by Rob Mclean
“Like I said already, I’ll do what I can.”
“Just make sure you don’t find anything too incriminating.”
“Pardon me?”
“Just want him to get a scare,” Clarice persisted. “Nothing that gets him in jail.”
“Now, you just listen to me…” His annoyance threatened to get the better of him. John wanted to tell her that he’ll find whatever he finds and won’t be overlooking or hiding anything, but his father’s voice spoke to him, ‘You must,’ the voice said, quietly but firmly, ‘or she will tell Zeke about the raid and you will find nothing.’
John didn’t hear the individual words; rather the whole concept blossomed in his mind as s fully formed thought. He had no doubt it had arrived from outside his own mind, or at least the conscious, every-day part of it he was used to. He occasionally had random, seemingly unconnected thoughts before, but who could say where they came from? He felt comfortable thinking they came from his dead father, that he was somehow guiding and advising him from beyond the grave, but he really had no way of knowing.
He could, however, see the logic, so he breathed in deeply and deliberately in an effort to calm himself before he spoke, this time in a much calmer voice, “I have already said I’d do what I can. I can’t promise anything, but I’ll do my best, okay?”
“I do hope so,” Clarice said before hanging up.
John stared at his phone in disbelief. It would be a pleasure to raid Zeke’s place and if it upset Angela, well, too bad. He had entirely had enough of that bunch of crazies.
He marched up to Eloise’s office, as fast as his stiff and sore legs would allow, cursing to himself that Clarice’s call might make him late. It felt good to be moving. He hated being stuck behind a desk. He would much rather be doing some activity.
The meeting was only the weekly group leader’s meetings, and usually they would hold a teleconference, but things weren’t normal. Not even close. Overseas, wars and tensions were flaring up all over the planet.
The Suez Canal stood out as a particularly volatile strategic hotspot. Held currently by a loose alliance of combined religious forces from the African and Middle Eastern nations, negotiations over access were heating up. Ultimatums issued by the European and American governments, backed by a vote of the New United Nations, were being complicated by a quarantine put in place by the old World Health Authority.
In addition, the Panama canal was a similar situation with the Panamanians claiming that their old treaties with the former United States of America were no longer valid. The threats, counter-threats and ultimatums were similarly escalating.
Corridors with concrete floors and caged lighting gave way to marble and carpet with brightly lit soft-toned corporate colours as John rose within the building, getting nearer to Eloise’s office.
Samuel, Eloise’s personal assistant, was gathering up papers and folders as John arrived. He glanced at his Rolex before giving John a standard corporate greeting smile. “You know the meeting is in the conference room, don’t you?”
“Yeah, sure Sammy,” John lied.
John started off in the direction he thought was right, but soon stopped when he realized it wasn’t. He turned to see Samuel waiting for him.
“This way,” Samuel tisked and beckoned him with a flurry of little circular hand waves. “Come now, we don’t want to be late.”
John lumbered back, reminding himself to be grateful for Sammy’s help. John caught him up and muttered his thanks before striding ahead.
“Hey, wait up,” Samuel called as he scurried to catch up.
“Not like you to be running late,” John said, feeling uncomfortable with this unusual little man, but not wanting to offend him either as he guarded access to Eloise.
“She sent me back for these.” Samuel proffered the bundle of folders.
“Oh, hey, there’s this guy…”
“Hmmm, yes?” Samuel lifted an eyebrow.
“Um, well…” John shook his head to reset his thoughts. “This guy’s been at a couple of church closures, protesting, disrupting things, you know generally being a nuisance…”
“Okay…”
“So now I get this call from… umm, an informant, telling me this guy is planning to kill the Alien Envoy when he visits L.A.”
“Goodness, you don’t say?”
“Yeah, so I was thinking maybe we could like, raid this guy’s place?”
“Wow, yes! How exciting.”
“Really? We can do this?”
“You haven’t told anyone else?” Samuel asked. “Not any other authorities?”
“Like the police?” John shook his head. “No.”
“Then we’re on it.”
“BlackSky, you mean? We can do this now?”
“Yes.” Samuel patted John’s arm. “That’s what today’s special meeting’s all about.”
John made to move to discreetly distance himself from Samuel and his affectations, but decided against it, lest he cause offence. He could detect no malicious intent in Samuel’s actions. John figured it was just how he expressed himself when talking.
Samuel continued unabated, “It’s a big day for the company. We’ve been deputised by the New U.N. authorities.”
“Deputised?”
“Yes, as long as we have at least one representative of the New United Nations authorities present, we are empowered to act as their representatives on matters of national, international and interstellar security.”
John nodded. It wasn’t all that different from their current arrangement with the old State of California, just upsized to fit the new situation.
“Okay, so this guy…”
“Send me the details…” Samuel put his hand on John’s arm. John flinched involuntarily, but made an effort not to react. “and I’ll put it under the boss lady’s nose to approve.”
“Thanks,” John said, putting his hands in his pockets and nodding to Samuel. “Much appreciated.”
“Not a problem. This will make an excellent test case.”
