by Harper Steen
Directly across from their actual target, the bunker, was a two-story, gray building. There was no movement there, and everything was dark within. The window panes had been shattered and tattered curtains fluttered in the breeze. The sturdy iron door was wide open, held only by a hinge on top. There were no guards to be seen. It appeared that all personnel were in the underground bunker, where the stolen missiles were being kept and could only be accessed by a narrow door on the side of it.
“Which of us gets to go knock?” Liz tipped her head in the direction of the bunker door and grinned so broadly, her teeth shone white in the darkness.
“Last time, I did it. It’s your turn. And we’re not doing rock, paper, scissors this time. You’re a shameless cheat and you don’t even have the decency to be embarrassed about it!”
“Party pooper!” Liz crept on her stomach over the ground all the way to the fence, carrying the compact HK MP7 in her hands. She used her survival knife to cut through the fence’s thin wire mesh at an inconspicuous spot hidden by the broad dark shadows of a dense leafy bush. Liz slipped through the hole she’d made and crouched on the ground while she waited for Jennifer.
Once Jennifer had reached her, Liz took the lead again. Sticking to the shadows of the trees and bushes, they crept toward the bunker’s entrance. They were a few yards from the door and Liz was just about to creep forward between two trees when she suddenly felt an uneasiness in the pit of her stomach that made her stop. She tilted her head slightly and looked directly into the tiny red glow of a motion sensor fastened at knee-height to the trunk of a tree. She had nearly tripped the sensor. Luckily it appeared that it didn’t register circular movements—only linear ones. Liz looked around and found the sensor’s receiver on another tree trunk. As long as nothing stumbled between the two devices, no alarm would be triggered.
“What kind of specialists wouldn’t know that this shit was lying around?” she said to Gray and Chris scornfully.
“Either the signal was very weak or it was covered up by something else and the satellite didn’t pick it up. Make sure you don’t trigger it!”
“You think?” she considered mumbling. She squatted down, set her submachine on the ground and slipped the strap of her backpack from her shoulder. She rummaged around inside it and pulled out a small, wooden box. Liz looked around for possible adversaries and shouldered her backpack again. Then she gave Jennifer, who had just moved up behind her, a signal to follow. Cautiously they climbed over the motion sensor’s invisible light beam and immediately took cover again so as not to be detectable by the cameras. Taking care to stay out of the cameras’ monitoring range, Jennifer ran to the bunker’s entrance and positioned herself near the door. Even if someone were to come out now, they wouldn’t immediately notice her and she’d have the advantage of surprise.
***
Liz turned a small crank which moved a mechanism inside the box she held. Gently she placed the box in front of the light barrier and ran to join her colleague. Each pulled out the shoulder stock of her HK MP7 and waited—weapon at the ready—for the door to open as the wind carried the soft, happy melody of a children’s song toward them.
“Can you tell me what they just did? Are they creating a diversion with that?” Chris whispered. He looked at his friend. Gray shook his head and answered just as softly, without taking his eyes from the monitor. “Probably. That’s not part of their standard equipment. It looks like a toy.”
***
The soft melody faded away just as the head of a clown shot out of the box, right into the light barrier. The door of the bunker was thrown open moments later and two armed men appeared. They peered in the direction of where the alarm had been triggered. There they discovered the colorfully patterned box with the playful clown’s head teetering back and forth, as if laughing maliciously. They looked at one another, perplexed.
“If you want, you can hold it.”
The men spun around at the sound of Liz’s taunt. Before they could even think about raising their weapons, they dropped, unconscious, to the ground, struck by quick, targeted blows.
Liz and Jennifer turned to the door, their submachine guns raised and pressed tightly against their shoulders. Just as they were about to go down the stairs, two more adversaries emerged from the bunker in front of them, each armed with a hand grenade launcher. It appeared that they were counting on finding an entire battalion outside the door.
