Nobody had ever described the sensation of blood freezing in his veins while his heart hammered at twice its customary rate. Nobody had ever described lungs fighting for air on dry land. Sick with dread, Tony gazed at Hassan, shaking his head. 'I don't know what you're talking about.'
'Quit playing games, Federal Agent,' Hassan replied fully prepared for his denial. 'Got anyplace we can chat undisturbed?' he asked Ali.
'We do in the village, but not here,' Ali told him. 'I'll get his family.'
'No, wait. I think he'll be a little keener to speak to us without his family's presence,' Hassan said, smiling icily at his captive. 'Isn't that true, Mr. Almeida? Cooperate with our enquiries and you'll get driven back to them. Fail to cooperate; there'll be no one to return to! Put him in the car.'
Two men grabbed Tony, tying his wrists together with a wire, shoving him towards the car the moment he was secured. He turned to glance at his horrified father, nodding his head at the kitchen window. 'Take care of them for me, Papa. Get them outa here now,' he begged in Spanish.
'What did you say?' Ali demanded outraged, kicking him in the back of the knee.
Tony remained tight lipped as he was shoved into the car between two militants. 'Wait a minute,' Hassan said, eyeing him distrustfully. 'The guy is a federal agent. He's not secure enough.' He reached forward, slamming his rifle butt into Tony's head.
The world went dark. Focus Almeida, focus. You cannot afford to lose consciousness now; you gotta get back here for Michelle. Ignoring the nausea as best he could he watched the road beneath his eyelids, struggling to keep track of their journey. Ali drove rapidly down the mountain track, the road's constant zigzag proving more than he could bear. We're gonna crash down the cliff…By some miracle they arrived safely, parking outside a solid stone building. Ali said something he failed to understand and he was hauled out by his arms, his legs dragging over the unpaved surface.
He noticed the building lacked a yard as he was dragged over to a solid wooden door which another stranger unlocked. The building was not unique, all surrounding buildings opening onto the street. A few hard eyed men entered after him. Glancing round furtively beneath lowered eyelids he noticed they stood in a room illuminated solely by a narrow window set high into the opposite wall. A desk stood beneath it taking advantage of the solitary patch of light from the street, a metal chair behind it. The room's furnishing was completed by two orange plastic chairs in the corners. Tony remained silent, hoping to be spared his 'talk' with Hassan as long as he could. His tactics worked. Ali snapped an order and he was dragged across the room without any regard for his well being and thrown into a second chamber that opened beside the desk.
Wrists secured by the thin wire, Tony was unable to prevent his fall, his head connecting with the stone with a sickening thud. His valiant efforts to remain conscious failed to work the second time. He sank into the beckoning darkness.
'Tony won't tell them anything,' Michelle insisted with absolute certainty, her voice shaking. 'They're going to kill him.' A thousand scenarios ran through her brain, each of them dismissed as unrealistic. There was no way she could break out of the heavily armed compound and rush to his rescue with a broken leg. Concentrate, Michelle. Tony's in serious trouble and you're the only one who can get him out of it. Think! She ran her hands as far as she could in her hopelessly tangled curls.
Rita looked up from the floor she had fixed her eyes on half an hour before. 'Tell me what you're thinking, Michelle. Whatever plans you have, I'll go along with them. I'm not going to allow anyone to hurt Tony!'
'Rita, we're locked in,' she groaned, waving a hand at the door of the storeroom in despair. The stench made her gag as she eyed their narrow confines in increasing desperation. 'We can't get out! Don't you think Tony would've gotten us out by now if it were possible?'
'I'm not so sure,' Rita replied, her fingers running over the surface of the stones in an attempt to discover a weakness. 'Your leg is not well yet.'
Michelle drew a sharp breath, her stomach heaving. 'You think Tony would risk the safety of the entire group to give my leg time to heal?' she questioned incredulously. 'He's a trained agent; he knows the lives of a group outweigh the life of an individual…'
'Oh, he's aware of that, alright,' Marco assured her, slipping his arm about her. 'It's not real easy to get past all those armed men, sweetie, they got about two for every one of us. I know he was planning an escape, but he had no workable idea yet.' He squeezed her hand, his heart aching. And even if he had, he'd have delayed it till you were better, Michelle. Tony would NEVER abandon you.
'You don't think he delayed an escape because of my leg?' she begged, fighting to keep what threatened to be a flood of tears at bay.
A long silence greeted her words. 'No, sweetheart,' Rita said finally, her lie fooling none of them. 'He'd have carried you.'
