A Stunning Betrayal

by Darrell Maloney

  The only ones missing were John Santos… and Sarah Speer.

  Next stop was his bunk. But instead of crawling back into it he tossed the unopened bottle of water onto it and continued down the corridor.

  It was time.

  In the far corner of the bunker, the very last room was originally a storage room.

  When Manson and his men took the bunker, Manson ordered the room emptied out and redone.

  Now all the supplies were gone, crammed into other rooms throughout the bunker system.

  The room contained only a bed and a card table with two chairs.

  The men all called this the “flop room.” The women hated the term, for all it implied, and referred to it simply as “the back room.”

  Protocol was for the men to use it to take Karen or Sarah for a little bit of privacy and everything else the men had in mind.

  The other men were to stay away when a red mailbox flag, screwed to the wall, was in the “up” position.

  Only Vega ignored that part.

  He walked right past the raised flag and stood in the flop room’s doorway.

  Sarah and Santos were playing cards.

  Vega wasn’t surprised that was all they were doing.

  He said not a word; just watched and waited until he was noticed.

  Santos didn’t see him at all. His back was to the door.

  Sarah was studying the cards in her hands. It wasn’t until she looked up that she saw Vega and was startled.

  “What on earth are you doing there? How long have you been there?”

  Vega smiled and walked into the room.

  “Oh, don’t worry. I’ve only been here a few seconds. Not long enough to eavesdrop on your conversation, if that’s what you’re worried about.

  “And it doesn’t matter anyway. I know all the secrets you’ve been keeping.”

  Santos, half turned in his chair now, looked to Sarah.

  Sarah shrugged her shoulders.

  She had no clue what Vega was referring to.

  Well, she did. But she didn’t want to accept it.

  Vega didn’t have any friends in the bunker. A lifetime of being bullied and called names made him convinced he didn’t need any.

  If these had been friends of his, he might have pretended he never saw Turner and Santos embracing in their cell. Perhaps he’d just let it slide.

  But they weren’t his friends.

  And moreover, he lacked the empathy that would make most people mind their own business.

  He finally figured out a way to use the information he’d kept hidden for months.

  And he was tired of keeping Santos’ secret.

  Chapter 55

  “What do you mean?” Sarah demanded of him.

  “Oh, I think you know perfectly well what I mean. But if you want me to lay it all out for you I’d be happy to.

  “Let’s see… where shall I start? There are so many things you two have been hiding I don’t really know where to begin.”

  A bead of sweat broke out on Santos’ forehead.

  “How about we start with the obvious? You two come back here every day to make people think you’re doing the naughty.

  “But I knew, even before I came back, that you weren’t. That you were chatting or playing poker or pitching pennies.”

  Santos made a lame attempt at arguing.

  “You know how it is, Vega. Sometimes you finish a bit early. And sometimes you’re just not in the mood.”

  Sarah took the cue.

  “And sometimes you just want to do something else, just to relax.”

  Even if Vega hadn’t known what he knew he’d have seen right through them.

  For they were lousy liars.

  He went on.

  “Of course, it doesn’t surprise me that you’re not coming back here to do the nasty. After all, that wouldn’t work very well.

  “A straight woman having sex with a gay man, I mean.”

  Sarah felt a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  She and Santos locked eyes.

  Her eyes reflected a look of sorrow and surprise.

  His reflected anger.

  “What do you want from us?” he demanded of Vega.

  Sarah shuddered. She was afraid she already knew.

  “Oh relax, Robert. I have no desire to expose your secrets to the rest of the guys.

  “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not a man who seeks out violence. I rather abhor it, actually.

  “If the others knew there’s a good chance you wouldn’t survive the night. They’d be outraged there was a gay man in their midst, and they’d be none too happy that you’ve been showering with them and no doubt watching them from afar.

  “If you were lucky, of course, they might just kick you out of the club. Run you out of town on a rail. Isn’t that what they used to call being banished?”

  Sarah spoke up.

  “He asked you a question. What exactly do you want, Vega?”

  Vega smiled.

  “You.”

  Sarah feigned shock.

  “Excuse me?”

  “When we took over this place Manson declared you community property. He said you belonged to all of us to use for our pleasure.

  “I already knew that Santos was gay. So I was a little bit confused when he declared his love for you and you for him.

  “But I figured maybe he converted. Maybe he was straight now. Or maybe you were trying to make him that way.

  “But word’s gotten around now you’re Parker’s woman. Everybody knows that you and Parker sneak back here for secret rendezvous.

  “And I’ve been wondering, why would Parker allow that? Sharing his woman with another man, I mean.

  “And then it occurred to me that you and Santos never had a thing for each other. You were just playing us all along.

  “You were just using the soldier’s code of honor against us.

