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So there has been shooting after all—and that’s fine by me.
The innocent-looking cottage with an old-fashioned thatched roof looks like something out of a Jane Austen novel, but I take only two seconds to admire it before running into the woods. A dirt road leads out, but I don’t take it; that stretch of lane must be surveilled and bugged from one end to the other.
The same thing for the parked dark-green Land Rover near the front door. I could waste a few moments trying to jump-start the darn thing and get it going, only to have it blow up because I didn’t know the phone number to call to disable the plastic explosives hidden under the front seat.
So into the woods I go.
After I’ve run a few minutes, the adrenaline and endorphins begin to fade, and various aches and pains make themselves screamingly known. The back of my head hurts something fierce—a burning sensation that has left blood pooling in my hair. Earlier in my cell I had tugged my smelly blouse over my head, the better to gain access to my bra and its underwires, and trust me, you haven’t lived until an underwire has unexpectedly snapped free and poked into your ribs during an office briefing.
I had then used the sharp end of the underwire to cut into the back of my skull, causing a head wound that bled like a torrent. With that blood smeared on my wrists—well, it had worked.
So now my head is burning and my feet are raw and bleeding as well, but I don’t care.
I’m free.
I run away from the cottage, but I run with a purpose. Most people in an escape situation blunder and propel themselves into being captured again: human nature is to run in a circle, and you end up right where you started.
But I pick out landmarks—a birch tree, a rock outcropping, a trio of pines—and run in a straight line. Then I do the same, but at a different angle. And again.
So I’m escaping, but not in a straight line and not in a circle—but instead in chance bursts of direction that will get me away in an escape mode that’s random and can’t be predicted.
My attention is fragmented—being all alone, Rashad Hussain, Tom taking myTiconderogawarning seriously—but I’m trying to stay focused on putting as much distance as possible between me and the CIA black site before daylight ends.
And what day is it?
No idea.
I know they were screwing with my food, temperature, light and dark, and—
The woods and brush end.
I’m on a narrow country road.
There’s a stone wall nearby.
I go over to it and sit down, examine my feet, wince, and put them back on the dirt.
Somewhere out there, it sounds like someone is mowing a lawn.
I catch my breath.
Pistol in my lap.
I touch the back of my head.
My hair is a bloody, thatched mess.
My wrists and hands are stained with my blood as well.
The lawnmower sound gets louder.
I just sit.
And wait.
A truck ambles by, its horn honking.
I wave.
