Close Protection (16 page)

Ramon knew that things were bad. They hadn’t even bothered strapping him to the chair. He wasn’t strong enough to get up off the floor, much less offer any resistance. The brothers allegedly wanted to learn what Ramon had done with the money and the car, but he suspected that they really were just looking for an excuse to hurt somebody.

And they did. They beat Ramon several times a day. He couldn’t pick up his arms or sit up. He had made several contributions to the bloody floor. But he did not worry about himself. He thought of Lena, upstairs, at least he hoped. He hadn’t seen or heard from since he got here. He’d wondered if Zeus had already shipped her off.

In one of his spliced memories, Zeus came to the torture chamber himself. He didn’t pretend to care about the money or the car.

“Why did you come back?” he asked Ramon.

Ramon did not answer.

“I mean, I know it was for Lena. But
why
did you come back. What made you think you could do anything? What made you think you were ever going to avoid this fate.”

Sensing Ramon’s surprise, Zeus laughed.

“Oh, you didn’t think I’d figured it out? How dumb did you think I was? Nobody else in this house would have laid a finger on Damien. It only could have been you.”

Zeus kicked him a few times, to stave off idleness, perhaps.

“And I’ve raised Lena from a girl. You don’t think I know when she’s got her heart after someone? It obviously wasn’t her dipshit fiance that had her all worked up. I mean honestly, what were you thinking?”

“I warned you, you stupid bastard. I warned you what would happen if you got involved with my daughter, and here you are.”

Zeus rolled up his sleeves and Ramon saw his tattoo. He had seen it for the first time a little more than ten years ago. Back then, he was living in a row house with his family. The first floors of all the houses on the block had been converted to storefronts, and the families that ran the businesses lived above them. Ramon’s dad had bought the block on the verge of demolition and turned it into a thriving little neighborhood.

On his fourteenth birthday, Ramon and his family were having dinner in one of the little restaurants on the block. Everyone was there, the whole restaurant was full of happy people, celebrating another year of life in the little corner of the world that they’d carved out for themselves. After dinner and cake, everyone was milling around, enjoying each others’ company and having a good time. Ramon was sitting in the front of the building reading to his little sister and some of the other little children. The sun was going down, and there was just a little patch of light where he could hold up the book so that the little ones could see the pictures.

When the first shot went off, Ramon didn’t know what had happened. He turned around and saw a black panel van, the side doors opened, and a man. Ramon had never seen a gun before in real life. On TV, Ramon had seen handguns that shot one little bullet at a time. They were dramatic moments, each shot punctuated some piece of stagecraft. But this was something else. The gun in the man’s hand erupted in bursts of flame and smoke and it was more like a roar than a pop. A spiderweb of fractures appeared before Ramon as the first bullets hit the huge plate window in front of him. The little beam of sunlight that he was standing in began to glitter with tiny shards of glass that filled the air. Then Ramon felt something hot on his back, and a fine red mist coated the window around him just a moment before it shattered and fell to the ground in a thousand little pieces. Ramon didn’t move. He stood there the whole time, watching the figure in the van. He was wearing a black leather jacket, a black ski mask, black pants and black boots. He was an enormous man.

On his right hand, the one that held the gun, there was a tattoo of a red octopus. It’s gnarled and grasping tentacles coiled around the man’s fingers so it looked like they were holding the gun, squeezing the trigger, spraying hot lead into Ramon’s friends and family.

This all happened in a few seconds. Even after the van passed and sped away, Ramon stood in the front of the restaurant, dumbfounded. He couldn’t hear anything, just a low roar and a high whine. He knew that people were screaming because he could feel the vibrations in his chest. He turned around and saw chaos. People were knelt over the indistinguishable shapes of their friends, covered in blood. Tables were flipped over and lighting fixtures hung from the ceiling and sparked. A sprinkler in the middle of the room was going off and Ramon watched as a pool of water formed and ran towards him, carrying little red swirls, bits of drywall, and sparkles of glass. He watched as the tide of destruction rolled closer his eye caught something else, something far more horrific.

The body of his little sister.

Lena hadn’t left her room in two days. When she demanded that she be allowed to go to the rest of the house, she was told that she had water and a bathroom.

“What else do you need?” he step-brother joked.

“Food, you asshole.”

“I don’t think so. Better this way that you get skinny for your wedding.”

Time had always passed slowly when she was stuck in her room, but with the added burdens of gnawing hunger and fear for Ramon, Lena hit a new low. She’d sleep as much as she could but her body resisted it. Hunger, fear, and worry kept her awake. She had no way to pass the time. No books, no TV, no phone. After the first day, she thought she was losing her mind. Memories began to appear before her eyes and play out like scenes from a show. She tried to close her eyes and will them away, but her subconscious kept playing them again and again like reruns from hell.

