The general walks in and hands Brad a sheaf of euros. He flips through them, smiles, and tucks it, folded over, in his pocket.
“Shitty benefits, what can I tell you? I need a nest egg for my retirement. My wife spends money like water.”
Melissa stops, stares at him, and just starts crying harder.
“Relax, honey. You’ll be well taken care of. The guys that can afford to buy girls like you usually keep them for at least a few years. Missionary girl like you knows how to behave, you’ll be fine. Penny, I’m sorry, but I can’t have you getting word of this operation back to anyone, so you’ll have to stay. In case you do something dumb and the general cuts your throat by the time I come back with the next shipment, good-bye and good luck.”
Then he just…walks out.
The general follows him outside. I hear them talking.
The other girl just lies there, eyes glazed over.
“Hey.”
She ignores me.
“Hey.”
Shaking as though startled, she looks over, just with her eyes, her head locked in place.
“What?”
“What’s your name.”
“Doesn’t matter. Nobody is coming for us.”
“It matters to me. Tell me.”
“Danielle. Danielle McCray.”
I blink a few times. “Wait, from the news network?”
She nods. “Yeah. I was in Solkovia for a puff piece about the missionary work you guys do and I stumbled on Brad. I started asking questions, he promised me a huge scoop, put me on a truck, and brought me here.”
“Did they…”
“Only the general gets me. Until you showed up, anyway. He’ll probably kill me tonight. I don’t care. I’m already dead.”
I swallow, hard. I don’t know what to say.
“Don’t fight him. Promise me you won’t fight him. You don’t know what he does to girls that fight him.”
“Did you fight?”
“No. He made me watch him do it to the girl before me. He used a knife.”
Brad must be done talking, because the general comes back in.
I take my first really good look at him. He’s about five foot eight, tanned like leather, with an oily reddish beard and thinning gray hair. He smells like he hasn’t showered in a week, and his uniform, such as it is, is stained with sweat. He walks over and jabs his foot hard into Danielle’s side, and she grunts, biting down on a cry of pain.
He pulls a long folding knife from his pocket and flicks it open. It ratchets as it opens up. The blade is long and wider toward the tip, swept back like a tiny saber. He jabs it down and I freeze as he slices through the ropes binding my ankles. Melissa starts to whimper as he drags me to my feet and shoves me forward, out of the tent.
I’m greeted by a chorus of catcalls and jeers. Brad watches like he’s watching a football game between two teams he doesn’t care for, puffing out his indifference on a short, foul-smelling cigarette.
The general pushes me through the camp. I trip a few times over loose rocks and stumble forward, and his fingers dig into my arm. A quick shove sends me onto a carpeted plank floor in his tent, and he nudges me with his boot.
“Get up,” he says, in English.
I awkwardly get on my knees and scramble to my feet.
Think, Penny. There has to be a way out of this. This can’t happen. Not to me.
It’s going to happen to me. He’s got a pair of cots with thin mattresses pushed together in a crude double bed.
He steps over to me, knife in hand, and grabs my shirt. He saws through the fabric and tears it away in ragged strips, until I’m down to my bra. He repeats the process with my shorts and I feel the blade skim over my ass, cold against my skin.
He admires me for a moment. His eyes are like disgusting lizards crawling on my skin, leaving sticky trails. I want this to stop now. I want to wake up.
“I speak English,” he says, in the slow tones of someone who doesn’t do it very well. “CIA man says you are not virgin. This true?”
He touches the tip of the blade to my chin. “You not lie. You lie I cut.”
Trembling, I squeak out, “I’m not a virgin.”
I’m not sure that’s what he wants to hear. If I say I am, he’ll probably think I’m just trying to get away from him and hurt me for it.
What choice do I have? God only knows what he’ll do to me if he thinks I’m lying.
“Good. Virgin cost too much for man like me. Used girl feel the same when wrapped around cock.”
