Wild Poppy

by Victoria Johns

  Sometime later, I heard a sound from the other side of the wooden panel and stood up ready when the light crept through. I did my best against the glare but stood ready to fight while my eyes adjusted. A flashlight scanned over me and Bolly snorted. “Shadow, such a joker.”

  “What the fuck is going on?”

  “Relax. I not hurt you.”

  “No? You just left me here all fucking day, locked up.”

  “It’s been two hours, lady. We go.”

  “What! Now? It must still be daylight?”

  He looked to the heavens, muttering heavily in Russian, inserting the word ‘Shadow’ at random points. “Climb in ‘ere.”

  Bolly had a roll of material already assembled against a sack truck, he pointed with more frustration than was probably necessary at the set of step ladders propped up against it. I climbed up them noticing there was just about room for me inside it and had to make the quick decision of whether to trust him, or fight and run. Putting all my faith in Shadow, I dropped the backpack and climbed in. When I was in, shoulders braced against the inside of the makeshift smuggling tube, he peered over the top. “No move. No talk. I hear peep from you, I cut your fucking throat,” he repeated his earlier threat.

  “Can’t fucking move.”

  “No talking! Save for breathing,” Bolly barked, and then the lights went out again as he stuffed some fabric in the gap. My heart rate sped up, wondering whether this was how I would die. Stuffed in the middle of a fake roll of black, fleecy teddy bear material, unable to get enough oxygen. The roll moved slightly and when I was tipped at a forty-five-degree angle, I resisted the urge to squeak and whimper at the odd sensation of being moved but having no control over it. The hustle and bustle of the market filtered through the muffling above me. I heard Bolly greet people in multiple languages, before the roll of fabric was tipped in the other direction and then moved into the back of a truck. A few seconds later the truck engine started, and the roll stayed pretty steady in the back, I assumed because I was secured amongst other rolls of fabric.

  The hum of the engine noise and my body’s need to wind down for a bit, lulled me into a state of relaxation and surprisingly it helped. Being tense in a tube just wide enough to hold me wasn’t comfortable. After a while, it stopped and a few minutes later, instead of feeling my restricted tube move again, my feet were being pulled out of it, and when they hit something solid, my legs wobbled and buckled until I was sat on the floor.

  “You rest. Tomorrow, you go.”

  Looking around me, I was in the middle of nowhere surrounded by hills and mini mountains, on the dirty ground by a farmhouse. For a minute my heart jumped. I could have been back in Afghanistan and I only prayed I wasn’t.

  “Go where?”

  “Where I tell. Your ride be here with papers.”

  For the first time since I’d met Bolly, I breathed freer. Today wouldn’t be the day I died.

  That night, I ate real food. Not stale bread, nuts and dried fruit. I ate vegetables and meat and drunk lemonade. It was the best meal ever, and not because I didn’t have to cook it, or worry about being tied to a bench and fucked by multiple men after it.

  “How do you know Shadow?” I looked across the table and asked Bolly.

  The fork that was a half-inch from his mouth stalled as he looked at me. It was clear I was more of an irritation than he was keen on at dinnertime. “Ask too many questions.”

  “Shadow said the same,” I muttered, and he laughed.

  I wondered when Shadow had had time to talk to Bolly, but there were times when I had slept like the dead in the truck beside him, and times when Shadow disappeared to take a piss, when he could have easily made the call. I’d been used to sleeping with one eye open, and the day Shadow found me was the first time I slept soundly, not having to worry about anything. It wasn’t just because he saved me that I trusted him. It was because of how horrified he looked at having witnessed my rape that day at the market. Unlike my captors, Shadow had a heart that still beat somewhere inside him.

  “How did you know Shadow?”

  He looked uncertain about whether he should share. “He save me. I owe him.”

  Well that sounded simple. “Do you mind me asking how you got that scar?”

