Uh…what if the cops intrude on the mercenaries’ work?
I wouldn’t want any witnesses. The family would have no to believe that they wouldn’t see their loved one again. They would never find a body after I burned it and threw the ashes in the lake, and when I get the money I’m leaving the country.
It makes me sick just typing that. I could never be a kidnapper. 
Sorry, to answer the OP, I would call the cops.
[dons Evil!Skald helmet]
It is good that you’ll never be a kidnapper, because reducing a body to ashes is much more difficult and time-consuming than you seem to think. Even if you have a crematorium it takes hours. Trying to do so in your fireplace or Viking-wise is just gonna get you caught.
Not that Rhymer Enterprises does kidnappings for ransom, of course. Even apart from the no-killing-women-and-children rule, ransoms are ill-thought… If I felt the need to avail myself of Bill Gates’ fortune, there are several simpler ways than abducting Melinda.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a seismic cannon to build. Atlantis is not/will not/did not sink itself, you know.
That’s when they kill the victim then go after you.
This thread reminds me of a wealthy Singaporean who a few years ago fell hook, line and sinker for the Nigerian scam. He finally did start getting suspicious about their unceasing requests for more money with nothing to show for it, and when he complained, they invited him come to to Nigeria to see for himself what his money was going for. Taking them up on their offer, he was kidnapped the moment he got off the plane. His family did ransom him, and he was released unharmed.
Dude, I’m a professional kidnapper, of course I’m not using my own fireplace. I’m using the crematorium I have set up, way out in the forest. Someone may find that spot someday, but by then, I’ll be sitting by a pool in a different country, being oiled up by the cabana boy. 
I give them their lousy money and get my Celtling back.
Then the hunt begins. They really shouldn’t have hurt her. They’re going to regret that.
I read a lot of tough talk in this thread about hunting down the perps and making them pay, but really, would you have a clue as to how to do that? Oh sure, maybe you could find some “shady gumshoe” and throw some cash at him to arrange something, but I’m skeptical if professional kidnappers are as easy to find as Hollywood teaches us they are.
I’ve actually read a couple of books on this, including one called Ransom Kidnapping in America. The short version is, there is no correlation between paying ransom, and getting the hostage back. I can rattle off several famous cases where it failed miserably: Charley Ross, the first known ransom kidnapping in the US; Bobby Greenlease (the inspiration for the original 1950s movie Ransom! that was the basis of the Mel Gibson film: Greenlease was already dead before the note was even sent. Charles Lindbergh paid a ransom, but his son was already dead too, albeit, probably accidentally, unlike Bobby Greenlease, who was deliberately murdered. Patty Hearst’s family tried ransoming her more than once. Marion Parker’s father tried exchanging ransom with her kidnapper, and (spoilered, because this one’s gruesome) got back just a torso and head, stuffed with rags and the eyes wired open. Her limbs were found later, and her organs were found in various places around town. The kidnapper, Edward Hickman, was tracked down by a tag or laundry mark, or something on one of the rags stuffed in the torso.
Less famous cases have gone pretty much the same way. Either the victim is killed for expediency, or because the kind of people who kidnap are sadists in the first place. Or like in the Hearst case, they keep raising the stakes.
Charley Ross’s kidnappers actually state in their note that they will make good on his return, because they want other people to trust them, suggesting they planned to make a career of kidnapping. However, they failed to do the research, and Charley’s father didn’t have the money they were demanding. When he was eventually able to raise a large portion of it, communication with the kidnappers had partially broken down, and no one knows what happened to Charley Ross. A robber was shot and killed while fleeing, some time later, and confessed to the kidnapping just before he died, but didn’t say where Charley was. Charley’s older brother had seen the kidnappers, and was brought to look at the corpse (he was only about 7 at the time), and said that yes, it was one of the men.
So, authorities, no question. I’d be willing to try a ransom drop under the supervision of the authorities, but only that.
FWIW, my husband was burned as a child, and lost most of one outer ear. It didn’t affect his hearing at all, and plastic surgeons build him a really good-looking new one. They took cartilage from somewhere, I forget where, and skin from his thigh (no, there’s no hair on his ear, and there is hair on his thigh-- they don’t take skin down to the follicle).
This.
The kidnappers could be anywhere in the world.
Money and willpower can’t solve every problem.
I don’t know what the prison hierarchy is like regarding people who try to ransom adults, but someone who kidnaps a child and cuts of its ear, and continues to terrorize it until the ransom drop is made, or authorities descend on the lair, or both, probably isn’t a whole lot more popular than a child molester-- or is very “popular,” if you take my meaning.
I imagine anyone who mutilates a living person is going to be looked down upon, even by your rapists and murderers in prison, because people who commit corporeal crimes in the first place have weird ideas about boundaries, but they do have them.
Let the authorities, who are trained to do so, take down the kidnapper. Life in a maximum security prison in the US is pretty awful, and even if the guy manages to pull of some kind of insanity defense (statistically, less likely than going your entire life-- a normal adult lifespan-- without ever having a cavity citation needed), he’ll still spend a significant amount of time having all his choices made for him, and be confined to a small area-- and probably have less free time than a prisoner. He won’t have happy times ahead, and more importantly, won’t be able to do it again.
I would simply call the police and let them handle it.