Enemies Foreign And Domestic

by Matthew Bracken

  After locking the van, she twisted up her ponytail and tugged on her black full-face shield helmet and straddled the bike. She kick-started it to life and waited, idling in neutral while she watched the front door of the porno shop, running the throttle up and down, the motor popping. Her Enduro was “street legal” in the lights department, but it had no up-to-date license plate sticker or current registration: she would just have to take her chances with Johnny Law. The old dirt bike did have one advantage, it had no daytime running light head lamp; this would help to keep her from being readily seen in the ape man’s rear view mirror. Anyway, she figured that an undercover jackbooted thug with a new porno magazine collection wouldn’t be spending much time looking in his mirrors.

  Finally the red-haired ape came out of the triple-X book store with a white shopping bag, scanning all around the shopping center, but Ranya and her bike were well concealed in the shade of the maple tree half behind her van. His thick hair hung over his collar; he had a Fu-Manchu type moustache which ran down both sides of his mouth to his chin. Either the feds were getting very lax in their grooming standards, or this was no typical group of feds which had kidnapped Brad…or it was no group of feds at all.

  The man didn’t get back in the truck. Instead, he went next door into the ABC store, and came back out two minutes later with a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag. Ranya thought: liquor and porno, you’re all set for a big night, aren’t you? The red-haired goon climbed back into Brad’s truck and backed out of his space, crossed the lot, and turned south on Independence again. Ranya gave him a two block head start, pulled onto Independence, and followed him across the wide Virginia Beach Boulevard intersection, crossing it as the amber light turned red, getting used to the light dirt bike’s controls and unique power curve again. She knew that the major intersections (and this was one of the biggest) in Virginia Beach all had red light cameras, but with her helmet on she felt safe enough. At any rate, red light pictures would not be examined until days later, she hoped.

  She felt more confident now. If he hadn’t spotted her in the full-sized van, he was much less likely to notice her on the bike. They both passed under the Virginia Beach Expressway and continued on as the road turned to the southeast and passed Mount Trashmore, the local park built over a landfill, which was the only prominent topographical feature in Virginia Beach. She had a full tank of gas, but knew that Brad’s truck could far outlast her bike if the driver just kept going. What would she do if she was on the verge of going dry and the truck was still going? Try for a fast fill up, and then try to catch up? She could only hope that the pursuit wouldn’t last that long.

  Independence became Holland Road, the housing developments gradually became spaced further apart, and the red pickup continued southeast at just above the speed limit. Ranya had no trouble keeping other vehicles between herself and her target for long stretches. Over the miles the suburbs faded away to smaller developments, private estates, horse farms, junkyards and trailer parks. She rode through bright sunshine, and occasionally through shaded tunnels beneath spreading oak corridors, sometimes flashing between light and dark.

  After nine winding miles Holland Road ended in a T intersection at South River Road, and the truck made an easy rolling right turn through the red light. The last scattered houses gave way to fields of tall corn, soybeans, cotton, peanuts and tobacco. The table-flat landscape was broken only by random wind-break tree lines, and a few scattered houses and old barns. South River Road gradually curved back around to the southwest, and then dived south toward the North Carolina border. On long straight stretches Ranya hung back until she could barely see the red speck which was Brad’s truck. Cars in between them to screen her from view became fewer and fewer.

  Her luck continued to hold. After curves where the truck could have disappeared off the road while out of her sight, it always reappeared in the distance on the straight-aways. Finally after nearly twenty non-stop miles she saw the pickup’s steady brake lights; it slowed and made a right turn just after a pair of boarded-up fruit stands. Tall silk-tasseled corn was a green wall along most of the right shoulder of South River Road here.

  She rode past the turnoff at 50 miles an hour, in case the driver had spotted her and was waiting behind a fruit shed for the motorcycle trailing behind him to either continue on, or turn and follow him. A quick look as she went past showed the truck already hundreds of yards down the new road heading west, so she braked and downshifted and turned around to continue the pursuit. The new road cut a narrow corridor through the dusty corn; sunlight lit the golden silk on top. If the driver had seen her, he could be luring her to a remote place for an ambush. It was a risk she had to take to find Brad, but she downshifted to third and continued on more cautiously.

  The closed-in path through the walls of corn ended abruptly and she emerged back onto a limitless flat plain of fields and marshes. The red truck was about a mile ahead, traveling perpendicular to her direction now, heading south after making a left turn. She could see for miles across the fields, her line of sight was obscured only by a few distant houses and tree lines. At this point she realized how impossible it would have been to follow in this terrain in her van, even an inattentive driver would have spotted it alone among the fields, following him turn for turn.

  The red truck made another turn and disappeared out of sight driving into a stand of hardwood trees. Ranya quickly accelerated to over 80 miles an hour, the little 250 was no match for her FZR in the top end speed department, but it had enough. Now she also had to be concerned about her engine noise, she knew its tinny popping would carry plainly across the fields to anyone who was being quiet and listening.

