by Jack Murphy
Deckard didn't want the body guard drawing his pistol and going for lethal force which was why he had taken a restrained approach. Reaching out, his fingers tightened around the pencil laying on the desk even as Bashir thrashed about and knocked his ashtray and computer to the floor with the crash.
Pivoting on the balls of his feet, Deckard bent at the knees and prepared to receive the bodyguard's attack. The mercenary held the pencil in his right hand, the eraser at the end pressed into the palm of his hand, his middle and index finger resting on either side of it while the point stuck out. As the bodyguard reached out, Deckard deflected his hand and struck out with his right. The tip of the pencil was guided into the bodyguard's neck where it stuck in place. Deckard immediately moved his two fingers out of the way and pushed the pencil the rest of the way into his neck by palming it forward until he slapped skin.
Bashir had by now wiped his face down with his shirt and was fumbling for the remote on his desk, no doubt for the panic button. Deckard slapped it out of his hand before the bodyguard collapsed to the floor where he began convulsing. Grabbing the money launderer by his greasy hair, Deckard slammed him face first into the desk. His head bounced off the surface before he slid off to the side and fell to the ground.
“You,” Deckard pointed to the hostess and began speaking in Spanish. “Go in there,” he pointed to the coat closet. “Go inside, turn the light off, hide in the corner, and don't come out.”
The woman nodded his understanding.
“Now!”
She got to her feet on shaky legs. That didn't stop her from stepping over the still twitching body on the floor on her way to the closet.
Reaching inside the bodyguard's waistband, Deckard confiscated a Glock 19 pistol.
Bashir was moaning on the ground.
Pushing the point of one of his shoes under him, Deckard flipped Bashir over onto his back. Blood flowed freely from his broken nose.
“I'm not going to give you the opportunity to lie to me. You've got me interested alright, but not in the way you were hoping. Where do you keep the movies you made?”
“W-w-who are you?” he stammered.
Deckard reached down and twisted his nose eliciting a sharp scream. They were alone up in the penthouse aside from the one guard he had taken down already.
“Where do you keep the movies?”
“In the basement,” he groaned.
“How do I get there?”
“It's the sub-basement. That private elevator is the only way down.”
“You have the key?”
“In the desk drawer.”
“Let's go for a walk.”
Deckard dragged Bashir up to his feet and pushed him back to the desk. Inside he found the key and then pushed the pedophile towards the elevator. He held Bashir by the neck with the Glock 19 pressed into the small of his back.
Calling up the elevator, the door opened.
“I don't need to tell you what will happen if you try anything stupid. You can still make it out of this alive if you play your cards right,” Deckard told him a bold face lie.
As it was, it would be a miracle if either of them survived another hour.
Deckard grabbed the key and turned it into the slot. The elevator snapped shut and they began descending down into what he suspected was Bashir's private house of horrors. He played it off like it was all fun and games, but people like Bashir were hardcore psychopaths. They dropped below the lobby and the basement. The digital counter above the doors was blanked out when they reached the bottom.
“Move,” Deckard ordered as the doors opened. He pocketed the elevator key before following the cartel financier out.
They were underground where the air was moist and cool. The chambers had to be specially engineered well ahead of time as they were now below the waterline. The main hotels, bars, and clubs in Cancun were all situated on a narrow patch of land sandwiched between the ocean and an inter-coastal waterway. The entire commercial ribbon was essentially a long island with a highway, a beach, and a bunch of buildings crammed in between.
They came to a heavy metal door with a numerical punch code pad.
“You know what to do.”
Bashir entered the code and the door unlocked. Deckard pushed Bashir into the door. It swung open as the automatic lights kicked in and Bashir collapsed to the floor.
“What. The. Fuck.”
It was a film studio wired for video, sound, and special effects. A large bed had been set up in the center of the room. Digital video cameras were arrayed around the bed on tripods and professional Hollywood quality lighting was hung on rails from the ceiling. Children's stuffed animals and dolls were stacked in one corner of the room.
Against one of the walls were restraints bolted into the concrete. Other handcuffs, gags, and restraining devices were sized extra small for the young “actresses” in Bashir's movies.
“Come here,” Deckard grabbed Bashir by the throat and yanked him up.
The rapist struggled, his feet stumbling over each other as Deckard dragged him and slammed him into the wall. Wrapping one of the leather restraints in place around Bashir's neck, Deckard did up the buckle. He began fighting back so Deckard punched him in the gut, which would have doubled him over except that he was now choking on the leather collar. Next he used similar leather restraints to secure his hands. Bashir was now tied to the wall, as helpless as his victims had been.
“Tell me where the recordings are and I will let you go.”
“You can't do this to me!”
“I'm just here for the recordings. You are not the job, I have no interest in you.”
“It's all on discs. Over there,” Bashir motioned to a side room.
Deckard looked inside. It was packed with cameras, portable lighting equipment, boom microphones, and other production equipment. Inside he found rows and rows of jewel cases on a book shelf.
