Forced Disappearance

by Marton, Dana

  “Give. Me. Names,” the commander growled. He’d sent for Glenn minutes after Miranda had been taken to Roberto. He’d wasted no time on niceties.

  Glenn gritted his teeth. He needed a moment to conquer the pain before he could speak. “François Englert, Peter W. Higgs, Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt, and Arieh Warshel.”

  The cane paused in the air.

  “Who are they?” the commander demanded.

  “Last year’s Nobel Prize winners in physics and chemistry. If you want to chat about people, we might as well pick someone worth talking about.”

  Wham! The cane came down hard across Glenn’s shoulder and split the skin. Warm blood trickled down his back. Stars danced in his vision.

  The interrogation continued.

  If he gave an answer the commander didn’t want to hear, he was beaten. If he stayed silent, he was beaten. Yet those were his only choices. If he gave the commander what the man wanted—admission of guilt—he would have been taken out and shot in the head.

  Goal #1: Stay alive long enough to escape.

  Goal #2: . . . He didn’t have energy for more than one goal.

  The questions continued and so did the pain, his back drenched in blood, his skin flayed. The commander didn’t stop until Glenn fell over, sometime around midnight. Only then did the man call for two guards to drag him back to the prison hut.

  Every little move hurt like a sonofabitch. But Glenn had a secret that kept him going. The commander had made a mistake right at the very end. The sliver of bamboo the man hadn’t seen when the cane busted at last was now tucked into Glenn’s pants, hidden. He had a weapon.

  Miranda was going to be proud of him.

  The soldiers shoved him up the steps roughly, kicked the door open, then pushed him in.

  Nothing but darkness inside.

  He whipped around, his stomach clenching. “Where is she?”

  The pain in his back was nothing compared to his panic that they’d done something to her. With a growl, he charged at the guards, trying to knock them out of the way, but they shoved him back, onto his back, the agony enough to nearly make him black out.

  While he struggled for breath, they tied him up, then slammed the door closed and locked it.

  “Miranda!” he howled her name, but the only response was the guard outside the door telling him to shut up before they came back in and made him.

  Miranda.

  He dragged his battered body to the wall and lined up his eyes with the nearest gap, but it was too dark to see Roberto’s hut. Was she still there? What was Roberto doing to her?

  Glenn grit his teeth, fighting back thoughts as dark and heavy as the night. Fury and worry churned in his empty stomach.

  He stayed where he was, lying on his side, and watched that hut all night. He didn’t draw a full breath until Miranda appeared in the doorway at dawn.

  Every cell in his brain was awake in a blink of an eye.

  Her clothes weren’t torn. She didn’t walk with a limp as the guards escorted her forward.

  Glenn struggled to sit, his back on fire.

  The door opened and she stepped in, eyes snapping wide as she stared at him. But she said nothing while the guardsmen tied her up. Only when the men left did she move as close to Glenn as the rope would allow. Still out of reach. He wished he could see her face better.

  She went down on her knees. “How badly are you hurt?”

  He reached for a joke, something glib, something to reassure her. But it seemed he’d run out tonight. He filled his lungs with cool dawn air. “I don’t think anything’s broken. You?”

  “I’m all right.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “The next time they untie either of us, we break free.”

  He nodded. He couldn’t take another beating.

  Since her voice had been thick with worry, he found a joke after all. He kept his voice low. “Hey, I have a gift for you in my pocket.”

  “Yeah?”

  He could see enough to know that the corner of her mouth turned up a little. He moved carefully and pulled the inch-thick, six-inch-long bamboo sliver from his waistband. He kicked it over to her. “Courtesy of the commander.”

  “Broke the stick he beat you with?”

  “They don’t make instruments of torture like they used to.”

  “I always said you were hardheaded.” She picked up the stick, then turned it around in her hand. “Would be nice if we could sharpen the end enough to stab with it.”

