For the Trees

by Brett Baker

  As I opened the door into the yogurt shop I turned around and saw the man looking at me. I ignored him and went inside. From my place in line I watched as he sat on his motorcycle, continued to look over his shoulder, and every few seconds looked toward the yogurt shop. The bright sunshine outside prevented him from seeing inside the building, but he kept trying.

  Just as I paid for my yogurt I watched the man reach into his front pocket, pull something out, and look down at it. He stared at it for at least half a minute, put it back in his pocket, and turned around on his bike so he was facing the door of the yogurt shop.

  I walked out of the shop with yogurt in hand and sat down at one of the tables on the sidewalk. The man smiled at me, but said nothing. He watched me for a few seconds while perched on his bike, then went inside the yogurt shop. He emerged a few minutes later with a cup of yogurt, and just as I was getting up to leave he came to my table.

  “Care if I join you?” he asked.

  “Actually, I was just leaving,” I said. “It’s all yours.”

  “Damn, that’s too bad. The only reason I bought this is so I could sit with you and eat it. Why don’t you stay and keep me company?”

  “That’s very nice of you, but I’ve got to go. Good choice with the salted caramel yogurt though. It’s the best one here.”

  The man nodded and smiled, but said nothing. I threw my container in the garbage and walked away, refusing to look back at the man, but feeling his eyes seer into me.

  I turned the corner and walked toward the El, which was a block away. The Roost’s proximity to Green line trains allowed for quick and easy navigation around Chicago. Within minutes I could be downtown and lost in the anonymous chaos afforded there. I’d used the hustle and bustle of the city to save my life from some pursuing madman on more than one occasion.

  As I put more distance between the yogurt shop and me, I gave the occasional glance back to make sure no one followed me or attacked me before I reached the train. At times I felt paranoid instead of cautious, and wondered if I’d ever be able to travel without wondering who was following me, or if The Summit had ruined that particular sense of freedom for me forever.

  Unfortunately, when one chooses to work with—or put more accurately, work against—criminals and murderers, it comes as no surprise when there’s not much of a respite from such work. If someone wants to kill me I can’t tell them they’re going to have to wait until later when I’m on the clock. Killers are unreasonable.

  So it came as no surprise when I looked back and saw Motorcycle Man walking a couple hundred feet behind me. He made no effort to hide, or avoid detection. Instead he waved, then looked over his own shoulder. I didn’t react, other than to pickup my pace.

  I looked back thirty seconds later and saw that he was within shouting distance of me. This time, instead of smiling, he started jogging toward me and said, “Hey, wait a minute!” I didn’t break stride. I still had no reason to believe that he was anything other than some guy who was trying to hit on a woman he found attractive. Most women wouldn’t have felt threatened by his actions, but then again, most women don’t work for The Summit. “Stop for a second. I need to talk to you.”

  I stopped, turned around, and said, “I can’t stop. I’ve got somewhere I need to be.”

  The man nodded, said, “Okay, okay. I know. You’re super busy, I’m sure. But you just said you couldn’t stop, yet you stopped. So you obviously have a minute. Just tell me your name.” He jogged toward me. “What’s your name? Do you live around here? I haven’t seen you before.”

  I respected the guy’s boldness, but if he thought I would tell my name to some stranger on the street and let him pick me up, then he was hopelessly delusional. And my feelings on that had nothing to do with The Summit.

  “I’m sorry, I appreciate your interest, but I’m just on my way somewhere else. I’m not from around here. Just passing through, in fact.” I gave him a hasty smile and turned to leave.

  “Wait, wait, wait. One more thing.” I stopped again, sighed, and turned around. This guy was persistent if nothing else. For a moment I considered making a run for the El station, more out of a sense of annoyance than because I felt threatened. “Can you help me with this?”

