Crisis Event: Jagged White Line (2 page)

Titman let go of Sadie’s thigh.

“You sure got pretty labia,” he said, turning toward Blakely. “Be a shame if we had to slice ‘em off and feed ‘em to you. Wouldn’t it, sergeant?”

Titman reached into the inside pocket of his gray camo jacket, watching as Duck’s rifle barrel moved a couple of inches toward him. He smiled. Now he knew for sure who he couldn’t trust in this mutinous crew of reservists.

Titman pulled out a cigar, bit the end off, and stuck it into his mouth.

“Come on, boys,” Titman said. “We’ll give our little terrorist some time to talk.”

Chapter 2

    “If you know anything, now would be the time to tell me,” Blakely said, and though he wanted to look down at the girl strapped to the table, he found he couldn’t. He was sitting on the edge of the rail, his back to the girl, talking over his shoulder.

He was having feelings.

Feelings he hadn’t had in a long time—not since he’d seen the photographs and videos of his fellow soldiers beating, torturing, and murdering innocent civilians in Mexico.

One of the feelings was shock. Another was shame.

The result of those feelings—back when he’d first seen that video—was that he’d been forced to grow up. To realize that life wasn’t all about good guys and bad guys, or whatever childhood crap he’d believed before the videos were leaked.

    “Know anything about what?” Sadie cried, her voice cracking and tears flowing. “Please make them stop.”

    Blakely ground his teeth and took a deep breath.

    “They’re looking for something you should’ve found in the backpack you went through in Youngstown. Or something that was in the motorcycle you took.”

    Sadie, whose fear had subsided a little, was terrified all over again.

    “I knew it,” she said. “I knew I shouldn’t have stuck my nose in it. He tried to warn me.”

    “Who tried to warn you?” Blakely asked. “And stuck your nose in what?”

Sadie told him about the Tall Man, and the Long Haired Man, and the murder. Then she told him about the kids and the dogs. Duck, Hider, and Meadowlark stood listening, glancing at Blakely’s and waiting for him to tell them what to do.

    “Jesus Christ,” Blakely said when the girl fell silent. “You are fucked.”

    Sadie, whose mouth, throat, and sinuses were burning, and whose entire body was overloaded with agonies of all variety, managed to snort out a laugh.

    “I thought you were the good cop,” she said.

    “In an interrogation scenario,” Blakely said, “There are no good cops. Only cops pretending to be good. Or nice. Occasionally they’ll be honest. Not very often, though. Interrogators are either liars or brutes or both. But you already know that.”

Sadie remained silent, listening to Blakely.

“Anyway, a
real
good cop—or at least a civilized human being—would have put those three down yesterday when he saw—.”

Blakely cut himself off, not wanting to think about the little girl and her bloody pink toes scattered on the floor in front of her.

“Instead I keep following orders I ought to refuse. I’m fucked too, you see?”

    “Please,” Sadie said. “Can’t you help me?”

    “Sure,” Blakely said. “If you’ve got what they’re looking for.”

    “What are they looking for?” she asked.

    “Something inside a Geiger counter,” he said. “Small but really important. That’s all I know.”

    Sadie swallowed several times, trying to ignore the burning in her throat and mouth and her nakedness as the soldiers stood around her.

Images of Callie flashed through her mind—one after another—of what would happen if these people got their hands on her.

She saw Callie being sexually assaulted and tortured with Tabasco sauce, and being raped and carved up slowly with a combat knife as the crazy general and his evil accomplices cackled with glee.

    “I know where it is,” she said. “I can get it for you.”

    “I knew you’d say that,” Blakely said, and stood up from the edge of the pool table. He looked at Duck. “Cut her loose.”

    The three reservists moved quickly to saw through the ropes holding Sadie’s head, shoulders, arms, and feet immobile. She sat up, rubbing at her bloody ankles, which were ringed with raw pink flesh. She swung her legs over the side of the table, hopping down quickly and looking for a weapon.

    “Thank you,” she said to the three soldiers, though she immediately hated herself for saying it.

She knew the psychology of torturers and their victims. And she knew better than to fall into the trap of gratitude. These bastards all deserved to die for what they’d done to her—or allowed to be done to her.

    Sadie could see the three soldiers were embarrassed and ashamed. They couldn’t look her in the eyes.

    While Sadie was busy psychoanalyzing the soldiers, Blakely dug into the pile of her personal belongings. He pulled out her freshly laundered MIT t-shirt and a pair of black warm-up bottoms.

“Here,” he said, and tossed the clothes to her.

She caught them, then stared at him. He held her gaze for all of a second before his eyes slid away. He glanced back at her naked body for a fraction of a second, then turned around slowly, as if it was a difficult task, and not something he wanted to do.

Pig. Another rapist. At least at heart.

Sadie turned away and put on her pants, careful not to pull them up too quickly. Her crotch was on fire and cloth pressing against her flesh made it worse.

She slid the shirt over her head and shoved her arms through the sleeves, wincing as the cotton cloth settled against her inflamed nipple.

“Where’s that Geiger counter?” Blakely asked. “Back in that square?”

Sadie started. She would have to be careful. Blakely was smarter than the general and his stooges.

“Maybe,” Sadie said as she sat down in a chair next to her backpack. “I gave it to someone. He probably left after the attack.”

“That’s kind of convenient, don’t you think?” Blakely said.

“Not really,” Sadie said. “If you assholes had just told me what you wanted I could’ve walked in there and gotten it. Now she’s likely gone...who knows where?”

“So it’s a she,” Blakely said. “Not a he.”

Sadie remained silent, aggravated with herself for giving information away.

“I think you know where he or she went, too.”

