by Shamim Sarif
15
SOMEONE HAS COME BACK INSIDE. I can’t see whether it’s a doctor or an armed goon because I’ve dropped like a stone behind the counter. The problem is, I’m sure the shift of my clothes moving has made a noise. In fact, I know it has, because the person who comes in doesn’t move about with purpose. He sort of pauses by the door, like he feels something’s wrong. Then solid, heavy footsteps start moving toward the computer, and the place that I’m hiding.
Please let it be a doctor, I think—but no, it’s one of Gregory’s armed guards. He stares at me. I’m lying on the floor, eyelids drooping, like I’m drugged-out. It’s an Oscar-worthy performance, if I say so myself, nice and subtle, and it stops him in his tracks. He pulls out his gun and points it at me, but I don’t react at all. My hands are limp by my sides, splayed open, nothing concealed. He hesitates, then reaches a hand down to pull me up. I stagger to my feet, swaying a little.
He asks me something, disapprovingly. Probably wanting to know how I got in here. I answer him with a hard chop to the throat from the side of my hand. Then I push my fingers into his eyes and knee him in the solar plexus. Not that different from what they teach you in school self-defense classes, but with surprise on your side it works like a treat. While he’s doubled-over and gasping for breath, I grasp the gun from his hand and give him a solid whack on the head, and then one more, till he’s knocked out.
I tuck the gun into the back of my jeans, drag him out of sight behind the counter, then retrieve my USB drive from the computer. From the window, I can see my fire escape ladder almost within reach—except that it really is hanging by a bit of rust now. If I throw myself onto it, chances are I’ll be plummeting to the ground in a second. Plus, I can hear guards talking outside. I turn and head for the door of the lab.
In the corridor, a doctor is walking away from me, having just passed by. I pull back and wait, and then go straight for a fire-exit door farther down the hallway. It’s open, and the stairwell is dark and free of guards; but then I hear a scuffle and screaming coming from another room off the hallway I just left. I picture Dasha, in trouble. But they’re all in trouble, all these women; I can’t start meddling now. I push on through the fire door, and it slams behind me. But even through the thick metal barrier, the wails come again—and they’re heartbreaking.
Somehow I’m back through that door and striding toward the screaming. It’s coming from a doorway to the right and, no surprise, it is Dasha who’s in trouble—but clearly still determined to get out of there.
Three girls cower in one corner watching, terrified, but, to her credit, Dasha is giving it her all. Kicking, screaming, even biting the guy, but she can’t last forever, and he’s almost subdued her. Even though he has a gun, he’s not using it. I guess all these organs are worth too much for them to be allowed to shoot dissenters. But he’s angry, red-faced and grim-mouthed, and he pushes Dasha against the wall and leans on her, yelling. I don’t want to know what kind of lesson he’s planning to teach her, so I take advantage of the chaos and slip up behind him. Releasing the safety on my stolen gun makes a small click, but, combined with the metal barrel touching his head, it’s enough to shut him up. He stops moving.
“Laissez-la partir.”
Why I’m telling him to let her go in French, I’m not sure, except that I’d prefer they don’t know I’m British. In any event, he steps back from Dasha, and with my free hand I pull her toward me. She’s crying but trying to stop, clinging to my arm. I get him to drop his gun, but I also want to take a shot at this guy, just his leg, just enough to stop him from following us—but I don’t want the gunshot to alert a hundred of his friends. It seems that Dasha’s screaming has already done that though, because heavy steps come pounding down the corridor and a new guard hurtles into the room.
I pivot and shoot, and I get the new guy in the shoulder, and then the leg. His gun drops, and I kick it out of his reach. When I spin back, the first guard is already on me. I’m angry with myself. If I’d just shot him when I had the chance, we’d be halfway out of here by now. He’s trying to get the gun from me and, with his massive fingers, he squeezes it out of my hand, but all his focus is on that, giving me a split second to swing my leg around and kick him hard in the chest. The gun scatters across the floor.