  That wasn’t going to happen without a knife. “We use the tools we have.” A basic tenet of engineering and innovation—using what you had to solve the problem at hand. “Worst comes to worst, go for the eye.”

  She paused mid-motion and raised an eyebrow. “I’m in charge all of a sudden?”

  “You had hand-to-hand combat training. I didn’t. You’re the better person to have our only weapon.”

  She held still. “All right. Now you’re really starting to worry me. Are you sure you don’t have brain swelling?”

  He managed a grin. “Sure. Mock a man when he’s down.”

  “Best time to mock him.” She dropped back into a sitting position. “I have a gift for you in my pocket too.”

  She tossed something to him that turned out to be a chunk of cheese, and he fell on the food, the best thing he’d ever tasted.

  She watched him with a smile. “Do you think you’re up for a mad dash through the woods?”

  He sure as hell was going to try. He swallowed the last of the cheese. “Listen.” He tried to hold her gaze, difficult in the dark. “If I fall behind, you keep going. There’s no sense in both of us dying in this godforsaken place.”

  “Nobody’s dying.”

  “Because you said so?”

  “Damn right.”

  “I like it when you turn dominatrix.” The corner of his lips twitched. Picturing her in a little leather outfit made the pain cursing through his body dull a little. So he did it again.

  She shoved the sliver of bamboo up her right sleeve. “Watch for my signal.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  He lay on his side, the least agonizing position, hoping to catch a few minutes of sleep. She scooted back to the wall so she could lean against it as she sat.

  Dawn was lightening the sky outside at last. Glenn closed his eyes, but the sounds of a motor starting had him opening them again.

  Miranda said, “Roberto is going back to Caracas.”

  That meant that their treatment had been left in the commander’s sadistic hands. “Shit.”

  “Try to rest up. Let me know if you feel faint, or dizzy. Jokes aside, a drop in blood pressure could mean internal bleeding.”

  He licked his dry, split lip, wishing for water. “He’s beaten me worse before. The bastard’s just warming up.”

  Maybe the commander wanted to pace himself, Glenn thought when two guardsmen showed up a couple of hours later to take him back for more torture. They were both young, one stocky, the other one a regular beanpole.

  “Hey, amigos. Just let me piss first, okay?” Glenn asked in his friendliest, most reasonable voice. “It’ll only take a second.”

  The tall one, the one with red pimples on his chin, flashed a bored, dispassionate look. Guard duty in the woods clearly wasn’t the highlight of his life.

  Miranda came to her feet. “I have to go too.”

  The two guards exchanged flat glances that suddenly made Glenn uneasy. Then, finally, the heavyset one said, “Sí.”

  The prisoners were untied, then led to the jungle at gunpoint. But when they arrived at a suitable spot, the guards didn’t step back. The stocky boy escorting Glenn stepped close enough to press his gun barrel to the back of Glenn’s head. The other one shoved Miranda roughly against a tree, face first.

  Beanpole grinned at his budd
y, his eyes lively all of a sudden.

  Gun at her back with one hand, he tore her pants down with the other, then shoved her legs apart with his knee and went to undo his own clothes.

  Everything happened so fast, Glenn could barely catch up with what was happening. “No!”

  He twisted to attack, but the guard behind him smacked the barrel into the back of his head so hard it made his brain rattle. Apparently, with Roberto gone, all restrictions on the treatment of the prisoners had been lifted.

  “No!” Glenn tried to turn again, but was shoved roughly forward, went down hard onto his knees. The cold barrel of the rifle pressed into the back of his neck hard enough to break the skin. “Miranda!”

  The other bastard was touching her.

  She didn’t protest. Her gaze cutting to Glenn, she didn’t so much as curse out her attacker.

  She had a weapon up her sleeve. Use it! Glenn begged with his eyes. But maybe she was worried about the rifle pointed at him.

