Race with Danger (Run for Your Life Book 1)

by Pamela Beason

  One of the voices is coming my way. Although this moist earth muffles a lot of sounds, I feel heavy footsteps moving toward me. There’s no way I can crawl away and hide quickly enough. I yank up the strap of my pack, position the dart on the ground next to my shoulder, and collapse onto my back, praying that it appears as if the dart is or was embedded. I make myself go completely limp. Just before I close my eyes, I see one of those creepy bird-sized spiders perched on a bent fern frond, only a few inches away from my face.

  The man is almost upon me. Deep breath. I slow my breathing and open my mouth slightly, forcing my facial muscles to go slack as if I am unconscious. A couple more steps. Even without opening my eyes, I know there’s a big foot right beside my head.

  “Here!” he yells in English.

  The voice sounds familiar. Can it really be Hasanov, the sharp-nosed Secret Service agent?

  This is uber-bad news. If Hasanov is part of the dart crew, then help is not going to come any time soon.

  A couple of shouts from his comrades persuade Hasanov to nudge my shoulder with his steel-toed boot. My heart is pounding so hard it seems incredible that he can’t see or hear it. It takes all my willpower to keep from moving. But then the spider must shift position, because Hasanov yelps and quickly repositions himself down toward my feet. He yells something at his comrades that makes the others laugh.

  Hasanov will have his gun, of course. I wait for the click of the safety or the hammer like you always hear on television. At which point I plan to roll sideways before I get a bullet between the eyes.

  No click. What is he doing? Just watching me?

  Wait. Breathe slowly. I feel soft whispers of movement on my forehead. Ay yi yi—the spider! Unconscious, I’m unconscious, I tell myself; I am aware of nothing. I am comatose. But I feel every one of that arachnid’s eight hairy legs as it tap-dances across my left eyelid, traverses my cheek, and then slides down my neck to the ground.

  As soon as the spider is off and I’m starting to wonder if Hasanov is going to simply walk away, he grabs me by the ankles and yanks, pulling me from beneath the ferns. My backpack slides up to my neck and its straps pull my arms upward to trail behind my head. My shirt is raked up, too, and the rough vegetation scours the skin of my already shredded back. It’s hard to keep up the pretense of unconsciousness as the second layer of my skin is gouged and burned and my head bumps along the rough ground. I pray Hasanov is not looking at my face.

  When I’m far enough away from the spider, he drops my feet and yanks my right arm, which hurts a lot more than dragging me by my running shoes, but I manage to stay limp. He heaves me up onto his back, whacking his shoulder into my diaphragm and knocking the breath out of my lungs. My pack flips down to wallop my aching head.

  So he’s not going to kill me. At least not right away. I hope this doesn’t mean that he and his thuggish friends intend to have fun with me before they slit my throat. The President’s Son is valuable, but I am expendable in anyone’s eyes. On the back of my eyelids, I see replays of beheadings broadcast in the recent past. I open my eyes to erase the horrific visions, but then all I see is the fabric of his shirt in front of my face. Light blue. Despite the dampness of the cotton, he smells like cologne and deodorant, so I know he cannot have been out in this heat for long.

  I expect to be dumped onto the ground, but instead I hear him say, “Let’s go,” and we continue our tramp through the jungle. My head is pounding from hanging upside down, my pack bangs into my neck with each step, and the swaying motion is making me dizzy and nauseous. Or maybe I got more of that knockout drug than I thought. I don’t want to think about what could happen if I vomit down Hasanov’s back.

  Are the men following us carrying Sebastian? There’s been no mention of him, at least not in English. Could I have been the target all along? Hasanov is Secret Service. Has the government been investigating me, watching me, communicating with God Knows Who? Will I die in a pool of blood like Mom and Dad? I begin to wish I was comatose instead of so easily able to torture myself with all these fears.

