Lockdown rl-1

by Sean Black

  On the kitchen counter her PDA blinked red. She picked it up and scrolled through the emails. There was a fresh one from Gail Reindl giving her the overnights. Gail wanted to congratulate her in person when she got into the office. That anchor job was getting closer.

  Angel had taken up position at the door and was barking. Carrie went back into the bedroom, threw on some sweats and tied her hair back in a ponytail. She grabbed Angel’s leash from the closet next to the door, along with a jacket, and headed downstairs. In the lobby, the doorman greeted them both.

  Outside it was still cold, but the sky was bright blue and the sun was shining. The weather reflected Carrie’s mood. She half walked, half jogged to the end of the block. Angel trotted alongside her, occasionally outpacing her and straining on the leash, desperate to get to the park.

  Carrie gave the leash a sharp tug as they reached the crosswalk. ‘Hey, easy there.’

  The dog stopped and looked up at her. The sign flashed WALK.

  ‘Now we can go.’

  Carrie stepped off the sidewalk. She didn’t even see the Hummer as it ran the light and barrelled straight towards her, ten thousand pounds of chaos doing forty miles an hour and picking up speed with every foot of blacktop rolling beneath it. She looked up at the last minute, and hauled herself and the dog back up on to the sidewalk as the vehicle’s rims scraped the concrete at the top of a drainage hole.

  An old man in his sixties, milk-bottle-thick glasses, touched her arm. ‘Are you OK?’

  Her heart was drumming against her chest. Her whole body seemed to be vibrating. It was coming straight for me! she thought.

  ‘Those damn things don’t belong on the roads!’ the old man shouted after the receding Hummer as it ran the next lights, slowed, and swung left out of sight.

  Fifty-two

  ‘Man, we should have popcorn for this.’

  Brand was like a guy who has to go to work at the start of the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl and decides to TIVO the whole game to watch later. As soon as Lock was inside the cell he’d radioed the CCTV operator to make sure to dump the footage from Mareta’s cell on to hard drive.

  ‘You got it cued up?’

  The operator nodded. ‘All ready to go. This one here,’ he said, pointing to the centre screen in a bank of monitors.

  The image was frozen: Mareta, the grieving widow, staring down at the wounded soldier as he crawled his way towards her.

  ‘Man, when this is over, I’m uploading this shit on to Live Leak. Come on, lemme see.’

  The operator hit play, and Brand leaned forward to enjoy the action.

  Lock had had a few things already worked out before the door into the cell had opened. It was clear that Brand was enjoying himself immensely and in a manner that went way beyond the satisfaction he would have gotten from just locking him up. Something lay on the other side of the door that was giving Brand one hell of a woody.

  From the design of the building, both inside and out, Lock was clear it hadn’t been built just to prevent escape, but also to limit and contain movement to the nth degree. That meant the occupants were deemed dangerous to staff.

  Lock had readied himself for a fight. To the death, if necessary. His or the other guy’s. Then Brand had dropped the bomb about Carrie. Brand had obviously expected the news to cut Lock off at the knees, but it had had the opposite effect. He’d felt a surge of energy, and with it a surge of adrenalin. Even in his diminished physical state he’d felt that the raw anger would carry him through.

  When he looked up from the floor of the cell to see a woman, the decision had been simple. Natalya dumped in the East River with her brains blown out. Carrie, the victim of an unfortunate ‘accident’. Two dead women was enough.

  He lay still and waited.

  ‘You sure this thing’s working?’ Brand asked, slamming a meaty hand down next to the keyboard.

  Lock and the detainee had hardly moved on the tape. Just remained where they were, watching each other in some goddamn Mexican stand-off.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the operator replied.

  ‘Move it on. Let’s get to the action.’

  The operator moved his mouse, pulling the slider along. The woman jerked forward as Lock lay on the floor.

  ‘OK. There.’

  On screen, Mareta laid the knife down on the floor. Still within reach should she need it. Then she knelt down next to Lock and helped him to his feet.

