by Eric Beetner
“Is there any word about Lauren?”
“None yet, I’m afraid.” O’Brien held his true thoughts inside like no secret he’d ever held from her, and he’d been holding on to some whoppers in recent years. His job right then, much like his job with the rest of the citizens of the city, was to reassure her. The last thing he was going to tell her was that Lewis was waiting down the hall for him to make up his mind whether he wanted to have his own daughter killed to keep his secrets safe. “It’s going to be fine though, Lori. They have their best man on the job.”
“What do you mean, like a negotiator or something?”
“Something like that. Now you know there’s nothing more we can do, so don’t go obsessing over it and driving yourself crazy.”
“Then what else am I supposed to do? I can’t go around acting like everything is normal.”
O’Brien got up from his desk and went to the bar. He poured his wife two fingers of gin, threw in a splash of tonic and dropped in a wedge of lime. He brought it to her and kissed her cheek before handing off her favorite drink. He loved how old fashioned she was about her alcohol.
“I know it’s maddening, dear.” He motioned for her to sit and then perched himself on the edge of his desk. “We’re going to get her back. Don’t worry about it. These things take time.”
It took every ounce of his best political mask to keep from breaking into a run for the bar again and drinking gulps of scotch straight from the decanter. His lies by omission to his wife and his constituents had become a way of life, but to so boldly lie to her face about the life and possible death of their only child was testing his façade like never before. He finally understood how guys like Bill Clinton and John Edwards felt when they stood in front of TV cameras with their wives an arm’s length away and lied through their teeth about the women they were seeing, or at least getting blown by.
But would Bill ever contemplate ordering Chelsea to be taken out?
Lori took a long gulp of her drink, draining half of it in one. “I never thought this would happen to our family, Mike. I mean, it’s terrorism. It’s the same thing.”
“Let’s not fly off the handle here. It’s terrible and it’s scary, but the men involved are petty criminals, not international terrorists. I know it feels that way to us here and now, but this will be over soon and we can get back to normal.”
“Back to the election?” There was vinegar in her voice. Bitter, blaming of her husband.
“Among other things, yes.”
“Just don’t use this to score points, okay, Mike?”
O’Brien swallowed hard. “Okay.”
“You promise?”
“How would I anyway? This isn’t the sort of thing you set up a photo op for.”
Lewis entered again without knocking. He stopped short on the rug when he saw Lori. “Oh, sorry. Mr. Mayor, we need to go prep for the press conference. We’ve only got twenty minutes.”
Lori gave her husband a chilly look. In a city of disappointed voters, she was number one on the list. She finished her drink in one more gulp and set it down.
“Give me a minute, Lewis.”
Lewis backed out of the office like a good servant.
O’Brien took his wife’s hand, cold from the ice in her drink. He placed his other hand on top of hers, feeling the protruding diamond ring setting on her engagement ring, the one he’d had redone with a diamond twice the size of what he originally gave her twenty-six years ago.
“There are political realities and there are political opportunities. This is only a reality. I want to be the one to announce her abduction, not some news anchor getting a scoop. This isn’t about the election. All I care about it getting Lauren home.”
“I get it.” Lori swigged the rest of her drink and stood. “That’s when the photo op happens. Mayor and daughter tearfully reunited.” She crossed to the door. “Hope you have some onions in your pockets so you can make some convincing tears.”
CHAPTER 15
“What’s the time?” Chief Schuster sat in the back of the tactical truck feeling pangs of a long dormant claustrophobia.
“Forty-two minutes, Chief.”
“Too soon for me to worry?”
The officer in charge nodded. Schuster resumed watching the tiny video screens displaying nothing. Shots of trees surrounding the old office park. They’d parked so far away to avoid detection by Tat’s goon squad that they’d rendered themselves useless. He could be back in his office for all the damn good he was doing here. He could be in a bar somewhere drinking a single malt or getting a massage from a teenage Thai girl. He could think of lots of ways to better spend his time, and he had plenty of wasted time to think.
