Onward and Upward

Chapter 6

  As we were in the area I thought it might be a good idea to do the Florida experience, so Carol found an empty parking slot and I got out the brochures. Disney World was a disaster, but it wasn’t Walt’s fault - it was David’s. All day long I couldn’t move a muscle without bumping into yet more muscle, hired muscle. David was into Close protection mode, with a capital C, he was taking El Gordo’s threats seriously even if the police weren’t, so the next morning I reluctantly agreed with him and told Carol to make preparations to get under way; I certainly had enough shares in this boat to tell its Captain where to go, and that was the signal for Caroline to go into a flat spin. Daughter Cindy, for some obscure reason had ‘just loved’ the Tee-shirt that her parents had brought her back from Palm Beach, and would like one just like it from everywhere that they went without her. They had forgotten to get her one from Florida so ‘hang on a sec Boss; I’ve just got to pop to the shops’, so I stood on the flight deck along with David, idly watching his wife and Agnetha, who was going along to keep her company, make their way quickly to the Marina entrance; there were some suitable looking souvenir shops just outside the barrier. They slipped around the barrier and started to make their way across the road when two large vans came out of nowhere and screeched to a stop either side of them. At first I thought that they had both been hit but then the vans drove off at high speed and there was no sign of Caroline and Agnetha anywhere. David went mental, and I was not far behind, but there was nothing we could do, the vans were long gone by the time we arrived at the site. Very quickly the road filled with cars fitted with blue flashing lights, including the Chief of Police’s, and I very publicly gave him a reality check. He had assured me several days ago that El Gordo was not a problem, so now I told him, in no uncertain terms, that I held him personally responsible for the safety of Caroline and Agnetha’. If anything happened to them then come election time he wouldn’t even make Chief of parking tickets. David and Charlie were out of it, but James was doing his job, and had been talking to Detective (1st grade) Harry Decker, who had been in charge of the crime scene until the Chief had arrived. It was obvious that he held his illustrious Chief in even lower esteem than I did, so when the Chief told me that he was leaving, to form a task group to hunt the perpetrators down, the Detective tried to get a word in.

  ‘What about road blocks, aerial surveillance, c...’?

  ‘If you have anything to say to me Detective, say it through your Supervisor,’ he tried to snarl, but it came out as more of a whinge, ‘at the task group meeting in my Conference Room in two hours’ time’, and as the Police Chief scurried away the Detective stood in the middle of the road looking on in total disbelief.

  James then took charge, he was an expert at quickly assessing the competency of Officers so; ‘Detective, let’s get to the Lady S, and then you can tell me what you need’, and within fifteen minutes Harry found out what it was like to be a Police Chief (only with unlimited funds). The first person that Harry rang when he arrived on board was his brother, who was a Special Forces ‘Ranger’. He was based at a nearby ‘Fort’ and was visiting with him and his wife Hilary whenever he had the time, ostensibly to catch up on some nephew time, although he thought that it might also have something to do with his wife’s sister, she was vacationing with them for a while. At the moment it was very quiet, Ranger wise, so recently all Harry had heard every time the cable news came on (I was usually the lead story) was, ‘did I tell you I know his security guy, I owe him big time, ‘look there he is’, etc, etc’, so his opening line was ‘Jim-Bob, I have a situation here, it concerns that Limey guy that you know, his wife has just been kidnapped, and it looks like my guys have been ordered to go slow, can you help?’ He listened for a few minutes, grunted three times, said ‘OK’ twice, and then hung up. He then rang an unlisted number at the DEA. ‘Chuck I have a problem’, and then went on to explain again what was happening, then ‘do you have any addresses for El Gordo’ (fatty to those out of earshot). Just one ‘OK’, and then he hung up, and turned to James and said ‘my brother will see what he can do, and my cousin will let me have some addresses in a few minutes, let’s get busy’. He used every phone at his disposal, and Scott to hack into some very off limit sites, but after fifteen minutes he sat back in disbelief, his first instincts had been right, all Police air resources had been grounded ‘to await a unified response to the situation’, and no road blocks were to be set up as ‘a’ complaint from ‘a’ member of the public had been received, and of course it therefore had to be fully investigated, before this method of crime prevention could be used again, although individual officers, if their paper-work was up to date should be on the look-out for two white vans. Both vans that had taken Caroline and Agnetha had been black so I reached for my phone to ring the Police Chief.

