Rick Mofina - They Disappeared

“Mom!” Cole’s eyes filled with tears.

The fourth man, the leader, kept his hands behind his back.

“Your husband failed to obey our instructions.”

The leader nodded to the cameraman, the red record light came on and Sarah’s heart nearly exploded. The leader suddenly displayed his pistol, prepared it for firing and pointed it at Cole’s head.

Sarah screamed and struggled in vain. Cole cried out.

“Your husband gambled with your lives and lost.”

One of the men began reciting a manifesto in a foreign language as they prepared for the first execution.

Somewhere in New York City

As Cole’s death sentence was read out the gunman pressed the muzzle against Cole’s head.

Cole shook as he cried. His eyes found Sarah’s.

She screamed and fought against the captors.

“This execution is the result of failure,” the man with the gun told Sarah.

“No! He’s just a boy, an innocent boy!”

“It is a result of your husband’s failure to return our property-” the man raised his voice “-the failure of your government and all governments to-”

A boot kicked the man’s hand, sending the gun scraping across the floor.

A larger group of men had materialized and overtook the others. Cole was released, Sarah was released. She scurried to Cole, held him tight and calmed him as they watched.

The men of the execution effort were punched and kicked by the others who then hauled them before a line of men brandishing guns.

The beaten men were forced to their knees.

All attention went to one man. Sarah had not seen him before.

His head was shaved clean. He had a bushy black beard and a commanding presence, as if he were supreme leader.

He stood a few inches over six feet. He had a muscular build that strained his New York Yankees T-shirt. The grip of a pistol was visible from his shoulder holster. He wore blue jeans and an ice-cold expression as he looked down upon the man who was going to kill Cole.

“Tell me, Zama,” the new leader said in clear English to the ringleader. “Was it not your responsibility to secure the component?”

“Yes, Bulat, but-”

“Stop. Your job was to secure the component and help with the setup, correct?”

“Yes, but circumstances changed.”

“Stop. I am informed that your courier picked up the wrong bag at LaGuardia, is that not a fact, Zama?”

“Yes, as we reported. But we terminated him and took corrective action, sir. Immediate corrective action.”

“Corrective action? Is that what you call it?” He threw the printed pages of an online news article at Zama’s face. “You’ve alerted U.S. law enforcement to our presence! This changes everything! But that is not all, Zama. Is it?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t because you’ve proven yourself a fool.”

“I am dedicated to the mission.”

“You have jeopardized our entire operation!”

“No.”

“It changes everything!”

“I should never have allowed our sponsors to convince me that you should be part of our brigade.”

After a long silence, Bulat lowered himself, looked the frightened ringleader in the face and adjusted his fury to a whisper.

“All of the dying, the souls of our children and martyrs, all are now at risk of being meaningless because of you, Zama.”

“That is not so. I give my life to our mission.”

“No, Zama, like your courier, you are a liability.”

“Please.”

“Don’t worry. I need you.”

“Thank you.”

“We are now forced to scramble to change our operation completely in order to salvage it. But I still need you.”

“Thank you, Bulat.”

Zama tried to show his gratitude by kissing the back of Bulat’s hand but the leader withdrew it.

“I need you to be an example to others that fuckups like you will be erased.”

Bulat unholstered his pistol, took one second to prepare it for firing, drilled the gun into Zama’s skull. The sound-like an enormous firecracker-was deafening. Sarah and Cole flinched.

The body fell forward to the filthy floor.

Bulat regarded Sarah and Cole for several seconds before stepping over the corpse and lowering himself to face them. Their chains chimed softly as they trembled.

Bulat inhaled deeply and let his breath out slowly.

“It is futile to fear what is inevitable.” He tapped the still-warm muzzle of his gun on Cole’s head. Then he tapped it on Sarah’s head. “Sooner or later, we all must die.”

Manhattan, New York City

Sarah’s eyes were ballooned in a silent scream as her face filled the large flat-screen TV in Jeff’s hotel room.

Her mouth was sealed with tape, her hair snaked wildly. Fear creased her face as she struggled between her captors with their gruesome masks and Jeff in the back of the fleeing van.

Detective Lucy Chu, an NYPD forensic artist, typed again on her laptop keypad. The image on the screen shrunk, the focus zoomed out and Chu continued displaying the three photos taken by detectives from the pursuit earlier that morning.

Frame by frame, section by section, Chu enlarged them, examined them intensely with Jeff, striving to pinpoint any identifying details. The photographs were helpful but so far had failed to yield a lead. The kidnappers were silhouetted or in shadow.

And they stayed that way.

The technical experts had already gone full bore to enhance the images but with little success. Chu repositioned her chair so that the TV screen was behind her and Jeff was looking at it while facing her.

Chu picked up her drawing pad, eraser and graphite pencil.

“All right, watch the pictures,” she said, “and take me back inside the van.” She left the three-photo slide show flowing, to keep Jeff’s attention on the interior of the van. She’d already interviewed him at length. Her goal was to use composites, image modification, whatever it took to mine Jeff’s memory for potential evidence.

“Let’s start with hands.”

Again and again Chu asked him about body parts, necks, hair, tattoos, jewelry, scars, clothing, footwear, characteristics of the van and items in the van. Over and over she drew, erased and redrew each time a nugget of detail surfaced.

It was painstaking, exhausting work and they pressed on.

Jeff took brief breaks by glancing around his new room. After his clash with the suspects, the NYPD and FBI moved him to this hotel, near Grand Central, in the shadow of the Chrysler Building. The location was undisclosed, for security reasons, they said, while they processed his old room for evidence and leads to the suspects.

This was a larger, more luxurious hotel. The task force had arranged to have Jeff’s original hotel room number deflected to a phone they’d set up here, and they’d given him a new cell phone that maintained the Griffin family’s cell number, in case Sarah, Cole or the kidnappers called him.

Detectives Cordelli and Ortiz were there observing but revealed nothing whenever Jeff plied them for details.

“What’s so important about the toy plane?” he asked.

“I don’t know. That’s still being analyzed,” Cordelli said. “Everything’s still being processed for any possible trace evidence from Hans Beck.”

Jeff sensed an undercurrent of anger toward him because he had disobeyed police orders and set out on his own to meet the suspects.

They would’ve done the same thing I did. Any man would have.

“Let’s go back to what items you saw in the van,” Chu said.

“There was something in there but I can’t remember.”

“I know it’s hard but you said something about takeout?”