now. They were surrounded on all sides by the thick woods of the George Washington National Forest. The weed-covered track they’d crawled along was a barely used fire road.
He had been brought here to be executed.
“Up!” the man shouted.
Gibson’s heart pounded with fear, but he wasn’t going to make it that easy for this terrorist. He got to his knees.
“Why don’t you make me?” he said, sounding much braver than he felt.
The terrorist kicked Gibson. He fell over hard and rolled into a ditch. Before he could get up, he heard the crack of the pistol and a searing pain at his right ear. He fell back to the ground, his eyes away from the terrorist. The headshot hadn’t killed him. Should he get up and keep fighting or play dead? He held his breath.
The door slammed shut, and after making a three-point turn the van accelerated back down the road.
Gibson remained motionless for another minute until he realized that he must be the luckiest son of a bitch in the world. He sat up and felt blood coursing down his temple, but he was alive. The angle into the ditch must have thrown off the terrorist’s aim. With all the blood, the shooter had just assumed it was a kill shot.
Gibson thanked the Lord for His mercy and then found the sharp edge of a rock to cut the tie on his wrists. With his hands free, he ripped off the bottom of his shirt and pushed it against the side of his head. It would stanch the blood, although it wouldn’t do anything for his headache.
As he trudged down the road back to civilization to report the hijacking, he pondered why they had targeted his truck. Sure, he could see Arab radicals taking a load of ammonium-nitrate fertilizer, the explosive compound used to make bombs like the one that blew up in Oklahoma City.
But he had no earthly idea what two terrorists would want with one hundred cubic yards of sawdust.
TWENTY-SEVEN
T yler wasn’t happy about having to wait for a shower when he and Stacy rendezvoused as planned with Grant at the Heathrow Airport Marriott. For convenience, they’d reserved a suite with a living area between a king room for Stacy and another one with double beds for the guys. Grant was already in the bathroom, so Tyler had to endure the smell of horse and river muck for a little longer. Tyler had their luggage sent over from the plane, and the clean clothes beckoned from his suitcase. After Grant finished, Tyler took his turn, feeling grateful for the invention of indoor plumbing.
After they ordered dinner from room service, Grant regaled them with his findings at the museum and his fight with Sal. Gia Cavano must have sent her men in London to abduct Grant as soon as she heard from the curator.
