The house was too nice for a plain old soldier. It had to be an officer’s home and she could only hope it was the Colonel’s home. It would make everything much easier if it was.
Within seconds of Private Blazek knocking on the door, she had her backpack zipped tight and was running for the ladder that zigzagged down the back of the building to the ground. Instead of heading straight for the stately house, she pulled the wire cutters from her pack and made one stop.
She lacked the arm strength to cut the chain-link fence, but her weight was enough. Once through, it took only seconds to slap a gadget onto a steel cylinder with a bit of duct tape.
Only then did she jog for the stately house with her pack flouncing on her back and a taser thrust in her pocket. She couldn’t have been more obvious, but she had no choice. She had to cover as much ground as she could before the base came alive with search parties.
The soldiers would never believe Neil came alone and if they knew the truth: that he had invaded the island with only a seven-year-old and a zebra as back up, they wouldn’t have believed that either. They would search and if they caught her out in the open the only tiny chance she would have against an armed man was the element of surprise.
Surprise was the real reason she had ditched the poorly altered camouflage clothing she’d had on earlier. Not only was it silly, it would look automatically suspicious. But what did she look like in her jeans and her pink jacket and her hat with its pom-poms? She looked like a little kid. In fact she looked like a harmless little kid straight out of the past.
Who could think a sweet little girl could be dangerous? She hoped that if she ran into anyone, her unexpected look would buy her enough time to shoot her taser. Thankfully, she hadn’t met anyone on the way to the stately house, and now, stepping through the Colonel’s doorway with a gun in one hand and a live grenade in the other, there was little question she was dangerous.
“Nobody move,” the Colonel ordered, his face set and grim. “There are some crazy bitches in this world. Trust me, when one shows you a grenade she just might use it, even a crazy little bitch like this one.”
“Do you want to see crazy?” Jillybean asked, the smile widening. She nodded to Neil. “There are keys to the cuffs in my pocket. Unlock yourself and take the gun and the bomb.” He slid around Jillybean and, moving gingerly so as not to disturb her aim or so she wouldn’t drop the grenade, he fished out the keys and took the grenade from her. He held it, ready to throw, even though the room wasn’t all that large. When he took the gun as well, Jillybean unzipped her monster jacket.
Strapped to her skinny body was a claymore mine with the words FRONT TOWARDS ENEMY clear as day printed across the front. She held the clacker in her right hand.
“Crazy as fuck,” one of the soldiers said.
“I’m not done.” Jillybean’s smile was now a hellish thing and Neil recoiled from it, looking as scared as the others. With her left, she dug out a second device. “Colonel, you don’t want to know what this one does, but you’ll find out if you call me any more names.”
“I highly doubt that,” the Colonel said, evenly. “It’s one thing to offer a MAD scenario…” Her blank look had him explaining: “It means: mutually assured destruction. That’s what you’re threatening with that grenade and that absurd mine. I understand, of course. You’ve come to my island to steal or what have you and now you’re caught. You have no other choice, but blowing us up or blowing something of mine up for name-calling? I have to say that’s rather childish.”
“Childish?” she asked. “Did you just call me childish?”
You know you are a child so anything you do is, by definition, childish, Ipes said. So that makes it not a really, really bad name. I say you give him a break this one time.
A part of her agreed with Ipes, but at the same time, there was an undercurrent of expectation in the room. There was a fearful expectation coming from Neil and Private Blazek, but from the colonel there was a different feeling. It almost seemed as though she were being tested.
Which way to go? she wondered. She only had the one bomb planted…but they didn’t know that.
“I’ll let it slide for now,” she said. “I won’t blow up the bomb out of anger.” Neil and Blazek looked relieved, while the Colonel had a tiny smile on his lips telling her she had chosen wrong. She could fix that with a push of a button.
“Instead, I will blow it up to teach you a lesson, Colonel.”
He peeled his smile back to show his teeth. “And what lesson is that? Not to trust this imbecile to guard my island?”
“No. I want you to know that I’m in charge.” She pressed the button. There was a second where the room held its collective breath and then came a thrumming explosion from somewhere to the east of them. It seemed to go on and on, like chain thunder, shaking the windows.
Jillybean felt the explosion on a deeper level than anyone else. On the surface, she felt a strange fear, almost like a horrible memory or stomach-churning déjà vu.
She knew what it was—the same fear she’d been living with for over a year now. Her tongue tasted like pennies, and a cold sweat crept over her and her stomach curled on itself like a snake.
And yet, there was another part of her that saw the sudden alarm in the Colonel’s eyes and saw Neil cringe, and she caught the two goons who’d been in the house with the Colonel look at each other, not knowing what to do.
Deep inside, she liked the looks of fear, but even more, she liked the fact that she had caused the fear. It meant she was the one with the power, and she craved more. It was an evil, Eve-like feeling.
“No,” she whispered, clamping down, not just on the evil but also the fear in her. Before, when she had executed Dave and Perry and killed those men who had followed her in the night and shot Jimmy with his big Adam’s apple and Kevin, the fat slaver, she had just turned cold and deadly. It had just happened. Now she clamped down on her emotions on purpose. She would be like the first bounty hunter who had killed Sarah, shooting her in the chest. He had been purposefully cold and she would be, too. She could be Jillybean another time.