In the middle of the night, the summer heat choking her with sweat, she laid awake thinking backwards through her life. The last two weeks took a long time play play out. They were still fresh, there were lots of details to remember. She felt herself shaking and ill when she remembered her encounters with Damien, felt safe when she thought of Ramon, and then empty when she passed the day that she first met him.

She regretted how mean she’d been to him. Had that really been her? Just a few weeks ago? It’s amazing how time changes things.

The year before whizzed past. She’d spent it all in this house, doing nothing worth noting. She’d wake up, waste a day away, and go to bed. There was the sudden spike of nightmarish visions from her last weeks of college. Damien, the injuries, the pain and shame and anger. As she watched the year leading up to that night unfold, she realized how many times she should have run. There were so many warnings, she hadn’t seen them then.

Her junior year went by, then her sophomore year, then finally her last year of school. They were filled with happy memories. She hadn’t chosen to go to go to school there, not really, but the other students had. They brought happiness to her life in a way that she no longer believed was possible. And then she was at the boarding school. She remembered the teachers who would talk pleasure in punishing her for the slightest infractions. Lena always did have a willful streak and a profound disrespect for authority. Given how much of her life she spent under somebody’s control, this was not a surprise. Nor was it surprising how often those tendencies made trouble for her.

Over the summer of her sophomore year, she’d tailored her uniform skirts to be a little more flattering. They hugged her hips and she brought up the bottom hem so that it would sit a few inches higher, just above her knee. She hadn’t thought anything of it, she just liked it better that way. It made her look taller, she thought.

On the first day of school, Ms. Glange, an ancient old woman with blue hair and extra folds of skin all over her body, called her out in front of her homeroom class.

Lena went to the front of the class, unaware of what she was there for. Ms. Glange told her to face the board, which she did, and proceeded to push Lena against the board and strike strike her with a metal yardstick on the exposed backs of her knees.

She got three blows in before Lena collapsed from pain. Ms. Glange told her to get back up or go to the office. Lena chose the office. She waited for two hours with the other students who were serving first-day infractions, sitting on the edge of her chair so that her raw, stinging legs didn’t touch the scratchy argyle upholstery.

It was lunchtime when Principal Strauss called her into his office. He put down a steaming mug of coffee and asked Lena to explain why she was there. She told him. He asked her to see the marks from the rule, and Lena obliged, standing in front of his desk so that he could see the raised welts that Ms. Glange had left. He casually asked Lena to pull up the bottom of her skirt - just a little - so that he could see better. Lena did, not realizing what a lecherous pervert the old man was. When he asked again, the realization in a flash.

She turned around and grabbed the cup of coffee off the desk and splashed it onto Principal Strauss’s bulging crotch, and walked out of the building.

Zeus went to the school the next day and met with Ms. Glange and Principal Strauss and made arrangements for Lena to return to school. She did, after two weeks of suspension that she spent by the pool, and when she went back, nobody commented on the length of her skirts.

As they did with all things, Andris and Basil got bored of beating Ramon. He found one morning, as the first rays of dawn were streaming in through the narrow windows at the top of his prison, that he could push himself up to a sitting position. Crawling backwards to the wall, he managed to lift one arm up high enough to turn on the lights. He thought that the exertion might kill him, and he was unable to lift that arm at all for another hour, but he did manage to get his first good look around the room.

He was already well acquainted with the floor, and he’d noticed the chair in the center of the room, but the rest of the contents were a relative mystery. He looked at them now. The room was small, maybe twelve feet by twelve feet. It was lit by one bare bulb in the middle of the room which cast strange shadows over the twisted metal implements that sat on small wooden shelves all around him.

Ramon correctly ascertained that he was in a genuine torture dungeon. This was where almost all of the Buldova’s dirty work was carried out on the compound. Ramon had been spared the real torture so far because Zeus had been busy. His offspring could hurt a man with their fists well enough, but Zeus could hurt a man just by looking at his tools.

He summoned his strength and climbed to his feet. His legs were shaking and he thought something might have been dislocated, but after a few staggering steps around the room, he was doing something not unlike walking. He went from shelf to shelf, inspecting the awful instruments that he found there. Most of the tools were strange and exotic, but he occasionally found everyday implements that, with a little imagination, fit right in to the torture shop. Pliers, for instance. A large gauge cheese grater covered in what he hoped was rust. A screwdriver.

Ramon turned to the chair. He couldn’t do much to protect himself now, but he
could
prepare for later. He went to the chair and loosened the screws that held most of the straps in. If he was right, he’d be able to rip them out when the time came. There’s no better way to defeat a stronger opponent than by taking them off guard. He tucked the screwdriver into the waistband of his pants. He’d have to be careful not to get kicked there, it would hurt like a motherfucker and give him away. He didn’t figure that Andris or Basil would take too kindly to finding a weapon on him.

He’d had enough of the museum of pain, and went back to the wall to rest. It felt good sitting upright. He’d been in some manner of a fetal position for most of the last two days and his shoulders and sides hurt almost as much from that as they did from the blows he’d sustained. He tried to stretch and massage his sore muscles. Ever touch hurt, but he felt his body loosening, returning to something that might pass as fighting shape. Feeling a little better and a little more prepared, he turned off the light and waited.