  “Shadow.” His one-word answer told me absolutely nothing but everything I needed. There was no doubt in my mind that Shadow was capable of cutting someone much, much worse than the artwork he’d left on his friend Bolly.

  “It looks like it was painful.”

  Bolly stood up, threw his plate in the sink and then reached for mine. I guessed dinnertime and after dinner conversation was over. “You sleep there.” He pointed to a chair in the corner. “You leave at sun up.” The big burly guy just turned away and walked off.

  There were no home comforts here, not least any other people and for a farm that was strange, but it was also covered in dust. I realized that this probably wasn’t his home. Whoever Bolly was, he’d used this place before to do this kind of thing for other people.

  I was awake the next morning when he came into the room. The sun was threatening to spill onto the hillside outside, but it wasn’t quite there yet.

  “Put on.” He threw a handful of clothes at me and dropped a pair of boots at my feet.

  Not hesitating, I got on with it. Only when I was down to my underclothes did I realize he was still watching, and definitely not happy with the bruising and bite marks on my body. Some were old, and only the more recent ones were starting to fade. I looked like an artist’s paint palette. Just like Shadow, it seemed Bolly did not like any injustice where women were concerned. As I finished lacing up the boots, a car engine sounded in the distance before brakes pulled the tires to a dusty, crunchy stop out front.

  “Come.” I looked down at myself and saw that for the first time in forever I was dressed in western clothes... proper pants. He pointed a dirty finger at me. “You, journalist.”

  “Journalist? I can live with that. Where am I going?”

  “You know when get there.” I couldn’t do that. I was already living on the edge of my nerves. I needed to know what was happening to me for safety reasons, and to be able to help if we got into trouble, but more than that, I needed to have some hope. “Now go.”

  “Tell me now, or I won’t go.”

  Bolly reached for my shirt and grabbed a fistful. “You fucking will, or I kill you now and save me trouble.” Sensing I was about to argue and make a ridiculous attempt to stand my ground, he dragged me outside and didn’t stop until I was stood next to another western-looking man in front of a dusty old beat-up Nissan. “Take her. Pain in ass.”

  The bearded guy peered from under the peak of a baseball cap before throwing an unfinished cigarette to the ground. He smiled at Bolly and then spoke to me. “Let’s hustle.”

  “You’re American?” I should run now. Shadow had been clear that no one from home could know I was still alive. I wondered if he knew that Bolly had probably given us both up.

  “Canadian. Can we go now?”

  I nodded and turned back to Bolly who had already dismissed the pair of us and was heading back inside the farmhouse. “Wait! Thank you!”

  He carried on and didn’t turn to look at me, but just barked, “Go! Now!”

  I climbed into the car with my latest traveling stranger. “Where am I going?”

  “I’m Harry Cross. Friends call me Cross. Here, this is yours.”

  He pulled a laminated pass attached to a lanyard out of the door pocket. “This is your press pass. We get pulled over, you show this, keep quiet, pretend you don’t speak the lingo and let me do the talking. Got it?”

  “Yes. But where am I going?”

  The guy turned my way and smiled huge. “North. Through all the fucking ‘istans, into Russia. Then you’re on your own.”

  Chapter Four

  Codename : Agent Poppy

  Harry Cross was one of my better traveling companions of late. He didn’t go for long sile
nces; he didn’t smuggle me in industrial-sized fabric rolls, and he didn’t thrust me in the back of a horse and cart against my will to be taken to a neighbor’s house to have punishment sex with someone who owed him. Harry was funny, chatty and with the accent, like a little slice of nearly home that was making it harder and harder to come to terms with the fact that I’d agreed to never return to my homeland. At any border check point, he produced paperwork for us, we flashed our passes and then he greased the palms of border control with cigarettes and whisky. Throughout it all, I stayed silent as I was instructed.

  “You know some scary people.”

  “Meh.” I feigned indifference. I wasn’t sure whether he was referring to the enforced marital harmony I’d left in Afghan, Shadow or Bolly. During some of our travel musings, I pushed the thought aside that I was also probably one of those scary people he referred to.

