by S L Shelton
“How much medical training did you have?” I asked as I ate the last bit of my sandwich.
“In nurse school? Less than one year,” she said before grinning. “In Amsterdam? Three years intense, on-job training. There are surgeons who haven’t done what I’ve had to do.”
“Ever think of going back to school?” I asked.
She tipped her head to the side and looked into the air. “Think? Yes. Do?” She shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe someone will make that happen.”
I looked at my phone and noted the time—it was nearly 6:00 p.m. I started to become a bit antsy as I realized my day had slipped away from me.
When we finished eating, she began checking my wounds again. All my burns seemed to be fine. She seemed pleased with the progress they were making. When she touched my ribs, they weren’t as sore as they had been the night before, but it still hurt to move. She had me sit up, making my head throb, before wrapping my torso with the compression bandages.
When she was done, she checked my head, neck, and then the cut on the bridge of my nose where I had been kicked. In the end, she gave me a clean bill of health. I was feeling strong as well. A good night’s sleep and food in my stomach had made me feel close enough to human again to go out and prepare for the next leg of my quest.
“I have to leave,” I said to Nyla.
“Elvis said to stay low,” she said, not remembering that her boss was not my boss.
“Yes, he did,” I agreed with her. “But don’t you think he was talking to you? He did wish me luck in finding my ‘woman’. How can I do that if I’m here?” I asked as gently as I could.
No argument she gave me could make me stay. Too much time had been lost already, and it was time to part ways. She had gone through a great deal of trouble because of me. Though, to my credit, had I not shown up, Majmun would have killed them all—even if all I’d done was show up and get tortured.
Her face said she had resigned her argument. But I noted some disappointment there as well. Was she infatuated with the idea of having her own personal American to play house with?
I stood and hugged her. “Thank you for taking such good care of me,” I said. “Maybe it would be best for you to go back to the club and find Elvis and Sobaka.” She pressed her face into my chest and gripped me tightly enough that my ribs hurt.
“I hope you find her,” she said sincerely. “And I hope she appreciates what you are going through for her.”
For the next few minutes she gathered her things from around the room, tucked the medical supplies into my bag, and then walked to the door, turning to say her farewells. “Check your bandages twice a day…especially your chest. Use the ointment in the green tube only if it gets worse. Use the white tube with each changing.”
I smiled and walked over to her. “I will. I promise. Thank you for all you’ve done for me. I will never forget it.” I kissed her on her forehead and then released her so she could walk through the door.
On the way out she said over her shoulder, “If she breaks your heart, come back and see me. I can heal those as well.” She smiled and winked as she headed down the stairs.
As soon as she was out of sight, I checked the time and went back into the room. I quickly pulled up my web browser to check the train schedules and realized that I would not be able to catch the last train from Amsterdam to Dusseldorf today. I’d have to take an early train tomorrow. That gave me time to locate some items I needed.
I started to stash my iPad and my prepaid phone in the room safe, but then I remembered the message from Bonbon about the hacking attempt on the site. I powered down the iPad and the prepaid burn phone and wrapped them in a hotel towel. I poked my head out the door of my room and looked both ways down the hall before creeping out in search of the perfect hiding place. The hacks on my phone connection to the encrypted servers at TravTech screamed NSA. If the government was onto me already, I didn’t want to give away my toys.
I walked down the hall until I found what I was looking for in the form of a small walk-in closet at the end of the corridor—a supply room with an ice machine in it. I pulled the door closed behind me and looked around for a suitable hiding place. Next to the ice machine was a small air return for the central heating and air system.
I took a butter knife from a tray of dishes, unscrewed the vent cover, and then peeked inside. There was a turn in the duct, so I reached my hand inside to make sure there wasn’t a drop off around the corner. Satisfied, I wrapped my tech gear in the towel before pushing the bundle into the hiding spot.
There was plenty of airflow around my stash, so I didn’t have to worry about a nosy repairman coming in to investigate a blockage.
I got the vent cover replaced and then headed back to my room. It was after 7:00 p.m. now, and I had little chance of finding a store with the items I needed, but I had to try. I shouldered my canvas bag and headed down the stairs.
**
NICK HORIATIS had decided to follow this Wolfe character when he left the Russian compound instead of staying with the Russians. Wolfe had disappeared into the hotel hours before. It looked as if the hooker had been carrying him.
“Too much partying, buddy?” Nick had mumbled as he’d watched them disappear through the front door.
Shortly after sunrise, Nick’s relief shift showed up to take his place. Nick hesitated to leave, but he realized the boy would probably be out for hours...enough time to catch a quick nap anyway.
He got a secure message around 11:30 a.m. from the NSA. It read:
Having difficulty getting any data from Scott Wolfe’s phone. It’s encrypted, but he is also using a cycling dynamic proxy that is proving very difficult to nail down.
Certain he had stumbled on something important here, Nick relieved the day shift watcher hours early and sent him back to the consulate for radio monitoring. Shortly after 3:00 p.m., he got another message from the NSA tech who was helping him. It said:
More activity on Wolfe’s phone. Am almost positive our attempts have been detected. New protocols in place. Never seen anything like this before.