  “Use it!” he shouted.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” she begged him instead. “It’s not worth it.” She swallowed hard as the man grabbed her hip with his free hand. Her gaze clung to Glenn’s. “Look away.”

  She made the same decision she’d made in the trunk of that car when those Iraqi hoodlums had kidnapped her. She would endure whatever she had to endure. She was going to survive whatever she had to survive so she could escape later.

  But a dark rage filled Glenn’s face, every muscle in his body tightening. “Like hell,” he spat the words with uncontrolled fury.

  Then he turned with a roar and went for the bastard behind him.

  Glenn jackknifed his body and threw his weight forward, knocking the surprised guard to the ground. The second guard swung his gun from Miranda to Glenn, and that was when she finally went for the bamboo pike. Elbow to the bastard’s chin first, knocking it up, then she shoved the pike up into the soft skin below his chin, up all the way until blood poured out, his tongue pierced through so he couldn’t even scream.

  A monkey screeched in the tree above them. The ruckus he was making masked the sounds of fighting below.

  “Forgot to tell you,” Miranda said as she grabbed for the nearest gun. “Winky’s here.”

  She disarmed the man who’d attacked her, then knocked him out with his own rifle. By the time Glenn disabled his own opponent, choking him to oblivion, she was already undressing the man on the ground in front of her. “We need to blend in. Clothes. Hurry.”

  In less than three minutes, they were dressed in camouflage, rifles over their shoulders. They rolled the men into the bushes.

  Winky jumped to a lower branch. Winked at Miranda.

  Glenn grunted. “Listen to me, you two-trick monkey. Get your own woman.”

  Next the monkey winked at Glenn.

  Miranda grinned. “He’s an equal opportunity flirt.”

  “We need to go.” Glenn half limped, half darted toward the path that led deeper into the forest.

  Too slow. Disappointment slammed through Miranda as her brain reevaluated their situation.

  She grabbed after him. “Wait!”

  “Come on!” He pulled forward.

  But she shook her head. He wasn’t going to make it on foot, and she wasn’t going to leave him behind. That left one option. “Go back into camp and duck under our hut. Wait there for me.”

  The huts sat about a foot off the ground, the gap obstructed by greenery, the best hiding place she could think of at a moment’s notice.

  They had no time to argue, and he didn’t. He took her at her word that she knew what she was doing. He hurried off toward camp.

  Winky looked after him.

  “We’ll be leaving,” she told the monkey. “Thanks for the help. Watch out for snakes and harpy eagles. I’ll have to make some noise now.”

  Winky gave Miranda one last wink, then climbed high up the tree. She fired a couple of shots in the opposite direction, then ran off parallel to the camp’s perimeter.

  She stopped in the cover of the bushes when she reached the edge of the clearing, watched as guardsmen ran off in the direction of the gunshots. Then she stepped out and headed toward the middle, passed by the prison hut with her hat pulled deep into her face, hurrying like anyone else.

  “Get to the trucks when you can,” she told Glenn without slowing and headed toward the vehicles.

  The commander was yelling at two hapless guardsmen in front of his hut. Miranda hurried by them as if on a mission, straight to the trucks. She headed for the one closest to the road and jumped in.

  No key.

  She searched above the visor, under the seat, urgency drumming in her blood, her fingers frantic. Nothing. Okay, hotwire. Basic electrical engineering.

  Then Glenn was there, glancing behind him as he opened the door.

  She sorted through the wires, trying to remember how to do this. “I don’t have the key.”

  “Move over.”

  “You think now is the time to reassert your masculinity?”

  “You’re the better shot. I drive, you take care of any shooting if we need it.”

  She slid over to the passenger side, and half a minute later the engine came to life.

  He flashed her a grin.

  Then the commander appeared in front of the truck out of nowhere, holding a gun at Glenn’s head through the windshield.

  “Alto!” His face was twisted, his features distorted with rage.

  Glenn raised his hands into the air. Miranda tightened her fingers on the weapon in her lap.

