by Amy Faye
Which, in a very real sense, they were, but at the same time, it was hard to think that she was really getting the raw end of the deal when they bought her dinner and drinks and then at the end of it she got to have a little fun of her own.
This was one of the nicer ones, though. She didn’t know what she had expected. When she thought of army bases in Syria, she envisioned tents, or perhaps re-purposed office buildings, with the usual walls of off-white gray. Instead, she was sitting in a room that was every bit as nice as the hotel that she’d left. There was a mini-bar in the fridge.
Ray told her not to drink any. After all, she was going to be a mother. He’d seen her charts, and he knew. Had she realized it, she wouldn’t have drank anything herself. There was a whole new world of realization now that she’d put herself in this position.
Lara sat back. There were two men parked outside. They had their backs to the door, which was closed, but the whole thing was frosted glass. She could see them both, depending on the angle she stood at. One was taller, the other shorter. One had dark skin, the other was Latino. They both had matching haircuts, though, in spite of their wildly different hair textures. It was the same haircut that Ray had. The same haircut that everyone in the building had.
They seemed to express themselves with their facial hair, where they couldn’t with the hair on top of their heads. The black guy’s beard was thick and bushy. Like a lumberjack, or something. He apparently wore cream in it to keep it soft, which she could tell only because when she’d come in, the light glistened off of it slightly.
The other guy kept his face trimmed close. But he apparently couldn’t resist the allure of facial hair, either, so he had a goatee. It was patchy and a little bit pathetic, by comparison, but he tried.
“Hey, guys? Can I get something to eat in here?”
She knew they could hear her. The Latino turned to his friend. The black guy turned back to him. Neither said anything, and they straightened again.
Ray was going to come back at some point. She knew he would. And then she’d want to have a plan of attack. How was she going to deal with him? How was she going to deal with this situation?
She knew these business types. She knew all about them, frankly. She’d known so many that she could practically paint a picture of them. Some were stiff and proper and wore suits. They liked to think that the world owed them something. They liked to think that she owed them something. And when you’re a stewardess, some disposable person, and you’re a woman, it’s not hard to figure out what it is that they think you owe them.
She owed them nothing. Sometimes she gave them what they wanted, though. Not for them, of course. For her. But she let them think whatever they wanted to think. It was a transient sort of lifestyle, and you had to get what you wanted where you could. She could be picky, but eventually it came down to getting your pleasure where you could.
The other type were the guys who fell into it. Blake seemed like that type. They were quick to get into messes, assuming that they were invulnerable. They’d taken plenty of risks getting there, and they weren’t planning on stopping now. Not now that all those previous risks had paid off. They ignored the fact that they were walking over the bodies of the people for whom risks had failed.
Both types wanted to believe that they didn’t fit the stereotype. Both could put up a convincing front, too. For a while. Eventually, it always came out. Eventually, something would come up.
The ones who thought that they had build the whole thing brick by brick, the ones who thought that it was time that the debt got paid, they found out that they weren’t in control of anything. They found out that other people weren’t disposable. If anything, men like that were disposable, because you could always find another one that had the same attitude, acted the same way, and had just as big a cock.
The risk-takers, they’d either have something blow up in their face, or they’d realize that they were in too deep. They’d back off. And she knew Blake Prince. She’d been with him for weeks and she’d got a sense for him. He was a risk-taker. He loved the danger.
That meant that he wasn’t going to just walk away from it. He wasn’t going to get her out of there peacefully. She was going to be in very real danger right up until the end, when the coin came up heads or tails, and that would decide whether she and the baby growing inside her lived or died. It twisted her stomach. She stood up, walked across the room, and looked out the window.
It was a four-story drop. There was no jumping, even if she could stomach the thought of falling that far. She couldn’t. She’d always hated heights, which made flight attending a very strange choice of occupation. But planes were safe. Heck, they were almost as safe as buildings. Safer than roller coasters, safer than cars. And she got used to it.
Falling, though? That was a different question altogether. Jumping? That was the worst of all. It took all the negative parts of falling from a height and added the extra little caveat that you had to choose to do it, first.
She wasn’t going to choose to fall four stories. She wasn’t going to make a miracle survival twice. Certainly not with her baby intact.
She sucked in a breath. There was one door. Three windows. All three were side-by-side, and they looked out over a concrete parking lot. There was no escape that way. There was a big white board, and a TV stand in the corner on wheels, and…
She thought for a moment. That was a plan.
She took the TV stand. Nobody was going to be watching. She had to make this quick, and she had to make it work just right. Otherwise, it wouldn’t work at all.
She shoved it with all her strength. It made impressive headway for a few short feet. Five feet, maybe. But that would be enough, if she made it count. She wheeled the whole stand across the room, by one of the windows.