'I've never seen him as happy as during this last year,' Marco added gently. 'When that woman left him, what was her name?'
'Nina,' his wife supplied.
'Nina. I thought he would never recover. He was devastated. He kept blaming himself for failing to notice her actions; he's always set himself a higher standard than the rest of us. But I think there was more to it than that. All his girlfriends left after a while… I guess he figured no one would ever want him. We tried everything we could think of to cheer him up, we tried to invite all our friends' daughters, but he was broken. And then, a year later, once everyone except Rita had given up hope, we noticed an old sparkle back in his eyes.'
'Did you ask him about it?' Michelle questioned, her heart in her throat.
'No, Michelle. We were just so glad to see him heal we resolved to give him a little space, however hard that was. And God it was hard. We had to remind ourselves of our decision every night.' He paused, adding quieter. 'And look how well it worked out.'
Michelle shook her head in despair. 'It worked out disastrously. He stayed to give me time to heal and now he's going to suffer. I'm responsible for whatever they'll put him through.'
They interrupted her, assuring her it was nothing like that. Tony simply had not yet figured out a suitable escape plan. He would have set it in motion the very moment he had done so. 'He's dependable, Michelle, he always was, even as a toddler,' Rita assured her. 'I remember one morning we were rushing more than usual – everything seemed to go wrong to slow us down and my mother phoned to announce she was on her way to visit us. You know my mother, how perfect everything always has to be for her?'
'Yeah,' Michelle replied, shuddering. Rita's mother was the only one of Tony's family she disliked, hated really if she was honest, a feeling shared by Marco.
'Well, I was already stressed out, and Janey needed a diaper change right then, and I think I told Tony something about preparing for a long lecture from Abuela as the kitchen was full of dishes. He just looked at me, one eye on the TV. I took the baby upstairs and when I returned, where do you think I found him?'
'I don't know,' Michelle answered intrigued, wondering where the three year old Tony could have been.
'He was standing on a chair in the kitchen before the sink, the bowl full of washing up liquid doing the dishes! He was so adorable, one sleeve pushed up, the other soaked to the elbow. He'd worked through quite a pile of them. He looked at me and told me not to worry. "We'll be ready, mommy. You sweep up!"' Tears filled Rita's eyes as she settled against her husband. 'I'm so scared, Marco.'
Michelle leaned against the wall, exhausted. 'He wanted me to give him the package I received with the medicines,' she remembered. 'We wrote each other notes in the bathroom. I didn't have a chance to do it. Thing is, I can't figure out what he wanted the things for. They were all medicines, and a fluorescent pink towel. None of those bottles had a tracking device, I checked. I'm sure Ali would've checked too.'
Marco frowned in silence, mulling over her words. 'What did he ask for in particular?'
Michelle blushed. 'The towel, when he discovered it was pink!'
'And it was bright pink?' Marco muttered, chewing his lip in the darkness. 'Could be seen from a mile away, if one were looking? It's not as though anyone round here owns anything pink! Anyone walking in the hills…'
'Oh my God,' Michelle exclaimed, throwing a hand over her mouth. 'He was planning on sticking it up somewhere. It could be noticed by satellite. I'll do it as soon as they let us outa here!'
Tony awoke cold and cramped, thoroughly disoriented in the complete darkness. His half formulated wish to sit up was prevented abruptly by an inability to use his hands. He frowned, wriggling his fingers to discover the thin wires binding his wrists together. The wire cut into his flesh as he struggled to loosen it, causing him to swear aloud. 'Dammit.' A sticky liquid trickled over his palms as he sucked air through pursed up lips. 'Ow.' He wriggled round, rising onto his knees with difficulty, turning to survey the unrelenting darkness. Not a sliver of light served to indicate the presence of a door. Focus, Almeida. They threw you in here real hard, there's GOT to be a door. Go find it. His heart beat faster as he struggled to his feet and took a step forward, slamming his head into a solid stone wall. He yelped, instinctively lifting his hands to rub the spot, only to yell again as the wire dug deeper into his flesh. Gee, Almeida, you're in real big trouble again!
Walking slowly round the wall he discovered the door, solid steel and cold to his touch. Tony turned round, running his fingers over every inch of the lower surface in the hope of discovering a weakness. Admit it, Almeida. You're trapped! He sank down in the middle of the room, despondent. It appeared he was to remain where he was until a terrorist chose to question him. He shivered in fear, dreading what awaited him.
