Desperate Rendition - Chapter 12

Washington, D.C.

They slowly made their way off the plane, stuck in the mass of people, as Taylor tried to think through options. They had just stepped out of the plane and onto the jetway when he saw his option.

Grabbing Bonnie’s hand, he yanked her after him, through the jetway door and down the stairs. She pulled her hand free, but saw his plan and ran after him as they hit the tarmac and sprinted down the length of the airport.

“Stay low,” he shouted as they ran behind the wheel of a nearby seven-forty-seven.

They sprinted from plane to plane, using them as cover to get as much distance as possible, even though it was going to be fairly obvious where they went. The flight attendants and a dozen passengers had seen them go out the side door.

Shouts, almost drowned out by the sound of the planes, told him their efforts had been in vain. A look back over his shoulder confirmed it. An agent in the typical suit and tie that was the uniform of most FBI agents was standing in the open door of the jetway, pointing in their direction.

“We need to get off the tarmac,” Taylor said, pulling Bonnie after him, veering toward the building, barely dodging a fuel truck that came driving past.

A baggage handler was standing near the door to the building with a security badge hanging off his vest.

“Sorry, man. National security,” Taylor said.

“Hey,” the guy said, reaching for Taylor, only to find himself on the ground as Bonnie kicked the back of his knee and pushed him, sending the man toppling to the ground.

Taylor swiped the badge, yanking the door open as shouts erupted behind them. They tumbled inside, Taylor slamming it shut. They would have to go around or find someone else with a badge. It wouldn’t slow them down for long though.

Fluorescent lights flickered overhead as they found themselves in a narrow corridor.

“This way, I think,” Taylor said as he led them deeper into the bowels of the airport.

He honestly had no idea where he was going, but they needed to make it out fast. Solomon or whoever he sent was probably already calling for the airport police to start locking the place down.

They rounded a corner, coming face-to-face with a conveyor belt disappearing into the wall. A bunch of workers were standing near the bottom of it, putting bags onto the conveyor, which carried them away. Without hesitation, Taylor hoisted himself up.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Bonnie muttered.

“Move!” Taylor barked.

Bonnie scrambled onto the belt behind him. They crawled forward, the mechanical whine growing louder as they entered the chute.

The belt jerked to a stop almost as soon as they disappeared, probably because someone hit a stop button. Taylor continued to crawl on his hands and knees through the darkness toward a sliver of light he could see ahead of him, his shoulders scraping against the sides of the narrow passage.

Suddenly, light flooded their vision as they burst into the baggage claim area. The area was packed with people from the last few flights that had landed. Bonnie came out behind him. She looked around for a second as everyone stared at her and then jumped off the conveyor and ran over to the fire alarm on the wall and pulled it.

“Fire! There’s a fire! Run!” She started screaming.

That broke everyone out of their surprise, and maybe explained for them why two people came out of the baggage suite. The crowd of people screamed and began running for the exit.

Taylor jumped off the bend and grabbed Bonnie again, hauling her into the crowd that flowed toward the exit. The fire alarm was turned off before they even got to the sliding doors, but the civilians were already panicked and the alarm going off didn’t stop the stampede.

A few officers were outside, but there were too many people for them to control and it had been too sudden. Cars were zooming through, nearly hitting pedestrians, people were shouting, and it was just pure chaos.

Taylor looked back, mostly to see if any officers or agents had made it down here and saw some far back, down the hallway that led to baggage claim and the door out to the street.

One of those agents was Whitaker, and the two locked eyes for a moment. He could read her look, silently pleading. Taylor felt a pang of regret, but there was no turning back now. He shook his head once.

She’d have to trust him.

Outside, cars idled in the pick-up lanes, drivers out of their cars trying to figure out what was happening and find their loved ones in the chaos. Bonnie broke from him, running down the line of cars toward the one at the end of the cars, with nothing in front of it, blocking it. The driver was a woman standing several steps away from the call, standing on her tiptoes, looking for people.

Bonnie slid over the closed trunk and stiff-armed the woman as she came around to the open driver’s door, sending her flying back into the street as people pushed past her, almost trampling her in their flight to get away.