  My journey as a pretend unconscious body is short. At the end of our hike through the jungle is a helicopter—I dare to briefly slit my eyes open to see its camouflage paint before I am tossed inside like a sack of potatoes. Pretending to be unconscious is harder than it looks, especially when you know being flopped around like a sack of dog chow is going to hurt like hell. As the back of my skull connects with the ‘copter floor with a solid thud, my jaws clack together and I see a flash of white lightning between my eyes and my eyelids. Maybe I twitch in pain, because next a woman’s voice says, “Are you sure they’re both out?”

  A woman? The voice sounds like the blond robot guard, but I don’t dare look. She said “both,” so Sebastian must be here, too, and at least “out” isn’t dead.

  Is our whole Secret Service contingent in on this kidnapping? That would make a perverted sort of sense. Who else could more easily pull off kidnapping The President’s Son than those who are assigned to guard him? Who else could better divert or fool the drones than those who program them in the first place? This group might have known all along that Sebastian and I fell into the crevasse. Had we foiled their plan by escaping on our own?

  I don’t have enough time to think this through because Hasanov replies to her question, saying, “I’ll make sure.”

  Then a wet sweet-smelling cloth is held against my nose and mouth. For a second I think about holding my breath, but I really have no choice. There are at least five of them. Bash has to be unconscious. I breathe in lightly and hope for the best, if there could be anything good in this situation. One breath, two...

  Chapter 16

  When I come to, my head feels like my brain has been using a dull pickaxe in an attempt to break out of my skull. My lips and tongue are dry. My throat feels like I just ran through a sandstorm. I sense that I’m more or less vertical, although my head is lolling to the side and my neck is so stiff that I’m not sure I’ll ever sit up straight again. I can’t seem to move my arms or legs. I’m not really sure, because I can’t feel my arms or legs.

  Keeping my eyes closed and my muscles slack, I listen for a moment. I hear only distant voices and quiet breathing sounds. I hold my own breath for a beat, but still hear the breathing, like someone snuffling through clogged nostrils. Cautiously, I open my left eyelid just enough to register too-bright old-fashioned fluorescent lights and the blurred details of my prison.

  It’s Sebastian’s prison, too; he’s slumped over next to me. He’s making the snuffling noises.

  No wonder I can’t feel my arms or legs. Like Sebastian’s, my limbs are firmly attached to a metal chair with those ghastly plastic zip-ties. There are three per arm at bicep, elbow, and wrist; three per leg at thigh, knee, and ankle. Our GPS units are gone from our wrists. I wonder if they’ve been destroyed or if our signals are still somehow racing through the jungle.

  Our chairs sit against a sweating wall from which strips of paint are peeling away. Paint chips and rust flakes decorate the floors around the edges of the room. The walls, the floor, the metal cabinets across the room—everything is coated with the same rubbery-looking gray paint, although parts of the floor are obscured with black rubber mats. It looks like this place was once used as a laboratory of some kind. There are three doors in the walls. They all have those step-over thresholds like you see on boats, and all are closed tight.

  I study my partner. Sebastian’s head sags back against the wall. His hair has come out of his ponytail and long greasy strands hang over his face. He obviously hasn’t shaved for a couple of days; whiskers blur his cheeks. In addition to the bruises and scrapes he’s accumulated in the last few days, there’s a big purplish lump on his neck. That must be where the dart hit him. Right into the carotid; no wonder he’s still out. His lips are slack, and a little drool of saliva drips down one side of his chin.

  He’d be mortified if he could see himself now.

  I’m relieved to see that
my clothing, as minimal and filthy as it is, is intact. My next thought is that it’s beyond outrageous that girls are always forced to consider whether or not our bodies have been violated while we were unconscious. And then I wonder if rape is still to come in my future, and it pisses me off more that the possibility even crosses my mind. I counted four men among our attackers. One woman. Maybe she’ll be the tempering factor, although since she’s clearly in league with the other thugs, the presence of Blondie doesn’t give me a lot of hope.

  Slowly I raise my head to its normal position. My neck shrieks with pain all the way up, like a rusty cable sliding through a pulley after years of disuse. My head isn’t doing so well, either. How many times have I hit it today?

