She bit her lip and nodded her agreement.
“You are truly a treasure fished from the sea and were you my daughter, I would never allow you to travel in such a dangerous place as the Bay of Bengal. What will he pay, I wonder, for your safe return?”
Remembering her father’s time in office, Daniels shrugged. “I doubt he’ll pay you anything,” she said, trying to hold on to her courage. “President Jefferson Daniels does not negotiate with terrorists.”
Vengai chuckled once more. “He will for you,” he said. “You see, presidents and politicians like to say things like that, but they only mean that for other people. They never mean it when it will actually affect them. He will negotiate for you, of this I am very certain.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a cell phone. From another pocket, he removed a small business-card-size piece of paper. He dialed a series of numbers, then handed the phone to her. “Call him. Now.”
She took the phone and saw that all the prefix numbers were entered. She added the area code and phone number for her father’s cell phone, then pressed Send. After several long seconds and a handful of clicks and beeps, the call connected.
Her father answered on the second ring. “Who’s this?” he said.
“Dad, thank God you answered, it’s me,” Daniels said. “Don’t hang up.”
“Heather, where are you calling from? I didn’t recognize the number.”
Before she could respond, Vengai snatched the phone from her hand, activating the speaker-phone function. “President Daniels, now you know that your daughter is alive, we can proceed with business. We are holding your daughter and if you want to see her alive again, you will follow my instructions exactly.”
“Who the hell are you?” her father snarled. “Where is she?”
“This will be the only call, Mr. President, so I suggest you write down what I’m about to tell you. Within ten days, you will transfer…twenty-five million dollars in U.S. funds into the following account.” He rattled off a string of numbers. “When the money is received, your daughter will be released. That is all.”
“Dad!” Daniels said. “I’m on an island somewhere near—” The slap that interrupted her came out of nowhere and she couldn’t stifle the yelp of pain as she went down. Rajan was standing over her.
“Ten days, Mr. President, or your daughter dies.”
He clicked the end button on the sound of her father’s nearly incoherent yelling.
“This is all so unnecessary,” she said. “We have nothing to do with your war or your money. We’re here trying to help the people of your country.”
“Miss Daniels, what you arrogant Americans seem to misunderstand is that we want no help from you. We don’t want your people in our country, but you refuse to go home and continue with these…useless efforts.”
Daniels held her tongue. She knew better than to argue with an extremist. But with her father there were two things she knew for certain. She’d never heard him sound so angry.
And he would never pay money to a terrorist, not even for her.
CHAPTER TWO
As a soldier, Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, fundamentally believed that there would never come a time in his life when training was unnecessary. On the other hand, even an experienced soldier could find that he’d bitten off a bit more than he wanted to chew. While that wasn’t the case this time, Bolan felt that the Le Parkour training he’d been spending his time on was pushing him toward his limit.
The course he was facing today was the last challenge in this training run, and for all of his previous training—Special Forces, rappelling, high-altitude jumps and just about every kind of military work in the world—none of it could have prepared him for the intensity of Parkour. Bolan had become interested in the discipline that was sometimes called freerunning after watching some action film extras on a DVD. Realizing that not all of the stunts were special effects or done with wires, he’d listened to one of the film consultants talk about Parkour and the discipline of body manipulation, jumping, climbing and negotiating obstacles with the most speed and efficiency. As the stuntmen and -women were launching themselves up the sides of buildings, leaping over concrete barricades and moving with amazing swiftness, Bolan determined to explore Parkour for himself, adding it to his already formidable battlefield skills. For a man in his line of work, those kinds of skills might make the difference between life and death.
Standing at the base of the Eiffel Tower, Bolan waited with his instructor for the signal to begin. It had been a grueling five days of training, and he felt as though he’d mastered the basics, but there were maneuvers he still longed to perfect. They had received a special dispensation to use any means necessary to reach the top of the Eiffel Tower, rescue the mock hostages and disarm the terrorists. Nothing else compared to the challenge.
The monitor dropped the flag and Bolan raced up the stairs. The steep staircases surrounded by mesh fencing for protection worked as more of a launch pad than an obstacle. Bolan turned one corner and saw a shrapnel grenade. Using the momentum from running, Bolan launched to the top of the fence, anchoring with his hands but pulling his body up and over in one graceful movement. The small explosion behind him didn’t diminish his movement, pushing off with his feet and jumping through the air to an adjacent set of stairs.
Bolan pushed off of the top of the fence with one foot, jumping in a zigzag motion down the mesh walls that enclosed the stairs and moving back after his prey. There were three opponents waiting for him at the next turn. He leaned back as the larger one in the middle swung a bat, then reached out as it went past him, grabbing the end. He swung his weight with the bat and knocked the other two down as the extra pressure brought with his speed made a complete circle.
Angry, the opponent dropped the bat and tried to grapple Bolan. The Executioner picked up the discarded bat, jabbed the last guard in the solar plexus and then rushed past him. The final turn was filled with small gadgets on the steps that were to mimic explosives that would detonate on impact. Bolan ran back three steps to pick up speed, launched over the first two and bounced off the side of the fencing like a trampoline without touching the step. Back and forth across until he was clear of the devices. His last jump he rolled on the landing where the hostages were being held. He pulled his pistol with paint rounds and fired off two quick shots, killing the villains.
Everyone in the tower clapped. Bolan smiled, out of breath but elated that he was able to clear the obstacles. He stood on the platform and talked to his hostages, members of the team that had been training with him. They congratulated him, impressed at how quickly he had learned the skills, and talked about springing from one set of stairs to another and the risks of jumps from a given height or a moving object. He enjoyed training with other like-minded military men, and while France wasn’t known for its military prowess, the men he’d been training with were all part of a special antiterrorist unit and were as good as anyone he’d ever worked with.
Just as he’d caught his breath, Bolan’s phone vibrated. He pulled it out and glanced down at the number, which he recognized at once as belonging to Hal Brognola, the director of the Sensitive Operations Group, based at Stony Man Farm. The most elite anti-terrorism agency in the world that answered only to the President of the United States, Stony Man Farm, Virginia, had been his brainchild. Now he worked with them on select missions, keeping a good arm’s length away from any kind of permanent
