One Way Out: Scout Ledger Thriller

by Elleby Harper

  “Where are these other agents stationed?”

  She blew a fake sigh out of pursed lips. “You’re so smart. Figure it out.”

  His hand lashed out. She took the blow across her cheek by rolling her head to the side. She tasted blood at the corner of her lips. Her mouth still stinging, she forced herself to grin at him. “It hurts when your dreams of an empire are crushed, doesn’t it?”

  He glared. “I’ll tell you what will hurt. Watching us round up your fellow officers and shovel them back over the border as fish food for the sharks in the Bay of Banderas. A fitting end for Oyster Bay agents, eh?”

  On cue, Rico’s goons laughed in support of their boss.

  “And a little water for you won’t hurt either.”

  Rico stood back with his arms crossed. The other two shoved their guns into their waistbands and lunged towards her. Ledger rocked back on her bound arms. She curled her knees up before snapping her legs out to kick Pedro in the chest. His arms star-fished outwards as he toppled backwards into Rico. She was already swinging her legs around for a second kick as Pedro’s younger brother charged her. When her feet connected with his torso she felt the jolt right through her hips. He doubled over, gasping. Before she could hop off the table, Rico grabbed a gun from his waistband. She recognized her own Sig. He jammed it against her stomach. She hesitated. There were still 6 shots in the magazine.

  “I think you are trying to make me kill you, but I’m not going to do that. I have other plans for you, Officer Ledger. You see the sinks up against the wall? The electricity to this place might be turned off, but the water still runs. And water is a very useful commodity, especially in a place that depends on it as much as Oyster Bay does.” He tossed some orders to his men, speaking rapidly in Spanish. They responded by again approaching Ledger. “Do not resist this time. I have no intention of killing you quickly. A stomach wound is a slow death.”

  A hot spurt of anger flooded Ledger. If she could wind time back an hour she would react differently. Her one regret was leaving Rico alive. Only, she was a law enforcement officer and it wasn’t her jurisdiction to take a life before hers had been threatened. Still, she could have shot his knees out. One at a time.

  Rico’s men grabbed her under the arms and dragged her off the table. Her heels scraped the ground as they tugged her over to one of the oversized sinks. She had no doubt about their plans for her.

  The Navy Seals had once used waterboarding as part of their strenuous induction program but none of the recruits had succeeded in overcoming the torture. Its only impact had been to drop the morale of the Seals so drastically that the Navy had eliminated it from their program. She had to think fast, while she was still able to.

  “Wait, Rico! I can’t tell you where my colleagues are, but I can lead you to them. I don’t know the address, but I’ve driven there before.”

  Rico didn’t give her words a second’s consideration. He leaned over her to press the gun against her bare midriff. “I have a way of knowing if you’re telling the truth.” He flicked his left hand. An unspoken order to his men to go ahead.

  Pedro moved away and then returned with a hessian sack. She twisted her neck aside, but it was a useless struggle. He grabbed her hair to jab her head against his leg. With a deft movement he slipped the sack over her face and pulled it down to her chest.

  She felt the rough fibers brush against her cheeks, cutting her vision to a few shadowy movements. The covering impacted her breathing immediately. Logically she knew that was ridiculous. Air still circulated through the weave of the fabric. But with every breath she sucked in the material pressed against her nostrils and mouth, escalating the feeling of suffocation.

  Nothing else happened for several seconds. She had a wild thought that maybe they were just trying to frighten her. Scare her into telling them what she knew. That they wouldn’t actually go through with the torture.

  Then she heard water pouring from the faucet at the sink behind her head, splashing against the stainless steel trough and her heart rate picked up. She concentrated on slowing it down. In and out. Steadying her breaths. Filling her lungs with as much air as she could. That was going to be crucial. She had to be prepared.