  ‘What the hell?’ Brand exploded. He’d got halfway through the first quarter only to find one of the defensive linesmen break through and start waltzing with the opposition quarterback.

  Mareta had heard the men approaching. Even after all this time she hadn’t been able to escape the low dread that clouded her mind as the cell door opened. She’d tensed and then relaxed each part of her body. Less chance of breaking a bone if you were relaxed. Bruises and lacerations were one thing, but she’d spent three months in a prison in Moscow with a fractured fibula and no medical attention. The bone had healed on its own but left her with a limp and the memory of the intense pain.

  They’d rushed in, one at a time. The biggest of them had dragged her off the bed and pinned her shoulders against the wall. The other man had reached down to her waist and grabbed her wrists with one hand while his other hand fumbled in his pocket. There was a click and one of her hands was free. She’d waited for him to uncuff her other hand and scratched at his face. She’d felt his skin wedging in a strip under her nails. She’d tried to get hold of his hair but it was too short. He’d shouted at her, calling her a bitch, and punched her in the face.

  She’d gone down under the force of that punch. One man had sat on her chest and the other on her legs, sending a shard of pain shooting up her left leg, the one that had been broken back in Moscow. She’d heard the shackles clanking against the concrete as they too were taken off.

  The men had then retreated from the cell, and she’d run at the door as it closed. Slamming her fists against the steel. She’d heard a door open and slam shut. Then they’d come back, her cell door opened again, and another man was thrown inside.

  He was dressed normally. He looked American, or at least how she imagined Americans looked when they weren’t in uniform. His hair was shorter than the guards’ and he had a fresh scar that ran along the top of his head. He’d looked from the knife to her but made no move towards it, not even when she bent down to pick it up.

  His gaze had met hers. There was no fear in his eyes. She’d held the knife in a hammer grip like she’d been taught by her husband. Still he hadn’t moved. They’d stayed that way for what seemed like an eternity. She’d sensed he was conscious of the knife but he never looked at it. Not once.

  Then, finally, he’d spoken. ‘I’m not going to fight you. So if you’re going to do it, then let’s get it done.’

  She’d looked from the man to the unblinking eye of the camera mounted in the corner, put down the knife, and put out her hand. He’d taken it, and she’d helped him on to his feet.

  Back in the control room, Brand had tired of the love-in. ‘OK, go live.’

  The operator punched a key. The screen went blank. The operator hit it again.

  ‘What is it? What’s the problem?’ Brand asked, agitated.

  ‘We’re not getting any signal from that camera.’

  ‘Try again.’

  ‘I just did.’

  Brand kicked out at the wall in frustration. Half an hour ago the cell had been occupied by a solitary woman, cuffed and shackled. Now it was her, Lock and a knife. What the hell had gone wrong?

  Fifty-three

  Lock handed the knife back to Mareta — a calculated show of trust he hoped he wouldn’t have cause to regret. If he was going to get out of here he’d need her cooperation.

  An alarm that had been shrieking in the background for the past five minutes fell silent. Lock prowled the cell, examining its construction from every angle. Mareta watched him.

  ‘The only way out is through the door,�
�� she said.

  ‘You speak English? Sorry, stupid question.’

  ‘They don’t know I understand them,’ she said, nodding to the disembowelled camera which lay on the bed.

  ‘Who are you? Why are you here?’

  ‘My name is Mareta Yuzik.’

  That piece of information alone went most of the way to answering both questions. Lock wouldn’t have recognized her face, because very few people had seen it. And most of those who had were dead. But he sure as hell knew the name. In fact, it sent an involuntary shudder all the way from the base of his spine to the back of his neck.

  Mareta was the most infamous of Chechnya’s black widows, women whose husbands had been killed by the Russians and who operated as suicide bombers in the Chechens’ bloody guerrilla war to win independence from the motherland. Mareta’s husband had been a notorious Chechen warlord. But that wasn’t what had made her exceptional. What made her stand out was the fact that she’d disavowed martyrdom to assume command of her former husband’s group of fighters.