She looked out, through the frosted glass door. Two men stood there. One black, one Latino. They were different heights, different weights, and their skin colors and beards made it impossible to mistake one for the other. But in most other ways, they looked like mirrored statues.
Then she pushed hard, and ran across the room behind the fridge. The stand crashed through the window, toppled, and fell through.
The guys outside heard the glass smash. They heard something crash to the floor. They came in through the door, and just like Lara had planned, they found the room empty. They crossed the room to look out the window. She ran, clutching her shoes in her hands, out the open door.
Nobody questioned her or stopped her. She was going to make it, she thought. Her hands balled up in the elevator as it started to creak down. The number on the display changed in time with the beeps. Four changed to three. Changed to two. Changed to one. The door opened. A voice said ‘Going Up’ and a man stepped inside before she could step out.
He had a pistol, and he buried it in her ribs. Ray Sandusky didn’t have a smile on this time.
“Where did you think you were going, Miss Winters?”
Twenty
Blake drove around Damascus. It was a waste of time. He didn’t have time to waste. He needed to get all of this figured out. But there were only two choices. Shoot his way in, invalidating the whole thing from top to bottom, or walk away.
Every other option that he could think of led to bigger problems in the end. Problems that would be easy to solve if he were just the sociopath baby-killer that some folks wanted to paint him as. He could just cut Lara out and go to the press.
He could start revoking funds and positions until the rot went out.
He picked up the phone and dialed Ray’s number. The phone rang twice. It connected. On the other end of the line, someone cleared their throat a little way away from the mouthpiece, and then a voice answered.
“What’s it going to be, Blake?”
“I’m not going to walk away from this, Ray.”
“No? I thought you might say that. Do I have to remind you what you’ve got on the line here? Are you really going to gamble that I’m a liar, Colonel?”
/>
“I know you’re not bluffing, Ray.”
“I’m glad that we’re on the same page.”
Blake thought that he could almost hear the sound of a pistol de-cocking on the other end of the line. The pit in his stomach deepened.
“So let’s talk.”
“Talk about what?”
“About this. What do you want? I want specifics.”
“You’ll give me a signed letter of resignation.”
“What, you mean personally?”
“Through a courier, then.”
“I’m more comfortable with a face-to-face meeting. Too many risks.” Blake hoped he would go for it. He was pretty sure that Ray wasn’t going to.
“What, so you can try to shoot me?”
“I won’t.”
“I’ve heard that before. Pardon me if I don’t have perfect faith, my friend. I don’t think I ought to just believe everything that you say.”
“Then you can have your guys check me before I go in.”
“What’s the obsession with a face-to-face meeting?”
“I don’t understand why you’re doing this. I want to talk.”
“We’re talking right now. More than we’ve spoken in years, Colonel.”
“I come every three months for an on-site sitrep. We speak minimum once a month off-site.”
“We’re talking, yes. But you’re not listening. You’re soft. You’re turning into a suit. Same as any of them.”
Blake sucked in a breath. “Is that really what you think of me?”
“You know it is. Hell, you’re thinking it yourself. You’ve gone soft. You’re too afraid to do anything. No guts.”
“Well,” Blake said. “You’ll get your paper. Soon as you agree to a face-to-face meeting, and you shoot me something to sign.”
“Really.”
“You got a PDF or something? Word doc? I might have to go back to the hotel to get them to print it. You don’t figure they’ve got a Kinko’s around here, do you?”
“I’ll have something emailed in ten minutes. You sign it, and you go home.”
“And the girl?”
“She’s not important to me or the mission.”
“The mission, huh? That’s still important to you?”
“It’s the only thing that’s important to me, Colonel.”
“Then you’re making a big mistake, hoss. You sit down with me. We’ll talk this thing out.”
“I’m afraid we’re past that, Colonel.”
“That’s your opinion, then,” Blake said.
“I’ll have it to you in ten minutes.”
“You want it signed in advance, or you want to be there?”
“Surprise me,” Ray answered.
“Will do,” Blake answered. Then he put the phone down.
Thirty minutes later, he had a piece of paper. It was precisely the one that Ray had sent over, with no changes. At the bottom was a place where he was intended to sign. He had it in a document folder. There wasn’t a Kinko’s. But he managed to find a printer while traffic directed him toward the hotel. The Lord’s providence once again.
Then he stood outside the Temple and waited for someone to approach him. He didn’t have to wait long. A new guy came to him. He looked like he’d just left the barber’s earlier that day. But he had the look of a man who had plenty of experience doing this kind of work. Like every Knight Templar did, because they wouldn’t hire someone who didn’t know what they were doing.
“Colonel Prince?”
“Please. I’m not in the Army any more, son.”
“This way, Colonel.”
His insistence meant something more than the words themselves, to Blake’s ears. The answer might have meant nothing at all. Or it might have meant just as much. Blake didn’t know which, and he didn’t want to read into it.