  “You know what you’ll do when you get to Russia?” As I went to answer him, four militia men in camo gear stepped out of the tree line ahead of us. “Fuck. Was hoping to avoid these guys. When I get out to deal with them, stay put. There’s a gun under each seat. If it looks like it’s going south and I come back to the car, I might need you to pass me one quick.”

  “Okay.” My insides buzzed, and I recognized what it was.

  Readiness. Preparedness. That survival instinct. I was so close to freedom that no one would take it away from me, especially not some half-baked amateur toy soldiers.

  He rolled the car to a stop, and the guys strolled forward. The road we were on wasn’t wide, and the only people we’d seen were farmers and families on horse and carts. No other automotives whatsoever. I took in the armed guards and under normal circumstances would have been wary, but one was carrying his gun like it was a baby, another had his gun so caked in mud it was a wonder it was still functional, and another was constantly flicking his safety on and off so there was no way he would know whether it was on or not when he came to use it. There was only one who seemed to understand his power in the situation, and when the time came it would be him I’d take out first.

  Harry walked to meet them, palms downwards, facing the floor in a sign of gentle submission and friendliness. Without moving my head, I checked the door mirror to see if anyone had crept up on our flank. Had these guys been a real outfit to be concerned about they would have made sure we were surrounded and left without an escape route.

  Words were exchanged, and the serious one nodded his head to his comrade who threw a wild punch at Harry’s face, which connected with his cheekbone, sending my traveling companion stumbling to the floor.

  Fuck.

  I knew Shadow had said I wasn’t to go home, but ending up in an anonymous grave in the middle of this fucking backward country was, I was sure, not what he meant either.

  Leaning forward slightly, I reached under my seat and felt the handgun. Pulling it up quickly, I checked it had ammo and cocked it ready, before reaching under Harry’s seat and repeating the action. Tucking both guns in the back waistband of my pants, I untucked my shirt to hide them and opened the door of the car. The minute I did, two of the four-man-muscle-team pointed their guns in my direction.

  “Shit. Girl,” Harry spat around a mouthful of blood. “Get back in the car. We’re just negotiating terms.”

  “I can help with that.”

  “No. No, you can’t.”

  I approached in the same way Harry did, with my hands surrendered, taking careful, measured steps, and scanning on either side of me just to see if there were any hidden surprises.

  “Pussy?” I heard one of them sneer and that made me see red almost immediately. There was no way on God’s green earth I would be subjected to anymore humiliation and degradation just because I had a vagina instead of a set of balls.

  “Get back in the fucking car.” Harry’s voice was on the verge of begging my compliance, but it was too late for that.

  “Titties,” another mewled, and then to the humor of his friends he grabbed his crotch and adjusted.

  “You wanna see titties?” I moved my hands and began to unbutton my blouse. Their attention shifted to my hands automatically. It was like Harry no longer even existed. “Come closer, you wanna look?” The power of the female form worked its magic and they stepped around Harry and came in my direction, as he scrambled to his feet ready to come and intervene. When I undid the last button, I pulled the shirt open wide, exposing my chest and bra. Two of them licked their lips and like idiots possessed, let their weapons fall idly by their sides.

  Just a little closer.

  I needed to make sure that the one with the brains, the one to be wary of, was going to get involved, too.

  When they were ten feet from me, I swept the shirt tails behind my back, relishing what was to come next, and reached for the guns. Quick as a flash, I pulled them to the front and shot each guy. The two closest to me took the bullets up front and center through their foreheads. The other two close behind them took bullets to their upper chests.

  Each would have been dead instantly.

  “What the fuck?” Harry hissed.

  “Problem solved.” I shrugged off his lack of gratitude and buttoned up my shirt.

  “Not problem solved—we were negotiating.”

  “No, you were getting your ass kicked.”

