by Genovese, CM
I heard a thud, and then she was silent.
Goddammit!
“I hope you find me,” Palach said. “But I don’t see that happening, my friend. See you in this life or the next.”
“I’m gonna find you!” I yelled into the phone.
He hung up, but it didn’t stop me from going off.
I grabbed the barstool nearest me, picked it up, and smashed it against the ground. “I’ll fucking kill you!”
My voice sounded like a lighthouse wail. It came out stripped. Hoarse.
“I’ll fucking kill you!” The next barstool flew across the pool table and nearly took Beezus’s head off.
BP and Frostbite came running out of a meeting to find me on my knees, fists pressed against the concrete floor that surrounded the bar, trying to control my breathing. My temperature was high, my heart rate had to be through the fucking roof, and all I could think of was flaying that sick son of a bitch.
When we reached the Chester Creek Trail, it was wiped out. Everyone came along this time. Every brother in our arsenal. We stormed that camp like a military unit, guns up and at the ready, muzzles sweeping the tents, but hardly anyone was there.
Left over pots and pans, drug paraphernalia, liquor bottles, and food packages lay scattered around the camp. I’d only been here once in the past, back when one of our ex-brothers had a serious drug problem and disappeared for a while. Pipe and I found him here, shacked up with some chick who’d promised him plenty of blow and blowjobs if he’d take care of her. We got him cleaned up, but shortly after that, he killed himself. The monkey was too damn strong.
All of these people had stories. Some were terrible and were their own damned fault, but others, they might have been forced into this lifestyle.
Right now, none of that mattered. Nobody mattered but Cassie. She was everything.
“Hey,” Pipe yelled at an old man sitting with his face buried in his hands. “Yo, you seen a pretty brunette around here? About yay tall?”
The old man glanced back at him with a distant stare. He wasn’t right in the head. BP stopped to talk to him, squatting down at his level and checking to see if he could get through to him. That was the warm part of our president. He didn’t like seeing people suffer. Maybe the old man reminded him of someone.
Up ahead, I saw a yellow bag that looked oddly familiar. As I approached, I realized it was Cassie’s. She’d carried it the day I took her tubing. Lying next to it was a young man who looked dead. I assumed he was until I leaned over to grab the bag.
“That’s my friend’s,” he said.
“Your friend’s?” I replied. “You know Cassie?”
“Cassie,” he repeated. “Yes. And Nia.”
“Yeah. Cassie and Nia. You Arnie?”
“Yes,” he said. Each word out of his mouth seemed to cause him a great deal of pain. His torso was covered with a blanket. I pulled it off him and saw he’d been stabbed several times and was completely drenched in drying blood. The kid would be dead in an hour.
“Where were they taken?” I asked him.
“I don’t… I don’t know, but you have to… you have to save Nia. Please. Take… care of her.”
“Kid, I’m gonna find my girl and yours, you got that? I just need a starting point.”
He only shook his head. A bloody tear fell from his destroyed eye. They’d really fucked him up good.
“Wait,” Arnie said. “One of them mentioned Closure.”
Yeah, that motherfucker wants closure. Palach wants closure real bad, but not nearly as badly as me.
“Pipe!” I called. “Oosik! Can you get this kid up? We need to get him to a hospital quick.”
Pipe leaned over to me and replied softly, “Brother, you know he ain’t gonna make it to a hospital.”
“We have to try,” I said. “We have to try.”
They picked him up carefully, and the boy screamed and cried the whole way to the van.
Closure. You want fucking closure, Palach?
Then it hit me. When we’d walked into the manager’s office, Russ’s office, at Boom Stick, he’d been explaining something about Closure to the two Russians. I couldn’t remember what he said, but I was absolutely-fucking sure he’d said the word Closure.
“Beezus,” I said. “Slitz. Nugget. Pres.” They gathered around me with their weapons put away. There was no fight here. Not anymore. “What does the word Closure mean to you?”