  “You knew that the code would prevent us from using you for our own pleasure if we thought you belonged to him.

  “So you and Santos made this secret deal. You wouldn’t tell anyone else he was gay if he’d pretend to be your lover so the rest of us would leave you alone.”

  He challenged both of them.

  “Now that I’ve figured it out, it’s so plain to see. I’m surprised I couldn’t see it before.”

  Sarah looked at the floor.

  She couldn’t convince him he was wrong. Not convincingly, anyway, because he was absolutely right.

  “So,” he concluded. “I want you. The way I should have been able to have you from the beginning, if you two hadn’t come up with your little ruse to fool everybody.”

  Santos just stood there.

  He didn’t know what to say or do.

  Now there were two people in the bunker who held his fate in their hands.

  Since he’d joined the gang he’d been terrified of what the others might do if they found out his secret.

  He’d been able to relax once he and Sarah implemented what Vega called their “ruse.”

  But now… now this changed everything.

  He used to lie awake each night in fear of his life. Wondering if that was the night someone came to stab him in his sleep, just for being who he was.

  He didn’t want to go back to those nights again.

  But if he argued Vega’s point… if he made trouble for Vega… his life would become a living hell again.

  Finally he found the strength to ask, “If I agree to this… if I agree to let you have your way with Sarah… you’ll keep your mouth shut?”

  “Oh, yeah. I give you my word.”

  Sarah felt betrayed. She’d considered Santos her friend.

  Yes, she’d blackmailed him at first for her own benefit. But they’d gotten to know one another since then. They’d had some long talks. They’d played hundreds of games of cards. They’d shared one another’s secrets.

  And now he was betraying her for his own interests.

  She
grasped at the only straw she had left.

  “But you said yourself I was Parker’s woman. How’s Parker going to feel when he finds out about this?”

  Vega was undeterred.

  “Parker won’t find out.”

  “But when you send Santos out of here, Parker will see him. He’ll see the flag up and know that someone else is back here with me. How do you think he’ll feel when one of his men forces himself on his woman?”

  “That’s the beauty of this whole thing,” Vega countered. “Santos isn’t going to leave. Santos is going to stay right here.”

  “No. Even you’re not that low.”

  “Look. I don’t care if he sits over there and reads a book, or plays solitaire. To be honest, I don’t even care if he watches. Maybe he’ll learn something.”

  He turned and spoke directly to Santos.

  “I only know that if he leaves before I do, by the end of this day every other man in this bunker will know two things.

  “They’ll know that you’re as gay as gay can be.

  “And they’ll know you stabbed them in the back by pretending you loved this woman to keep them away from her.

  “My guess is that they won’t be happy about either of those things.

  “My guess is you won’t survive the night.”

  Vega walked over to Sarah and grabbed her by the arm.

  Then he threw her onto the bed.

  “And just in case either of you are wondering, this is not just a one-time thing.

  “This is an ongoing arrangement.

  “From now on any time you two are back here I might just show up out of the blue.

  “Hell, I’ve got a lot of time to make up for.

  “I’m guessing this is gonna be a daily occurrence for quite some time.”

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  Thank you for reading

  ALONE, Part 9: A Stunning Betrayal

  Please enjoy this preview of

  ALONE, Part 10: Return to Ely

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  Dave’s drill instructor once told him he was the dumbest recruit the Marine Corps had ever blundered into.

  That was back in his basic training days… the days the Corps lovingly calls “boot camp.”

  Dave’s uncle told him before he went in that the DIs would ride him unmercifully and insult him in a thousand different ways. It was the job of the DIs to identify the weak links and to weed them out.

  After all, it’s far better to identify someone who can’t take the pressure and get rid of him during boot camp than to let him go to war. If he broke under pressure on a battlefield he could get good men killed.

  But Dave took it personal anyway despite his uncle’s admonition.

  He spent his entire Marie Corps career trying to prove that DI wrong. He was meticulous in everything he did. He followed orders to the letter and never let his superiors or his men down.

  Those days were gone.

  He was getting sloppy.

  Of course, he was no longer active duty, so no one could blame him for not being on his best game.

  But he could blame himself.

  Because his sloppiness could have killed him.

  He walked right up to the ventilation pipe without once thinking the area could be mined.

  In the tall grass he couldn’t see Jones’s bones until he was right up on them.

  Only then he realized he was damned lucky he didn’t step on a mine and wind up just like Jones.

  Even though the meat had been picked clean, he could tell Jones met his maker by means of an explosion. His bones were scattered over a large area. Moreover they were splintered into hundreds of pieces. Especially, most notably, his leg bones.

  He immediately froze in place and studied the ground around him.