  At the first gush of water against the bag she dragged in a deep breath and locked her lips. At first it was a trickle, then a torrent, pressing against her face. She closed her eyes. The water filled the bag, weighing the material against her skin, blocking her nostrils which quickly filled with water. She tried to tilt her head backwards, away from the direction of the cascade. It was useless. The water gushed up her nostrils, down into her throat.

  Instinct took over, she exhaled through her mouth, puffing out bubbles of air and the choking water. Then she clamped her mouth shut again. She needed air in her lungs if she was to survive this. The water came bubbling back into her throat. She blew out again, one long exhale. It took the rest of the air in her lungs. She was running on empty now. Yet the water kept coming. Her lungs were burning. Her lips unlocked, she opened her mouth, desperate for air. All she got was water. It filled her mouth, her nostrils, covered her face.

  Agony caused her body to spasm. She was dying. No air! No air! Her body bucked. She was desperate. There was no relief from the flowing water. It just kept coming. She was drowning. Lying in the open air, she was simply drowning.

  Rational thought deserted her, there was only the animalistic urge to survive. Her eyes were stretched wide, but she could see nothing, her entire brain was encompassed by only one drive. To get enough air to breathe. Only there was no air. Her lungs were filled with water, every part of her body begging for one tiny cell of oxygen to keep her going.

  She convulsed, her body jerking against the arms holding her captive. Every fiber of her being was now bare. There was nothing left in the tank. She thrashed against her constraints, and then blessedly the outpouring of water stopped.

  She sucked in a breath, the bag clogging her mouth. She coughed up water. It spurted from her nostrils.

  “Now tell me where your colleagues are tonight.” Rico’s voice was a satisfied purr. He had no doubt she was going to answer.

  Go to hell!

  But the words never spluttered to sound. She was incapable of doing anything other than sucking in oxygen.

  Then she was hit by the shock of water gushing back through the hessian sack. It poured up her nostrils and down her throat. She hadn’t even had time to hold her breath. Already oxygen-deprived, she slipped quickly into panicked thrashing. Searing red clouded her vision. Now all that was left was to wish death would hurry and ease this agony, this continual burning pain for oxygen.

  Abruptly the bag was ripped from her face. Someone tipped her onto her side and she spewed forth a lungful of water and bile. It felt like corrosive acid filling and spilling from her mouth. Until finally the gush slowed to a trickle coming from between her lips. The red searing her vision began to clear as air finally filtered through her gasping mouth. Her chest was heaving as though she’d sprinted a marathon. She couldn’t get enough air into her lungs, it was like she was trying to catch up on all those minutes starved of oxygen.

  “We can do this all night. Until you tell me where to find your colleagues. Where are they? Tell me and this torture will end right now. I won’t let them kill you. You will just keep going through this process. Eventually you will break. If you want me to stop. Talk to me now.”

  She could see the hessian bag in Pedro’s hands. He was grinning. His brother was grinning. They would enjoy doing this all night long.

  Ledger squeezed her eyes tight shut. She couldn’t face another bout of the water torture. She couldn’t possibly go through that again. Mingled with the rivulets of water cruising down her face were her tears. If only she could force them to kill her! Then Gene’s face swam into her mind’s eye. She couldn’t leave him alone to face his fight against cancer.

  “What time is it?” she croaked.

  “It’s a few minutes past ten. So where are
they now?”

  She hoped CC and Wyche had given up waiting. The sun had long since gone down. The boat crews would have returned and packed up by now. There would be no more workers on site until low tide in the morning when they harvested the oysters. She hoped she had held out long enough for them to have got away.

  “They’re staking out Northern Shore Cannery, waiting for you to turn up in the parking lot.”

  “How many and who are they?”

  “Two officers. Cyrus Carroll and Hank Wyche.”

  Rico stuffed the gun back into his pants and stepped back. He pulled out a phone that she recognized as her own. He scrolled through her contacts list, then his fingers tapped over the keypad. He gave her a wintery smile.

  “I’ve just sent them a message to tell them to meet you in the parking lot. That way we’ll be sure we can find them.”

