They Disappeared Page 16

  That’s right, she thought, stroking Cole’s hair.

  Now she had the answer to her haunting question.

  Why is this happening?

  To make us stronger.

  We can never surrender.

  We have to fight.

  Again she glanced over to the area where some of the men were quietly working.

  They’re planning something huge, something horrible.

  We have to get out of here.

  We have to tell people what’s coming.

  CHAPTER 35

  Somewhere in New York City

  Flames burned in Bulat Tatayev’s eyes.

  The fire reflected his hell and his will to be delivered from it.

  Even if it meant killing one of his men.

  Zama.

  Bulat’s memory traveled across the Atlantic and across time to a troubled region of the Northern Caucasuses where he and Zama had grown up, like many of his men under his command.

  There, as boys in the mountains, they’d played football together, chased the same girls, went to the same schools and dreamed the same dreams.

  Bulat was born in Mykrekistan, a small Russian republic slivered between the tinderbox republics of Dagestan and Chechnya near the Caspian Sea. Bulat’s father, a chemist, and Bulat’s mother, a teacher, had joined Mykrekistan’s long-standing rebellion against Russian rule.

  But the struggle to create a free and independent nation was always crushed.

  After a failed uprising, Bulat’s father and mother had taken him to gather with others to line the streets of their town to protest a passing Russian military convoy.

  Bulat’s father stood in the path of a tank and held up the sign he’d made on their kitchen table opposing the Russian occupation. The tank’s gunner shot him. When Bulat’s mother rushed to his aid, the gunner shot her, too. Before anyone could move, the tanks rolled over their bodies as if they were animals.

  Bulat was fourteen.

  He ran to them but others held him back to save his life. He fought, screamed, then fell to his knees in the snow-soaked dirt, his body quaking, tears running down his face. The foul-smelling diesels growled and steel clanked as he mourned the rag dolls that were his mother and father.

  In the days and weeks that followed, Bulat remembered nothing.

  But the seeds of vengeance had been planted in the blood-drenched mud where his parents had died.

  Bulat had been taken in by relatives and passed to various homes. He was always the outsider, the loner.

  “You are an orphan of the revolution,” one uncle told him, “perhaps you are destined to lead it one day.”

  As Bulat became a young man he joined the struggle with a vow to honor his parents by winning freedom.

  The Republic of Mykrekistan was divided between the loyalist minority, which ruled as a Kremlin puppet, and the resistant majority determined to break free of its Russian yoke. Mykrekistan was a region of unrest. For years across the land there were enclaves of separatist fighting and talk of unifying insurgent movements for a revolutionary war.

  After graduating from school with high grades and the ability to speak English and some French, Bulat became a junior engineer in a chemical factory. He also secretly trained with the underground militia and helped lead attacks against Russian military targets.

  By the time he was nineteen he had killed fifty men.

  Impressed by Bulat’s zeal, a wealthy warlord with international links arranged for him to study in Europe, Canada, Australia and the United States.

  “You are a true son of Mykrekistan, you carry our plea and hope for our emerging nation,” the warlord said.

  For the next six years Bulat was away. He lived in London, Paris, Hamburg, Sydney, Toronto and New York City. He studied engineering and improved his English, his French and learned to speak some German. But the goal of his education abroad was to gather intelligence, establish cells and strengthen “freedom” networks in Mykrekistani communities around the world.

  In New York City, he fell in love with Leyla, a pretty NYU student from Mykrekistan. They returned to Mykrekistan where they married and started a family, first with Lecha, their little boy, then Polla, their little girl.

  Back in his homeland Bulat was embraced by rebels as if he were a returning prophet. During the years that followed he’d become a professional soldier and resumed his role leading missions against the Russian occupiers that were devastatingly effective as the potential of a revolutionary war increased.

  Beyond the bloodshed, Bulat saw the future in the faces of his children, the promise that a free Mykrekistan was within their grasp. He felt it when he took them to the cemetery to kneel at the graves of his parents—to remind Lecha and Polla that his life, like those of their grandparents, was devoted to the struggle.

  One year, after a brutal winter, the spring brought hope when Moscow announced free elections and the start of peace talks aimed at the transition of power and independence.

  It was a lie.

  The move was a ploy meant to end the toll exacted by the insurgent attacks. The election was rigged, resulting in another government that kowtowed to the Kremlin. Anger ignited unrest on every street of every village, town and city. Within weeks Mykrekistan was engulfed in war.

  For weeks Moscow hammered Mykrekistan’s rebel forces with its overwhelming military might. Rockets, bombs, tanks and ground troops razed entire towns.

  Bulat took his family to a safe house in one of the rebel-controlled mountain villages, but the Russian military tortured prisoners for information on rebels, then unleashed relentless attacks on their strongholds.

  One night Bulat woke to the sound of distant thunder. It was approaching. Dishes and cutlery began clinking because the earth started shaking.