John frowned. It was never good to be the crash test dummy.
*
Later that afternoon, an e-mail came through from Eloise, as promised by Samuel. John and a squad of his choosing, including a former L.A.P.D. cop, acting as the New U.N. rep, were authorised to investigate, with force, if necessary, the premises of Ezekiel Campbell.
Chapter 53
Ling sat with her closest band of associates, Snake and Bear, in the mess hall. Bear had finished her bowl of watery rice porridge. It had a random assortment of mushy things that were once vegetables and now Bear was leering hopefully at the picked over bowls in front of Ling and Snake.
Ling pushed her bowl away and Bear scooped it up with a grunt of thanks. Ling had no appetite since she had foolishly confided her thoughts of freedom to Kiane earlier in the intimacy of her cell. Although it had been all Ling could think of, Kiane had not mentioned it since.
“You should eat, my love,” Kiane said. “You never know when you may need your strength.”
Ling eyed her warily, trying to decipher her meaning. Despite their relatively short time together, Ling soon discovered it was almost as if her lover had two personalities. In the closeness of her cell, Kiane was the devoted lover, but she could turn, in an instant, into the venomous Snake. Ling had seen her demolish objectionable inmates into bloody pulp, often at her own command. Today she couldn’t make out which personality was in charge.
Kiane looked away before Ling could decide if there was any hidden menace in her words. She nodded over Ling’s shoulder, indicating something of interest behind.
Ling turned to see a quartet of guards striding purposefully towards them. Four of the meanest women on staff. Heads turned in their wake.
“I wonder who’s in the shit now?” Ling said. She looked around for a potential victim, but her fears rose steadily the nearer the guards approached.
She turned quickly back to Kiane. Ling’s eyes widened in horror as she saw that her lover
had slithered herself away, sliding further down the bench, distancing herself. Kiane now wore the dispassionate, detached mask of Snake, the ruthless.
Bear looked up from her second bowl of mush. She took one look at Kiane and the approaching guards, then snatched up Kiane’s neglected bowl and stood and moved away.
Ling knew then her rule was over. She knew also that she would have done exactly the same to insinuate herself into the trust of the prison authorities, but it did little to alleviate the betrayal, which should not have hurt as much as it did.
She had been a fool to confide in an opportunistic creature like Snake. She should have known, but she had made the mistake of daring to hope, of dreaming of escape, an aspiration Snake would never let herself have.
Ling lowered her head on the bench and covered it with her hands, but the first baton blows were to her back. Placed with expertise below her floating ribs, but above her hips, they set off sharp, agonizing explosions in her kidneys. It forced her to arch her back and although she groaned, she prided herself that she hadn’t cried out. Her hands, however, had slipped from her head and the next blows were to her skull. She briefly saw a bursting kaleidoscope of colour as the room blurred around her. The four guards merged into a tangled octopus of hands as they grabbed her.
Two of them held her from behind while the other two rammed the ends of their batons repeatedly up and under her ribs. Her feet were lifted from the ground with each blow and she felt herself gasping for air between each blow.
She fell to her knees and threw up during the brief moment when the guards changed position. Her former attackers lifted her by her hair and restrained her while the attack resumed afresh.
Amid a sea of horrified faces, Snake and Bear were nowhere to be seen. She did catch the American banana girl’s friends, Moon-Face, Broken Glasses and Horse-Face. It gladdened her that they were weeping for her. Maybe they were praying for her too? It brought a perverse bloody grin to her face that was soon knocked away by a guard’s elbow.
Eventually she was marched, dazed and weeping from the mess hall. The prisoners followed at a safe distance behind. There had been no announcement, but everyone knew there had been a change in the predictable regularity of their lives and were all curious to watch the latest development.
Ling would have relished such a diversion herself, had she not been the source of entertainment. She wanted to look around for Kiane or Bear, but knew her clique were long gone. They would be as far away from the condemned as they could.
They reached the main auditorium. Lights came on to reveal the Captain waiting up on the stage, wearing a tight murderous expression. Seats filled rapidly with inmates, but not quickly enough to improve the Captain’s temper.
Ling was dragged up onto the stage, flanked by two of the quartet of guards. She knew they were taking special delight in mistreating the previously ‘special’ prisoner, not just by the severity of their blows, but by the cruel names they called her as they dished out her punishment. She had long suspected that they had resented her privileged position and her suspicions had been confirmed by their cruelty.
Ling idly wondered if the Captain had taken Kiane as the newest consort, if ‘she’ would entrust ‘her’ secret with the two-faced Snake. Probably not, she knew Kiane’s wiry frame was too masculine to be the Captain’s preference. More likely ‘she’ would take the American girl, whether that prisoner agreed or not. No doubt Kiane would be getting some special rewards for her efforts, maybe a transfer to a softer prison?
There was a faint hope that Ling clung to; that this was to be another of her many public confessions of sins/renouncing of Christ, albeit a more brutal version. That hope had quickly been quashed by the severity of the beating at her arrest. That and the death stare the Captain maintained unblinkingly.
