Comandante raised his hand, signaling his balding enforcer to stop. He then looked at Mason. “It's funny, when you speak, I don't hear any words. Just bullshit.”
“It's the truth,” Mason said.
“Let's try this,” the comandante continued. “Tell us what you're doing in our territory, and we’ll go from there.”
“Territory?”
“You will pay a hefty price for the offense.”
“What kind of price?”
“Food, water, ammo...whatever you got.”
Mason couldn't believe his ears. “Whatever I got? Do I look like a man who has things?”
“Back home, puta,” the goatee man answered. “You take us back to your little gringo home in your little gringo neighborhood, and we take what we need.”
“Sounds fair to me,” the balding man added.
“It's the best deal you're gonna get,” Comandante said.
Mason looked around the room in disarray. They had managed to confuse him in ways that exceeded his own limited knowledge of interrogation techniques. He grasped at anything that would stall them or possibly let him go. Nothing came to mind.
“Look at that,” the balding man said, walking in front of Mason. “El gato got his tongue.”
“Last chance,” Comandante said. His goateed compatriot picked up a small two-by-four plank.
Mason was at a loss. He saw little hope in his situation and next-to-no way out of it. He shook his head from side to side while taking a deep breath. “I don't have a house, and I don't live around here. You have to believe me. I can't remember much beyond that.”
Comandante stepped forward—leaning close to Mason—and spoke softly. “I'm sure you'll recall something.”
He backed away and signaled his men, who proceeded to pummel Mason from both sides, quick and painful. They struck him in the face, chest, and stomach. White flashes consumed his vision as his face immediately began to swell.
Just when he thought the worst was over, goatee man raised his two-by-four in the air and smacked it down onto his already battered legs. It was the worst pain he had felt yet. He responded with an agonizing scream that startled his attackers. Comandante signaled the men off as they stared at the badly beaten man before them.
Mason squinted up at the men surrounding him. Along with a surge of pain and numbness, he began to remember things as if they were from yesterday. His mission—his entire purpose—rushed back to him in a recollection that was vivid and accessible.
“Talk, damn you, talk,” Comandante said.
Goatee man held his two-by-four high in the air, ready to bring it down again on Mason's legs. Mason shuddered. He was no soldier or master spy. He was a data analyst, with virtually no training in how to handle torture.
“It's in Henry County, just outside the city. An old farmhouse! I put the thumb drive there. You want it, you go out there yourselves and get the fucking thing!”
His captors were stunned. Goatee man continued to hold the plank in the air, awaiting the signal. Comandante scratched his chin, trying to figure Mason out. He decided to press him further. “What are you talking about?”
Mason was on the verge of tears. Gone was any sign of impudence or defiance. “You were sent to follow me right? Well, I'll tell you what you want to know. Not like it's going to matter anyhow.”
Comandante grew more curious. He signaled his men to stand back. “Go on,” he said.
“Surely you know that the NSA has had its tentacles all over the world. Not only do they monitor hundreds of millions of American citizens each day, but they've got a foothold around the world as well. There isn't a single country that isn't on our radar. Hell, we embedded Spyware into computer networks all over the world, from Iran and Pakistan to China and Russia. Well, it wasn't too long before we picked something up. The EMP attacks, you know all about them, right?” Mason thought he was telling them things they already knew; however, their confused faces indicated no pre-knowledge of anything.
“In order for the reigning superpowers to become a one-world order, if you wanna call it that, America had to be taken down a peg. The attackers planned a three-pronged strike. The first nail in the coffin was the EMP strikes themselves. This was initiated by Russia and their sympathetic allies in South America. I assume you know about this, considering your government played a part.”
The men said nothing. Mason had no choice but to continue.
“The second nail was to draw the U.S. into an unwinnable war by placing the blame of the EMP strikes on a patsy. In this case, the NSA produced fraudulent intelligence tracing the origin of the missiles to the unstable Middle-Eastern regimes, like Syria and Libya. Counter-attacks by America would result in an even more serious response, especially once Iran gets involved. The third nail involves picking up the scraps left over from the war. A war that China and Russia will have no major role in. Russia will expand its territories through Europe, China will consume Asia, and they'll both divide North and South America into whatever suits them.”
Mason paused to catch his breath. Comandante raised his finger in the air.
“You are one crazy man,” he said. “Where do you come up with this stuff?”
“Cut the bullshit,” Mason said. “You know that I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. You just want to know where I hid the information.”
“What information?” Comandante asked.
“The files!” Mason shouted. “The thumb drive. It's what you're after, isn't it? Everything that exposes the conspiracy. The very information that over a hundred people in the NSA were killed over this past year. The same information the infiltrators in our government don't want out there.” Mason laughed to himself. “It's funny how after all this destruction, it comes down to just little old me and a memory stick hidden in a pumpkin on a farm in Georgia.” He looked up and saw that his captors were not amused. “My only question is, what do you hope to gain from this? Without America, the world will eat itself alive. You really think your masters can contain a war with the Middle East? A war with Iran? It's not going to happen. We're all going to die because of this.”