  Mareta’s band had spent the last few years on a murderous rampage. Lowlights included the wholesale slaughter of some of Moscow’s prime movers and shakers during a performance by the Bolshoi. Demonstrating a horrifyingly accurate understanding of the theatricality required to get yourself noticed as a terrorist in the modern world, Mareta had kicked off proceedings by personally beheading the lead ballerina live on stage. Of course, where the newly rich Russians were, so were their bodyguards. A firefight had taken place during which the respective close protection teams took out more of each other’s clients in the crossfire than the Chechens managed. The finale had been a huge explosion.

  In that particular puff of smoke, Mareta and her comrades had disappeared, leading to speculation that the whole thing was a putup job by the Kremlin, who’d seen one of their main political rivals taken out during the outrage. The apparatchiks had seen it as a happy coincidence.

  Mareta’s follow-up was no less demanding of world headlines. Her fighters entered a kindergarten just over the border from Chechnya and held two dozen infants hostage before slaughtering them in cold blood, taping events for posterity. Once again, Mareta slipped into the night before the building was overrun and most of her fighters were killed by Russian special forces.

  It was this second escape which had earned her the nickname of the Ghost in the Russian media. There had been numerous sightings of her since then, including in northern Iraq, Pakistan and Helmand Province. Her popping up here beat them all.

  Lock decided to follow Mareta’s lead and play dumb. ‘Do you know why you’re here?’

  ‘To die,’ she said, matter of factly.

  ‘Are the other people they brought here also from your country?’

  ‘Some. Some from other places.’ She picked at a hang nail with the tip of the Gerber. ‘Now, let me ask you the same question you asked me. Why are you here?’

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  Mareta glanced around the cell. ‘Maybe we have a long time.’

  Lock trusted his new cellmate about as much as Brand, so he gave her an edited version of events, telling her he was an investigative journalist looking into the activities of a drug company.

  ‘You have investigative journalists, right?’

  ‘Investigative?’ She rolled the word around in her mouth like it was the funniest thing she’d heard. ‘Yes, we have these people. The government kills them.’

  She was clearly a glass-half-empty kind of a gal.

  ‘So when I was looking around this place,’ Lock continued, ‘they found me, beat me up. I guess they threw me in here hoping you’d finish me off.’

  Mareta listened calmly. She paced to the door and back again, making shapes in the air with the blade of the knife. ‘So why do you think I’m here?’

  ‘You mean, what would a drug company want with you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think you’re a guinea pig.’

  ‘Guinea pig?’

  ‘Yes. They’re going to use you to see if something they’re developing is safe to use on humans.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That, I don’t know.’

  In fact, he had a couple of ideas. Mareta’s presence here had to have been sanctioned at the highest level. Maybe a private deal between governments. Maybe Meditech was developing something which the Russians thought could open her up for interrogation. Both the CIA and KGB had chased down so-called ‘truth’ drugs during the Cold War, everything from sodium pentathol to a more orthodox tongue loosener like whisky, or a picture of the target in a compromising position. In a world where quality intelligence could save thousands of lives, something surefire would be worth more than its weight in gold.

  ‘So, which paper do you work for?’ Mareta asked.

  ‘I’m freelance,’ Lock said. It was only half a lie, but Mareta’s expression told him that she didn’t buy it — and neither did he for that matter. It wasn’t such a bad thing to be crap at playing dumb, he supposed.

  Mareta stopped pacing the cell and approached Lock. She held the point of the knife about a foot from his right eye — not close enough for him to take it from her. ‘And say I don’t believe you.’

  Lock did his best not to blink. He knew that arguing would make him seem even more suspicious. ‘Not much I can do about that.’

  She kept the tip of the blade where it was. ‘They tried this once before. In Moscow. They put me in a cell with another woman. I made sure she would never have children. And that time, I had no knife.’

