Jeff finds himself in Washington DC on business trying to close a big deal for his company where he meets up with Nancy again, the FBI agent he had fallen in love with in Atlanta nearly two years ago. Jeff is separated from his wife because of Nancy
Chapter 17 of
Monday 12:02 PM: Kidnapped!
They discover that
Jeff's wife was kidnapped by Iranians! After depositing Jeff at a phone booth
to await instructions to rescue his wife, a black car drives up and they kidnap
Jeff!
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- Chris Lamela
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Author contact: Chris Lamela,
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K Street, Chapter 17
Monday
12:02 PM: Kidnapped!
“My wife was kidnapped,” Jeff spoke in barely a whisper.
“Ah Jesus, like we don’t have enough problems!” a voice came from the
room.
“Who said that? WHO!” Nancy
A small-faced man with only a wisp of hair combed over his bald head, a
scraggly salt-and-pepper mustache spoke timidly, “I’m sorry, it was me, it was
just a reaction, I didn’t really―”
“You didn’t what? Mean to say something that was really going to piss me off!” Nancy Nancy
The man made a hurried motion to try to collect notes in front of him, Arnie
waved him away, “That’s all case notes, you won’t need them.” He motioned
toward Nancy who stood looking two feet taller than her already-tall frame. “Like
she said, you’re off the case. You better leave. Now.”
With a panicked expression the man could barely get to his feet,
stumbling through the curtain.
Arnie reached to Nancy Nancy
Without a word Jeff reached taking the phone, pushing a couple buttons,
handing it back to Arnie who held the phone up to his ear, he walked around the
table to Yvonne. He leaned over to her giving instructions to access the message,
asked her to get a quick transcript of the fifteen-second message. “Can you get
it back to me in fifteen minutes?”
“This will only take two minutes,” she leaped up around the table
through the curtain.
“Thanks!” he called to the wafting curtain. “We need fifteen minutes in
here.” He turned back to the table, “look guys, we need a break, can you give
us fifteen minutes here?” There was a mumble and movement, soon only Arnie,
Nancy and Jeff were left in the room.
Arnie came to the other end of the table, pulled up a chair facing Jeff.
“Look, Jeff, we know this is serious and we are taking it serious. You already
know that this game has gotten pretty big. Pretty ugly.” He rubbed his eyes
vigorously, held his fingers to his face in thought, turning to him. “They have
no reason to hurt her. They are doing this to get to us. You heard the message,
they want contact at that phone booth at noon. That gives us two hours to
figure this all out. My guess is that they’ll want a meeting and when we show up
they’ll give us,” he looked up at Nancy
“Donna.”
“They’ll give us Donna back. You
know everything we know, my guess is that they just want to find a way to kill―I’m
sorry, that’s a poor choice of words huh?” He rubbed his eyes again. “They just
want to stop this deal. But Jeff we’ve been around this game our whole lives,
my whole life, things sometimes are simpler than they seem at first. I mean
really we only have two players here, Saddam and the Ayatollahs.” He laughed, Jeff
jerked his head toward him with a squinched scowl, Arnie turned getting the
full force of it, “No, Jeff, I’m not making light of this. It’s just that if
they wanted to send a stronger message they would be telling us where to find
your wife’s body.”
“Arnie, stop it!” Nancy
Arnie stood up to face Nancy
Arnie kneeled down to Jeff looking
up into his face, “Jeff, we need you here. We need your insights. You know that
there’s no magic here. It’s just us humans trying to figure this out, all of
our nerves are on edge,” he looked up at Nancy signaling her that he was talking
to her as much as Jeff, “so we are all doing and saying things that are not the
brightest things we’ve all said and done.” He put his hand on Jeff’s shoulder, finally
getting eye contact, Jeff looked to Arnie. “Jeff, you’re in this. We need your
help.” He shook Jeff’s shoulder gently, “Are you in the game here?” Jeff
nodded. “Feeling a little better?” Jeff nodded his head so slightly. “You
should feel better, really this is good news. We need you now, stand up, walk
it off, then come back here. Go outside if you need. Do you need to go
outside?”
Jeff shook his head slowly, “No, I’m fine. It was just such a shock
that’s all.”
“Come on, stand up,” Arnie made to help Jeff to his feet, “take a stroll
around the table if you need.” Jeff came to his feet taking a few steps around
the corner of the table, looked back at them, “Good, take a few laps around the
table, get your head back in the game.”
Jeff continued walking around the table, soon lapped it, coming back
around Arnie and Nancy were in the corner, Arnie shaking his finger at Nancy
“That won’t be necessary,” Jeff said as he came to a rest.
