by Gray Gardner
She paced her white room in the dim lighting of the one lamp on her small bedside table and wrote on hundreds of pieces of printer paper. Facts, ideas, notes concerning her theories, smells, sounds, and what she’d seen. It looked haphazard, but it all made sense to her. Papers littered the floor as she continued writing with ink-stained fingers.
They had to move fast. Wolinski was no idiot and he’d be suspicious once the media released the full story, which they never would. Just the candy-coated CIA version at the hotel: gas leak, explosion, three dead, tragic.
Burton stood in the parking garage, waiting while Connor had pulled up and jumped out of a black suburban. He had paused several feet away. They’d warned him about her state of mind. He wanted to be careful.
He also wanted to reach out and touch her. Hug her, kiss her, tell her everything that had gone on in her absence. She didn’t look ready for that, though. She didn’t look like herself, either. Sunken, hollow cheeks and eyes, stringy uneven hair hanging in her face, and her clothes sagged on her body.
Baylor looked at her hands folded in front of her, unable to find anything appropriate to say.
Connor slowly walked forward and opened her door for her. “I missed you.”
“Me too,” she half grinned, stepping up into the large car. It seemed like the appropriate thing to say. And it felt good to hear herself speaking English again.
He sighed and walked around, starting up, showing his clearance badge at the right places and driving them to the suburbs of Washington, DC. The whole time he was thinking about her, though. What had they done to her? He’d poured over her logs but knew she’d left things out. What had she seen? Why wouldn’t she look at him? He didn’t want to press it, so he obediently wove in and out of the streets of the calm neighborhoods. The day pressed on. Silver Spring, Bethesda, McLean, Arlington, Annandale, then they reached Alexandria.
“I know every street here,” Burton mumbled, elbow out the window with her face in her hand. As much as a girl in her situation could, she was enjoying the wind and afternoon sun in her face. “Keep moving.”
Connor obediently drove on to the beltway bridge, and when they crossed into Maryland Burton suddenly sat up a little straighter. The smell. The smell in the air was familiar. Muddy water—the river. Burning fuel—the air force base. She commanded him to turn, and as they weaved in and out of more streets, Connor was beginning to lose faith. She’d been tortured, traumatized, and drugged. She couldn’t possibly remember.
“This is it,” she whispered, as he turned onto some Last of the Mohicans street in Forest Heights.
He sighed as he slowly progressed through the homes, some old ranch style, some new and built right to the edge of the lot.
“Stop!” she shrieked, when they reached a newer home, two stories and towering over its neighbors. She threw the door open and had a gun, he didn’t know where she’d stolen it, drawn and was at the front door before he could stop her.
“Baylor!” he hissed, grabbing her wrist and yanking her hand back right before she knocked. “What the hell is the plan?”
“Save the kids, ask questions later,” she replied, looking up at him with resolve.
He sighed and shook his head. This was the way agents got killed. Little intelligence, going in blind, basically. And hot heads.
“Please, give me five minutes to call it in and go around to the back to give you cover. Can you at least do that?” he asked, pulling out his cell phone. God, please let the CIA have a good relationship with the Maryland authorities.
“I’m timing you,” she grumbled, looking at her newly restored pink watch on her bruised wrist.
He nodded and made the call as she fumed at the front door. She prayed that they were there. Those kids had no one to help them.
Please God, if you are a merciful God, let these kids still be here. Let me save them.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. She took that at a yes. She loaded the chamber of the Beretta and kicked the door in. There was no more waiting. She stepped inside and a man she recognized with a beard looked up from a chair in the back living room. He seemed confused to see her.
She pulled her arm up and squeezed the trigger. Moving into the kitchen, she took out two more men who seemed astonished at her materialization. Blood sprayed on the white cabinets as she fired more than once to make sure she didn’t miss. But still no Wolinski.
