by Gray Gardner
She snapped out of those thoughts when the blinding morning light flooded into the room. The Russian baker demanded that she remain silent as he cut the tape at her feet, stood her up and yanked her by the arm. He hurried her through the small hallway and shoved her out into the alley.
There was the black van. The door was open, and she felt a heavy hand push her into the dark void. She fell on her face and elbows on the van’s floor. Someone picked up her legs and pulled them to her chest, and she heard the van’s door slide closed. Before she knew it, they were moving. This was what she had expected.
She twisted and turned and tried to find anyone’s face, but they were all covered in dark beards and snow hats. She tried to stretch her neck to look out of the front window, the only window, but was quickly shoved back to the floor.
The GPS chip in her tooth was hopefully guiding the boys back home as to her whereabouts. The men in the back of the van with her scanned something across her trembling body. Well, they weren’t stupid. They could have easily suspected some kind of small-time sting going on. Little did they know the largest Intelligence agency in the world had sicked an under-qualified, under-paid, dishonorably discharged Army private who also happened to be a direct descendent of Leon Trotsky on them. So there.
They didn’t detect the bug, if that thing was a bug detector at all. She began scooting backwards as one of the bearded men produced a long, dripping syringe. Fuck this. She did not sign up for crazy Russian medical experiments. She shrieked underneath the tape and kicked her legs, but suddenly felt a surge of energy throughout her body and completely passed out. She had suspected they might use a stun gun on the older kids they kidnapped. Suspicions confirmed.
She awoke in a dark room. Dark couldn’t really describe it. It was pitch black. She could be anywhere in the entire world. After stunning her with electricity and judging from the headache severely drugging her, they could have stuffed her into a suitcase and taken her anywhere. Her arms and legs stretched out, not feeling the silk lining of a suitcase. She heard scuffling noises, though. Rats! She was in a room with fucking disease infested rats.
The room swayed and her body fell to the side. She caught herself with her hand, glad to feel industrial carpet and not a furry rodent. She also wasn’t tied up anymore. And she seemed to be rocking up and down.
A ship schedule. They were taking kids every ten days to make a cargo ship departure.
The question remained, where were they going? A ship could really be taking her anywhere in Europe, the horn of Africa, the Mediterranean, through the Suez Canal and out into all of the island countries of the Indian Ocean. She tried to stop thinking too much and just began banking on the fact that the CIA had been positive she was going to America.
A door creaked open, revealing the outline of a tall figure and harsh lighting of a hallway. The figure stepped inside, his shoes reflecting the light, and placed his hands on his hips.
“You’re awake,” he said, in very poor Russian.
Squinting as her eyes still adjusted, she could have sworn he looked like he was wearing a white captain’s uniform. Suddenly a line of men in red jackets passed in the hallway behind him, looking preoccupied and carrying trays full of food. Wait a minute. What?
“Sir?” a young looking man eagerly said as he ran up to the door. He peered inside at Burton and saluted the captain. “Oh good, sir. When I heard there was a stowaway I just knew we’d never catch her. Should I call the port authority to meet us when we dock?”
“No, son,” the Captain replied, a hint of annoyance in his voice. He hadn’t wanted to be interrupted. “I’ll handle it, just like I always do. Go and tend to the guests. The concert starts in thirty minutes.”
Holy shit, it was a cruise ship. The horn sounded in the distance as if to confirm what she’d just discovered. She pushed back against the wall, away from the captain, causing a few unwelcome roommates to squeal as she did.
She’d just realized they were all speaking American English. They spoke freely. They didn’t expect an uneducated girl from the streets to understand.
“Don’t be afraid,” the captain said to her, his imperfect pronunciation causing her to lean forward so that she could catch what he was trying to say. “Just stay here until we reach the harbor. Someone will come for you.”
She opened her mouth to speak but was met with a slamming air sealed door. She sighed heavily as she sat in the middle of the room.
Okay. The baker made first contact with the kids. He alerted the van dudes, they picked up said kid on a day when a cruise ship was leaving, then the captain took it from there. Genius, she thought admiringly. Keep contact with the contraband short. If she was a real detective, no way would she ever suspect a fat, though not so jolly baker and a Village People type captain on a cruise liner. She was almost kind of excited to see who would intercept her once they reached the port in America. A stockbroker with a pocket protector, perhaps?
She had to further admit that she was impressed by the weak though effective grasp of the Russian language the captain had. No way anyone would be able to speak to her fluently when they got to the States. That would be good for her, because then they’d be forced to communicate in English and they’d think she would have no idea what they were saying.
After hours of darkness and silence the captain entered again, this time with a stun gun and a syringe. Oh shit, not again.
Torture the Dead
She only awoke for very short periods of time. And when she was awake, she sure wished she was back in her dreams, away from the horror of reality. Sometimes she found herself face down in a tub of water, a strong hand on her neck pushing her under. Other times she was just fighting against chains, screaming at people and pulling and finally passing out from exhaustion. A few times she felt that electricity flow through her—the stun gun.