  Perhaps it was my annoyance, or maybe it was because I actually found the guy slightly attractive, but I let myself become distracted for a few seconds. When I spun around to look at him I didn’t notice he’d moved closer to the street, and had one foot in the street, and one foot on the curb. I didn’t notice he’d stopped in a spot between two parked cars, which allowed an unobstructed path to cars passing by. I didn’t notice that a large tree shielded him from people north of him, and a truck parked ahead on the corner shielded him from people south of him. And more than anything I didn’t notice the black sedan that trailed a few hundred feet behind him, driving slowly down the one-way street.

  If I had noticed any of those things I might not have approached him, but I missed all of those elements of my surroundings, so I gave him a tepid smile, and looked in his hands to see what he needed help with. I took a few steps toward him, and he turned slightly away from me, blocking his hands with his body so I couldn’t see what he was holding, but I immediately assumed he was holding his phone and had a question about something on the screen.

  “It’s just that I can’t tell…” he said, and all at once, as I took two more steps toward him to get a better look at what he was holding, he grabbed me by both wrists, pulled me toward him, and kneed me in the stomach. While he assaulted me, the black sedan gained the last few dozen feet, stopped in the street next to us, and the driver’s side backdoor swung open.

  The man pulled me toward the car, and when I resisted he expertly dug two fingers into my clavicle, forcing me toward the ground. Instead of letting me hit the ground, he dragged me by my right arm and whiplashed me into the car. Another man waited for me in the backseat, and as I careened through the door he greeted my chest with a solid fist. I felt all the oxygen immediately leave my chest. As I gasped for breath I tried to scamper back out the door I’d come through, but Motorcycle Man followed me in and pushed me back toward the middle. With the wind knocked out of me I was in no position to resist.

  One of the first things I learned while training with The Summit was to know when to stop fighting. As many Bond villains have pointed out, there are times when resistance is futile. Best to preserve energy for an opportunity to use the skills I’ve developed to break free. So as the black sedan raced down side streets, over speed bumps, and through a stop sign or two, I stared straight ahead, said nothing, and refrained from trying to break free.

  I paid attention to my surroundings. I made mental note of every turn we took, every road we passed, and the few words exchanged among Motorcycle Man, and the two fat men in the car, one on my right and one driving. I remained calm as the oxygen returned to my lungs, and waited. The men seemed to have no interest in talking to me as we drove, so I waited.

  The fat driver made his first mistake, at a stop sign and almost got us killed. Cross traffic didn’t stop, and somehow the fat driver didn’t see the massive CTA bus barreling through the bus lane, and began to pull out in front of him to speed across the intersection.

  Only a loud honk from the bus driver stopped him mid-turn, and the fat driver yelled out, “I fucking saw you,” even though he obviously hadn’t seen him.

  Four blocks later the fat driver made a second mistake when he turned right onto a busy street. Traffic was backed up at the next stoplight, and he cursed at waiting behind at least fifteen cars.

  “Just go around this,” the man to my right said.

  “Where would you like me to go?” the fat driver said, not trying to hide his agitation. “Probably not a good idea to drive on a sidewalk and attract attention during a kidnapping.”

  I chuckled at the slight relief I felt upon hearing that I was just being kidnapped and not murdered. Only in The Summit is being the victim of a kidnapping consid
ered good news. However, I’d been around enough to know that kidnappings can go wrong and turn into murders before anyone knows what happened.

  “Bus lane, idiot,” said the fat guy next to me.

  “If I get a fucking ticket I’m going to kill you,” the fat driver said as he eased the car into the far right lane, cutting off another driver who had the same idea.

  I considered asking him why he seemed not to mind kidnapping someone, but threw a fit about driving in the bus lane.

  We all have our quirks, I suppose.

  The fat driver raced past the cars that respected the bus lane and stopped at the red light with no one in front of us.

  “You’re going to have to gun it here, Claude,” said the fat man next to me. “Get out in front of these people. Otherwise we’re going to be farther back than we were before.”

  “Hey jackass, I know how to drive. Why do you think they put me behind the wheel?”

  They?

