Foreign Enemies and Traitors

by Matthew Bracken

  “Okay,” he finished. “Enough small talk. Enough polite chitchat. Come on, blondie, let’s go upstairs and find the master bedroom in this dump before the colonel grabs it for himself.” Still smiling, he pulled her through the opening into the living room by her neck and then pushed her toward the front hall and the stairs. Behind them the soldiers roared their approval, whistling and stomping their boots, then once again they broke into a verse of their drunken song. He pushed her upstairs with one hand clamped around the back of her neck and the other clutching her left upper arm tightly enough to hurt.

  ****

  He shoved Jenny through the door, toward a king-size four-poster bed. He pulled out his pistol; a bright mini-flashlight was attached beneath its barrel. He scanned the room with the light until he found an oil lamp standing on an antique bureau. He gave Jenny one more hard push, and she landed on her face on the bed. The bed was piled high with quilts and blankets; the room temperature was nearly comfortable, not bitterly cold. He pulled off his fur hat, dropped his pack, and kicked the bedroom door closed behind him with a boot. He lifted the lamp’s glass and lit the wick with a butane lighter. With the wick adjusted, the room was suffused in a soft glow. It was burning real lamp oil, with a nice scent, not the foul smelling motor oil she was accustomed to. He reholstered his pistol, its harsh electric light no longer needed.

  Expensively framed antique oil paintings of pastoral equestrian scenes hung on the walls. The room had a white brick fireplace across from the foot of the bed. A large painting of horses and riders preparing for a fox hunt hung above the fireplace mantle. It was a working fireplace, not merely decorative. There were half-burnt logs on an iron grate, and fireplace tools in a rack on the side. She carefully noted the iron tools: she might get a chance to use them as weapons if her captor let down his guard. There was a large window on either side of the fireplace, their shades pulled down. Between the fireplace and the windows were low bookshelves. The sounds of the bacchanal came up through the floor: men singing and shouting, and girls screaming. Jenny wondered if she was indeed luckier than the girls remaining below.

  Her captor breezily said, “You have to admit, they really knew how to build these old places. More earthquake-proof than houses built ten years ago. It must have been built before they had central heat—lots of fireplaces.” He grabbed some bound books from the low shelf to the right of the fireplace, ripped pages out and threw them into the hearth, and then threw in entire books. He ignited the paper with his lighter. He picked up an antique mahogany chair, and using only his upper body strength, broke it into pieces by pulling the legs apart. He tossed its solid wood legs and arms into the fireplace, and repeated the process with another antique chair, and then the four mahogany posts from the bed, which lifted easily out of slots. The paper was already burning brightly, and he fed additional open books into the flames until the wood began to catch fire.

  “There, that should do it. It’ll be warming up in here in no time.” He went to his pack, opened a side compartment, and extracted a thick sausage wrapped in plastic film, already opened at one end. He waved the long reddish-brown cylinder in the air. “Here’s what you’re playing for, blondie. Make me a happy man, and we’ll have a nice romantic dinner together—afterwards.” Jenny could smell its greasy, spicy aroma and her mouth began to water. He said, “Summer sausage, from Wisconsin. Not too many problems up there—the cheeseheads have all they want, just about. Not like down here in Tennessee. I’ll bet you’re just starving, eh?” He laughed at his own joke. He set the meat within her sight, on the edge of the bureau under the lamp, then removed a plastic bottle from his pack, unscrewed the cap, and took a drink.

  Jenny lay on the bed on her side, her knees drawn to her chest, looking at him as he first unbuckled his outer belt with its pistol and other gear, then unzipped his camouflage jacket and dropped it to the floor, followed by his uniform shirt. He left on his brown T-shirt. He sat on the edge of the bed and unlaced his boots, taking his time, staring at her with his mouth agape. Finally he stood and unfastened his belt, and let his pants drop to the floor. He was a huge, thickly muscled man, with hairy gorilla arms and short bandy legs.

  “Okay, blondie, your turn now.” He stood above her by the edge of the bed and clapped his hands together. “Come on, honey; get with the program. Take off that vest—let’s see what you’re hiding under there.”