Alberta paused, bending over Adam's console, her eyebrows knit in a frown. 'What are you working on?' she inquired in a sugary tone, a hint of steel beneath it.
'I'm monitoring satellite images from Pakistan,' Adam admitted reluctantly, wishing she would leave.
'I can see that,' she replied, her breath warm on his hair. 'What I don't quite understand is why! Who authorized you to conduct that search?'
'I'm sure Tony would appreciate every bit of assistance we can provide,' Adam replied, nervous.
'I'm sure he would, were he alive. Tony's dead, Adam. The sooner you accept that the sooner I'll see your full potential at work. Right now I am unimpressed. I suggest you get on with the task I assigned you if you wish to remain at CTU.'
'I'll get onto it,' Adam assured her; clicking the toolbar to open the page of monitoring a possible hostile group she had assigned him the day before.
'See that you do,' Alberta replied, walking further. 'Ah, Gael.' Her smile broadened as she noticed him busy on the list she assigned him to complete. 'Nice to see someone round here working! Have you seen anything on those sat. feeds yet?'
Gael failed to blink. 'What sat. feeds, Alberta?' he inquired innocently. 'I'm checking internal revenue documents.'
'Just like I asked, ah?' she asked sweetly.
'Yes Alberta, just like you asked,' he replied evenly.
'See that you do so. I'll tell you now you'll find nothing further on those sat. feeds. Every village looks identical; we've no way of knowing where they took Tony and Michelle. They're bound to be dead by now anyway. Division is impressed with your record.' She smiled at him sweetly. 'See you cooperate and I'll put in a good word for you. We're looking for a replacement for Michelle!'
They continued their conversation in the unknown tongue, their voices rising and falling. Tony, who had shuddered when the outer door was unlocked to admit them, had sunk into despair as the first hour had passed without anyone checking on him. He longed to pound on the door and yell at them to free his wrists but the thought of what they had in store for him kept him sitting on the floor in silence. Neither his name nor nationality was mentioned in the ceaseless conversation. Effectively ignored, he decided it was best to wait it out. Tony was not patient by nature; forbearance had been drummed into him in the Marines.
Sweat trickling down the back of his shirt he waited; concealed behind what had to be the world's prickliest bush. As luck would have it the sun shone from the exact same angle as the hut they were supposed to monitor, blinding him as he struggled to keep it in his peripheral vision. There were hostiles within according to the latest intel - hostiles whose questioning was vital. The point was, it was necessary to capture them in secrecy as they left the hut without alerting the remaining terrorists within. They were to leave freely and be picked up a little further down the road. The only glitch in the plan was their marked reluctance to emerge and get captured.
Tony rubbed the sweat burning his eyes and cursed aloud, resolved to deal with his classmates who had the fortune to be cast as the hostiles. 'Dammit, come out. You KNOW we're out here in the sun waiting for you. This isn't funny anymore.' He imagined them sipping ice cold sodas inside laughing at their group. The thought of wringing their necks crossed his mind as the hours wore on.
Tony cast a questioning glance in the direction of their instructor as he came to check their progress an hour later. 'Sir, permission to storm the building with CN gas and take them out,' he begged. His request seemed more than reasonable considering their dismal circumstances. The instructor, however, who had recently emerged from the air conditioned comfort of an observation building failed to sympathize with his misery.
'Permission denied. You have your orders, see that you follow them!'
'Sir, if I may ask why?' he pleaded, slapping at yet another sand fly. The satisfaction he felt as he gazed at its inert body faded at the annoyed expression on the instructor's face.
'If we're fortunate they might be joined by fellow hostiles. I don't need to tell you the more we capture the clearer our understanding of their plans will be. Take this as a lesson in patience, Almeida!'
'Yes sir,' Tony agreed, burying the dead insect an inch deep in the burning sand, 'but won't you please order them out now. It's a little hot!'
The instructor's eyes narrowed. 'I'll see you in my office this evening, Almeida,' he said, leaving without another word.
Tony lay on the ground and cursed under his breath. 'Great, just great! What the hell…' He rubbed his right hand absentmindedly, horrified to discover an army of red ants crawling over it, an army that had been disturbed by his kind deed of burying the fly. He inched backwards in desperation aware he could only move so far before he became visible from the hut. Pools of sweat poured down his face.