  Land mines are strictly prohibited by the Laws of Armed Conflict. American forces no longer use them, except under certain conditions and only in close proximity to sensitive assets.

  But the bad guys still routinely use soviet-made mines in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

  United States Marines deployed to those areas, therefore, must be well versed on how to deal with the mines should they come in contact with them.

  Dave could once recite Marine Corps Reference Publication 3-02E, Terrorism Measures and Countermeasures, almost by heart.

  Those days were gone, but he still remembered the gist of it.

  He knew if he found himself in a mine field he was to proceed with the utmost caution.

  He was to crawl out, on his hands and knees if he had to, while carefully inspecting the ground In front of him with a probe.

  At the same time, he was to make note of the location of each mine he found. If friendly forces were expected to pass this way again he was to mark the mine in some manner and to warn others of its presence.

  While finding and marking the mines he was to look at their relative location to one another. Part of the “big picture” to help finding others easier, since mines were usually laid in a pattern.

  In this case, he expected no friendly forces to come in behind him.

  He just had to find his way back out of the mine field.

  Alive, if possible.

  He carefully inspected the ventilation pipe for any strange markings.

  They were faint. Faded in the sunlight, probably.

  But he was able to make out black hash marks on the two sides of the pipe he could see by leaning first to his left, then to his right.

  The marks were made by hand, he could tell. They weren’t of uniform length and one was slightly slanted.

  If they were made by the machine which rolled the pipe they’d have been uniform.

  They were on the six o’clock and twelve o’clock positions.

  They might mark safe approaches for the brothers who owned the bunker, in the event they had to do maintenance on it.

  He examined the ground around Jones’s bones and was able to make out a small depression in the earth where the mine detonated.

  It was between the hash marks.

  That supported his theory, but didn’t prove it outright.

  At least not enough to make him want to follow the line away from the vent.

  Oh, he would take that route.

  But not on his feet.

  He made his way to the six o’clock hash mark, on hands and knees, using his knife to tenderly poke the ground every four inches.

  It was nowhere as good as a probe.

  But by turning the knife as he sank it into the ground he could clear away the dirt without having to shove the knife hard and risk triggering any mine which might be there.

  It took him almost an hour until he was fifty feet away and felt comfortable enough to stand up and walk again.

  He looked up at the sky and saw he only had about two hours of daylight left.

  He made his way to the other ventilation shaft and used his field glasses to find similar hash marks.

  He approached one of them head on.

  But again, on his hands and knees.

  He was confident this was his safe approach to the second ventilation pipe.

  But overconfidence sometimes got men killed.

  Even as the sun was sinking low on the horizon he went through the maddening task of searching for buried mines until he made it to the pipe.

  He now had a safe approach through both mine fields.

  It was too late to set in motion the next stage of his plan.

  He scurried off into the woods to bed down for the night.

  He’d be back first thing in the morning.

  And then people would start dying.

  *************************

  ALONE, Part 10: Return to Ely

  will be available worldwide on Amazon.com and at Barnes and Noble Booksellers in May, 2018

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  ALONE, Part 9: A Stunning Betrayal

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  COUNTDOWN TO ARMAGEDDON

  Available now at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble Booksellers.

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  Scott Harter wasn’t special by anybody’s standards. He wasn’t a handsome guy at all. He wasn’t dumb, but he’d never win a Nobel Prize either. He had no hidden talents, although he fancied himself a fairly good karaoke singer.

  His friends didn’t necessarily share that opinion, but what did they know?

  No, if those friends were tasked to choose one word to describe Scott Harter that word might well be “average.”

  If Scott excelled at one thing, it was that he was a very good businessman. And he was also a lot luckier than most.

  And it was that combination – his penchant for making a buck and being lucky, that led him here on this day to the Guerra Public Library on the west side of San Antonio.

  To research what he believed was the pending collapse of mankind.

  Twenty three years earlier, Scott had done two things that would change his life forever. Even back then, he was just an average Joe. He’d had plans to become a doctor, but his average grades weren’t cutting it. So he dropped out of college halfway through his junior year.

  He’d have loved to have married a beauty queen, but his average looks certainly did nothing to attract any. Neither did his average amount of charm. So instead he started dating Linda Amparano, who was a sweet girl but somewhat average herself. They seemed to make a perfect, if slightly vanilla, couple.

  The second thing Scott did that year was buy a dilapidated self-storage unit on the north side of San Antonio. It was one of those places where people rent lockers to store their things when their garages have run out of space. Or their kids go off to college. Or when they just accumulate so many things that they’ve run out of room to put them all.

  Pat, the guy who sold the property to Scott, was a friendly enough sort, but not a businessman at all. He didn’t understand some of the basic principles of running such an operation.

  Not that Scott was an expert. At least back then he wasn’t.