  So these men had been sent by someone. They weren’t working alone.

  Morsels of information like that frequently doomed criminals. Often some criminal would say something during an operation and not even realize he’d just given me enough information to act on, and had sealed his own doom, if not his own death. The most effective and competent criminals always kept their mouth shut. Thus I figured it safe to assume that Motorcycle Man, who hadn’t spoken a word since we got into the car, was the brains behind the operation and had the greatest chance for success.

  Claude proved to be a capable driver, and pounded the accelerator as soon as the light turned green. He swerved in front of the traffic to his left, and led the pack of cars. The damage had already been done though. I’d figured out how this would end. I just needed to wait for an opportunity to do what needed to be done, and for Motorcycle Man to react exactly how I thought he would react.

  4

  Chapter 4

  The opportunity presented itself six minutes later.

  We stopped at a red light, with only four cars ahead of us. Three cars were already stopped in the bus lane, so Claude decided to stay put. He and the fat man next to me, whose name I hadn’t yet learned, argued about the wisdom of such a decision. They’d had a long history of combativeness, judging by the enthusiasm of their bickering. Motorcycle Man kept quiet and stared straight ahead. He almost seemed unaware that anyone else was in the car. Either he focused entirely on the task at hand, or he’d grown so tired of listening to his partners argue that he’d decided to tune them out.

  Since I sat in the middle of the backseat I had a perfect angle to look at the rearview mirror. A number of cars waited directly behind us, and in the distance a CTA bus stopped at a bus stop. I had only a few seconds to evaluate my surroundings, and the three men in the car with me. If everything went perfectly then I knew my plan would work. Anything unforeseen would ruin it and probably be the end of me.

  As I watched the CTA bus approach, I made the split-second decision to put the plan into action. I took one last look at the fat driver, who had both hands on the steering wheel and was yelling at the fat man to my right, who was gesturing wildly with his hands, motioning toward the bus lane, and trying to convince Claude that it made more sense for him to wait there. Motorcycle Man stared straight ahead. The stoplight remained red.

  I brought the chaos all at once, which is the only way my plan would work. With my right hand I punched the fat man next to me in the back of his head, which faced me since he had his head turned toward the window to look at the bus lane. I didn’t have my eyes fixed toward him, so I only heard the sound of his face crashing through the car window, followed a split-second later by his agonizing screams as he felt the pain from the tiny shards of glass embedded in his skin.

  I simultaneously used my left hand to deliver a quick palm strike to the side of Motorcycle Man’s face. His head whipped hard to the left, narrowly missing the window. As he tried to recover I unbuckled the seatbelt draped across my lap, spun toward Motorcycle Man, and planted my left elbow into his xiphoid process, which, if done correctly, is an easy way to puncture the diaphragm and make breathing a very difficult task.

  I reached over Motorcycle Man, unlocked the door, opened it, and scrambled across his lap, planting my knee into his groin, and leaping out of the car. My right foot caught on the car door and tripped me, sending me into the fender of the adjacent car. I briefly fell to my knees, but stood up and ran toward the rear of the sedan, between the two columns of cars waiting for the light to turn green.

  Claude heard the chaos as soon as it started, but didn’t have the presence of mind to try to navigate the car into the bus lane, or to get out of the car and meet me as I got out of the back seat in order to keep me from escaping. I can only imagine that he sat in the seat, stunned into inaction.

  When I formulated the plan, I knew that both Claude and the fat man next to me in the back seat were much too heavy to chase me. Even though I’d already run sixteen miles, I had enough in me to sprint for a few blocks and make my get away. The only person I had to worry about was Motorcycle Man. I planned to neutralize him long enough to escape the car, but I assumed he’d quickly give chase, and although I could outrun him, I didn’t want to take any chances. If I succeeded at puncturing his diaphragm then he couldn’t chase me too far, but I planned to end the chase before testing his endurance.

