The Debt Collectors War

by Tess Mackenzie

  “I’ve got a delivery,” she said, talking quickly, trying not to give him too much time to think. “It’s in the car,” she said. “It’s heavy so you might need to help me.”

  “What is it?”

  “How would I know? A box.”

  “But it’s for me?”

  Ellie held up her tablet. “That’s what this says, yep.”

  “And who sent this package?”

  “I don’t know. Some guy. Who wants it delivered to you.”

  Mark seemed suspicious. “Who?” he said.

  Ellie hesitated for a moment, looking at him. She hesitated as long as she hoped someone would when thinking about breaking a company policy for a difficult customer. Then she shrugged, and looked at her tablet, and said, “Um, John.”

  John, because it was a common name here.

  “John who?” Mark asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ellie said. “John. Some guy called John. It’s on the forms. I’ll show you if you give a shit.”

  Mark kept looking at her, as if he was waiting for her to do that.

  “The packing slip’s in the car,” Ellie said, and sighed. “For fuck’s sake. With the box. The box I told you about, which is heavy. So I need you to help. So come on and help me.”

  Mark kept looking at Ellie, thinking. She looked like a low-end casual courier, she hoped. She was in local clothes, and she didn’t have any obvious tactical gear on. She was still wearing her comm earpiece, which he might be able to see, but lots of people wore comm earpieces for their phones. Hers might just be so she could talk to her courier firm as she drove.

  Ellie stood there for a moment, letting Mark look at her, then she started putting a little more pressure on him. She looked around. She looked at her tablet as if checking the time.

  “Come on,” she said. “I don’t have all day.”

  “Can’t you bring it here?”

  “It’s heavy.”

  “How heavy?”

  “Very fucking heavy. So come and help.”

  Mark looked at her some more. Ellie waited. She didn’t want to be too insistent, not suspiciously insistent. She just wanted to seem like she was in a hurry.

  “Someone sent me something?” Mark said. He seemed to be having trouble with that idea.

  “Yep. In the car. It’s heavy. Like I said.”

  He seemed unsure. Perhaps he had some debt, and expected collectors to service it. Perhaps he was active enough in his militia that he actually expected the debt authority to be looking for him. Either way, he was turning out to be harder to get outside than Ellie had expected, so she tried another trick.

  “Oh wait,” she said suddenly. “Shit. You are Mark, right?”

  “I’m Mark.”

  “And you live here?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Aren’t you expecting me, then?” Ellie said, trying to look confused. “You should be expecting me. Someone from the office was meant to have called.”

  Ellie reached up, and touched her actual comm, and looked at her tablet as if she was about to make a call.

  Mark was supposed to stop her there, to interrupt and say no, he’d come out and get the box. That was where his greed was meant to make him get stupid, but it didn’t actually happen.

  He just stood there, looking at her, unsure.

  He was irritatingly suspicious, Ellie thought. Or perhaps he was just honest.

  Ellie thought quickly. She needed to try something else.

  She looked at her tablet. Then at the house number on Mark’s door. Then she said, “Oh shit,” as if only just realizing that she might have made a mistake.

  She looked around, trying to act confused. Trying to look like someone who was about to give up and but leave and take her wonderful free package away with her. She wasn’t quite sure how that would look, but she made a confused face, and then a worried face, and she must have done all right, because suddenly Mark realized she might actually be about to disappear on him, and suddenly he became a lot more agreeable.

  “Okay,” he said. “Hold on. Maybe I can come and look at this package.”

  Because he was greedy, Ellie thought. Because suddenly he thought he was going to con her, to get something for free that she was delivering to the wrong address. He was greedy, because everyone was greedy, and his greed was going to make him ignore his suspicions and go outside like she wanted.

  Greed made people stupid.

  “No, wait a sec,” Ellie said, pushing a little more, trying to make it so he convinced himself he wanted to go with her. She looked at the tablet again, and then his door. “Is that the right number?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “And you’re Mark?”

