Terrorbyte (26 page)

I heard him. Mac lay motionless. I doubt he heard him.

“We gotta get out of here, Ellie.”

I heard him. I grabbed Mac's shoulder with my good arm and shook him hard. “Wake up!” My knees sank in the mud, my hand slipped on his muddy shirt. “Mac, get up!”

Large hands dragged me up and stood me on my feet. Those same hands stopped me from reaching Mac.

“Praskovya, take her.” I felt my body move quickly backwards. Another set of hands grabbed me and pulled me close.

A shot rang out. The bullet ricocheted off a metal door ahead of us and again, I was in the mud. It was dark and hot under Praskovya's body. His cologne removed all traces of the bourbon smell from the ground. I knew the scent. A heady musky aroma; Mac wore the same one. From under Praskovya's arm, I could see Lee shielding Mac with his body. More gunfire erupted. This time the bullets hit the ground, little puffs of sand and dirt jumped as the rounds hit, moving closer and closer to Lee.

Lee spoke over his shoulder, “On my mark.”

Praskovya moved an arm. I heard a click, as he chambered a round. An indefinable calm settled over me as it occurred to me that Mac and I were with the best two people to keep us safe. I trusted my instincts that told me Mac was alive. I'd have known if he wasn't. I would just know.

“Mark.”

Praskovya rolled, dragging me with him. Mud and Lee's boots flashed past my face. There was a loud clang. Then silence.

I found myself suddenly propelled into a dark and dank space. I blinked and squinted, trying to adjust my eyes as quickly as possible. Slowly, in their own time, my eyes allowed me to see. I stood in the middle of a room. It smelled as if the sun had never reached it. Lee propped Mac against a far wall. The hands that restrained me earlier dropped away. I was free to go to Mac.

Guilt flooded forth as I leaned down a little and tried to wipe the mud from his face with part of my shirt. I smeared more than I cleaned, but it was the best I could do.

“I'm sorry,” I whispered in his ear.

His eyes flickered. A smile crept onto his dirt-streaked face. His voice croaked, “You're okay.”

“So are you.”

“Concrete head, you know that.” He blinked a few times. “Dark … where are we?”

I straightened up and ran my good hand through his hair looking for an injury. It was too dark to see where he'd been hurt. My fingers searched his scalp, finally settling on a wound about three finger-widths long and one wide. “Found it.”

“Found what?” Lee asked.

“Head laceration, I think a bullet skimmed Mac's head; it cut a fairly deep trail as it went.”

“That's going to look messy later,” Lee commented. He seemed to be a long way from us. I guessed he was by a door and listening for activity outside.

“Where are we?” Mac asked again. His hand followed the path my fingers took, as he felt the wound in his head.

“I think it's an old ammunition bunker, or something similar.”

Mac grabbed for my hand but missed and got my leg. “Are you hurt?” he asked, struggling to his feet.

“Hurt?”

“Injured, Ellie,” Mac spoke slowly, “Did he hurt you?”

“Who?”

“The dead guy we found?”

“Nope, no idea who the hell he was but he called someone who sounded Russian. He wasn't one of the two who snatched me.”

“Are you hurt?”

“My arm.”

Lee spoke, “It's a defensive wound, Mac.”

I heard what Lee said but had no desire to elaborate on the fight I'd had with the Marine. I was struggling with what I thought I knew. A Marine? It was so wrong and it didn't sit at all well in my gut. Every time I moved, my shirt didn't; it was really starting to annoy me. I wished we were in my car and I had a clean, dry shirt.

I heard Lee speak again, this time it was to me, “You hurt anywhere else, Chicky?”

A volley of gunfire hit our shelter. I didn't have time to answer, which was a good thing because I didn't know what to say.

“They're not going to give up,” Mac said.

Lee's cell buzzed. He answered quickly, “We're under fire here, Caine. We need some support.”

For a second I thought he was going to call in an air strike. It wouldn't have surprised me if he had. I listened to his conversation, one-sided though it was.

“We are in some kind of bunker at the end of Deakyne Road, right inside the military reservation.”

As soon as he said that, I flashed back to my childhood. Funny I hadn't made the connection before; I was sure this was where we had played as kids.

“Someone got a light?”