  Jenny wondered if he was possibly a foreign soldier, trained to speak flawless English. He was wearing the foreign uniform, but his English was perfect. Maybe he was a foreigner who had lived for a long time in America. She had also heard him speak the foreign tongue. There were so many groups of foreigners living in the USA, it was hard to keep track of them all. She was repulsed by him and didn’t want to join in his one-way conversation, but she felt compelled to ask him a single question. “Are you really an American?”

  He smiled, his face softening slightly. “As American as apple pie, blondie. Born and raised in the Land of Lincoln. Now, here’s the deal: I’m getting cold waiting for you to get in the mood. I want you naked under the covers, right now. Got it? Come on, it’s still too chilly in this room. Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle,” he laughed. “You’re going to love what I’m going to give you, I promise. Then if I like it too, well…I’ll try to forget what you did back there in Mannville. That was rude—you really pissed me off. You embarrassed me in front of my colleagues from Kazakhstan. Now I’m giving you a chance to make it up to me. Then we’ll have dinner.”

  Jenny crossed her arms tightly and looked away. “No.”

  “No? You don’t understand. ‘No’ is not an option for you tonight.”

  “No—I won’t,” she repeated, quietly but with conviction.

  “Oh, yes you will! He gave her a cruel smile and then launched hiself on her, still wearing his brown T-shirt, boxer shorts, and socks. She rolled quickly to the far side of the wide bed and half slid off it, but he crawled after her, grabbed her by an ankle and easily dragged her back into the middle. He laughed and playfully smacked her on her rump, then pulled the sneakers off her feet and tossed them aside. Jenny rolled onto her back, trying to get into a defensive posture where she could fend him off.

  “So you’re a fighter, are you? Well, I like spirit in a girl, but don’t push your luck.” Without warning, he turned and slapped her hard across the face and Jenny’s hands flew up. Still laughing, he grabbed the edge of her plaid wraparound skirt in both hands and yanked it upward until she rolled out of it. Then he straddled her bare legs at the thighs, grabbed both sides of her black insulated vest and yanked them apart, sending the gold buttons flying, and then pulled up the bottom of her yellow sweater.

  He was extremely powerful, but Jenny clutched her arms to her chest tightly and for a moment they were at an impasse, until he gave her another open-handed blow to the other side of her face. The shock of it stunned her, and in that instant he forced the sweater and open vest up over her head and off. When the sweater came up, it took her cotton undershirt with it. She wore no bra, she did not own one anymore; bras that fit her were impossible to find. He flung her clothes aside and she clasped her arms back across her bare breasts. She had never been exactly busty, and after a year of near starvation, she was even less so. Naked now except for her panties and socks, she felt furious, powerless and terrified all at the same time. Her face was scarlet both from humiliation and from his slaps.

  He carefully grasped both of her wrists, easily peeling her arms away from her chest, and pinned them under his hands against the mattress, on either side of her head. “Come on, blondie, I like a frisky little filly now and then, but enough is enough. Make it easy for yourself—I don’t want to mark up your pretty little face. You can’t be my Tennessee girlfriend if you look like you just went ten rounds in the octagon.” All of his upper body weight now bore down upon her slender wrists, his hips crushing hers, his knees battering her thighs, forcing her legs apart.

  Then he lowered his chest against
her while Jenny squirmed and thrashed to no effect, his greasy whiskered face only inches away, his breath stinking, his tongue darting out and wiggling like some perverted lizard. He licked her neck, her cheeks, probed her ear as she turned her head to the side and clamped her eyes shut. She was crushed, pinned and helpless. While he licked and kissed her neck, his whisker stubble grating like sandpaper, the back of his ear brushed against her lips. Without thinking, she bit into it as hard as she had ever bitten anything in her life. It was like biting a dried apricot, with a piece of beef jerky inside. She held onto his ear with her teeth, like a crazed pit bull clamping down on a rawhide chew toy.