Suddenly, goatee man punched Mason in the face at the behest of the comandante. The shock was sudden and harsh.
“Who are you?” Comandante asked slowly.
Mason looked up and spat out a mouthful of blood onto the floor. “Don't you know? Didn't they send you after me? I'm Mason Turner, a data analyst for the NSA. Now that I've told you everything, why don't you tell me something about yourselves?”
“I have no idea what you're talking about,” the comandante said. “I must say, you have quite an active imagination, but you're not going anywhere until you tell us what we want to know.”
“What do you want to know?” Mason shouted.
“Where are your supplies? What are you doing in our territory?”
Mason closed his eyes and shook his head in disbelief. He felt more quick blows to his chest and stomach and lowered his head, ready to pass out.
“Last chance, gringo,” Comandante said, putting a revolver to his head.
Mason heard the click of the gun, followed by a sudden revelation. It dawned on him that he had been mistaken. The three Colombian men weren't part of any conspiracy. They were territorial thugs after all, and they were about to kill him for no reason. Mason then decided to give them what they wanted.
“I have a house. A safe house full of supplies,” he said in a defeated tone.
“What kind of supplies?” the comandante asked.
Mason thought to himself, growing dizzy by the minute. He eventually spoke. “Containers of food. An armory of weapons. Fuel, medicine, water. Anything you need.”
Comandante lowered his weapon and smiled. “Where at?”
“Not far,” Mason answered. “I was scouting for more stuff. That's why I was in your territory.”
“And you'll take us there?”
“Yes. As long as you don't kill me.”
“Con
sider it done,” Comandante said. Although they planned to kill him anyway.
“Who else is there?” goatee man asked. “How many others?”
“Five,” Mason blurted out. “You'll have to take me there, or they'll light you up the minute you set foot on the property.”
“Let's move,” Comandante said, not wanting to stall any longer. He signaled to his men and told them in Spanish to help Mason up. They pulled him up to his feet. He shivered in pain as his head hung low. He then noticed the box cutter on the ground near the leg of his chair.
“Start moving,” goatee man demanded.
As they pushed him forward, Mason simply collapsed on the ground. Comandante smacked his own face in response to his men's incompetency. “Get him up, idiota,” he said.
Mason lay on the ground and quickly crawled toward the box cutter before they could lift him back up. He clutched the tool nonchalantly and concealed it within his grip.
Goatee man knelt down and lifted him up, cursing at Mason in Spanish. The moment Mason got on his feet, he drove the blade into goatee man's neck, digging into his thorax as deep as he could. Mason ripped it out of his neck, leaving a gaping hole that gushed blood. Goatee man gurgled and fell to the ground just as the balding man drew his knife, ready to strike.
Mason was faster and stabbed the balding man in the face repeatedly with the blade until the man fell to the ground in a bloody pool. Comandante struggled to pull his pistol from its holster as Mason fell with the balding man. Mason retrieved the knife, stood up, and lunged at Comandante with his last ounce of strength.
They rolled over the creaking floorboards, grunting and heaving in a desperate, primal struggle. Mason lay atop the comandante, pushing the knife down toward him. Comandante held Mason's arms up as the knife hovered above his chest. The fear in Comandante's eyes revealed his glaring disadvantage. He frantically struggled and then attempted to reason.
“Wait!” he shouted. “We can work this out.”
Mason kneed the man in his groin, causing his resistance to subside. The knife entered the comandante's chest under the full weight and force of Mason's 170-pound frame.
“Chinga tu madre,” Comandante said, coughing up blood.
His head tilted upward and froze as he let out one last agonized breath. Mason pushed himself up and managed to find enough balance to stand. He examined the carnage on the floor and couldn't believe that it had come from his own hands.
Before leaving and wandering into the great unknown of the city, Mason knew there was still work to be done. He toiled over each of his kills and searched their pockets for identification. After finding their wallets, he tore through them in haste. They had Georgia driver's licenses, and everything else indicated similar residency. He had no reason to believe they were part of the conspiracy. It looked like he had simply wandered onto their territory after all.
He did, however, find one disturbing pattern. Each of the men had a tattoo on his wrist that indicated an affiliation with Locos Urabeños, a notorious para-military gang, which Mason was familiar with from his days at the NSA. It made him all the more curious. He suspected that he was standing in their safe house and feared that others would soon be on their way. He yanked the comandante's pistol from its holster, kicked the lantern out, and stumbled out of the house into further darkness.
He was in immense pain, dehydrated, hungry, and tired. There was only one place he knew of that could help him. He would go back to the hospital. He stuffed the revolver in his pants pocket and patted it from the outside. His return to the hospital would no doubt surprise them, but he wasn't going there to see a doctor. A simple Humvee would do the trick.
The Out-of-Towners
Friday, September 25, 2020, late afternoon
While James and his crew had been working diligently around their bug-out house, they were unaware of the suspicious activities of five stockbrokers from New York City only a few miles away. Even after the calamity that followed the EMP strikes, it seemed that they had faced the worst. The Milledgeville bug-out house was quaint, and they had what they needed to make it for at least a few months. For James and everyone else, there was something peaceful about their isolated location.