  Bulat knew what was coming.

  He moved quickly to get his family to safety just as the sky shrieked with such ferocity Bulat feared it was being ripped apart. In an instant the air spasmed with a deafening roar and great wind, then everything flashed white as though the sun had hit the earth.

  Bulat was hurled into blackness.

  He awoke to the smells of earth and charred meat. He called out to his family in vain, then heard strange voices. Flashlights pierced the night as rescuers extracted him from the rubble.

  Then in the dust-filled blackness they found Leyla.

  Eyes and mouth open, only her head was exposed. Bulat called her name and prayed as he frantically removed the debris around her.

  It was futile. She was dead.

  Leyla’s hand had a death-grasp on a foot. Lecha’s foot. A flashlight beam followed it into the rubble as Bulat dug savagely to Lecha’s knee, his thigh, then to…nothing but bloodied flesh, veins and tissue.

  They found the rest of his son’s remains across the room.

  Bulat and the rescuers searched for Polla.

  He called out to her, his shattered heart clinging to the hope that she had survived. Then they found her.

  Above them.

  Entangled in the roof’s wreckage.

  Dead.

  Bulat got her down.

  Her body was intact and warm as he carried her from the horror to the tiny meadow near the house where the rescuers had arranged Leyla and Lecha. Their bodies had been wrapped in sheets.

  As Bulat held Polla in his arms something inside him cleaved, separating him from this world and his connection with humanity.

  They don’t kill you, they kill what you love, which is far worse than death, he thought.

  From the mountainside, among the dead, he saw the distant bomb flashes and the tracer fire of the Russian onslaught across the region. Bulat had no time to mourn. He fought the enemy as the war raged for months. Thousands of Mykrekistanis died before Rus
sian forces had regained control of the republic.

  “They invade our country, murder our children, our families, and the United Nations does nothing,” Bulat told his men. “We must plunge our sword deep into Russia.”

  In the months after the war, Bulat led a number of strategic strikes against Russian institutions in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. However, the FSB, Russia’s security service, paid informants to lead them to most of the rebels. They were captured and their families were located, arrested, then tortured before their eyes.

  Then they were all executed.

  Bulat and his surviving loyalists had escaped.

  Soon, the Kremlin declared an end to hostilities and installed a puppet regime whose new president proclaimed victory.

  “They have won nothing but a death sentence. We will never surrender,” Bulat told his men.

  Bulat’s struggle had been crippled but his mission still burned. He would honor the dead with a free Mykrekistan by forcing the world to drink the blood of injustice.

  “They can only understand once they feel what we feel. We will exchange pain for pain on the largest stage possible.”

  Bulat drew upon all of his resources and global connections and began planning a mission that would guarantee world attention to Mykrekistan’s plight.

  He would bring his struggle to the United States.

  Everything had gone smoothly until Zama fucked up.

  Zama was part of the advance team. Bulat had just arrived from Paris, where his forged passport had been produced.

  Bulat shook with anger.

  This operation had been painstakingly planned for more than a year and now it was in jeopardy. It did not involve hostages, car chases and news conferences with the FBI. All Zama had to do was to oversee the pickup of the component from LaGuardia, bring it here and help set up.

  That was it.

  The expensive component was rare and critical because it was undetectable by any means of security.

  Without it the operation could not happen.

  Everything was at risk because of Zama.

  Bulat stared at his corpse burning in the furnace in the grim, lower bowels of the old casket factory.

  Zama’s incompetence was unforgivable.

  The furnace flames reflected the determination burning in Bulat’s eyes. He had shown the others that failure was not tolerated.

  “Scatter his ashes over the East River. We leave no traces, just like you did with Hans Beck, or whatever that idiot’s name was,” Bulat instructed his men before he returned to the upper level operation planning table.

  He glanced at his watch.

  Less than thirty-six hours to go.

  “Yannov,” Bulat called to one of the men. “We will not dispose of the woman and boy. Not yet. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  “We are changing the operation in order to save it. I have a new plan that will include the woman and the boy. With them we’ll get even closer than we first thought. Did you enact the backup?”

  “Yes, Commander, a second device. It is en route from Amsterdam.”

  Bulat scanned the maps, photos, monitors, the muted news channels.

  “Good, we will salvage the mission. All is not lost. This operation will seize the world’s attention.” Bulat turned to the direction of the factory where Sarah and Cole were being held. “We need the woman and boy. They’re going to be a big part of it.”

  CHAPTER 36

  Manhattan, New York City

  What am I missing?

  Jeff drew his face to within inches of the flat-screen TV in his hotel room. He examined the millions of tiny pixels that formed the three pictures of Sarah in torment as he’d fought to free her from her captors.

  But he no longer saw his wife, himself or the kidnappers.

  He saw nothing but liquid crystals rotating polarized light.

