AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yeah, well, too bad Quentin’s in North Korea.”
Zoya furrowed her brow. “North Korea? Who told you that?” she said as she took down the penultimate agent, kneecapping him. The poor bugger howled. This was a more serious message, along the lines of:No means no, pal.
When she spun the table around us to line up her final shot, I tookmyshot—an elbow right to her temple, knocking Zoya unconscious.
Now the real fun could begin.
CHAPTER 23
AFTER ZOYA COLLAPSED to the ground, I reached for her gun. The final SVR agent had had enough by now—he’d just watched four of his comrades win trips to the hospital within the past thirty seconds, and he wasn’t about to take any chances on me. I had to act fast.
“Don’t dare!” he yelled at me in broken English.
I tried to put him at ease by responding: “Take it easy! I’m surrendering!”
“Oh,nowyou surrender? Couldn’t you have done thatbeforeyour incredibly sadistic friend hurt my friends?” (He responded in Russian, so I’m not completely sure what he actually said, but that’s my best translation based on his tone.) In English, he added, “How about I place bullet inyourleg? See howyoulike it?”
“Buddy,” I said, “that would be far from the worst thing that’s happened to me over the past two days.”
While he puzzled that one out, I slowly climbed to my feet, showed him my palms, and surveyed the scene. Civilians were still sheltering in place, behind overturned tables and behind huge planters. I saw smartphones taking photos and recording videos. Not good. I had to wrap this up quick.
“I’m coming to you.”
I took a step forward and wobbled a little, trying hard to maintain my balance.
“What is wrong with you?” he said in English. I must have been an awfully pathetic sight. He’d just pivoted from wanting to put hot lead in my thigh to inquiring about my well-being.
“I’m kind of working with an expiration date here, and it’s fast approaching.”
“I’m sorry? I don’t understand.”
“If you have a vehicle nearby, I strongly suggest you put me in it and take me to your superiors. Because I’m not going to be alive much longer.”
CHAPTER 24
A HOOD OVER my head, a push into the back of a white van—it was nice to have the opportunity to finally get a little more rest, at the very least. The back of the van smelled like bleach. As if a body had been disposed of recently.
The length of the drive indicated I was being taken somewhere deep behind the former Iron Curtain—back when the Soviets controlled this half of the country. The Wall fell and all of that, but I knew the Russians kept a secret black site interrogation room or two around, just for old times’ sake.
I was glad they hadn’t bothered to take Zoya, too. She couldn’t tell them anything useful, and she’d probably just have annoyed them until they killed her. I didn’t want to spend the afterlife with her giving me nasty looks.
Several sets of hands rudely pulled me from the back of the van and dragged me down a long corridor. Guess they didn’t care that I was a gravely ill woman and not being difficult for the fun of it.
Soon, I was stripped down to my undergarments and secured to a chair with thick bungee-style cords. I wanted to tell them this was overkill; frankly, at the moment I’d have a hard time breaking through dental floss, let alone industrial-grade rubber. On the plus side, I’d already suffered the indignities of the hospital, so the petty torture of being exposed to strangers in my underwear didn’t bother me too much.
I kept repeating one of the only phrases I knew in Russian:
“I will only speak to your section chief.”
They went in a little harder with the torture—bending my fingers in directions that nature didn’t intend them to go, using rubber batons on pressure points, and so on. What they didn’t understand was that thanks to the effects of the chemical agent, I was feeling increasingly numb as the time passed.
“I will only speak to your section chief.”
There was a psychological component to my numbness. When you feel like the fates have already dealt you the worst hand possible, you don’t fear the turn of the next card. Pain didn’t mean much. Pain was a mere annoyance next to the true horror of losing Kevin. Especially if I was somehow to blame for that.
Which was the whole reason for this ruse—meeting Zoya, allowing myself to be captured, stripped, and tortured. I wanted all of this, because I needed to find out the truth, if nothing else, before I died.
Any minute now.