Liz and Jennifer jumped to the side looking for cover as the grenades whizzed past them. When the projectiles flew into the forest and exploded, the two women exchanged resigned expressions. Then Liz looked accusingly into Jennifer’s camera. “Didn’t you say that these guys were equipped with machine guns at the most? That was no machine gun. They’re shooting at us with RPG-7s! Russian anti-tank weapons!”
“Those had to have been stashed in their hideout a long time ago. For as long as we’ve been watching by satellite, we’ve never seen any weapons with that kind of clout. We’ll immediately request a larger team. Who knows what else they have up their sleeves. It’s time to pull back. The mission is dead. You’re not equipped for it. You wouldn’t have any chance!” Gray said.
“Forget it!” said Liz. “They know the score now! We have to see it through, or they’ll immediately move the missiles out of our reach—maybe even out of the States. We’re already here now, so we’re going to have to deal with this!”
“I think so too.” Jennifer unfastened a grenade from her gear, pulled out the security pin and threw it into the still open door of the bunker. She and Liz ducked for cover again as splinters and rocks flew passed them.
“I said pull back!” Gray swore into the headset microphone as he followed the action on his monitor. “Immediately! That’s an order!”
“By the way, boys, you might want to read our files a little closer next time. Then you’ll be better prepared for our issues with authority. That must be noted in there somewhere. Our boss should have mentioned that.”
“Is that what you call it?” Jennifer threw Liz a curious glance. “’Issues with authority’?”
“Just another way of saying we’re not team players. Why do you think they stuck you and me together of all people? Birds of a feather.” Liz gave a soft laugh and threw a second grenade into the bunker. Again, fragments flew by their ears.
“Damn it, Agents Gibson and Langer! You’ve been given an order!” Gray moaned and glanced in Chris’s direction, as if he could somehow do something about it. Chris shrugged his shoulders, raised his eyebrows and made a helpless face.
“Lt. Colonel Blackwood has given us an order,” Jennifer pointed out the obvious in a bored tone.
“Really? Someone should have made it clear to him that we’re not very good about following orders when we’re out in the open.” She snickered. “That must be in our files too.”
“One last time! Your order is: immediate retreat.” Chris repeated the order that Gray had already given repeatedly, forcing his voice to stay calm.
“One last time,” said Liz. “Forget it!”
Cautiously she and Jennifer approached the entry again, peered inside and looked down the stairs. Immediately, more men who were armed to the teeth emerged in the smoke-filled corridor before them.
This can’t be happening. Liz swore to herself. The grenades should have taken care of most of their adversaries.
“These guys are tough. At this rate, we’ll run out of ammunition before we run out of them.” Jennifer’s teeth were clenched and her expression pinched. Liz knew that she was right.
“What do you think of Plan S?” She gave Jennifer an encouraging look. Jennifer rolled her eyes first and made a not very enthusiastic face, but nodded in agreement.
“Retreat already, damn it! You don’t have a chance! And what is Plan S anyway?” Gray demanded, although afraid to find out the answer. Slowly he felt himself being overcome with despair. By completely ignoring his and Chris’s orders, they were in all likelihood signing their own deat
h warrants. These two were even worse than the greenhorns he and Chris had worked with the last time. He’d never lost a man before!
“I’ll explain it to you later.”
“If you don’t turn back, there won’t be a later. Get out of there now!”
When Liz and Jennifer started to move backwards slowly, he felt a glimpse of hope. Maybe they would get out of there alive after all. Again and again, Liz and Jennifer shot bursts of gunfire in the direction of the bunker—he assumed, to prevent their attackers from pursuing them.
“If we put up less of a fight, it will look suspicious,” said Jennifer.
“Maybe they’re just being cautious because they want to make sure we’re not luring them into a trap.” Liz shrugged and threw an irritated look at her partner.
Gray and Chris grew pale as they listened to the women’s banter. They watched the monitor in stunned amazement as the first men came through the bunker door.