Holding the blade edge down, he sticks it between my legs and I tense. The dull back of the knife touches me and I go stone still, my blood freezing. Oh God.
“How many man you fuck? Not lie.”
I swallow. “One.”
The flat of the blade presses against my inner thigh. One quick cut and I’ll be dead before I hit the floor.
“Not lie.”
“One, I swear to God I’ve only ever had sex with one man.”
“You love him?”
I swallow again. “Yes. Very much.”
“Where is he now? You leave him in America?”
My voice is hollow.
“He’s dead.”
“You sad for dead man you fuck?”
A horrible urge floods through me. Just tell him to fuck off and let him kill you, Penny. It has to be better than this.
“Yes. I am sad for him.”
“I make you feel better.” I can’t see his face but I can hear the leer in his voice.
No. No no no no no no please…
When I don’t move he grabs my arm and shoves me over the bed, facedown. Instinct takes over and I start to struggle, until I feel the edge of the blade pressing into the back of my neck. I hear a zipper.
“After I fuck you, you clean my cock, American whore.”
I squeeze my hands together and clench my teeth and do something I haven’t done in a long, long time: I pray.
God, if you’re up there, help me. Please, somebody help me. This can’t happen. Please.
The general freezes, listening. I hear it, too. A whine, low at first, then louder and more shrill by the second.
The night lights up like day, long shadows rolling over the ground outside as the light source moves. Through the tent flaps I see it, a flare falling out of the sky trailing a column of smoke. The general, his greasy erection still bobbing loose in his fly, turns around and forgets the American whore for a second.
Then the explosion comes.
I can feel it in my chest. It rocks the ground like a giant picked up the entire mountain and shook it from side to side, and I’m on the floor before I realize what happened. The general starts to move and I scream in fury, shove my legs out, and trip him with my calves. He goes down and turns, rolling, the knife rising to plunge into my belly.
I kick him in the face and he grabs my foot.
Another explosion rocks the world, so loud it leaves a ringing in my ears. The general gets up, his fury forgotten in panic. Fly still open, he charges out of the tent, big belly jiggling and bursting out of his undershirt over his belt.
I somehow get up. I’m on my feet before I even realize what happened. My heart pounds in my chest, beating so hard I think it’s going to throw me off balance from the force of it. In my underwear, covered in scratches and bruises I don’t remember getting, my arms bound behind my back, I run outside.
The night lights up again. The flare falling from the sky is blinding. I hear shouting and can’t make out the words. The first pops of gunfire ring out to my left, and more come in answer, echoing off the mountains.
The thumping of a helicopter roars overhead and I land on my ass in the dirt, get up again, run. I need to get my hands free and get the hell out of here. I run in the general direction of the tent where they held Melissa.
It’s not her fault. I can’t just leave her to this, or that other woman. I see the tent and run around the corner toward it, and straight into a cluster of
fighters. They spin around with their rifles in hand and aim them right at me.
Time doesn’t exactly slow. It’s like it was running fast, and now it’s at the real speed. I can count the stitches on their gloves and the hairs on their fingers. I see the bones in their hands lever as they tighten on the triggers.
This is how I die. Spared from violation only to be shot down like an animal, left to rot in the dirt because my captors don’t have time to abuse me.
A roar behind my head makes my ears ring, and the world goes silent. These little puffs of dirt rake across the ground, and when they hit the cluster of fighters they turn from puffs of dirt to splashes of red. I never understood until this moment how delicate the human body is. The impacts are like smashing a melon.
There’s a spotlight on me. A helicopter slides from side to side overhead, shining a light so bright it makes the sun look like a candle. I scream in stupid animal panic, run through the flaps into the tent and throw myself down.
Melissa has spit out her gag and is sobbing hysterically, praying and cursing and begging for help. She calls out for her mother, for God, even for Brad. More gunfire rips overhead. That gun on the helicopter shoots so fast it sounds like one noise, a steady roar.
