Nike's Wings

by Valerie Douglas

  The frank words shocked her, but they echoed in the hollowness inside her where there should have been feelings, emotions, but weren’t.

  “We can help you,” Victor Torrance said, taking her hand. “We can give you purpose. Help you use what happened to you to do some good. In exchange we’ll get you the help you need to live in society once again.”

  He paused, looked at her.

  “Your family knows nothing,” he said, gently. “Until you’re ready, until you’re healthy enough to tell them. In the meantime, you can help us stop men like Santiago from doing to others what was done to you.”

  Evan echoed Torrance’s words. “You can take what Santiago taught you, what we’ll teach you, and use it to stop men like him.”

  Victor Torrance added, “We’ll give you a new name, a new life. Time to readjust. Then, when you’re ready, you can step into your old life again.”

  It was something, a chance to use what had been done to her in a positive way, a direction to go when she’d been directionless. Her only thought until then had been escape not what would come after. She’d found herself rudderless and all too aware as she came into contact with people that she’d changed, that she was different.

  “Can you get a message to a CIA agent named Ty Connor?” she asked. “Let him know I survived?”

  She didn’t want him to come, didn’t want him to see her like this, but she wanted him to know she lived.

  Evan looked at Victor, who nodded. “Sure.”

  Studying her, Evan said, “We’ll have to do something about her eyes, though, they’re too distinctive.”

  “We’ll work on that,” Victor said. “Give a thought to your new name and let us know.”

  Callie nodded.

  Looking at her steadily, Evan said, “We have to warn you, though, it won’t be easy. You’ll receive the same training as field agents with years more experience. That training is harsh.”

  Victor Torrance looked at her. “We know you can do it, though. You survived Santiago, you can survive this.”

  Reassuringly, he smiled. “It won’t be all bad.”

  With a nod, Evan said. “Come with me. We’ll get you started. Get you some clothes, introduce you to your instructors.”

  Chapter Eight

  It wasn’t difficult, not at first. After what Jorge and Santiago had put her through, the physical training was easy, easier than she’d expected now that she was eating on a regular basis. Self-defense was harder. Jorge had been closer to her height and weight than the people she trained against now. Languages, geography, anatomy, it was all fascinating, almost like college. They discovered she was a natural mimic, able to duplicate any accent within moments of hearing it.

  Except that she was likely to be awakened at any hour of the day or night. Not that she knew what either of those were, because she rarely saw the sun. Her sleep cycle was disrupted constantly. As was her class schedule. There was no routine, there were no moments when she could relax. Training was constant from the moment she awoke until she was allowed to sleep.

  Until the day Victor walked into one of her training sessions with Evan and two men wearing thin black balaclavas over their heads. Behind the masks the men were indistinguishable from any others. All she was certain of was that they were large and heavily muscled.

  Her instructor left without a word.

  A chill went over her. Something inside her went very still, wary.

  “This part of the training will teach you to withstand harsh interrogation techniques,” Victor said, “so you know what to expect. We’ve been waiting for you to get healthy enough for this. Now the real training begins. Understand - there will be no mercy. They’ll treat you exactly as they would a prisoner. The purpose is to break down your personality. And we will. It won’t end until you complete the training successfully. You belong to us now. This will be the only time we tell you when this is going to happen. Do you understand?”

  Beside him, Evan stared anywhere, but at her and remained silent.

  Callie looked at Victor Torrance, then at Evan. There was no escape. Not past the men in the black masks. Emotion fled. This would be bad and she knew it. She also knew fighting them would only make it worse.

  Instinctively she tucked Callie away once again. She’d chosen Nike as her new name. Nike, the goddess of victory. Nike Tallent. As she’d become Chica once before, in that instant she became Nike in truth.

  She nodded.

  The man waiting behind her snapped the cuffs on her wrists and led her away.

  Watching her go, Victor said, his voice soft. “You only think you do.”

  It suited him to allow her to think so.

  “Are you insane?” Evan snapped at him as the doors closed. “Telling her that?”

  “She needs to know the purpose of it, if she is to fight it,” Victor said evenly, as they walked to the observation room to watch.

  “You want her to fight?” Evan said, his tone incredulous.

  “Tooth and nail,” Victor said. “She’ll break faster that way. Part of her accepts her fate, but another part will try to preserve the personality. That we cannot allow.”

  Cameras were set in every location that the person who would be Nike would occupy. First, to be certain the trainee wasn’t harmed irreparably, and secondly, to be sure the trainer didn’t go too far, as a dead subject would do them no good.

  Not, however, in this case. Those who worked with her had very specific instructions.

  “She needs to anticipate. She must anticipate it.”

  The avid sound in his voice gave Evan the shivers. There was no doubt in his mind that Victor enjoyed this.

  Victor looked at him. “Remember, everything we do here has a reason, but the final purpose is this great country of ours. They have suicide bombers. Now we will, too.”

  Nike’s guards dragged her down the hall to where other men waited. All of them were masked, too.

  As with all prisoners, they stripped her down to skin, handling her roughly, crudely, while Evan and Victor watched.

