Ransom X

by a b

  “We have two agents in the field, we might have to move before containment.” Brent didn’t want to wait.

  “Say again.”

  “Agents in field, 6 pm deadline for Laura approaching.” He spoke in packets.

  “Laura’s broadcast has been delayed, tell your agent he has more time – hold.”

  Thoughts raced through Brent’s head, Blade had never gone off schedule. What did this mean? It was two minutes to six. Had Legacy interfered with the execution? If so, he should probably take down the men in the corner, it would at least satisfy his need to deal out some punishment. If the bartender would only get off the damn phone go in the back, he could probably shoot all of them – calculated, painful chronic injuries they’d take with themselves to the chair. With no witnesses, he could contend it was in self-defense.

  A flood of narrative from Wilkes interrupted his thoughts of revenge, pouring like salt water onto an open wound.

  “Blue just entered the frame - he’s dragging Laura in by her neck. She’s in a wig. Move your resources, agent. He’s putting her in arm restraints – oh, Christ.”

  Brent shouted. “What?”

  “He’s showing a knife to the camera. Move your resources! Now!”

  Brent hadn’t been able to make clear the fact that he had no communication with either of the agents in the field. He was as helpless as any other viewer to the atrocity. Wilkes’ usual rock solid tone began to crack, barking orders to others around him. Moments passed, as the voices in the background rose in a loud commotion.

  The words, indistinct, washed over the airwaves, occasionally popping out like a rusty nail in a clamoring construction site. Brent didn’t care much for drama. He’d once been dragged to a theater production of Pirates of Penzance by a fresh faced theater major. Brent had found himself earnestly wishing that the boat would sink, all hands on deck. Brent had a no tolerance policy for non-participants – he lived real action and couldn’t understand anyone who pretended to play a part. Wilkes voice woke him from a bad daydream and slammed him head first into nightmare.

  “OH, GOD!” His voice rattled the earpiece, then eerie silence. “It’s over.”

  Brent cast his eyes around the barroom wildly. He wanted so badly to lash out at something. He was met only with dubious stares of the bikers who had begun to pay attention to the agent’s behavior.

  Wilkes continued, clinically, “Her back’s to the camera, we can’t see the wound, but the volume of blood indicates a cut artery, she’s limp in the restraints.” His voice found a hollow reserved for those who thought they’d seen it all, only to find one gutting image left. “Never seen a girl – it’s over, wait for backup agent.” He murmured in a stupor, “Seen a hundred men die -”

  Agent Brent disconnected, he didn’t want to hear that last part, he didn’t want to hear any of it. He surged from his chair, he didn’t know what he was going to do, but it involved payback and the men in the corner. He took one step in their direction and his phone rang. He stood like a stone monument to indecision in the middle of the bar. The bikers studied him like he was somehow familiar – categorized but not identified, yet. One of them took the time to sneer and blow smoke menacingly from nostrils.

  He didn’t want to hear another word, but his sense of duty ran deeper than his vein of retribution, just barely. He pushed a button on the phone and was more than a little surprised at the hushed, disturbingly familiar voice that came across the line.

  “I’m calling to report - I’ve been calling but I couldn’t get through, but now I am.”

  “How did you get the number?” Brent demanded.

  “Well, I got this number from a girl agent –” the voice sighed, struggled to be understood like he believed cops spoke a different language “She told me to call”

  Brent noticed the slight echo, doubling the sound of his breath and it clicked for the young agent, he turned to the bar. Brent locked eyes with the man on the other end of the phone. The bartender slouched over the phone, hiding the receiver in a thick hand. Brent closed the distance between them in brisk steps, reached across the bar, his fingers reaching for the phone, disconnecting the surprised bartender. He picked up the conversation face to face without skipping a beat.

  “What did she say?”

  Burly took the sudden shift in his customary way, chewed and digested the strange turn of events like it was part of human nature. He’d seen enough strange human nature in his days that this agent appearing in front of him provided only the opportunity to deliver his message.

  “You got here fast.”

  “Where is Agent Wagner?”

  “She went up the back trail to the old church camp- little while ago.”

  His slow country drawl caused Brent visible discomfort in a time when every tick of the clock seemed to bring a fresh crisis. Burly couldn’t tell what nerve he was tapping into, so Brent courteously decided to bring him closer to examine the problem face to face. He grabbed the bartender by the shirt and pulled him across the bar with a sudden jolt. Burly’s feet scuffed around wildly searching for the ground. Brent knew he was pressing hard, too hard, and he knew it but he couldn’t stop himself. Wagner was at risk.

  “When?”

  A rumble that Brent originally mistook for a massive gastric belch escaping the fat man’s stomach erupted in the night air. It was joined by another rumble, amplified again and again. It was the sound of engines churning to life.

  The men in the corner were gone.

  Brent bolted for the door. He was outside, a wall of yellow light was aimed at the door and he squinted, staring into a row of three headlights and what struck him immediately wasn’t surprise. It was the flat, ridged grip of the gun stamped in the center of his forehead, propelled by the arm of the fat one. He was quick for a man carrying at least twice the natural weight for his frame. This lightning strike to the forehead was called the stare down, for the way it blurred the vision of the man who was hit. It was evidently the fat one’s signature move.