It was a good plan, and they had what they needed for the time being. The house was equipped to sustain a large number of people for six months to a year. It wasn't perfect, but it was ideal in its way. No one really wanted to believe that they would need to bug-out for any time longer. And no one would have ever expected that the house would be reduced to ashes days after their arrival.
Bryce and Scott, two of the five ill-fated men, devised a scheme that led to the destruction of the bug-out house, and also their own deaths. Their random encounter with James's group was tragic for everyone involved. But that wasn't the end of Bryce's group. The rest of the men had abandoned the group one by one, peeling away from it after each blowup and argument over what to do about their situation.
Their plan had been to drive to a cabin in Thomasville, Georgia, and spend a weekend away from the city to relax and unwind. It sounded ideal, but they also had the matter of their embezzlement scheme about to be exposed by their coworker, Gordon, a man they loathed. Out in the woods, Gordon ran off after growing wise to their murderous scheme. The day after that, Jamie abandoned the group after an argument about whether or not to attack James's crew. Then off went Aaron, for similar reasons. The group had split up as randomly as the forces that had brought them together. Their eventual fates would turn out to be as bizarre as anything they had faced so far.
***
Gordon was no survivalist. He was the kind of man who always wore a nice suit, looked good, and sported a thick, well-groomed head of blond hair. The closest he had ever been to an outdoor life was during his rare walks through Central Park. After fleeing Bryce's group, he ran far into the woods and went completely off their radar. He was dirty, his clothes were ragged, and he longed for a bottle of water. Miraculously, he had managed to evade Scott and the others. But he had an even greater problem: he was completely lost.
There was no one to turn to and no one to assist him. His cell phone, like the van, no longer functioned. Gordon's only hope was to find a way to town, which was ten miles away. He longed for New York while resting against a tree in the desolate forest. He would give anything to see his apartment again. As small and expensive as it was, he was still proud to call it home. He promised himself that if he made it out of his current predicament, he would live his life to the fullest extent.
He’d managed to lose Scott, and for that, Gordon was grateful. After he no longer saw any sign of the others, he took a moment to assess the situation. He would have to fend for himself. After realizing that he was well and truly alone, panic settled in and Gordon almost considered looking for the very people who he expected were plotting to kill him. Maybe everything was one big misunderstanding. He knew better, however, and had to trust his instincts. He had his suspicions about the van breaking down and the reason for them walking through the woods in the first place.
Maybe they had messed with his phone in the process. They were, after all, master manipulators. It all seemed coincidental, but very real at the same time. They had been told that downtown Milledgeville was ten miles south, so he used the daytime sun as his compass and started walking. The endless forest was full of thick brush and rolling hills. It was exhausting to navigate through, especially with only a limited knowledge of where he was heading. He constantly looked around for any signs of the others and walked carefully. It wasn't long before a creeping hopelessness started to settle in.
As the day went on, it only seemed to get hotter. Gordon speculated that it was at least four or five in the afternoon. It was Friday, which meant that if everything worked out, he could catch a flight back to New York and be home by late Saturday or early Sunday. He might even have some of his weekend left. The important thing was to make it back to work by Monday. He was going to burn Scott's crew for good. He had so much on
them, he didn't even know where to start.
It was almost too easy to simply go to the police. His former friends would pay for taking him out into the woods. He would ensure that at the very least. There came a time after so much walking and climbing hills that Gordon had to rest. He sat down and leaned up against a tree next to a particularly large bush for concealment. It felt good to close his eyes for a moment. His headache temporarily subsided, and pretty soon he nodded off completely and fell asleep.
When he awoke, it was considerably darker. The sun had dipped below the horizon. A large man stood over him with a rifle and Gordon thought he was still dreaming.
“Hey, buddy,” the unshaven man said. His curly hair was packed under a red hat with a bass insignia on it. He wore coveralls and a flannel shirt underneath. He looked to Gordon like a typical good ol' country boy. The man lightly tapped Gordon with his foot. Once it became clear that he wasn't dreaming, Gordon jumped up in a panic. His first thought was that they had found him. His second thought was that he had wandered onto someone's property and was in trouble.
“Easy there,” the man said. There were others behind him dressed similarly and holding rifles.
“Who are you?” Gordon shouted out.
“Name's Bobby. What are you doing out here?” the man asked.
“Nothing,” Gordon answered. They were complete strangers, and he didn't want to tell them a thing.
“Looks like he was trying to catch some Zs,” one of the other men said with a laugh.
“You out here all by yourself?” Bobby asked.
Gordon looked around. There were four other men. Maybe they could help him get back into town. Perhaps Gordon lucked out. However, he didn't know if he could trust them. The sight of their rifles made him nervous. Gordon swallowed uncomfortably as his throat was dry as sandpaper. “Not really,” he answered.
“What's that supposed to mean?” Bobby asked.
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