Author's note: Er, yes, I did name Ch 7 and Ch 11 the same thing. My bad. Fixed now.
It was early in the morning when they came for him. Several hulking brutes in military uniforms. Some were American, some were Argentine. Dr. Lecter stared at them calmly through the grille of his cell. Quite a show of force.
A man wearing officer's bars stepped forward. He held a piece of paper up to the grille.
"Dr. Lecter, I'm Captain Maxwell of the US Air Force Military Police. We'll be taking charge of you for your return to the United States. Do you want to see the warrant?"
Dr. Lecter shook his head.
"All right then. We'll treat you as well as you treat us, Dr. Lecter. But as you can see, we have adequate people here to control you by force if you make us. Put out your hands, Dr. Lecter. I'm going to shackle you."
There was no way he could win. He realized that. Not here, at least. So he put his arms out the slot and allowed them to handcuff him. The steel ratchets closed around his wrists with a metallic clicking sound. The American military police had out their batons and cans of Mace. Dr. Lecter let out a mighty sigh and allowed them to shackle his ankles and attach his handcuffs to a belly chain circling his waist.
Once he was chained, it was simply a matter of escorting him from the cell. Dr. Lecter had not been off his cellblock since he came here. He glanced around a few times as his guards brought him out for the first time in a few weeks.
There was a van parked in the transfer area of the prison. The guards were polite enough to help Dr. Lecter into the van. Then they closed the prisoner gate, trapping him in the van. Dr. Lecter sat peacefully. He wanted his guards at ease.
It was a short drive to the air base. Dr. Lecter examined the scenery a bit. Here he had lived peacefully with Clarice Starling for eight years. Here he had found an easy peace that he had not wanted to give up. But he hadn't. It had been taken from him.
Charlene Starling. He'd never once thought Clarice's little niece would have done what she had. He would have liked the chance to try poking around in that head of hers. Interesting, indeed. She'd quite literally made herself over in her aunt's image. What sorts of monsters lurked in her mind? Unfortunately, he would never be able to find out.
At the air base, Dr. Lecter's van was driven directly to a waiting small jet. Dr. Lecter studied it. A Gulfstream C-20, it looked like. Years ago, he had once chartered a commercial version of the plane and served a gourmet meal to his guests in the sky. They hadn't realized at the time that their meal consisted of a psychologist who had written an article ridiculing Dr. Lecter's article in the Archives. He'd made a far better meal than he had a psychologist, Dr. Lecter thought.
But this was no luxury plane. It was a troop carrier, with only the bare minimum concessions to comfort. Dr. Lecter was brought on board the plane and installed in a seat. His guards stood around him warily, as if he might leap on them at any moment.
"I can assure you I shan't try to resist," Dr. Lecter addressed one of them.
The MP looked very young, Dr. Lecter thought. They all did. A young, muscular man in a beret. He had blonde hair and blue eyes. He eyed Dr. Lecter without a word.
"Are you going to answer me?" Dr. Lecter queried.
"I'm not allowed to speak with you unless strictly necessary," the MP said tersely. "I'm sorry, but I do have my orders."
Dr. Lecter nodded.
The intercom buzzed. This was a military plane, and there would be no pleasant This is your captain speaking greeting to welcome him aboard the plane. Instead, the pilot informed the guards tersely that they would be taking off shortly and exhorted them to ensure the prisoner was secured.
"Dr. Lecter, I'm going to put your seatbelt on now," the MP said. "If you resist me, chemical agents and/or electrical stun devices will be used to bring you under control. Do you understand?"
Dr. Lecter had not often heard someone actually say 'and/or' and blinked. Poor little robot. Think for yourself, it's much more fun.
"I shan't resist," Dr. Lecter said calmly.
The MP buckled him in. Dr. Lecter tried to adjust himself as much as his restraints would allow. The chains clinked. The plane rolled forward to the runway and then leapt into the sky, bringing Dr. Hannibal Lecter back to the country that meant to hold him captive until the end of his days.