  But before she could do anything, Glenn slammed his foot on the gas and bounced that sucker right off the hood. The man’s startled face was pressed against the windshield for a moment; then, as Glenn gave the truck more gas, the commander slid off to the side, his broken nose leaving a smear of blood behind.

  The truck rattled as the tires rolled over something. Could have been a hole in the dirt road. Or—

  She whipped her head back, but couldn’t see anything. “Did you just run him over?”

  Glenn focused on the road, his lips flattened. “Ask me if I care.”

  Miracle of miracles, nobody called out, nobody came after them as they flew down the dirt road. Hopefully everybody was busy rushing in the opposite direction, where the prisoners had been last seen.

  The road turned and dipped, but Glenn handled the terrain well. “How long do you think before they figure out that we took the truck?”

  She looked at the side-view mirror. “If the commander is dead or knocked out, then ten or fifteen minutes. If he’s all right, he’s probably sounded the alarm already.”

  He glanced at her. “Airport?”

  She nodded, holding on to hope.

  The truck flew down the dirt road at twice the speed than was safe, but Glenn kept control. The soldiers still caught up with them long before they reached anywhere near the city.

  “Hold on,” Glenn said between his teeth.

  They reached a section of the road where it turned and twisted to follow a creek. Glenn slammed on the gas and put some distance between them and their pursuers, then after a particularly sharp turn, he drove straight into a gap in a stand of leafy bushes.

  A few seconds later, half a dozen trucks zoomed by behind them without slowing.

  In full daylight, the tracks on the ground and the broken branches would have been seen, but in the dim light of dawn, the soldiers, certain the escaped prisoners were ahead of them just around the bend, missed the signs.

  Once they passed, Glenn backed out of the bushes, catching up to the train of National Guard trucks and joining the line from behind as they roared toward Santa Elena de Uairén at full speed.

  Nobody thought to look back. And even if they glanced in the rearview mirror, they’d just see one of their own truck
s. Miranda and Glenn were in uniform, the trucks rattling so hard that catching a good look at their faces through the windshield would be impossible.

  Glenn flashed her a satisfied look. Yeah, he was handy to have around. Miranda grinned.

  At the edge of the city, the trucks slowed and separated, each taking a different road as turnoffs became available. Glenn headed toward Route 10, then south toward the airport. Nobody thought to follow them.

  They were at their destination in minutes, and pulled into the parking lot without anyone giving them a second glance.

  He parked as near the entrance as he could. “This is it.” He shut off the engine and reached for the door handle. “Can we take our guns?”

  “We don’t know if they allow them inside the airport for people who are off duty,” she reasoned. “And we don’t know if it’s the right time for a change of guards so we can pretend to be the next shift. I say we pretend to be guardsmen on leave, heading home. I doubt even the National Guard fly with their rifles on a commercial airplane.” She laid her weapon on the floor by her feet.

  After a moment of consideration, Glenn nodded and did the same.

  Raindrops splashed onto the windshield, one after the other.

  They got out and straightened their clothes. She checked Glenn’s back. “You have some bloodstains on your shirt.”

  “How bad?”

  “A couple of dark spots. They mostly blend into the camo pattern. Let’s hope nobody looks too closely.”

  They headed for the front doors, pretending to be soldiers who looked forward to leave and seeing their families, happy and excited. At the entry, the guards waved them through without a second look, one busy lighting his cigarette, the other one looking at his cell phone.

  The waiting area was nearly empty, only a handful of people milling around. Miranda glanced at the board.

  The morning plane to Caracas was leaving in twenty minutes. The passengers were probably at the gate already.

  They had no money, so they didn’t go to the ticket counter. They walked straight toward the door that was marked “staff only.” The guard let them through with a bored expression, saying something about the rain.

  Miranda gave a sympathizing nod. This time, they didn’t meet anyone in the long walkway as they hurried out. The plane stood on the tarmac, with the stairs up against it.