by Matt Rogers
They had restrained him, and now they were storing him in this abandoned structure.
It didn’t look good.
He transferred a bundle of nervous energy into an all-out burst of strength, forcing his wrists apart, straining against the duct tape.
But there was too much of it.
His reserves depleted, he drooped his head and grimaced.
An open palm slapped him across the cheek, and a string of aggressive Italian followed it. They’d noticed his attempts to break free, and punished him accordingly.
He sunk back into darkness.
6
Befitting his own mood, the weather had considerably worsened when he came back to reality.
This time, there wasn’t the air of desperation seeping through his mind. The journey had come to a halt, reaching a checkpoint of sorts. He wasn’t being dragged anywhere. He was stationary.
He opened his eyes and noticed the amount of tape around his wrists had increased. The thick grey material had been looped around his hands again and again in almost comical fashion. Now, the bindings against his skin had the appearance of a swollen sphere of tape. An unnecessary amount, considering Rollins hadn’t been able to break out of the initial bindings.
But maybe…
He filed an idea in the back of his head for future use, and turned his attention to the rest of his surroundings.
He was in a windowless room. The walls had previously been a shade of pale yellow, but the rot and the weather and the years of disuse had deepened their hue to the colour of dark urine. The single wooden door providing the only means of access to the room lay half-open — clearly his captors considered his restrains enough to contain him. Rollins wondered why he couldn’t simply get up and hop out of the room, even with his ankles tied together…
Then he noticed the chains.
Further up his shins, past the roll of duct tape yanked tight around his ankles, a pair of bulky metal manacles were clamped down across the lower portion of his calf muscles. A sturdy chain ran from the manacles to a bolt fixed into the wall, reinforced for good measure.
He wasn’t going anywhere.
Swallowing a sudden wave of nausea, Rollins didn’t bother struggling against his bindings. He knew any attempts to do so would fail, and that would only serve to increase his anxiety. The fact that he had a history in black operations didn’t make the concept of being held against his will any less terrifying. That was something primal and evolutionary and instinctive, and it didn’t go away in a hurry. He imagined he would need to be subjected to a decade of life-or-death operations before he happily embraced a situation like this.
Lying on his back in the same position he’d awoken, he sat up and scooted back to the closest wall, adopting an upright position so he could be better prepared for whatever came next.
As if on cue, Viola stuck her head into the room, leaning through the doorway.
She spotted Rollins, momentarily found eye contact with him, and then darted back out of sight as if shocked with an electric cattle prod.
Rollins understood. He’d glimpsed the mixture of fear and tentativeness in her eyes, even before she’d spotted him alert and conscious on the other side of the room. She was involved — and that wracked his insides with unease considering how easily he’d been duped into thinking her affection was real — but she wasn’t the mastermind behind this shoddy operation. He had seen enough people like her in war zones.
Timid types, easily roped into playing along with a certain set of circumstances.
She felt bad, probably.
That didn’t help Rollins’ current situation.
As soon as she disappeared from sight, recoiling at the fact that he was awake and capable of judging her, the house lapsed back into silence. Rollins kept his ears tuned to any sign of disruption, but Viola was awfully quiet. She’d retreated back down the corridor without a peep of sound, leaving Rollins to his own devices.
He sat patiently, ignoring the headache left over from his bout of unconsciousness and the aching in his lower legs as the metal manacles bit deep into his skin.
He sat, and waited.
As he’d been trained to do.
Trained.
No, he thought. Not like this.
He would have to come to terms with it sooner or later, though. When his military career had come to a sudden end just a few short weeks ago, he’d vowed to let the skills he’d acquired over years of training fade away into nothingness. He’d promised himself — sworn to himself, in fact — that he wouldn’t even think about using violence or force against another human being ever again.
It had the potential to be morally wrong, of course.
What if he came across a mugging, or a kidnapping, or a rape?
He had vowed to cross that bridge when he came to it, but in the process of unpacking all the shit he’d built up in his mind over his career, he’d practically accepted that he was going to have to try his hardest to leave his old life behind. He couldn’t step away from the profession and maintain the aura of a trained killer. He’d done it over and over again — he knew what it looked like when the life drained out of a man’s eyes — but he couldn’t carry it with him into the next phase of his life.
No matter what.
And now, less than a month after making that promise to himself, he realised he would probably need to break it if he wanted to live.
Why?
Why was this happening?
Was he attracted to violence? Did it instinctively seep into everything he did?
He would certainly find out.
Someone pushed the door wide open, and Rollins lifted his gaze to meet the eyes of the man who stood in the doorway. The guy was one of the three attackers, and Rollins instantly recognised the nature of the situation.
Drug addicts.
The man was hopped up on some kind of stimulant — Rollins guessed crack cocaine, a deeply sinister substance. He didn’t know exactly which drugs were popular on the black market in Italy, but there was no mistaking the dilated pupils and the sharp, rapid breathing and the uncomfortable twitching in his fingers as he stood poised in the middle of the doorway. Rollins eyed the man’s cracked lips, beginning to blister from repeated use of the hot pipe.