She kicked open the basement door as she heard Connor yelling out his credentials obediently to all of the dead people in the rooms behind her. She half smiled as she jogged down the steps to the cold basement and unlocked the first door on her right. The holding room.
She didn’t know why, but she was holding her breath. She burst into the room and found all of the kids in the bare room, asleep. Exhausted. The cold concrete floor was not a hindrance to getting some shut eye in this situation.
“They’re here!” she shouted, leaning out of the room and up to Connor. Thank God, he was merciful after all. They were all in there.
She sighed and leaned back against the exposed brick wall, wiping her forehead and looking down at them as they slept peacefully. They’d been worked so hard that they were exhausted. She noticed that not one of them awoke when she opened the loud metal door. Then she noticed the red puddles on the hard concrete floor. And the plastic cups.
Good God, Wolinski had made them drink the Kool-Aid.
“Ipecac!” she hollered, hoping Connor would understand. “Call the paramedics!”
She ran and fell to her knees next to one of the older kids. The younger ones were already having shallow breathing.
“How long?” she yelled, shaking the seventeen-year-old girl’s shoulders. She screamed in Russian, “How long ago did you drink this?”
The girl opened her droopy eyes and grinned slightly. She was welcoming death. Who could blame her? Burton recognized her as Mina, the hardened teenager and supposedly the oldest girl in the basement. She quietly mouthed the word, “Five,” then sighed heavily.
Five minutes? Okay, she could deal with that. She quickly stuck her finger down Mina’s throat and plunged it further until she felt a warm substance against her fingers. She rolled her on her side. The girl had red stains down her throat and shirt as she heaved and cried and looked up at Burton.
“I’m here to save you,” Burton said, pulling out her pistol and shoving it into Mina’s hand. “Believe it. It’s true. We don’t have much time. You have the gun. If Wolinski comes through that door you shoot him. Do you understand me?”
Wolinski had to still be there if he’d only administered the poison five minutes earlier. The girl nodded and squeezed the pistol in her weak hands as she leaned back against the wall. She wasn’t afraid to kill anybody. Burton tried to work quickly.
She aimed for the little ones first; the poison would move more quickly through their systems. They all threw up all over her and cried in protest, but their sobs were like music to her ears. They were alive. The older girl she’d saved first had caught on to her plan, and was helping her get the children to vomit.
“Come!” she screamed, as Burton had sat back for a second and caught her breath. She had to admit, once she smelled it, she wanted to do it. She held it in as she crawled through the red pools of puke towards the girl. “Nothing,” Mina huffed, holding her hands above the little boy.
“Come on, come on, baby,” Burton cried, leaning over and trying to hear his breathing. She couldn’t hear anything and there was no hot breath on her ear. The girl suddenly gasped and held the pistol out straight in front of her. Burton had time to look up and see Wolinski standing in the door and Connor tackle him in the hallway.
Connor could handle himself, she had to be reminded. She turned her focus back on the boy.
“Stop!” she ordered, as Mina growled and stood to undoubtedly shoot Wolinski in the hallway. “I know. I know you want him dead. Trust me, and trust my partner. We are here to help you, I need to save him now, and I need you to go into th
e front yard and get the police and ambulance. These kids need help!”
She looked at Burton incredulously. She wanted to kill her captor. But then she looked at the kids, her family for the past few years. She nodded and stood, black wool dress too short for her now womanly figure. Running through the coughing kids she determinedly headed for the stairs.
Something popped into her head. Something that had been blocked for ten years. Ferguson had saved her. He’d hardly known her. Whatever his motives, he’d done it. She took a breath and folded her hands above his small chest. If fucking Ferguson could do it, so could she.
She compressed and breathed into his mouth. Nothing. She repeated and repeated as the other kids began to gather around. She counted out loud and leaned over, breathing everything in her lungs into the boy.
“Miss?”
She hadn’t noticed the arrival of the paramedics. She pushed them back as they arranged their gear and continued.