Nick picked up his phone and dialed his NSA tech. “What’s your take on Wolfe?” he asked.
“He is using some very sophisticated communications protocols here. Better than we use ourselves,” the tech said.
Nick leaned over to look out the window of his car, gazing up at the window of the room Wolfe was staying in.
“What are the chances of you breaking them?” Nick asked.
“Honestly?” the tech replied. “Zero. The guy is using a combination of defeats I’ve never seen. He’s got awesome tech on his side.”
“Thanks,” Nick said. “Keep on him. At least we have his location.”
“Will do,” the tech said and then hung up.
With this new update from the NSA, Nick decided he would raise the alarm with Temple. He sent a text update. A few minutes later, his phone rang.
“Yeah?” Nick answered.
“Okay,” John Temple said with resignation in his voice. “Get a bag team together.”
Nick smiled. “Yes sir.”
By 5:00 p.m. everything was in place. It was just a matter of timing. Nick hoped it would wait until after dark, but either way, Scott Wolfe was going to answer some questions.
**
I had just stepped into the alley when I heard an American voice. “Got a light?”
Here it comes, that new, other voice inside my head said. It startled me making my chest contract.
As I turned in the direction of the speaker, two sets of hands grabbed my wrists and shoulders from behind, before a sharp shove sent me to my knees on the cobblestone. My arms were pinned behind me, pulled painfully upward. I could feel the bandage on my chest tugging at my wound, and the movement renewed the sharp pain.
“Ow! Fuck!” I yelled as zip ties cinched tight over my wrists.
With the pain, a flash of anger exploded into my head and I kicked out and back with my foot, striking the feet of
one of the men. All my weight fell on one knee—ouch—as one of the men behind me fell to the ground, swearing.
“You mother fu—”
His words cut short as his face struck the back of my head solidly. An angry growl rolled out of his throat before my face slammed down on the cobblestones, breaking my lip.
“I will kill you where you lay if you move again,” he whispered in my ear.
He braced himself against my head and shoulders to stand up, grinding my face, my now-bleeding nose, and my broken lip against the oily stone surface. He jerked me back up to my knees by my hair and was about to smash the side of his hand into my face when the man who had asked me for the light interrupted.
“Enough,” he said with a bored tone.
I looked up into the face of the guy behind me as he pulled my head back by the hair—I could see the seething anger on his pointed features as well as a thin trickle of blood from his nose, which was now clearly broken. I smiled inwardly at the damage my maneuver had caused, but I was very careful not to let it show on my face.
“Up!” yelled the man who had smashed his face into the back of my head.
The two behind me jerked me to my feet before pulling a hood over my head, blocking my vision.
“This thing smells like ass,” I protested as I tried to jerk my hands free. “Do you ever wash these fucking things?”
The response was a solid punch to the gut, sending the air from my lungs and doubling me over.
“What did I say?” I heard cigarette guy ask coolly.
They moved quickly down the alley away from Damstraat, dragging me between the two of them, the toes of my shoes clacking across the stones. The alleyway was quiet this evening. When I had come out of the hotel, only a handful of people had been around. I figured most of them were doing their best to ignore the apparent kidnapping, judging by the lack of voices speaking up in my defense.
I heard an engine start up as they pulled me roughly to one side, and then the vehicle pulled up to our location. I heard a metal door roll open—a van.
“Hey! What are you doing?” I heard a woman’s voice ask frantically.
I recognized her thick German accent. It was Kathrin—the girl I’d traded bags with yesterday. I heard her boot-clad feet walking toward us.
“Don’t come any closer,” cigarette man said threateningly. “Official business.”
“I don’t believe you. ID. I want to see your ID,” she insisted loudly. I could almost hear the sneer on her face.
“This doesn’t concern you,” he replied, his voice conveying a hint of emotion—annoyance I think.
I lifted my head toward her voice. “Get the poli—”
My plea for help was cut off by another punch to the gut.
“Help!” Kathrin screamed. “Terrorists! They are killing him! Police! Police!”
I could hear cigarette man move toward her and away from me. I heard her boots shuffle backward on the cobblestones, before she screamed louder, adding, “They have a bomb! Stop them!”
Her screams had apparently attracted some attention. Within a few seconds, the siren of a police car wailed its approach screeching to a halt at the Damstraat entrance to the alley.
“This is way too much attention, John,” I heard a voice in the van say in our direction.
“Shit!” cigarette man rasped. My guess was that he was John. “Get him out of sight.”
They lifted and tossed me inside head first, banging my head into a hard metal edge. The contact sent a sharp pain radiating out from my left brow. The wind left my lungs again as someone sat down on me, roughly, followed by the sound of the van door rolling closed with a slam.
Kathrin was still screaming for the police when I heard a second police car roll into the alley from the opposite direction, effectively blocking the van from exiting.
“They abducted a man!” I heard Kathrin scream. “I think they are killing him!”
I heard more sirens and a man’s voice.
“Turn the engine off!” the new voice yelled with the crisp command quality of law enforcement.
A couple of beats ticked by before the driver complied.
“I don’t know what she’s talking about,” cigarette man said, an almost amused quality to his voice. “She must be stoned.”