A hush fell over the auditorium as one of the guards approached the microphone. The silence only interrupted by the dripping of Ling’s blood from her nose as she hung her head.
“Ling Zou,” the guard barked, “you are charged with plotting to assassinate the Captain.”
Ling nodded without lifting her head. It was no shock that there was no trial. She was mildly surprised that she was paraded in front of everyone, but such dramas did help to maintain control and order.
“You will not speak,” the guard added.
Ling turned her head slowly towards the guard and squinted, trying to understand her demand. Normally a public confession was required.
Ling had no intention of opening her mouth – that would be foolish, inviting another beating, but before she could understand what was happening, another of the guards stepped forth and jabbed a taser into her throat.
Ling’s jerky spasms flicked her blood onto those nearby, including those in the front rows. Splattering droplets flew, blood bubbled and frothed from her mouth as she collapsed to the floor. She felt her breath wheezing and gurgling as it got harder to breathe. Her throat constricted as she rasped for breath, breathing in her own blood.
The possibility of dying loomed large in her mind. Death would be a relief, Ling thought, and she would welcome it, she decided as her world darkened and spun about her.
The Captain’s disgusted expression at the red spots on her trousers was the last thing Ling saw before she passed out.
*
Searing pain ripped through her body. It dragged her reluctantly back to consciousness. The sharpest pain came from her shattered ribs and although she couldn’t see anything, it didn’t take long to work out that she was being carried, over the shoulder of one of the guards, probably the mountainous Sergeant Wei. Every step sent a stab of fire into her kidneys.
The darkness, she discovered was from being blindfolded, but the sulphurous stench which overlay an insidious fetid, toxic, oily smell, she recognized only too well. The dripping of the water from the roof and the scrunching of the Sergeant’s boots filled the picture in her mind. The only thing missing was the faecal stench of other prisoners.
The Sergeant lurched and stumbled slightly, causing Ling to cry with fresh agony.
“Halt,” the Captain’s voice commanded. Mercifully the trudging stopped.
Her blindfold was pulled away. A gloved hand grabbed a handful of hair and lifted her head up. A flashlight was shone into her eyes. Ling squinted and her eyes watered against the glare.
“Well, it seems our ungrateful worm has awakened from her little sleep,” the Captain said. The icy malice in the words froze Ling’s heart. Any closeness they had shared in the past, any specialness the Captain may have expressed in the past had, judging by the hatred that now fuelled her action, had transmuted into the very opposite.
Ling had just enough time to work out that she was in one of the deepest tunnels of the abandoned coal mine. She had heard of these shafts, but they were not used for prisoners as they were deemed unsafe. There were no cells or electric lights this far down and the tunnel floor had been roughly hewn from the rock with handheld tools. The air was hot and oppressively thick, leaden with the very poisons that had forced the abandonment of the mine.
Captain Lau lashed out with a wild slap. Ling felt the sting momentarily before it was re-joined with a more vicious backhand.
“I trusted you,” the Captain hissed.
Ling tried to protect her face from the blows she knew would come, but found her arms bound behind her back. She tried to protest, but her voice only came out as a raw croak.
“Bitch,” the Captain underscored her venom with a closed fist.
The world blurred between the crazed dance of the flashlights and their reflections on pools of stagnant oily water and the dizziness in her head.
“This’ll do,” the Captain said between heavy breaths. “Put her down here.”
Ling hoped the Captain meant to have her killed here, in the depth of the earth where nobody would ever find her. Surely it would be preferable to dying slowly of hunger and poisons, but Sergeant Wei simply dumped her on the ground and stood back.
‘What?’ Ling thought, ‘had a happy life together? With a freak like you? Didn’t you understand that we had a working relationship, a mutually beneficial series of interactions? You used me, just as I used you. Didn’t you understand that?’ Instead, all Ling could do was shake her head.
“But you’re an ugly creature,” the Captain added.
Ling couldn’t stop a crazed grin appearing on her face. The irony of the sadistic, malformed, stunted little Captain calling anyone ugly…
“I don’t mean your wretched face,” she said in a quiet measured voice. “I mean your black, treacherous soul.”
The Captain kicked Ling hard then stood to go. “You will rot down here,” she spat. “I have erased you from the records. No-one will ever find you. You will be forgotten forever and mourned by no-one.
Ling watched the jagged march of the flashlights as they receded through the blur of her own tears. They turned a corner and suddenly Ling was utterly alone, in complete darkness.
Chapter 54
John watched the crisp pre-dawn twilight fade, the stars twinkling increasingly overwhelmed by the growing light while he checked his weapons one more time. He waited with his squad at the Fortitude Valley depot for the L.A.P.D. attaché to arrive.
Open roller doors let the cool morning air flow into the staging area, for which John was grateful. Outside, two Black Ford Interceptors stood waiting, emblazoned discreetly with the company logo as well as that of the new U.N.
The squad similarly checked their weapons and equipment. They were the same faces from the nightclub days, but the changes that had transformed the world since, had also altered his squad.