Definitely crack, he thought.
The man’s shoulders drooped, his back concaved, like a wolf raising its hackles as it spotted its prey. He looked roughly thirty, but Rollins knew the guy could well be in his early twenties.
There was no way to know for sure with addicts.
Before Rollins could utter a word, the guy burst off the mark and sprinted straight at him.
7
Rollins couldn’t help himself — his heart rate surged at a dangerous rate.
Dark, icy fear speared through him.
Because, as gaunt and weak and untrained as this man was, his veins were fuelled with the desperation of an addict, and Rollins was restrained effectively enough to make resistance futile. If the guy wanted to, he could stomp Rollins to death in less than a minute, jabbing down with the sole of his boot until Rollins’ skull cracked.
Both of them recognised that.
The blood drained from Rollins’ face.
At the last second the addict screeched to a halt, sliding almost a foot across the slippery wood-panelled floor as he ground his boots to a standstill. Moving like a circus clown, he planted himself down on his rear in a panting heap, laughing and cackling, exposing rotting yellow teeth.
Like something out of a horror movie.
Most would have panicked at the sheer strangeness of it all.
Rollins sat motionless, his face hardening to stone.
Quietly observing.
‘Hey!’ the addict said, adopting a monk-like seated position with his legs crossed and his hands resting comically on his knees, palms up. His Italian accent was thick, but the inflection of his tone was pronounced. ’Did I scare you? Sorry, friend.’
‘You speak English,�
� Rollins noted.
‘I sure do! You impressed?’
‘Very.’
‘Good. Because if you weren’t I might have killed you.’
He let out an explosion of laughter, so harsh and guttural that Rollins almost winced. But he fought down the urge to show any emotion whatsoever, and remained seated with his back against the wall, watching this strange man go through his performance.
‘Are you scared?’ the addict said, leaning forward, unblinking.
His eyes bored into Rollins.
‘A little bit, yeah.’
‘You should be more scared.’
‘Sorry to disappoint you,’ Rollins said.
‘Who are you?’
‘You don’t know?’
‘Why the fuck should I know who you are?’
‘Good,’ Rollins said, genuinely relieved. ‘This has nothing to do with me, then.’
‘It has everything to do with you, friend. You are tied up! I could go fetch my knife right now and gut you like a fish. How does that make you feel?’
Rollins tested his wrists, applying the slightest downward pressure to the duct tape. He pulled his hands down and out simultaneously.
Nothing.
No. Not nothing.
The slightest, subtlest shift in the material.
It had adjusted, ever so slightly.
He was no closer to freedom, but he had all the information he needed.
‘Why don’t you try it?’ Rollins said, leaning forward himself. Now their faces were only half a foot apart. ‘Do I look scared to you?’
Briefly, the addict’s rabid performance subsided. A kind of uncertainty that Rollins had seen a hundred times before seeped through. The idea that maybe … just maybe … he wasn’t in control.
‘That’s strange,’ Rollins said, maintaining the same tone. ‘You’re not so talkative anymore.’
‘Shut up, friend,’ the man said, and slapped Rollins hard enough in the face to send him careening back into the plasterboard. Nerve endings exploded across his face, and the stinging set in. He couldn’t raise a hand to his cheek, considering they were covered in duct tape, so he sat still and allowed one side of his face to redden.
The slap brought confidence back to the addict.
‘How’d you like that?’ he said through a leer. ‘You enjoyed it? You want some more?’
‘What am I doing here?’ Rollins said.
‘You’re in private security,’ the guy said, uttering the words as if he had no idea what they meant. He probably didn’t know. He was parroting what Rollins had told Viola. ‘That means you’ve got some money. We’re going to get it from you!’
‘How do you plan on doing that?’
‘We have your wallet. You give us the codes to your cards, and we go around taking money out from ATMs. But there’s very annoying restrictions in place these days, so we can’t do it all at once. So we keep you here. Until we have it all. Might take a few days. Then we might kill you. How does that make you feel?’
The addict seemed strangely interested in how everything made Rollins feel. Rollins had seen it before — the sociopathic tendency to revel in fear. The guy wanted Rollins as panicked as possible, because that would make him feel powerful.
It would make him feel like a god.
Which explained Rollins’ behaviour. He displayed no outward signs of unease — inwardly, he was beyond uncomfortable, but he’d turned his exterior to stone. There was no fear, no sweating, no nervous shaking. Just a calm, subdued stare.
Which threw the addict off.
‘Didn’t you hear me?’ the guy said. ‘We’ll take your money, and then we’ll kill you!’
‘I heard you.’
‘Doesn’t that make you sad? Oh, so very, very sad. And what about Viola? You thought she wanted you. You thought you were going to get lucky. Doesn’t that disappoint you? It would if I were you. I’d be terrified right about now. Oh, so terrified, yes. Yes…’
The addict’s eyes widened, his expression turning manic. Rollins spotted one of his eyelids twitching and sensed an undercurrent of suppressed discomfort in the man.
