At eleven o’clock she figured out that wasn’t going to happen.  An oven in the shop had quit.  She called Bobby Gomez to see if he could fix it.  That was ten-thirty.  He got it fixed, but the back-up of orders was killing her.  Because of the terrible traffic in the tunnel it was going to take two hours to get to Norfolk.  Everything was working again, but she wouldn’t be there until at least one. 

“Nic, I can fix this,” Bobby had said. 

“How?” 

“Don’t worry about it.  You’ll be at the waterfront at noon.  Call your boyfriend back up and tell him you’ll be there on time.  Don’t argue with me.”

“Madi, can you talk sense into your man?” Nicole said, exasperated. 

“No, but I also know he’s never told me he could do something when he didn’t have a plan,” Madison Gomez replied.  “Trust him.”

Nicole relented and called Mike’s cellular number back and told him that she would be there.  She didn’t know how, but that a friend was arranging transport.  She assumed it would be by boat, but even that would be tight at this point. 

Bobby walked into Nicole’s office, “Do you have everything you need ready to go?”

“I’m ready.  Do we need to head out?”

“Patience, Grasshopper,” Bobby replied. 

A few minutes later she figured it out.  Maybe not as much figured it out as much as saw it.  Duke Smythe’s helicopter landed in the parking lot.

Duke casually walked across the parking lot to the building and walked in the door.  “Hey Nicole.  We probably should be on our way.  I don’t have permission to land here,” he joked with a smile.  He turned and casually headed back out, after picking up a couple of cookies from the counter.  Nicole was on his heels. 

***

Mike Holland was reporting from the Norfolk waterfront when a helicopter swept straight in from Indian River.  It wasn’t police or news, but it was interrupting his broadcast.  He asked to send the live feed to the studio while it landed. 

As he turned to look at the chopper, Nicole Dixon stepped out of the front seat.  She took off her headset, set it on the seat, grabbed a duffle bag, closed the door and walked straight toward him.  His cameraman shot the whole thing.

The production team never stopped Mike’s feed, so live over the air he said, “Damn, my girlfriend knows how to make an entrance.”

“No doubt,” he heard over his earpiece.

He was still looking at Nicole walking toward him when the chopper lifted off behind her and accelerated back to the north again.  Nobody stopped her as she walked right up to him.  She didn’t know he was live. 

“Hi Mike,” Nicole said, very relaxed. 

“Whose chopper?” Mike said.

“A friend.  He wanted some cookies,” Nicole laughed, with no idea that she was live in a couple hundred thousand homes. 

“Mike, you’re still live,” he heard in his earpiece. 

“Folks, her cookies are THAT good,” Mike said, recovering and looking at the camera. 

“We’re live?” Nicole said, looking at Mike, bordering on horrified at how that must have come across on TV. 

Mike just started laughing.  “That’s live TV, folks.  Back to you in the studio, Sandy… and we’re out.”

“Thanks for warning me Mike,” Nicole said, giggling.  “I look like an idiot now.”

“You?  I look like an idiot.  You look like the coolest chick in Hampton Roads.”  Then they both started laughing. 

“I gotta say, Nicole, Mike,” the cameraman started, “first, Nicole, your cookies ARE that good, and second, that was priceless.  That’s getting played at the station Christmas Party.”  Then he started laughing, too. 

…

“We’re in Seligman Arizona,” Jack told his father.

…

“Ok, we’ll get rooms and then I’ll call you,” he said before he hung up the phone. 

“We’re going to get a hotel room.  We can call ahead to the hotel in Vegas to see if they show up there, but I’m concerned,” Jack confided in the others. 

***

“I don’t know.  It just cut off,” Nicole said to Amy as the Jeep rolled to the side of the road.  She tried to hit the horn or flash the high beams, but all the electrical systems in the Jeep were dead. 

“They’ll see we aren’t behind them in a moment and one of them will come get us in a few minutes,” Amy said confidently. 

A van coasted to a stop behind them.  Several men armed with military style weapons exited the back of the van and quickly approached the Jeep.  Amy and Nicole knew that trying to resist wasn’t going to work. 

Three minutes later they were locked in the back of the van and one of the kidnappers was driving the Jeep south from Ash Fork, Arizona on back roads.  The women were trying to keep track of the time in order to have some idea of how far they were being taken.  Both remained surprisingly calm.