Taylor wasn’t sure he approved, but they didn’t have much choice. They had to get out of the airport before it was locked down. He jumped into the passenger’s seat just as Bonnie put the car in drive and hit the gas.

They sped away, dodging other cars and people. Bonnie drove like a maniac, getting around the gates and out to the freeway, half the time in the wrong lane, narrowly avoiding other cars.

It worked, though. Within minutes they were out of the airport and pulling up on the freeway. She didn’t keep them on it for long, taking the very next exit that led into what looked like a business area.

The airport was still busy with the last planes unloading for the night, but most of the other streets were fairly empty, which didn’t work in their favor.

“We need to ditch this car,” Taylor said.

The woman would have told the first cop she saw. It would have taken maybe five minutes for Whitaker to figure out what car he was in, the plates, and put out a BOLO.

“I know,” Bonnie said, almost annoyed at the backseat driving.

She turned down a main thoroughfare that led somewhere in the city, and then made several more turns. Taylor wasn’t sure what she was looking for. He would have gone for some kind of parking structure or apartment complex, but she seemed to be heading toward more of a commercial area.

She must have found it because she pulled into a darkened strip mall with 2 cars still sitting in the parking lot, pulling next to a small, very nondescript older sedan.

“Let’s go,” she said, getting out and going over to the sedan.

She had the door open in seconds and was in the driver’s seat. By the time Taylor was in, she’d already had it hotwired. It was very impressive.

“Where to now?” Bonnie asked.

“We head to the meet. It’s the only place we know where they’re gonna be. Then, we find my daughter.”

They kept their heads down and headed in the other direction, choosing to take the Capitol Beltway around the city rather than go in the same direction they left in. Bonnie was good. She kept the car a few miles per hour above the speed limit, so that she didn’t stand out from other cars, but also was unlikely to get pulled over. She did nothing erratic and nothing to draw attention to herself.

Now they just had to get to the address. Taylor finally had a chance to plug the address they sent into his phone and look it up.

“Take a left at exit nine,” Taylor said.

“Where exactly are we headed?”

“It’s some kind of industrial area. Lots of warehouses,” Taylor said, pulling up information on the address. “We’re headed for one of them, although the map says it’s permanently closed.”

“Makes sense. A good place for a meetup like this. Big space but indoors so not a lot of eyes, but in a place that gets a lot of traffic.”

“Probably not this late.”

“No, probably not,” Bonnie agreed. “But they’re improvising and this is probably a location they’ve used and scoped out before.”

Taylor started to look if he could find some kind of layout of the site when a call came in. He wouldn’t have needed caller ID to know who it was.

“What the hell are you doing?” Whitaker demanded as soon as he connected.

“I can explain...”

“I sure hope so. Director Solomon is livid. He’s ordered a full-scale manhunt for both of you. You just ran off with a goddamn assassin.”

“You need to get him to call it off. Now.”

“And why would he listen to me? He’s not going to accept my judgment when it comes to you. We’ve burned that bridge enough times, it’s not coming back.”

“They have Kara,” Taylor said.

The line went silent for a moment.

When she spoke again, Whitaker’s tone was completely different. “What do you mean, they have Kara?”

“They have kidnapped Kara. They want to trade her for Bonnie.”

“Who has Kara?”

“Richard Ellsworth.”

“The Senator?” Whitaker asked, both confused and shocked.

“Yes. He hired Bonnie to kill a guy named Darryl Casall, who apparently was looking like he was going to beat him.

There was a pause on the line. “Darryl Casall had a heart attack, Taylor.”

“Yeah, courtesy of Bonnie. She switched out his medication.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Yes. Unfortunately for her, she accidentally found out who hired her, and Ellsworth didn’t like the exposure. He brought in a Chechen PMC and bought the local Caracas police to deal with her. We managed to deal with that, but Ellsworth clearly figured out who I was because I had a text waiting for me when I landed with a picture of Kara tied up and surrounded by armed men. They want me to trade her for Bonnie.”

“I’ll have agents…”

“No,” Taylor cut her off. “Ellsworth was explicit. No warnings, no backup. He claims he’s got people in the FBI.”