He pulled his ball cap low on his head and followed the guy inside. They weren’t stopped at the door. That was a mistake, Blake thought. They might have security before he got inside the building, but they should have checked him before he got that far.
They wouldn’t have found anything on him. There was nothing to find, except for a single milled-aluminum ballpoint pen. It could have been used as a weapon by a particularly committed assailant. But given why he was there, Blake figured that he could be allowed to have it.
They did check him for weapons before they went into the command offices. The search was thorough, and as expected, they found nothing except for the pen. They handed it back to him after giving it a cursory look. He kept it in his hand, tucked against the folder.
“Colonel. Glad you could make it.” Ray didn’t look glad. He looked sour. About as sour as Blake felt.
“Major.”
“You’ve got to understand, Blake. We need a firm hand at the top. I was perfectly happy to leave you up there when we weren’t in the shit.”
Blake detested cursing. It was an Army pastime, though. So he said nothing.
“You want to get to this? Where’s the girl?”
“Private Marks?” A man snapped to attention without either of them looking at him. “Go fetch our guest.”
“Sir,” he said. And then stepped out through the door. A moment later, he brought Lara along. He wasn’t rough with her, but neither was he gentle.
“You okay?”
She looked okay. She looked better than okay. It would take a broken nose before her looks were damaged enough to be called just okay. But she also looked unharmed.
“I’m alright,” she said.
Blake turned back to Ray.
“Alright, let’s get to this, then.”
“Which is it? Signed? Or not?”
“I thought you’d like to see the look on my face,” Blake said.
“You’re so thoughtful.”
Blake took the folder out from one hand. He dropped it on the table, and set the pen beside it. Then he opened it up. There was one piece of paper. It was overdone, but he had the money to afford a minor extravagance.
“Ready?”
“By all means.”
Blake leaned down and signed it. He thought that it should have felt harder. He was signing away half his life. The man he was signing it away to should have been one of his most trusted friends. Instead he was the man responsible for who knows how many deaths. And it felt like nothing at all. Signing a piece of paper.
“There you go.”
“You made the right decision,” Ray said. He reached down for it. Which was a mistake. The first thing that Blake had learned was that when you got everything you wanted, that was the moment that you should be very careful about what risks you incurred.
Usually, someone’s got a plan that you’re not counting on. Or they’re just morons. Blake wasn’t a moron.
It was only a little halfway-turn. Nobody would blame anyone for it, except that this was kidnapping and blackmail, and you have to be careful when you’re pulling that kind of racket. Particularly when the one you’re extorting is a soldier.
Blake’s hand snapped to Ray’s hip, and pulled up and out. The pistol fought him for an instant. And then it stopped fighting him, and slipped free, and Blake fired twice into his best friend’s abdomen.
He snapped to the man holding Lara and pointed the pistol. He’d been a competition shooter. Nothing special, of course; he placed third a couple of times in shooting contests. But given more than the blink of an eye to aim, he could hit a man-sized target reliably at fifty paces. Reliably. Every time.
He wasn’t at fifty paces. He was at maybe five. And the man was a large man. He didn’t have much hope.
“You part of this mutiny, son?”
He looked like he was about to relieve his bowels right there in the middle of the room. Which was about the right emotion to be feeling when a trained shooter has you dead to rights.
“No, sir.”
“Let the girl go. Army boys taking hostages now?”
He let Lara go. She ran.
“What abo
ut the rest of you? You got a problem with what just happened? You’re under new management.”
The Hispanic fellow—Blake thought his name was Ramirez, maybe first name Carlos; Navy SEAL, if he recalled—shook his head.
“Then drop the weapons, please. I’m feeling a little jittery after having my best friend try to stab me in the back.”
They dropped the weapons one at a time.
“Is Major Timmonds on base?”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
“Go get him.”
“Yes, sir.”
One of them left.
Blake turned to Lara. She was leaning against the table.
“You feeling alright?”
“That was awful,” she said.
“I won’t put you through it again,” he said. He hoped not to be made a liar of. “I’ll get you home by Monday, alright? Promise.”
She leaned into his shoulder. He shifted her across his body to leave his shooting hand free. He didn’t want to make a liar of himself. But he wasn’t going to ignore the possibility.
“I’m sorry this happened.”
“I want to go home.”
“I know. And I’m going to get you home.”
“Good.”
He sucked up a breath and closed his eyes. There wasn’t going to be much time to talk privately. In a moment, there was going to be a lot of rot to cut out in his command structure. A structure he thought was bulletproof.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you too,” Lara answered.
Blake leaned down and kissed her. Her lips tasted good. Then the door opened, and in spite of himself, Blake had to get back to work. To make sure that he could keep his promise to her. She was always going to be safe, and he was going to make certain of it.
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