“Hurry up! Retreat!” Gray ordered again, but his stern words were ignored.
Once ten armed adversaries were standing in front of them, Liz gave Jennifer a brief sign. Simultaneously, they threw down their weapons, dropped to their knees and laced their fingers behind their heads. They stayed in this position and with emotionless faces watched the men cautiously approach.
“Get ready for a headache!” mumbled Liz, keeping her eye on the men.
“You’re paying for the aspirin.”
“No problem. I’ll give you a whole pharmacy.”
“Deal!” Jennifer said, and then they fell silent.
The men surrounded them, pushed them violently to the ground and held them there by force. Their backpacks were ripped off them and their hands were tied behind their backs. Each of the apparently defenseless women was dragged by two men to the door of their hideout, while the remaining six kept an eye out for more intruders. When they didn’t discover anyone else, they followed their comrades inside.
With wide eyes, Gray watched Liz’s and Jennifer’s capture on the monitor.
“That’s one way of getting inside,” said Chris.
Gray looked at him in surprise.
“That was Plan S,” Chris observed.
“And what does ‘S’ stand for? I didn’t think you had any idea.”
“Until now, I didn’t. But now I get it: ‘S’ for surrender.”
“Oh shit!” Gray said.
Chapter 4
Liz and Jennifer were led into a small, musty-smelling room and seated across from one another on chairs positioned just a few feet apart. A beefy guy with greasy brown hair and a scarred face came in and walked right up to Liz, who was closest to him. He bent over her in a threatening manner, drawing so close that she got a whiff of his foul-smelling breath. Nauseated by the stench, she made a face and fought back the powerful urge to gag.
“Who are you? Who sent you?”
Not only did he have an unpleasant appearance and the bothersome odor, Liz observed, but spit also sprayed from his mouth when he spoke. She answered in a bored tone of voice. “Local police. The utility company sent us. You haven’t made your last three payments.”
“Don’t jerk me around!” he roared. Then he struck her face with the flat of his hand so hard her head flew to the side.
“I would never do that,” she assured him in a genial tone, shaking the dark-smudged hair out of her face and giving him a pleasant smile. She ran the tip of her tongue over her split lower lip and tasted her own blood.
He reached out his hand, which seemed more like an enormous paw, and pulled Liz out of the chair by her collar, lifting her high enough so she could look directly into his eyes. “When I’m finished with the two of you, you’ll sing like two sweet little birds,” he threatened.
Liz began to laugh loudly and stole a glance over her shoulder at Jennifer, who was trying to look indifferent. “I have to warn you, buddy. I can’t carry a frigging tune. I’m absolutely tone-deaf. That’s why they threw me out of the church choir years ago.”
“Don’t talk shit!” Jennifer sounded offended. “As if you were ever in a church choir! I don’t like your constant exaggerating at all.”
As a powerful blow suddenly hit her stomach, Liz folded forwards. As she fell to her knees, her attacker kicked her hard in the ribs. With a groan she fell to her side and lay on the cold, hard concrete floor. Trying not to aggravate the pain in her upper body, Liz consciously worked to keep her breathing even. From where she lay on the ground she watched as the man asked Jennifer the same questions he’d given Liz and got the exact same answers, as if from a recording. Jennifer got the exact same treatment that Liz had gotten, too.
***
Chris looked at Gray. “Oh shit! Now what do we do?”
“Wait!” he growled, barely coherent. Although his expression didn’t betray any emotion, Gray felt stretched to the breaking point.
“We have to do something or he’ll kill them!”
“He won’t do that. Not until he gets some answers from them. And given their behavior, I doubt they’ll give him any. They didn’t get their high security clearance for nothing. Anyway, it doesn’t seem like we’re dealing with professionals. They haven’t found the cameras yet; they haven’t even looked for them.”
“From your lips to God’s ear,” Chris whispered. He stared, transfixed, at the monitor. The two watched in silence as the men tried to beat information out of the women, hitting them and kicking them until they lay bloody and unconscious on the concrete floor.