Sending Dale in after the girl had been a punt. Nobody could come up with a better plan. The final consensus was to try this and when it failed, send in some real firepower. But if they went in heavy first, they’d be crucified in the media. So sending Dale, a crooked goddamn cop, wasn’t exactly sending in Seal Team 6.
Schuster had to admit a little bit of a payback element in his decision to go along with Dale as the inside man. He wouldn’t cry any tears if Dale ended up with a bullet in his back. Or his front. Dirty cops made the whole department look bad. And the buck stopped with the chief, so the inevitable fallout questions wouldn’t go to Dale, they’d go to Schuster. And then the mayor’s office would need to act tough and properly outraged, so they’d hang him out to dry.
He was in what you’d call a no-win situation. Unless Dale could do it. Unless that weaselly little crap factory could make good on his promise from the elevator to do his damnedest to pull off the near impossible. He had the motivation—to keep his ass out of jail. But they all knew he was going up no matter what. But for how long hung in the balance.
Schuster hated the idea of Tat and his empire, and how helpless he felt to do anything about it. Handcuffed by the mayor’s office into inaction, for whatever hidden bureaucratic decision lay behind that call. And now sending in a crooked cop to do a hero’s work.
Crap. Maybe he should get drummed out of office. This was the dumbest damn decision of his career.
“I need some goddamn air. This place is like a coffin.”
He stood up, hunched over in the back of the van. The officer in charge opened his mouth to protest but saw Schuster’s determination and a glisten of sweat on his forehead and decided to let him go.
9TH FLOOR
This is all my fault, thought Lauren. Until that moment she could easily lay the blame at her father’s feet, at Tat’s, at this weird bulldozer of a rescuer. But no, she had to admit, none of this would be happening if she hadn’t tried to get all Geraldo on this story and go into the lion’s den or snake pit or whatever you would call this fifteen-story death trap. Okay, fourteen with that phantom thirteenth floor.
Men had been killed. Bad men, but still. And now an elderly lady had been cold-cocked because of Lauren. All in pursuit of a story, which she also had to admit was a thinly veiled attempt at poking her dad with a stick. When she started she had no idea she’d turn up so much on him. She knew nothing of the extent to his corruption. She thought of the political ads that were currently skewering him and making accusations. She had to laugh. If they only knew.
She felt bad. Guilty. Like a spoiled child. She was still going to write the article though. First in a series. The corruption, the abduction, and the escape. She might leave out the KO’d septuagenarian, but she still had her eyes on the prize. She needed evidence. Facts. Paperwork, something. If she could only get to Tyler…and if Tyler hadn’t already heard about their escape. Sure, he worked in accounting, but he was still a good soldier, loyal to Tat. If he found out he was being used…
Dale pressed the first-floor button in the elevator and cast a last glance at the gaudy and lavish living quarters of Tat’s mom. The tacky furniture, bad art, and faux opulence made him wonder who the hell had come out to this abandoned office park and done c
ontractor work to turn a floor of a glass-walled office building into a condo for Scarface’s mother.
As the elevator doors closed, smooth jazz filled the steel box. Grateful to be on his way out, he let loose a long exhale. The ticking clock in his head finally started slowing, too. He had to have burned close to an hour of his allotted time, but now freedom was only a short right straight down. His mind could drift away from the simple here-and-now thoughts of brute survival.
He’d tried to be good. Tried to do the right thing. Really, he could have told Schuster to fuck off. Taken his turn at bat in front of a judge and dealt with whatever sentence was handed down. He didn’t have to make this good faith extraction behind enemy lines. But that’s where he was.
Tat was the enemy. Him and all of his kind. When Dale walked in, he’d been one of them, worthy of any of the bullets the men had gotten today. All of them could have been etched with Dale’s name. But now, with a girl to save and a wife to rescue, he knew he stood on the right side again. He also knew it would be too late. But at least he knew.
