The Circle: Rain's Story (16 page)

Rain’s jaw was grinding furiously while reading the article and cursed
. “Fucking imbecile!” She checked over her shoulder to see if anyone heard her outburst, and then continued to search the newspaper for more information.

Enraged, she tossed the paper on the table as her body began to shiver frantically with anger as her mind swirled in a million directions.

“After all the shit we taught her, she still got to be so damn hardheaded!” Rain questioned. She was so shaken and vexed, that she could no longer take sitting down and stomped out the café. It was nothing more she could do for her and was ashamed to admit it.

CHAPTER 26

It was a quarter to two that afternoon when Rain checked out of her hotel room. Her entire demeanor was bitter, as she loathed inside deeply about her sister Fallon stupidity. There she was, caught up in a damning 55 count federal bank robbery indictment, to completely get away by break out of prison, and was scott free, and risking everything because she had no discipline. “Fuck!” Rain cursed. She paid for her near week stay and headed fully packed out the hotel exit, failing to check her surroundings, especially the man sitting clandestine, reading a newspaper. Wearing an ear piece, his eyes following her every move like an eagle, spoke into the hidden microphone in the cuff. “Subject left the establishment.” He stood up, signaled to another man, behind the check-out desk, and radioed into a walkie-talkie, and then men in tactically dressed uniforms appeared running in every direction. Hotel security rushed, and locked down every entrance and exit, redirecting all now disoriented hotel guest, back to their rooms for their safety.

*
              *              *

Outside the hotel, Rain’s eyes surveyed the parking, and noticed how sparse and empty the
usually bustling mall was. She looked upward; the sky was darkened with fine sprinkles of rain sweeping the city. She then noticed dark clouds forming, and dismissed it by reasoning people didn’t want to get caught in the rain. She walked towards the center of the huge mall, and in a distance, she spotted a blue van head lights flick on and immediately off. It was Miss Jackie.

As she walked towards the meet spot, her head shifted from left to right in caution. The closer she got
to the tinted van, the more uncomfortable she became, as her sixth sense started to kick in. As she got within ten feet of the van, she saw movement from the corner of her eye, several cars and at least a van, turned in both directions in the same mall lane to the left and right of her. She became wary and her steps became shorter, and then cursed at herself for not having her gun in reach, but inside of her Coach bag. She blew a momentary sigh of relief when all the cars passed her by, then she saw Miss Jackie, and stepped from out of the blue van’s passenger seat, waving her arm motioning to her that it was okay. “Get in.” said Miss Jackie, sliding the side door of the van as her eyes darted around, ensuring all was clear. Rain looked at the driver, he was of Middle Eastern descent, and then she looked around the inside of the van.               It was totally bare inside of the old beat-to-hell vehicle, other than 2 large black gym bags that lay directly behind the driver’s seat, a couple of white plastic bucket pails, that doubled as seats, and scattered fast food cups, empty bags and debris. She turned, and looked into old Miss Jackie’s face, then jumped inside. Miss Jackie jumped in right behind her; Rain gave her hand as assistance as she strained to get inside. On her knees, Miss Jackie used what strength she had left to slide the door closed. Miss Jackie huffed relief, and took a seat on the other bucket and made the introduction. “Lisa this is Abdel. Abdel, this is my niece Lisa.” She lied. The man in the driver’s seat whipped his head around and leered at Rain with his dark, no nonsense, grimly eyes, without as much as a gesture of friendly. Rain matched the gaze of the eerie, psycho, rabid looking man, with every same cautious and contempt. A long pause followed until Abdel demanded flatly, in a thick, Middle Eastern dialect. “Do you have the money?”

“Yeah, but I
would like to see the stuff first.” Rain sneered, holding the same staunch position of distrust. Rain watched him closely, as the man rose from his seat and made his way towards the back with them. He hunched down on one knee and snatched the black gym bag and unzipped it snatching it open for her to see. Rain stared inside at an assortment of ugly looking reddish-brown, tan, and grey wrapped cylindrical sticks with tons of coiled-like wires that were stuffed to capacity. He opened the next one. Rain couldn’t hide her awe. It definitely looked to her like a weapon of mass destruction-type, but clearly didn’t know what it was.