He ignored Bashir's howls of terror. Deckard wanted to leave the torture chamber as soon as possible. Looking over the jewel cases he saw that Bashir's obsessiveness bled over to cataloging. Deckard clearly wasn't the first of his guests that Bashir had tried to coax into his predilections. Most of the names on the discs were unknown to him but a few jumped out as belonging to Mexican politicians. Not all of the names were Mexican either. Maybe ten percent were American. As his eyes quickly swept over them, he recognized a few as sitting US congressmen.
Looking around he found a camera case with a sling attachment. Discarding the pull out padded inserts on the floor, he packed the bag full. There were so many discs that he began tossing the jewel cases as well to make room for the discs. Outside, Bashir was sobbing and whimpering to himself.
Slinging the camera bag over his shoulder, Deckard walked back out into the studio and looked at the pathetic worm that he had strung up to the wall as he had done to so many of his young victims.
“You have to let me go now,” Bashir pleaded. “I did what you wanted. You have to let me go!”
Tears streaked down his cheeks.
Deckard walked over and fished around into the money man's pockets until he found the Zippo lighter that he had seen him with earlier. Opening up the fuel cell, he dumped the lighter fuel on the bed in the center of the studio.
“What are you doing?” Bashir whined.
Deckard flicked the Zippo next to the lighter fluid.
“Hey, what are you doing man?”
Another flick and the sparks ignited the sheets, starting a fire.
“What are you doing, you said you would let me go!”
“I know.”
“So let me go. The job wasn't me, you said that yourself!”
The flames were spreading behind Deckard. Soon they would engulf the bed, the carpeting, the drywall, and everything else in the film studio.
Bashir's eyes were pure panic. He was used to causing pain and eliciting terror in others but of course he had no tolerance for pain himself. His pain was the only kind that he could feel. He w
as a maniac.
Deckard was more of a sociopath. He could never fit in with the rest of society, he could never conform to what society wanted in a person. But the similarities between him and Bashir ended there.
“You said you would let me go!” Bashir's eyes were wild with panic.
“I lied to you.”
The flames were growing hot at Deckard's back.
“What?!”
Deckard's eyes were ice. They looked right through Bashir.
“You are going to burn.”
“Wait, wait, wait!”
Deckard walked towards the elevator. Before he left he found the climate control panel and made sure the vents were wide open. Down in the sub-basement it was especially important to make sure the flames were fed with plenty of oxygen.
“You can't do this to me! You can't just leave me here!”
Deckard stepped onto the elevator and turned the key. The doors shut, leaving Bashir to his fate.
18
The closet door suddenly shot open and the hostess hugged her knees a little closer to her chest. Bashir's visitor, the man who turned out to be an assassin, stood in the doorway.
“You are going to hear the fire alarm go off in a few minutes. When that happens you need to leave. Don't come back.”
She nodded.
“Is there an emergency exit?”
“Through the other room, there is a door leading to a staircase that goes to the next level down.”
“Okay, take that once you hear the alarm.”
Deckard shut the hostess back in the closet and readjusted the camera bag strap on his shoulder. He was forced to ride the elevator back up to the penthouse. There was no other escape from the dungeon and popping out in the lobby would very likely place him at ground zero for a triple cross fire with no cover or decent plan of egress. He had the Glock and one magazine from the bodyguard forcing him to think on his feet and come up with other options.
He had propped up a chair to hold open the elevator door to prevent the shooters standing by down in the lobby from calling the elevator down and coming up after him. Deckard could already see black smoke wafting up through the shaft from below and into the elevator.
Following the hostess' instructions he walked through a parlor room that contained the late Bashir's salt water fish tank. Finding the stair case he tried one door and found that it led to a bathroom. The second door took him to the spiraling stairs that went to the ground floor.
The mercenary began hurrying down the stairs when he heard shouts, the voices reverberating up the confines of the emergency stairwell. Looking over the railing, he could see the forms of Bashir's shooters rushing up to meet him. They were fast. The PSD had seen the smoke coming from the elevator shaft, tried to take the elevator to the penthouse only to find it blocked, and were now coming up the stairs to find out what was going on. Deckard estimated that it had only been three or four minutes since he left Bashir to his fate.
They would meet somewhere around the tenth or eleventh floor, a meeting Deckard didn't care to have if he could avoid it. There were more cartel shooters flooding up the stairs behind the bodyguards and he didn't have enough bullets for them all, assuming he even got the chance to shoot. On the seventeenth floor landing he exited through the emergency door and quietly shut it behind him. With a little luck, he would be able to slip past them entirely.
Moving down the hallway he could see that the entire floor was being refurbished. Drywall and stacks of wood lined the hallway. The walls were covered in plaster and waiting for a coat of paint. A couple workers carrying buckets of plaster moved across the hall from one room to the other, paying Deckard no mind as they talked to each other in Spanish.
Ducking into one of the rooms that was being renovated the mercenary walked out onto the balcony. It was going to be a little dicey but these things always are, he told himself. Below, hotel guests were coming out of their hangovers and scuttling along like little ants to the beach with their umbrellas and coolers. Squinting in the sunlight, Deckard could see the flashing red and blue of police lights several miles down the strip.