  He nodded.

  “Have you got ID?” she asked.

  He hesitated, then said, “Hold on.”

  He closed the door. He actually closed the door. He must have gone to get a wallet, because he opened it again thirty seconds later. He held out an identity card to Ellie, and she went up the stairs and took it from him.

  It was his ID. It was in his real name and everything, and said he lived at this address.

  “I just need to check this,” she said. “I won’t be a minute.”

  Mark nodded. He obviously expected her to swipe it on her tablet, standing there. Like anyone would do to check an ID.

  “I won’t be long,” she said, and turned around and walked off.

  “Hey,” he said, and opened the door a little more.

  Ellie looked back. “The reader on the tablet’s broken. I’ll do it in the car.”

  “No,” he said. “Bring that back.”

  “It’ll just take a sec,” she said, and then walked off again.

  People always argued too much, she thought. They stood there talking all day. It was easier to make someone move by planting an idea, making a suggestion, then just walking off, and going where you wanted them to go, so they followed you to continue the conversation.

  She walked away, and Mark hesitated.

  She kept walking, straight down his driveway, straight back towards Joe’s SUV. She was wearing normal clothes, and holding nothing but a tablet, and she looked harmless. As harmless as anyone ever did, here.

  He hesitated, and then followed her.

  Probably mostly because she had his ID, Ellie thought. Which she had because he was greedy, and had got stupid.

  She kept walking, and Mark followed her outside. He was concentrating on her. She was there, in plain sight, the only thing he expected to be outside his house. She was walking off with his ID too, which made him even more likely to focus on her, and not look around.

  He came down the steps, and said, “Hey,” and started after her.

  Sameh stayed still as he went past. Peripheral vision was funny. People tended to only notice things that actually moved, in the corners of their eyes.

  Sameh stayed still, and Mark didn’t see her.

  Ellie kept walking.

  “Hey,” he said to Ellie again, and followed her down the driveway.

  Ellie didn’t look back. She didn’t need to look to know what was happening behind her.

  Right now, Ellie knew, Sameh would be about to move. Mark would have passed Sameh by now, so Sameh would be moving. Sameh would be stepping out from under her tree, closing on Mark from slightly behind him, outside his peripheral vision. She would have her sidearm in her left hand, and a collapsible metal quick-opening law-enforcement baton in her right hand, and as she stepped towards Mark she would be raising the baton to strike.

  *

  Ellie heard a thud, and turned around.

  Sameh had moved up behind Mark and hit him with her baton. She hit his arm, not his head, intending to hurt him and startle him, but not to risk seriously injuring him or actually knocking him out. He would be too difficult to carry if he was unconscious, and difficult to interrogate too.

  “Fuck,” he said, and started turning towards her.

  Sameh hit him agai
n. A tap to the side of his knee, so he fell, and then again to the arm he raised to cover his head.

  Mark was swearing under his breath, kicking at Sameh, trying to fight without quite seeming to know what was happening.

  Ellie stayed where she was, looking around. The house door was still open, but Mark seemed to have been the only one inside. The street was quiet. There was enough suburban noise, barking dogs and distant traffic, that the gasps and grunts Mark was making wouldn’t carry very far. It was odd there even was suburban noise in the middle of Měi-guó, Ellie thought, but she supposed suburbia was suburbia, and people had dogs and cars everywhere.

  She took out her sidearm and pointed it at Mark’s door, just in case anyone else came outside.

  There was no need to look harmless now. It was obvious what Sameh was doing to Mark. There was no need to look harmless, and probably some actual good in looking dangerous.

  Thinking that, Ellie took her corporate secureID out from under her shirt, and left it hanging on its cord around her neck. It looked official. It was official. As official as anything was now. Official enough it might make someone hesitate, and go back inside.