  Nudity didn’t bother her. Modesty had gone by the wayside in the Santiago’s camp. Nor did the shouts, the insults, the crude comments. Those Nike had known before as well.

  They didn’t allow her to sleep, banging on the sides of her cell, shouting at her, sometimes even kicking her to get her up. Even that was known, familiar. Sometimes they didn’t have to wake her as the nightmares of the days in Santiago’s camp brought her out of sleep. Only now sometimes she didn’t dream of the jungle, but of featureless white walls and men who wore masks.

  They forced her to stand for long hours with no relief, no water, nothing to distract the mind from the stiffness and the growing pain in her thighs, her back, abs, as the muscles cramped and quivered from remaining in the same position for too long. Or they made her sit crouched until the muscles in her thighs screamed with agony.

  When they pulled the thin cloth bag over her head and bound her to the board, tilted it – that had been bad. When they poured water over the bag until it was soaked, until she couldn’t breathe without breathing in water, the bag sucking up her nose as she coughed, sputtered and gasped, she fought. It was instinct. She tried desperately to breathe, to get a single breath of clear air as they demanded information… Her name, her real name… Not her new name, Nike Tallent, the cover name she’d chosen, but…her own… Callie, Callie Martin. She fought, struggled for air…

  She was confused. If she gave the wrong answer, if she told them the truth, they beat her, poured water over the bag until she surrendered and gave them the answer they wanted.

  There were the shocks from a taser, her whole body going rigid as every muscle locked, her lungs frozen as her body arched in agony.

  All of it was difficult, but the ‘chamber’ was horrifying.

  Nike knew better than to fight when they put her in it, knew it would do no good. She fought the urge with every muscle, bone and nerve in her body as they lowered her inside the black
tank, the salts and minerals in the water rendering the fluid within it incredibly buoyant. With her wrists bound loosely behind her, her ankles tied, she could do nothing but float as they closed the lid and darkness descended around her.

  It wasn’t the little closed coffin beneath Santiago’s hut or shack, or the pit, with the dirt sifting down every time someone walked across the floor, but it was in some ways worse. In the absolute darkness she couldn’t see anything, couldn’t feel anything, couldn’t hear anything, couldn’t smell anything…There was only the utter blackness closing in around her.

  For a short time, it wasn’t bad, until her mind turned on itself, chased itself, until she wondered if they would ever going to let her out of the darkness. It seemed as if it would go on forever. Thoughts and fears raced through her mind. She thought she fell asleep for a time…and dreamed of Santiago’s men hunting her through the jungle as she tried to escape. She might have made it until she felt something hammer into her leg and she was falling. Still, she tried to flee, heard their laughter echo nightmarishly from the trees. Hunted on every side…until they dragged her back. Until they thrust her into the hole.

  The nightmare woke her to the utter darkness and the darkness didn’t go away, she couldn’t escape from the dream, from the fear, it just went on and on. It closed in to smother her. It seeped into her pores.

  A voice so faint, so impersonal that she might have only imagined it whispered, hissed.

  “You don’t have to feel it, the fear…you don’t have to feel anything…”

  Her old mantra wound through her mind, but against the swallowing darkness it was of no use. Shadows haunted the edges of her vision. The ability to tell the real from the unreal deserted her. She heard other voices. Jorge crept out of death and the darkness to kill her, and she couldn’t defend herself.

  Fear ravaged her, raced through her, as she fought and struggled within the chamber.

  Evan couldn’t watch, he had to walk away, his jaw clenched while Victor continued to observe dispassionately. Or so Evan hoped. A part of him feared Victor got off on it.

  The monitors were going wild.

  “Remember our assignment. Remember why we’re doing this,” Victor said to him, tightly, over the radio, a voice in his ear. “The enemy has people willing to die for their cause. So must we. People not only willing to die, we have to go them one better. This is what the Secretary wants. It goes higher than that. You know it, Evan. Your attitude is the kind of weakness that brought us here. This is no more than what we do in Guantanamo or at some of the overseas camps. It’s what has been and will be done to our people, what will be done to her if she isn’t quick enough, smart enough to escape. She needs to be able to survive it. Remember that.”

  Within the tank, Nike clung desperately to memories, escaped into them.

  Fear is the mind-killer. The words floated to the surface of her mind. She retreated. And became Chica once again, then, finally, Nike.

  When she finally went still the trainers went in after her, lifted her carefully out of the tank. Her eyelids fluttered…

  “No,” Victor hissed furiously, his restraint worse than a shout. “Not one shred of kindness, not one. Imagine that she’s a female suicide bomber for Al-Qaeda, and treat her as you would them. Would you treat her so well if she was?”

  They dumped her on the floor of her cell wet and shivering.

  In the darkness, she heard a distant shout, a cry.

  She knew there were others besides her she knew, but she never saw them and as far as she knew they never saw her.

  After a time, she crawled onto her cot and curled there for warmth.

  It seemed she’d barely slept or rested when they came for her again.

