“Get in the room, bitch, I’ll be there shortly.” He pushed me forward, up a few steps and into the office. I did as I was told and went into the little room. It was a mess. There was a double bed pushed in the corner and clothes were strewn all over the place. There were half-empty bottles of bourbon on every available counter space and ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts. There was nowhere to sit but the bed and I didn’t want to touch the sheets. I did notice that there was a door against the back wall and wondered what lay behind that.
I didn’t have time to contemplate the door, or work up the nerve to explore. Too soon he was pushing through the door of the office and yanking at the make-shift curtains, plunging the room into darkness. He cursed under his breath and I heard the clattering of something and then a lantern flicked on.
“Get undressed. I want to see what I paid five cases of MREs for.” I froze. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to make a break for it, but I knew the other men would be on me before I could make it down the stairs. I also knew I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t submit to this man.
“Take your fucking dress off, bitch,” he hollered and moved toward me, his hand raised. He went for the hair, these douchebags loved to yank me around by my hair, the only vanity I had left in this fucked up world. I had let it grow, my long dark locks something I had always been proud of. I was shaving it if I ever got out of this shit.
He didn’t let me undress on my own. I heard the flick of a switchblade, that unmistakable clicking pop that announced the releasing of the blade. Then he was slicing through the too tight dress. The dress that I had thought covered so little, I now realized covered so much.
I was butt-ass naked beneath the dress. The old skank hadn’t even given me a bra. He yanked harder on my hair and I whimpered. His rough hands pawed at me and I made the mistake of looking at him, meeting his dilated eyes, unfocused from the drugs. He looked insane, he looked hungry. This was really going to happen. He was going to rape me.
He pushed me hard and I fell down on the bed, sprawling across it. I pulled myself up, trying to cover my body with my legs and arms, anything to retain some amount of dignity.
I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t watch what he was doing, but I heard the distinct sound of leather on leather and the sound of a belt being yanked from pants and then the sound of a zipper.
“I’m gonna fuck you, bitch, and you’re gonna like it,” he spat and I mustered the courage to look up at him. He was now completely undressed, but I couldn’t make out details since he was in the shadow from the dim lantern. I could tell he was disgusting and wrinkled. He was old enough to be my father; gray hair peppered his chest, his man boobs protruded like deflated balloons. His dick was still flaccid against his thigh and he gripped it in his hand, yanking on it in a way that didn’t look very appetizing or stimulating.
When nothing happened, I could tell he was getting frustrated because he was cursing and yanking harder. I tried to stay as still as I could. I didn’t want to give him any reason to take his attention off of his limp dick.
Nothing happened. He couldn’t get hard. I was now convinced that some higher power had my back. This was a testament to the Don’t Do Drugs campaign…the thing about chronic drug use, or just stimulants in general–they could cause erectile dysfunction. Someone couldn’t get it up.
I couldn’t help it, I smiled.
“You laughing at me, bitch?” He dropped his sad excuse for a dick and came at me fast, yanking on my ankle and dragging me to him.
The bad thing about stimulants– aggressiveness and added strength.
I barely had time to get my arms up to protect my face when the first punch hit me. It glanced off my arm but it still hurt like a bitch, he was strong. The second one landed along my jaw and had me crying out in pain. I kicked out against him, but I had taken too much in the last few days. I was as weak as a kitten and it did nothing to him.
It was like one of those dreams. Those fight dreams where you’re fighting an attacker but it feels like you’re under water. Your arms are like jelly and nothing you do even makes an impact. I tried fighting, but nothing I did had an effect on him.
And this wasn’t a dream. This was reality.
This was my new reality
. Each blow caused flashes of light to sprinkle across my vision and each one hurt a little less but a little more. At one point I wanted to die. I wanted to close my eyes and have it end.
The last one I remembered came hard against my temple and the stars that popped across my eyes quickly faded and he finally stopped. I knew I should probably try and stay awake as he lumbered across the room and grabbed for a bottle, but I just wanted to sleep. I let it take me. Sweet fucking oblivion.
ZACH
Ito, Romeo, and Jimmy came in hot. Jimmy wasn’t exactly who I would have chosen for this mission, but he was eager and had been training hard with Martinez. I wanted fucking Cole. Cole had interrogation experience, Cole wouldn’t freak when I did the things I had planned. But Cole’s wife wouldn’t let him off the island if she could help it. Guess he was sitting this one out, again.
I wanted to fault him, the pussy, but for some reason I found it reassuring. To have someone care about you enough that they bossed you around…okay, maybe it wasn’t that reassuring.
Cole should have been here.
I gathered the troops and laid out the plan. It was going to be easy. We go in, we take ‘em down and we hold them until they give up Lex and Clara. Lex could be in that house right now. She could be enduring God knew what kind of treatment and I was just sitting here, watching. Waiting for heavier darkness, waiting for optimal conditions. If my logical side hadn’t kicked in, I would have busted in with just Blake at my back. But these rednecks were wildcards. I didn’t know what kind of weapons they had, how many of them there were. It was frustrating. but it was logical. Wait, watch, then move. Standard Operating Procedure. SOP. Live by it, die by it.
“Ito, Romeo, Martinez, you’ll go up the stairs on the west side, take the back room, we’ll move in from the south entrance, take the front. Move all EC’s to the front room. Then we find Lex.”
“What if Lex isn’t on the property?” Baby asked.
“Then we interrogate them, treat ‘em like ECs, the usual.”
“So, we do this? We’re treating them like Enemy Combatants? Do we have intel that they are the ones that took Clara and Lex?” Baby asked, but she didn’t look like it mattered, just asking a question, no opposition.