…
Clarice Starling took off her baseball cap and ran her fingers through her hair. Things were going much better for her. She'd taken the money Charlene had given her and rented a car to get up to Baltimore. Dr. Lecter had an old safe house there, which he had set up so that she could use it as well as he. The fake driver's license Charlene had made for her on her computer looked pretty good, she decided. A cop would know it was a fake in minutes. Fortunately for Clarice, a car rental clerk was not so quick. She'd gotten herself a car and driven up to the house.
Now she had ten thousand in cash, far better identity papers for three different identities, and a weapon. She felt vastly better. She'd busied herself getting some other things she would want. The phone in the house was already on. She selected an old van from a want ad and called the owner. They were nearby, and she was able to check out the van. It was battered, but it would do. She bought it and returned the rental car. Registering the van under one of her identities was easy and convenient.
After that, she went out shopping. Unlike Dr. Lecter, Clarice's shopping was search-and-destroy. She knew exactly what she wanted and got it with a minimum of fuss and bother. Ammunition and a cleaning kit for her gun. Hair dye. She was blonde now. He'd get a kick out of that. A scanner that could monitor police and airport frequencies. She kept that on most of the time, trying to see if her name came up at all. So far, it had not. Still, she'd have loved to see the look on Jack Crawford's face when they told him she'd escaped.
She hadn't seen Charlene since the night of the escape. It had been a few days. That didn't bother her. Charlene needed to go on with her life. Clarice didn't want her to be a suspect in her escape. She'd seen firsthand Crawford's bad side. She was more concerned with what was happening to her niece. Slowly but surely, her entire world was falling apart. The only thing that Charlene still seemed to believe was that Dr. Lecter deserved to be in jail. And Clarice had to agree to disagree with her on that. Dr. Lecter had behaved himself for years. He was old. There would be no threat to the public safety in letting him live his life out. And she intended to live with him.
To do that, she needed to know when and where. How was pretty obvious. They'd fly him in. Could be something from the Air Force or Army or something just to drag him back. When and where were the bitch-kitties. If she had those, she had a fighting shot at getting Dr. Lecter back.
Now she had an idea on how to get that.
Clarice picked up the phone and dialed a number. She waited while it rang. Was the number still the same? She hoped so. She wet her tongue and mentally summoned up her drawl.
"Department of Justice, Extraditions," a voice answered.
"Hi," Clarice said, drawling it out into Hah. "This is Special Agent Starling calling for Jack Crawford. Ah'm just calling to double-check the arrival date and location for Dr. Hannibal Lecter."
There was a brief pause. Clarice felt an instant of guilt shoot through her for impersonating her niece. But their voices were similar enough, and after all, she'd never specified she was Special Agent Charlene Starling, had she?
"I sent him an email with that information," the voice said dubiously.
"Right, well, he's been having some computer problems," Clarice said. "He just asked me to call. If you could help me out I'd be much obliged."
"Now you know there's a firm no-press rule for Dr. Lecter's arrival," the voice warned.
"Oh, of course! We're not tipping the damn Tattler. I just need the time and place is all."
She heard papers rustle and clenched her free hand into a fist. C'mon, baby, c'mon, c'mon. Gimme gimme gimme.
"Dr. Lecter's arrival date is today…eight PM…at Langley Air Force Base. At that point the Air Force will hand him over to the US Marshal's service. He's got a flight out to Colorado until they decide if the Virginia state authorities are going to try him. The Tennessee authorities have also asked for a crack."
Shit House Mouse, if they take him away I'll never see him again.
"Eight PM? Thank you much," Clarice said. "I'll tell him."
She hung up the phone. It was three. She had five hours.
She would set him free or die trying.
…
Charlene Stenson Starling had this much in common with her aunt: both of them were descended from the bleak underclass of the American South. Starlings had fought and died for their country on many occasions. Charlene had fought but not yet died. It was her world that was dying. Dr. Lecter, wanted for fifteen murders, had not been the murderer of her aunt. Her aunt had given herself up in Charlene's place, but she had then fled with a serial killer, betraying everything Charlene had thought she stood for. Her boss, Jack Crawford, had done a great deal to help her. Now she knew it was only so that she could catch Lecter for him, as a skilled hunter will put the best dog in the pack in front. Once her aunt had been apprehended, Crawford had intended to punish her for leaving and use her as a pawn against Dr. Lecter during his day in court. His means of doing so would have left her broken and institutionalized for the rest of her life. The boss Charlene had sought to assiduously to please had turned out to be a petty tyrant.
