Devil's Den

by Jeff Altabef

  “He must have forgotten. You know Brad. He can be a bit of a flake.”

  The guard snorts, lifts a phone, and dials a number.

  Brad’s phone rings in my ear.

  Kate says, “Remember, just read the note, Sam.”

  Brad answers the phone. “Can you let my friend Steve in? I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about him before. I must have forgotten.”

  The guard calls out to me, “Look at the camera.”

  I shrug and smile.

  “Yep, that’s him,” says Brad. “Thanks.”

  The guard opens the door and gives me the once over. “Apartment 408. Take the elevator.”

  “Do you have stairs?”

  He points toward the staircase. “Suit yourself.”

  Kate tells Brad to sit in a chair as I bound up the stairs two at a time. When I reach the fourth floor, a stitch stings my side. I should be in better shape. I enter the hall and speed walk to the apartment.

  I knock, and when the door opens, I realize something is horribly wrong.

  “You’ve really fucked up this time, Trainee,” Caesar gleefully tells me.

  I’d argue with him, but he’s right.

  Brad is duct-taped to a chair like we planned, but Kate didn’t tape his hands to the arms. The worm managed to hit a silent alarm under a table. I should’ve warned Kate about silent alarms. I’m used to working with pros who would’ve known. Obviously, Kate didn’t and that’s on me. It’s my screw-up that I have to fix somehow.

  I drop the backpack on the floor. “Brad, that wasn’t a smart thing to do. Hitting the alarm? How long do they claim is their response time?”

  He smiles a slick grin as if he’s thwarted us somehow. He’s thirty pounds heavier than his profile picture on Eros, and an awful pencil-thin mustache slithered across his lip. His long, bloated face comes to a point at his chin that makes him look like a fat rat. He’s wearing a high-collar black shirt and tan slacks. The shirt stretches tightly against his stomach, as if it’ll give up any moment.

  “Two minutes,” he says. “You better leave now.”

  He’s lying, of course, but they’ll be here soon. I turn to Kate. “We have five minutes, maybe a little more before the Klendall response team shows up.”

  “And I thought the date was going so well, Brad,” says Kate, but real worry lurks underneath the snarky tone in her voice. She’s not concerned so much about herself, but about Megan. If we don’t get out of here and learn something important, we won’t save her daughter.

  “Hey, how do you know my real name?” A touch of indignity floats in Brad’s voice.

  I remove my knife from my jacket. His eyes lock onto the blade like a laser. “We know a lot about you, Brad. We want some information about your work as a talent scout.”

  He shakes a bit. “I’m just a teacher. I made that up for the profile. I wanted to impress women. That’s all.”

  I slowly twist the blade a few inches from his face. It still has a streak of Mr. Frosty’s blood on it. “We don’t have time for the bullshit, Brad. If you hadn’t pulled the alarm, we’d have all night, but you did. And that’s on you. So now we’re going to have to speed things up a bit. We know you’ve sold students at the high school to someone. We want to know who and where the kids go.”

  Brad visibly shakes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Wrong answer. I thought we got this out of the way already. Don’t be so slow. We don’t have time for the back and forth, you sniveling twat.”

  I duct tape his wrists to the arms of the chair. When I finish, I press the point of the blade against the joint where his pinkie connects to his right hand and carve it off. It takes about five seconds. I would have had a more difficult time carving a turkey leg. Normally, I’d take my time, add more flair to the situation, but time is of the essence.

  He yelps.

  I shrug. “That’s your fault. It’s on you, Brad. Start talking or more body parts are coming off and it’s going to hurt a lot more. Who’s paying you?”

  All resistance breaks down. Somewhere in Brad’s peanut-sized brain, he knows his life is in jeopardy, so his survival instinct kicks in. I’ve seen it dozens of times, but it won’t help him in the end.

  “I-I don’t know any names.”

  “What do you know, Brad?”