  She reached the tree line and braked to a stop while still in the shade, where she would be harder to see if the truck was not far away and the driver was looking in her direction. From her position under the trees she scanned ahead and spotted the truck stopped a half mile ahead, by what appeared to be a hedge or line of shrubbery. She swung her pack off, sat it on her fuel tank and pulled out her binoculars, which when folded together were no larger than a thick paperback book.

  Through the binos she could see that the hedge was an overgrown chain link fence, and the driver was opening a gate. Three strands of barbed wire ran across the top, rectangular plates were fixed to the fence evenly spaced about every 100 yards apart. Ranya had lived around Tidewater with its heavy military presence all her life; she knew that the signs would be a warning to the public to stay off of U.S. government property.

  So Brad was being held on some kind of remote military base that she’d never heard of. She pulled out her map of Tidewater and traced their route down Holland Road and South River Road toward the Carolina border, and then right on Bridgewood Road, which apparently was the road by the shuttered fruit stands that had cut through the cornfields. The next road they had taken, turning off of Bridgewood, was not marked on the map, but the map showed Bridgewood running near a two mile long swath of land shaded on her map in purple, like all of the other military installations in Tidewater. It was named the South River Naval Auxiliary Landing Field (Closed). Her map showed a mile and a half long air strip running north to south down the center of the abandoned base.

  Brad’s truck was driven inside the fence line, and then it paused again as the driver got out to swing the wide gate closed behind him. Then it continued west and was soon out of sight, lost among low scrubby trees. In the distance Ranya could see the flat black tops of several large structures over the treetops.

  So he was being held here on an old Navy air strip. All she had to go on was his truck ending up here, but for all she really knew, he might still be back at Boat America waiting for her! Was her admitted state of paranoia playing tricks on her mind, deceiving her, making her see conspiracies where there were none?

  Brad’s truck being driven to this place was no mere trick of the imagination. If his truck was here, then he was here, because that was all she had to rely on. He was here, he had to
be here, and she was going to get him out, one way or another. She just needed a plan.

  ****

  The van had spent a long time driving at what seemed like high speed, perhaps a half hour, perhaps an hour. Then it made a series of widely spaced turns and stops and starts. Brad had tried to find the least uncomfortable position on the floor of the van, partly on his side with his knees drawn up in front, but on some turns he was rolled over on his back and onto his tightly cuffed wrists, or he was rolled the other way until the chain attached between his cuffs and the floor stopped him.

  By their voices he guessed there were three or four men in the van, but he wasn’t sure. George had pretty much shut up and they drove mostly in silence, with just a few quiet phrases muttered now and then. He thought he might have heard some police or military radio talk, but with the sack pulled over his head and his face on the floor over the drive shaft, it was difficult to hear much at all except the motor and the hum of the tires on the road.

  The van came to another stop and this time the engine was turned off and the doors were opened. Hands rolled him onto his side and someone unlocked the chain holding him to the floor, then he was picked up from under his arms, dragged out, and put on his feet.

  “This way, one foot in front of the other,” said a new voice. Hands held him up by each arm, hands steered him. Light seeping through the material of his hood and the sudden heat told him that he was in sunlight, but after a dozen steps he was again plunged into inky darkness. Powerful hands turned him right and left, he guessed he was walking on smooth cement.

  He was brought to a final conclusion, a sudden halt, and he was pushed over hard by a grabbing shove to his head.

  “Bend over Fallon, lean over goddamn it!”

  Oh sweet Jesus, is this the end right now? Brad thought: all this, all this way, to end my life with a bullet in the brain? He wanted more time, he needed more time, this was too sudden, he wasn’t ready… Time slowed to a sluggish stream of microseconds, he stiffened and went board-rigid.

  “Pop him with the zapper again,” said a disembodied voice.

  Another bolt of lightning hit Brad on the side of the neck, striking him like a high voltage sledge hammer, causing him to lose muscle control. Many hands shoved and pushed him through a small opening or doorway, a doorway to nothing, not a room at all, but just a box. A narrow metal door then squeezed him from behind until it latched shut with a grinding clack.

  “Okay Fallon, don’t go anywhere, and we’ll be seeing you in while, okay? If you need anything, just ask, and we’ll tell you to go screw yourself.” Other men were laughing, and then something like an industrial machine’s electric motor was switched on, flooding him in an abrasive screaming noise.

  Brad had never known such a combination of fear and dread and pain. At some point of being man-handled into the box his hood had been taken off; he wasn’t sure when, he had no memory of it. He had not been forced to his knees and shot as he had feared he would be; instead he had been forced into a tiny vertical box. His head was jammed almost onto his left shoulder in one top corner, his legs and knees were bent forward and sideways together into the opposite corner to allow his six foot frame to fit inside. There wasn’t enough room to move his knees from one side to the other; he could only remain in the position in which he had been forced inside.

  With his hands still cuffed behind him, he tried to feel the door, and along the side he felt some vaguely familiar rods and grooves. It was taking a tremendous amount of energy to remain bent and crouched, so he tried to slide down and find a more comfortable resting position. Down as far as he could go, only a few inches actually, his knees became jammed hard against the corner opposite his back, and his ankles and feet were bent at such a severe angle that the pain became excruciating, so he forced himself back up the side walls against gravity and friction, holding himself up with his leg and back muscles to take the pressure off his knees and ankles.

