Page 40 of Call Sign: King
Ryder already knew what he was going to say. It didn’t make it easier to hear it.
“Queen’s tracker is moving. I think they’re taxiing, getting ready to take off.”
“Bing here. Crack broke into the NAV Canada air traffic control to try to track down our bogie’s destination.”
“They won’t be filing accurate flight plans,” Ryder warned, surprised Bing wouldn’t already know that.
“Right, but they had to register the aircraft when they landed. They can’t fake the identification numbers of the plane. Well, I mean they can, but that’s a lot harder to do. If we can ID the aircraft, we can work backwards to see who the fuck owns or chartered it.”
“Good idea,” Axel praised. “And even if they block her GPS signal again, if we can nail down the flight, won’t you and Crack be able to follow it through the global air traffic control network?”
“Possibly. It gets dicey if they don’t stick to the normal flight patterns. There aren’t as many tracking stations over the Atlantic, but we’ll trace as far as we can.”
Ryder broke into the chatter to ask, “What about Khloe’s chip? Still moving?”
“This is weird,” Axel said.
“I’ve had enough go wrong!” he shouted. “I need some fucking good news!”
“It’s not bad news… just confusing. It looks like the trackers in her earrings and the pin are standing stationary not far from the hangar, but her implant is moving again. They’re getting farther apart.”
Ryder pounded the steering wheel out of frustration again. “That means they found the trackers, dammit.”
“Right, but that’s a good thing. They probably think they were smart finding not one but two trackers. Hopefully that will lull the assholes into thinking they caught them all, and they’ll miss her implant.”
The kidnapper had been one step ahead of their entire team all day. Just once, Ryder needed to catch a break. If they lost the GPS on Khloe and the plane found a way to evade being tracked by Bing and his team in D.C., there was more than a good chance he’d never see her again. With the kind of resources his enemies had, they could literally fly her to any nook or cranny of the globe. He’d go out of his mind, like Wrath already was, turning over every rock looking for her until he drew his last breath.
The ramp for his exit had just come into view when he heard the dreaded news.
“I’m detecting fast movement. Stay calm, but I think the plane is taking off,” Axel said.
As if the fucker was taunting him, an executive jet rose off the runway running parallel to the highway, lifting into the air at a faster than normal climb.
The thought of pulling over to shoot at the plane crossed his mind but the flight was already too high. Shooting it down would kill everyone on board — including his wife. If he had any balls, he’d shoot it down anyway. He knew first-hand what kind of hell Khloe had just entered. Dying by his own hand in a plane crash might be the best outcome for her.
But before he could rally the courage to pull over, the plane was out of range, flying off into the darkening eastern sky.
She was gone. He’d failed her.
What now? He was the answer man. The leader. The one who stayed strong in the middle of chaos.
For the first time in his life, Ryder felt hot tears rolling down his cheeks.
Focus, Helms. Work the problem.
His voice quavered as he reported in. “Eyes on bogie. Heading east. I’m going to the airport to see if I can dig up information on the plane or crew. I’m sure they filed a bogus flight plan, but still, it might give us a clue.”
“Roger that. I’m still tracking her GPS,” Axel said. “I’ve already put Ice on alert. He’s pulling his entire team in now and will have them at The Camp in Turkey waiting for instructions. We may not know where they’re going for sure, but an educated guess is it’ll be somewhere in Ice’s European region.”
Ryder’s gut was screaming to send Ice up to Moscow now. Ryder had left enemies strewn across Europe over the years, but it was only those in Russia that had the balls to pull this off.
But the order didn’t come out and as he drove through the entrance gate to the executive airport, nodding at the security vehicle as he drove past, he realized why.
I don’t trust myself anymore.
He’d made mistake after mistake starting with his decision to attend the premier with Khloe two weeks ago. That event had put a chain reaction of events into motion that had endangered not just the love of his life, but even the members of his team.
The flashing lights on top of a second airport security vehicle outside one of the two metal hangars drew his attention to where he needed to go.