  He shrieked in pain and released his hold on her wrists, his meaty hands going for her throat, but she maintained her bite on his ear. His thick fingers snaked up to her neck, one hand found her windpipe and began to clamp down, but her hands were now also free and her fingernails flew to his eyes like ten daggers. Then his head was suddenly loose from her and he pulled away. Most of his ear was still in her mouth, and she spat it out on the bed between them, their eyes locked together. He rolled away from her to gain some distance from the source of his pain, then raised himself up on one arm and drew his other hand back in a fist to strike her.

  His face was a twisted contortion of blind rage, there were deep red scratches running from his eyes down his cheeks. The ragged stump of his ear gushed hot red blood down his neck and onto her. His right fist came down, but Jenny darted away toward the side of the bed as the punch narrowly missed. He pursued her, hitting her on her buttocks, grabbing at her flailing legs as she went over the edge, kicking backward at him. He was right behind her as she shot head first down to the floor, but she just managed to scramble ahead of him toward the foot of the bed, slipping on the small rug in front of the fireplace.

  He sprang up to leap on her, and as she rolled onto her back she grabbed at the brass fireplace poker that leaned against the bricks, point upward. There was no time or space to swing it as a weapon. As he came hurtling down, she turned slightly, guiding the poker’s iron tip. In his rage and animal excitement he focused on her naked body, not seeing what she held in her hands.

  As he threw his bulk onto her, his full weight came down on the poker. The bottom of the brass and iron spear held fast where the hardwood floor met the raised bricks of the fireplace hearth. The harpoon point tore into his throat, piercing his windpipe. The poker’s outward curving hook, the complement to its spear tip, prevented it from completely impaling him. His forward motion vaulted his body over Jenny into the fireplace. The top of his head slammed into the bricks at the back of the hearth, his face, chest and shoulders landing across the blazing wood. His still-pumping feet and legs found no purchase on the small rug and smooth hardwood. He jerked and tried to roll out, but he was trapped in the fireplace by the iron poker jammed deeply into his neck, its shaft caught backward among the burning wood and the iron hearth grate. His back arched and stiffened, his legs gave a few more kicks and shivering spasms—and then he was motionless, with his black hair and T-shirt already aflame.

  Jenny crabbed away from him on her back, hyperventilating, finally sitting against the pillaged bookshelf, staring at her would-be rapist’s prone body. She was naked except for her panties and socks. Downstairs, she could still hear the music, the yelling, and the screaming. Nothing had changed except that her attacker was apparently dead. Dead and now on fire, already smelling like burnt hair and roasting meat. But he wasn’t the meat she was interested in. She stood and snatched the sausage from atop the bureau and tore into its open end with her teeth while still watching his body for signs of movement. She washed down half-chewed chunks of the sausage with gulps of water from his plastic bottle; it was flavored with some kind of citrus. Something like Gatorade—sheer heaven. Within minutes, she had consumed almost a foot of the sausage. She belched with great pleasure, her stomach already rumbling agreeably.

  It took no deliberative planning, there was no moment of eureka, she simply saw his uniform pieces on the floor and went straight into action. As long as the “party” continued downstairs, she hoped she might have time. On went her undershirt and sweater and vest, then his pants, his boots, his uniform blouse and insulated outer jacket. His pants were baggy on her, but they fit tolerably well with the belt cinched tight, and the strings at the bottoms of the legs tied. It took a minute to figure out how to adjust the wide pistol belt that went on over his jacket, around her waist.

  The holster was made of black plastic. A special button had to be pushed to release the gun. The pistol was a big one, a Springfield XD .45, according to the inscription on the slide, but her fingers were long enough to get a good grip around it. One thing she knew was guns: Uncle Henry had shown her how to operate all of the most common models. There wasn’t enough ammunition to waste on much practice, she’d fired only a few real bullets, but she was confident that she’d be a good shot when the time came. She knew how to line up the sights, she’d dry-fired her uncle’s pistols without ammunition hundreds of times.