Then I go for him, and we’re hand-to-hand fighting. He’s not much taller than me, but he’s squat and wide. When I punch his neck, it’s pure muscle, like punching a wall. But I’m faster than him. I go lower, feinting, turning, kicking, so fast that he’s getting confused, lashing out and missing. I get a good blow to his groin area. He feels that, and crumples just briefly enough for me to chop at his windpipe. I’m definitely on top now, but his flailing fist connects with my chest hard enough to knock some of the wind out of me. I stagger back onto the floor and scramble up, but Dasha’s jumped on his back now, her fingers in his eyes.
Picking up the gun, I give him a heavy whack between the legs and, as he crumples, another on the head. Then I grab Dasha’s hand and run. The corridor is empty for less than a second before double doors at the far end crash open. Two more men run toward us. I push Dasha through the fire-escape door and we pound down the stairs. I’m switching off lights as we go, and as soon as I hear the door open on the floor above us, I pull her out into another doorway. Shots fire into the stairwell behind us, whining as they ricochet off the metal handrails.
The floor we emerge onto is pitch-dark, unused. With Dasha at my heels, I turn right and run. There’s an operating room with a sink halfway down the hall. I turn on the water, and it creaks to life. Then I grab Dasha and run hard, back in the opposite direction.
Skidding on the floor, we head into an empty ward. Only a little moonlight penetrates the darkness, and the shadows of old equipment and drip stands make us both jump because in our terror we mistake them for guards. I take Dasha by the shoulders and try to calm her down because they’ll find us just from the sound of her breathing. She manages it, and fast. If I have to drag along a sidekick, I’m glad it’s her, because she certainly has guts.
We hurry to the window. I do my best to find an opening, but it’s sealed shut. Up high there’s another small window with a latch. I motion for Dasha to cup her hands together, and she gives me a leg up so I can reach it. The latch is stuck tight.
Behind us, in the corridor, we hear the fire door open out from the stairwell. One of the guards is creeping in quietly, trying to find us. Listening. He hears the running water from the tap and he’s heading that way, in the opposite direction from us. Pleased, Dasha gives me a smile, but I’m too tense to return it. I’m trying to decide what to do. Escape and make a noise. Or play hide-and-seek in the hospital from hell. I don’t think we can ever win that game, not with this many guards around.
I turn back to the window, cover the butt of the gun in an old sheet from one of the gurneys, and bash at the glass as quietly as I can. The glass and frame start to give. With a big push, I get the thing open, then drop back down to the floor. Now I boost Dasha up, and she wiggles through it while I drag a gurney over to the window. The metallic screech could wake the dead, and immediately I hear the guard’s footsteps moving toward me, faster now. I jump onto the gurney and hoist myself up. Outside, Dasha drops down onto some shrubbery. My legs are halfway out the window when the guard rounds into the doorway. In the dark, it’s hard to see what’s going on, but this time, I can feel him. I twist and shoot, low. He drops.
I fall well, and Dasha is waiting for me. I grasp her arm, and we run for the perimeter wall. Around us we can hear walkie-talkies crackling, men shouting. It’s a full-scale hunt for the two of us. Ahead of me a guard pounds into view around the corner of the building. We run harder, but he’s too close to us to outpace. Turning, I raise my gun and aim for his leg. He goes down, but I feel Dasha’s hand jerked out of mine. When I turn, another guard has her in a choke hold, and is dragging her back toward the hospital. It’s dark, and I can’t get a shot on him without risking her.
“No!” she screams. “Run! Cours!”
Jesus, she’s even trying to tell me in French, since she heard me talk to the guard who was attacking her inside. I can hear the men from the perimeter sprinting toward me. I turn away from the hospital—away from Dasha—and run. I can’t stand leaving her there, but if they get me, all these women are going to start dying tonight because no one has a clue what depths of depravity Gregory has sunk to in his quest for money.
My feet fly over scrubby grass and concrete, heading diagonally toward the wall. It’s dark and still raining, which helps obscure me from view, but the wall has large security lights on it, and when I glance behind, there’s a wide semicircle of flashlights closing in on me from all sides.