“Amy, I don’t think they intend to hurt us right away.  I’m guessing they are taking us for ransom.  What do you think?”

“I agree, Nicole.  But if things start going poorly, are you ready to fight?”

“If that’s what we have to do.  In fact, if I think we have a chance to get away, we take it.  They haven’t let us see their faces.  That’s a good sign, though, right?”

After about thirty minutes, the road started to get bumpier and the van was moving more slowly.  A few minutes later they stopped.  Amy and Nicole could hear the men in the front of the van exit, but then they were left alone. 

“I heard another engine for a minute, but that wasn’t the Jeep.  That was bigger… like a pick-up truck,” Amy told Nicole. 

“Do you think they just left us here, alone?” Nicole responded as she tried to loosen the zip-tie on her wrist.

“I have a small pocketknife in my front pocket, Nicole.  Can you get to it?” Amy asked. 

Nicole wiggled around until her hands, which were secured behind her back were in front of her sister-in-law.  She worked at getting the small blade from Amy’s pocket.  “Do you always carry a knife?” she asked.

“Jonathan gave it to me.  And yes, I almost always carry it,” she said with a smile.  “Be prepared, you know?”

A few minutes later and Nicole had the knife from Amy’s pocket, and they were figuring out how to use it to cut the zip tie.  It took a few attempts… the plastic binding was tougher than either of them expected, and neither of them could see what they were doing with the knife.  Nicole dropped it once and they had to search for it in the dark van, using their hands, behind their backs.

“Geez, girl, that thing is sharp,” Nicole told her sister-in-law, “I thought I was gonna slice my wrist open,”

“Sorry.  Your brother is a little obsessive when it comes to knife blades.  I’ve never used it for more than opening mail.”

A few minutes later and both women were free from the zip ties on their wrists and ankles.  But they were still trapped inside the back of the van.  They couldn’t hear anyone outside, though, and felt like they’d been left alone. 

“Hopefully, that means that their plan was to get the ransom paid and then give Jonathan our location.  But I don’t know who is going to open that door next,” Amy said. 

The two young women sat in the back of the van, mostly in silence.  One or the other would drift off to sleep, but generally not for long. 

***

Jack snatched the phone off the cradle when it rang, “This is Jack,” he said into the handset.

…

“How much?”

…

“When?”

…

“Did you get any idea of where they are, Melody?”

…

“Look, I have it.  We can just pay it,” he told his friend.  “The money isn’t as important as my wife or my sister.”

…

“I’ll let them know.  When will they be here?”

…

“Thanks, Melody,” Jack said as he hung up the phone. 

It was approaching midnight when he filled in Rolf, Tim and Cara on what he’d just been told.  Melody had gotten the call at Jack’s parent’s house.  Amy and Nicole were being held for ransom.  They demanded ten million dollars in cash, or the women would die.  He had thirty-six hours. 

“Melody told me that Gunny is on the way with a team,” he said, mostly to Rolf.  “We’re going to get them back.”

As the team loaded up their vehicles into the modified C-130 Hercules, they knew this was going to be a tough run.  The guys all started joking as soon as they had their gear loaded.  It was their way to “pre-game” their actions. 

This was going to be unusual for a number of reasons.  Most of these guys had a personal stake in this mission, something that they seldom had.  And instead of being a “business trip” that they were going on, without telling their families, their families were gathered in Bobby’s barn.  They were on the living quarters side, where Bobby had set up a remote communications suite for Melody.

The Black Ops spec C-130 took off from Patrick Henry International Airport at four in the morning, local time.  They expected a seven-hour flight, and so their landing would be around eight in the morning, local time for the operational area.  Duke Smythe, callsign “Five” was at the controls.  Gino Bell, callsign “Two” was his unofficial co-pilot. 

Close to the expected seven hours later, Duke circled the proposed landing site.  It was supposed to have been prepped for them to land.  He expected it to be rough, though. 

“Strap in, Lad.  We’re coming in and I don’t know how the field is going to greet us.” Duke said over their coms to Ronny Torres, callsign “Three”.  The rest of the team had taken their exit from the craft a little closer to their target.  Duke had dropped them outside Santa Ana, Mexico.

The plane came in low over the agricultural field.  Duke did everything he could to set the plane down gently, but they were bounced violently around by the rough ground.  After a moment, the big cargo plane was on the ground. 