“An end to things,” Nugget said. “That’s what I’d say.”
“Closure,” Slitz repeated the word, his brow furrowed, probably turning the word around in his mind to see if it made any sense.
“I got nothing, man. Why?” Beezus replied.
“Same here,” BP added.
“Wait a minute,” Nugget said. “Closure? That’s a titty bar. Lolli complained about it the other night. How there was another strip club opening up and really close by, so she was afraid they were fixin’ to steal a bunch of her clients.”
I shot out and grabbed both of Nugget’s chubby cheeks. “You are a fucking genius, brother. I fucking love you.”
As I turned and walked toward the trucks and van, I heard Nugget say, “He must really like titties.”
“What’s going on?” BP asked as he rushed to keep up with me.
“Sorry, Pres,” I replied, stopping to face him. “The kid said one of the Russians mentioned Closure. I thought it was Palach talking about getting closure, you know, with me. But, nah. It’s a fucking place. Remember Russ mentioned it at Boom Stick? When we walked into his office? It’s another club they’re using to get women and push whatever other fucked-up agenda they got. This might be the only way to find Cassie, Pres. I gotta go there.”
BP bit his bottom lip and said, “Well, then. Let’s go get us some fuckin closure.”
16
Cassie
Motion sickness woke me up. My blurry eyes began to clear slowly, settling on the face of a redhead with her hair pulled back into a ponytail. Mascara ran down her cheeks and her lipstick was smeared up and to the right of her mouth, giving her a half-Joker appearance.
Sitting beside her, on what looked like a wooden bench that ran along the length of the wall, was a young black woman who’d also done her fair share of crying.
I was in a van, and the bumpy ride was hell on my stomach. The fact I couldn’t move my hands to sit up wasn’t making things any easier. My ankles were bound too. Lying on my side, I could only see the row of women. Using one foot and one hand to push myself over, I was able to roll to the other side of my body.
More women.
A Latina about the same age as the others, younger than me, maybe twenty-two, twenty-three years old. Beside her sat a girl with a shaved head and a pretty face. She had one of those slightly raised, almost pig-like noses that gave her an added cuteness.
All this I viewed through a sleepy haze that seemed to be taking forever to dissipate. A kick from the heavy boot of the Russian sitting next to me helped bring me back to reality.
“Where are we?” I asked.
Nobody answered. Ahead of me, the big Russian who’d knocked me out, he’d said his name was Palach when he was on the phone with Rain, sat in the front passenger seat with some other guy driving.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said. “You can drop me off. You can drop all of us off.”
My words were foolish. Kidnappers didn’t tend to take suggestions from their abductees. It didn’t hurt to try.
“We cannot drop you off,” Palach said, turning in his seat to look back at me. He laughed.
“Why not though? This could end easily instead of in some big war with my boyfriend’s MC. You could open the door and let us out.”
Palach laughed again. “I’m afraid you don’t understand. First, I am not worried about your boyfriend and his weakling gang of animals. Second, we cannot open the door and let you out because we are coasting at 11,000 feet.”
11,000 feet? What the fuck?
Doi
ng my best to look around one more time, I couldn’t believe I didn’t notice it right away. I’d been so out of it, half-conscious, to the point I didn’t realize I was in the back of an airplane.
You’re on a fucking cargo plane. You’re on a fucking plane. You’re on a fucking plane.
They were taking me to Russia, I was sure of it, and once I crossed into that country, Rain would have no way of finding me. It would be impossible to track me down.
“Where are you taking us?” I asked.
“Pitstop, I believe is what you call it in your um… in your NASCAR,” Palach said.
“Where is the girl I was with? Where’s Nia?”
“I’m over here,” Nia’s voice said calmly. “In the back, Cassie. I’m here.”
“Are you okay?” I couldn’t see her, and it bothered me, so I kicked my body around until I was sideways, staring at the rear of the plane. She leaned forward and waved.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“Thank God.”
