Sweet Dreams (39 page)

KIRK COULD FEEL HIS head swim as he collapsed on the floor. He had made it halfway down the hallway before he gave up, he couldn't take another step. The glass dug deeper into his feet and hands as he crawled down the hall, trying to make it to an empty cell.

All he hoped was that the other cells weren't covered with deadly glass, too. He made it to the last door, reached up, and turned the doorknob.

It was open!

He rolled inside and gritted his teeth as bits of sharp metal 364 AARON

and glass imbedded deeper into his back. Then he felt around to discover that this room was clean and free of any traps. He lay on his back, trying to get a second wind. He was sure he would be found from the blood trail he had made on his way there.

Let them come!

He felt in the mood to tangle with a guard or two. Pain will break you or tick you off, and Kirk was getting madder by the minute.

After he worked the glass from his hands and feet, he found an old pillowcase in the corner. He tore it into pieces and wrapped his feet to stop the bleeding. He could tell that he had a broken nose, and most of his ribs were broken as well. He limped toward the door and looked out into the hall. He needed a weapon, something...anything. He scanned the floor. Most of the glass was broken into little pieces, but some of the metal chunks were just the right size for a makeshift knife. Taking two pieces that were about four inches long and very sharp, he wrapped them on one end with the last bits of the pillowcase.

Now I'm armed and dangerous!

He made his way through the door at the end of the hall. Cell doors lined both sides, and most of the doors were open. He could hear voices coming from a door off to the left and down about three back over the glass lined floor. Finding the same crate he had used before to hide, Kirk shook his head. It's like deja-vu all over again.

Looking up, he spotted an air duct cover in the ceiling. It looked like a return, which meant it would be open to the ceil-

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ing above. Crawling up on the crate, he reached the grill and pushed it up. He could barely reach, but with some effort, he pulled himself up into the open hole and then replaced the grill.

Just then, he saw two bearded men walk into the hall and stop to talk just a few feet from him. They were talking in Russian or some variation of that. They made small talk as one lit up a cigar and puffed away as if it was his last meal. They moved on. One headed back to his cell, where he was supposed to be somehow not noticing all the blood on the floor, and the other one sat down on the crate, pulled a flask out, and unscrewed the top. This was Kirk's chance. He saw the man had on boots and a gun hanging from a strap on his shoulder. The shoes looked better than the gun at this point. Quickly taking off the grill and placing it to one side, Kirk looked down at the guard. The big, hairy man outweighed him by a good twenty pounds, but with the element of surprise,
this
is going to hurt!

Jumping from his hiding place, Kirk landed on top of the unsuspecting guard naked and bloody. The guard flopped to the ground without a sound. Kirk rolled to his knees and looked at the shard of glass that stuck out of his victim's neck. He was dead. It seemed from the amount of blood that was spilling from the wound that he had hit his artery. Grabbing him by the collar, he dragged him into an open cell where he found the pillowcase and undressed him, taking his clothes and shoes. He pulled the black ski mask over his head and shut the door. Checking his machine gun to make sure it was loaded, he walked down the hall toward the exit. ________________________________________

366 AARON

A CROSSHAIR LINED UP with the head of an unknowing Russian guard who was making his rounds on the main site. Mark looked at him for a second; then when he walked behind a small outbuilding, Mark fired.

The man hit the ground and stiffened up as his blood and everything else in his body that was liquid turned into a substance hard as steel. Mark smiled and scoped out his next target. He was patient, he had to be; it had to be done with utmost care, not to alert the others. Isis lay next to him under a heavy camouflaged netting. They blended in to the brush and even if you were right on top of them, you would not see them. She whispered in his earpiece that another guard was off taking a leak in the bushes. With a quick swing of his rifle, Mark took him out. Big B was making his way down to the main yard and was soon under the fence and into the main area. He placed charges under a Jeep and on the side of a fuel tank that sat in the yard on stilts. Mark made sure that he was covered. They were all linked with their earpieces and could talk as they moved in on the camp.

Jamison sounded that he had spotted someone just kill a guard and take his clothes. The computer screen from inside the small hut was linked to a thermal imaging camera that could see through almost any material. It was like a big X-ray device, but live and very nice to have on an operation like this.

"He is on the main floor and making his way toward us. Be careful, I think its Detective Weston." Jamison laughed.

"It looks like he's wounded but still fiery as ever!"

"Any sign of K and Sam?" Mark tried to sound professional.

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"Not yet, but I'm looking. Only one other prisoner that I can see and he looks male."

Mark sighed and motioned for Isis to follow him. "Okay, we're going in."

________________________________________

K WAITED FOR NIGHTFALL and had decided that they were going to make a dash for a truck or some kind of vehicle. She figured that one of them had to leave this place at one point. They would try to hide and maybe, just maybe, get out of there.

Cracking the door open just enough to look out, she jumped when she saw a guard standing a few feet away. Past him were nothing but open grass, dirt and a big truck sitting in the corner.

"Ok, hun, you do just as I say. Okay? We're going to play a game of hide and seek. We are hiding from the bad, bad men. You just follow mommy and be very quiet, okay?"

She nodded but looked like she didn't believe that this was a simple game. K tried to sound brave and confident, but she knew that her daughter saw right through it.

Opening the door, she saw a large bush right behind where the guard was standing. They had to make a run for it. With a smile, she grabbed Sam and pulled her along as they dashed for the bush.

As soon as they made it to open ground, someone cried out in another language.
They saw us!

"Stop or I shoot... Stop!"

K froze as the guard that must have been standing behind the small pump house shone a flashlight on them. Before she 368 AARON

could even think, there were a half dozen guards pointing guns at them. K dropped her weapon and covered Sam up in her arms.

They were grabbed, and Sam was ripped from K's arms as she screamed out in fear. "Mommy! No!"