***
The door to the interrogation room opened with a soft creak and two men hauled a large round container into the room. They were panting from carrying the heavy tub. With each step they took, water sloshed over the rim and splattered on the concrete floor.
Liz slowly came to consciousness and was immediately hoisted from the floor and dragged to the container. Someone pushed her head under the water. She floundered ineffectively, trying to break free. Eventually they pulled her up again. Liz snorted water from her nose and mouth.
“Hey! Don’t you have any warm water here? That stuff’s freezing cold!” She shook like a wet dog. Again her head was plunged under the surface of the water and held there. Her captors repeated the process several times, but not a single word about her employer passed through her lips.
When they realized that they wouldn’t learn anything from her, the men knocked Liz to the ground and turned to Jennifer, who was just now slowly coming around. But the man who appeared to be the leader held the others back with a hand movement.
“If it didn’t work on that one, it won’t make the other one talk either.” He bent over the soaking wet Liz lying on the ground and grinned maliciously. “I have other ways of making you talk.” He grabbed her collar, pulled her up and flung her toward the chair she’d been seated on earlier. It was only with difficulty that Liz managed to keep her balance so that she and the chair didn’t fall over backward.
Her tormenter pulled a knife out of his pocket, unfolded it leisurely and caressed the finely sharpened blade with one finger before he pressed the cold metal against her neck.
“No one is so fearless that they will accept death. It’s time for you to tell what I want to know, you bitch!”
“You’re really not going to like what I have to tell you,” Liz mumbled, feigning regret. Her slightly dazed glance betrayed the fact that she was in pain.
“Out with it!”
“In my pants pocket there’s a pack of TicTacs. Take one. Your breath stinks like you gargled with manure.”
Furiously, he struck her in the face again. Then he pulled back her sleeve, raised the knife and sliced her upper arm with a ferocious movement.
The breath hissed from Liz’s mouth. “Son of a bitch!” she muttered through clenched teeth. “Now I can’t wear short sleeves anymore.”
Again he raised the knife menacingly in front of her face, the blade now smeared with her own blood. “Do you want me to let you slowly bleed to death?”
&
nbsp; “You do that and you won’t get what you want,” she said, unmoved.
He turned around and kicked her savagely in the back and then left the room. A short time later, he came back holding a small package. As he stood in front of her, he let the white substance trickle into his open palm while he grinned maliciously. Then he bent over, pressed the salt into the cut and rubbed it in roughly. Liz winced and moaned, then closed her eyes and ground her teeth together so as not to cry out in pain.
“What’s the matter? Is something bothering you?” He grabbed her hair, pulled her head backward and got so close to her face that she again had to draw in his foul breath. Not even the intense pain seemed to dull her sense of smell.
“Yeah. The way you smell,” she whispered before losing consciousness. Apparently disappointed by his failure, the man let her go, causing her head to drop to her chest. He left the room again and came back with a small brown leather bag. He set it on the table and started pulling out the contents. “Wake her up!” he ordered the two men who were helping him. “And bandage her arm. I don’t want her to die just yet.”
A bucket of water was thrown in Liz’s face. Coming back to consciousness, she shook her head and, dazed, watched as they put Jennifer in the second chair. Rough hands patched up her arm to stop the bleeding and her huge interrogator approached again holding a syringe filled with a pale white liquid.
“This stuff works quickly. In a couple of minutes you’ll tell me everything, starting with your birth.”
“I hope you’ll be recording this, because I’ve got a lot I can tell you.” She gave a soft laugh that hurt her ribs. Without warning, the man stabbed the needle into her arm so violently she thought it would hit bone and break. A moment later it was Jennifer’s turn.
Their tormentor stood in the middle of the room and folded his arms across his chest expectantly. His gaze flickered back and forth between his prisoners as he watched for the first sign that the drug was taking effect. It didn’t take long.
