Ransom

The others were all drunk by late that afternoon. Even Waters. And by six o'clock they were all asleep in the living room. Peter sat watching them, and then went to the back of the house to Sam's room. He said nothing to the boy, lay on the bed next to him, and fell asleep with his arms around him, dreaming of his daughters.

Chapter 19

When Ted and Fernanda got to Tahoe, the local police had taken over a small motel for the entire task force. It was run-down and ramshackle, and had been empty for the most part, even during the summer season. The few guests staying there had been content to leave with a small stipend paid to get them out. And two of the cops were bringing food in from a nearby fast-food place by the vanload. Everything was set up. The FBI had sent eight commandos trained in hostage release and kidnappings, and a SWAT team that had come up from the city was similarly trained. The local cops were swarming, but had not yet been advised of exactly what was happening. There were more than fifty men waiting when Ted got out of the car and looked around. They were going to have to handpick who went in and how they did it. A local captain was handling equipment, road blocks, and local officers. And Rick was in charge of the entire operation, and had set up shop in a room next to the motel office, which he had left for the local captain. There was an entire fleet of communication trucks, and Ted saw Rick come out of one of them, as Fernanda followed him from the car. The organized chaos around them was both terrifying and reassuring at the same time.

“How's it going?” Ted asked Rick, and both men looked tired. Ted hadn't had more than two hours' sleep consecutively in days, and Rick had been up since the night before. Sam was becoming a sacred cause to those who knew about him, which was a comfort to his mother. And Ted had asked one of the officers to set up a room for her.

“We're almost there,” Rick said, glancing at her, and she nodded with a tired smile. She looked like she was holding up, but barely. This was beyond stressful for her, although talking to Ted about other things on the drive up had helped for a brief time.

Ted went to get her settled. There were a psychologist from the SWAT team and a female officer waiting in the room for her. And when he had left her with them, Ted came back to Rick in the room he was using as the command post. They had a mountain of sandwiches and boxed salads on a table along the wall, and a diagram of the house and a map of the area taped to the wall above it. The food provided was unusually wholesome, as neither the FBI commandos nor the SWAT team ate fatty foods, sugar, or caffeine, as it slowed them down after the initial high, and they were meticulous about what they ate. The local police captain was sitting in with them, and the head of the SWAT team had just walked out of the room to see his men. It looked like the invasion of Normandy to Ted as he grabbed a sandwich and sat down in a chair, while Rick stood next to him. It looked like they were planning a war. It was a major rescue mission, and the combined brain- and manpower was impressive. The house they were setting their sights on was less than two miles down the road. They were putting out nothing over the radios, in case the kidnappers had any kind of monitoring devices, and so the press wouldn't pick it up and blow it for them. They were taking every precaution they could to keep the operation sterile, but in spite of that, Rick looked worried as he glanced at the diagram with Ted. They had gone to the local surveyor's office to get the map of the house, and had blown it up to an enormous size.

“Your informant says the kid is at the back of the house,” Rick said, pointing to a room at the back, not far from the property line. “We can get him out, but there's a cliff right behind them, it's straight up from there. I can get four guys down the rock face, but I can't get them back up fast enough, and if they've got the kid with them, they'll be too exposed.” He pointed to the front of the house then. “And we've got a driveway the length of a football field on the way out. I can't get in with a chopper or they'll hear us. And if we blow up the house, we're liable to kill the boy.”

The head of the SWAT team and the FBI commandos had been conferring for the past two hours, and they hadn't solved the problem yet. But Ted knew they would. They had no way of contacting Peter Morgan to set up a plan with him. They were going to have to make all their decisions on their own, for better or worse. Ted was relieved that Fernanda wasn't in the room with them to listen to the dangers they were outlining. It would have driven her over the edge. They were brainstorming out loud, and so far everything they'd come up with had a high likelihood of killing the boy.