James Patterson - Roses Are Red

I interrupted her right there. "No, no. You sit tight, Mrs. Morris. Don't move a muscle. We're on our way to you."

"I know the area. I can help you," she protested.

"We're on our way. Please stay put."

One of the FBI helicopters searching the nearby woods was brought over to the railroad station. Just as it was arriving so did Kyle. I'd never been so glad to see him.

Betsey told Kyle exactly what she hoped to do in Virginia. "We take the chopper in as close as we can without being spotted. Four or five miles from the town of Tinden. I don't want too large a ground force involved. A dozen good people, maybe less."

Kyle agreed to the plan, because it was a good one, and we were off in the FBI chopper. He knew the agents at Quantico he wanted involved and he dispatched them to Tinden.

Once we were on board the helicopter we reviewed everything we had learned during the bank robberies. We also began to receive information on the area where Mrs. Morris had seen the bus. The army base she mentioned had been a nuke site in the eighties. "ICBMs were kept underground at several nuke bases outside Washington," Kyle said. "If the tour bus is on the site, a concrete silo could shield it from heat-seeking search helicopters."

Our chopper began to settle down on to an open area near a regional high school. I glanced at my watch. It was way past six o'clock. Were the hostages still alive? What sadistic game was the Mastermind playing?

Bright green athletic fields stretched out behind an idyllic-looking two-story red brick school. The entire area was deserted except for two sedans and a black van waiting for us. We were four or five miles from the state road where Mrs. Morris had seen the' Washington On Wheels' bus.

Isabelle Morris was sitting in the first sedan. She looked to be in her late seventies, a stout woman with an inappropriately cheery, false-teeth smile. Somebody's nice grandmother.

"Which farm should we go to first?" I asked her. "Where might somebody be hiding?"

The old woman's bluish-gray eyes narrowed to slits as she thought. "Donald Browne's farm," she finally said. "Nobody lives there these days. Browne died last spring, poor man. Someone could hide out there easy."

"Keep going. Drive by,” I told our driver as we reached the Browne farm on State Road #24. He did as I asked. We curled around a bend in the road about a hundred yards farther on. Then the car eased to a stop.

"I saw somebody on the grounds. He was leaning against a tree. Up near the house. He was watching the road, Kyle. Watching us go by. They're still here."

Up ahead, I could see the remains of the old missile site that had once been in operation out here. I figured we would find the tour bus hidden in a missile silo, safe from the Apache search helicopters. I wasn't so optimistic about the nineteen hostages from Metro Hartford The Mastermind hated insurance companies, didn't he? Was this about revenge?

I was flashing lurid images of the hostages who'd been killed during the bank robberies; I was afraid of finding a massacre scene at the farm. We had been warned. No errors, no mistakes. The rules had been enforced during the bank jobs. Had anything changed?

Kyle said, "Let's go in through the woods. We don't have time to be choosy."

He made contact with the other units. Then he, Betsey, and I ran due north through the dense woods. We couldn't see the farmhouse yet, but we couldn't be seen, either.

The woods came up close to the main house, which was fortunate for us. The brush was mostly overgrown, almost all the way to the driveway. The lights were off inside the house. There was no movement that I could make out. No sound.

I could still see the sentry for the kidnappers. He wasn't too far away and he had his back to us. Where were the others? Where were the

FBI agents were inside and spreading out all over the house. Some of the hostages began to cry when they realized they weren't going to die, that they'd finally been rescued.

"They said we'd be killed if we tried to leave the house before tomorrow morning. They told us about the Buccieri and Casselman families," a tall, dark-haired woman said between sobs. Her name was Mary Jordan and she'd been in charge of the tour group.

We did a careful search of the house no one was there. There wasn't any obvious evidence, but the technicians would be here soon. The tour bus had already been found in a shed on the former army base.

After half an hour or so, Mrs. Morris came waddling through the front door. A couple of agents were futilely trying to stop her. The local woman's appearance was an almost comical punctuation to the stress of the last several hours," Why did you hit old Bud O'Mara. He's just a nice local fella, works at the truck-stop. Bud said he was paid to stand around and wait. Got all of a hundred bucks for the dent in his skull. He's harmless, Bud is."

An odd and exhilarating thing happened as several rescue vehicles finally arrived. The hostages started to clap and to cheer. We'd come for them; we hadn't let them die.

But I knew otherwise: For some reason, the Mastermind hadn't wanted them to die.

Of course, the case continued to be a full-blown-knock-down-drag-out media event. The press had learned about the existence of a "Mastermind," and it made for sensational headlines. A picture of the Buccieri boy, one of the first victims, was the featured art in story after story. I had begun seeing the little boy's face in my dreams.

I was working twelve-and sixteen-hour days. The Washington bank robber named Mitchell Brand was still high on the list of FBI suspects. He had been up on the wall of suspects for over a week. We hadn't been able to locate Brand, but he fit the profile. Meanwhile, crime-scene investigators covered the money-pickup site, combing it for evidence. FBI technicians went over every square inch of the Browne farmhouse. Traces of theatrical make-up were found in the sink of the farmhouse. I talked to several hostages and they supported the idea that the kidnappers might have worn make-up, wigs, and possibly lifts in their shoes.

Sampson and I worked in Washington the first two days. Metro-Hartford had offered a million-dollar reward for information leading to the capture of the men involved in the crime. The reward was aimed at the general public, but also at anyone involved in the robbery whose stake might be less than the reward being offered.

The search for the bank robber Mitchell Brand was also centered in Washington. Brand was a thirty-year-old black man who was suspected in half a dozen robberies, but who had never been officially charged, and suddenly had gone underground. Once upon a time he had been an army sergeant in Desert Storm. Brand was known to be violent. According to his army records, he had an IQ over one-fifty.

A mountain of evidence was being collected but the notoriety of the case was also working against us. The phone calls and faxes offering tips never stopped at the FBI field office. Suddenly, there were hundreds of leads to follow up. I wondered if the Mastermind was still working against us.

The second night after the Metro Hartford kidnapping, Sampson showed up at the house around eleven. I had just gotten there myself. I grabbed a couple of cold beers and we talked out on the sun porch more or less like civilized adults.

"I was hoping to see the little prince tonight," Sampson said as we sat down.

"He's coming here to live with us." I told John the latest news. Some of it anyway.

He broke into a broad smile, his teeth as large and white as piano keys," That's great news, sugar. I assume Ms Christine is coming as part of the package."

I shook my head. "No, she isn't, John. She's never gotten over what happened with Geoffrey Shafer. She's still afraid for her life, for all of our lives. She doesn't want to see me anymore. It's over between us."