  “My signature move.” Mac told the teetering agent in a chummy tone.

  Brent didn’t black out, but the sudden concussion on the visual cortex made him completely incapable of fending off attackers.

  Blade usually took over when they were helpless, but tonight there were several things that didn’t go according to plan.

  “Why didn’t he go down, Mac?”

  Mac was just as surprised, “They always go down.”

  Sean didn’t want a chat, “Pop him and let’s go.”

  Vorest stepped forward and put a fist into the gut of the teetering man. His hand crunched, at first he thought it was the ribs of the man he was hitting, and a smile came to his face, but it disappeared in an instant of realization. Fist running full force into Kevlar on a cold night meant something was going to go crunch, and it wasn’t going to be the Kevlar. It was like punching a concrete wall.

  “Fucking A, my hand!” he searched the recesses of his dark mind to find the perfect word to express the moment, there it was, just where he’d left it moments before, “FUCK!”

  Mac stepped in with another blow aimed at Brent’s forehead, but this time he was ready. Even though he blinked a blurry cocktail of blood and saline from his eyes, Brent rolled his head backwards. It was a good guess, the butt of the gun skidded off of his hairline.

  Brent’s training kicked in and somehow as he rolled on the wooden porch, he found two semi-automatic glocks in his hands as he pushed himself into a crouching position. Now the only question was: where to shoot? Everything was shadow, flash and blur. He decided that since nobody in the vicinity deserved to live as it was, he’d concentrate on the shadow and blur and open fire.

  Shots rang out one after another, with no space between explosions; then with careful count and two magazines almost spent, a single bullet in each gun, Brent listened. The night had no more violence in it, there was only to the retreating sound of engines. Even in his delirium, he could tell there were only two. A bike
stood, headlight still shining on the entrance of the bar. A body slumped by its side, one of the unlucky blurs, Brent thought.

  He didn’t know that he’d actually granted the biker’s wish. Sean was finally dead. His arms were in an awkward embrace over the neck of the bike, his last gasp of air was filled with warm exhaust.

  Brent whirled on the door, pointing both smoking guns in its direction. Burly leaned out, “Don’t shoot.”

  “You set me up.” Brent yelled.

  A chuckle from the doorway. “You’re not very smart are you GI Joe?”

  Brent wasn’t sure about what made sense in the tense moments that followed, and he wouldn’t be for quite some time. Burly detected the uncertainty in the air, “There’s a saying in these parts: If you can’t trust a man with a shotgun pointed at you, who can you trust?” He pumped a shell into the chamber.

  Brent took a second to clear a thick wall of cobwebs that separated his judgment from his perceptions. He realized that the fat bartender was right, if he’d wanted him dead, he wouldn’t be talking to him. Brent lowered the weapons and as his vision began to clear he realized that he was pointing at the window rather than the door anyway.

  Burly was lifting him to his feet the next moment. The air was silent, consumed in darkness. Brent lost track of the time that Burly had gone down and turned off the motorcycle and headlight. The next thing Brent knew he was sitting in a chair in the bar, pulling bloody napkins from an old chrome holder. He knew logically that the napkins were not coming out bloody, but he could have sworn that they actually spat from the holder pre-soaked in a glistening deep ruby stream. Brent’s life became like a slide show seen through a muddy red lens. He was fighting the welcoming blackness with everything he had. Brent had to get up that mountain and warn Legacy that he’d lost containment, and with that thought, he pushed himself to his feet, or tried to. The next instant, he was lying on a broken table. All of those bloody napkins couldn’t be his, could they?

  *****

  Wagner heard a shrill whistle. The dogs appeared to judge the quality of the command before backing off. They were so close to unprotected flesh, it took a second sharp, insistent pipe before they backed down. The noise of their frantic chase had drawn the proprietor of the compound out into the night. A tall, lean specter appeared in the doorway, looking less like a man than a parchment-skinned walking cadaver. There was unbridled delight in his eyes, like he’d just come from the most satisfying moments of his ugly life.

  “Ladies?”

  Wagner shuddered. His tone was deadly sweet and incendiary, like a wisp of fairground cotton candy soaked in kerosene. She looked up and saw the flashpoint immediately, gleaming in the monstrous recessed eyes of Blade. There was something about the light entering behind Wagner that made a mosaic of colors play across his skin.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure, Darci? And you brought a friend.” Wagner’s eyes drifted from him to measure the distance between the door and where she lay. It wasn’t enough. Wagner had never seen the man before, and he’d never seen her. She might be able to explain her presence as part of Darci’s strange migration.

  Headlights flashed across the silhouette of Blade in the door, lighting up the side of his face for a moment. He stiffened up looking strangely uneasy for a moment. His voice remained calm, “The boys are back from the bar, what good timing.”

  Blade knew that the approaching rumble was not the sound of motorcycle engines. He did a quick calculation, and then let go of the door.

