Page 31
“Hit the lights, Jase,” Kostya ordered since Jase was closest to the light switch.
Three pictures popped up on the screen. “These are our subjects. Edward Talbot the Third is the one on the left. He’s known as Trey. Sinclair Talbot is the young man in the middle. The one on the right is no slouch; his father owns a pharmaceutical company. His name is Robert Short.”
“When the girls were arrested, the young men went to the US Embassy, which told them that since the girls weren’t American citizens, but were Turkish citizens, they couldn’t assist. When they went to the Gendarmerie, they were told that they had never heard of the girls. Basically, that the girls had never existed.”
“When was this?” Lincoln Hart asked.
“Seven days ago,” Commander Clark answered. “That didn’t stop them; they went to the press.”
Shit. Ryker remembered seeing some mega-yacht on the front of one of those tabloids at the grocery store check-out lanes with pictures of pretty girls and the big title ‘MISSING’ and ‘COVER-UP’ blaring over the pictures. Yep, the boys had been busy.
The door opened and Linc slipped in and took a chair next to Ryker. He didn’t say anything, just sat with his notepad and pen in hand.
“The Princeton boys were high-profile in Turkey, making all kinds of waves. It’s assumed that’s when they were targeted. They didn’t dock, instead, they anchored about a half mile out at sea and took their tender back and forth to the mainland.”
“A couple of nights they stayed and partied hard at a private residence. Their bodyguards were with them the entire time, except when they went upstairs with their new girlfriends.”
Ryker wasn’t quite sure if the sneer in the Commander’s voice was due to the lack of diligence by the frat boy’s security team, or the frat boys’ deep commitment to their original lady loves. Ryker’s internal sneer was for both.
“It wasn’t until noon the next day that it was determined all three of them were missing. The girls, all American, were hospitalized. They’d been roofied, so they couldn’t provide any information. According to the five-man security team, there were well over two hundred partygoers, and it was still going strong when they finally decided to go upstairs and check on their charges. That was three days ago. Whoever took them knew the property. They made it into the communications room and destroyed all recorded footage from the time the Princeton boys arrived. The house wasn’t set up for off-site feeds, so once it was destroyed, it was gone. The man running the communications room wasn’t killed, he was drugged.”
“Did they bring in the Gendarmerie General Command?” Ryker asked.
“The security team decided against it. They knew that the boys hadn’t made any friends with the local authorities, and since there weren’t any real injuries against Turkish citizens the homeowner went with their decision.”
“Three days ago?” Gideon clarified.
“Yes,” their commander nodded.
“So why are we just being brought in now?” Gideon asked.
“The security team didn’t contact the boys’ fathers, instead they thought they could handle things on the ground there in Turkey.”
“Idiots,” Lincoln muttered under his breath.
Ryker gave a subtle nod.
“It wasn’t until they received a ransom demand along with a video of one of their kid’s fingers being cut off that they called into the President. Like your lieutenant said, this is a political nightmare. The video was transmitted over one of the more subversive social media platforms, and all three sets of parents were provided e-mails with links at the same moment. Gideon, play the video.”
It took a moment for everything to get into focus, but when it did, you could see that there were three men, two in their underwear, one naked propped up against a cement wall. They all had black hoods over their heads. They were all Caucasians.
A man with a ski mask walked on screen in front of the three men. He began talking with a Turkish accent.
“Brothers Talbot and Mr. Short, you seem to be missing something, and we have it. You have all received a separate e-mail this morning, with three different Swiss bank account numbers. The Talbots will have to pay a great deal more to get their sons back, Mr. Short, your ransom will be sizably less. All of you must pay within three days, and all of your sons will be returned. If one of you fails to pay, then all of your sons will die. It is simple. To show that we are sincere, we will give you a small taste of what’s to come.”
He turned and barked in Turkish to someone off-camera, telling them to take the hoods off the college boys. Two men came into the frame, both wearing ski masks, and took the hoods off. The young men had been roughed up.
“Bring me one, I don’t care who,” the leader said in Turkish. “And bring me a table and knife.”
Ryker winced. He was almost a hundred percent sure he knew what was going to happen.
Please let it only be a finger and not a hand.
When one of the terrorists brought over the middle kid who was wearing blue boxer briefs and shoved him over the table that another guy had set down, a third guy brought over a wicked-looking scimitar.
“I said a knife, not a sword, you fucking idiot! Someone get me a knife!” he shouted in Turkish. The kid was sweating, but there was no begging, no pissing his Calvin Kleins. There was more to him than Ryker had been expecting.
In moments an equally wicked-looking knife was slapped into the leader’s hand, and he turned to the camera once more. “Remember, you have three days. Seventy-two hours.” He nodded at the man holding the college boy down on the table and motioned for one of the others to grab his hand. He did. The kid balled his hand into a fist and started to struggle, but it didn’t matter. The leader simply cut into his fist and was soon holding up the bloodied, amputated pinkie finger.
