Constant Fear (26 page)

CHAPTER 45

T
he man’s eyes gazed upon Ellie like two black moons. His long hair framed a thin, angular face. Under the weight of his boot, Ellie writhed to get free, but the man’s foot held her in place. Her strength weakened with each spurt of blood that shot out from the holes in her legs. The pain was all-consuming, and her thoughts were gummed with terror.

The man bared his teeth like a set of fangs and tucked his gun into the waistband of his pants. Evidently, he had something other in mind for Ellie than a final bullet. With a wicked grin, he extracted a knife from a holster latched to his belt. The massive blade looked to Ellie like a sword.

He lowered himself down onto her. Soon he had the blade pressed against Ellie’s throat. She could feel him getting hard. Ellie had no weapon with which to fend him off, and little strength left to fight. Her last bit of resolve pumped out her leg and colored the green grass red. The man put his face close to Ellie’s, close enough so she could smell onions and peppers on his breath.

He pressed into her, hips grinding, and she felt his excitement build. With his free hand, the attacker reached behind Ellie’s head and seized a clump of her hair. He gave it a hard yank, as if pulling a rope.

Ellie cried out in pain. “Help,” she whimpered. “Help me.” Her voice grew in volume until Ellie finally found the scream she’d been looking for. “Help me!”

Her voice sailed into the night, catching the breeze, going nowhere and to no one. She listened for sirens. Perhaps someone had heard the gunshots and called the police. But all Ellie heard was the man’s heavy breathing, Kibo’s desperate barks, and the blood that thundered inside her head. The man cupped her mouth with his calloused hand. He pushed the blade harder against her throat. Hatred consumed him. Blind to the possibility that help might be on the way, he was determined to make her suffer to the greatest extent possible. It seemed that was all that mattered to him.

“Voy a hacer que dure,”
he said.

Ellie knew
“voy a hacer”
was Spanish for “I am going to.”
Going to what? Kill me? Cut my throat? Rape me?
All of the above, she believed. Every single one of those things. Even if that wasn’t exactly what the words meant, it was what he was going to do.

The man pulled Ellie’s hair and breathed into her ear.
“Te va a encantar mi verga.”

Ellie knew for certain what was to come when he undid her belt. She clawed at his face.
Clawed.
The blood loss had left her completely drained. Her attack couldn’t repel a fly. Ellie writhed beneath him. She kicked haplessly. Fatigue beat out resolve and Ellie began to give in. Her mind went blank and the pain went away. The brush of steel against her throat became nothing.

She felt her body rising up off the ground. Suddenly there she was, ten, maybe fifteen feet in the air, maybe higher, just floating. She looked down upon herself and the man on top of her . . . but then, it wasn’t her. It was someone, somebody else thrashing beneath this stranger. How horrible it was, she thought, to see this poor woman being savaged in such a vicious manner.

Where Ellie was now, nothing hurt. She felt no pain, only peace, profound peace. But the woman, that poor woman. Something had to be done to help this woman. It was her duty, though she couldn’t exactly say why. She felt nameless. She had no past. No future. She was just a presence watching over this woman in such duress.

She called out, “Somebody help!”

Her voice was a hiss of air, a whisper in the wind.

With a sudden stab of horror, Ellie understood she
was
the woman. In the very next instant, Ellie returned to her body, and the pain came back sharper than ever. It flooded her eyes, her mouth. It was shards of glass against her skin. The pain sank deep into her joints and the fibers of her muscles. She wished herself back to the place where she was floating, where she was nothing and everything all at once. The blade sank into her throat and a tug on her pants pulled them to her hips.

Ellie’s screams grew softer. She was thinking about that place. The place without any pain. A noise in the distance registered in her ears. What was it? Strange but familiar. She wasn’t scared of this sound at all. It grew louder until it made sense to her. Until she knew what was coming. It was the sound of growls, and snarls, and snapping jaws. It was the sound of paws slapping the soft earth. It was the sharp bark of Kibo streaking at the man like a missile on target.

He had heard her. In her cruiser, he had probably barked, spun around in the front seat, pawed at the door handle, and nuzzled it with his snout until he got it open.

And then he ran.

Ellie saw little of the attack. But it was enough.

Kibo flew in the air over her head and struck the man in the chest with the full force of his eighty-five pounds. He snarled and snapped his jaws into the man’s shoulder. His paws ripped long streaks down the man’s face. Then Kibo sank his teeth into the fleshy part of the man’s leg and shook his head from side to side. Ellie heard a ripping sound as the flesh came free. Then Kibo bit again.

Free of the man, Ellie reached for her Glock and managed with a stretch of the fingers to take hold of the weapon. From the ground, she aimed through the gauze of her vision and fired a single shot, which found the center of her attacker’s head. The man fell backward. Kibo pounced on his chest and snarled in his face. When the man didn’t move, and his scent changed, Kibo got off and came over to Ellie. He curled up next to her, licked her face, and whimpered.

At some point, a new voice came from the dark. “Hello? Hello? Are you hurt?”

