by Mike Ryan
“What do you mean?”
“You mind telling me what you’re doing?”
“Once again, what do you mean?”
“I’ve just gotten word that there’s a trail of bodies being found all over Spain right now. You happen to know anything about that?”
“Gee, first I’ve heard of it.”
“Luke, what’s going on?”
“I’m telling you, Dad, I just don’t know.”
“Whenever you get cute, you always know more than you’re saying.”
“Maybe if you tell me what you’re talking about, I might be able to help.”
“First of all, bodies have been found by the airport in that building that we discussed.”
“So? That’s not news. I told you that myself.”
“Yeah, well, it’s one thing for me to know, it’s another when the authorities there know.”
“Not seeing the problem.”
“How ’bout the next one?”
“What next one?”
“Apparently three bodies were found in some makeshift brothel a little while ago. Two men were also found tied up. They insisted they were raided by a man and a woman. The woman was very flirty and bears an amazing resemblance to someone you know.”
“Is that so?” Bridge said. “Hmm. That’s interesting. Not sure how it applies to me, though.”
“Authorities seem to think they were holding women hostage there. Seems like quite a coincidence since that’s what you’re there investigating.”
“Coincidences happen all the time, Eric. You know that.”
“Not in this business. And you know that.”
“I can’t confirm anything at this point.” There was silence on both ends of the phone for a few seconds. “Is that it?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“Is that all that’s been found so far?”
Happ closed his eyes, and his shoulders slumped. He knew what that meant. “Should they have found something else?”
“Oh, I dunno, just asking.”
“Geez, Luke, how much more is there?”
“Uh, you know, I don’t know. I mean, I’ve heard rumors. Can’t say for certain.”
“What kind of rumors?”
“Just that there may be another similar building on the opposite side of town.”
Happ loudly sighed into the phone. “And how many bodies are in that one?”
“Unofficially, I think the count might be three or four. Can’t remember. I mean, I can’t remember what I heard. Not that I saw it firsthand or up close or anything.”
“Is that all you’ve heard?”
“Nope.”
“You’re gonna start an international incident, aren’t you?”
“Nope. Just cleaning one up.”
“That’s it, right?”
“Well…”
“Oh, come on, Luke. You’re not 007 and you don’t have a license to kill. What are you doing?”
“Like I said, cleaning things up. We—I mean, I just heard a warehouse just got hit.”
Happ didn’t wait for him to finish his sentence. “How many bodies?”
“There could possibly be six.”
“Is that all?”
“So far?”
“So far, he says. How many more?”
“Well, rumor has it that there might be one more. We’ll see.”
“And that’s it?”
“According to my information.”
“And how reliable is that?”
“It’s good,” Bridge replied.
“On a side note, since you’re not involved in anything over there, what do you hear about the women involved? Have any been found?”
“Oh yeah. They’ve been found. Most of them, I think.”
“How many are we talking?”
“Twenty-five.”
“That’s great. Where are they?”
Bridge laughed. “Well, they’re all kind of tagging along with us.”
“What? You’re driving around with twenty-five women in your car?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I couldn’t fit twenty-five people in my car.”
“Don’t be cute, Luke. You know what I mean.”
“I don’t know what else to do with them or where to take them.”
“What about your hotel room?”
“Well, um, that’s another little problem.”
“You didn’t get a hotel room?”
“Oh, no, we got one,” Bridge said.
“Then why can’t you use it?”
“Um, well, we’re using it for something else right now.”
Happ tried to think of what else they could be using it for, but came up empty. “What else is there?”
“Well, we’re holding someone else in there right now.”
“You’re what? You’ve got a prisoner?”
“Well, yes and no. He’s not really a prisoner. We’re planning on letting him go when this is over.”
“Oh yeah? And just who do you have in there?”
“Uh, I really shouldn’t say.”
“How do you know whoever it is hasn’t gotten loose and blown the whistle on you?”
“I would doubt it.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s not conscious.”
“What?”
“Listen, reception’s getting really bad here,” Bridge said, making some noises with his mouth to simulate the static. “Whoa, can barely even hear you now. Gotta go. Bye.”
“He’s so gonna kill you when we get back,” Nicole said.
Bridge looked at her and smiled. “Probably.”
18
Bridge and Nicole put the remaining driver in their van just before they got to the warehouse. They had the same setup in mind.
“Same thing as the other guy,” Bridge told him. “You cooperate, you leave. Simple as that.”
“I’m gone as soon as you give the word.”
“How many people in there?”
The driver thought for a second. “One, two, four, five. Five.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah.”
“The other place had six.”
“There’s guards in the front and back. Then three inside.”
“How many girls?” Bridge asked.
“Six or seven.”
“Let’s do this one differently,” Nicole said.
“Why?” Bridge asked.
“More efficient. When we take out the front guard, this guy takes one of us to the back and gets the back guard, then we take him out too. Then we converge on opposite sides until we get to the middle.”