They turned to Jeff surprised.
“Hey guys, this is a small room.” The two stood with horrified
expressions that Jeff had overheard this conversation.
“And Arnie, your softest voice ain’t all that soft!” suddenly all three
burst out laughing, Jeff walked up to them putting his arms around their
shoulders pulling them in until it felt like some kind of family hug that Jeff would do with his kids.
Arnie laughed again, “Okay, guys, let’s get back into the game, let’s go
get Donna back, huh?”
“So then let’s go get some bad guys, okay?” Nancy
A couple minutes later Yvonne walked in with a small stack of pages that
had only a few lines printed on the top, sitting down, quickly followed by the
others who picked up a copy of the page from the stack at the end of the table.
Everyone sat in silence reading the terse caption on the page in front of them.
Five minutes later Nancy walked in with
her arm around Earl, the small-faced little man that had made the comment that
ignited Nancy
“First let me apologize for my little outburst earlier,” with only the
slightest acknowledgement of her words from the table, “let’s figure out what’s
going on.” She picked up the transcript from the voicemail message from Jeff’s
phone. “So it looks like Jeff’s wife, Donna, called at five this morning to
leave this message.” She looked to Yvonne, “Yvonne, how did you get these
translations so fast?”
Yvonne gave a wry smile, “I have my ways,” she reached across laying
Jeff’s cell phone on the table.
“Yeah, I’ll say. So let me read this out loud, Female voice English: ‘Jeff
it’s me Donna. When I left your room last night I went downstairs to get a cab
to go back to the airport’.” Nancy fourteenth
street Franklin
Park at noon. You’ll know it because the will be a―yellow right?
Yes a yellow advertisement taped to the door of the booth advertising some tea
house’. First man’s voice Farsi: ‘Hurry!’ Female voice English, crying: ‘Jeff
they say they’ll kill me if you aren’t there oh god I only hope you―’.
Scuffling noise, line disconnected.”
“Hope you what?” Jeff’s head jerked up with a piercing scowl at Yvonne.
“Hope you what!”
“That’s all there was. Like it says the line was disconnected.”
Jeff’s chest heaved in anger, Arnie reached his hand to Jeff’s shoulder leaning
to Jeff speaking softly, “Jeff, that’s all there was. You can go back and
listen to it again if you want.” Jeff shrugged shaking his head looking down at
his knees.
“So first, why that phone booth, why not just call his cell phone?”
“Because they want to make sure that Jeff is alone,” piped up Earl, the
small-faced man.
Jeff turned to Earl who answered simply, “That’s pretty standard SOP.
Never seen these kinds of calls done any other way.”
Just then a man poked his head through the curtain. Arnie stepped over
to him, the man whispered into Arnie’s ear, Arnie turned back to the table,
“Okay, those guys are definitely on it, the phone booth already has the
yellow-paper advertisement taped to it.” Jeff wondered how they knew this so
quickly, he shrugged feeling a little better that they were so on the case.
Finally Nancy
Arnie pointed to Jeff, “Here’s your man who’ll be at the booth, Jeff can
you stand up? They need your picture.” Jeff stood up facing the men, one
pointed a camera to Jeff, he heard three clicks and whirls of the auto-winder. The
man with the camera turned around pushing back through the curtain. He turned
to Arnie who was grinning, “So our guys know who you are!”
Arnie motioned for Jeff to sit down, gestured for everyone’s attention
at the table, “Okay people, we’ve got less than an hour to get Jeff to the
phone booth.”
Jeff noticed his cell phone sitting on the table, motioned to Arnie if
he could take it. He looked at the screen, saw no new messages, sliding the
phone into his right inside coat pocket.
“Look, I know that all our attention is on Donna right now, but we have
to keep our eyes on the ball here concerning the congressmen and ODS.” Arnie
glanced at Jeff, “Of course, our first priority right now is Donna.”
A man pushed through the curtain standing next to Arnie who glanced up
at him, turning facing the group, “This is Ahmed who is running the op at the
phone booth,” he looked up at Ahmed, “tell us the setup.”