“Gonna be good to get the hell out of here.”
The elevator moved and he felt his stomach drop a bit as it began the descent.
Lauren nodded but looked at her feet. “Yeah. Sure will.” She looked up at him. “Hey, would you mind if we make a quick stop on the fourth floor? You see my contact, Tyler—”
Before she could finish the bell dinged and the elevator slowed to a stop. The digital readout indicated 9. One floor down. Someone had pressed the button.
Dale moved his body in front of Lauren as he turned to face the opening doors. He’d been given no time to reach around and draw his gun.
The man on the landing to the ninth floor was more shocked than they were when the doors opened. His eyes went wide and he took a single step back as he quick-drew his pistol from a hip holster.
His ear hadn’t even stopped bleeding and Dale found himself in another fight for his life.
Dale had no choice but to lunge forward and put a hand under the barrel of the 9mm, giving the shooter a level stare. He shoved the gun upward and the man fired a round that pierced the ceiling of the elevator. Dale’s hand flared hot from the shot. He let go and made a fist with his good hand. He cracked the man across the jaw and the shooter went soft in the knees.
Lauren screamed as bits of the plastic light cover fell on her head. She cowered in the tiny elevator, no place to run.
Dale brushed aside the pain in his hand and reached up to wrench the gun from the strange man’s grip. Still reeling from the punch, the gun came loose easily. Dale grabbed the man by the T-shirt and went to shove him forward, but the man snapped to attention. He countered Dale’s shove and pushed forward himself, a bigger and stronger man than Dale.
Dale’s feet scrambled to stay beneath him as he backpedaled. Dale pulled, using the man’s own momentum against him and spun, whirling them both into the open elevator.
Lauren screamed again.
Dale pushed the man to the floor, his legs flopping over the tops of Lauren’s shoes.
“Out.” Dale barked the order as he let go of the T-shirt and aimed the gun. Lauren yanked her feet free and hopped over the body in front of her, tangling her legs in his. She bumped Dale as she leaned for the elevator door which was trying to close again and again but kept bumping against the man’s sprawled legs. Lauren got free of the tangle and stumbled into the dark entryway. The floor was polished concrete, the walls dark grey.
Kicking at the man’s legs, Dale held the gun on him while trying to stuff the man into the elevator. The man pulled his left leg inside, away from Dale’s kicks. He put a hand down around his ankle and came back with a small pistol.
Dale leaned and started backing away. The man got off two shots before the door closed on him. Both went over Dale’s head.
He turned to see Lauren standing in front of a thick metal door leading into the rest of the floor. “Go. Just go.”
Lauren turned and stepped into a long dark hallway. Dale followed then turned on the door, slammed it shut like a set of prison bars and turned a heavy crank to lock the door solidly from the inside. When the man made the return trip to the ninth floor on the elevator, no way could he get inside. It gave Dale an uneasy feeling to think of what might be waiting for them on the ninth floor that required such a heavy and impenetrable set of doors, but his more immediate survival took priority.
Dale stared down the hall. As tacky and opulent as the floor above was, this was sparse and cold. The hall was merely polished subfloor, shiny concrete in a dark grey. So were the walls. On either side of the hall were rows of doors much like the dorm floors, but there were all heavy steel with thick rivets like a ship’s hull. They each had a thin opening about eye level with a thick plexiglass window.
“What is this?”
Lauren peered into the window of the first door. “I read about this but wasn’t sure it was real. These are torture rooms.”
Dale nearly shivered. He was reluctant to look through any of the windows.
“They’re like cells.” Lauren seemed genuinely fascinated. Seeing the rooms in person appeared to make her forget all about their assailant.
Dale hadn’t forgotten. “Torture rooms?” He gave in to curiosity and peeked through a window. Inside was a nearly empty room, except for a single chair in the center under a cone of overhead light. The chair had arm and leg restraints and looked to Dale like a decommissioned electric chair. “Jesus…”
“Yeah. Kinda crazy, huh?”