Bridge nodded. “Makes sense. OK, we’ll go with that.” Bridge looked at the driver. “You good with that?”
“Yeah.”
“Ready when you are.”
The driver put the van in motion, quickly driving up to the gate. Once the driver’s face was scanned, the gates opened, and the van drove on through. Once they pulled up to the front of the warehouse, a guard quickly emerged from one of the doors and walked up to the van. Before the guard got there, the driver jumped out of the van and started yelling.
“It’s a trap, it’s a trap!”
“Damn it!” Bridge yelled, opening the back door of the van and jumping out.
As he started taking fire, Nicole lunged over the front seat, pointing her rifle out the window. She first targeted the unarmed driver and put a hole through his chest. As the other guard turned to look at her, Bridge dropped underneath the van doors and fired a couple of rounds, dropping the man. Nicole then jumped out of the van and the two of them ran up to the warehouse.
“So much for that plan,” Bridge said.
“Damn idiot had to mess things up. If he’d just been cool like the other guy, he’d have lived through this.”
“Some people are just too dumb to live.”
Bridge threw open the front door, and they rushed inside, where they were immediately pelted with gunfire. Bridge yelled out in
pain and fell to the ground in an awkward manner. Nicole kept firing to try to keep some of the heat off.
“You OK?”
“Don’t worry about me,” Bridge said. “Just worry about them.”
Nicole didn’t look at him, but kept on firing, though she was still worried about him. “Are you OK?”
Bridge sat up and put his hand on his left arm. He let out another groan as he touched the spot where the bullet had grazed him. “I think it’s just a scratch.”
“Where’d it get you?”
“On the arm. Didn’t go through. Burns like hell, though.”
“Guess you’ll need some extra attention after we’re done with this.”
“Guess so.”
“Maybe I can wear that nurse’s costume…”
“Now’s not the time, Nic!”
“Oh. Yeah.”
As the two sides continued to exchange gunfire, Bridge noticed a door behind him. “Hmm. Wonder if that goes anywhere.”
“What?”
“There’s a door. I’m gonna see if I can get in behind them.”
“OK.”
“You just keep them busy,” Bridge said.
“Do I have a choice?”
“Not really.”
“And it’s more like the other way around. They’re keeping me busy.”
“Well, just keep it that way until I can get in behind them.”
“Make it fast,” Nicole said.
Bridge went through the door as Nicole kept firing, clinging to the wall for protection. The men she was shooting at periodically showed their faces from the wall they were hiding behind whenever they fired a few rounds. Bridge quickly went through a couple of doors, then into a hallway. It wasn’t a big building, so it didn’t take long until he got around to the other side. He went through one more door that led to the main part of the warehouse, which was where the other men were shooting from. He didn’t have a good angle at which to fire from, so he was going to have to move into the open space of the warehouse, and also give up the protection of the door and room he was in. He was going to have to chance it, though.
Bridge waited until all the men were firing at Nicole, so they wouldn’t notice him emerge from the door. He quickly rushed into the room and slid down on one knee. He then took aim at his first target. As soon as the man went down, the others turned to fire at him. The first one did not realize he left himself exposed to Nicole, who shot him in the back. Bridge then dropped to his stomach and fired at the same time, mostly to change the angle at which the other men would be shooting at and make it more difficult for him to be hit. He fired at another target, hitting the man in the stomach. There was one man left. Bridge and the man were about to simultaneously fire at each other, most likely resulting in both of them getting shot. Then, out of nowhere, a gun and head appeared from the hallway, almost as if it was peeking around the corner to see what was there. It was Nicole. She fired a round point blank at the remaining man’s head, instantly killing him before he got a shot off at Bridge. She then turned to look at her boyfriend.
“You all right?”
Bridge took a deep breath and stood up. “Yeah. You?”
“I’m good.”
“You find the girls. I’ll make sure this was all of them.”
Nicole nodded, then moved out, looking in some of the other rooms. It wasn’t long until she found the women. There were five of them, huddled together in the corner, afraid of what was happening when they heard the gunshots.
“C’mon, ladies,” Nicole said. “This is your path to freedom.”
The ladies were a little hesitant to move, causing Nicole to have to explain to them everything that was going on. While she was finishing up her talk, Bridge came over to her.
“Everything else is clear.”
“Let’s go, girls. Your chariot awaits.”
Bridge was the last to leave, taking a careful glance at each of the women as they passed him. None of them looked like Evelyn Fester. As the girls, led by Nicole, left the building, Bridge stayed glued to his spot for a few moments. He was breathing heavily due to all the excitement, though it was starting to slow down and return to normal. He just stared at the floor. The only thing running through his mind was how much work they had done in a short amount of time, all the girls they had freed who would now be able to return home and get back to their lives. But they still hadn’t gotten the person they were originally after. Bridge’s eyes looked around the room for a minute, almost like he was stunned at what had transpired. A minute later, Nicole came back in, wondering where her boyfriend had gone. She immediately saw the look on his face and knew what the trouble was. She put her hand on the back of his head and rubbed it. He always liked it when she did that. It kind of relaxed him.