“There’s another lesson you could learn,” she said to the Colonel. “Don’t store all your fuel so close together.” Although she had planted only a single remote controlled bomb on a single fuel truck, it had been parked between two others.
“You bitch!” he hissed and then ran to the window. When he pulled back the curtain, the night was startlingly bright.
“What did I say about name calling?” Jillybean asked, producing yet another remote control device.
That this one wasn’t connected to anything didn’t matter. The Colonel took one look at it and reigned in his fury. He held out his open hands, palm up. “Okay, fine. No name calling. Damn it!” He turned back to the window and then back at Jillybean. “Look at what you did. You know what a waste that is? We don’t get that back, you know.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s a pity. That’s what means it’s sad. Now, turn around and lay on the floor. Go on. One at a time. All of you turn around.”
“Have them put their hands on the backs of their heads,” Neil said. “Oh, I guess I could have told them that. Hands on your heads.” One at a time, with Jillybean covering him, Neil frisked them and took their weapons. Since they had three sets of handcuffs and four prisoners, Jillybean daisy-chained them so that they looked like school children holding hands.
The Colonel and Haigh were considered the most dangerous and so they were stuck in the middle of the line, both of their hands connected to the man in front and behind. To add a last incentive to compliance, Jillybean duct taped a grenade to the Colonel’s throat and attached a stiff wire to the pin. She looped the other end of the wire around a toothbrush which she held like a leash.
She could kill him with a tug of the brush.
“Now that you’ve got us all trussed, what do you want?” the Colonel asked.
Neil leaned in close to Jillybean. “Our friends were sold to th
e River King. They’re probably there by now, or very close. We should hold the Colonel hostage until we’re far enough away.”
That seemed like the only sensible plan, but something about it nagged at Jillybean. “Wait, if we leave empty handed he’ll guess we were here after the prisoners. He’ll know exactly where we’re heading and if we let him go, we’ll get caught for certain. We should take some stuff with us, that way he’ll just think we’re stealer people.”
“Good plan,” Neil whispered. Louder, he addressed the Colonel: “We want access to the armory.”
The Colonel didn’t seem surprised. “What are you looking for? Guns? Ammo?”
“C4,” Jillybean answered, rattling off: “Detonators, blasting caps, grenades, claymores, M79 ammo. And do you have any bullets for that big cannon out there? It said it was a nuclear cannon.”
“No, they don’t make them anymore, but we have the rest. If you give me a list we can call ahead and have it all gift wrapped and ready to go.”
Jillybean’s cold heart wouldn’t let her laugh, all she could do was smile. “No, but you can call whoever is with security. You’ll tell him that you’ve caught the guy who blew up your gas and are questioning him. Tell him to send his men to help put out the fire.”
Neil added: “And tell them that it’s a crime scene and that you want it guarded until morning.”
Under their watchful eyes, the call was made. Jillybean then hustled them outside. “Where’s the armory?”
Before the Colonel could answer, Neil shoved Blazek’s M4 into his ear and growled: “Don’t get cute and don’t play games or you’ll be the first to get it.”
The Colonel cocked an eyebrow at him and scoffed: “You don’t scare me, little cowboy. The girl yes, but not you, so why don’t you wave your gun someplace else?”
Neil looked cowed for a moment and then spluttered: “Well…you are…just show us to the armory.”
“Gladly, if it will get you out of my hair.” True to his word they wove behind the buildings, which were alive with soldiers staring out at the fire or talking to each other from adjacent windows. The little group was hardly noticed as Jillybean kept them in the deepest shadows and kept herself hidden by the larger men.
The armory turned out not to be a classic armory that she was used to. It wasn’t situated in a half-buried bunker, it was right out in the open in what once had been the RIA Auto Skills Shop, or so the sign in front read.
“There’s a coupla guards in there,” Blazek warned in a whisper. He was the last in line behind the Colonel and with the grenade so close, he was visibly freaked, holding his cuffed hand as far out in front of him as he could.
His admission earned him a glare from the Colonel, who stared hard at Blazek as he growled to Jillybean “Don’t worry, they’ll listen to me. Just let me do the talking.” He hammered on the heavy door and barked: “Open up. It’s Colonel Williams. I need access right this minute.”
A slot in the door slid back and a pair of nervous eyes looked out. The Colonel was very close to the door, basically taking up the entire view. “Open up, son. I need some special items.”
The door was cranked back and the soft glow of lit candles leaked out into the deep night. Two men stood at attention; both carried M4s and wore matching looks of befuddlement as the four prisoners filed past. There was no hiding the cuffs even under the dimness of the light and yet they didn’t reach for their guns until it was too late.
“Don’t move!” Neil snapped, his own M4 up to his cheek and aimed.
“What’s going on?” one of the men asked, unable to figure out the obvious and still standing at attention despite the gun pointed at him.
Haigh answered: “We’re being robbed.”
