Boyd Morrison - The Midas Code

Before the blindfold went on, Sherman saw a girl lying unconscious on the floor of the van. There were no bruises or blood, which made him think she’d been drugged. He didn’t recognize her, so he couldn’t fathom why the two of them had been kidnapped. Blond and in her late twenties, the girl had a runner’s physique. That would be helpful when the time came to make an escape attempt.

His gag had been removed for the drive, but Sherman hadn’t been able to get anything out of his stoic captor, whose sole response was to tell him to shut up or he’d put the cloth back in. But if he was trying to intimidate Sherman, he might as well piss up a flagpole.

As a former fighter pilot, Sherman had taken the Air Force’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape course, but that SERE training had been decades ago. Now he wished he’d taken a refresher. Maybe he wouldn’t have been captured so easily. At this point, he was more annoyed than anything else.

How he handled the situation would depend on why the two of them had been taken hostage. Was it just a chance to earn some quick cash? Maybe the woman was also involved with the Pentagon and the kidnappers wanted to torture information out of them. The well-executed operation suggested that these men weren’t a couple of hustlers who had hatched this scheme in their crack house. The fact that they had abducted Sherman in broad daylight, exposing their faces to hundreds of witnesses, meant they were either desperate or had a well-thought-out plan. Sherman guessed the latter.

The van came to a stop. Sherman heard the clank of a garage door opening. It was industrial, too large and noisy for a residential garage.

The van nudged forward and stopped, and the engine turned off. His kidnapper waited until the garage door was closed again before he removed the blindfold.

The Taser was trained on him, the threat obvious. It was a dual-operation model that could either be loaded with a single-use cartridge that would shoot the electric leads thirty feet or be used without a cartridge by making direct contact with the subject. Since he was cuffed, the single-use cartridge had been removed.

The van door opened, and the guy calling himself Wilson gestured with the Taser for Sherman to get out.

Struggling against the cuffs, Sherman climbed to his feet and hopped through the door. The sound of his shoes hitting the floor echoed through a warehouse cavernous enough to hold twenty tractor-trailers. Fluorescent lights flickered above the windowless space. With the power active, it was unlikely they were squatters. The building looked as if it was in good repair and was probably in a warehouse district. If Sherman could make it outside, he might be able to find help quickly.

The warehouse was empty of the expected shelves and boxes. Instead, a small grouping of furniture sat near the van: four cots, six large tables, four chairs, and a trash can that had been ignored. Empty pizza boxes and Chinese-food containers were piled on the tables, which held a TV, two laptops, and a wireless router. There was also some metal-working equipment: drills, soldering guns, an arc welder, and a large box of tools. Metal shavings and discarded scraps littered the floor.

Beyond the furniture was a line of twelve steel barrels. Wooden crates were stacked behind them, but Sherman couldn’t see any writing that might reveal what they held. On one side of the warehouse, a peninsula of four rooms jutted from the cinder-block wall, with two doors facing the front of the warehouse and two facing the back. The doors had six-inch-by-six-inch cutouts where windows would normally be, but otherwise the rooms were completely sealed. Sherman could make out the remains of glass squares on the floor. The panes were the size of the cutouts and were cracked but intact because they were held together by wire mesh inside the glass, indicating that the rooms had been secured for valuable items. They’d been removed and replaced with crude metal plates that could be swung back and forth.

Sherman guessed where he’d be staying for the duration.

“What now, Captain Wilson?” he asked.

“Call me Gaul,” the man said, disregarding Sherman’s sarcasm. “And before we show you to your room, we have some business to take care of.” He pulled Sherman to a chair set in front of a bare concrete wall and said, “Sit.”

“What am I, a dog?”

“Funny. In the chair.”

“Why?”

“Because if you don’t, I’ll tase you again, and then you’ll sit anyway.”

Sherman shuffled over to the chair and sat. “What do you want?”

“From you? Nothing. This is just a little proof for your son, to show that you’re still breathing.”

So this was about money. If Tyler would be seeing this, Sherman had to get him whatever info he could.

Gaul went to the van and removed a duffel bag. At one of the tables he took out a ski mask, newspaper, and a video camera.

“Phillips,” he said. The other man, who had now changed into a black sweater, took the ski mask and the front page of the newspaper from Gaul.

Phillips moved behind Sherman and put the blindfold back on him.

“Am I going somewhere else?”

“We know you were in the Air Force,” Gaul said, focusing the camera, “so we’re just making sure you don’t blink any messages by Morse code. You’ll answer my question and nothing else. This isn’t going out live, so don’t bother trying to blurt out anything. Phillips, start over here so I can get a close-up of the paper.” After a moment, Gaul said, “Good. Now move back so we can see the paper beside the general.”

Phillips did so until he was standing behind Sherman.

“What is your name?” Gaul said.

“Are you asking me or Phillips?” Sherman said. He heard Gaul make a disgusted grunt.

“Apparently I wasn’t clear,” Gaul said. “Give him a ride.”

Sherman jerked as a jolt of electricity shot through him. His hands clenched in agony until the shock abated, and he slumped in the chair.

“Now let’s keep going. I can edit that out. Name?”

“Sherman Locke,” he said through clenched teeth.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it? That’s all I needed.”

The blindfold came off. Phillips wrenched Sherman to his feet and led him to a room facing the rear. Gaul opened the door, pushing Sherman inside without taking the cuffs off. He slammed it shut and locked it with a dead bolt that had no keyhole on the inside.

The room was the size of a prison cell. The ceiling and walls were made of cinder blocks. The only contents were a cot bolted to the floor and a bucket. One bulb jutted from the ceiling out of reach. Sherman had stayed in worse conditions, but not for long.

“Here’s how this is going to work,” Gaul said, peering through the hole in the door. “You’re going to be staying in this room for the duration.”

“Which is how long?” Sherman said.

“That’s up to your son.”

“And I don’t even get to take the cuffs off?”

Gaul tossed the keys through the hole. Sherman had to squat to pick them up. After he uncuffed himself, Gaul demanded the keys and the cuffs back.

“When we want to bring you out,” Gaul said, “you’ll cuff yourself again. If you don’t, you get another ride. You can scream all you want, but all you’ll do is make yourself hoarse. We aren’t near any occupied buildings. When we eat, you eat. Any questions? No? Good.” The plate covering the hole slammed shut.

“It’s Carol’s turn,” Gaul said, and his footsteps retreated.

Massaging his wrists, Sherman started plotting his escape.

S tacy agreed with Tyler that Orr’s warning to come alone should be taken seriously. After dropping Grant off at the naval base so that he could tie up some loose ends on the ammunition depot project and get his car, she and Tyler headed back to the dock, where they made it in time for the 11:10 ferry to Seattle. Stacy sat in the Viper’s passenger seat as Tyler idled in the rain, waiting for the ferry to empty. She found the metronomic beating of the wipers soothing, reminding her of sleepy childhood rides in her father’s pickup after he’d taken his daughters to a movie on a drizzly evening.