Out of Control (63 page)
Jones had pretty much known on his way over that there was a very real possibility this was going to be a one-way trip. He’d already considered the possibility that Molly had given him up, and he didn’t blame her for it at all. He’d run with the money, putting both her and Billy in mortal danger. He deserved what he got.
And right now what he got was the chance to be a dead man, rather than a barely living man kept alive only to be tormented and tortured.
No, there was no way in hell he was going back to the Thai alive.
He reached around to his arsenal of weapons and grabbed a hand grenade. He pulled the pin and took the duffle of money and climbed down out of the plane.
Molly was as white as a sheet, and Savannah came up beside her, ready to catch her if she should faint.
Out the window, she could see Jones, climbing down out of his plane.
“Tell your troops to hold their fire,” he said. “Tell them that while the reward for bringing Grady Morant in alive is five million, it’s only a hundred thousand if I’m dead.”
“What did he do?” Savannah asked softly.
“He destroyed a drug lord’s business,” Molly said, “but the bastard bounced back. God, Grady should have killed the Thai when he had the chance.”
Those were pretty harsh words for a missionary.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Jones-Grady said. “I’m holding a grenade,” he held it up for the officer and everyone else to see. “I’ve pulled the pin, but as long as I’m holding onto it, it’s not going to go off.”
“Oh, Lord,” Molly whispered, pressing her hand to her mouth. “Oh, Grady, don’t do this.”
“What I’m going to do is keep holding the release,” he continued. “What you’re going to do is march all of your American hostages out of your guest quarters and down the road to that helicopter you inherited from Otto Zdanowicz. You’ll give them weapons and a map and a pilot, if they need one. And then you and I will stand and wave good-bye as they head back to Jakarta. After they’re gone, I’ll put the pin back in the grenade, and we can have a nice dinner before you call the Thai.”
“Holy shit,” Ken said. “He’s negotiating our release.”
“I’m not going,” Molly said. “I’m not going to leave him here.”
“No one’s going anywhere yet,” Ken said.
The officer paced in silence for several long moments before he responded to Jones’s proposal.
“What’s to keep you from blowing up both yourself and the money after they’re gone?” he finally asked.
“I’m not exactly the suicidal type,” Jones said with a laugh. “Do I look like I want to blow myself up?”
“I would hug a grenade before spending the rest of my life in Nang-Klao Chai’s dungeon,” the officer said.
“I’ll give you my word that I won’t.”
The officer laughed. “Your word. Wonderful. How about: If you blow yourself to bits with that grenade, I will track down your friend Molly. I’ll deliver her to Chai, and tell him to keep her alive in your place.”
“He warned me that this would happen,” Molly whispered. “He said if we became friends that they’d use me to get to him.”
“Can’t we do anything?” Savannah asked Ken.
“I think Jones is doing a pretty good job all by himself,” Ken told her. “He’s going to get us out of here. And then they’ll probably toss him in here. And tonight Sam and the rest of the team will have to rescue only one person instead of five.”
Molly turned toward them, hope in her eyes. “Your friends can get him out of here? But will they have to arrest him? He’s wanted in the U.S. as well.”
“I didn’t hear what his real name was,” Ken said. He turned to Savannah. “Did you?”
The walk to the helicopter was excruciating.
Grady was holding a duffle filled with money and that grenade and looking at Molly as if he was never going to see her again.
“I’m sorry I got you and Billy shot,” he said. He was walking on one side of the road with the slender officer he’d addressed as Jayakatong, the hostages were on the other. Soldiers with huge guns were in front of them and behind them. “I was planning to tell you that I took the money for safekeeping, but we both know that would be a lie.”
“But you came back,” she said.
“Too little, too late.”
“It’s never too late.”
“Yes, actually,” he said, “sometimes it is.”
As Savannah helped her uncle and the two missionaries get comfortable, Ken wrestled the helo off the ground. They lurched and swooped and flopped around for quite a bit before things evened out.
She came forward. “Do you really know what you’re doing?”
“I do now,” he shouted. “Took me a sec to figure out the controls.”
She sat down, uncertain whether to laugh or cry. “You haven’t really ever flown a helicopter before have you?”
He glanced at her, glanced at her again.
“It’s okay,” she said. “You seem to have the hang of it now—you can tell me the truth, I won’t freak.”
“I’ve had some training, but this is a first for me,” he admitted. “And I have this wicked, awesome simulator game for my PlayStation2. It’s really not that different.”
“Will you just do me a favor and check to make sure we aren’t going to run out of gas?”
“Fuel gauge,” he said, pointing to the intricate control board. “Here and here. Computer says . . .” He made an adjustment to another device. “We’ve got enough to fly for . . . three hours at this speed.”
He reached up and flipped several more switches, pushed other buttons. “Navigation computer says . . . Port Parwati, ETA fifty-eight minutes.” He smiled at her. “Plenty of fuel. We’ll land there and transfer to a Navy helo—get us back to Jakarta that much quicker. Besides, we don’t want anyone mistaking us for Otto Zdanowicz and blowing us out of the sky.”
God, she hadn’t even thought of that. Still . . . Fifty-eight minutes until Ken didn’t need to be the pilot, until she could ride the rest of the way to Jakarta in his arms. “I can’t believe this is almost over.”
He looked at Savannah and grinned. “Honey, it’s just beginning.”
On General Badaruddin’s island, as the helo carrying Molly and her friends faded from a speck to nothing, Jones put the pin into the grenade and handed both it and the duffle to Jayakatong.
Who turned to a squad of his soldiers and ordered, “Beat him. Make sure that he won’t be able to run away tonight, but be careful not to kill him.”