Every time she reached consciousness she begged herself to not reveal who she was. She reminded herself to only speak Russian if she needed to blurt a few explicit words, and when someone asked her a question, she choked out saliva and blood and tried her best to answer. She could barely handle it. She began to dream about small children handling it, which only disturbed her further.
From what she gathered during the little spouts of awareness, they were trying to tell her that she was theirs. The men in the room, three or four, and the women, two maybe, held her down and told her she belonged to them. She had to do what they said or they’d cut off her fingers, then her toes, then her tongue, then leave her to die all alone. They said they knew her parents were out there somewhere, and they’d find them and slit their throats. Well, that would certainly get a child to obey.
She began to nod when they said these things, if only to get them to stop trying to drown her in a tub and electrocuting her. She agreed that she was theirs. She said that she understood when they told her she couldn’t leave until a few more years. Good God, no wonder the CIA wanted to stop these people. If they were capable of doing this to children, then they really did need to be stopped. Her respect suddenly grew for the very people who’d put her in this whole situation.
Even though she was really put out by it, and really pissed off about it, they had believed she could help. She was starting to believe it, too.
No concept of time was present where she was being held by the chains in the wall, but one day the captors apparently figured she was able to join the general population of prisoners. She was unlocked, placed in white underwear and a black wool dress, then dragged down the cinder block hall and thrown into another cold, dark room.
Walking was hard, so she’d been half-carried, and when she entered the room she fell to her knees and scooted back against the wall. She couldn’t explain it, but she felt much better when her back was to a wall. Breathing came from all corners of the room, and light from the moon shone in through a little slit of a window about twenty feet up in the air, but she decided not to speak. A basement. It looked like a basement, she told herself, tr
ying to think of something else. She leaned her head to the side and closed her eyes, just to relax for a second.
When she finally became aware that she was asleep face down on a cold concrete floor, she lay still as she took in the gravity of the situation.
“Is she dead?”
“No, stupid, she’s breathing.”
She opened her eyes and heard several gasps all at once. She quickly sat up and wiped her mouth, finding almost twenty pairs of curious eyes gaping down at her. Some were right in her face, others were in the far corners of the room, but all were upon her.
She also noticed that not all of them had the look of a Russian. It was like a United Nations meeting in there. China, India, Africa, South America. Christ, this was bigger than the CIA had thought.
The lock on the door suddenly creaked and everyone took a gasp at once, eyes fixed on the green metal door in the middle of the exposed brick. The tension was thick. Who was going to be leaving the room? Burton pressed her back against the wall.
A man she recognized from her torture sessions walked in authoritatively, and pointed his finger at her, motioning for her to follow him.
She shook her head. Truthfully, she wasn’t sure she could make her feet move.
“You have to go,” a teenage girl muttered next to her.
“Yes” she replied, remembering her purpose. It was her mission, so why couldn’t she execute? Why was she being such a coward?
The man, annoyed, stalked over and grabbed Burton by the hair, dragging her out of the room behind him.
She didn’t go quietly. She screamed and kicked and tried anything she could to get back into that room with those kids. She had to help them. She knew she was capable. She just needed a couple of seconds to devise a plan.
“Shut up!” the man screamed, raising his hand to hit her as they approached some wooden stairs. This would hurt.
She was very disoriented when she opened her eyes. She felt guilty for not trying to punch the guy who’d pulled her from the room out, but she felt that she was in some kind of moving vehicle again. Lifting her pounding head, she realized she had an ice pack on her face.
“Sorry about Manny.”
She jerked her head forward, causing the ice pack to slide off of her cold, numbed cheek. A man in a dark suit and neat haircut was driving, and a grate separated his front leather seats with her back leather seats. She was in a suburban. And the guy could have easily passed for CIA in that get-up.
“He gets a little too aggressive for my tastes, but that’s the best I can get in our Florida operations.”
She frowned and sat up. All right, she’d been in Florida. And this dude just indicated that he’d had more than one operation. The sun was setting to her left. They were heading north. She certainly hoped those idiots at the CIA were keeping tabs on her. This guy was too calm to be anything but creepy.
“You know, you are very pretty,” he said, looking at her through the rear-view mirror.
She threw-up and swallowed it back down. It was best if she just bit her lip at the moment. She could think of a few things to call him.
“Where are the others?” she finally asked in Russian and in her calmest voice.
“Oh, the other children? Well, you’re too pretty to be down there. We’re moving you to our Washington DC operation. There’ll be a lot more action there.”
Was he kidding? He was acting like they were talking about sports or something. She didn’t like it. Not at all. She wanted to turn around go get every one of those poor kids out of that basement.
She decided to try something. Anything. It was her duty.
“So Manny and Casey called you and you drove all the way down here to get me?”
He huffed and shook his head. “Manny and Brent Tracy called me, yes, but I didn’t drive. I flew and took their suburban.”
She repeated the name Brent Tracy in her head several times before the creep spoke again. She noticed his Russian was very good. Perhaps he’d spoken it at home as she had.
“I’m Mr. Wolinski,” he said, indicating that he deserved a certain amount of respect.