“That’s a bluff, Taylor. He’s trying to isolate you.”

“Are you willing to bet Kara’s life on that? A guy like Ellsworth definitely has the connections to have some inside the Bureau. I’m not saying they’re in on the kidnapping, but he could definitely convince someone that there was a reason to keep him informed.”

“Taylor, you don’t even know for sure it’s Ellsworth. All you have is Bonnie’s word.”

“You’re right, but I also can’t afford to ignore it either. Whoever has her brought a PMC from overseas and bought off an entire city’s police force. Sure, it’s Venezuela’s, but that’s good enough for me, and I’m not going to risk Kara’s life on maybes.”

“You realize that he isn’t just going to let you turn her over and hand Kara back, right? If he was willing to kill his opponent and the assassin he hired, he’s definitely willing to kill you. This is a trap.”

“I do realize that,” Taylor said. “But I can’t let anything happen to Kara. She’s my daughter, Loretta. Her safety is my top priority.”

“I know, but... be careful. And keep me in the loop. I know he said no FBI, but if things go south, you need to get us involved.”

“Sure,” Taylor said, very specifically not agreeing or promising.

Whitaker made a sound that made it clear she heard what he was doing, but wasn’t going to fight him on it.

“I’ll talk to Solomon and see what I can do to smooth things over. He won’t be happy, but I think I can get him to call off the hounds. Don’t take any unnecessary risks.”

“Sure,” Taylor said again. “I love you.”

Before she could say anything, Taylor hung up and pulled the maps back up, again searching for a layout of the warehouse.

“If you’re done with family time, we have work to do,” Bonnie said.

“Just drive,” Taylor replied, making it clear he wasn’t in the mood to joke. 

“I have another stop for us on the way.”

Up till now, this had been an errand. He’d been willing to get Bonnie, but he wouldn’t have cared if she didn’t make it. Ellsworth made this personal and Taylor was going to make sure he paid for that mistake.

To do that, though, he needed to be prepared.

“We need to make a stop,” Taylor said as he wrote out a text.

Bonnie was incredulous. “A stop? Are you kidding me? I thought they had your kid!”

“He does. But I don’t have a gun. Do you?”

Bonnie just shrugged and said, “I figured you’d grab one off somebody when we got there.”

“Yeah, I’m not doing that. If I’m going to go into a situation like this, I’m going in armed, and I’m not going to trust I can get my hands on one before I needed it. We’re stopping to meet someone who’ll set us up. One of my guys.”

He could see Bonnie thinking for a second.

“The Mexican?”

“He’s from Puerto Rico.”

He wasn’t surprised she knew about Lopez. At the moment, the former private contractor was the only person Taylor worked with, outside of Whitaker. Lopez had run interference for Taylor during the whole incident that had put him and Bonnie up against each other the first time, so of course she’d have tagged him.

“Whatever,” she muttered, rolling her eyes. “Your buddies definitely know about your boy. Do you really think they won’t have eyes on him?”

“He knows how to shake a tail. Besides, if Whitaker says she can get the FBI to back off, she will. We’ll be fine.”

Taylor directed Bonnie off the freeway and toward a series of buildings he and Lopez knew. It wasn’t well populated or patrolled, so there wasn’t much of a chance of anyone pulling up on them while they got what they needed.

Just in case Whitaker wasn’t successful.

Taylor pulled the sedan into an empty parking lot of a building that had chain link fences all around it and signs telling people to keep out. One of the many abandoned buildings on the outskirts of the city.

A single SUV sat near the back, off to one side of the building, outside of the street lights and almost entirely in shadow. Taylor pulled the older car next to it, putting the SUV between them and the street.

Lopez got out of the SUV as they parked and walked around the front while he and Bonnie got out of their car. Lopez came around and intercepted Taylor, grabbing his elbow and pulling him away from the car and Bonnie.

“Boss, you sure you know what you’re doing?” Lopez said, interposing his body between Taylor and Bonnie, who leaned up against the car, arms crossed.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Taylor said, shaking him off and putting a hand on Lopez’s shoulder, redirecting him back toward the SUV. “Just show me what you’ve got.”