  ‘You were captured?’

  ‘Twice. Twice I escaped.’

  Lock glanced at the knife, then shifted his gaze back to Mareta. ‘So if you think I’m a spy, why haven’t you killed me already?’

  ‘Getting information from someone can go two ways. I have learned more from my interrogators over the years than they ever learned from me.’

  ‘No shit.’

  ‘Please don’t use such words.’

  Lock made a mental note.Likes: public decapitation. Dislikes: Inappropriate language.

  ‘Maybe I make sure you won’t be able to make any children either.’

  She moved the knife slowly down from his face, letting it come to rest level with his crotch.

  Fifty-four

  Lock sat on the floor with his back against the cell wall. All he was missing to complete the Steve McQueen look was a baseball.

  ‘So, what do you think we should call the kids?’

  Mareta, who was on the bed, pointed the knife in the direction of his face again. ‘You talk too much.’

  ‘Just trying to pass the time.’

  ‘You should be thinking of how we get out of here.’

  ‘I thought you’d have that covered.’

  She looked straight at him. ‘And why would that be?’

  Damn. Nothing Lock had said since he’d entered the cell had in any way suggested that he knew her by reputation, and that was too close. ‘You said you’d escaped twice after being captured, didn’t you?’ he countered, thinking quickly.

  She sneered, swung her legs over the edge of the bed frame. Jabbed the point of the knife gently against his arm, like a housewife checking the chicken to see if the juices are running clear. ‘You’re not a journalist,’ she said.

  ‘And why do you say that?’

  ‘I’ve met many of them.’

  Lock flashed back to another story that Mareta had reputedly featured heavily in. Six pro-Kremlin reporters dispatched from Moscow to show how well the war effort was going in Chechnya. The first head arrived back in their Moscow office in a large brown box a week later. A day later, a second head. Within the week all the heads had been returned. Then the hands started to arrive. That took two weeks. In all, it was a three-month process. A constant drip of gruesome detail. Only their hearts didn’t make it back. Presumably they left them in Chechnya.

  ‘Most journalists are fat,’ Mareta continued. ‘From sitting on their backsides an
d sticking their noses in the government trough.’

  ‘Not here they ain’t, lady,’ Lock said. ‘We have freedom of the press.’

  ‘So does Russia. They’re free to say or write whatever they like. But somehow what they write is what the people who pay them want to hear. Big coincidence.’ She kept staring at him. ‘So, who are you?’

  She didn’t look like she was about to give up this line of questioning any time soon.

  ‘I told you already.’

  ‘You mean you lied already.’

  ‘Listen, if we’re going to get out of here in one piece, we’re going to have to trust each other.’

  ‘Trust requires honesty.’

  Lock conceded that point. He was about to break the primary rule of capture: pick a cover story and stick to it. But this wasn’t a regular situation. For one thing, Brand wouldn’t hesitate to break his cover, especially if he thought it would get him killed.

  He examined Mareta. In a straight fight it would be no contest, despite her reputation. But she had the knife. Guys who watched the Ultimate Fighting Championship might talk about knife ‘fighting’, but in reality there was no such thing. There was only getting stabbed. Quickly followed by bleeding to death.

  ‘OK, you’re right,’ he said.

  She listened calmly as he told her about working for Meditech and filled in the details leading up to his being taken prisoner at the facility. She said nothing, remained resolutely expressionless, only occasionally stopping him to seek clarification of a word or phrase she didn’t understand. The only time she reacted to Lock’s story was when he mentioned the animal rights activists and their cause. The very idea seemed absurd to her. Lock understood her scepticism. For someone who’d witnessed and enacted the slaughter of human beings, it must have seemed a foreign concept. He considered repeating the Gandhi quote that Janice had fired at him from her hospital bed, but thought better of it.

  He finished, and waited for Mareta to say something. Silence filled the space between them. Normally he would have been content with that, but what was needed now was rapport. Storytelling was about as good a way to establish that as he knew.