Rick Mofina - Every Second

“Can I have another donut?” Billy asked.

“I’ll give you half of one. We need to save the rest.”

As Billy ate, Lori scrutinized the laptop with heightened intensity, searching for anything that might help. Other than a couple of standard icons, the desktop was clean. She went on to the drives, found several folders and began opening them. Reading as fast as she could. One held files that contained detailed maps of New York City. Another file contained a list of names, addresses and emails for several people. Most were in the United States, some were in Canada, Germany, Australia, Britain, Kuwait, Iraq and Syria.

Another file contained four videos.

She played the first and was greeted by the face of Percy. The running time was a few seconds. She kept the volume low, hit Play, and Percy spoke directly into the camera.

“Greetings from paradise. At this moment, you’re asking why. We’ll enlighten you. Because your elected government continuously perpetuates atrocities around the world, your support of them makes you, the people of America, responsible, just as I am and my brothers are responsible for protecting and avenging our people. Until we feel safe from your oppression, you will be our targets. What you have witnessed in New York is only the beginning. More acts will come and they will be stronger until you cease committing atrocities. Allah is great.”

The three other videos showed the other captors making similar short statements.

“Those don’t sound good. What are they?” Billy asked.

Lori knew but didn’t answer.

She opened more files, finding another map. This one was of Manhattan, clearly marked with four locations, the Staten Island Ferry, Times Square, Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal. A name was affixed to each location, causing the tiny hairs on the back of Lori’s neck to stand up.

“Oh my God, no!”

“What is it, Mom?”

She opened files containing notes, one detailing how the group had planned to give the money from the bank operation in Queens and names of “young American believers” to a network, so that it could fund more “glorious operations.”

Lori shut off the laptop and took several deep breaths.

“We’ve got to get out of here and warn people.”

“Warn what people about what, Mom?”

“Something very bad is going to happen and we’ve got to stop it. Come on, we’ve got to find our way out.”

As they stood to leave, they froze.

Voices carried from the distance.

Coyote Mountains, New York

Daylight slowly began filling the forest.

As it fingered through the trees, Cutty could feel it needling him for his failure. His prisoner had defeated him and escaped.

The cuts, the bruising and the fractures he’d suffered from her surprise attack only fed his rage. He was the biggest, the strongest of the group, and he’d had his ass handed to him by a stupid nonbelieving woman.

His flashlight raked through the waning darkness as he and Percy hunted Lori down. Jerricko and Vic were hunting together another forty or fifty yards to the north. Both teams communicated to each other by way of signal bursts from their flashlights.

Cutty’s thoughts shifted to his family and the images his relatives had sent him from northern Iraq. The dead little babies, their mouths agape, buried in the rubble of shelters destroyed by American drones. His anger warmed his blood as he nursed his humiliation at losing his prisoner. He would personally exact payback from that bitch-right in front of her kid. He’d get Percy to record it before he and the others took their turn.

Problem was, Cutty was not sure if he would enjoy that more than just cutting off their heads and showing the world the price to be paid for oppressive regimes.

Soon every person on the planet will know me and my brothers and the glory we’ve attained.

As the sky brightened, Percy signaled-he had something.

With the rising sun Percy saw a flash of color in the distance.

He signaled to the others, then got on the ground and took a position, raising his small binoculars. Deep among the branches and needles, he saw a postage-stamp size patch of blue. He couldn’t discern movement or details, only that whatever the object was, it didn’t belong there.

“It’s them,” Percy whispered to Cutty, who’d joined him.

Percy, who was the best shot of the group, raised his gun and sighted the target, easily more than a hundred yards off. But he knew his gun’s limitations.

A thought arrived.

Percy lowered his gun and reached into his pocket for his cell phone, wishing right now that he had Vic’s satellite phone. Cell service was spotty, but there were brief periods when his cell worked, and if God willed it, this would be one of them.

“What’re you doing?” Cutty asked.

“I’m trying the code. Let’s blow them up!”

“But Vic and Jerricko said she’s got the laptop.”

“Yeah, well, I say we take our chances and kill them now. What good is the laptop going to do us if they get away? Besides, we’ve got the money. Vic’s got the sat phone. We know what to do, so let’s get on with it.” Percy held up his phone. “Look, I’ve got a signal! I’m making the call.”

Coyote Mountains, New York

The air ambulance helicopter whipped dirt and stones into the air, forcing emergency crews on the ground to turn away as it landed in a small clearing on the jagged hilltop.

Less than an hour earlier, after the Ferring brothers had gotten down from the ridge, Sidney Ferring had made a 911 call to a Greene County emergency services dispatcher who then set events in motion, alerting several agencies to a mountain trauma rescue.

On the scene now as the chopper put down were Greene County deputies, state police out of Cairo, forest rangers, and a K-9 unit that was checking the cabin and the trail to the outbuilding.

Crouching as they left the chopper with medical bags, the flight paramedic and flight nurse stepped down the hillside to join Greene County paramedics who’d arrived earlier with a scoop stretcher and gear.

They’d cleared away the branches and had set out working on the male patient when the chopper team arrived at the base of the slope.

“We’ve got vitals! He’s got multiple GSWs, multiple fractures, maybe spinal injuries,” one of the paramedics shouted. “Lost a lot of blood. Doesn’t look good.”

As they worked to get the patient on the stretcher and start an IV, one of the county paramedics shouted, “Stop!”

Everyone halted.

“He’s wearing a bomb vest! Everybody step back!”

Amid the blood-caked dirt and needles covering the patient, a canvas vest with various compartments, wires and a blinking red light of a battery pack was now visible.

The teams backed off several yards, using a rock formation as a shield as they shouted over the thud of the waiting helicopter.

“He’s that bank manager from Queens!” one of the county paramedics said.

“If we don’t move him now, he’ll die,” the flight paramedic called out.

“Yeah, but if that vest blows, we could all die! We need the bomb squad,” the flight nurse said.

“There’s no time. He’ll bleed out before they get here!”

“Wait! One of the deputies up top did bomb disposal work when he was with the army or marines.” The county paramedic shouted for help into his radio.

Less than a minute later, Greene County deputy sheriff Kyle O’Mara, who’d served with the US Army in Baghdad, hurried down the hill and huddled behind the rock with the paramedics, listening and looking toward the patient as they told him what they’d found.