  This Springfield XD pistol was similar to her uncle’s Glock. That meant there was no manual safety catch—you just pulled the trigger to fire it. The XD’s hinged safety was right on the trigger, like on a Glock. She mentally thanked her uncle for teaching her about guns, something her own father, a non-shooter, had never done. This lapse had cost their family dearly when Memphis had been transformed into hell on earth by the earthquakes. The silver barrel extended a half inch beyond the front of the slide, and it was threaded like a bolt or screw on the outside. A small light was attached under the barrel, in front of the trigger guard. From the grip’s length and thickness, she estimated that it carried at least ten bullets in its magazine. Two extra magazines fit into a black plastic pouch on the opposite side of the web belt. There was no time to examine the gun further, so she holstered it.

  There were twenty or thirty armed soldiers downstairs, along with a dozen local girls she didn’t even know. She pushed mad thoughts of a rescue from her mind. What was impossible was not worth wasting time thinking about. Jenny was a survivor first and foremost: it was why she was still alive a year after the quakes, when so many others—including her parents—were dead. She knew that there was a time to fight and a time to run. Anybody could die for a pointless, futile gesture. Thousands had. Maybe millions. Not Jenny McClure.

  She went to the window and rolled the shade halfway up. After she figured out how to unlock the old-fashioned clasp, the bottom section of the wood-framed window slid up and open. Cold air blasted in, along with snow. The snow was really coming down now! She looked outside. It was too dark to see much except that the world was now blanketed in white, but she could make out a small angled roof just a few feet below the windowsill. She put a leg over and then had a thought, looking back into the room. She climbed back inside, grabbed the would-be rapist’s pack, and put the rest of the sausage and the water bottle into the side compartment and snapped it shut.

  It was heavy but manageable. She’d carried heavier. It weighed maybe twenty-five or thirty pounds. She heaved it over the windowsill and then let it go. It dropped onto the lower roof, slid for a second, and disappeared from sight. One last look: on the floor by the bed, the dead traitor’s fur cap caught her eye. She scooped it up and put it on her head, looked at herself in the mirror above a low dresser, and pulled the fur earflaps down on the sides and back. The inside of the hat was as soft as mink. It would protect her head almost like a helmet when she landed.

  She paused on her way to the window to look again at the traitor’s body, its upper half now sizzling and burning in the fireplace. A sudden idea overtook her. She looked around the room, yanked comforters and sheets from the bed, and shoved them partway into the blazing fireplace. Next, she slid the low bookshelf sideways away from the wall and tipped it over across the traitor’s back. The way the drunken soldiers were carrying on downstairs, the sound would never be noticed. The flames were already dancing along the bed sheets into the
jumble of open pages beneath the overturned wooden shelf. Finally, she climbed over the windowsill and lowered herself downward until her boots touched the angled roof, its wet slate covered with a thin layer of snow. She let go, slid on her fanny down to the edge, and was launched into space.

  10

  Phil Carson was on another sailboat, but it was not a catamaran this time, and not on the ocean, or even on water. The boat was somehow mounted on wheels, and he was trying to negotiate a mountain road. The vessel’s mast was as tall as the surrounding trees, and he worried about how he would navigate the boat through overhanging branches and under electrical power lines that he could see ahead. He was steering the boat from behind the wheel, high up in the cockpit; somehow, the boat’s means of locomotion was not important. Gravity, he vaguely understood. It did not seem at all strange to him that he was driving a big sailboat down a mountain road. Then the boat began swaying beneath him. The dirt shoulder at the edge of a turn began crumbling away, the boat slid toward the edge…

  He was awakened by harsh words and cold steel against his cheek. His eyes opened to see pistol and rifle barrels inches away from his face. There were two guns, and behind them, two men. One man held a large black pistol with a suppressor fixed to its end. The other had an M-16 carbine across his lap, its barrel casually angled to aim at his chest. The men were dressed in dark rain gear, their faces hidden behind black balaclava masks. Both were sitting on kitchen chairs, their backs to the iron stove. Zack was nowhere to be seen. The man holding the pistol said, “Sorry to wake you up. We’re on a tight schedule, and we need to talk.” He had a Southern accent, but not overly strong.