  Is it even still today?

  I think about all the football players and boxers who can no longer string together a complete sentence or walk without help. If I knew that would be my future, I would be ready to die right now.

  But I’m not dead yet. And neither is Sebastian. Or Bailey, although all our futures are looking mighty grim.

  My stomach roils with nausea. I take a big breath of stale atmosphere. The air feels cool and damp against my skin and it’s absolutely motionless. I hope we’re not hermetically sealed in this room.

  Please God no, don’t let us be on a submarine.

  Chapter 17

  Faint voices waft in from the other room, the sound level constant. A broadcast of some kind.

  Then I hear someone clearly say in English, “This is it. Turn it up.”

  The voice sounds loud enough to be in the same room with us. Panic flares in my throbbing head until I notice that there’s a metal grid set high up in the wall above Bash’s head.

  No hermetic seal; there will be air. We’re not on a submarine, then. It’s appalling what a girl can be grateful for in circumstances like these.

  The volume increases, and I hear a carefully modulated male voice, educated English with a slight tinge of some sort of Middle East accent.

  “…exchange for the return of Sebastian Callendro, we demand immediate intervention to rescue our beleaguered people. We demand air strikes against the invading terrorists, weapons for the rebels, and humanitarian aid to our freedom-loving people . For too long, the United States has stood on the sidelines and watched our people slaughtered. Stop this bloodbath, and President Garrison’s son will be returned unharmed.”

  A couple of male voices in the other room follow that announcement and their discussion drowns out the commentator’s voice for a moment. Their tone sounds congratulatory. I wonder if the man who recorded those demands is in the room. Are they all proud of what they’ve done?

  To say the least, hearing their demands depresses me. I realize that kidnapping The President’s Son is a powerful act, but if these guys are asking for America’s military involvement in another country as well as humanitarian aid and weapons, Sebastian and I may be captive for weeks. Or months.

  The guys in the next room take a break from patting themselves on the back, and the broadcast leaks through again.

  “…in fact a terrorist group, too? Our reporter asked that question of the President.”

  President T.L. Garrison’s voice comes on. “Any organization that believes kidnapping and extortion are legitimate means of persuasion is a terrorist organization. The policy of the United States stands: we do not do business with terrorists.”

  The foreign-language speaker in the next room then shouts something in an angry tone, and the broadcast abruptly ends, probably snapped off by our captors.

  An angry discussion erupts. I can’t understand a word.

  Correction on my initial time frame estimate: we could be captive for years. Or at least Sebastian could. I can’t help noticing there was absolutely no mention of me. For the last three years of my life, I have strived to be invisible. It seems that I have finally accomplished my goal.

  A metal connecting door abruptly squeals open. I make myself go limp, but it’s too late.

  “So our little African American Princess is awake.”

  I can tell it’s a man from his voice, one I haven’t heard before. His head is completely obscured by a khaki bush helmet. His face is hidden beneath camo-patterned mesh netting that descends from the hat’s brim to his shoulders. That’s probably some sort of standard-issue desert soldier gear to protect against dust and sand flies.

  Maybe Emilio is used to seeing his buddies decked out like that. For me, it’s terrifying to be under the power of a stranger whose face has been erased so completely.

  I try to memorize the details I can, on the off chance I live through this and can be useful to the police. Khaki-colored long-sleeved shirt, tan pants, leather lace-up boots, skin on his hands the reddish brown of a tanned white guy. A wicked looking knife in a sheath on the right side of his belt. A pistol in a holster on the left.

  “How’re you doin,’ sweetheart?” He tickles me under the chin like I’m a cat.

  I don’t purr. I do wish I had claws to shred that mesh and scratch his eyes out. I have to settle for giving him my most hostile glare. His touch reminds me of a lecherous orchard owner in Eastern Washington where Marisela and Emilio and I picked peaches and plums one summer. The old geezer would not stop coming onto me, and I needed to keep that job.