  “After my divorce became final, two guys met me in a bar near where I lived. They said they worked at a farm. That they needed young people to work for them.” Brad’s eyes light up as if he just now realizes how shitty this sounds. “It’s not bad. Really. They said the young people become enlightened and end up with rich families around the world. They have better lives that way. That’s what they said. I believed them.”

  Kate slaps him across the face.

  “That’s what they said.” She mimics his voice and then continues in her own. “You’ve sold four girls to these people like they were cattle. You miserable pile of donkey shit.”

  “Three girls and one guy, but they’ve promised me that they’re all doing well. That they’re better off this way.”

  Five students have gone missing from the school. One must have disappeared for some other reason besides Brad, which sounds about right. He only received four payments.

  “Better off?” snaps Kate. “You self-absorbed bloated bag of pus.” She slaps him again.

  Normally, I’d let Kate blow off some steam, but we’re in a crunch for time, so I move between Kate and Brad.

  A handprint appears on his cheek. He tries to defend himself. “What chance did they have coming from District 12? This way, they might hook up with someone rich. They’re probably thanking me right now.”

  “Stop making believe you care about these kids, Brad. It’s really pissing me off. Give us a name.”

  “I don’t have one.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t think you’re hearing me.” I grab his chin in my left hand, so he can’t wiggle, and saw through his right ear, taking it clean off. Good thing the blade is sharp. The gap left behind gushes blood.

  “Oh, shoot,” I say. “That’s probably not going to help.”

  He bucks at the tape, but it holds. His yelp lasts longer this time than with the pinkie, like one long screech.

  “You see what happens when you piss me off. I make mistakes and you lose body parts.” I hold his ear in front of his face. “That’s on you again, Brad. You’re making bad decisions, and we don’t have time for them. Where do they take the kids?”

  “I don’t know...a farm. They said they go to The Farm. That’s exactly what they call it.”

  “How do they contact you? And the answer had better not be you don’t know, or you’re going to look like a Picasso painting.”

  He’s yelling now. “There’s a chat room on swapping used crap! Their username is The Farm. They ask for a certain bike. It’s all code. Female version, age, good for off-roading. I have a file on my tablet with all the info. My username is Sam Steele, like for the profile.”

  Blood oozes down the right side of his face, runs down his neck, and onto his collar.

  Kate grabs a computer from a table in the living room. “Is this your tablet?”

  He nods. “You don’t understand. My wife took everything in the divorce. And she makes more money than I do. They pay shit at the school. I would have had to move into the ghetto. I wouldn’t do well in the ghetto.”

  “Love sucks,” I say, but I understand. He was trying to survive and to do it, he sold out the kids—a totally despicable thing to do, but he’s right, he wouldn’t have made it long in the ghetto. I almost feel sorry for him. Almost, but this is Kate’s daughter we’re talking about.

  Kate’s phone rings, and she answers it. She looks up at me with worry in her eyes. “Tina says two black SUVs have arrived. Eight armed guys have piled out and gone into the building.”

  I had hoped we had another couple of minutes more. “How do we get onto your tablet, Brad? What’s the password?”

  “
No password. It uses a retinal scan.”

  I remove a nylon cord from the backpack and hand it to Kate. “Fasten this to something sturdy. We’re going out the window.”

  “Seriously? I know you’re afraid of elevators, but there’s got to be a better way.”

  “Sorry. With the response team here, we’ve got no other choice.”

  Brad bucks in the chair. “You’ll have to take me with you to use the tablet. Killing me won’t help you.”

  “Wrong again, Brad. This is just not your day. I don’t need you. I just need one of your eyes.”

  He squirms as I approach. “No, don’t take an eye. I’ll do anything. I need to see.”