Another explosion shakes the dirt.
This is just a tent. They can’t know we’re in here. When I look out through the flaps I see my worst fear. Bullets rake the tent across the path and it collapses on itself, folding in like a house of cards.
Then Brad bursts in, half his face covered in slick blood and sweat. His eyes stand out too white and too wide, and there’s a wet spot on his khakis.
“Shut up and do what I say.”
I do the exact opposite of that. I kick at him as he draws closer, my boot catching him in the leg.
“You stupid twat, that’s the Phoenix Guard out there. They catch us and we’re fucked.”
I just stare at him.
“You mean you’re fucked if you’re caught with us.”
He blinks. “No time. You want to live, you come with me. Otherwise, I gotta get rid of the evidence.”
He shakes a gas can at me. Liquid sloshes in the bottom.
My breath catches. He wouldn’t.
His eyes say he would.
“Fine.”
If he can buy me another ten minutes, I’ll take it. There has to be a chance we can still get away.
He pulls me up and throws a blanket around me. It slips off and he pulls it tighter, and cuts the cords tying Melissa and Danielle’s ankles. Melissa springs to her feet, but Danielle won’t move.
“Burn me,” she croaks. “You fucking bastard.”
“Get up, you stupid bitch,” he snarls, dragging her to her feet.
She finally gets up and he shoves her forward.
“Head toward the rear of the camp. There’s an old goat track that leads into the mountains. If we can get out of sight and get some cover, we can wait it out, maybe recover a vehicle and head back for Solkovia.”
“Where you kill us and dump our bodies,” I say.
“If I wanted to kill you, I’d have done it already. Are you that stupid?”
“If I was that smart I wouldn’t be here, dealing with you, motherfucker.”
“Just fucking move or I swear to God I will blow your brains out myself. Stay low and stay close to the edge of the tents.”
He jabs my back with his pistol and I push Melissa forward. We end up herding Danielle alone, flanking her and bumping her along when she tries to stop. As she walks, her eyes fade more and more until she looks completely burnt out, staring at nothing. She stumbles and falls when another explosion rocks the camp.
There are more of them on the ground now. I can hear shots and see people running. Another helicopter whips overhead, spins, and comes back around, raking the ground with gunfire. Flares and explosions light the night like a thunderstorm, raging wildly overhead.
Brad points toward a twisting, narrow path behind the general’s tent that slopes sharply up into the mountains. Danielle isn’t going to make it on bare feet, but I don’t think Brad cares all that much. He shoves us forward hard.
“Come on, we’re almost there.”
I look over my shoulder and see them.
They’re dressed in black, all of them. Big men in tactical web gear with black berets, moving with mechanical efficiency. They make the “resistance” fighters look like children playing at war. When they spot the resistance men they just shoot them without thinking.
A knot of fighters comes around the tent just as we head for the goat track. They aim their rifles at Brad and he drops his gun.
Danielle screams.
They shoot her. Three times in the chest. She falls down, not like a movie, she just collapses in place, her breathing replaced with a ragged, irregular sucking sound, like someone trying to pull gelatin through a straw. One of the fighters kicks her aside and barks an order at us.
“Move,” Brad translates.
Pushed forward, we head up the goat trail. It’s barely wide enough for us to pass one at a time at first, before it evens out and spreads out wider. The resistance fighters push us all under a rock outcropping and look back.
Brad talks with them, and for a moment the one who looks like he’s leading them listens, then cracks Brad in the face with the butt of his gun.
They start arguing back and forth. I can barely make out what they’re saying, it’s too fast, but I pick up enough words. Three of the six of them want to kill Brad, take us with them, and fuck us before they kill us.
The other three want to kill us now, because we’ll make too much noise.
I scream at the top of my lungs. They all just stare at me before one shoves the butt of his rifle into my stomach again. He points his gun at me.