  Ellie watched Sameh hit Mark, glancing around, covering the street and the house. Sameh didn’t need help, not with this. She was vicious and bored and dangerous. She had killed people like this, killed them without a thought, so many that a small-town Měi-guó debtor didn’t have a chance against her.

  Not taken by surprise, anyway. Not without some kind of firearm to help him.

  Mark was still on the ground, still being hit, and that meant he’d already lost. Ellie knew that, although Mark probably didn’t. Mark’s only chance had been to get back onto his feet after he fell, and fight back against Sameh using his size and weight against her.

  Now it was too late.

  Now he was being hurt, and weakening. Now he was starting to give up, and lie still, and just hope it would end soon.

  Hoping things like that got you killed.

  Sameh kept hitting him. She was being slightly sadistic, prodding and tapping rather than clubbing him, drawing it out a little more than she should. She was being careful though, too, and only hitting his limbs and body, not his head. She hit him until he stopped struggling, stopped trying to get away, until he just lay on his driveway, curled up, covering his head. Then she stood over him, and took a cloth out her jeans pocket, and pushed it into his mouth.

  Sameh knew what she was doing. She knew how to kidnap someone properly. She’d grown up seeing this done by pros, by people far better at it than Ellie could ever hope to be. Ellie’s instinct was to grab someone quickly, and try to drag them into a vehicle right away, but that actually wasn’t the best way. If you tried to pull someone into a car, they knew they were being kidnapped and shouted and made a fuss and then everyone nearby looked to see why. If you kept hitting them instead, they thought they were having a fight, and so got all worried about being hit, and concentrated on fighting you off. They usually didn’t think about very much else, and they usually fought you without shouting very much either, at least not at first. People had a kind of tunnel-thinking when they were surprised and under attack. They pushed and shoved and responded, but it took a while for them to make an actual plan.

  It was far better to do this the way Sameh was. To hit someone for a while, quietly and steadily. To hit them enough to beat the fight out of them, and make them calm down, and then, just when they’d given up, just before they remembered they had friends and should be shouting for help, you gagged them. There was a knack to doing that, too, a knack to knowing exactly when to try, because sticking a gag into someone’s mouth in the middle of a fight just wasn’t going to work.

  Sameh had a feel for it. She gagged people early, while they were still trying to avoid being hit. Like she was doing to Mark now. She shoved a cloth into his mouth, and he made a surprised sound, then tried to spit the gag out.

  “Don’t,” Sameh said, and hit Mark’s hand, so he groaned into the cloth. “Leave it.”

  Mark tried again.

  “Don’t,” Sameh said, and hit his knee, hard.

  “Careful,” Ellie said. “It’s easier if he can walk.”

  “No shit,” Sameh said, then, “Tell your mother how to give birth.”

  She seemed to be having that kind of day. Perhaps kidnapping people was making her think of home.

  Sameh tapped Mark’s chest with the baton, then tapped his head, then his chest again. He moved his arm, trying to fend her off, but he was too slow. Sameh was teasing, almost, having fun. She was also letting Mark know she could do what she liked, which was something he needed to start realizing about now.

  He seemed to understand. After a few more failed grabs at the baton, he went still, and just lay there looking at her.

  Sameh grinned, and tore off a strip of tape, and stuck it over his mouth to hold the cloth inside.

  “Okay,” she said, and poked Mark. “Listen.”

  Mark just lay where he was.

  “Are you listening?” Sameh asked.

  He didn’t seem to be. He was gasping into the gag.

  “Hey,” Sameh said again, and then stood on Mark’s hand until he made a noise into the gag. It wasn’t words, really, Ellie thought, just a noise to show he had heard Sameh.

  “Get up,” Sameh said. “Walk to the car.”

  Mark tried to say something, but couldn’t past the gag. It didn’t sound like a refusal to Ellie, but all the same, he didn’t move.

  Sameh poked Mark with the baton again.

  He tried to say something else, sounding confused. That time, Ellie was almost sure he’d asked who they were.

  She decided it was time to get involved.

