Ch 24, Point of No Return
James looked around at everyone's frozen faces as if assessing the situation and as Teresa stifled a cry and sank heavily into the closest chair, he seemed to come out of his trance. The notion that a child of his had been kidnapped broke something inside of him that he didn't know was still intact. He felt his knees liquify, his strength give away, but one look at her and then at Louise's terrified face brought on anger that made him bunch his fists as if preparing to hit.
"The cameras on the poles, James!" Pote's voice came to him.
Thank God, Pote had been next to him in many crucial moments in his life!
"Yes, let's go!" The soldier was back in an instant as he grabbed his keys and ran after Pote. James's security company and hi tech gear included surveillance not only on the property and the businesses, but on the roads leading up to them, despite the lack of municipal permission.
Teresa heard the snapped lines and realized what had happened. It gave her hope and she lifted herself up and found the strength to tell the rest where the men had run off to.
The license plate of the beige sedan was clearly visible on the cameras James had put on several electric poles along the road leading to the property. He started at the screen wondering how they would track the kidnappers and find the kids without the involvement of the authorities, not only because they had no idea if a ransom demand wouldn't be coming, but also because they had no idea with whom they were dealing.
James had mastered a decent level of hacking skills when he had worked for Finch. But that had been long ago and despite his best efforts he could not hack the Ministry of Transport database to search for the license plate. They sat in the office in his shooting range and looked at each other with mounting frustration.
"This is a rental vehicle, Cabron!" Pote said when he decided to take another look the car snapshot blown up on the monitor. "See that sticker here…on the wind shield! It looks like a rental sticker."
That made them look for the logos of the local rental car companies online, until they located the one. It had five offices in the whole Cape Town Area.
"Let's split!" James said. "You and Chicho go to Nyanga to see if you can get a hacker on board. The place where you get the unregistered guns would be able to point you in the right direction!" Nyanga was a sketchy neighborhood to the north of Cape Town, where everything was for sale.
"And you?" Pote asked, holding the door handle as James took the turns on the way to the house way faster than safe.
"I'm gonna take Marcel with me…and go see the rental car company…maybe I'll get a name…somehow!...Will leave the women in the house in case someone makes a contact!" James stopped the SUV with a screech of tires and was out before Pote could reply.
"Ne fais pas l'idiot avec moi, Marcel!" (Don't play dumb with me)! James could hear Louise Dumas's distorted voice as she argued with Marcel and then broke down in sobs. "C'est ta faute, de courir après ce stupide anglais!" (It's your fault chasing this stupid Englishman).
James couldn't understand as she spoke in French, but he figured she was blaming her husband as he saw her hitting his chest with her fists when he was trying to calm her down; and the scene broke his heart.
Teresa wasn't doing any better, although she had withdrawn and looked composed, but James knew the calm to be the façade for the cold gripping fear he himself felt. His mind refused to even think about how the whole experience would affect her still very fragile mental state after his going to prison just a few months back.
Then suddenly she stood by him and said: "Can I have a hug?"
He pulled her to him and whispered promises that he wouldn't rest until he had found the kids. Then she looked at him with her deep eyes, that were dry now and said: "When I was little…I have this memory of my father holding me over waves…some big and scary waves…but I remember feeling safe…because he protected me…We need to protect our boy…always…how did we let this happen?"
James was spiraling because he felt deep inside that this was not a kidnap for ransom. This was revenge for the Lancaster demise, else the kidnappers would have made contact by now.
How come he didn't anticipate something like this happening? How come they had left the mother in England as a loose end? They had been out of the biz for a long time, and it showed. This was an inexcusable mistake!
"We took our eyes off the ball!" he said, voice low and heavy. "If this is Lancaster's mother, she just signed her death warrant. This is the point of no return!"
"This is my fault…I shouldn't have…", she started saying as he interrupted her fast: "No, it's not your fault. Don't even think about it!"
James sat next to Louise Dumas, who looked at him with her red and puffy eyes and didn't say anything for a while. He wanted to promise her that he would find her daughter and his son, but he didn't know who he was dealing with, all he could say was that he would do his best, and he would do it now before the trail had gone cold.
As he spoke, her face kept slipping from hope to heartache and back. "I'm scared, I've never felt like this in my life, it's all-consuming, it's suffocating…I have only one child…we weren't blessed with more", she finally said. "Please bring her home to me, please!"