And so Charlene had sought some refuge in the past. The genteel people had always considered her people peckerwoods. Featherwoods, in her case. Although, the FBI agent she had become reminded her, there was a gang operating by that name now, and she didn't care for that. So Charlene had taken the day off from work and gone to Manassas Battlefield Park. There, she had a look at the museum and stared at the verdant fields of Henry Hill. So many young men – younger than she was now – had all lost their lives on a sunny day in July.
Charlene closed her eyes and imagined the battle. Horses, men, cannons rumbling along on great wooden wheels. Battle was more…more real then. Now it was all sanitized. In lieu of men charging and muskets firing, it was all someone sitting at a computer terminal in an air-conditioned room. Just as she had done when she tracked Dr. Hannibal Lecter down. Just sitting at her computer, tracing expensive purchases, and kerbam. Now Dr. Lecter was coming back to prison.
Aunt Clarice wanted him free. She knew that. On the other hand, Aunt Clarice wasn't gonna get him. Charlene had liked meeting Will Graham, but she had no real desire to look like him. If Dr. Lecter was free, he would eventually try to enact a fate as bloody and gruesome for Charlene as had befallen those young men who fell here in 1861 and 1862.
She had her gun, and she was no shrinking violet. But she knew her foe as well as anyone. She could recite chapter and verse of his crimes. He was fearsomely intelligent and fearsomely strong. He needed to be kept in jail. That was the only way she, and the people she was sworn to protect, could be safe. Dr. Lecter would suffer in jail, but it was suffering he had brought on himself. Charlene didn't think enforcing the law warranted being slashed up with a linoleum knife.
Dr. Lecter would be coming back shortly. Charlene found herself wondering if she should go and be there when they brought him off the plane. What would he say to her, before he was whisked off to living entombment in Colorado? Any more smart comments? Or would he be quiet? Broken? Acknowledging his loss?
Charlene checked her watch and sat down on a park bench, staring at a small hill that nine hundred young men had once died on.
…
Dr. Lecter had been a most quiet prisoner. He had sat in his seat, strapped in, for several hours. He had not moved or spoken in that time. His guards seemed slightly more at ease because of this. The plane had landed once to take on fuel as it sped ever north. During that time, the guards had hovered around him, Tasers and pepper spray at the ready. But Dr. Lecter had not moved.
He did, now, for the first time since the plane had taken off from Argentina. To his guards, it seemed disturbingly like a corpse coming to life. Dr. Lecter shifted his feet and cleared his throat.
"Pardon me," he said to his guards. "Might I be permitted to use the bathroom?"
The young man who had spoken briefly to him before stared at him calmly.
"Please," Dr. Lecter said, but it was out of courtesy, not begging. "I am a man of advanced years,…" he squinted at the rank chevrons pinned to the younger man's collar. "Sergeant."
Silently, the man reached down for Dr. Lecter's seatbelt buckle. Once that was undone he allowed the doctor to stand. He escorted the doctor without a word down the aisle of the plane to the tiny lavatory. He unlocked the doctor's restraints and removed them in order to allow him some dignity.
"Dr. Lecter, you are to allow yourself to be restrained once you are done without issue," the sergeant informed him.
"Of course," Dr. Lecter said, and entered the bathroom. He did have to empty his bladder, and he did this without incident. He knew what was going to happen now. Dr. Lecter reached up to his mouth and removed two items.
In the cell Dr. Lecter had occupied in Argentina, his only companion had been the rats that came into his cell. The only living companions, Dr. Lecter discovered. One night, he had made the slightly unpleasant discovery of a few rat bones under his bunk. They had been picked clean. Dr. Lecter had found himself idly wondering if the rats in the cell with him had practiced cannibalism as well. He was not sure if they did or not.
There was what looked like a rat's tooth and what Dr. Lecter thought was a rib. He had washed them off in his sink with the cleaning supplies they had provided him. He was largely left alone in his cell, and had ample time to scrape the bones along his wall and the edge of his bunk. Shaping it had been lengthy but not difficult. He could not bend the bone, so he had to carve it. A small metal burr on one of the bars of his cell had been his drill. It had taken a great deal of time, all told, but time was something he had. In fact, he had oodles.