  He brushed that off, not wanting to acknowledge that I’d just saved us both. “Yeah? Well now we’ve got bodies to hide. There’ll be no rest tonight. We’ll have to put some miles in to outrun this.”

  I looked at him, still pissed off that he wasn’t going to say thanks for saving our asses. “Then you’d best get me a fucking shovel.”

  We dragged the bodies into the thicket of trees, dug a shallow grave and put them in. I wanted to keep the weapons, but Harry insisted that we’d be in more trouble if we were found with a car containing automatic weapons, so reluctantly, I conceded and buried those, too. After we’d done that, I dragged a leafy tree branch over the ground to cover any tracks and then turned some of the earth over to hide the blood that had pooled on the road. It would be dark in a couple of hours, so if they went undiscovered before nightfall, we stood a good chance of making it from here.

  When we were back on the road, I found the silence similar to that when Shadow was getting me across the border, and I couldn’t stand it any longer. “I’m sorry if I shocked you, but I wasn’t going to let them kill you and then come for me.”

  “It wouldn’t have got that far. They were just asking for more whisky than usual.”

  “You don’t know that, and besides, they were easy to handle.”

  Harry shook his head. It didn’t matter what I said; he clearly didn’t agree with my handling of the situation, but the problem was, while he’d been living a relatively comfortable life, only reporting and photographing the horrors of the Middle East, I’d been living it. While he was taught English and journalism, I was being taught about code, hacking and then progressed to marksmanship and assassination. My instincts had been tweaked for the outcome back there; it was second nature to me.

  Kill or be killed.

  And while I wasn’t under strict guard, being watched like a hawk or having sex forced upon me, I would continue to handle the situations as I felt best.

  “I think when I get to Russia, I’ll need to find someone who can get me a passport, new identity and a bit of cash.” I went back to the conversation we’d started before I became murderer and disposer of dead bodies.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Not gonna get far on a new life without them.”

  “I’ve got that covered. Arrangements have been made for you.”

  This surprised me. “Such as?”

  “There’s a contact waiting in Russia with everything you need. Courtesy of a friend of Bolly.”

  That could only mean Shadow. He really did want to make sure I had options and didn’t need to revert to type and go home.

  “Do you know where I’m going?”

  “No.”
He said it like he was relieved, and I realized that while he was a good guy for helping get me across the globe, and a great conversationalist, he was also a scaredy cat and wanted to be rid of me as soon as possible.

  “Do I really have to apologize?”

  “What’s done is done. They told me I was helping rescue a woman who had been detained in Afghanistan while she was trying to rescue her kidnapped kid.”

  Inventive, I was impressed. “And?”

  “Clearly that was a lie.” He was back to being pissed off.

  “Not really, I was detained over there.”

  “I’m wondering how. With the skills I’ve just seen, seems you could have freed yourself any time. That and we don’t have a kid with us.”

  “I probably could have freed myself anytime, but I would have also died trying.” A single gun only has so many bullets, and without the ability to carry a small arms store with me I wouldn’t have gotten very far. There was also the small matter of me staying put because I thought I was going to be extracted a hell of a lot sooner. And when it came to it, it was a rogue extraction. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that my country had sold me out, but where would that get me?

  “Maybe I was wrong earlier. You don’t just know some scary people. You are plain scary yourself.”

  Finally, he was getting the picture and I wasn’t going to disagree with him.

  No.

  Harry Cross, Canadian journalist, was better in his blissful ignorance. I didn’t have the luxury of killing him to keep him quiet. I needed him to get me out of here, and as I’d also just learned, I needed to find that contact and get that passport and papers.

  A week after I left Bolly’s farmhouse, we crossed a dirt track through a forest clearing.

  “Welcome to Mother Russia.”

  All the air in my body left me at once.

  I’d fucking made it. I was very nearly safe.

  “Really?”

  Harry turned and smiled at me. I could see he was just as relieved as I was, but it was probably over knowing he’d be rid of me soon. Every mile behind us was one step closer to a new life.