I veer right and keep running, toward the darkest section of the wall. I really wish I had that climbing rope with me now because—no surprise—they don’t make it easy to climb walls that are designed to keep people in. My best hope is a tree that grows next to it. I start up it, struggling for foot- and handholds in the darkness on the rough bark. The flashlights move closer, forming a long line that will be able to check most of the wall in about thirty seconds. Behind them, that wretched hospital looms like a massive tomb.
Once I’m at the top of the trunk, I sit astride the branch that grows out toward the wall and drag myself along it. Not far from me, two guards below are already sweeping the wall with their flashlights. I lie still on the branch for a moment, and when they talk to each other, I move to the end, take off my jacket, wrap it over my arms, and leap.
Barbed wire rips through my jacket and makes a jagged cut on my arm, but I’m hardly aware of it. I’ve made it to the top of the wall. Using the jacket as protection from the wire, I lower myself onto the other side. Now my legs are dangling on the side of freedom, and I make the drop onto grass and pine needles. Hitting the ground hurts, but I don’t care. I’m out of there, and I run, hard, away from the gate, which is opening to let more men out to find me. I head into the forest and run and run. Only once I’m far in, maybe two or three miles away, and deep among the trees, do I stop to catch my breath, and to think. I can’t figure out which way the road is. I’m suddenly aware that my arm is throbbing from the cut from the barbed wire, and my hip is aching from the drop down from the wall.
The sound coming out of my mouth is like crying, and for a few seconds I can’t make it stop. Maybe it’s relief, or just the accumulated horror of that awful place, and the image of Dasha being dragged back in, begging me to leave her and run. And the idea of what they might do to her now. For a moment my stomach turns so badly that I lean over and wait to throw up, but nothing comes, only a few spits of saliva. I drop down onto my knees and rest my forehead on the ground, because just for this moment, I can’t move, and even if I could, I don’t know where to go.
16
IT’S BEEN ONLY A COUPLE of minutes, but I’ve pulled myself together, helped by the realization that the longer I knelt in the dirt feeling sorry for myself, the more likely it was that I’d get dragged back to that hospital by Gregory’s thugs. A pale dawn is beginning to wash across the edge of the sky. Just the promise of light makes everything better, as if it can brush away all the shadows, all the nightmares that choke you when the world is drenched in blackness. I’ve stopped to check several times, but there’s no one following me now. Exhausted, I hoist myself up into a tree yet again, just to get a sense of where I am. My arms feel like lead. Hala’s biceps must be strong as steel to make climbing that much look so easy. This time, I’m rewarded with a line of roofs, red-tiled against the gray-blue dawn sky. I clamber down from the tree and walk toward them.
My mind is a mess, replaying everything that’s happened. Already, Gregory’s party feels like it happened a lifetime ago. My thoughts are with Dasha and the other girls I left behind. I need to get to the Athena team with everything I know.
The roofs belong to a little row of houses sitting on their own in a ramshackle mess. Curtains are still drawn, and each house has a small car in front of it. One of the cars is missing a tire, but the others look decent. I make my choice before I emerge out of the trees opposite and hurry over the road. First, I go for the chain-link fence that sits to the side of the last house in the row. I rip off a small section of loose chain and force it into a straight line with a curve at the end. Then I move quietly back to the cars.
The oldest car is a pale-blue job, some local brand that I’ve never heard of, and it’s so old that it locks with a key in the door, not a remote. Which makes it relatively easy for me to pull away the rubber seal on the window, slide the fence metal between the window and the door, and pull up the lock. Once I’m in, I get to play with wires again, but hot-wiring a car of this age is much easier than defusing a bomb, and it takes me no time. And I’m away. In the rearview mirror I glance back, but no one seems to have noticed that it’s gone yet. I don’t feel great about it, because they probably need it to get to work, and I’m pretty sure they don’t have money to sort out a replacement; but for now, I can’t see another way to get clear of here.