The voice was a boy’s. Kibo growled.

Ellie managed to wheeze out, “Easy, easy, Kibo. It’s fine, sweetie. It’s fine.”

The boy held his ground. “My name is Gus. We’re being held hostage, but I think you might have killed them all. I called the police. They’re on the way.”

Kibo growled low and menacing. The boy would not approach. He was smart to be cautious. Ellie gripped Kibo’s fur to keep him close, though she knew for certain her guardian angel would never willingly leave her side.

CHAPTER 46

S
olomon wore his terror like a gruesome mask. His mouth hung open wide, lips twisted and curled, eyes bulged from strain as he pushed futilely to get through the compact opening. Stuck in that hole, Solomon’s cheeks billowed and collapsed from the effort. He kept up a steady stream of grunts, groans, and cries for help. How much time did he have before the cartel men showed up and started shooting? Fifteen seconds? Thirty? A minute. Not much more, that was for certain.

Jake focused again on those approaching footsteps, and something clicked. He could distinguish two distinct sets. Two people were coming for them. Jake flashed on his count again. Three of the cartel were still alive, assuming Andy’s information had been correct, which meant one of them had taken the wrong route, while the other two had come to investigate Solomon’s racket.

Jake ran toward those footsteps. Solomon watched him go. As soon as Jake vanished, the boy’s panic escalated. It sounded to Jake as if Solomon was screaming in his ear.

Jake backtracked a good distance and dropped to his knees to fire his AK-47 blindly down the corridor. Without night vision, it was pitch black. He sent round after round screaming into the darkness, firing in three-shot sequences to conserve ammunition. Flashes of gunfire briefly lit him like a strobe light. In the interludes, Jake listened for footsteps. What he heard was Solomon’s desperate pleas.

“Come back! Come back! Help me get out!”

Shots rang out at Jake from the darkness, sharp against his exposed eardrums. The bullets struck concrete. Jake was thankful again that this particular section of tunnel angled in such a way that kept him out of any direct lines of fire. It was a temporary sanctuary from the bullets, at best. In no time, the men would reach a point where the angles played in their favor. As long as Jake kept shooting, he could hold them at bay until Solomon freed himself.

That was his big strategy anyway.

Part two of his plan wasn’t much better. Once Solomon was free, Jake would keep shooting long enough for the boy to get away. Then it would be two against one, and Jake understood his odds.

But there was a problem with this plan, which Jake reasoned as soon as his thoughts had time to gel. One former pitching coach nicknamed this interlude “the gathering,” which accurately described the process Jake used to pull himself together during a game. The gathering helped him focus and visualize the task at hand. In all instances, it heightened his mental acuity; and in this situation, it helped Jake see the obvious fault of his thinking.

He would run out of ammo long before Solomon got free.

The only way to dislodge Solomon, Jake believed, was to pull him from behind. Maybe Andy had gotten to Haggar by now. Maybe help was on its way. Maybe. But Jake’s ammunition would be gone long before that theory proved out.

For the time being, Jake couldn’t shoot them and they couldn’t shoot him. As long as they heard gunfire, they wouldn’t advance. Once he stopped shooting, they would come, guns blazing, for sure. And eventually they’d hit him or Solomon. One of them, or both, would die.

Jake settled on his best option: take out the two men at the exact same time. But how? Charge them? That seemed reckless at best. Wait for them to come to him? In these close quarters, a stray bullet had a good chance of becoming lethal.

And then it came to Jake, a plan formed during another miniature gathering episode. Jake knew how and where to set up an ambush, but it required Solomon to become invisible. For his plan to work, Jake would have to lure the cartel into this section of tunnel. That was the easy part. All he had to do was stop shooting.

The problem was Solomon. If the cartel men heard the boy, they’d shoot, even if they couldn’t see their target. Jake needed it completely silent for his ambush to work.

Walking backward, taking hurried steps, Jake returned to Solomon. As he went, Jake fired at regular intervals—ineffective, he knew, but he hoped it would be enough to stave off an assault. He had to get in position. Had to get ready.

At the hole, Jake bent down and gave Solomon his headlamp—the power of light. He brushed aside the boy’s tears and set a comforting hand on Solomon’s flushed cheek. With his free hand, Jake fired off a couple more rounds from the rifle.

“Listen, buddy, listen. I need you to go silent now.”

Solomon was having none of it. He was in the midst of a full-on panic attack.

“Can you get quiet?” Jake asked again. “We’ve got to be silent. Right now. Starting now. I know you’re scared, but you’ve got to do this.”

Jake had talked long enough. The men might already have advanced their position. He set off another burst of gunfire, and that made Solomon jump, but it didn’t get him free from that blasted hole. Jake pulled the trigger once more, but the magazine was empty. He changed it. And that was the last one.

“I’m so scared!” Solomon hollered.

Jake gazed down into the void. Somewhere in that darkness, two men waited for their opportunity to strike.