K tried to fight but was knocked unconscious by the butt of a rifle. She could still see the face of her daughter screaming with big tears falling down her face as she fell asleep.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

THE COLD WATER JOLTED K AWAKE. SHE LOOKED

wildly around, trying to find Sam. "Sam? Where are you baby, Sam, come to mommy! Where is my daughter? Sam!"

She yelled and cried making her voice sound like an old smoker who was on her last cigarette.

"Shut-up. You're lucky that we keep you alive after killing Gustavo," A short middle-aged man with a scruffy black and silver speckled beard glared at K with thick eyebrows and dark hate-filled eyes. "You think you're so smart. You will die here, I will see to that." He backhanded K, knocking her back in her chair.

Iron and a rust taste filled her mouth and her front tooth felt like it was loose but all she could think about was Sam. She shook her head as they pulled her upright again. "You come with us to see the boss, you behave, or Sam will get it. 370 AARON

You hear?" The man's accent sounded childish to K but she suppressed her smile. What she really wanted to do was mock him and call him--well never mind what she wanted to call him, it wasn't good in any case.

They cut her wrists free, which were bound in duct tape, and pulled her to her feet. Half dragging her to a cell right across from hers, they opened a door that led to a stairway. The basement was even more frightening than the rest of the building.

The lights overhead flickered and the smell of sweat and blood filled the room. She would have never known that the place had a basement; the doorway leading to it was in the back of one of the cells and must have been that way on purpose. The stairs were carved from the earth itself and in some places had broken off leaving a tripping hazard. K stepped carefully and her captors did the same, they knew that dropping her could end badly for them if she were to break her neck in the fall.

K could see the bottom up ahead and realized that they had gone over fifty feet underground. It looked like it was all hand dug and very unstable. Old wooden beams were stretched across the top and sides making it look like a mine of some kind. Once they reached the bottom of the stairs, they came to an open room with boxes and crates full of explosives and guns. K only knew this by the printed lettering on the side of one that said "
Explosive
," she saw a small office with a wooden door off to the right of the room. They led her to it and knocked.

She waited, and they waited. The one to her left shifted

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his feet as if he was the one being marched to his death instead of her. Who was
this
guy they were all so afraid of? She thought that she herself should be just as scared but her mother's righteous anger overpowered it.

"Come in," The male voice sounded English or Scottish, she couldn't tell at first but in the end she decided that it was English. The tall guard that was nervously shifting his feet to her left pushed her into the small room and shut the door, leaving her standing alone with a madman or maybe worse.

"What do you want from me? You don't even know me--

what did I do to you?" K tried to reason with her captor and hoped to find out who she was dealing with.

The small office had a desk made up of pallets and a bank of drawers torn from some old doctor's office. K could see that he had the internet and a laptop sitting among the other clutter that filled the desk.

"You have a problem, Mrs. Appleton. Your husband has been a thorn in my side, and for that, you must suffer," He turned in his chair and looked at K with his dark eyes glowing.

"Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Tripp Maddock, but you may call me Geoff."

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KIRK HELD HIS BREATH as a thick man came down the hall toward them. He pulled out a cigarette and lit up; trying to fit in and keep the other masked man from discovering that he was not a friend. A second, much shorter hairy man with huge eyebrows, came out of a cell and shut the door behind him. It must lead somewhere else, maybe an exit.

The two looked at him as he sat on the counter that held 372 AARON

two computers. A large window looked out into the main lobby and the guard station. Kirk grunted and puffed a cloud of smoke.

"You not hot in that thing?" The tall guard asked. "I only wear it if I have to,"

They didn't wait for a response and moved on, as if his opinion didn't matter in the least. Kirk was glad the guy he killed was one at the bottom of the food chain. He could do bottom of the food chain. The office led out into the main lobby through a side door and was covered with guards at every exit. He had to find another way out.

The two guards that didn't seem to care that he was alive walked through the side door and out into the main lobby, they not even noticing the
sleeping
man behind the counter watching a football game. He looked back down the hall and walked toward the cell door where the short scruffy guard had been. It looked just like all of the other doors in this place, but when he turned the handle and looked down the rough-cut stairway that led down to another floor, he saw that this was not at all like the other cells.

Hmmm, this looks promising.

He had heard a commotion a few minutes earlier down in the darkness at the bottom of the stairway, but couldn't tell what was going on. Maybe they brought a prisoner down here...maybe it was the woman and her daughter.

Taking out his newly acquired gun, he crept down the long, dark stairway. When he reached the bottom, he noticed an open room filled with large wooden crates. He quickly hid himself behind one of the crates and waited. The voices coming from the small office in the corner were from a woman and

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someone else, a man, it sounded like...

Kirk shook his head and muttered under his breath. He recognized the English accent right away.
Geoff?
His mind raced with the events of the past few days and the chance meeting with the ever-so-helpful gentleman. His face flushed in anger as he discovered that he had been played. Kirk leaned over and looked inside of the crate in front of him. They were filled with detonators and C-4. He grabbed a few blocks of C4 and shoved some detonators in his pocket. He put one down on the floor next to where he sat and hit the timer.
Twenty minutes--that should give me enough time to get
out of here. If not, then I will go out with a bang, as they say.
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ISIS STAYED CLOSE TO Mark as they made their way around the back of the building. The guard dogs feasted on a poison-laced bone and were soon wandering around like they were drunk.

The South end of the building had a loading dock and a few roll-up doors. The grounds were long since kept up, the natural undergrowth had taken its land back over, and this offered plenty of cover as they made their way across the open expanse toward the building. Two guards sat at a makeshift table playing cards and drinking vodka right out of the bottle. Mark held out his hand and halted Isis. She crouched down behind some old pallets and a huge tumbleweed that sat in the broken parking lot.