“From this point, you’re with us or against us, there isn’t a gray area,” Blake spoke up from the back of the room. “No matter what, these are the men that have fired on us and tried to take down Ito. They’re the enemy, even if they didn’t take Lex.”
“They took Lex, end of story. They’ll pay with their lives,” I said stubbornly. They had to have taken Lex. If it wasn’t this group then there were no other leads, no other options.
“Well, then let’s get her back.” Baby clapped her hands and as usual I wasn’t sure if she was being sarcastic or if she was behind me. She was so hard to read. She followed orders like a champ, but her dry sense of humor was hard to interpret.
The landscape was pitch black when we converged in the ground floor patio area. I only had two pairs of night vision goggles. I handed them to Blake and Martinez. I could do without. The plan was simple. We were ready. Two quick hand signals and we split, my group heading toward the highway, Martinez and his group heading toward the lake.
We had to make this quick. We had to go up the stairs and hit the house before the occupants inside could muster any of their weapons and defend themselves. We also needed to take them alive.
Most of them.
I quickly crossed the expanse of marshy grass toward our target. Blake was at my rear and Baby five paces to my right. We made it to the bottom of the stairs and I waited until Martinez confirmed that they had made it to the other access stairwell.
“Go,” I spoke harshly into the com and we all moved as one up the stairs. I didn’t hesitate when I hit the porch. I went straight for the door and kicked it in. The door was weatherproofed and reinforced but it went in easily from the force of my kick. There were two men sitting on the sofa, their bloated faces staring at us with stunned shock. I pointed my rifle at the two, recognizing the one furthest from me as the douchebag from the truck.
They were well-trained in the art of obedience. With the rifles, combat gear and precision movements it was obvious we were military or police. Their hands went right into the air and their mouths opened and closed with inaudible defensive sounds. No opposition here.
“Down on the ground,” I shouted. They obeyed and Baby and Blake were quickly on them, zip-tying their wrists and pressing guns to the back of their heads just for a bit of psychological reinforcement.
Obey or die.
This wasn’t our first rodeo.
My head shot up when I heard a weapon discharge. Handgun, small caliber.
It wasn’t one of ours.
“Hannah.” I motioned for her to follow me and we made our way down the hallway, kicking open door after door. We found a woman cowering in the bathroom. She was an older woman, overweight and unkempt. She had the handgun clutched in her hands which were shaking like a poodle with palsy. She had discharged on accident.
“Put the weapon down!” I yelled.
“Ya gonna shoot me if I do,” she called back her voice wavering, scared.
“We’re not going to shoot you. Put the gun down. You can’t even do any damage to us, we’re all wearing body armor.”
“Are you the police?” She asked, her hand dropping down.
“No ma’am,” Baby said, pushing into the bathroom, grabbing the gun from her hand just as her arm dropped to the floor. She clicked the safety and then under-hand pitched it over to me. I checked the chamber and then pushed it into the waistband of my pants.
Baby pulled on the woman to get her to her feet, which was quite a task, she was being obstinate and had to outweigh Baby by at least a buck. The woman was now sobbing and blubbering. Her dramatics seemed a little forced so I kept the gun trained on her.
“Get to your fucking feet,” I ordered.
The woman finally did as she was told. Baby quickly tied her hands behind her and I backed out of the room. Turning, I headed down the hall, Baby pushing the woman behind me.
Martinez came in, leading another man from the back. He put him on the floor next to the other two. Blake had set up lanterns so the whole room was illuminated and Ito moved the tables out of the way so there was plenty of room to work.
“She’s not here,” Martinez said, meeting my eyes. I had already figured this out, unless they had her stashed somewhere, she wasn't in this house. Or they had dumped her dead body…
could not think that way.
“Put the old woman on the sofa, she should get the best view,” I said to Baby. “Martinez, Ito, take watch at the entrances. Let’s get this over with. Blake…
BLAKE
Zach never had the stomach for interrogation, so when he looked over at me I knew what he was asking. Neither one of us had taken point on operations like this when we were in the shit, that was something you left up to the spooks. But, we were almost always on site at any black operations that involved our muscle. As the officer, I was sometimes asked to sit in on monitoring the interrogations to provide clarification. I had never gotten my hands dirty before though. I knew how to do it, had even had it done to me in SERE training. It wasn’t fun. But it didn’t kill you.
“Sit ‘em up,” I ordered. Zach and Baby pulled on the men until they were on their knees, lined up in front of me, a captive fucking audience. They were scared. I could almost smell it on them, among other things. They all stank, body odor and grease, clothes drenched with so much sweat they smelled like piss. It was rank, they could all use a good bath.
Not one of them had a full set of teeth, or a full head of hair. I had to hold back the urge to just lay into them. What had they done to Alexis? To think that she was forced to come with these men, that they might have done something to her had the rage boiling over inside me.
Had they raped her? Had these nasty subpar humans touched her?
I slipped my rifle off my arm, just in case I was tempted to use it. I couldn’t kill them, we needed info. We were just assuming they took Alexis. We had to be sure. We had to find out what they did to her. We had to find out where she was. This would take more finesse than bashing heads.
“Last night you took two women from Highway 90. They were driving a white SUV, you took them and left the SUV,” I said it as fact, I wasn’t asking a question, they had to know I knew.
I looked down at the men for confirmation. None of them could look me in the eye.
“Two women, one short and blonde, the other tall and brunette, both attractive. You brought them to the bait shop a mile from here. We found your other man…the one we saw with you.” I stood in front of the man from our earlier confrontation. “You took the women, where are they?”