The Nissan pulled up to a
darkened, empty building in a seedy portion of the city. Once the building had housed a gas station
and garage, but that was years ago. Now
weeds grew up through the cracked concrete, the windows were boarded up and the
sagging building echoed with the sounds of the present and the ghosts of the
past. Huan got out of the car first and
checked the neighborhood over. When he
was sure it was safe, he signaled to Xia.
She emerged from the car and pulled out Cindy, gagged and her arms
bound, struggling impotently to pull out of the Chinese agent’s grip. Though she dug in her heels and fought every
step of the way, Cindy was hustled into the building and the door locked behind
her. Xia shoved her down on the
concrete floor of the garage, then turned to her partner.
“{This is the best you could do}?”
she asked pointedly.
“{On short notice, yes},” Huan
said, looking down but bristling at the rebuke. “{I assumed you did not wish to compromise the location of
another safe house. I further assumed
that you wished something small and easily defended, in a remote location with
easily surveyed grounds, in a neighborhood in which no one would care what
happens here. The owner was easily
bribed and the people here will not concern themselves with us}.”
Xia scowled. She hated when someone besides her made
sense.
“{Very well},” she sighed. “{I can be consoled by the fact that I will
not have to spend much time here}.”
She crossed over to Cindy, whipping
a length of rope out of her bag. Cindy
cowered on the floor, fearful of what this woman intended for her now. Xia knelt down at her feet and swiftly tied
her ankles, taking great care to pull the cord tight so that it bit into the
woman’s exposed flesh. Cindy whimpered
in pain and was ignored as Xia leaned over and bound her victim’s legs together
above the knee.
“Pampered Americans,” sneered Xia
as she tugged on the knot. “I could
take twice the discomfort you have received without whimpering like a
child. Your decadent lifestyle has made
you all soft.” She sneered again, then
calmed. “You will excuse me,” Xia said
to Cindy with a malicious glint, taking a cell phone from the bag. “I must make a call.”
“It was all a lie!” moaned Susan,
staring wide-eyed in terror and humiliation at the barrel of a gun. She sat on the floor, her arms and legs
tied. Shondra Lockwood towered over
her, holding the gun, preparing to fire it and snuff out her life. “You were just pumping me for information!”
“I’m sorry,” whispered
Shondra. “Not all of it was a lie, but
right now that doesn’t mean much to either of us. The bottom line is you know too much. The agency doesn’t want anyone who can reveal what’s on that disk
left alive to tell anyone. I don’t want
to do this.”
“Did you shoot the poor man who
gave me the disk?” Susan asked, her disgust plain. “Was he going to talk?”
“I didn’t shoot him.”
“Would you have?”
“That was Dr. Dressendorfer,”
Shondra revealed. “It wouldn’t make
much sense to shoot him.”
“So who did?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it was the Chinese agents. Maybe it was Armand and Marie. Maybe it was a third party none of us know
about yet. I’ll deal with it when I
can.”
Her finger began to close on the
trigger.
“If you shoot me, you’ll never find
the disk!” Susan said desperately.
“Maybe so, maybe no,” Shondra
replied, unmoved. “At least nobody else
will have it. You’ve seen what’s on
that disk. Maybe that’s the best
solution after all.”
Susan jammed her eyelids closed,
fearing at any moment the impact of a bullet in her skull. She wondered as she trembled helplessly at
Shondra’s feet what it would feel like to have her head ripped open by a few
ounces of lead. Would it hurt? And what would death be like? She’d seen death many times in the ER, but
always from the other side. What would
it be like?
When nothing happened, Susan became
concerned. Was Shondra prolonging it
intentionally, gaining some twisted pleasure from watching her terror? Could she be that deranged? Susan would have thought not, but now she
wasn’t sure about anything concerning Shondra Lockwood. She relaxed her eyelids. They slid open and her eyes peered up
timidly from beneath them, expecting at any time to feel a bullet slam into her
skull. But Shondra wasn’t there. A furtive glance found her at the window,
staring out aimlessly, the pistol dangling from her right hand.
“Thank you for not killing me,”
Susan whispered timidly, praying the sound of her voice wouldn’t set the woman
off.
“It’s OK,” Shondra replied, her voice
choked with emotion. She refused to
look at Susan. “After all, you saved me
from the fire. Least I could do.” Shondra sighed deeply. “Got into this game for all the right
reasons, you know? I wanted to protect
the innocent, kill the bad guy. I just
wanted to keep my country safe and to keep the people in my country safe. That’s all.”
Shondra turned to Susan and made
the nurse utter a low gasp. Tears were
streaming down the cold hard agent’s cheeks and the haunted look of terror in
the woman’s eyes couldn’t have been worse I she had just confronted Satan
himself.