They started walking door to door, looking in as they passed. Empty room after empty room, some with more equipment than others. Dale saw a wall rack. One set up with a tub for water to simulate drowning. One had what looked like a workbench with tools. None of them had any people in them, and Dale was grateful.
He continued to grip the gun in his burned hand.
Lauren let out a gasp. Dale stepped over to the window she’d looked through. There was a man inside, strapped to a chair like Dale had seen before. He was naked and his face pummeled bloody. Thick black cables ran from heavy clips on his pectorals to a bank of car batteries. It looked like they lifted the entire chassis from a Prius and brought it into the room.
Clamps pinched his nipples, his ears, one on each hand and finally his scrotum. Dale winced. The pressure of the heavy clips alone would be agony, let alone getting electric shocks.
Dale looked again, but there was no one inside with him.
Lauren turned the knob and the door opened.
Dale reached for the knob to snatch it back, but the door had swung too far inside. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Don’t you want to help him?”
“I don’t even know him. Maybe he’s the bad guy.”
“You really think that?”
Dale didn’t. He stepped into the room. Once in, he noticed the man’s feet sitting in a bucket of water. The areas on his body where the cables made their connection were bright red and turning to dark purple. Raised blisters dotted the areas of contact and a sour, cooked meat smell hung in the air. Dale couldn’t help thinking this could be him if Tat ever caught up with them. If he hadn’t fought his way out of the office upstairs, he might already be down here with cables clamped to his junk.
Dale peered closer at him. “You alive?”
The man jolted like he’d been shocked again. He pried his swollen eyes open and recoiled at the sight of a new face. He turned to see Lauren and shrank in the chair. She made a point of not looking down at his naked crotch and the jumper cables clamped there.
“It’s okay. We’re gonna get you out of there.”
Dale stowed the new gun and started unclamping the naked man. He started with the ears and worked his way down to the genitals where he did not like what he saw when he removed the clamps. Each clamp had taken almost all of Dale’s grip strength to remove. Putting one of those on your body would hurt like a bitch, and he knew i
t.
The testicles under the clamp were dark purple. Blood under the surface. Swollen too, like hard boiled eggs.
Dale put a hand under the man’s armpit. The naked man tried to help in the effort to get him standing, but he was so weak, he couldn’t keep a grip on Dale’s arm.
The man slid forward, his skin slick with sweat and oil. Dale couldn’t hold him. Lauren clamped a hand over her mouth as she watched the tortured man slump to the floor.
Dale reached down to try to get him back up, but he felt different somehow. Dale felt the need to check his pulse. He poked at his neck for a minute before realizing it wasn’t his finger placement. The man was dead.
There was a rustling behind them. Dale and Lauren both turned to see a man in the doorway. Hanging from his hands was a fresh set of jumper cables. He wore a black rubber apron, knee-high rubber boots and thick rubber gloves, like he was going gardening in the mud or else performing an autopsy. Either way, the job he was dressed for was going to be messy.
He gave the same slack-jawed expression the man outside the elevator had given them.
Dale drew his gun. The rubber man flicked his wrist and the jumper cables shot out like a bullwhip and the heavy brass clamps cracked against the gun metal and sent it flying from Dale’s weakened, powder-burned hand.
The rubber man yelled as he spun and flattened a palm against a large button on the wall. Round and flat like an emergency power switch. Behind Dale the bank of batteries sparked to life.
Dale hadn’t been watching where he tossed the cables on the floor as he released the tortured man, and now that the power returned, he discovered several of the cables touching each other and making cross connections. The exposed brass clamps started sparking where they touched, shooting a light show across the floor and jumping like snakes, separating from one closed circuit and bouncing across the floor to touch another cable for a split second and send a miniature bolt of lightning flying.