It
was a fragmentation jacket that contained and produces the shrapnel responsible for most of the bomb's lethality, effectively making the jacket a crude, body-worn, claymore mine. Once the vest is detonated, the explosion resembles an omnidirectional shotgun blast. The most dangerous and the most widely used shrapnel are steel balls: A suicide bomber weapon of choice.

Rain was at a
loss for words, because it looked more complicated than she had anticipated. She looked over at Miss Jackie, and she could tell that she was equally oblivious and stunned. Rain submitted to her ignorance and asked, “What exactly is all this?” Disgusted by her question, he spat his displeasure. “It’s what the woman asked for.” Rain paid his sarcastic and smug undertone no mind, and couldn’t risk the deal falling apart. She had to at least get him to tell her how it works.

“I know what it
is; I just don’t know how I’m going to put all this together without blowing up in the process.” Suddenly, his voice spoke loud.

“I’m not instructor. I come here to drop off and get money and leave.”
Speaking more so to Miss Jackie.

“Stop playing Abdel, you know goddamn well ain’t nobody gonna know how the hell to put that dangerous shit together, much less want to even be around it.”
Miss Jackie cried. “She a young girl and she’s my niece. I brought a lot of business your way, so just show her how it works.” Rain waited for the man answer.

“Do you have the money?” Rain nodded, and
lifted her purse, insinuating that she in fact had it.

“Twenty thousand total for me to show you how to construct and operate.”
Miss Jackie was ready to voice her displeasure for reneging on the said price, but Rain stopped her.

“That’s some bullshit, Abdel and you know it. We had a…..”

“Okay, auntie. I’m not going to haggle over five stacks.” Rain said, growing bothered.

“So, do you want me to
show you? We agree on price?” he asked. Rain nodded her head, reached in her bag and counted off twenty thousand dollars cash and gave it to him.

Abdel didn’t bother to recount the money and stuffed it into his army-like field jacket pocket, and got straight to business. He began with the second bag and pulled out the content and
showed her. “This is called a loadable vest.” He turned it on both sides front and back as he explained. “It can weigh between 5 to 20 kilograms when fully loaded and may be hidden under thick clothes or loose jacket to not be detected.” Rain did the metric conversion in her head and knew it was over 40 pounds she could possibly be carrying.

Rain watched him slide over to the second bag, but this time
abruptly and to her disbelief, he pulled out a nine millimeter pistol, pointing it directly at her as he yelled in well-spoken, clear English, “Freeze! Don’t you fucking move an inch” growled an agent. “Put your hands in the air!” Almost simultaneously, the van door slide open, then the back door, as what seemed like a squadron of agents, all dressed in black military uniforms pointed weapons directly at her. She didn’t have a chance as three of them, with powerful arms and legs, rushed in and subdued her by tackling her to the van’s floor, putting her in handcuffs. To Rain’s utter surprise, when she looked up she saw Miss Jackie with her head down, untouched, looking solemn. Totally blindsided, Rain didn’t want to believe it. Her voice strained with disillusion and asked. “Miss Jackie…you set me up?” Miss Jackie could not face her, and continued to stare away from her glare. “After all these years Miss Jackie….after all me and my family has done for you, this is how you repay us?” Shouted Rain, incensed with anger and by disloyalty. The agents yanked Rain from behind, and out the back of the van. Rain kept yelling, screaming over and over at Miss Jackie. “How could you do this to me…. how could you do this to me….” They muffled Rain’s mouth with masking tape and threw a bag over her head. Rain’s vision suddenly went black, as fear and adrenaline caused her to struggle violently. She never felt the prick on her arm and the fluid injected inside of her. Within seconds, an awaiting van threw Rain inside, closed the door and sped off, as quickly as they arrived and made the arrest.