  Wagner heard the door creak as it eased back to a close rusty springs. The light falling across the dirty interior narrowed until only needles around the improperly hung door stretched across the interior. Blade’s voice called to her from the darkness, “Agent?”

  Wagner was sure that she’d look up to lock eyes with pure evil, but to her surprise, he was gone. There was a slap of wood against the doorframe. It made Darci shudder beneath her, and drew Wagner’s attention to the irregular breathing of the girl. She was petrified. Wagner reached down to her ankle holster and then felt the cold clammy slap of a hand that covered her own like a tourniquet. A whisper entered her ear flicking like the tongue of a snake.

  “Let’s not take out our toys - yet.” There was urgency in his voice now. It wasn’t like the playful address at his entrance, “We don’t have time to play.” Wagner whipped her head around. There was only blackness staring back at her but she could smell his stale breath hovering at an intimate distance in front of her face.

  Darci began heaving, great convulsion-like dry sobs until the contents of her stomach surfaced. It was the only time in Wagner’s life that the smell of bile was a welcome change in the atmosphere. Vomit is not always the gatekeeper for tears, but for Darci it was like her entire body remembered Blade and protested in its own way.

  “You look delicious – but you smell surprised, agent. Guns and girls in my chapel can only mean one thing. You followed the little red riding slut back to grandmother’s house.” Wagner’s eyes adjusted slightly and she recognized the geometric pattern of the primary illumination in the room. Silver moonlight filtered through a stained glass representation of the story of Cain. It was just enough light to make out the form of his attacker, more than enough to strike back.

  Her weapon was pinned down, but Wagner felt her body surge preparing a response to Blade’s hospitality. Darci must have known, felt her body change; she choked from the darkness, “Don’t do it.”

  But it was too late to change anything but the direction of the blow, palm smashing into the bridge of Blade’s nose.

  A normal man would have been incapacitated for several seconds, giving Wagner the chance to draw, but somehow Blade held onto Wagner’s hand. Wagner’s knee shot up, sunk deeply into the gaunt man’s stomach, pushing organs up against the spine before retreating. That would certainly –

  But before she could complete the thought, she felt the holster ripped from her ankle tearing the cuff of her pants. It was now in Blade’s hand, Wagner locked eyes expecting some sign of pain or shock. Instead, she found something equivalent to an orgasm in Blade’s world, and though it stemmed from pure evil, it had its roots in pure bliss.

  Darci’s voice cut the silence just before Wagner received a slap that burst blood vessels on the inside of her mouth.

  “It’s how he always wins. Pain gives him an advantage.” SMACK, her words were punctuated with a white flash.

  The dogs bayed and howled, they were keen to see the violence. Teeth, impossibly white, gleamed from lips curled in sinister snarls. The home crowd atmosphere distracted Wagner from raising her guard more quickly, at least that’s what she thought. In truth, there was almost no response that was quick enough to defend oneself from Blade. Another blow, again open handed and ferocious after a blazing fast recovery from the first. Wagner’s skin stung and she imagined the blood flooding her face looking for a way out, and finding none, permeating all of the interstitial spaces. She felt the clamp of a handcuff around her wrist and then her arm pulled like a rubber band until it met Darci’s left hand. They were cuffed in a tight embrace.

  Blade took Wagner’s second set of cuffs and pulled Darci’s right hand over Wagner’s shoulder reaching down through her crotch and meeting her left hand. Effectively both ladies ended up like a ball of yarn, the chain dug into humiliating areas leading to the discomfort of a chain link wedgie. She’d only known Blade for two minutes and he’d already degraded her. Wagner began to empathize with the bile that Darci extruded, realizing its physical presence came from a deeper understanding of the man who stood over them.

  It was the kind of mental understanding she never wanted to have. Blade tugged at the restraints. Wagner imagined that it was as much for the pleasure of seeing both women flinch as to make certain that there was no way of escaping.

  Wagner watched his every move, probing his physical weaknesses was imperative, and she made a mental list, not knowing when or if she’d ever use the information. One thing was clear
, Blade was fast, and took advantage of every weakness instantly. The strength that it took to rip the leather straps of her holster off her leg required the kind of grip that a shop vice aspired to. Anger was a gateway to a violent ecstasy just below the surface.

  She heard the creaky springs complain as they stretched open and light from the outside flooded inside. Darci’s face was white as a sheet, and the dim yellow of the lamplight, mixed with the silver blue of the moon flickered like an old movie playing over a textured stretched canvas. Except the scratches were real, and the flicker Wagner imagined was Darci’s life force so delicate that it could be snuffed out with the flip of a switch. Wagner felt pity for her; even though she hardly had the luxury or distance of sympathy, it still welled for this young lost girl. She’d come back all this way, just to see if hell was how she left it.

  Blade looked around outside for a moment, then thundered back through the door. He dragged them roughly onto a nearby battered aluminum sled, and pulled them out the door like some kind of trophy kill he needed to get home while the meat was still fresh. He left the door open and called the dogs back to their patrol.