“I’ll move when you have your equipment ready,” she cried, tears streaming down her face.
“Ma’am, there’s no pulse,” a paramedic carefully said, holding his limp wrist.
“Shut up!” she screamed, vision blurred with tears as she continued trying to revive the dying boy. “Ipecac!”
The paramedics backed away and began administering the drug, carefully leading the group of forty children out to the front lawn. Burton breathed into his dry lips.
“Please,” she cried, holding his shoulders as he lay on the cold floor. She didn’t want to stop, but there was nothing left in her. This was no way for a little boy to die. Held in captivity, abused, frightened, away from his parents, poisoned.
She pulled him up and held his head at her shoulder, squeezing his lifeless body as hard as she could.
“I’m so sorry,” she mumbled, unable to catch her breath. “I’m so sorry.”
She suddenly felt a hot stream of liquid down her back. Sitting up, she held his shoulder and found him throwing up red goop all over the place. Holy shit. He kept coughing and had red stains down his chin and shirt, so she grabbed him up and ran up the stairs, calling for help as she ran outside of the house.
The front yard was a circus. Police cars, ambulances, yellow tape, TV cameras, neighbors, and kids strewn across the lawn. They looked pitiful, skinny and weak, with red vomit stains on their clothes. Burton hoped the neighbors really felt guilty as they watched as she handed the small boy to a waiting medic standing by. He was going to be okay. They immediately started him on liquids and got him to throw up again. He’d be okay.
She pulled her soaked and splotched red shirt away from her body as she looked around the large green yard. The smell of bile was potent but welcome. She’d saved the whole gang of kids, and as the clouds swept in overhead, she couldn’t help but wonder where her congratulations were. The praise should have been flowing. Connor should have been on his knees smiling that smile and begging her to marry him.
Wait. Where was Connor? And where was Mina with her pistol?
A helicopter zoomed overhead. A Bell Kiowa Warrior. That wasn’t the police. Connor must have been radioing in his position as he was in pursuit, and the CIA was sending air support. She didn’t even think as she raced through the yard, underneath the yellow tape, and through the crowd as she desperately looked up at the sky. The helicopter would lead her to Connor, and that would lead her to Wolinski. She wasn’t finished with him. This was her bust. She would see it through to the end.
She huffed as she sprinted towards the end of the block, heading westward as the chopper banked. She continued her pursuit as the street suddenly ended, dropping off into a half full drainage ditch. Then she spotted Connor’s white shirt running through the trees across the water. If memory served, they could only run west for so long until they ran into the river. Maybe only a few hundred yards.
She leapt into the knee-high ditch water and was just wading through to the other side when the chopper landed in the open space in front of her. She shielded her eyes from the strong gust the blades created as Payne hopped out.
“Get in!” he hollered, as the wind blew his hair out of its part and across his forehead.
“No!” she shook her head, yanking the assault rifle out of his hands to his great surprise. “There’s a girl out there, following Connor!”
“I’ll take care of it!” he nodded, the noise deafening as he tried to grab Burton.
She backed away and shook her head. “Either come with me or get the hell out of here!”
She turned and ran around the chopper, loading the chamber of the weapon and heading for the tree line. Payne quickly fell into step next to her and had his pistol drawn, the helicopter hovering above their heads through the tall tree branches. They ran up a small incline in silence and hoped at every turn they would spot Connor, Wolinski, or the girl.
When they reached the top of the hill and a clearing in the trees, they both let out frustrated moans. Burton hadn’t remembered this.
“A shipping yard,” Payne sighed, eyeing the hundreds of stacks of rectangular colored bins angled on the large paddock in front of them.
Burton’s mouth hung open as rain drops began to fall. The helicopter had to back off as lightning flashed in the distance. The silence was worse than its constant beating above their heads. The sky rumbled and turned dark gray as she turned and looked desperately up at Payne.
