David tried to think. They had spoken his name in English. He tried to remember if there was an accent. He didn’t think so. If they were terrorists, would they have an accent? David was way out of his league. He had been in the Navy for a while. But he had been an officer for only a few months before being let go due to a combination of bad eyesight and budget cuts. He had never deployed or done anything really exciting. His current job was equally mundane. It sounded a lot more interesting than it really was. He spent his first few years out of the Navy working for In-Q-Tel as a low-level tech researcher. His recent promotion meant that he traveled more and got to work on the higher priority projects. But it was still research. David got all of his information about terrorists and spies from books, TV, and the occasional NPR story. If he had to guess, these guys were probably from a foreign government.
Would the Russians do something like this? Or the Iranians? Would they have spies that had good enough language skills that they wouldn’t have any accent? Would either of those countries take a risk like that? It wasn’t like David could build them the technology. He just knew about the applications: how a voice-recognition software could identify a particular bad guy, or how a new type of computer virus could beat the protection software. Who would want that information badly enough to capture a U.S. employee on American soil? Weren’t they stealing it all through cyber warfare anyway? The United States wouldn’t stand for this. He had to calm down. The government would find him. Rescue him. Right?
But no one had seen him. Maybe the government would never find out. God, he hoped he wasn’t going to die. Death may or may not be imminent. He didn’t know. But being tied up and blindfolded in the back of a car like this certainly didn’t bode well for his health. David thought about his loved ones. He tried to remember his last interaction with each of them.
He remembered telling his wife, Lindsay, that he loved her when he left for work that morning. He had kissed her on the cheek as she nursed their youngest daughter, Taylor. Her eyes were half closed as she sat in the rocking chair, but she had smiled. David travelled often now. Lindsay held the house together. She practically raised the kids herself. She was the perfect companion. He owed her everything, and loved her more every day, if that was possible.
He had kissed his oldest daughter Maddie on the cheek as she slept in her bed. Was that the last time he would see them? If he had known, he would have told his wife a thousand times how much he loved her. He never would have let go of his daughters. They were the best part of life. He couldn’t bear the thought of losing them.
David tried to think of the last time he visited his mother. It was a year earlier, in the large waterfront home his parents had owned near Annapolis, Maryland. David tried to remember the last thing he had said to her but couldn’t. It was probably about his work. She was always telling him that he worked too hard and too long, and that the government couldn’t keep pushing people like that. That Mrs. Green’s son from church had a government job and he was home every day at 4 p.m. and never had to travel. He hoped he hadn’t been condescending in his response. She only said those things because she cared for him. If she were still around, she would be devastated if he was hurt — or worse. A Navy wife for more than 35 years, she had been tough as nails and dedicated to her three children. She had practically raised them on her own with their father gone so much. He wished she had still been around when Taylor was born. It would have been nice to let her see one more crying grandchild. A slice of heaven for a dying grandmother. But hardship and sacrifice was the way of life in a military family like the Mannings.
When your father was an Admiral, it was expected that each child would serve, go to sea, and give up the comforts of civilian life. The other two siblings were certainly fulfilling this obligation. His sister, Victoria, was a rising-star helicopter pilot living in Jacksonville, Florida. Their brother, Chase, had been a SEAL, and now continued that type of work for lesser-known government entities. Aside from the occasional holiday, David hadn’t seen much of his father or siblings over the past decade. Being in the military after 9/11 meant a lifestyle of long and frequent deployments. As the commander of the Navy’s newest carrier strike group, this was likely Admiral Manning’s last time at sea. David was the only one who hadn’t turned military service into a career.
David thought about his family and realized that the last time he had seen the three of them was at his mother’s funeral. She died a little over a year ago now. It was a cruel irony that a woman who had loved others so deeply would die of heart failure at the young age of 61. David had thought about her every day since then, and it had taken over a month for those thoughts to stop drawing tears. While his siblings used to tease him that he was her favorite, he didn’t care. They had a special bond, even for a mother and son.
Her passing had the strange effect of transforming David into a late-blooming athlete. He was by far the least physically gifted of the three siblings. While the other two had been athletic superstars, David was the bookworm. With his mother’s death, though, he needed an outlet; something that would provide both meditation and a distraction. Chase used running as his getaway from the world — always had. David hoped it could work for him to0. And that was how, the day after their mother’s funeral, David found himself in a 7-mile run with his brother on the Washington & Old Dominion Trail. David was limping for the next week. But it was the spark that started the flame. Eventually he registered for a 5K by himself. 5K’s turned into a half-marathon. In an email exchange with his brother, Chase had suggested he add swimming to his routine. Now David was training for a full triathlon. What had started as a sort of therapy quickly became a healthy obsession.
Chase. Where was he when you needed him? He had been a ghost ever since he joined The Teams. That was almost a decade ago. David had seen him on a sprinkle of holidays over the years. But nothing like the close relationship they once had. The three siblings were a military fa —
The car came to a sudden halt, followed by the sound of doors opening and shutting. There was an anxious hotness in his chest that he thought could be the start to a panic attack, although he had never had one so he wasn’t sure. Would they hurt him?
He could hear men talking — in English. The sound of a jet engine spooling up told him that they were at an airport. Not good. This could only get worse if they got him outside of the country.
David heard the trunk open and felt a rush of cool air. Then the hands grabbed him again. It was more than two people. Not a fair fight even if he had use of his arms and legs. Tied up, his chances were precisely zero. They moved him swiftly. David gave up struggling. There was no point. He felt cowardly for not fighting. He tried to justify it in his mind. He told himself that he was saving up his strength but deep down he knew it was just reality setting in. David had completely lost control of the situation.
It felt like there were zip ties around his legs, feet, and hands. He barely had the ability to move and was almost certain that the loss of circulation had made his limbs fall asleep. God, he had to pee. The fear made it worse. If they didn’t untie him he was just going to go. What was there to lose? Now they were lifting and pushing him up. The loud sound of the jet engine indicated that they were likely putting him on a plane. He was going to get thrown into a dark prison cell and be tortured by someone that barely spoke English. He had seen enough on TV to know how it went.