She gritted her teeth, wanting to just lunge through the metal grate used to keep dogs in the backseat and strangle him.
“Katya,” she finally managed to say.
“Katya,” he nodded, with some absurd delight in his eyes. “Well, Katya, would you mind checking on our little friend back there?”
She immediately jerked her head around and found a little boy on the seat behind her. She felt an instance of relief as she watched him sleeping, so calm and sweet.
“He’s fine,” she muttered, clenching her teeth as she spoke to Mr. Wolinski. “He’s just asleep.”
“As I need you to be, as well,” he replied, in a fatherly ‘do it or I’ll pull the car over’ tone.
“I’m wide awake now,” she sighed.
“I know. Take the pills next to your water bottle.”
She looked down and found a bottle in her drink holder. What, he wanted her to self-medicate?
“I suppose you will stick me with a needle if I don’t take these?”
“Yes, and I want to see you smash them up and place them in the water bottle. Then I want you to finish the bottle.”
Damn, he was smart. She did as she was told, though she managed to spill most of the powdery pills next to her leg as she dumped it in the water bottle. When she looked back up to show him the crunched up pills in the water, the untrusting bastard shot her with a tranquilizer in her neck. She should have seen that one coming.
She awoke in a similar multi-prisoner underground situation, though she did agree, these children were all beautiful and unique in their own ways. And they were definitely from more countries than just Russia. This was big.
Most of them spoke Russian or at least understood, while others cowered away, looking as if they only spoke an Asian language she didn’t know. There weren’t any Spanish speakers here, and besides French, that was the extent of her linguistic capabilities. She gathered a few facts, though, and they included the three meals they got in the dark basement, the standing weekly appointments where certain kids had to leave for a few hours, and the shower at the end of the day.
She decided to take action after a few days. She didn’t care what would happen. Let them torture her. These kids deserved a chance at life.
“I’m ready,” she boldly stated, standing in the doorway as the two men in dark suits entered. Obviously, it was not her turn yet.
They tried to bat her away, but she stood her ground.
“No one has requested your type yet. Everyone has what they like,” one replied in Russian.
“I’ll be their type once they meet me,” she said, stepping over so that he would look directly at her. Her shoulders flung backwards as she looked up at him with dark green eyes. She was ready for some action. And she was ready to be useful.
The man looked her up and down, his dark eyes and thick accent telling her he was from Russia, not American born. “Fine. Come.”
She quickly fell into step behind him, a sigh of relief in the room as the door shut on the forty or so kids in there. They walked down a cinder block hallway lit with fluorescent lights, climbed some stairs, then emerged in a beautiful home. It was so spacious and so—French country. Suburbia? She paused as the man held up a hand at her in the kitchen.
“Change her into street clothes. Where is Anna?” Mr. Wolinksi said, then paused and took his reading glasses off. He stood from his perch on a bar stool at the dark marble kitchen counter and smiled. “Katya. I don’t know if she’s ready.”
“She seems eager to get out of the hole,” her captor said.
The hole. Appropriately titled.
Mr. Wolinksi looked her up and down. One of the minions spoke in English.
“Just tell her you’ll let her go. Look at her. So young looking. We can keep her until she’s twenty and then dispose of her. If she’s willing to cooperate, then just let her believe she coul
d actually be freed.”
Wolinski nodded as he turned and smiled at Katya. “You do as you’re told, child, and you’ll get your freedom.”
She nodded and folded her hands in front of her, which was all she could do to keep from punching everyone in the head right there. She had to wait it out a little bit, though. The CIA agents had told her there was a client she was looking for, not a captor. She ground her teeth as they dressed her like a doll in a black velvet dress with a matching headband. They were definitely going for the little kid look.
She didn’t quite grasp the full meaning of that until they dropped her off at a hotel downtown. Mr. Wolinksi took her hand and led her inside the elegant lobby, nodded at the attendants behind the counter, and pulled her into an elevator. They knew him there. Everyone got a cut if they kept quiet. Interesting.
“Mr. Smith will meet you in the room after I leave.”
Mr. Smith my ass, she thought, as the floors lit up in their ascent.
“When his visit is over, you will meet me in the lobby. Do not go outside. Do not talk to anyone. Is that clear?” he asked, sounding very different.
She nodded.
“What was that?” he snapped, frowning like a disciplinary father again.
“Yes, sir,” she replied, swallowing hard. She suddenly became very nervous.
Wolinksi unlocked the room and shoved her down a hallway, sitting her on the edge of a king-sized bed and repeating his instructions. The room was nice, with crown molding and silk curtains. It must have been a pretty well-known hotel.
Once he’d left she leapt for the phone and quickly dialed Connor’s cell phone number. It went to voicemail.
“Connor, I swear to fucking God if you don’t pick up when I call back in two seconds I am going to rip your mother fucking head clean off!”
She hung up and counted to two. Then she redialed.
“Baylor?”
“Get me the hell out of here! Some creepy old guy named ‘Mr. Smith’ is getting ready to come in here and have his way with me and I have decided that this is not what I want! I’m a chicken, okay? I’m a god damned chicken, now get me the fuck outta here!”