The tragical sight of both mothers and Kelly Anne's shaking hands as she was trying to fix herself a drink hit James right in the core. The fear was overtaken by anger and hatred for the Lancaster family, as deep and as poisonous as he had never felt before.
Pote and Chicho had hired a hacker, a guy in his mid-20s, who had taken less than half an hour to uncover that the car had been rented by two citizens of the United Kingdom, going by Potter and Barton. They had flown in from London four days ago.
Just as the hacker had informed them that they were not registered in any hotel in the city and the area, Chicho said: "Can you get us access to the systems of the rental car company? They have tracking devices on all their cars".
"Yeah…sure!" the lanky young man said: "But these devices may not be active…"
"Let's first check…maybe it's active…If not, then I guess you'll have to activate it, no?" Pote grumbled. It was evident they needed to find the vehicle's location. Why wasn't this young man taking a little more initiative for the cash he was getting paid?
Another hour passed before Pote called James to let him know that the tracker's log they had accessed put the vehicle at the EasyLife motel, a cheap spot to the north of town.
James checked his watch. It was after 1 a.m., but he hoped that the EasyLife motel had 24 hour reception.
The challenge seemed unsurmountable. George had lost consciousness in the back of the car, but now was wide awake and terrified. He had the burlap bag over his head and kept hearing lightbulbs humming above him someone dragged him forward by the arm. He noted the twinge of panic looming on the horizon as he was struggling to wrap logic around everything that has happened when he heard Vivienne's whimpering close after him and knew that at least they had not been separated.
They were pushed into a room and the burlaps were removed from their heads. A man with a ski mask freed their hands and told them to 'stay put and not make noise' before slamming the door on the outside.
George looked at the girl with her big tails, her tear stricken face and red eyes. "They'll find us, Vivienne! My dad and my tio will be coming, you'll see!"
She nodded and wiped her eyes again: "These people wanted me…for something my papa has done…they only got you because you tried to stop them…thank you!"
"Not that I had much success…" George mumbled thinking that he should have picked up more fighting skills from his dad, just like his brother had done. He touched his face hesitantly and concluded that one of his eyes was almost shot, while his nose was mishappen. The man had hit him in the face with his fist when trying to subdue him.
He collapsed on the other bed and closed his eyes. The ceiling started spinning counterclockwise at a speed that seemed to increase gradually. He remembered that the two times he had tried vodka with his teammates, but it hadn't made him feel like this. His hands gripped the bed and held on in terror. His face had no color. Nausea clamped down painfully on his stomach. He caught himself praying that he would vomit.
The excruciating effect of what he assumed had been a taser they had used on him before opting for a shot of some tranquilizer, had finally relented, but he suddenly felt too weak to move. His eyes sheeted over with tears.
His head kept spinning and he promised himself that if he ever went to college, he would never get drunk! No glamour at all! He shouted and Vivienne was there, right next to him, asking him if he was okay. Then a man came in, checked his vitals, looked at him with annoyance and took out duct tape and strings. When George lifted himself off the bed, ready to protest, the man took out a small black device and that was the last thing he remembered.
Sometime later he woke up by himself on the bed and estimated that it had to be after midnight. His heart was pounding, the darkness was spinning, the inside of his mouth sickeningly dry. For a terrifying minute, he had no clue where he was. It was not the shot they had given him, but a much deeper level of disorientation. He wrapped the covers around himself, but he couldn't stop shaking. A full body ache was growing more painful by the second, his legs restless, his head throbbing.
He heard someone on the outside relatch the door. There was a chain, a knob lock with a massive deadbolt and a crossbar, like one would see in a Middle Ages castle and an iron rod tilting upward at a forty file degree angle from the floor. His foggy brain wondered about the excessive precautions. Maybe they had expected to kidnap someone way more capable of escaping or at least of creating trouble!
The terror he had felt earlier flood his mind, was now followed by rage. The dynamics of the situation hadn't materially changed though. Their fate still depended on their usefulness, he thought. As long as the kidnappers wanted something from their parents, they had leverage.
He looked at Vivienne who was asleep on the other bed, but he could see her eyes moving back and forth under her closed eyelids.
He felt devastated, broken, and on the brink of just wanting it all to end: his Tio storing guns in his office, car and living room; his Dad going to prison and his Mom, Tio and Tia talking hush hush about 'product' being shipped from Mexico just a few months back; now this Marcel guy with his issues having tossed his whole family around the world chasing bad guys!
Then he heard the door being opened and shortly after the man with the mask woke Vivienne up, they were both whisked out of the room and back in the van.