  “That’s precious, Brad. I didn’t realize you were such an optimist. Do you really think I’m going to let you live? I just can’t do it. You’ll find a way to tell The Farm or whoever, and they’ll know we’re after them. No can do, Brad. You’re headed to hell. No chance at redemption for you. The Fates have just cut your string and you don’t know it yet.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Why does everyone keep saying that?” I slice the knife across Brad’s throat. Blood spurts for a few seconds with the last of his heartbeats, and his eyes lock on mine. I think deep down he’s happy. I’ve done him a favor. Eventually his crimes would have consumed him. He was already eating himself to death—every pound a cry for help. I’ve shortened the torture for him. Maybe he made good with God in that last moment. I can’t imagine it would be enough to redeem him, but Father Paul said it’s what’s in your soul that counts. Maybe his soul was redeemed at that last moment...or maybe he’s headed to hell and I’ll see him again. Next time, I won’t be in a rush to finish him off.

  “How are you making out with that cord?” I ask Kate.

  She finishes tying a knot around the base of a sturdy looking bar that’s bolted into the floor. It’ll probably hold.

  “Done,” she says. When she looks up, she’s not in shock or even upset at what I’ve done to Brad. She’s angry, which is the best I could’ve hoped for.

  I remove a small palm-sized explosive out of the backpack, set the timer to thirty seconds, and slide it to the door. It’ll cause havoc with the response team and buy us time to escape.

  “Better not look at this part,” I tell Kate and go back to work with my knife. “This will get gruesome.”

  This is the third time I’ve taken someone’s eye. Once, the person was alive when I carved it out. We needed information from him. We had intel that a new terrorist group was going to attack one of our bases. He wouldn’t willingly give up the information. My orders were clear. Use any means to get him to talk, and he talked in the end. The terrorists were only in the beginning stages of planning the attack, but they had an inside man. We got him before he could run.

  Was it worth it? Would I do it again? Could I have found another way?

  I’m wasting time we don’t have, so I shake my head and clear it. I make quick work of removing Brad’s eye, slip it into a small plastic container and slide that into my pocket. We still need to escape through the window, but this one doesn’t open—probably an air quality thing. I fire three shots from the Smith and Wesson into the window facing the street. Glass explodes everywhere.

  Fifteen seconds have elapsed since I set the explosive. I grab the cord at roughly forty feet of length and tie it around my left hand. I wrap my right arm around Kate’s waist.

  Ten seconds left.

  The security guards have reached Brad’s door. They don’t really care about Brad’s safety, but if we escape alive, it’ll be bad for business. They sell these buildings as ultra-high security. The brass won’t want a news story about a successful robbery or murder.

  They bang on the door. “Open up and give yourselves up!”

  “The door is wired to blow! You’ve got ten seconds!” They’re only doing their job. They deserve some warning. What they do with it is on them.

  “We run for it,” I tell Kate.

  “Shit,” she says.

  I pull her toward the windows at a sprint. When we reach them, I leap with my shoulder toward the glass and break what’s left of it. It sounds like an explosion.

  We’re free falling.

  Kate’s wrapped both her arms around me. The asphalt rushes up to meet us at an alarming speed.

  “I hope you didn’t fuck up the measurements or you’re road kill,” says Caesar.

  The slack in the cord disappears and we jerk to a stop. Our combined weight wrenches my hand and shoulder. It feels as if someone’s ripped my arm out of its socket. Luckily, Kate doesn’t weigh that much, and I keep my grip.

  We’re hanging six feet from the ground. Not bad.

  The explosive detonates, and a fireball erupts from Brad’s window. The cord comes free and we fall the rest of the way.

  I help Kate up and we run for the sedan. Tina’s got the car running. I jump in front and Kate dives into the back.

  One member of the response team bursts from the lobby and opens fire.

  Tina pulls away from the curb and glares at me. “Good work, genius. I thought you did shit like this for a living.”

  “Sometimes you have to improvise.”

  “Is that blood yours?” she asks.

  “No.”

  “Too bad.”

  Tina parks the car on a quiet street. “What in holy hell happened? Do we know where to find Megan?”

  Kate starts to tell her the story. I don’t need to relive it, so I go outside, peel off my jacket, and wince at the pain. The sudden stop dislocated my shoulder. I reach behind my head, cross my hand to the opposite shoulder and shove it back into place. A groan slips through my lips, and tears brim my eyes, but the shove pops my shoulder back into the socket. It’s sore, but at least it works.