The car handles like a bad shopping trolley, but I do my best, and stop at a tired roadside convenience store, where I buy some antiseptic and bandages to stick around my wound. The place is manned by a guy who hardly bothers to look up from a movie playing on an old TV. As I’m leaving, I notice an old pay phone on the wall. Using the coins I just got as change, I call Peggy on her personal mobile. It rings just once before she answers.
“I’m coming to see you, right now.”
“What’s happened? Are you all right?”
Her voice is thick with sleep. I must have woken her up.
“There’s a lot I need to tell you.”
I won’t say more on an unsecured line, and Peggy gets that.
“I’ll tell our security guys to look out for you.”
I hang up. The car takes two tries to start, but it coughs to life finally, and I’m off again, heading toward the house where Peggy, Kit, and Caitlin are staying. My head is pounding. While I drive, I worry about the girls in the hospital, but I also think about Paulina. Earlier tonight, I started to forget that she was a means to an end, and what I felt when I thought about her was excitement. But now, it’s uneasiness that rises to the surface. What does she know? What does she choose not to think about? But I’m pretty sure that no one knows about Gregory’s new plan to send people off to be slaughtered for their organs. I imagine a conversation where I open Paulina’s eyes to the true business that her father is running. Would she do anything to stop it? Would she even believe me? And if she tried to stop it, would Gregory ever listen to her?
It’s embarrassing how bizarre your thoughts get when you’ve had no sleep. It’s a relief when I pull up outside the gated house. A slim guy in a black suit approaches. In this town, almost anyone in a large home has security, so it doesn’t look unusual, and if you’re up to what Athena is up to, you certainly don’t want any uninvited guests strolling in. I spend five seconds looking for the button to open the driver’s window before I realize I have to wind it down with a handle. How retro.
Impatient, I wait as the guard consults his phone, then looks back at me and waves me through. Peggy must have sent him a photo. Another thin guy patrols the other side of the gate. Neither of them looks very strong, but at least they’re armed. Maybe Gregory has first pick of all the wrestlers, boxers, and weight lifters around here. I pull up and notice Hala’s bike parked in front of the door. I touch the engine as I pass it. Still warm. Maybe Peggy called her in just now.
As soon as I’m shown into the kitchen of the house, I feel like crying. After a night spent with criminals, being chased by armed men, and trapped in that hellish hospital, the sight of this big, clean kitchen, and Peggy standing over a coffeepot by the stove, makes me feel grateful. F
or what, I’m not sure. Just that I get to be here, I suppose, when Dasha and the other girls I left behind don’t.
Peggy turns the instant she hears me. Her eyes look tired, but her hair and clothes are immaculate, like she woke up hours ago. We look at each other for a moment, then she comes toward me quickly and grasps me in a hug. She smells like shower gel and that perfume she always wears. I don’t know why, but I feel tears rise up, and I force them back down, staying in the hug a bit too long till I’ve pulled myself together.
When Peggy moves back, she examines my face, then my arm, which is seeping a bit of blood through the bandages.
“What happened?” she asks. She pours coffee and puts on some toast. I sit at the high counter, hesitating. There’s so much to tell her that I don’t really know where to start. And yet I do.
“Gregory’s not trafficking these girls to work the streets, or even for eggs. He’s planning to take all of their organs at once.”
Peggy stares at me blankly as if I just rattled off an explanation in Japanese.
“How do you know that?”
My mother’s voice behind me is a surprise. I turn around. Kit doesn’t sound angry or accusing, just worried. Her hair is pulled back in a loose ponytail, and she’s wearing sweatpants and a fitted souvenir T-shirt from one of her own past concert tours. Behind her, Caitlin appears. She’s also in sweats, but she looks like someone who just woke up, while Kit looks like an off-duty superstar.
“I was there a couple of hours ago. In his abandoned hospital.” There’s a general gasp from everyone in the room, and again, I feel tears coming up. Maybe it’s just too fresh, or maybe it’s because I haven’t slept.
It’s Peggy who moves first, coming over and putting an arm around me. Kit moves into the room, closer to us. Caitlin still lingers near the door, and, behind her, the outline of Hala hangs back farther still.