“Fear is in the mind,” Jake said. He spoke slowly so Solomon could hear his words clearly, and he got close to reveal his serious expression. “Just get those negative thoughts out of there.”

Jake shot off a few more rounds.

“I can’t do it. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t calm down.”

He had to reach the boy. But he couldn’t rush him, couldn’t force it. Reach him. Connect with him. Jake went to the one subject he knew best besides prepping.

“You play any sports?” Jake asked in a soothing voice. “Baseball? Football? Anything like that?”

Jake fired off a couple more shots. He was down to maybe twenty bullets. With one hand, Jake undid his battle belt and let it fall to the ground.

“Bowling,” Solomon whimpered.

“Bowling,” Jake repeated as he worked quickly to get his chest rig removed. “Fine. Fine. That’s a good one. Bowling. I like that. Okay, okay, so do you scream at the bowling alley?” Jake fired some more bullets at nothing.

“‘Scream’? No,” Solomon said.

“Do you get all nervous when you bowl?”

The chest rig came off and fell to the ground, near to the battle belt.

“Never,” Solomon said.

It was working. Solomon needed the distraction. His breathing was already less ragged, his panic less pervasive.

“Never,”
Jake repeated, sounding pleased. “Well, then, imagine we’re just bowling right now. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but think of this corridor here as nothing but an alley. Get yourself into a quiet space. Concentrate on it. See it in your mind. The pins. The lane. The feel of the ball. The smells. The noise. Everything. Think about every detail until it’s like you’re there. You understand?”

“No,” Solomon said in a panicky voice.

“Right, of course you don’t. Of course not. You see, nervousness, that’s just your worry all pent up with no place to go. That’s where the anxiety comes from. You’ve got to have a release valve for that, get it?” Jake’s voice came out breathless from a combination of dread and exertion.

He took three more shots. Jake was down to the last ten bullets in his rifle. Solomon had that many bullets left to get calm and quiet. Jake removed his shirt and revealed the Kevlar he wore underneath.

“You’re feeling anxious, right?” Jake asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, your anxiety is making that fear happen. Like a little fear factory working overtime inside you. And that fear, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Jake said. “Do you know what I mean by that?”

Jake’s last baseball coach had said something similar to him a week or so before the car crash that ended his career. Lance had said something similar as well, right before Jake agreed to take the job at Pepperell Academy.

“You can’t live your life like a scared little animal,” Lance had said. “You’ve got a son to raise. Man up, Jake, and take the damn job.”

Jake had done what Lance asked of him: he “manned up” and took the job. Jake had spent a lifetime trying to overcome his fear, and poor Solomon would have to do it in just a matter of minutes.

“Do you understand what a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ is?” Jake asked. He worked to loosen straps on his Kevlar.

“I think so,” Solomon replied in a shaky voice. “If I think it, I make it happen.”

“That’s right,” Jake said, energized. “What you think, you make happen. So this is a challenge, buddy. Nothing more. A really awful challenge that you got to face, and you can’t give in to the pressure.” Jake fired off two more shots. Eight bullets remained. “You might be stuck in that hole, but you’re still in control. You understand? You have the power. We don’t want them to know they’re close to you. If they do, they’ll shoot. And they’ll hit you.”

As if to illustrate the point, Jake fired his weapon. Flashes spit out the barrel of the gun. The echo of each gunshot rattled off the walls loud enough to sting the eardrums.
Rat-tat-tat.

Jake was down to his last five bullets.

“Think about what you want to have happen, not what might happen. What do you want to have happen, Solomon?” Jake fired off another shot and the Kevlar came free from his body.

“I want to get out,” Solomon said, his voice shaky and on the verge of tears.

“What else? When those men come, what else do you want to have happen? Remember, you make it happen.”

“I want you to knock ’em down like pins,” Solomon said.

“Yeah. I want to do that, too. But what I need is for you to stay quiet as can be,” Jake said as he fired off two more shots.

Two bullets left.

“Are you a fighter?” Jake asked.

“They called me a pig,” Solomon said, sobbing. Jake could hear him sniffling. The tears were flowing again. “They pretended to cut me
like I was a pig.
”

Jake propped his Kevlar vest in front of Solomon, positioning it in such a way as to completely cover the boy’s face and head. He took the headlamp from Solomon’s hand. It wouldn’t do him any good now.

“This Kevlar is like a shield,” Jake said as he slipped his shirt back on. “It’ll hide you from them and protect you if a bullet comes. You can hold on to it with your hands if you like, but don’t let it fall down. Keep it in front of your head and face at all times. Understand?”

“Okay,” Solomon said.

“Are you a fighter?” Jake asked again in a voice that commanded attention and respect.

“I’m a fighter,” Solomon said. His voice came out softened behind the bullet-resistant fabric, but that wasn’t why his words lacked conviction. “I am a fighter,” he repeated.

That time, Jake believed him.

Jake cut the light from the headlamp, casting them both into an impenetrable darkness.

“I thought so,” Jake said. He fired a bullet from the rifle.

His last one.