CHAPTER 27

When Rain came too, she couldn’t see clearly as if she was awakening from a dream. The lights in the cold, concrete-like room was dim, but she could still see the closed-circuit camera that was obviously watching her. When she tried to rub her eyes, it was then she was faced with reality, as the events preceding this began to flood her mind. She was handcuffed to a steel bar that was embedded in the wall. Her eyes instinctively went to her body, and were shocked to find out that she was in different clothing. Some yellow, thin, hospital-like garbs, that now hung from her body. Rain was totally shocked by this bombshell, but remained calm by showing no reaction. To think that someone, more than likely a man, stripped her naked, made her feel more violated than she ever did in her life. But that was minor compared to the predicament she precariously gotten herself into. All was at lost and had come to a screeching end.

Her blood pressure began to rise
again when she played backwards the events that led to her capture. She wished she could carve Miss Jackie’s eyes out of skull and cut her tongue out of her mouth. Fire and fury was raging inside of her. Never in a million years, would she have ever thought the two closest people, outside of her brother and sister, would have betrayed her in that way. She learned a valuable lesson, even at that moment that—
everyone had a price
and Smitty and Miss Jackie were no different.

*
              *              *

Coherent, Rain looked at her handcuffs. She then scanned the room and read she was in interview room number 2, a twelve-by-twelve-foot gray tiled room, with a metal table, two matching steel stools on each side, and a video camera affixed to the ceiling.

“Hello!” Rain shouted. Her voice
only echoed off the wall. The room was unventilated. She swallowed back, her throat and mouth were bone dry, and suddenly had an insatiable need for water.

Two
hours passed, and the daunting fear of the unknown began to tee away at her brain. She was growing increasingly claustrophobic, stricken with anxiety from being in such an enclosed, small space. She suddenly felt trapped, deaden, with no way out. Emotionally drained causing a physical reaction, triggering Rain to go ballistic, and began to try to shake and rattle her free from the handcuffs. The fear of her claustrophobia was so intense, after ten minutes of thrashing and psychotically induced struggling, it rendered her chained wrist, bloodied, cutting and ripping her skin and ligaments all the way to the bone.

Unexpectedly
, Rain heard the clanking of metal. Rain stopped struggling with the handcuffs and focused her attention towards the door. The door swung open abruptly, and two huge men, wearing beige camouflage uniforms stomped in. Neither had weapons, which meant to her, that they were sure she was no longer a threat. Mean-spirited, each grappled ahold of her shoulder and arm, and lifted her to her feet as if see was nothing but a bale of trash. They already had on surgical gloves, and knew they were dealing with a prisoner with an opened wound. Rain thought it was no sense of fighting them; she was too weak, and simply wanted to get out of the room, or get a drink of water. She watched closely as the uniformed brute on the left of her, put a key into the base of the cuffs and released her.

Still silent, the two uniformed men literally
swept her off her feet and started shoving her out the door, not the least concerned of her gender, or wound.

Outside the concrete dungeon she was in, she nervously looked around and saw
she was in a modern, commercially built basement. No different from where she was, only bigger and more lighting. With fast choppy steps; Rain’s bare, chained feet looked comical trying to keep pace with her captors, with each corner she turned. Finally, they came upon an awaiting elevator, this time it was one man awaiting them and allowed them to enter. The man wore a grey suit, stepped in after them, and used a key to operate the elevator. The elevator had no floor numbers, only switches, which required a key to operate. The suited man, silent as the other two, stuck in a key at the bottom of the control panel and turned it to the right. He then used another key, in one of the upper locks and turned that too and the elevator began to lift, almost at warp speed. Seconds later, Rain felt the elevator slow, and then a humming sound and it came to a fast halt. Just as the door began to open, an alarm went off, like some of the warning sounds going off that she saw in the movies. They immediately shoved her off the elevator and continued down a spotless, clean white hallway, with no markings or descriptions other than exit signs that hung from the ceiling. When she finally came to the end of the hall, they opened the door and heaved her inside.