Lopez looked back at him one last time, making sure Taylor was serious, and shrugged. That’s what he liked about Lopez. He had the rare ability to just roll with things, instead of having to argue things out to death.

Honestly, it was a refreshing change from the Bureau, where everyone had to ask why for every damn thing.

Lopez kept his eyes on Bonnie as he passed, his hand close to a bulge on his opposite hip. Bonnie clocked it too, because she shook her head and chuckled before pushing herself off the ‘borrowed’ sedan and falling into step with Taylor. They followed Lopez to the SUV, who popped the hatch and pulled a large case toward them, unlatching it and throwing the lid back.

Inside were neatly arrayed weapons. Pistols, sub-machine guns, and rifles. Taylor recognized the crate, because they’d invested in two for his small company. One, he’d gone out of his way to get legal weapons that he or Lopez, or any future guys they might get, could carry on the job. The other crate was held off-site from the warehouse Lopez was currently working out of, and kept just in case. Taylor had been involved in enough borderline encounters over the last few years to know there would be moments when he’d need weapons not easily traceable back to him.

That moment had finally come.

Taylor reached for a Glock, checking the weight in his hand.

“You’re really just taking that?” Bonnie said.

“If we go in waving rifles, it’s gonna start fast. I like to leave my options open, and getting lit up the moment we show ourselves isn’t my idea of smart.”

“You know they’re not going to let us walk in and try to talk our way through it, right? They’re going to gun us down the second they see two of us. Besides, they’re not going to have your kid there. I’d put money on it. They’ll be smart enough to hold her somewhere else, in case things go sideways. If you really want to keep your options open, you’ll do just that.”

Taylor grunted, but she was right. Lopez handed him a large duffle bag and he put an M4 and a couple of magazines into the bag. To his surprise, instead of grabbing the other M4, Bonnie went for the Remington 700.

“Options, remember,” Bonnie said, picking up the small hard case in a separate slot and opening it to confirm it was a scope meant for the Remington.

Taylor wanted to argue, but he assumed she knew what she was doing. They both grabbed belt holsters for the side arms, along with several magazines and boxes of ammunition before Taylor pulled the lid of the crate closed.

“We’re going to need your SUV,” Taylor said, looking at Lopez.

Lopez shot a look at the older sedan, maybe wondering why he had to give up his car, but only said, “Sure. I can get a ride.”

“Thanks. When you’re out of here, could you call in a tip about this car, so it can be picked up. We boosted it, and I’d like it to get back to the owner.”

“Softie,” Bonnie muttered, but Taylor ignored her.

“Sure, I’ll take care of it.”

“Thanks,” Taylor said, pausing to make up his mind before adding one last thing. “If you don’t hear from me by tomorrow, call Whitaker. Let her know everything and tell her we’re heading to this warehouse.”

Taylor pulled up the map and handed his phone over, so Lopez could copy the address down.

“Take the case with you. I don’t want all this hardware floating around and it was too much of a pain in the ass to get it all together. Put it back in storage.”

“Sure,” he said, handing over the keys to the SUV.

Lopez pulled the crate out of the back of the vehicle and slammed the hatch down. “Be careful, boss.”

“Always,” Taylor said, getting in the SUV and starting the engine, giving his friend one last look before pulling out and back onto the road.

“You know, as he might just call your woman now, right?” Bonnie said as they pulled back up on the beltway.

“He won’t,” Taylor said, not taking his eyes off the road.

“In my experience, everyone’s loyal until they aren’t. All it takes is a little pressure, and suddenly, they’re doing whatever it takes to save their own skin.”

“Maybe that’s why you’re in the situation you’re in. If you had people you could rely on, instead of seeing everyone as the next person you could use, you’d have people to back you up. Instead, what did you get? Backstabbed, double-crossed, and needing someone to save you.”

Taylor must have hit home closer than he thought because Bonnie’s mouth opened, then closed. For a moment, Taylor almost apologized to her as she glared at him since insulting the person you expected to back you up seemed like a bad idea, but Bonnie just turned to look out the window.

Taylor just kept driving, the only sound in the car road noise and the soft hum of the engine.