I’m lucky. He’s one of the ones who wants to use me before they kill me. Instead of shooting me he just sticks his bayonet against my cheek. One move and he’ll slice open my cheek from eye to chin.
The world goes eerily quiet.
Then, footsteps.
Each step is a dull, plodding thud. The blade pulls away from my cheek. I draw back, huddled up against Melissa.
Brad looks down the path.
“We’re all going to die,” he says, with the casual conviction of absolute certainty.
I blink. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. It looks like a man wearing a suit of armor. Not Kevlar and ceramic, black lacquered steel polished to a high mirror shine. He must be seven feet tall from the soles of his feet to the top of the heavy helmet he wears over his face.
The black-clad soldiers follow behind him. He raises a closed fist and they stop, falling back to the path.
All six resistance fighters raise their guns and open fire. The sound is deafening. The response is nothing. The man in the armor just walks forward, ignoring the bullets pinging off his suit.
The fighters turn and bolt.
Something that big shouldn’t be able to move that fast. He breaks into a run and crosses the distance in a blink, heavy metal feet thudding on the dusty ground. The fingers on his gleaming, segmented gauntlets end in sharp steel points, and they bite into one of the fighter’s back like claws. He screams as the armored man heaves him bodily from the ground and throws him like he weighs nothing. He hits the rock hard and falls, leaving a bloody smear.
I stop watching halfway through. When it’s over there are five bodies at the giant’s feet with broken limbs and crushed heads. I can hear him breathing, the sound amplified into a growl as though through some kind of microphone. He barks orders in Kosztylan and his men come rushing forward.
Brad stands up.
“Listen, I’m an American. I’m with the Central Intelligence Agency. I was planning an op against these men to rescue these women…”
The armored man backhands him across the face, casually, like he’s flicking away a bothersome insect. Brad topples to the ground and spits out a mouthful of blood and teeth.
“Fuck,” he sn
arls.
“He’s lying,” I say calmly. “He was selling us to them.”
“You dumb bitch,” Brad snarls through his bloody mouth. “Don’t you know who this is? He’s the crown prince. He’ll kill us all.”
The armored giant turns and looks down at Brad. When he moves, the armor makes little whirring noises, like it’s some kind of machine.
“You will be silent or I will tear your still-living heart from your chest and feed it to you.”
Brad’s mouth clamps shut.
The giant steps closer. I press against the rock. The clawed tip of his armored finger almost touches my cheek, but he pulls it away as if he just noticed the blood coating the steel up to his elbows.
“See to her wounds. Bring them back to the camp.”
“There’s another girl,” I say. “Her name is Danielle. They shot her in the chest.”
“We found her.”
He switches to Kosztylan to order his men. They remove the short shoulder capes they wear and wrap one around me and one around Melissa, and cut the bonds on our wrists. I clutch the garment around my body and hold on to it like a blanket. I start to hobble back down the path. I twisted my ankle and I don’t even remember when it happened.
“I will carry you,” the armored giant booms.
I stumble back when he takes a step closer, looming over me. I feel like I’m looking up at a mountain, shivering and clutching blankets and cloth to my naked body. Somehow he slips his arms under me without touching me with the sharp steel claws on his hands and lifts me up off the ground.
I have no choice but to curl up in his arms. He moves like I weigh nothing at all. One of his men picks up Melissa and carries her.
“Prince Charming,” Brad spits. “He’s going to kill you the same as me. I hope he’s making a good impression.”
“Be silent and I will grant you a clean death,” the giant thunders.
I shudder. His voice rumbles from the armor against my body as he speaks. I feel like a child carried in an adult’s arms.
It’s a shorter trip back to the camp than I remembered.
My God.
The tents are all down. It looks like a giant strode through the camp, taking no care where he put his feet. The canvas and poles are down around piles of bodies. The trucks and generators are burning. The big mess hall is the only structure still standing, if you can call it standing. The back half is smashed in, all splintered wood, torn metal, and shredded cloth.
Count On Me Page 26