An addict without a fix.
They needed Rollins’ funds. More than they were letting on.
Because there’s nothing more dangerous, or more unpredictable, than a crack addict without drug money.
And, Rollins noted, there’s nothing more dangerous than an ex-member of Black Force held against his will.
Rollins felt the tide shifting underneath them.
He leant forward again.
‘What do you know about Zurich?’ he said.
8
The unbridled confidence in his voice threw the guy off.
‘What?’ the man said, one eyelid twitching.
‘Zurich.’
‘In Switzerland?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know, friend. This is not Zurich.’
‘No, it’s not. It’s Italy.’
The guy leered again. ‘Shut up, bitch. Want me to slap you again? Stop talking nonsense.’
‘Know anything about Switzerland’s banking laws?’
‘I said shut up.’
‘I don’t think you really want me to shut up,’ Rollins said. ‘Because I can save you some time. Instead of making the trip to ATMs, you can just give me my wallet back.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Then you’re not going to be happy when all my cards get denied.’
‘Because you will try and give us the wrong PIN codes.’
‘No. Because I keep all my money in Zurich, locked up safe and sound in one of their most private institutions. Because of the profession I used to work in. That’s just the way things operated. So you’re not going to move any substantial amount of money around without a long and complicated series of exchanges with a series of bank officials. And all of them are going to realise you aren’t me. You really want to bother with any of that?’
The guy didn’t respond for a while. He kept staring at Rollins, his cheekbones protruding from his face, his cheeks hollow, his eyes wide and sunken.
He needed a fix.
‘You’re full of shit,’ he said with another laugh.
But this time, the laughter was clearly forced. There was no mistaking the false bravado.
Rollins shrugged, and rested his head back against the wall. ‘Go find out for yourself.’
The guy scooted another foot across the ground, moving closer still.
Good, Rollins thought. Keep doing that.
‘Your card has to work,’ the guy said. ‘It has to. Tell us how to make sure it works. Or we will kill you slowly.’
Yeah, that’s it, Rollins thought. Get desperate. More desperate.
‘It won’t work,’ he said, staying infuriatingly calm.
‘It has to! You tell us how to make it work, friend. You tell us, or there will be bad consequences for you. You’re alone out here. You’re…’
‘It won’t work.’
‘You must call Zurich.’
Now it was Rollins’ turn to laugh, and he laced his own cackle with as much contempt and scorn as he could muster. ‘It’s not as simple as that, you drugged-up little shit. You’re not getting my money, no matter how much you want it.’
Bingo.
He’d been working his way up to the Holy Grail of insults, the single line that would send all the addict’s nervous energy bubbling to the surface, spilling out as he realised he was unable to control himself.
It happened.
The guy made a lunge for Rollins’ neck, pale thin fingers searching for his throat, abandoning all semblance of keeping himself together. Rollins saw the spit flecks spraying out of the corners of the guy’s mouth, saw his teeth bared with rabid intensity, saw his eyes boggling out of his skull. He needed his fix, and being denied access to it had driven him to the point of insanity.
Which also resulted in him abandoning any shred of common sense.
Rollins brought bo
th his hands up from his lap at the same time, using the enormous wad of duct tape around his wrists as a rudimentary club. He smashed the wad of material into the underside of the addict’s chin as the guy lunged forward, crushing both rows of the guy’s teeth together with a clang that echoed through the empty room.
Four teeth were knocked loose by the blow.
Blood sprayed and the guy recoiled back across the room, twisting and tumbling away from the horrendous burst of pain. Rollins shuddered under the force of the strike — he’d put his heart and soul into it. With a surge of motivation, he sensed the duct tape weakening slightly, a tiny gap of air forming between his wrists.
Now.
The very first idea that had crossed his mind proved the most effective. During a stint with JSOC he’d been trained in the art of escaping from restraints, and he carried out the next series of movements in one fluid sequence. He reached both arms up far above his head, getting his wrists as high as possible. Then he brought them down, thrusting both hands away from each other at the same time. This time he put every ounce of strength into it, and sure enough one of his hands tore free from the giant bundle of duct tape.
He reached over with his free hand and ripped the rest of the tape off, tossing it aside.
He could use his hands.
Now for the next step.
Getting teeth knocked loose was an abhorrent sensation. Rollins had been counting on a visceral reaction to the blow — the addict wouldn’t be able to think straight. His reality would consist of weakness and pain and anger, and he’d channel that into another pitiful charge.
Rollins was sure of it.
Bingo — again.
Bleeding profusely from the mouth, the guy ran straight at Rollins, even though anyone with two brain cells to rub together would have backed off after the realisation that their prisoner was still chained to the wall by his ankles. Most would have retreated, regrouped, fetched a weapon.
Anything other than a direct charge.
But the guy was losing his mind, desperate for the next hit, his brain hurting as it pleaded for another shot of stimulants to ease the mind-numbing pain. That, coupled with the fact that half his teeth had been knocked loose, led to an overwhelming urge to get his hands on Rollins and punish the man.