The flight didn’t take that long. Before I knew it, we were touching down, and it wasn’t a soft landing. A couple of my kidnappers were nice enough to lift me up into the seated position before we reached the ground. If they didn’t, I would have cracked my head open.
When the wheels finally screeched to a halt, our kidnappers hopped out of the plane, pulled the door open, and escorted each of the women out. During the flight, they’d all been shackled together with a long chain stretched between them to keep them in place. Now, they were free to walk out of the plane with no constraints.
Nia glanced down at me with her mouth curled into a sad frown and her eyes moist with tears.
“I’ll meet you out there,” I promised.
Wherever there is.
I was the last one to be taken off the plane. Once the others were out, Palach himself climbed into the back and cut the rope off my ankles. He was far gentler than I would have expected.
“Mr. Palach,” I said, doing my best to keep my voice calm. “You don’t have to do this. You seem like a reasonable man. You can let us go.”
“Stop groveling,” he said.
Ouch. Not even a bit of civility here. Groveling?
“Let me make sure you understand,” he said. “You are not in Anchorage anymore. You are in a little town far from there.”
“Are we in Russia?” I asked.
He laughed. “No, you did not sleep that long. We are still in your pathetic country. We will be in mine soon enough. This is only a meeting place. Where we bring all of our, how shall I say it, supply together.”
“Women,” I corrected him.
He nodded. “Supply.”
“This is where you round us all up?”
“Before big shipment, yes. You will see when you walk out there. There is nothing. There is nobody. Rain will not come for you. He cannot come for you. You cannot drive to this place, you see? I tell you this not because I care. Because, you see, I will hurt you. I am going to fuck you. But I will not kill you. Killing you was a lie I told Rain to hurt him. I cannot kill you, because you are… supply.” He shrugged his shoulders and laughed. “Yes, you are supply, you see? You will be bought, you will be fucked some more, and maybe then you will be killed. I don’t know. That is for you and God to discuss.”
His words sank in and were colder than the icy breeze blowing in through the open door.
“I tell you this because I want you to lose hope,” he said. “Hope is wasted here. And you will be broken.”
The calmness in his voice as he said it all was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. It was almost serial killer like. It was completely void of emotion. He talked about fucking and hurting me the same way someone else might mention the fees they would charge for taking a look at your dishwasher. It was absolutely terrifying.
As soon as the words left his mouth, he slid out of the plane, reached back to grab the ropes around my wrist, and pulled me out face first.
“No!” I yelled, fearing he might toss me out on my head.
Instead, he placed me down hard on my feet and used his knife to cut my wrists free. Cold wind kicked up around me. Palach and I were alone on the small runway.
He wasn’t lying. There was nothing in sight. Nothing of significance anyway.
To my right was the runway and past a wide, snowy field, I thought I could make out cabins through the snowy fog. To my left was an airplane hangar. Other than that, there were only trees.
To drive home the fact that I was truly in the middle of nowhere, Palach didn’t wait for me. He walked toward the other women who were moving in a long line to a three-story, grey building about a hundred yards from the runway, directly in front of me.
Fuck him. You can make a run for it. Go now. And freeze to death out here.
Freezing sounded better than being fucked and killed. Yet, I knew Rain would come for me. He wouldn’t give up on me. He would come. He had to. I was a tough woman. I could do my best to buy some time, fight them off, and maybe even escape. Out here, dressed the way I was in only my tennis shoes, blue jeans, a sweater, and jacket, I’d be dead in no time at all.
No, it’s better to run. Don’t be stupid. This might be your only chance.
There was nowhere to run. To take me out of the misery of having to make a choice, someone stepped around from the front of the airplane where he’d apparently been fiddling with something in the cockpit. He pointed a gun at me and said, “What do you think this is? A vacation? Get inside before I shoot you in the knee.”