That was fast. The local Mexicans would never get such a reaction from the police if they got into trouble. That kind of hustle was reserved for Cancun's franchise owner.
After placing his wallet and cell phone into his pants pockets, Deckard discarded the suit jacket and undid the buttons on his sleeves. Securing the camera bag tightly across his back, Deckard started towards the balcony when he had a last minute thought. Turning back, he grabbed a fist full of screws from a box laying on the floor and pocketed them as well.
Back out on the balcony he held onto the railing and swung his legs over the side. Down on the ground, the tourists continued about their business none the wiser to any of the insanity that was going on in their hotel. Taking a deep breath, he knew he had to act fast. The cartel gunmen would figure out his ruse sooner or later and block the exits. Here he was, hanging over the edge of the balcony on the seventeenth story of a hotel in Mexico with a camera bag full of highly questionable material.
Not one of my finer moments, Deckard thought to himself with some resignation.
Reaching down to the bottom rail he kicked his feet out and let himself hang under the balcony. Gravity attempted to have its way with him, his sweaty hands struggling to maintain a firm grip. Slowly, he began to swing his legs back and forth. Sweat ran down his face and dripped down his shirt. Swinging harder and faster, he built up momentum before angling his legs towards the balcony below and releasing his hands.
Air whistled in his ears as he landed with a crash. Stumbling backwards he almost tipped over the railing of the lower balcony, threatening to go end over end to his death. Both hands instinctively snapped onto the railing to prevent him from falling.
Looking at the sliding door, Deckard realized that he might have screwed himself but breathed a sigh of relief when he found it unlocked. There was a double bed inside and someone was in the bathroom with the shower turned on. He moved across the carpet as silently as he could, slowly turned open the dead bolt and eased the door open. Once in the hall he reached into the side pocket of the camera bag where he stashed the Glock and moved back to the stairwell.
With an ear pressed against the door, he listened for a few moments before continuing. The cartel gunmen had indeed continued up to the top levels of the hotel. Rushing, Deckard took the stairs four at a time, falling forward and turning at the last moment to prevent a face plant into the wall before going down the next flight. The camera bag bounced on his back as he raced to the ground floor.
Out of breath, he hit the landing on the third floor when the police officers he had seen from the balcony finally arrived and began making their way up to the penthouse.
“Fuck,” Deckard said under his breath. He took the door again, searching for a way out. Halfway down the hall he found a thirty-something blonde exiting her room with a beach bag.
“Excuse me,” he said, pushing her out of the way and walking into her hotel room.
“Hey,” she said curling her nose at him. “Who the hell are you?”
“Shore patrol.”
“What?”
Deckard flung open the sliding door and was back out on another balcony. This time the fall wouldn't be enough to kill him, just enough to hurt really, really bad. There was a swimming pool below but of course it was just a little too far for him to jump to. Immediately underneath him were some plastic pool chairs.
The woman chased after him, letting the door slam shut behind her.
“Hey dude,” she squeaked. “Get the fuck out of my room!”
“I'm working on it,” Deckard responded, climbing over the railing.
“What are you doing? Are you on drugs?”
Examining the side of the building, the walls were smooth with no way to climb down, no drain pipes to slide on, not even another balcony to drop down on. He was on the third floor leaving about a thirty foot drop down to the poolsid
e.
“Holy shit,” someone cried out from below. “Look at this action hero!”
Swimmers in the pools stopped and looked up at Deckard hanging off the outside of the balcony. Tourists lounging about set down their cocktails and stared at him in bewilderment.
“That dude is crazy!” someone wearing a Hawaiian shirt yelled. “He's gonna jump!”
Just then a banging came at the hotel room door behind him followed by muffled screams.
“Oh, no,” the blonde exclaimed.
“It's the police,” Deckard explained. “They are after me, not you.”
“It's not the police, that's my fiancé,” she said listening to the screams coming from the other side of the door. “He must know there is another man in the room with me!”
Now everyone at the pool was looking up at Deckard.
“Do it!” someone said. Then in unison they began to chant, “Jump-jump-jump!”
“Should I let him in?” the girl asked.
Looking over his shoulder Deckard could see the door bulge with each thud as her fiancé began trying to kick the door in.
“Who is your fiancé?”
“He's a linebacker for the Miami Dolphins.”
Deckard turned and jumped from the balcony.
It was far from a graceful landing. As a former para-trooper Deckard knew how to execute a Parachute Landing Fall which was meant to help cushion your impact with the ground and prevent injury. Keeping his feet and knees together, he brought his fists up in front of his face for protection. Making contact with the concrete, he stayed loose and rolled to the side, flopping over some pool furniture.
For a moment he saw red and was vaguely aware of the crowd cheering his epic wipe out.
Struggling onto his hands and knees, he was scraped up and bruised pretty good. His entire body felt jarred like he had just been in a car crash.