  She shivered. A reaction to the cold wind filtering against her wet skin. Or maybe because of the fact she had condemned her fellow officers to death. She had as good as murdered CC and Wyche.

  11

  The shed fell eerily silent and settled into shadows once Rico and his men took their flashlight and left. She had heard some commotion at the door as they exited, then the roar of the F-150 tearing back up the single-lane driveway. In the silence, all Ledger could hear were her own harsh breaths and the faint lapping of the waves washing ashore outside the shed.

  Her strength was returning quickly now she was able to breath again. The jelly in her limbs stiffening back to bone. She noticed her regular breathing was just a fraction faster than normal, as though her body couldn’t quite believe it was okay and that oxygen was once again plentiful.

  They had left her on the floor, lying in a pool of water, beside the big stainless steel sinks. The cold from the night air whistling through the broken windows wrapped around her. It penetrated through the wetness of her clothes and her hair, plastered against her skull. Her eyes tilted upwards.

  Before he left Rico had positioned a digital tablet against the sink, its screen activated.

  “Watch that.”

  Video footage flickered onto the screen. She could see an image of herself on the ground in the dimly lit interior of the building. She looked around and noticed Pedro attaching a body camera to a chest harness. She tried to rein in her chaotic thoughts. What did they intend to film?

  “I’m not interested in your home made movies.”

  Rico grinned. “Believe me, you’ll want to watch this. It should entertain you for the next half hour or so. And then we’ll be back to take care of you.”

  Her blood ran cold, not from the ambient temperature but the sudden realization that they were going to film the execution of CC and Wyche for her benefit!

  As she got her breathing under control she watched the images being captured from inside the pick up truck—a shaky and jolting view out the windshield from the front passenger seat.

  She rolled onto her side and pushed herself into a seated position. The men had left her alone, unfettered apart from her hands and feet. Were they dumb enough to think she would lie there and watch their torture unfold on screen without attempting to escape? Did they think she would fall apart when she watched her colleagues being murdered? In that case they were going to be in for a surprise.

  She raised herself to her knees and tried to wriggle her arms over her butt. She quickly found that didn’t work. She needed to make her body more compact so her arms had enough length to pass over her body. It was going to require her utmost flexibility.

  She rolled backwards onto her shoulders by first raising her body straight into the air, then bending at the hips with her legs extended over her head, before lowering her chest towards her face. She dropped her knees to either side of her head. It was the same move she had made to entertain the Garcia kids.

  This made her body small enough so that when she raised her bound arms high, there was sufficient room to pass them over her butt. Then she was able to wriggle and shimmy her arms over her bent legs until they were in front of her body. She uncurled her body and stood up.

  A quick glance at the screen showed the men were still driving.

  She jiggled her hands to test the duct tape at her wrists. It was a thick covering, wrapped around multiple times in a figure eight, like a makeshift set of handcuffs, which gave the bonds added strength.

  Ledger looked around. The men had taken the artificial light, but the moon still shed plenty of brightness. She was looking for something useful to cut the duct tape. She noticed the spools of stainless steel wire and crawled over. A closer inspection showed the fishing line was double sheathed. There was an outer cable that looked to be around a half inch diameter, filled with a second cable about a quarter inch wide. Inside these was the stainless steel fishing line. The line was strong. It reminded her of a garotte. With a bit of friction it would easily cut through the tape. Yanking a length of tubing from a spool, her bound feet tripped over a toolbox tucked between the cabling. It must have been overlooked by Rico and his men.

  The lid opened, spilling pliers, grips, a spooled tape measure, string, bolt cutters, tensioners, a set of screw drivers and a utility knife onto the ground. The knife would save her valuable minutes!

  She sat on the floor, pick up the knife and clamped the handle between her knees. She separated her hands as much as she could before carefully positioning the blade to slice through the tape. She was slow and methodical. It wouldn’t help her cause to slice her wrists. With her hands free, she sawed through the bindings on her ankles.

  “Big mistake not killing me before you left, Rico,” she muttered.