“That’s right you are,” Neil said. “Put the weapons down, very slowly.” They looked to the Colonel, who nodded his permission. Now they had two extra prisoners, but no cuffs and no very good way to keep them tied up.
Jillybean’s wires and strings were too thin to do the job and the only wiring in the armory was designed with explosives in mind, not trussing up grown men.
“What do you think?” Neil asked Jillybean. Her eyes were half-lidded as she slowly spun to stare at the crowded warehouse-like building.
“I need another grenade and the shoelaces from one of their boots.” Neil had them both in no time. She had the men sit back-to-back against a support beam. “You see this,” she said, showing them the grenade. “I’m going to knot the pin to one of your hands and the grenade to the other. Do you understand what will happen if you try to escape?”
They nodded vigorously and she patted the closest one on the head and asked: “Where’s the C4?”
Jillybean was like a kid in a candy store. While Neil guarded the prisoners, she went up and down the aisles, shining her flashlight at all of the crates and boxes. It was all so neatly laid out that she found everything she could ever want or need in no time.
Ipes was like a very small zebra in a building filled with bombs. What are you doing? All we have to do is escape. You don’t need all that stuff. Like that…that AT-4. What is it and why do you need it?
“It’s like a LAW rocket, I think, and I don’t know what we’ll need it for. We aren’t done with this. Sadie is in more danger than before. Now, hush. I got to concentrate.”
The workings and uses of the gadgets and bombs were all obvious to her except for the items sitting in a cage within a cage. A section of the warehouse near one wall was caged off and in the cage was a second cage. Within it was what looked like a small carry-on suitcase and inside that, sitting in a bed of soft grey foam were ten steel cylinders, each only six inches tall, and each marked with the skull and cross-bones, a symbol even she knew meant poison.
“Mister Colonel, sir, what is Venomous Agent X?” she yelled from down the row and pointing back at the cage. “Is that snake poison?”
His eyes widened for just a second and then a strained smile jumped onto his face as he tried to conceal his fear. “It’s bad news. Don’t touch that, whatever you do. It’s VX gas. It’s a chemical weapon that could kill all of us in seconds if you release it by accident.”
“He’s right. Don’t touch it,” Neil warned. “I read about that stuff. It could end up contaminating this entire island, killing everyone. You can have anything else, but not that.”
Jillybean stared at the cylinders, wondering how anything so small and innocent looking could be so deadly. “The entire island?” All of the men nodded, the guards included. “That’s all the more reason we should take some.”
This caused an uproar from everyone, Ipes included. His voice in her head drowned out everyone else. Jillybean, what are you thinking? Poison gas that could kill thousands? Using it would be the worst thing you ever did. Think about it, not everyone on the island is guilty. Remember the sex slaves and the workers? If you kill innocent people it’ll make you a murderer. You, Jillybean. It wouldn’t be Eve this time. It would be you and this time you won’t have any real excuses.
The little girl turned away, hunched over the zebra as she scurried down one of the aisles so no one would be able to hear her answer him in a whisper: “The River King has Sadie and Mister Captain Grey, and the only thing that will make him turn them over is a real threat.”
And what happens if he doesn’t believe the threat is real? What will you do then? He didn’t believe Captain Grey would blow up his bridge, remember? What happens if he doesn’t believe you, will you use it on someone?
Her eyes slid to the little group of prisoners and the coldness in her heart intensified to the point where it was entirely ice, incapable of a single emotion, not even hate.
Speaking in a monotone like a child giving a book report in front of the class for the first time, she said: “Those grode-ups are evil. You heard all the stuff Deanna and the other ex-prostitutes said about the Colonel. What they did to her and to the other girls and to the people who he didn’t like. It was horrible and sad. And you heard Neil te
ll the story about how the Colonel stole everything from him and Sadie, and kicked them out among the monsters.”
But that was just the Colonel, Ipes insisted.
“All by himself? You know that’s not true. Those men helped the Colonel do all that bad stuff and they deserve to die.”
Maybe they do, but not like that. You executed Dave and Perry and the others and I didn’t say a thing because it had to happen, but you did it humanely. This would be awful. I think…I think if you do this, you do it without me. If you take that VX stuff, I’ll go away and never come back.
“And you don’t care how the Colonel made naked women walk out among the monsters because they wouldn’t sleep with him? And you don’t care how he would string people up over the monsters and let them get eaten alive starting at their toes?”
Ipes’ stripes crinkled down in anger. Of course I care, but I also care about you. If you do this, you’ll be as bad as the Colonel. And maybe you’ll turn into him.
“That’s not possible. I’m a good guy.”
A good guy with a heart of ice? A good guy who is willing to gas a city to death? I’m afraid a person who does those things isn’t good and it’s not a person I will associate with. Put me down, Jillybean. I don’t think we can be friends anymore.
Chapter 33
Jillybean
She was silent for a minute, staring through the bars of the two cages at the cylinders sitting in their foam coffins. The cylinders represented real power. It was why the Colonel had them in the first place. With them he could threaten any city in the world. He could even threaten the Valley.
That was a fact. The Estes Valley would never be safe if the cylinders remained in his possession. Did Ipes care about that?
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