Two hours later, he heard someone outside his door. It was a voice he’d never heard before. Ramon pushed himself up beside the door and grabbed the screwdriver. Now that he had adrenaline coursing through his veins, all he could think to do was to stand up and fight.

“Andris said he’s been shitting himself for the last two days. Hasn’t moved a muscle since they thrown him in here.”

“Well let’s get this over with fast, this place gives me the fuckin’ creeps.”

The door swung open. The first goon entered with a handgun drawn. Rookie mistake. Ramon broke his hold and disarmed him with one fluid motion. Before the man behind him knew what had happened, Ramon had the first guard in a choke hold with his handgun pointed at the second.

“Drop your gun. Very slowly,” Ramon said. The second good cooperated, very aware of who had the power in this situation. “Now into the room.”

Ramon locked the men in the room and took both guns.

“If you’re very quiet, I might forget that you’re in here. If not, I might remember to come and shut you up,” he said. Ramon left it up to their imagination as to how he might silence them. A man’s imagination can easily become his worst enemy.

He knew that he didn’t have long. Zeus would expect the guards to return in a minute. If he was lucky, the guards were also on disposal detail, in which case he might have as long as an hour or two. But Ramon knew better than to count on luck. At least good luck, anyway.

Ramon snuck around the back of the building. There was a blind spot in the surveillance system back there. The camera that looked over the pool only saw the inside of the wall. Ramon could stand on top of it and dance around and nobody would see him, at least on camera.

Getting on top of the wall would be a problem. Normally he could pull himself up, but he wasn’t exactly in normal condition. Once he got there, he had another problem. His plan was originally to shimmy over the sliding glass door and pull himself into the window of a second floor room. He’d made sure that the window stayed open, precisely for this reason.

But staying on the wall would take excellent balance and a powerful grip. The ledge was only an inch wide, and the only handholds were irregularities in the brickwork. If he slipped, it would be ten feet straight down onto concrete and closed circuit security. If he could do it though, he’d be right across the hall from Lena.

Swallowing his fears, he took a run at the wall, planted his foot against the coarse brickwork, and launched himself up. His fingers gripped the top of the wall and held for a second before pain shot through his arms and he fell back down to the ground.

He took another shot at it, this time trying to run up the corner that the wall made with the house. He jumped, kicked off of the wall, pushed up off the house, and got both hands on top of the wall and felt himself rise as he pulled himself up. As he went higher, he got more leverage and it seemed easier to pull. He had his head and shoulders over the wall, he could see into the courtyard, but his body would push him no further. He gave one last heave to try and get himself onto the wall, but pain shot through his arms and further into his chest and he fell.

That wasn’t going to work. He needed another way in. Collecting himself, he moved around the back of the pool to the garage side of the house. There were cameras here, but it was only a matter of time before the entire compound knew that he was loose. He took a deep breath, stretched his legs, and ran for the side door. He opened it quickly and quietly with one of the guns raised and ready to shoot. There was no one there.

He moved to the staircase, always keeping his pistol trained ahead of him and one eye behind him. His movements were quick, decisive, and nearly silent. Once he’d made it to the top of the stairs, he peered around the corner of the hallway looking for trouble. There was nobody there. He hugged the wall and listened for any commotion in the house, but so far, there was no sign that his intrusion had been detected. He made it to Lena’s door and put his ear to it. He couldn’t hear anything.

He tried the knob, but it was locked. Reaching for the screwdriver, he put wedged it between the door and the jam and lined it up with the bolt. With one powerful swat of his palm, the door swung open. He listened for any sign of response, and heard none. He looked into Lena’s bedroom and was surprised to find it empty. He thought of the other night, and called out quietly.

“Lena, it’s me, are you here?”

Nothing.

Ramon went inside looking for any sort of clues. Her suitcase was gone and her closet looked suspiciously empty. He went to the sliding glass door and looked into the courtyard just in time to see Zeus shoving Lena into the back of a town car and climbed in after her. They were on the move.

“Fuck,” Ramon said under his breath. He didn’t see who else was in the car, but judging by the amount of activity, the entire goon squad was on the move. Doing anything now was suicide. He knew that they were headed to the Miami airport private terminal. He knew that they would be flying into Havana. He just had to get there first.

Lena’s car pulled away and the SUV pulled up in it’s spot. Ramon watched as the thugs loaded it with four suitcases, each of them so heavy that it took two men to lift. Ramon got a sinking feeling. He’d had a suspicion before when he saw the detonator caps in the garage. This all but confirmed it. Zeus was going to smuggle bombs onto the boat and blow the whole thing to high hell. Lena’s marriage wasn’t a truce or a treaty. It was bait.

The Buldova family was going to war, and Lena was caught in the middle.