“Yeah, in the SUV along with my backpack,” Mac replied, “Wanna go get it?”

“I'll pass, smartass.”

Praskovya threw me a Zippo. It bounced, sparking across the concrete floor.

“Thanks.”

I lit it and carefully began searching along the back wall. Mac joined me.

“What are we looking for?”

“We really did play hide and go seek here.”

“Here, here?”

“We're by the bay aren't we?”

“Yep.”

“Then yes: here, here.”

“Don't tell me there is another secret tunnel.”

I have a thing about tunnels. I love tunnels, always have. Once before, my love of tunnels enabled Mac and me to slip in and out of Washington, D.C. undetected. This time I hoped it'd get us out of harm's way.

“I remember a bunker joined to another bunker via an underground, well, tunnel.”

“Tunnel?” Lee asked.

“Maybe,” I said. No sense getting all excited yet. Might be I hadn't remembered it correctly, or this wasn't the right bunker.

Another volley hit the exterior wall.

Drums and wooden crates were stacked five or so deep and three high in the furthermost back corner. It was starting to feel like a prison cell in a third world country. Mac pointed out scuffmarks on the floor. The crates and drums hadn't always been there, maybe even placed there recently.

“What if we aren't the only ones who know about this?” Lee said. “They were out here for a reason, why would anyone come way the hell out here?”

“You want to wait and find out? Sooner or later they're going to try and blow that door.” I replied, inspecting the drums and crates for something usable. Time to cowboy up. “We're going to have to move this out of the way.”

“Step aside, Miss Ellie. Let us menfolk handle the heavy work,” Mac said, mock-tugging his forelock and bowing. Blood dripped down his face.

“Not you, sunshine. Praskovya and Lee can handle this.”

Mac grinned. In the dim light, the flame from the lighter made his eyes seem more gold-flecked than normal.

The dirt streaks down his face were a mixture of blood, sweat and mud. In the flickering light he looked as though he belonged in an old war movie. I guessed that I would look more at home in a Wes Craven horror flick. Gunfire periodically hit the walls outside, a nice reminder that they weren't going to give up. I watched Lee and Praskovya move everything out of the way. When they finished they stood staring at a small door.

“Who is going through that?” Lee asked.

“We are,” I replied. It was smaller than I remembered – a lot smaller than I remembered. Funny how things seemed bigger when you were a kid.

“This is white rabbit territory,” Mac commented. “Real people won't fit.”

“Just open the door.”

I could hear the rabbit. I could even see him running for the door saying, ‘I'm late! I'm late!' I kept that to myself.

Praskovya moved back to the main door. We could hear voices every now and then. Lee worked on opening the small door. No amount of brute force made a scrap of difference. It was stuck fast.

“Next?” he puffed, sliding down the wall.

“Go out the front?” I replied. Yeah, that was really an option.

“Any ideas that won't get us killed?”

Raised voices outside interrupted our discussion.

I turned to Praskovya. “Cavalry?”

“
Nyet
,” he replied. “Dissension in the ranks, they're arguing about us.”

“Saying?”

“The Russian wants to blow the door. The Americans say it will attract too much attention.”

“Good, let's hope they dissuade the Russian.”

“How many out there, Praskovya?”

“I don't know, more than three … I have the impression there is someone out there who is not speaking.” Praskovya hurried across the room to Lee. “We need to open this door.”

“Any ideas?”

Both men crouched by the door, inspecting it. Lee called me over and asked, “What is in the crates?”

“I saw a lot of packing material, but nothing else.”

“We need something to use as a fulcrum.”

Mac was already poking through the crates, pulling out packing material by the handful. “Shovels!” he called out. “There are shovels in here.”

Praskovya joined him and removed one of the shovels. “Here's your fulcrum,” he said, handing a shovel to Lee.

“Thank you very much.” Lee set to work opening enough of a gap in the small doorway to wedge the shovel in.

I took the opportunity to talk to Lee quietly as he worked. “Lee, whoever drove my car onto the base works here. Could even be an officer. The guard at the gate – and I don't know which gate, but it wasn't Tulley – knew him, called him ‘sir'. He let him through without the DOD decal. Someone else drove another car into the same gate, and that car had a decal. He could be a Marine.”