  The thought of spending hours like this deepened Brad’s sense of foreboding and despair. He had never been claustrophobic, but this was testing his outermost mental and physical limits. His pulse was surging wildly, and he wondered if he would have a heart attack simply trying to stay in this position. He gradually slid down again, and again his knees and ankles burned with searing hot pain. What if they left him here for days? Days!

  He knew he couldn’t last that long, he wondered how long he could endure it, and if this was just a prelude to the questioning which he was sure was going to come. If this agony was only a warm up for whatever torture was yet to come, how could he avoid betraying Ranya? His position was so painful, painful on such a sustained high level which he had never experienced before, that he already knew he would say anything to end it, and this filled him with even more pain, understanding for the first time in his life his ultimate weakness, knowing that he would betray anyone just to end the pain.

  Again he pushed himself up so that his knees were not jammed against the corner, decreasing the pain in his feet and ankles, but increasing the pressure on his back and neck. How long would it take, he wondered, to breathe deep and fast and build up the CO2 in the box until he passed out? And would he die, or not? What if he only gave himself permanent brain damage? Might he end up retarded or even a vegetable if he couldn’t quite kill himself by building up CO2, but only passed out in the box without sufficient oxygen? Was the box air-tight enough to build CO2 up to dangerous levels at all? It was certainly getting hot inside the metal box, which was vibrating from the piercing electric motor noise. Or might he have a heart attack first, and end his suffering that way? At least then he couldn’t be made to betray Ranya…

  His leg and back muscles failed again, he couldn’t hold himself up, again he slid down until he was stopped by his knees being jammed together against the corner, and again his ankles were stabbed with shooting pains. Brad tried to guess if he had been locked in the box for ten minutes or an hour, but he couldn’t. Time meant nothing in this box. In this box, any amount of time was a complete eternity of pure pain, beyond the limits of any other frame of reference. What if he was left here for hours, or even days? What if he had been intentionally abandoned here, left to die like this? How could anybody stand an hour in this hell, much less days?

  At least if he was left to die, he wouldn’t have a chance to betray Ranya. He saw a flash of her face and it was gone, he tried to focus and picture her, to remember her, but her image was extinguished by the unrelenting waves of pain. He groaned and screamed and cried unheard as his feet and ankles and knees were bent and crushed by his own body weight against the metal corner of the hell box.

  How long could it go on like this? He tried to find something behind his back to support some of his weight with his shackled hands. He felt the inside of hinges or bolts and small sharp flat pieces, but there was nothing he could rest against, nothing to hold himself up. He tried to push up against a piece of metal in the corner near the door latch, and it took a bit of pressure off of his knees and ankles, but it bit sharply into his palm and pushed his face even harder into the opposite corner.

  His alternating cycles of pain, of pain up, pain down, pain in his legs and back and neck, or pain in his feet and ankles and knees, went on for longer eternities. He never completely lost consciousness, but in time his consciousness changed. The pain remained, burning white hot pain, but gradually it became apart, it separated from him and the door opened and he escaped the box and was flying just above the water, rushing down a stream to a river which ran into the bay, skimming across the whitecaps, pure vision, only seeing, until he was out over the Atlantic and free.

  36

  Standing over her Enduro, hidden in the shade of the tree line, Ranya scanned the distant fence and what she could see beyond it with her binoculars after Brad’s truck disappeared. The fact that there was no guard presence at the gate meant that there were probably not a large number of personnel on the base. If the gate itself was left unguarded, there was hopefully li
ttle chance of running into roving security patrols around the fence. Even so, this was an era when wireless video cameras were so cheap that the people who had taken Brad could easily have the gate and the access roads around it remotely monitored. She decided not to advance beyond the cover of the tree line, and instead she turned around and rode back out the way that she had come in.

  Back in the cover of the cornfields she pulled off the pavement onto a dirt path and studied her road map. A narrow finger of the South River cut across the base just below the long north-south runway. Brad’s truck had been driven onto the smaller section of the base south of this creek, so Ranya decided to begin her recon there, but coming in from the opposite side from the gate, from the west.

  She backtracked to South River Road and made a long clockwise loop around the bottom of the base on one lane blacktop county roads, dirt roads through soybean and peanut fields, then up the overgrown right-of-way beneath electrical transmission wires strung between rusty towers. She knew from years of riding that dirt bikes were a common sight and sound on these trails and back roads, so she never felt dangerously conspicuous.

  When the power lines diverged to the northwest, she cut back to the east on a dirt road running through more tall corn for a few hundred yards, until she came within sight of the government fence again. Ranya stopped when the cornfield abruptly ended; beyond it was one more field of picked cotton, then swampy waste land, and the base.

  If she rode on any further the noise of her bike might still have passed unnoticed, but she felt she would be too exposed to possible direct observation, so she decided to continue on by foot. She threaded her way deep into the corn rows until her bike was invisible from the outside, and cut the engine. She put her wallet and mini-purse inside of her helmet, wrapped it all in her denim jacket, and stashed it separately in the corn out of sight of the bike.