“How are we supposed to find them now?” she choked, the impossible task of searching each and every metal shipping bin overwhelming her already wounded mind-set. She wiped the rainwater out of her eyes and searched the shipping yard below her. She couldn’t see anyone. What now?
Payne was barking into his cell phone for more back up when they discovered, much to their surprise, back up was already there.
“Heat sensory goggles.”
Burton and Payne wheeled around as two men in dark gear approached from the trees. Where had they come from? How had they gotten there? The CIA really was the best clandestine agency on the planet.
Neither of them would have believed it if they hadn’t seen it.
“We owe you,” Ferguson nodded, his goggles on his forehead, a pistol in his hand. He looked a little uneasy, like maybe Burton wouldn’t accept his offer.
“But after this we’re even,” Marty Austin sighed, a little bitter, pulling the goggles over his eyes and nodding. He pressed his hand to his neck and spoke to somebody, then took off down the hill. All of that gear made him look as young as the day she’d met him. Shit, maybe she’d misjudged him a little.
Ferguson handed Payne and Burton ear pieces and quickly followed. They stood only for a moment as they pushed their listening devices in, then ran down the hill after the unlikely pair. Whatever would happen next, they had two really experienced people on their side.
“What,” Burton asked, huffing as she climbed the chain linked fence. Not that she was complaining or anything, but what?
“They owe you, apparently,” Payne sighed, jumping to the concrete on the other side. “A British CIA agent and a former President of the United States owe you. Be proud.”
She sighed heavily and followed Payne as he slinked through the storage containers as the dark sky dropped buckets of rain on them. This was a lot to process, but she knew she had one task ahead of her. Voices buzzed in her ear. She heard they were approaching the northern end, so she quickly jumped on Payne’s back, pushed her knee onto his shoulder, and pulled onto the top of a faded red container. This was much better.
“What are you doing?” Payne called, holding his arms out.
“You go south!” she ordered, turning and running along the top. “I’m going straight up the middle.”
She didn’t listen as he called for her. She just concentrated on landing on the next metal bin as she leapt over an open space. She had a much better advantage up here. She ran and jumped, ran and jumped, her steps echoing around the shipping yard. Where were they?
She paused at the edge of the grou
nds, leaning over on her knees and peering out among the stacks of containers. Nothing was coming through her earpiece. Were the heat sensory goggles working? Were they even still there?
Suddenly, she saw Austin and Ferguson round a corner. Payne suddenly joined them from behind her. They all had their weapons drawn. She quickly fell to her stomach and inched over to the edge.
There was Connor, on his knees, his back to the river, hands behind his head, and Mina, lying on the ground in front of him. Wolinski stood behind Connor, with Burton’s pistol he’d obviously wrestled from the girl aimed right at Connor’s head. He turned his eyes up and looked at Burton, crouched on the edge of the tall container, looking down on him with a terrified expression. He gave one slight shake of his head and said so much to her. Don’t save me. Go on without me. You deserve more. Save the girl. Save yourself. I love you.
“There’s more than one way this can go down,” Ferguson yelled, approaching slowly, his hand up.
“Stop right there!” Wolinski ordered, pushing the barrel into Connor’s head and making him wince. “I’m not going down for this!”
Ferguson, Austin, and Payne all stood about twenty yards away, watching and calculating their next move. Burton was racking her brain. She couldn’t come up with anything. They all had assault rifles and automatic pistols…nothing with precision. They all risked hitting Connor or the girl. Was it a risk they’d be willing to take? She glanced down at the trio to her right, not lowering their weapons. What was next?
The rain still drilled down as the standoff continued. Burton was about to leap off of her perch and try to draw Wolinski’s fire when, yet again, something totally surprised her. She shouldn’t be surprised anymore, she knew that.
She smiled to herself as she realized it was the best surprise yet.
“Oh, fuck yeah,” Marty Austin mumbled, his powerful presidential voice softly coming through all of their ear pieces and making him sound even younger.