“You were kidnapped by military personnel?”

“Yes.”

“Those idiots outside, trying to get in here … maybe active military?”

“I tussled with a Marine – or with someone wearing a current Marine desert-camouflage uniform.”

“Seem to be a lot of military connections surfacing.”

Those words rolled around my head while Lee jimmied the door. I went back to Mac. With Lee and Praskovya working on the door, it didn't seem to take long to pry the thing open. Light suddenly flooded in. My heart sank and all thoughts of the military connection fell from my mind. If it went straight to the outside, it meant trouble and gunfire. Not to mention imminent death.

“Ellie,” Lee whispered. “Get over here.”

“What?” I whispered as well, only because there was so much light I was sure they would find us any minute.

“We could be heading into serious trouble: this doesn't lead outside, it's a lit tunnel. On the other side of this small doorway is a proper-sized tunnel.”

“Do it.”

Praskovya looked at me. It was one of those long penetrating looks that members of my team liked to use. He was starting to fit right in. He followed it with a question: “How much of that is your blood?” Carefully his fingers reached for something on my shirt. He pulled back with a sticky, bloodied Post-it note in his hand. I saw it and wondered how sticky those things were to survive what I'd been through, although most of my mind was still trying to decipher what he'd said to me.

“Of what?” We didn't have time. We had to get out of there.

His voice was more gentle than normal. “Ellie, your shirt is soaked through, that bandage on your arm is soaked through.”

“Let's not worry about it; let's get through this door into wherever the hell it leads.” Everything seemed distant. It felt like the kind of distant that wasn't good. Everything slowly drifted out of focus, until I could no longer make out clear shapes through the haze.

Mac touched my shoulder. I knew it was Mac, 'cos that's what he did to get my attention; he always touched my shoulder like that; gently. “Mind your head,” he whispered. “Follow Lee.”

I did, we crawled through the doorway into the more spacious tunnel beyond. There was a brighter light coming from the end. I expected to see mom again. As we stepped through the opening at the far end into the brilliantly-lit room, a voice echoed back down the tunnel, creating waves in the light.

“Medic!”

I'd stepped through into a movie set. We were in a war movie. Yes, that was it; we were in a war movie and had just escaped from
Stalag 17
. I turned to see Mac. His makeup was so realistic. Whoever they had doing the makeup on set was amazing. His head wound was so real and the blood was super realistic. I wondered what they made the blood with; it had to be some kind of non-toxic substance that reacted just like real blood. What an awesome movie. Someone called my name. I just wanted to see how this movie ended before we left. I heard my name again. Then again. This time it was more insistent and followed by an instruction.

“Ellie, wake up!” Someone said something about a cowboy.

No, they were wrong, it wasn't a cowboy movie. It was a war movie. All I asked was to see the end. The light faded, dammit, I was going to miss the end. One word escaped the dimming light and found my ears. “Goodnight.”

I sank into the misty place between reality and the dream world. I've been here before, I thought, as I stood on top of a cliff. From my vantage point, I viewed the surrounding countryside. Teetering on the brink of sliding down the cliff, I grabbed a branch from a ragged dogwood next to me. It creaked ominously. I sat down on a rock. It felt safer to sit. A river meandered below, curving gently between the hills and fields.

Memories mingled among wild flowers; straggly dogwoods poked spindly branches at the more robust rhododendrons. Old oaks sprawled gnarled limbs into a makeshift canopy. Underneath the oak, violets nodded in the welcome shade.

I breathed peace.

Insistent voices reached me. They floated on the warm afternoon breeze. I couldn't see anyone walking up the steep incline. I chose to ignore the voices. I didn't want to leave this place.

The breeze rippled the water and tousled the wild flowers. I watched in awe as it tipped and nodded through the fragrant field, leaving in its wake a list of the dead, written in pretty purple flowers. I read each name, mentally ticking it off against my memorized list. The wind wrote three names I hadn't seen before. Carefully, with much concentration, I visualized a black marker pen and blank white paper. The pen began in the middle of the paper and wrote the new names. A blue bloodied note poked out from under a patch of violets and I read the words, ‘People like you shouldn't procreate.' I hadn't seen that note before. Slowly the violets grew over the note, covering the words in a purple shroud.