The results were not cosmetically pleasing. It had a distinctly barbaric look to it. But Dr. Lecter had successfully made the tooth into a handcuff key. It would work, and that was what mattered.
The rib Dr. Lecter had simpler plans for. He had simply sharpened that on the stone wall of his cell until he had gotten it to razor sharpness. Now he had a somewhat flexible blade a few inches long.
He had cleaned these with the soap that he had and hidden them in his mouth. It displeased him to some extent to hide the bones of a rodent in his mouth, but the alternative was prison. He could always arrange for a dental cleaning later.
He hid the key between the fingers of his left hand and the rib between the fingers of his right. For a moment he considered. The sergeant would be directly outside, cuffing him again. He would cuff Dr. Lecter's hands first, then the belly chain, then his ankles. Where would the others be? Perhaps twenty feet down the aisle. This would have to go carefully and very, very quickly if he was to win. But Dr. Lecter had something his opponents did not. He knew what lay ahead of him. Life in a supermax prison. No, not life; mere existence. Without his Clarice. Given that, it was not so much to risk his life. Death would be preferable to a meaningless existence like that.
So Dr. Lecter exited the bathroom. The sergeant was there to stop him immediately. Dr. Lecter expected this and held out his fists without issue. The sergeant handcuffed him again and attached the belly chain. Then he squatted to attach Dr. Lecter's leg irons.
Calmly, carefully, Dr. Lecter put his homemade key in the handcuff lock and turned it. For just a moment it caught in the lock and he feared it had all been for naught. But then the handcuff swung open. He passed the key to his other hand and unlocked his other cuff.
Free of his restraints, Dr. Lecter reached down and grabbed the sergeant by the hair. The sharpened rib was in his hand and he was ready. The sergeant looked up at him and grabbed his legs. It was the wrong move. Dr. Lecter cut his throat easily and reached down to his belt. It took only a moment to free the Taser and pepper spray.
The wound was already lethal, and so Dr. Lecter ignored the sergeant as he lay bleeding out on the floor. Thirty feet. Figure five feet as the effective range of the Mace. Dr. Lecter charged down the aisleway with inhuman speed and the grace of a dancer. The Mace was out and ready in his left hand. It sprayed out in a fog, covering the remaining three guards. They began to choke and sputter. To kill them took only moments with the sharpened rib. One, two, three, and he was done.
Back to the sergeant, already relaxing in death. He carried a pistol in a flapped holster. Dr. Lecter had ignored it, knowing he could not get to it in time. But now he had oodles of time. He took the gun and walked forward to the door separating the cockpit.
This had to go quickly as well. Dr. Lecter aimed the gun at the lock, pointing down. Normally he disliked guns, but sometimes they were necessary. Now was one of those times. He pulled the trigger and the door shuddered open. Now for the pilots.
The pilots glanced over at him with wide eyes. Dr. Lecter covered the remaining ground in a second or two and shot the copilot dead. The pilot eyed him with wild alarm, twisting around in his seat to try and free himself from his safety harness. A quick blast from the Mace ensured he would not complain any further. Then Dr. Lecter cut his throat and hauled him from his seat.
The plane appeared to be flying itself. Dr. Lecter knew about autopilots. Flying by wire made for less crashes. Good. The pilot appeared to be close to his size. It took only a moment or two to change clothing with the pilot and drag the corpse to where it would not be in his way.
The FBI files on Dr. Lecter had never indicated he had a pilot's license. This was for a most simple reason. He had never obtained one. But when his hobbies began to occupy more and more of his time, he had taken some lessons and knew the rudiments. With the autopilot flying the plane, he would have ample opportunity to acquaint himself with the controls.
Where was the flight manual? It had to be here somewhere. Dr. Lecter located it as he sat down at the pilot's seat. He began to page through it calmly. His pulse had risen to one hundred, but as he calmly read how to land a Gulfstream C-20 from the manufacturer's own instructions, it began to drop to a normal level. According to the computers on the plane, they were just getting over southern Mexico now.
Dr. Hannibal Lecter sat at the controls of the plane and read. He planned to go north anyway, for Clarice. She was waiting for him.