They circled him cautiously, and he knew what they were thinking. Grady Morant. Any man who had angered the Thai enough to place a five-million-dollar price on his head must be just one degree of separation from the devil himself.
Except, no, wait. The Thai was the one who was one degree of separation from the devil. Thanks to Molly, Jones was just two degrees of separation from the other guy, the one who lived upstairs.
Imagine that.
Her mother and father were waiting, along with Rose, as they disembarked from the Navy Seahawk.
Savannah had been extremely aware of Molly for the entire trip—aware that she’d left her lover back in Badaruddin’s camp. She’d tried to be discreet about holding tightly to Ken, who made it much more difficult by whispering all the ways he was going to blow her mind that night—as soon as they found a hotel room where they could be alone.
But after they landed and helped Molly, Billy, and Alex off the Seahawk and into the waiting ambulance, Savannah was ready to never let Ken go.
They came off the helicopter arm in arm, and she could see her mother’s horror in the way she took a quick step back.
Savannah looked at Ken, trying to see him with her mother’s eyes and . . . oh dear. He looked like Robinson Crusoe’s younger, grunge-loving brother. But what a smile, and what incredible eyes . . .
“Savannah! Darling! Thank God you’re safe!” Her mother practically yanked her out of Ken’s arms and enveloped her in a cloud of perfume.
Ken held out a dirt-streaked hand to her father. “Mr. von Hopf. I’m Ken Karmody. How do you do, sir?”
Her father shook his hand. “I understand you’re responsible for saving our daughter’s life, young man. I’d like to offer you a reward.”
“Well,” Ken said. “Thank you, sir. I’ll accept. As a matter of fact, I’ve already picked out something pretty special and . . . Mrs. von Hopf! You’re exactly as I pictured you.”
Savannah bit the inside of her cheeks as Ken brushed past her mother’s gingerly offered hand and gave her a bear hug.
Rose, who’d returned from a quick visit with the still heavily sedated Alex in the ambulance, was also trying not to laugh.
On impulse, Savannah hugged her grandmother. And got a very big hug back. “Thank you for bringing Alex home.”
“I had more than a little help,” Savannah replied. “There’s a man still in Badaruddin’s camp who sacrificed himself for us. Kenny says they’ll get him out tonight. I hope so . . .”
“They will.” Ken jumped into the conversation. He squeezed her arm. “Trust me, they’ll bring him out.” When she nodded, he turned to Rose. “Mrs. von Hopf, it’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am. I’d love to have the chance to sit down and talk to all of you, but I need to do a debriefing with my CO and Max Bhagat—he’s the FBI team leader,” he told Savannah. “And then I’ve got a date with a shower and a scrub brush. I’ll meet you back at the hotel, okay? Don’t go anywhere without an FBI escort.”
“I won’t,” Savannah said.
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her good-bye. Right in front of her parents and Rose. It was not an “I’m kissing you in front of your parents” peck. It was an “as soon as we can find some privacy I’m taking off your clothes” kind of kiss.
“Later, babe,” he said, and was gone.
“My . . . goodness gracious,” Savannah’s mother murmured.
“I like him,” Rose announced.
Savannah laughed. “I do, too.”
“What’s this reward he’s already picked out?” her father asked suspiciously.
“Me, Daddy,” she said. “He wants me.”
The floor was cool.
Jones floated in a place where there was only the cool floor, the darkness, and the pain.
He’d been here before, and he’d swore he’d die before he came back.
Why had he come back?
Molly.
She’d been standing right there, right in front of him, and yet he hadn’t said it. He’d had the chance, but he’d choked. Still, maybe she knew. “I love you,” he whispered. He had no problem saying it now, even though his lips were battered and split. “I love you, Molly.”
“I’m afraid I’m not Molly,” a voice said quietly from the darkness. “I’m Lieutenant Sam Starrett, U.S. Navy SEALs, and I’m here with my friend and hospital corpsman, Petty Officer Jay Lopez, to get you out and bring you home.”
His first thought was that they came for him. After all these years, they finally came for him.
But then he realized with a sickening certainty that he couldn’t go.
“If you take me, they’ll go after Molly.”
“We’re a step ahead of you, sir,” said the voice with its trace of a Texas drawl. “She and all of the other missionaries have already been taken to safety. You can put her out of your mind right now, Mr. Jones, and concentrate on helping us get you out of this shithole.”
“Your right leg’s broken, sir,” said another voice. “I’m going to put on a temporary splint. I’m working with night vision glass, so even though it might seem dark in here to you, I can see what I’m doing quite clearly. I’m going to give you some morphine—”
“No!”
“All right, but I need you to stay still and not cry out. Do you understand me, sir?”
“Yes.”
There was a sharp flare of white hot pain that then slowly subsided, leaving just the dull roar from the rest of his bruised and battered body.
“Let’s get you out of here,” Starrett said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Twenty
Alyssa left the press conference and went out into the hotel lobby for some air.
What a pain in the ass it must be to be a von Hopf and have to hold a press conference every time some bad personal shit reared its ugly head. A son kidnapped. A daughter missing. Okay, maybe those were news stories, but still. There were reporters in there asking Priscilla von Hopf about an alleged fender bender she had in the Lord & Taylor parking lot during a recent business trip to Natick, Massachusetts. That wasn’t anyone’s business.
The lobby wasn’t that much more of a fun place to be right now, Alyssa realized. The SEALs—with the exception of WildCard Karmody—were checking out and going wheels up this afternoon.
They’d brought the man known only by his obvious alias of Jones back late last night, and spent the morning in debriefings.
Jones, yeah right. That was really his name.
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