Momentum 2.0: "The Drop"

THE DROP

BY BILL MOHR

We weren't sure for which defense in chess this was a metaphor, but it had something to do with chess since we inevitably talked about the problems of executing a successful kidnapping after playing a long game. Abducting somebody's relation, and sequestering him or her, is relatively easy. Collecting the money is the deceptively sneaky, almost insurmountable, obstacle. I guess ransom money is the equivalent of your opponent allowing his king to totter one square away from check while he moves his queen to an almost equally vulnerable corner, but he's positioned his bishop so that all of your moves are fatal.
One possibility is making the kidnap victim collect his own ransom. The pick-up car is souped up with high-performance explosives which could be triggered anytime you feel the mission is being interfered with. Ideally, the victim's car is towing a second car which is also equipped with a bomb. Perhaps halfway to the drop, the towed car is released from its hitch and when they are far enough apart, you detonate the second car to let them know you aren't bluffing.
The victim is chained to the steering wheel so that he can't stop the car and dash away before you set the bomb off. Of course the chain is sufficiently long enough so that he can get out of the vehicle and pick up the suitcase of money. Wiring the car also prevents the victim's family from folliwing their wealth back to your headquaters. The victim's family might attempt to mark the money with a high-frequency tag, the kind of audible isoltope used to track a wild animal on its migratory trails. It might be a good idea to keep up to date on the latest jamming techniques.
Another alternative is to make the victim's family pay in installments. This scenario allows you time to examine the ransom for indications that it's been marked and gives you an opportunity to scrub it down, perhaps fly it to Mexico and Brazil where it's exchanged for their currency and then flown to London and Paris for deposit in an assortment of banks.
The secret to the installment plan is controlling your greed. You ask for a half-million, but you only collect two payments totalling $350,000. Before the final drop, you use a recorded message to inform them that you don't appreciate the surveillance and they'd better back off tomorrow or you'll blow up the car with the victim and the ransom together. When they make their drop the next day, you don't pick that up either. Remember that nobody has ever said that buying some getaway time would be cheap.
You've stalled the pursuit long enough. The garage door which bottled the victim up for several days opens like a turtle's eyelid. He listens again to the tape which directs him to the remote location where he will collect the third portion of his value. He does not realize that he will never see those masked faces again. He picks up the cash and drives to the rendezvouz where he expects to be freed. He notices a mailbox at the side of the road with its red flag up. He waits all afternoon for someone to show up. At the bottom of a basket of food he finds a note. "The mail's for you." There is a long white envelope with a typed note which says he is free and the bomb has been removed from the car.
The kidnappers have made only one error. They do not realize how attached the victim has become to their company, and their service. For a whole week he was pampered with his choice of music and cinematic comedies. The victim feels that they have been shortchanged. They have not received their full reward for setting him loose. He decides that he will complete the mission which fate has imposed.
He begins his search, spending as little of the ransom money as possible, tracking them down clue by clue. He does this by himself, without any help from the authorities. In the course of his investigation, he stumbles onto three other kidnapping plots and advises the criminals on the care and feeding of the terrified. He asks for no other reward other than information about his own kidnapping.