“Where did it go wrong?” Shondra
asked. “What happened? You’re not one of the bad guys, yet I was
going to splatter you all over this room.
That’s not right!”
“You won’t get an argument from
me,” offered Susan. “But you didn’t do
it. You saw it was wrong before you
took the fatal step and went too far.
Hang on to that. That’s your
lifeline. It means you’re not a lost
cause. It means you can over.”
Shondra emitted a chilling, derisive
giggle that sent the hairs on Susan’s arms rising.
“I wish I didn’t know what you
don’t know,” Shondra said, awash in the ghoulish humor of the situation, humor
only she saw.
“Why?” Susan asked warily. “What happens now?”
“What happens now is you run!”
snapped Shondra. “You grab your sister,
you empty your bank account and you head for the furthest place from here you
can find. If you’ve got any relatives
you like, you run as far away from them as you can, too! And when you get there, you find a hole and
you pull it in over you and you pray that the agency doesn’t find you! Because if they find out you know what you
know and that I didn’t terminate you for it, they’re going to terminate us
both!”
Susan stared at the woman, unable
to believe that she was completely earnest.
“No,” Susan shook her head. “No, this is America…”
“And America has rules,”
interrupted Shondra, “but there are parts of America that ignore the
rules! Believe me, I know! But if you want, you stay here and wrap
yourself in the flag! See just how
bulletproof it is!” She knelt down to
untie Susan. “You’ll get a phone call
one day and find out it’s your last!”
The phone rang. Shondra already had her gun up and aimed
before she realized it was just the phone.
It rang two more times before she decided on a course of action. Shondra brought the phone over to Susan and
held the receiver between them so they both could hear, then directed Susan to
answer.
“Hello?” Susan asked hesitantly.
“Suzie!” cried Cindy on the other
end, openly distraught. “She says you
have something she wants! She says
mmmpph mmmmmmfff!”
“Cindy!” howled Susan.
“Susan Hitchcock?” asked another
voice, this one more calm and controlled.
“Yes! Where’s Cindy!”
“We have your sister. Bring the disk to 1284 Mithoff Street in one
hour or your sister dies.”
“Cindy? Cindy!” Susan shouted into a dead connection. “Oh my God.
Oh my God!” and for a moment it seemed panic would consume the nurse. Then Susan seized control of it and stepped
on its neck. She turned with
determination to Shondra. “Untie me,
quickly!”
“What are you going to do?” asked
Shondra.
“What do you think I’m going to
do!” spat Susan. “I’m going to give her
the disk!”
“Susan, you can’t!”
“The Hell I can’t!”
“Is your sister’s life worth
potential global Armageddon?”
“Right now, yes! You might be able to watch someone you love
die for the greater good, but I can’t!
I’m going to give them the disk, get my sister back safe and alive, and
then I’m going to pray like Hell that I haven’t made things worse! Now untie me, damn it!”
“I can’t,” Shondra said resolutely.
“Can’t?” demanded Susan.
“I can’t let you do this. It’s too important.”
“Somebody help me!” screamed
Susan. “Somebody hrrrppff mmmmpphhh!”
Shondra thrust the packing deep in
Susan’s mouth, filling it up. Then she
took a second cloth and tied it over the struggling, fuming nurse’s lips to
keep the packing in place.
“I’m going,” Shondra told the still
struggling woman. “I know you hate me
right now and trust me even less and I don’t much blame you, but this has to be
my fight. This is why I joined up. I’m the one that’s trained for this sort of
stuff. I promise I’ll get your sister
back safe.”
Shondra stood up and checked the
ammo supply in her gun, the hidden compartments of her belt and in the black
shoulder bag she had. Satisfied, she
turned to the door, only to find Susan squirming toward it.
“Girl, do I have to lock you in the
closet!” snapped Shondra, seizing Susan under the arms and dragging her
back. Susan let loose a string of
curses that the gag smothered. “All
right, if you insist.”
Flinging the closet door open,
Shondra dragged the fighting woman into the closet and deposited her face down
on the floor. Getting some more cord,
she tied a loop around Susan’s ankle ropes between her ankles, then pulled them
back until the cord could be tied to her wrists. The effect of the bondage was to bow Susan, with the opposing
pull of her arms and legs drawing the other limbs taut. This greatly reduced her ability to squirm.
“Now stay put!” huffed
Shondra. “I’ll be back with your
sister.”
The door shut on Susan, muffled
curses echoing in the cramped chamber.