“We’ll find her.”
“How?” Bridge asked. “She’s not at any of the places that we hit. Neither’s Meyer. He’s gonna hear about this within twelve hours, tops, if not sooner. That means we’ve lost the element of surprise. We’re not sneaking up on him now.”
“So what? It doesn’t mean we have to stop looking for him or for Evelyn. Just means this isn’t over yet. We’ll find them. And when we do, we’ll figure out a new plan. We always do.”
“I was really hoping we were gonna wrap this all up here. Bring everyone home.”
“We’re still bringing a lot of people home. C’mon, let’s get out of here. We have to figure out what we’re doing with all of them.”
Bridge and Nicole left the warehouse and got into the van and drove away. They continued talking about their plans from that point on.
“What are we gonna do with them?” Nicole asked. “We can’t just fit thirty-plus people into our hotel room for who knows how long.”
“The embassy.”
“What?”
“We’ll take them to the U.S. Embassy. It’s in Madrid. Probably about an hour from here. We know they’ll be safe, they’ll get back home within a few days, they’ll be fine from there. Then we can keep on with our search.”
Nicole nodded, good with the plan. “We should probably give them a heads-up that we’re coming. I mean, just dropping thirty-some people into their laps could be problematic.”
“I’ll call Eric, let him know, so he can take it through proper channels.”
“I’ll pull over and let the girls in the other van know what we’re doing.”
As Nicole pulled over, then got out to explain the situation to all the girls, Bridge called Happ.
Happ immediately answered. “Blow up another building already?”
“For the record, I haven’t blown up any buildings.”
“I assume you need something.”
“I’ve now got thirty… I dunno, I lost count, thirty-some women who need a ride home to the U.S.”
“And what do you want me to do?”
“I dunno, something.”
“Um, well…”
“Here’s what I was thinking,” Bridge said. “We’ll take them to the U.S. Embassy in Madrid. They can keep them safe and send them home from there, right?”
“Should be able to.”
“I didn’t wanna just show up unannounced. You think you can call them and let them know I’m coming? You know anyone there?”
“No, not personally. I can run it up the flagpole, though.”
“Make it fast. We should be there in an hour.”
“I’ll do what I can. Hopefully you didn’t spark off an international incident here.”
“It should be.”
“What do you mean?”
“There won’t be any blowback on this.”
“Why not?”
“Because these girls aren’t just Americans.”
“They’re not?”
“I counted three Canadians, two from Spain, one from Germany, one from Russia, and one from France. Nobody’s getting grief on this,” Bridge said.
“Good to know. Is that it for you? For this?”
“No.”
<
br /> “What do you mean, no?”
“Evelyn Fester isn’t among the girls we’re bringing back.”
“You know where she’s at?”
Bridge hesitated before answering. “No.”
“I hate to bring this up, but the possibility exists that she’s not…”
“No,” Bridge immediately replied. He wasn’t waiting to hear the rest of that sentence. He knew what he was implying. “She’s not dead. She’s not. She’s alive.”
“Luke, I know you wanna think the best, but the reality is… I mean, if she was with the rest of those girls, and now she’s not…”
“Just means they sent her somewhere else. That’s all. They wouldn’t kill her. She has value to them.”
“Maybe so. But that doesn’t mean that something didn’t happen…”
“She’s alive, Eric. She’s alive. I just have to find her.”
“OK. How do you plan on doing that?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“OK. Well, if you need me for anything else, let me know.”
“I will.”
After getting off the phone, Bridge put it in his pocket. He then removed the picture of Evelyn and looked at it.
“I’ll find you.” Bridge then put his finger on the picture, as if he were talking to her directly. “I’m coming. I promise.”
19
After Bridge and Nicole dropped the women off at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid, they went back to their hotel to regroup and figure out a new plan. They weren’t leaving until they found Evelyn Fester. As soon as they walked into their hotel room, they were greeted by their now awake prisoner.
“I was wondering when you guys would get back,” Flores said.
Bridge looked at Nicole, wondering why he was awake. “Why is he up?”
Nicole shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess the stuff wore off.”
“Great.”
Flores was still tied up in the chair and nothing was out of place in the room, so they knew he had no tricks up his sleeve.
“How long have you been awake?” Nicole asked.
“Oh, I think about an hour now,” Flores replied.
“Put him back asleep,” Bridge said. “We don’t have time to be messing with him.”
“Aww, wait, wait, come on now. I don’t know how many times you guys have put me under, but no more. No more. I lived up to my part of the deal. I gave you everything you wanted. Now it’s time to let me go.”