  It had been more than three hours since he’d started working with Detective Lucy Chu, the forensic artist, and some thirty-four hours since Sarah and Cole were stolen. Events bled into one another, with this morning’s call from the kidnappers leading to his failed rescue bid, the hospital, the press conference and now his work with Chu.

  In all that time, he’d barely slept.

  Jeff blinked several times and rubbed his face.

  Chu and Ortiz traded glances.

  “Maybe you should knock off for a bit?” Ortiz said.

  “I had her in my arms,” Jeff said to the TV. “I had the door open.”

  “Jeff,” Chu said. “You should take a break while I work on images.”

  “I was so close to getting her back.”

  “Let’s get out of the hotel,” Ortiz said. “So you can clear your head.”

  “We have to find a detail, a lead,” Jeff told the TV.

  “Come on, Jeff, let’s go out for a bit.” Ortiz took his arm gently but he shook her off.

  “No! Did you hear me? I can’t! I don’t even know if Cole’s alive!”

  In the tense silence he saw the two detectives looking at him with pity and concern, the way sane people look at someone who is losing their hold on reality. Through his anguished exhaustion Jeff recognized this and after a long moment said, “All right, I’ll go out by myself.”

  “I have to go with you,” Ortiz said.

  “No.” He collected his cell phone and room key. “I’ll go alone.”

  “That’s not possible,” Ortiz said.

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “Of course not.” Ortiz handed him a Yankees cap and dark glasses. “Here, people might recognize you after the press coverage. Your face is out there.”

  Jeff stared at her.

  “You guys are pissed at me. You don’t trust me.”

  “Jeff, it’s for your safety, in case contact is made again,” Ortiz said.

  He glanced around the room.

  Cordelli had left after his call. Brewer and Klaver were following leads.

  “All right,” Jeff said, “there’s a place I need to go.”

  Over twenty city, state and federal police agencies were working on the case, Ortiz told Jeff on the way to her unmarked car.

  “There was a case meeting at the FBI’s office downtown. People from D.C. were on the call.”

  Jeff looked at her.

  “Washington? Do they know what the toy airplane has to do with all this, can you tell me?”

  “No, because I don’t know. All I can tell you is that everyone’s looking at all angles of the murder case and the abductions—” she nodded to a helicopter and a passing motorcade “—because of the UN meeting going on in town right now. And, at last count, we’re following sixty tips called in since the press conference.”

  “Sixty?”

  “A handful could be credible leads. Everyone’s going flat out, Jeff.” They’d reached the car parked near the hotel entrance. “Where did you want to go?”

  “Central Park.”

  “That’s not far, which entrance?”

  “South.”

  “What’s in Central Park?”

  “Hope.”

  As they drove across midtown, Jeff scoured vehicles and faces in the street for Sarah, for Cole, for the kidnappers.

  “You know, anyone would have done what I did, Juanita. They would’ve gone out on their own if it meant getting their family back.”

  She looked at him, at his face laced with cuts, scrapes. He looked as if he’d been at the losing end of a brawl. He was beat up physically, emotionally, but he was not defeated and she admired that about him.

  “I know, Jeff.”

  “I remember seeing a picture of a little girl on your desk,” he said. “You have kids?”

&n
bsp; “Our daughter, Lucy, is six.”

  “Tell me about her?”

  Ortiz’s face softened into a smile.

  “She’s perfect. She’s everything to us and I would die without her.”

  Jeff nodded, narrowing his eyes as he searched the streets for a way out of his nightmare.

  “Tell me about Cole, Jeff?”

  “He’s my buddy. He has a heart of gold. When—” Jeff swallowed. “When Lee Ann was born all he wanted to do was hold her and look after her. You know what he did before we brought her home from the hospital? He took his favorite old toys, lined them up in her nursery, to welcome her and watch over her.”

  Jeff shook his head, glowing at the memory, then his face slowly darkened.

  “I’ve got to find them, Juanita.”

  Central Park gave Jeff sanctuary from his nightmare.

  Here, the boiling chaos of the city melted into the peace of the creeks, waterfalls, vast green expanses and sheltering trees.

  Central Park was an island of calm.

  Jeff and Ortiz found a bench near the Gapstow Bridge at the northeast end of the Pond.

  “This is where Sarah and I met, really got to know each other,” Jeff said. “We went to the same high school and I sort of knew her. I liked her and thought she was nice but she was dating a farm kid on the basketball team. Then we came to New York City on a school trip, about fifty students.

  “We were in the park, around here, and Sarah was off by herself crying. She looked so sad and alone. I’d learned that her boyfriend had broken up with her and all I could think was who would be dumb enough to break the heart of such an angel. So I started talking to her. I told her not to worry, that what happened was the best thing because I was going to marry her one day and we would have the greatest life and come back here with our kids and tell them about it and laugh at the day her idiot boyfriend broke her heart.”

  Ortiz smiled.

  Breezes fingered through the trees and Jeff looked up.