  Sleep was unpredictable. She could be awakened at any time for physical training, training in martial arts and self-defense, in languages, in geography, weapons. She had to be ready to leap out of bed, functioning. Every waking second was filled. She dreamed sometimes wide-awake, her only moments of peace in the bathroom or the shower.

  No one touched her except roughly.

  She would live through this, too.

  They woke her again. There was the shock of a bag going over her head. Her clothes were stripped off, rough hands on her, snapping the cuffs on again. Shouting, men pushed, dragged and shoved her down hallways.

  This time she fought them with everything they’d taught her.

  A soft voice in her ear, so soft it was almost imagined, said, “Good, good.”

  It began again.

  When it ended, there was new training, with weapons and simulated drills. She was awakened at any hour, handed any weapon, any assignment without warning. Her objective changed with each assignment. They were always run as if it were an actual assignment, with Evan giving her instructions, briefing her on the target.

  He was to be her handler. She understood that.

  She was long past weariness and exhaustion.

  Even so, she still had the capacity to surprise them.

  The training area was like a small town built in the middle of nowhere. The buildings were all empty, but complete. All of it was encircled by two distant courses of ten foot high electrified steel fences topped with concertina and razor wire. Cameras were mounted in places along the fence. As always when Callie… Nike…her name was Nike now… As always, Nike wondered whether they were intended to keep others out or her in.

  Evan and Victor Torrance waited. Evan gave her instructions, as usual.

  Her objective was to reach a certain point, bypassing all the guards and sentries, to reach a point in a specific location without being spotted and without being caught, and from there to enter the square full of people.

  “When you arrive,” Evan said, handing her a small remote, “press this button. That will be the signal you’re done.”

  She nodded.

  The backpack on her back was unwieldy, but if she cinched the straps tight enough, it didn’t throw her too much off balance. It didn’t take her long, trotting lightly through the darkness, to get accustomed to the weight.

  Something about the arrangement of the buildings, the way the walls were set, the angles, brought memories back memories of her days in South America - her father’s early days there, when they moved from country to country - and the kids in the streets she’d hung out with then, free-running, tagging, learning Capoeira and Parkour.

  Evan and Victor watched her, she knew that. Infrared cameras lined the streets, but not the roofs.

  She smiled.

  Watching the cameras, they saw her break into a run. She went around a corner into an alley…

  They shifted cameras.

  For a minute they all stared. The alley was empty.

  She’d disappeared.

  Victor stared at the monitor.

  The camera operator switched cameras, turned them to infrared.

  “Where the hell is she?” he said. “Where did she go?”

  They switched cameras, going around the buildings searching for movement.

  Victor smiled. “Tell the others to search for her. Find her.”

  It was becoming much more than the usual drill.

  They had military training. Until she’d come here, she hadn’t. She was the wild card. She did the unpredictable. She did nothing they expected.

  It wasn’t only Nike who was learning here.

  Nike leaped, using some crates to bounce from to gain height and grasped the coping of the building. Using her momentum, she pushed off that building with her hands and feet to catch the balcony of the one across the way. She scrambled up it to run along its short length and leap for the lip of the roof of the next wall. Pushing off with her feet on the wall, she vaulted up onto the roof.

  The soft-soled shoes she wore rendered her nearly silent.

  Moving fast, she raced for the next roof and leaped across the space, almost invisible against the dark sky.

  She was aware of the guards below her, more so as they grew rest
less. Their hands went to their ears, to their earphones, their bodies tense. They fanned out, eyes scanning everywhere, but up. Line of sight was against them.

  Moving almost silently, she ran lightly along the roof and leaped to the next.

  There was a juncture when she had to come down to ground level where two of the guards searched.

  It could be possible, she saw in an instant, but the timing would be split second.

  She jumped from one roof to the lower, into the intersection between the two buildings. One guard turned, but she was already moving, running to leap, wall-walking to gain momentum. One step, two, three, and the guard’s trained reactions no longer had a target. She was already out of his reach.

  Instantly he was on the radio.

  Nike’s orders were not to engage so she didn’t. She evaded.

  The next guard disappeared, but she knew where he’d been, and he didn’t know where she could go. Exhilaration filled her. Running as fast as she could, she leaped for a wall even as another guard came after her, but this time she simply bounced from one building to the next closest, then up a third, and she had the edge of the roof. Swinging up over the edge, she scrambled to her feet and raced across it, knowing they would be talking to each other now. They knew where she was and where she was going, but it was already too late.

  The square in the center of the small village was exactly as Evan described, with decorative cement planters and strings of fairy lights hung in the trees.

  A party was going on and a number of people were gathered in the courtyard in the center.

  Below her was a six foot courtyard wall and that was where she landed, as if on a balance beam, racing quickly and lightly along it.

  An outcry came from the guards as they spotted her, but she was already leaping to land among the flowers in one of the large planters. Bouncing from it into a standing somersault, she rolled to land in the middle of the square, only feet from the people who stood there staring at her in shock.

  As instructed, she pulled the narrow cylinder from her pocket and pushed the button.

  A loud bang sounded from the backpack.