  “We’re police,” she said, because the word police made people do what you wanted them to do. It made them think that nothing very bad was going to happen to them, and that there were rules about what Ellie and Sameh could do. At least, it did in Australia, and in the calmer parts of the MidEast like Islamabad. Ellie hoped it did here, too.

  Sameh looked at Ellie, and made a face.

  “Come on,” Ellie said to Mark, trying to sound kind. “Get up. You’re okay.”

  He nodded, and slowly stood up.

  He seemed to be hurt. He was holding his side, and moving carefully on one leg.

  All the same, he looked around, and then tried to run back towards the house.

  Sameh had been waiting for him to do that. She pushed him over, roughly. He fell, and rolled, and Sameh knelt on his chest, and held the baton across his neck, pressing down. “Don’t be smart again or I’ll actually hurt you,” she said. “Do you understand?”

  Mark nodded.

  Sameh got off him. “Get up,” she said.

  Mark tried to say something, then remembered the gag. He held his knee instead. It was obvious what he meant. His leg was hurt. He couldn’t walk.

  “So crawl,” Sameh said, coldly, probably irritated he’d tried to run off on his supposedly sore leg. “Just get in the car.”

  Ellie sighed.

  “Crawl,” Sameh said, and prodded Mark with her boot.

  Ellie decided to help. She went over and pulled the door of Mark’s house closed, then went back to him, intending to help him to stand up.

  “Come on,” she said, and held out her hand. “You’ll be okay.”

  He flinched away, scared of Ellie too.

  “It’s fine,” she said again. “Everything’s fine. Calm down a bit, yeah?”

  Mark seemed to realize that Ellie wasn’t actually hurting him. He seemed relieved.

  “It’s fine,” Ellie said gently. Her hand was still out. “Let me help you up.”

  He took her hand, and she pulled, and helped him stand up.

  “Put your arm around me,” she said. “I’ll help you walk.”

  “Thank you,” he said through his gag. She could just make out the words.

  Ellie nodded, and took his weight on her shoulders, and helped him hop
to the car.

  “Thank you,” he said again.

  He thought nothing too terrible was going to happen now, Ellie assumed, because she was being kind to him.

  It was probably a fairly awful mistake on his part.

  *

  Ellie helped Mark, and Sameh watched.

  Sameh watched the way she often did, quietly, not interfering, but a little unsettled by Ellie’s kindness to a target. Ellie noticed Sameh’s expression as she went past, noticed Sameh was upset. She wasn’t saying anything, but she was upset. Ellie being kind to people who she might be going to hurt later always upset Sameh, because Sameh didn’t understand how Ellie could deceive someone like that, even an enemy.

  It was an odd difference between them, Ellie thought. Sameh could kill people utterly without remorse, as long as she did it herself. And Ellie could befriend someone, and be nice to them, and help them, and then give them over to monsters. Give them over to be cut apart by monsters, and never have a qualm about doing it. She would smile, and be kind, and keep everyone calm until she’d done what she had to. Because it was easier that way, and because it actually didn’t bother her, as long as it wasn’t her who did the cutting. And because she was just used to it, too, she supposed. She’d spent half her life taking people away from their families in places like Islamabad and Kabul, telling them that everything would be all right, and telling their families that too. She’d been doing it for so long she barely thought about it any more, and she’d always done it knowing she was handing people over to rendition teams to be flown to dark, blood-filled, torture chambers in horrible parts of the world.

  It didn’t bother Ellie, but it bothered Sameh, a lot, and Ellie had always thought that was interesting. She thought it was admirable. Sameh was honest about her feelings. She would kick someone to death for an insult, but she thought it was horrible that Ellie was nice to people she might need to harm later on, or might have to kill.

  They were different in that way, and Ellie had never been sure which of them was worse. Not that it especially mattered, since Ellie wasn’t going to change.

  She did what she had to do, and got her job done, exactly the way she was now.