  She threw another glance at the screen and tensed at the vision of Northern Shore Oyster Cannery’s parking lot coming into view. She could see the white van CC and Wyche were using. It was the lone vehicle in the lot. Damn it, if only they had headed back to Long Beach when nobody showed up!

  Something lobbed through the air. It bounced against the side of the van and in the next instant the van burst into flames. A grenade! Ledger tensed as she saw someone tumble out of the driver’s side only to be gunned down. There was no sound to the video footage she was viewing. Like a silent movie she watched CC’s bulk jerk as bullets from a semi-automatic ripped through his body. He collapsed back against the burning metal.

  She held her breath, willing Wyche to escape. But no one else exited the vehicle. The flames grew into a tower that looked bright and hot on the screen. Even in the darkness she could see a bluish cast to the red and orange and guessed there was some leakage from the fuel tank. It hadn’t exploded so probably it was just vapor hissing and boiling from the heat. Eventually cracks and fissures would appear in the tank. If the tank failed quickly, before the gasoline could evaporate into vapor, the van would burst into a fireball.

  Even when Ledger turned her attention away from the screen the fire continued to burn on the back of her eyeballs. It was as though it was burning inside her. Just like the fuel tank on the van was under pressure of exploding, that was exactly how she felt. The pressure threatened to overwhelm her. Unless she decided to turn that tension into a new direction. There was nothing to be done to save CC and Wyche. She felt tears glitter at her eyes but quickly blinked them away.

  She had no doubt Rico’s crew were returning with one objective in mind. So it was imperative she save herself. It was her duty to bring these men to justice for killing CC and Wyche. That meant an arrest and trial. Rico and his goons would serve life sentences.

  Her mouth tightened. Something shifted inside her. A seismic shift of epic proportions that left her with no other choice. She shrugged off the constraints of making a dutiful arrest. As of now Rico, Pedro and his brother were dead men. Because she was going to avenge CC and Wyche’s deaths.

  12

  Rico didn’t strike her as stupid so Ledger couldn’t imagine he had left her alone without anticipating that she would try to escape. He wasn’t going to just let her walk out the door.

&nb
sp; She grabbed up the digital tablet. It was little more than a streaming device, but it did have a light function. Switching it on she headed towards the door. She approached the exit with caution, using the light to shine around. It was a manual sliding door, the type found in cooler rooms. It was slotted into an aluminum sliding rack, runners extending back several feet along the wall at both the top and bottom for the door to glide open. Rusted spots had eaten through the covering revealing the interior urethane insulation, but the door was still in solid condition. Certainly too solid for her to punch or kick her way out of. The door was a relatively new addition to the slowly warping wooden structure. Probably added forty or fifty years ago. She could see the remnants of an old iron rail above the new aluminum rack. No doubt the original door had been timber, probably banded by iron.

  She judged the current door to be about five feet wide. It fitted snugly to its frame. It had a steel rail about middle height that served as a handle. She tugged but there was no movement. It didn’t give an inch. There was obviously a locking mechanism on the outside.

  She went back to the toolbox and grabbed a screwdriver. Her intention was to lever the door open through the locking mechanism. She directed the light around the frame looking for a closing mechanism. That’s when she saw the wire. It was so fine she would never have noticed it without a careful inspection. The door was booby trapped. Probably with some sort of incendiary device that would explode if she tampered with the lock.

  Chewing her lip with frustration, Ledger took a step back and her eyes began quartering the room, looking for other escape avenues. Basins and sinks lined the two longest sides, while the center of the room had a series of steel tables and a trough that was fed by conveyor belt. The mechanism for it had long been removed, but the conveyor originated from an opening in the back wall. Closer inspection revealed this gap in the wall had been boarded over many years ago with a steel plate riveted into place. Even if she had the time to pry it off, she doubted she would be able to fit through. Flesh and muscle was malleable but bone wasn’t and the hole wasn’t wide enough to ease her shoulders and hips through.