“You’re right,” she said. “But I’m not telling you. Torture me all you want. You’ll just kill me anyway. I’ll tell you so many different stories you’ll never figure out which one’s the truth. You’ll never find her in Pennsylvania. Or was it West Virginia. Or was it North Carolina? Or Louisiana?”

Blakely laughed.

“You sure you want to play it like that? You’re right about those three. They’ll kill you and go after your friend—if they can. It doesn’t matter how many stories you tell. They’ll piece it together. They’re idiots, but they’re clever.”

    “Good to know how you really feel, Sergeant,” Titman said, re-entering the room with Mallick and Getter on his heels.

    One after another, Duck, Hider, and Meadowlark swung their rifles down to horizontal. They glanced at Blakely, who gave a nearly imperceptible head shake.

    Sadie saw all of this and realized there was an actual divide between the men in this outfit. The question for her quickly became: “How can I use this to stay alive?”

    She didn’t get to formulate an answer.

    “Maybe you’re just an innocent little girl who got tangled up in this thing,” General Titman said as he faced her.

His cigar moved up and down between his lips as he spoke.

“Or maybe you’re a terrorist bitch who means to destroy what remains of the U.S. government. Surely you can see my problem. How can I take your word for it when the future of the United States is in my hands? The fact that your grandmother was Palestinian...well that just complicates things more.”

    “Fuck you,” Sadie said. “My grandmother was so proud to be here she cried anytime she heard the national anthem.”

    Titman laughed.

    “Hell, girl,” he said, and pulled his unlit cigar out of his mouth. “I cry when I hear the national anthem, but that’s just because the people singing it are fucking it up so bad.”

    Mallick snickered, his head bouncing up and down, his eyes squeezing shut.

    “Sir?” Blakely said, but the general shook his head.

    Titman kept his gaze on Sadie, staring hard,

    “General,” Sadie said. “I’m just trying to get home.”

    A sudden burst of snickering made everyone in the room turn to Mallick.

    “I’m just trying to get home,” he squeaked with a high-pitched voice, then exploded with laughter. He squeezed his eyes closed and and bobbed his head as if he were hearing the most beautiful music ever written.

    “You shut up,” Blakely said, and stepped toward the torturer.

    “You wanna go?” Mallick snarled suddenly and dropped into a fighting stance.

    “Stand down, Sergeant!” Titman bellowed, and was surprised when Blakely actually did. Titman turned and nodded at Getter, who stepped forward with a black plastic box attached to a black nylon strap.

“What’s this?”

“You get the chance to prove you’re telling the truth,” Titman said.

Blakely stood frozen, glancing from Getter to Mallick and back again, calculating the speed at which he’d need to move to kill Mallick before pulling his pistol or the knife he kept up his sleeve. His calculation was interrupted when Titman continued.

“You’ll wear this monitor,” he said, “and get my Geiger counter. You do that and you walk free.”

“But if you don’t” Mallick said, “we cut your tits off.”

Then he cackled like he’d told the funniest joke in the history of the world.

“No way,” Sadie said, standing tall. “You’ll just take it and kill us both. Right now you don’t even know what she looks like, and if she sees a convoy of Humvees she’ll hide. If you want that Geiger counter you’ll have to do it my way.”

Blakely glanced at Sadie. He felt some undefined feeling form in his chest as he watched her face down Titman, a man who was ten inches taller, a hundred pounds heavier, and a whole lot crazier than her.

He swallowed and turned away. Admiration was something he hadn’t felt in a long time.

“I don’t see you’ve got much of a choice, Missy,” Titman said, his voice getting nearly as loud as it had been when he murdered Navarro.

Sadie stared at Titman. Her guts were knotted and she felt like she was going to void her bowels. But she didn’t back down. She had come to understand the obligation you feel toward a person whose life you’ve saved. She’d always thought she’d understood that old saying. But her understanding had only been on an intellectual level.

Now she felt it. She and Callie had a bond, and she would never do anything that could get Callie killed. Even if it meant Sadie had to suffer or die instead.

Besides. These bastards had tortured and violated her. She wouldn’t cooperate willingly, no matter what was at stake. Forgive and forget so the U. S. government could be saved?

No freaking way.

She closed her eyes, said goodbye to Texas and her grandfather and parents, and yelled: “Fuck off, you limp-dick pervert. You torture girls because you can’t get it up and there’s no more Viagra around. And if the U.S. needs fuckheads like you to keep it alive, it should die.”

Duck gasped.

Hider and Meadowlark grinned.

Mallick smirked and pulled the knife out of his sleeve.

Titman crunched down so hard on his cigar he bit it in two. The long brown piece of rolled tobacco dropped from his lips, grazed his chest, and fell to the floor with a soft splat.

“You—!” Titman said, his eyes going wide and his face flooding with so much blood every vein seemed to balloon out instantaneously. “You don’t—.”

Blakely watched the general’s hand drop toward the pistol on his hip. He noted the way Duck had swung his rifle around to cover the raging general. He observed Getter going for his gun, and Mallick ready to strike with his knife. He knew the moment to intervene had come. He couldn’t let the woman die because Titman was too stupid to know he’d been goaded into killing the only person who could help him achieve his objective.

Blakely slid between Titman and Sadie, facing the young girl.

“I have a solution, Sir,” he said, his voice calm, his hands out to his sides.

Blakely heard the general’s pistol slither out of its leather holster. He felt the general’s hand on his shoulder. A second later, a sharp shove spun Blakely around to face the general.

“You insubordinate piece of trash!” Titman raged, but Blakely smiled. He’d succeeded in saving the girl’s life for the moment by diverting the general’s wrath.

The general shoved his gun against Blakely’s throat.

“I ought to put
you
up on that fucking table for a little drink!” he said.