Chapter 7: The Abduction
So there she was, sitting in the dark of the opera box wondering when the screeching would be over so she could leave and wind up the operation.
Maybe once Director Graham and General Beckman had stopped congratulating her and Casey had finally admitted that things had turned out all right after all, they would let her take a little vacation, just long enough to recharge her batteries.
Sarah idly fingered her gloves and had started to let her mind drift away again to possible vacation destinations when she realized the house lights were up and the audience was on its feet clapping loudly.
She glanced over and saw that the prince was still seated and, as he turned his head to smile in her direction, she smiled back. He was not applauding so Sarah decided it was safest to abstain as well. She continued to smile brightly at the prince, focusing his attention on her face as she hastily drew her gloves back on, hoping that he hadn't noticed any of the blue and purple marks that were starting to show on her pale skin.
The prince gestured his approval of Sarah's civilized decorum with his eyes and observed, "Such a nasty noise to follow such divine music, don't you agree?"
Definitely not in agreement with this statement, Sarah nodded her consent, murmuring, "Your Highness," and stood when he did. She could feel Casey behind her pulling her chair out of the way and, as she turned, he reached out to open the door of the box.
The prince preceded Sarah into the hallway, where they were joined by his personal assistant, the Perogian agent, Nadia. They walked towards an elevator that went directly to the parking garage below the theater. It was being held especially for their use and, once inside with the doors closed, the prince visibly relaxed and turned to the petite woman in the black gown.
"Nadia, have all the arrangements been made to see that Ms. Walker gets home safely?"
"Yes, Your Highness," answered the woman, who was unobtrusively punching a text message by touch into her BlackBerry with one hand while looking at the prince.
"Good, good," was his reply.
Turning to Sarah with a sincere smile, he remarked, "Ms. Walker, you have been a most captivating companion. I hope when next I visit your charming country you will do me the honor of accompanying me once again."
Sarah inclined her head at the compliment but couldn't help thinking Oh, please, not another opera!
The prince must have been reading her mind. With twinkling eyes, he continued, "Perhaps on the next occasion we can go to a baseball game and eat – how do you call them? – red hots?"
The three burst out laughing at this, and when the merriment had died down, Sarah, smiling genuinely for the first time that evening, said, "Yes, of course, Your Highness, that will be fun."
By this time, the elevator had reached the parking level and the doors slid open. The trio exited and walked towards two nondescript cars with black-tinted windows parked nearby.
The prince briefly said his good-byes and got into the first car. After Nadia had closed the door behind him, she walked back to Sarah and said in a low voice, smiling, "Remember, Sarah, call me any time you need me."
"Of course I'll call you, Nadia, and thanks," Sarah replied.
Before the Perogian agent could turn away, Sarah placed a light hand on her arm and asked, "Nadia, did Casey really ask you for a date earlier?"
"Of course," the petite woman replied. "Although I believe I have changed my mind."
Sarah smiled, thinking, Ha! Casey's going to be disappointed after all, when Nadia continued.
"I think dinner in a restaurant would be a waste of time with a man such as that one. Perhaps room service will do, hmm?"
And Sarah was left speechless for the second time that evening as Nadia walked away and called over her shoulder, "Give your partner a big, wet kiss for me and tell him I'm looking forward to meeting him again."
Sarah opened the door to the back seat of the second black car and climbed in, putting on her seatbelt once she was comfortably in place. She watched as Nadia got into the back seat of the car beside the prince and closed her door. A moment later, the first car pulled away.
I wonder what's taking Casey so long, thought Sarah. She knew that he had remained in the opera box after she and the prince had left so he could change into the chauffeur's uniform that he had brought in and hidden in the theater the day before.
Sarah relaxed into the seat cushions and closed her eyes for a moment. When the driver's door clicked open, she raised her lids and was about to ask Casey what had delayed him when the words froze in her throat. The man who had gotten into the car was not Casey.