  I grab a new T-shirt from my backpack and change. There’s too much blood on the old one, and I don’t want Homeland asking questions at a checkpoint. Blood always spurs questions. It’s a natural response. One I’d like to avoid.

  Kate must have finished telling Tina the story because Kate and Tina leave the car and both lean against the vehicle next to me.

  “You really cut that guy’s ear off?” asks Tina.

  “He wouldn’t listen to me.”

  “Funny,” says Tina.

  “He had to die either way. We couldn’t take him with us as a hostage until we got Megan back. Too many variables, and if he escaped, our chances of getting Megan back would have dropped.”

  Kate asks, “Do you think that chat room will help us find this...Farm and get Megan back?”

  “It’s a clue. Depends how frequently they monitor it. We’ve also learned other clues. Every new bit of information helps. It’s hard to know what will pay off, but something will.”

  “Yes,” says Kate. “Megan’s been taken by some type of cult that calls themselves The Farm, and they promised Brad she’d have a better life. It’s not much to go on.”

  “At least we have a name,” says Tina. “That’s more than we had this morning.”

  I touch Kate’s arm. In desperate situations like this, a simple touch helps people stay grounded, reminds them they have help. “Let’s go back to your apartment and see what we can find out on that chat room. If we’re dealing with a cult, we probably have a few days before they move her. They’ll want to initiate her first.”

  “Initiate her?” Kate shudders. “I wonder what that means.”

  Tina grabs her hand. “Megan’s a strong kid. We both know how hard it is to get her to change her mind after she’s made it up. She’ll hold out just fine.”

  “You think?”

  “I do,” says Tina. “I only wish you’d have let Brad live.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “So, I could’ve killed that shithead myself.”

  No one from Homeland bothers to check our IDs as we drive back to Kate’s neighborhood. We’re going to lower, less secure districts, so they just wave us on, and we park the sedan back in the spot
where we took it. I leave a twenty on the front seat for the gas and the mess. That’s on us.

  At Kate’s apartment, I use Brad’s eyeball to access his tablet. This is the only crack we’ll get at it. The eyeball will deteriorate to the point it won’t fool the retina scan again.

  Tina takes control of the tablet. She’s always been into computers and works for a social media marketing firm. It’s good for her to feel useful, but I hover over her shoulder to make sure she doesn’t miss anything. We can’t afford mistakes.

  “Brad said he used a code with The Farm to know what type of young person they wanted,” I say. “He told us that he had a file on his tablet somewhere with the info on it. Look for that first.”

  Tina types on the screen and pulls up some documents. One is marked “Talent Scout,” so she clicks that one. Pay dirt. The Farm asks for a used bicycle and adds a bunch of other info that spells out the attributes they’re looking for in the young adult they want Brad to identify. The age of the bike refers to the age of the target. A one-year-old bike translates into a kid who’s fourteen. Two- and three-year-old bikes mean fifteen and sixteen-year olds. The colors refer to ethnicity. Even some of the features mean different skills. A twenty-speed bike means someone who’s athletic. Sixteen-speeds indicate someone with a science aptitude, while twelve-speeds mean a person who is adventurous by nature. Other items get very specific like eye color, height, and nationality.

  It’s enough to make my head hurt. These Farm people treat kids like widgets they can buy with different options.

  “Now that we have the code, we need to find the chat site,” says Tina. “Which one did Brad say he used?”

  Kate bites her lower lip. “He didn’t say exactly. He said it was a site that sells junk.”

  “That could be hundreds of places,” says Tina. “Good thing you have me. Let’s look at Brad’s search history.” She presses a few keys and whistles. “Brad’s been a naughty boy. He certainly liked porn sites.”

  “We can safely exclude them,” I say. “Look at something a week old. The abduction team would have needed at least a week to pick the best spot to grab Megan.”