Duke, Gino and Ronny unstrapped the three buggies in the back of the plane.  They each jumped into the driver’s seat of one of the vehicles.  It was going to be a ten-mile run back to where the rest of the team would be beginning their assault at any moment. 

***

Gunny, callsign “One”, had his rifle set up on a hill overlooking the target villa, just over a mile away.  He was waiting for Bill’s inside man to step out and give the high sign.  Between Gunny and Bobby, callsign “Four”, and the villa was the rest of the team.  Ed Dixon, callsign “Omega” was with Bill Prince, callsign “Alpha.” They were crouched outside the gates of the villa.  A hundred yards behind them, the newest members of the team, Enrique “Ric” Espinoza, callsign “Seven”, and Patrick Willem, callsign “Six”, huddled to cover Alpha and Omega.  While they waited for One and Four. 

“Alpha, should I be seeing Sky walk out of the villa?” Gunny said into his coms as he noticed Tio Sky exit the front door of the villa into the enclosed courtyard.

“Affirmative, One.  Did he give the signal?”

“Still waiting, Alpha.”

Gunny patiently waited, watching through his scope, as Bobby lay on the ground next to him alternating between sweeping his binoculars around the villa and checking their location for threats.  If Sky gave him the signal, Gunny and Bobby had seven minutes to get down the hill, through the brush to Alpha’s position.  Duke, Gino and Ronny should get there just a few moments later.  Antonio Sky stepped out through the front door of the villa and wiped his hand across his forehead.

“I got the sign,” Gunny said into his radio.

He and Bobby took a few seconds to set their packs on their backs and start the scramble down the hill. 

“ETA, seven minutes, Alpha,” Bobby said to his coms. 

“Echo to Team,” Melody said from over two thousand miles away, “we have the bird in position.  I show twenty-three heat signatures inside the villa.  Repeat, twenty-three.  I have five outside the gate and two scrambling down the hill.  I show transport coming in approximately four miles out.”

Gunny and Bobby were still sixty seconds out when Bill sent a rocket propelled grenade into the gate of the villa.  He followed that with a second RPG that flew through the destroyed gate and impacted the front doors of the villa, leaving splinters, dust and a gaping maw where the door had been. 

The four men nearest the gate began their sprint inside, guns raised. 

“Echo to team, I have four hotspots down from the blasts.  There are still four hotspots between the gate and front door.  There are also eight hot spots that might be moving toward the door from inside the house.”

Ed was first through the gate, with the other three men closely following.  As soon as they cleared the gate, they fanned out to cover a forty-five-degree arc in front of them.  They dropped four hostiles immediately. 

“This is Omega, we have confirmed eight down.  Heading to the doors.”

“This is One, we are ten seconds behind you.  Passing your initial position.”

“Two, Three and Five are two miles out.  ETA, three minutes.”

“Alpha?” Antonio Sky shouted as he ran up behind the rest of the team. 

“Come on in Tio.  Watch over Six and Seven,” he said as he tossed the former NEA Agent an M16A2.  Tio nodded to the two newest team members. 

***

“Melody, are you ready for me to do my magic?” Dirk asked.

“Light ‘em up, Dirk,” Melody replied. 

He and Steve started working on their keyboards.  Dirk had designed a pair of “worm programs” that would follow the money from the cartel bank accounts, starting where the payments had been sent for the failed hits against Jack, Ric and Madi.  The first worm followed the money upstream until it stopped, and then released the second worm, which replicated itself and followed the trail back down through all the accounts that were connected to the main account. 

“We’re live,” Dirk stated. 

“I have the data coming in… everything.  Account numbers, names, balances, transaction histories.  Everything,” Steve shouted excitedly. 

“Do you have the names of people they are bribing in the Mexican government?” Melody asked.

“Oh, SHIT,” Steve said excitedly. 

“What’s up, Steve?” Melody asked. 

“We got names of people that look like they are getting bribes, all right.  And when we report this, we are gonna have a problem.” Melody rushed over to look at the printouts coming off the printer with Steve.  As she looked over his shoulder, she saw why he was freaking out. 

“Here’s the deal,” Bobby said calmly, “we already have your guys downstairs.  We know who they are, and they are going to prison.  You aren’t leaving this room a free man.  I don’t give a crap about your threats.  But before you do anything, think about this.  We are NOT the cops. 