  Finally, inspired, I told him that I was flattered and could use the extra money (although he hadn’t promised any) because I needed to buy another round of antibiotics to be sure I was over my bout of Chlamydia. I was so glad the disease couldn’t be spread through handling fruit, because I’d had it several times and it was really hard to get rid of, wasn’t it?

  He not only stopped harassing me, he gave me a bonus at the end of the season. It’s amazing how liberating having a pretend STD can be. If only dealing with this guy in front of me could be as easy.

  He bends close and pushes my hair back from my temples. His fingertips feel calloused. He smells like sweat. He must do some type of manual labor.

  When he pulls the knife out of the sheath, my breath gets hung up in my throat. The knife looks even bigger close up. Thick leather-wrapped handle, wide blade—a hunting knife? Oh, sweet God. My pulse pounds as he puts the sharp edge to the side of my throat. One quick swipe, and my life could be over.

  “What should we do with you, Zany?” he mutters in a growly voice.

  If I put myself in my captors’ terrorist boots, I can only think of one possible use for Tanzania Grey. Nobody’s going to pay a ransom for me. At most, Marisela and Emilio and all my pals at the zoo could scrape together a few hundred dollars. Perhaps a ransom could be crowd-sourced over the Net? The endurance racing world is small, but I do have fans. But crowd-sourcing would require someone to set it up and beg for my return. Perhaps my sponsor—Dark Horse Networks? But as far as I know, my presence in this little side trip has not even been mentioned.

  No, the best use for Tanzania Grey would be to make a splendid example of just how far this group is willing to go to get their demands met. A televised beheading. Death by firing squad. Or worse—maybe broadcasts of prolonged torture to suggest that the same is happening to The President’s Son.

  I try to quash these horrific thoughts, worried that I may be telepathically communicating them to Camo Mask. Or maybe he’s sending them to me.

  He slides the blade against my neck, using what feels like the side of the blade, not the edge. Thank God for small favors.

  He leans closer. “Is Tanzania Grey your real name?”

  I want to back up, but I’m melded with this stupid chair. “Damn, you found me,” I snarl. “I admit it. I’m Jameena, in disguise. I like to travel incognito.”

  He snorts at my mention of the rock star. “Who would want you, Zany? With your parents gone, you really don’t have a family, do you? But could someone be left?”

  This makes me think about that African pendant in my personal box waiting for me at the finish line. Does this guy know something about who sent that?

  Next he
suggests, “You must be worth something to someone. Maybe another group would be interested in getting their hands on you?”

  He slides the flat of the blade upward. I can feel the point digging into the underside of my chin.

  I wish I could see his eyes. Does he know something about who killed my parents? Is he proposing selling me to another organization? Is he trying to gauge my reaction?

  Then he suggests, “Maybe the government?”

  My brain conjures up the black SUVs that haunted my neighborhood after my parents’ murders.

  The same door opens again. Another man stands in the doorway. He too wears fatigues and boots, with the same desert camouflage helmet. His face is covered with black netting. He barks what sounds like a command in a guttural language.

  The thug at my side answers. Then, reluctantly, he returns his knife to the sheath on his belt.

  I swallow hard and work some saliva back into my mouth as I face the man in the doorway. “These binds are too tight. I have no blood flow to my hands and feet,” I tell him. “Gangrene will set in.”

  My would-be torturer kneels in front of me and takes hold of the fingers on both of my hands for a minute, a disturbingly intimate gesture. He lets go and moves down to my feet, which are still laced up in my running shoes. He loosens the laces and sticks a finger into each running shoe.

  Then he pushes himself to his feet. “Your hands and feet are merely cool. You’re okay for now, Princess.”

  He puts his fingers under my chin and tilts my face up. “You can guess how this is going to go, can’t you, mystery girl?”

  My breath snags on my tonsils at the back of my throat. Why did he say that? He’s no doubt staring into my eyes, but I can only see colored netting where a human face should be.

  “Should I cut off a finger to show we’re serious? Or maybe an ear?” He delicately rubs my right ear lobe between his index finger and thumb.