Chapter 2

Taylor stood there, open-mouthed.

“Who is it?” Whitaker called from the other room.

“Come in, I guess,” Taylor said, stepping aside and gesturing for Claire to come inside.

“Thanks,” she said, as he closed the door behind her and led her into the living room.

“Loretta,” Taylor said, “This is Claire Massey. Claire, this is my wife Loretta and our daughter Kara.”

“Your ex-fiancé?” Whitaker asked, sitting up in surprise.

“Nash, actually,” Claire said, stepping forward and offering her hand to Whitaker. “I took Wayne’s name when we got married. Your daughter? But she’s...”

“Adopted,” Kara said.

“Ohh, I see. So you got married? That’s great. I’m very happy for you,” Claire said to Taylor before turning back to Whitaker. “He’s a great guy and I’m glad you two were able to find each other. I’m really sorry for barging into your life and I know this must seem terrible, but I need help and I didn’t know where else to go.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Taylor said, ignoring the look Whitaker flashed at him. “Sit down and tell us what’s going on.”

“My husband, Wayne, has been working for Northbridge Services for the last couple of years and two months ago he got a chance for a really big promotion. He’s an IT specialist and they offered to make him team lead for a new project, but it required living overseas for six months. I wasn’t thrilled with it, for obvious reasons, but he’s worked overseas before and he pointed out this was ... different than when you were over there, so we agreed and he took the position.

She paused and licked her lips, clearly trying to stay calm.

“Could you get Mrs. Nash a glass of water?” Whitaker asked Kara.

Taylor understood what she meant by her not being thrilled. He’d been the last person she’d known to go overseas, and that had not ended well. She had to go through the grief of being told Taylor was dead and when she finally put the past behind her, Taylor had reappeared from his three years of captivity. Unfortunately, she’d gotten married and was pregnant by then, which meant they could never be. While they’d both moved on by now, Taylor wasn’t surprised that she was gun-shy about having someone else she loved leaving the country again.

“For a while, everything was great. He called me every night to check in and sent me a couple of emails every day, until Monday. At first, I thought he might just be busy, but after several days of no word, I started getting worried and called his work. At first, I couldn’t get a lot of answers. I didn’t know his new supervisor and his old one didn’t know where he’d been transferred. A lot of their stuff requires clearances, so that’s not unusual, but the more people I called, the more worried I got. I kept calling until I finally got to the right people, but they wouldn’t tell me what was happening. So I started to make noise. I sent emails and made calls to executives and started talking about going to the press. I guess I got their attention, because two men from the company came to talk to me.”

“They didn’t threaten you, did they?” Taylor asked.

Northbridge was a defense contractor and he’d dealt with them in the past. The people from the company he’d had dealings with had always come off as incredibly arrogant and abrasive and they’d had a few scandals in the past of intimidating and outright threatening employees or anyone else they thought might be a problem. One of their executives had even done some jail time for extortion or blackmail or something like that. He knew how tenacious Claire could be and it wouldn’t surprise him if the people they’d sent to her were there to intimidate her into backing off.

“No. They told me that there had been an incident and a dozen employees, including Wayne, had been taken hostage. They said that, while this was tragic and there had been some deaths, this wasn’t uncommon in the region. Normally, they’d just ransom the men back and the kidnappers or whatever would release them, but they couldn’t do that this time.”

“Where was he working?” Taylor asked.

Since she’d come asking for his help, Taylor had assumed her husband had been sent to the Middle East, since that was an area Taylor actually knew about, but kidnapping for ransom wasn’t a common issue in that area. Most of the hostages that got taken ended up on a video in front of a green flag facing the terrifying last minutes of their lives.

“Somalia.”

“Somalia? Really? Why would Northbridge have a group of contractors working there? We don’t have a significant presence there anymore and half the country is completely lawless, with warlords and pirates acting as de facto governments.”

“I don’t know. I know we had that thing back in the nineties, but Wayne seemed to think it was okay, so I didn’t question it.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to side-track you. You said normally they’d ransom the hostages. That sounds like they were saying they weren’t able to do that this time.”

“Yes. They said because of the tech they were working on there, they couldn’t just pay the ransom and get their men back. They had to also retrieve the tech to keep it from being sold to the wrong people or something. They told me not to worry, that they were putting together a rescue operation that would be leaving in a few days. I’ll tell you, Wayne’s been working for Northbridge for years, and they’ve always been a bit ... difficult, but these men set me on edge. I could tell they weren’t telling me something and I knew the only reason they were there talking to me was because of the big stink I created. I’m worried that they see Wayne and the other hostages as expendable and are really only going to get their tech back. I asked about the people they were sending and they said I shouldn’t worry, that they were sending the best. I pressed and they said they’d contracted with White Mountain Security.”

Taylor and Whitaker exchanged a worried glance.

“Yeah, that was my thought too. I’ve seen stories about them on the news and I don’t really follow the war anymore, because of ... Anyway, I heard their name and I got more worried. I told them I wanted to send my own expert along, just to make sure my husband and the rest of the hostages were safe. They said no, of course, but I insisted. I told them Wayne might have signed an NDA, but I didn’t and I’d go to the papers about this and raise a big stink. They tried to tell me it’d be expensive, but I told them I’d pay for it. We went back and forth for a long time until I told them to get out. I set up a call with a reporter as soon as they left, but they came back an hour later and told me they’d agree, as long as I signed an NDA to not talk to anyone other than my agent about what was happening. That’s the favor I came to ask. I know I have no right to ask this and you can say no, but I wanted you to go with them and make sure Wayne and the rest of the men came home.”

Taylor opened his mouth to speak but Whitaker beat him to it.

“Of course he’ll help you.”

“Hold on,” Taylor said. “You know I don’t have any kind of expertise in sub-Saharan Africa, right? I’ve never deployed there and I don’t speak any of the languages.”

“Arabic is one of the major languages,” Whitaker said.

“Ohh, see, I didn’t even know that. I know some guys who served in that area that would be more useful and might have some contacts down there. I’m not saying I won’t do it and of course, I want to help, but there are better people if you want to get your husband back.”

“I don’t know them and I know you. You are the most tenacious man I’ve ever known and I know that if you promise to bring Wayne back to me, nothing will stop you. You came back from the dead after three years. There isn’t anyone I trust more with my husband’s life than you.”

“I appreciate that you have that kind of faith in me, but this kind of situation needs to be looked at objectively, or people die. While I have the basic skills for this, I’m not an expert in hostage rescue, I don’t have any knowledge or contacts in the area, and I haven’t done this type of fieldwork in years.”

“Bullshit,” Kara, who’d been mostly quiet through all this, said. “Russia was only a couple of years ago, and you didn’t have a whole team of soldiers with you. You got us out then, you can get her husband out now.”

“It’s not that simple. The situations were different.”

“So what?” Whitaker asked. “You hadn’t stopped a psychotic bomber before, but that worked out. You hadn’t investigated a serial killing general before, but we got him. I, more than anyone, want you to stay safe, but this is what you do. Why are you becoming gun-shy now?”

“Because what happens if I fail.”

“Then the mission would have failed anyway,” Claire said. “I will at least know you did everything you could to save him. I know it’s weird, doing this kind of thing for me, of all people. But if what we had meant anything to you, please do this.”