“If you hurt that girl, I will put a bullet in your head.  After that, I’ll figure out who you are and who you held dear.  I will take out revenge on them.  Mother, sister, daughter, girlfriend… whatever.  THEY will suffer for your poor decisions.  And I will tell them exactly why, too.  They will know all about you.”

Ronny had moved back down the stairs and gotten the name of the kidnapper from the man that was still conscious downstairs.  He radioed it to Bobby. 

“Do you understand me, Thompson Walters?” Bobby finally asked. 

Hearing the intruder use his name shook his confidence to the core.  In the movies, the good guys always laid down their guns.  He thought that was some sort of unwritten rule.  He would be able to push the girl outside and get in a car and get away.  But these guys weren’t playing by the rules. 

“I want an exit,” Thompson Walters said to the man standing in front of him. 

“You drop the gun and let go of the girl, and you might be able to get out of here alive before the cops arrive.  Until you do that, you don’t have an exit unless you’re dead.”

Outside he could hear the helicopter setting down in the back yard, between the house and the barn. 

“What’s that?” the kidnapper yelled.

“That’s my ride.  Your time is about up,” Bobby replied.  Gino slipped from his spot just outside the door in the hallway into the room behind Bobby and moved off to his left, his rifle also raised and pointed at Walters. 

Walters looked around.  His decision was whether he would set the gun down or just shoot the girl, knowing he would die a moment later. 

“On second thought, I might not shoot to kill.  I might maim you.  If you pull the trigger, your gun hand will get a bullet before the echo dies.  After that, I will subdue you, roughly.  In the end, when the ambulance picks you up, you will have suffered multiple wounds and by the time you go to prison you will be a eunuch.  You are going to be a VERY popular man in prison, Thompson.  And I might still visit your family, just to let them know what kind of man you are,” Bobby said with a grin. 

Thompson Walters moved the gun away from the girl’s head.  As soon as he did, Gino Bell moved in and removed the gun from his hand, dropped him to the floor and zip tied his hands behind his back.  He pulled the zip ties as tight as he could and drew blood from both wrists of the kidnapper. 

Bobby rushed over to Tasha and removed her gag.  “You’re ok, Tasha.  We’re here to take you home.”  Then he cut off the bindings on her wrists.  As soon as she was free, she wrapped her arms around the man in front of her and started crying into his shoulder. 

Bobby scooped her up and started carrying her from the room, down the stairs, through the back door and outside to the waiting chopper.  Gunny and Gino did a final sweep to make sure they hadn’t left anything, while Ronny started checking the girl over for hidden injuries.  They knew that the police would be there any minute, and they didn’t want to be there when they arrived.  That would require too many explanations, and stealth was required for their continued success.

Gino jumped into the front and Gunny hopped into the back and slid the door closed. 

“Take it up, Five,” Gunny said into his radio. 

***

The helicopter set down on top of a high-rise in downtown Chicago.  Franklin Johnson walked over as the side door slid open.  His sixteen-year-old daughter, Tasha, jumped from the helicopter and ran to her father.  When she leapt into his arms, both were in tears.  His little girl was all he had left after her mother had passed away a few years before from cancer. 

Without a word, the chopper took off again and headed to a private airfield just south of Gary, Indiana.  They dropped off the helicopter and boarded their plane to head back to Virginia. 

“Bobby, you are a stone-cold badass,” Gino said as they settled into their seats.  “Man, you scared me, and I know you’re a big teddy-bear.”

“You were in his head, no doubt,” Gunny confirmed.  “He didn’t know how to react because you changed every rule he thought he had to go by.  Good work, my friend.”

“Thanks, guys,” he responded. 

“That bit about his Momma and his sister, dayum,” Ronny exclaimed, “if I didn’t know better, I’da thought you meant it.”

“I guess I missed the fun part.  I mean, I heard it on the radio, but the front row seats were likely better,” Duke chimed in, “but what I heard was epic.  You think they got away?”

“Nah,” Gunny said, “I think the police were only a couple of minutes out.  They’ll get a tip that the guys were involved in that kidnapping and the girl will be able to identify them.  Her father already knows to try to tamp down any conversation about us… and she wouldn’t be able to identify us, anyway.”

They continued to talk and laugh about the successful rescue until the plane set down at Patrick Henry Airport in Newport News, Virginia.  Then the group disembarked, packed their gear back into their various vehicles and headed home.  The after-action report would be tomorrow morning at 0900.

You can find You Don’t Know Jack on Amazon for Kindle for only $2.99. Here is a link.