  The unknown factor in a public encounter is how the public will react. Had some gun-toting vigilante, or any Johnny B. DoGooder misread the situation and assumed that I was a criminal running away from some cops, it might have spelled the end for me. Luckily, public is usually too stunned by what’s happening to react. Only when the moment has passed will someone realize what they should have done.

  Still I worried that I’d misjudged my captors. They’d apprehended me without the aid of a firearm, and hadn’t displayed a gun during our car ride. They seemed to be cautious kidnappers. I hoped that their caution would lead them to refrain from firing at me in public. Most people, especially criminals who aren’t amateurs, won’t want hundreds of people to see them shoot another person. Bullets can always foil plans though.

  For the final part of my plan to work, I had to allow Motorcycle Man to catch up to me. If he didn’t shoot at me right away then I knew it was unlikely that he’d shoot at me if he got closer to me. A gun is a slow runner’s crutch. If I let him get too close, then I risked him actually catching me and subduing me, but if I didn’t let him get close enough then the plan wouldn’t work. On top of that, I had no idea how far away I needed him to be.

  I looked back at the car and saw that he’d made it out of the backseat. Claude was also out of the car, but he walked around the front of it and over to his fat partner whose face looked like a crimson mask studded with irregular crystals. I’d discovered a way to get the men to stop yelling at each other; I just had to put one of their faces through a window.

  Motorcycle Man looked stunned and he stumbled toward me for a few steps before recovering into a run and then a full-on sprint. Although frustrated that I hadn’t punctured his diaphragm, I was relieved that he could run fast enough for my plan to work.

  As he approached, I slowed my pace. He called out for me to stop, as if anyone who has ever been pursued in a foot chase has stopped simply because someone asked them to stop. Instead I slowed down, and waited until he was within ten feet of me. I took one last look at him, and then turned around and spotted a large SUV two cars ahead. He was only a few feet away from grasping me with his hands, so I ran a little faster, and then cut in front of the large SUV.

  The bus didn’t honk. It all happened too quickly, too shockingly. It was over almost as soon as it began.

  In one flash of an instant, I crossed in front of the SUV, into the bus lane, and over to the curb just a fraction of a second before the bus barreled past. Motorcycle Man, three or four steps behind me, in hot pursuit, angry that I’d escaped, humiliated that a woman had beaten him up, perhaps frightened at how his emp
loyer might react upon hearing the news that he’d let me get away, was entirely focused on capturing me. He’d been closing in. He could almost feel me in his clutches. In the heat of the moment, with the thrill of the chase, he tuned out the rest of the world. He’d entered a zone. Nothing else mattered except capturing me.

  So when he cut in front of the SUV he didn’t stop to make sure the next lane was clear. He hadn’t monitored the bus’s movement for the previous half mile as I had been doing since I first saw it in the rearview mirror from the back of the black sedan. By the time his brain processed that he’d just seen me narrowly miss getting hit by the bus, it was too late for him.

  He was in the middle of the lane. I was on the sidewalk. The bus was right next to him, the driver’s foot not even yet on the brake, his reaction time slowed by age, fatigue and perhaps the four Miller Lites he drank before reporting to work that day. Motorcycle Man realized what was about to happen just as it happened. He felt nothing. The 40,000 pound bus was traveling at forty-three miles per hour when it impacted his right side, launched him ten feet off the ground, and thirty-seven feet ahead to the right, where he came to rest on the sidewalk. Horrified onlookers gasped and screamed. The bus screeched to a halt.

  Inside, I cheered.

  I sprinted once again, turned down a side street on the next corner, and lost myself in a neighborhood with which I wasn’t familiar. Sirens blared moments later, and I wondered if the two fat men witnessed the demise of their partner. I doubted they were in any condition to try to catch me, so I didn’t look over my shoulder.

  However, I knew that this was just the beginning. I’d been shot at and kidnapped and I wasn’t even on an operation. The fact that Motorcycle Man only kidnapped me instead of trying to kill me like Aviator Man made me feel only slightly better.