  ‘What’s the betting that he sends you for a colour blindness test before he does anything about it’ Harry said, and he was almost right, ‘they would amend that ‘small’ detail the next time there was a bulletin update’.

  ‘When will that be?’ I asked in exasperation.

  ‘After the Task force meeting’, and then he hung up on me, it was obvious to all and sundry that we were on our own, so as I was only the ‘wallet’ I took a step back to let the professionals get on with it. Chuck quickly rang back with four addresses, one was a local town house, one was El Gordo’s private ‘club’ (about thirty miles away) and two were out of State, ‘so don’t forget you will need FBI assistance to go across the State Line’ his cousin finished with.

  ‘In your dreams sunshine’ I finished with.

  David was slowly getting back into the swing of things and contacted a company that specialised in satellites, not the TV kind - the other kind, spying, and within half an hour we had four images on a screen, one image for each property, although apparently there were going to be a lot of angry people at ‘Langley’ around about now as they had just lost ‘four of their Birds’. As the images came on line the first thing that I noticed was a door hanging off its hinges at the first address, Charlie had obviously already checked that one out, and within five minutes we watched as Charlie, Pierre and several of my crew enter the cat house, sorry club, with their universal search warrants in their hands; Mr Colt had a lot to answer for. Lots of semi-naked ladies streamed out but there was no sign of Caroline or Agnetha. David then told Charlie to return to the Lady S as the other two addresses were miles away, and in opposite directions, so he would need air transportation. That was when my mobile phone entered stage left. It rang, which was very unusual as not many people know my number, but Maria had apparently put this call through.

  ‘This is Loo-ten-ant Colonel Hiram G Chickenhymer the third, Officer Commanding the Special Forces detachment at Fort Dodge (I think he said Dodge), I understand that your ‘little gar-danged boat’ has some aviation fuel on board?’

  ‘Err yes’ I replied, wondering where this conversation was going.

  ‘Well son, I have a slight problem, I have two Special Ops Black Hawks in your vicinity and they seem to be running low on fuel.’

  Any other time I would have told ‘Daddy’ where the nearest Shell garage was, but I was feeling charitable, even if he did call the Lady S a little boat. A ‘boat’ is a submarine. ‘Well you had better send them on over then’ I told him.

  ‘Well thank you kindly son, oh, and you wouldn’t do me a favour would you? I have nothing for them to do for the next few hours, could you keep the crews and passengers entertained for me?’

  ‘Certainly’ I said, and went aft to await the arrival of Jim-Bob and his team.

  I had to park one of the helicopters in the marina’s car park, but after the crewman had delicately rammed the business end of a pump action assault shot gun under the yacht club secretary’s nose, there seemed to be no problem with that. It was also very strange that the helicopters only took about three pints of fuel between them.

  Harry had worked out that a ve-hic-le pro-seed-ing at the legal spee
d limit (so as not to attract attention) would take approximately four hours to drive to either of the last two addresses. The first one was El Gordo’s airfield, and the other one was a rather dilapidated looking stud farm. After a very heated debate it was decided that the two helicopters would not be dispatched, one to each property, as that would only split our force in two, and also that there was no proof yet that Caroline and Agnetha would even end up at either property; they may be going in totally the opposite direction.

  Three hours fifty-nine minutes and fifty-eight seconds after the kidnapping the camera covering the stud farm zoomed out. An analyst at Head Office had spotted (on his ‘bigger picture’) a black ve-hic-le exiting an obscure freeway exit close-by. The black van pulled up outside the main house and a rather large passenger got out of the front passenger door and spoke to a female occupant of the farm, who quickly disappeared indoors, as did the two security staff patrolling the grounds, then he slid the side door open, and a blanket draped female was pushed out, and Caroline did as she had been told to do by David, she looked up at the sky. A positive ID - then the blanket fell to the ground. ‘That would explain why the tracking devices that she and Agnetha had attached to their clothes weren’t functioning’ a tiny part of his brain told him, while the rest of it was working overtime, then Agnetha was dragged from the van: she was in no state to look anywhere.

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