The empty garage was silent. Huan was at one end, watching cautiously for
anyone who might approach. Xia was at
the other end, doing the same. Trundled
off in a corner, beside a stripped and rusting tool cabinet, was Cindy
Hitchcock. She had long since given up
hope of slipping her ropes. Instead she
sat fearfully in the corner, knees brought up to her chest and prayed that this
would all end quickly. Her short, thin
skirt was scant protection against the cool concrete floor, nor was her bared
midriff comfortable against the cinder block walls. She was tired, she was hungry, she was scared out of her mind and
it was all the fault of that damned CD.
Why hadn’t Susan turned it over to the police when she first got it?
“{It will be time soon},” Huan
said. “{What if she does not come}?”
“{Then I will think of something
else},” Xia replied, “{and she will mourn her sister}.”
Just then Huan’s attention was
seized by a crash, coupled with the roar of an engine. He looked out of his vantage point to see a
large van crashing through the gate of the chain-link fence that surrounded the
property. Without stopping, the van
sped straight for the garage’s metal rolling door.”
“{Look out}!” was all he could get
out before the van slammed through the aging rolling door, ripping it loose
from the wall.
The van slammed to a stop as the
door rolled off of it. Rolling out was
Shondra Lockwood, her gun drawn even as Huan managed to squeeze off two
shots. They were errant, as was her
first shot, but the second one hit home and Huan crumpled to the floor. Shondra was already locating the second
source of fire, Xia on the far side of the garage. The van shielded her from Xia’s fire, but it also prevented her
from hitting the Chinese agent. Boldly
circling around the van to the passenger side, Shondra tried to gain a sight
line on her adversary. She spotted
Cindy out of the corner of her eye, pulled up in a ball behind the empty tool
cabinet so she wouldn’t get hit.
A few more hopping steps brought
her out of cover, her gun raised to return any fire that might come. Xia was trying to climb out past the crashed
van through the hole in the rolling door.
“Stop now!” Shondra bellowed,
squeezing off a single shot. It
exploded a fragment of metal above Xia’s head and the Chinese agent froze. Shondra jogged to cut the distance between
them. “Hands behind your head! Lock your fingers, NOW!”
Xia complied, part of her looking
for a mistake to exploit while the other part fearing her imminent
execution. Shondra stopped just a few
feet from her, the gun pointed at the woman and held rigid by Shondra’s arms.
“Face down on the floor!” Shondra
demanded. “Face down on the floor,
NOW!” she roared when Xia didn’t respond quickly enough.
The Chinese woman complied. Once she was down on the floor, Shondra
backed to the van and pulled out the shoulder bag, keeping her quarry covered
at all times. With one hand she ripped
open the bag and pulled some rope from inside it. Straddling her foe, she buried the gun into the base of the
woman’s skull.
“Hands behind your back,” snarled
Shondra, an intimidating picture when she was angry.
Xia complied and felt the cord bite
into her wrists. Shondra was not
gentle, pulling the cords tight around her wrists, drawing her elbows back,
lashing her arms to her torso with rope above and below the Chinese agent’s
breasts. Not once did Xia whimper or
groan. She seemed almost defiant about
it. The final touch was a roll of tape
pulled across Xia’s mouth and wound behind her head, under the long black hair
and around and over again. Xia was not
only gagged, her lips were crushed to her teeth. Shondra got off her back and roughly hauled her prisoner to her
feet, then shoved her over to where Cindy was cowering. She forced Xia to kneel, then knelt behind
Cindy and began to untie her.
“Don’t be afraid,” Shondra
whispered. “I’m the cavalry. I’m going to take you back to your sister.”
Susan lay on the floor of the
closet in frustration. There was no way
she could move, due to the way she was tied, and there was no room in this
cramped closet to move around in if she could.
She’d tried yelling, but all that had netted her was a sore throat. The gag had absorbed most of the noise she
made.
So all she could do was wait, hope
Cindy was all right and would be rescued, and hope that nothing bad happened
here. Alone and bound, there was little
she could do to help herself if the place caught fire.
Susan shuddered. Just thinking about fire brought back
memories of the previous night. The
memories faded, though, when the throbbing ache in her arms, shoulders, back,
thighs, calves and ankles returned with a vengeance. The position she was bound into was very stringent and not very
forgiving. She felt like she had cramps
in her cramps. If Shondra ever returned
and if she ever untied her and if she was able to walk again after enduring
this position, she was going to put her foot right up a certain black secret
agent’s behind.
The door opened outside the
closet. Susan perked up. Were they back? Had she succeeded? Was Cindy
safe? Susan began to mrrf into her gag,
unconcerned that the noises she made were gibberish. Footsteps walked over to the closet and Susan anticipated
deliverance. The door opened and framed
in the doorway was a handsome dark-haired man with graying temples.
“Well well,” commented Armand. “What have we here?”