Ahmed had a light mahogany complexion, a stiff Arab nose that curved
over his small lips ending in a distinct point over his chin, he spoke in a
clearly middle-eastern tinted voice, “Yes, these men are very smart to choose
that location. It is surrounded on three sides by tall buildings with Franklin Park behind it. There is no way we could
possibly watch all the windows in the buildings, and it will be difficult to
spot passers-by around the park. Yes, a very good choice, but not so much for
us.” He held up a large sheet of paper with his left hand pointing to it with
his right forefinger. “This is a layout of the location, you can see the
problem. We have a dozen men positioned around on the ground level,” pointing
to the buildings across the street, “three sharpshooters on each of the closest
buildings. The buildings are not ideally positioned because they are across the
street, but that is the best we can do under the circumstances.”
He pointed to Jeff, “This is the man, right?” Arnie nodded, Ahmed swept
his fingers up toward Jeff signaling him to stand. Jeff stood up facing Ahmed.
“There will be three signals which you must practice right now.” Ahmed put his
right hand on his hip, his left hand dangling. “This means they did not show,
the phone did not ring. There was no contact.” Raising his left hand onto his
hip, “Both hands on hips means the transaction is finished and that you are
ready to go back to our contact point.”
“Contact point?”
“Yes, you will arrive in a cab that is ours, you will return to the cab
when you are done. It will have circled the block and be parked down the street
to your left on Fourteenth Street
“What if something goes wrong or is changed?”
Ahmed crossed is arms, “Simple, this is our universal sign that
something is wrong and that you need us to come immediately. But only use this
if something goes very wrong otherwise
we may blow our cover. Understand?” Jeff nodded. “Now you practice.”
Jeff laughed that it took a masters degree for him to remember these
three simple gestures but he went through the drill anyway.
“Okay, then,” Arnie stood up, everyone else rose, Ahmed disappearing
back through the curtain.
A few minutes later Jeff was in a cab headed back toward K Street
Jeff looked at the yellow flyer taped to the door seeing it was for the
Iran Tea House, which he took to be the signal that it was the clue from the Iranians.
He glanced at his watch, it said two minutes after twelve. The phone booth was
starting to get hot with the sun creating a little greenhouse with him standing
in it, he opened the door.
He eyed the phone trying to will it to ring, glanced down the street
looking for the cab that was to pick him up. Straining to see through the phone
booth glass Jeff could see a man next to the driver’s side leaning over talking
to the driver when suddenly the man leaned back making exaggerated
gesticulations like he was telling some fantastic story. How odd, he thought
that the driver would be watching all this when suddenly Jeff noticed a man
crouching next to the passenger side back tire, standing up walking away. Jeff
shook his head thinking maybe he was tying his shoe but all that activity
around his special cab seemed odd.
Suddenly his cell phone rang in his pocket. He reached into his pocket
to pull it out, pushed the TALK button putting the phone to his ear, instantly
hearing his wife’s voice, “Jeff? Jeffy? It’s me, can you hear me?”
“Donna, yes, it’s me are you okay?”
“Jeff listen to me, OW! You’re hurting me!”
“Donna, Donna! Are you okay, what’s going on!”
“Jeff, they say they will kill me if you don’t do exactly as they say.”
“What! What do they want me to do?”
“They want you to walk to the corner and not to make any signal to
anybody, you are to keep your hands to your sides. A car will be there to get
you.”
“Donna, they want me to do what?”
The line went dead.
Jeff stood holding the phone to his ear
paralyzed, dumbstruck about what he was supposed to do. Oh, god, they want me to do what? He clicked the TALK button again
to turn the phone off putting it back into his pocket trying to remember what
the signals were―so much for that master’s degree―and what was he supposed to
do right now? The game has changed: right
hand on hip. Yes, that was it, but then go stand on the corner? If he blew
it would they kill Donna? If he goes out there somebody will sweep in to scoop
him up? Jesus! He stepped backward out
of the phone booth circling around it to stand on the corner. He put his right
hand on his hip, not two seconds later a large black car roared up screeching
to a halt, a man jumped out of the passenger door, opened the back door shoving
Jeff inside climbing in with Jeff, pulling the door closed behind him, the car
peeling away from the curb.
He could hear the car’s huge engine roaring, it felt like they were
accelerating to a hundred miles an hour, a sharp right, Jeff slid across the
seat banging into the left side door, the car turned a sharp left, he was
slammed against the man on his right who pushed him away. He tried to look out
the back window expecting to see another car pursuing them, but there was nothing.
Looking forward, the car careened through the streets he saw they ran a
red light! Cars were honking, swerving to avoid them, the black car sped on.
All he could think is that he was being taken to see Donna who had been
kidnapped. And now he was in the same situation…
Kidnapped!
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NOW READ THE NEXT CHAPTER IN
K STREET!
http://chrislamela.blogspot.com/2012/09/k-street-chapter-18.html
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