“Lie!” Kathrin screamed. “I saw them hit a man, put a bag on his head and throw him in there.”
“Open the door,” I heard a cop say.
“That’s not happening, chief,” cigarette man replied with more amusement than anger. “You’d better just calm down before you get yourself in trouble, little girl.”
“Fuck you,” Kathrin yelled angrily, and then she lowered her voice. “I think I saw canisters with wires coming out of them.”
“That’s bullshit!” cigarette man yelled. “This chick is seriously fucked in the head—”
“Open the door!” the cop yelled louder, and I heard what sounded like the slide of a handgun locking forward.
“Shit,” cigarette man muttered again.
The police were not budging. “Open the door!” they yelled, their commands crossing one another with a threatening edge. “Open it!”
I decided Kathrin’s case wasn’t strong enough on its own—I decided to help move this little drama along a bit faster. I rose up with all my strength, forcing the man sitting on my back toward the ceiling and then slammed him against the side of the van. My damaged ribs screamed from the effort.
“Help me!” I yelled through the bag. “They are killing me!” A fist slammed into the side of my head through the bag.
I heard more weapons locking into place outside.
“Help me!” I yelled again.
The door to the van rolled open. “Out! On the ground!” Three or more cops began yelling at the occupants.
One of the passengers delivered a cheap shot to my kidney as he was exiting—I guessed it was broken-nose guy.
I heard John, the cigarette guy, speak with a little more agitation in his voice this time. “We are under consulate protection,” he said. “Before you go ending your law enforcement careers, call the number on this card.”
But the police were having none of it.
“No one is doing anything until we find out what’s going on,” the cop replied as someone helped me to sit upright and then pulled the bag from my head.
Oxygen! I thought as I gulped in the cool evening air, almost as if I had been holding my breath the entire time I was being abducted.
I looked down at the source of the nagging pain on my chest and saw the bandage had come undone under my clothing; a wet red spot was leaking through my shirt. One of the police officers saw it and motioned for a medic, who walked over and cut my shirt off to examine the source of the bleeding. He gasped and suddenly all eyes were on the ugly burns on my chest, arm, and shoulder and the compression bandages wrapped around my ribs.
“Oh shit,” I heard one of the men on the ground mutter.
“We had nothing to do with that,” John said defensively as the medic began to examine my bloody face.
Kathrin watched me from the crowd with a look of worry on her face. I gave her a wink to let her know I was okay. She seemed to relax a bit, but her brow remained creased with concern.
The police handcuffed the men on the ground as the medic tended to me. After cutting the ties on my wrist, one of the officers nodded his head toward my abductors before saying something in Dutch. Several cops dragged the men across the alley and stationed them against the wall, all the while weapons trained on them.
It was a few moments before I was allowed to stand. Now that I had my breath back, the night chill began assaulting my naked torso and a shiver ran up my spine.
“I’m cold,” I said, grabbing the attention of the officer who had been watching over me. “Can I get a jacket?”
A nearby medic heard the request and held out a blanket. The officer took it and handed it to me. “Does this work?” he asked.
I took i
t gratefully and put it around my shoulders. After a moment, I shrugged off the corner. It was irritating to my wounds.
“Actually, my room is right up there,” I said, pointing up at the third floor window of the hotel. “Would it be okay if I sent my friend up to grab me a new shirt and my jacket?”
I glanced down at my bloody chest to emphasize my condition. He appraised the shredded state of my shirt and the wounds before looking into the crowd.
“Who your friend is?” he asked in a thick Dutch accent.
I pointed toward Kathrin. He instantly recognized her as the woman whose screams had drawn the police in the first place, so he gestured to her. As she made her way through the crowd, I dug into my pocket for my room key.
She stepped up to me with a concerned look on her face. “What is happening?” she asked in a lowered voice.
Trust her, my new inner voice whispered into my ear. I jumped visibly, startled, drawing the attention of the officer who glanced back in my direction.
“I’m not sure,” I said, handing her my room key. “Can you do me a favor and get a shirt and a jacket out of my room?”
“Sure thing,” she said and then turned to go.
“Stop her. Don’t let her go to his room alone,” John shouted from his place against the wall.
The policeman in charge looked at John and then at Kathrin. Clearly deciding it was a prudent idea, despite the source of the suggestion, he motioned for one of the other officers to go with her.
While all eyes were on Kathrin and the second officer, I reached into my bag and pulled out my phone, tapping the skull and crossbones app and then punching in my four digit code. The screen flashed once and then displayed a status bar.
“Hey. Don’t let him use his phone!” broken nose exclaimed.
They all looked in my direction. I shot them a confused, incredulous look, and then put my phone back in my bag to finish running its wipe and restore out of sight. It was dark now, and I still didn’t have my shirt.
It was only a few minutes later when a large, black SUV rolled up at the Damstraat end of the alley, stopping at the entrance of the alleyway as it couldn’t get any closer. Several people got out and walked toward the sprawling scene, flashing badges and papers at everyone who challenged them. There were four of them approaching—one man in a suit, two in street clothes, and a woman in business attire.