The door opened around three in the afternoon and a fellow officer candidate who bore him genuine animosity emerged with an icy can of soda. 'It's beer,' he called, his eyes searching the terrain. As though drawn together by mutual hatred their eyes met as he focused on the bush, raising his can in a mock salute before sipping it. 'Ah, that feels better.' He drank slowly leaning against the building while Tony struggled against his growing rage. 'This is not fair. They're aware of the objectives of this exercise. They're supposed to come out now!' Once the can was drained to its final drop he tossed it towards the bush, hitting Tony on the head. He chewed his lip, his temper aroused. 'Having fun, Almeida?'
Fists clenched, eyes narrowed, Tony lay on his stomach, forcing himself to remain concealed. 'Don't blow it, Almeida. They're coming out soon now, they're getting bored. Sit tight!'
'I'm going back inside now,' his classmate continued, smiling in his direction. 'You're welcome to the last few drops. Boy it's hot out here! Must turn the fan up!' He waved at the hidden group, frozen the next second as a 'bullet' struck him.
Ears burning Tony emerged from the instructor's office wondering apprehensively just what he had meant by concluding his lengthy lecture with the ominous words "You need to exercise patience, Almeida. I'll see you'll get plenty of practice to learn the meaning of that word!" He had kept that promise.
After a second hour spent listening to the incomprehensible discussion he changed position, leaning against the wall in a corner. It was obvious they intended to keep him for they were in no hurry to interrogate him. That left him with his greatest fear confirmed – no one appeared to be remotely interested in searching for them. It's not as though you didn't already know that, Almeida. His heart sank as the minutes passed. Someone knew you were on that plane…That intel wouldn't have come from the U.S. government…There's another mole…
He sank into a fitful sleep gathering his strength for the inevitable ordeal that awaited him. His general exhaustion was matched only by his gnawing hunger as a second day passed without either food or water. He awoke with a start hours later at the sound of a lock snapped back. Dim light flooded the cell, causing him to squeeze his eyes shut. Footsteps moved to the center of the room and something was laid on the ground with a clank. He forced his eyes open and studied his captors. Both men appeared hostile, sporting neatly trimmed beards, dirty shirts and rifles, one of which was pointed at his head. The man who had set the plate on the floor took a step towards the door as he rose.
'My hands. Please could you untie them, I can't eat like this.' He turned carefully, kneeling with his back to them. 'Please,' he repeated, straining his ears.
Footsteps sounded across the cell and the man approached, kicking him viciously. Tony gasped from the pain as he toppled forward, his face slamming into the cold stone floor. They left, locking the door while he took shaky breaths. It took another minute of steady breathing before he was able to roll over and struggle into a kneeling position rubbing his back with his fingers. The sharp pain of the wire cutting into his wrists as he moved them soon forced him to give up. Focus, Almeida. They're terrorists, what did you expect? Find the food and try to get as much of it inside as you can, you'll need it! He inched towards the door, his knees tensed for the slightest obstacle. Once he located the plate he lay on the ground and attempted to lap up some watery soup, his head sliding deeper into the bowl as he drained its contents. Licking the last few lentils with his tongue he sat up, wiping his face in the shirt's shoulder. Despite having consumed the entire meal he was starving. He attempted to cheer himself with the thought that at least the soup had contained no salt so he had also had a drink.
Michelle held the towel in her hand, trembling as she eyed the silent bathroom. Much to their relief the two women had been allowed out to wash and change after the rest of the group had finished. She studied the roof carefully, wondering whether she could remove some tiles.
'Sweetie, it won't work that way, the place is too solid,' Rita told her, guessing her thoughts. 'I thought it didn't matter where it was put, as long as it was outside.'
'It doesn't really matter as long as it's clearly visible,' Michelle replied, rubbing her eyes and struggling to concentrate. 'It's just got to be in an exposed spot, and they're not likely to just let us hang it out.'
'Why don't we try it anyway?' Rita suggested. 'Fortune favors the bold! I noticed the washing line we rigged up behind the sleeping quarters is still in use. I'll try and hang this towel out with the rest of our clothes.' They stared at each other uneasily. 'Between you and me, they don't look like Rhodes scholars,' Rita continued. 'Only that man who came and took Tony has a clue what's going on.'
'You're right,' she agreed, handing the towel over reluctantly. 'Let's just pray they even got a satellite over this area. DOD can't be expected to reposition a satellite forever.'
Rita walked over to the washing line casually, her arms filled with wet clothes and a soaking pink towel. Ali eyed her disinterestedly as she hung them over the line, pegging them securely, the fluorescent towel in the middle of the line between two black chadors. Without bothering to glance his way she returned to the bathroom where Michelle poured the third bucket of water over herself. 'It's done.'