With this asshole close behind, I walked as quickly as I could. I was freezing, and I realized for a second time that I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere if I’d made a run for it. I was having a hard time making it to the building in this weather. The wind blew at my legs, went up through the bottom of my jacket, and out the top.
“Jesus, it’s cold,” I said.
“This?” the man behind me said. “This is great weather.”
“Really? Where are you from?”
“Very small town. Oymyakon it is called. You don’t want to go there.”
“Sounds lovely.”
He laughed.
“What is your name?” I asked, wondering if there was any chance I could make this guy my friend.
“Is not important.”
“Well, what if I need help in there? What if one of the other girls attacks me and wants to damage the, um, the property?”
The supply. That’s what Palach called us.
“The supply,” I said quickly.
“My name is Artur,” he said. “But please don’t say unless emergency. Is bad for me.”
“I won’t. My name is Cassie. But it’s bad for me too if you say my name.”
He chuckled. “All is bad for you, Cassie. Is shame. You are very beautiful girl.”
I turned once to look over my shoulder at him. He was younger than the other two guys in the plane. I hadn’t seen him before, so I knew he had to be the pilot.
Artur could get you out of here. Remember his name. He’s a pilot.
“Straight ahead,” Artur said, seeming concerned that I was looking at him.
“Of course,” I replied with a smile.
He smiled back and shook his head. “Is shame,” he repeated.
When we finally reached the building, the front door swung open for us, and the biggest guy I’d seen yet stood there with his giant forearms crossed in front of his chest. He said something in Russian and Artur replied in their native tongue. The bigger man seemed angry and I got the feeling Artur was defending himself.
“Go inside,” Artur told me. “You see? You make bad for me.”
“I didn’t mean to…” I started, but my words trailed off as I glanced right and saw the tree stump to the right of the door. Chopped firewood was lined up against the wall and an axe was stuck into the stump. These guys really had no concern that a woman might best them. They had a fucking weapon right outside the front door.
It dawned on me that
the axe might have been left there for a reason. It was a psychological thing. All of it was.
You could run for it, but you will die out there in the cold. You could reach for that axe, but you’d be dead before you could lift it.
The mind game worked. I couldn’t muster up the courage to run for the axe. Even if I did, who was I going to hit with it? One of these two guys? Then I’d be screwed anyway. I couldn’t take them all on. Not when they were armed the way they were. I wasn’t Rambo. And, again, even if I succeeded in killing these two, which I was sure I wouldn’t, where was I going to go? Out there?
My eyes drifted over to the snow white field and it killed me that freedom was so close, but with that freedom came death.
“You make bad for me,” Artur repeated. “Go inside.”
“I’m sorry,” I said as he led me past the big guard and into the building. Ahead of me was a set of metal stairs. To the right was a hallway, but Artur pressed his gun against my back to let me know we were going to the next floor up. “I only wanted to talk to you. That’s all. Nobody will talk to me here, I’m sure.”
The stairs echoed as he led me up. I reached out to touch the wall to my left, and it was solid. It felt like we were in some kind of arctic research facility.
“What is this place?” I asked.
“No more speaking please,” he replied.
“Fine.”
At the top of the stairs, we turned left and ran right into a metal door. Artur banged on it with a closed fist and yelled something in Russian. The door swung inward, and I was led into the darkest, dingiest room I’d ever seen in my life.
Over a hundred women were packed in. All wore the clothes they’d been picked up in. For some, this meant thin dresses meant for dancing in warm nightclubs. For others, it meant wool caps, gloves, and coats. Some still wore work uniforms.
Many were dirty, grimy, and had dark rings around their eyes. These women appeared to be malnourished and I wondered how far they’d traveled. Those in cold weather gear might have come from Anchorage or one of the other Alaskan cities. They could have come from Canada, too, I supposed. I heard some speaking Spanish, two women whispering in what might have been Chinese, and even one woman talking to herself in what sounded like German.