Ignoring Sarah's loud protests, he quickly turned the key in the ignition and locked all the doors. Sarah grabbed the door handle a fraction of a second too late and, when she tried to unlock her door, found that the stranger had also activated an override on the locks.
Sarah then turned and fumbled for her handbag, which was lying on the seat beside her, opened it and pulled out her little gun, aiming it between the front seats. By this time, the tinted bulletproof partition between the front and back had just finished sliding into place, effectively making Sarah a prisoner in the car.
The communications system between the driver and passenger sections crackled a bit as the driver turned it on.
"I thought you might have spotted me in the press gallery at the theater," a low male voice said, "but luckily for me, you did not."
Sarah pushed the button on the door handle with a picture of a little loudspeaker beside it.
"I did see you. Who do you work for? Let me go," she said, carefully keeping the panic out of her voice.
Instead of answering her questions, the driver clicked the speaker system off, eased the car into drive, pulled out of the parking spot and drove away. Sarah turned her head to look out of the back window in time to see Casey barrel through a door leading from the stairway into the parking garage. He paused long enough to get a good look at the car and, Sarah hoped, the license plate before he ripped the chauffeur's hat from his head and dashed it to the ground in frustration. Just before the car turned a corner to block Casey from her sight, Sarah could see that he had taken a cell phone from his pocket and was going to make a call. She felt a little better already and turned her head once again to the front, looking out the windows to try and keep track of where they were going.
It wasn't too hard at first, up and out of the opera house's underground parking lot, right turn, next left. But when gas started hissing into the back seat compartment, Sarah's attention became focused on trying not to breathe and wondering if the gas was meant to kill her. As first her arms and legs and then her spine relaxed, she contented herself with the thought that it was probably just a soporific. She just wished that she had had one more chance to see Chuck and make sure he was going to be all right before she drifted into unconsciousness.
When she awoke, her head feeling as though it had been rewired all wrong, Sarah was strapped to a metal chair that was bolted into a cement floor. She was secured at her ankles and wrists, not uncomfortably so, but she still tested her bonds to see whether there was any weakness she might be able to exploit. Her evening clothes had been replaced with blue mechanic's overalls, her feet left bare, and her hair had been pulled away from her face and held in place with an elastic in a ponytail down her neck. They must have also scrubbed her makeup away and removed her false eyelashes, since her face felt completely clean and fresh.
Wherever she was, it was very dark, with just a lone floor lamp positioned near the chair and pointing towards the floor to relieve the blackness so that Sarah could only see about three feet into the gloom in front of herself and to the sides when she turned her head. After her short inspection, she waited quietly, senses on full alert, hoping to get more information about her surroundings. Suddenly, two men appeared out of the darkness on silent feet, and Sarah turned her head back to the front as they approached her.
The more intelligent-looking one was holding the disk up in the air so Sarah could see it.
"Ms. Walker," he began, as though they were about to have a congenial conversation, "I don't want to waste your time and, I assure you, you don't want to waste my time."
Sarah decided a stony silence would be best under the circumstances.
"Good," the man continued. "Now, we will try to make this as simple as possible. We have brought you here because –"
"I won't tell you anything," Sarah broke in, a hard look on her face.
"Oh, no, my dear, patience, please. We don't want you to tell us anything."
"Then why did you bring me here?" Sarah asked, thrown off balance by this information.
"We brought you here because we want to show you something," the man said, raising his hand and snapping his fingers to signal to the silent one behind him.
The second man approached Sarah, bringing some kind of device up to her face. She whipped her head from side to side, trying to avoid whatever it was that he had in his hand, quickly yelling out, "No, no! My people will be here to get me soon! Let me go!" But when the man put the device on her lap and grabbed her by the throat with both hands, squeezing sharply to depress her Adam's apple and cut off her air supply, she could only resist for a moment more, and she watched groggily through a haze of gray as he slipped a bite bar between her teeth and gently adjusted the padded mouth cover in place before running two sets of straps behind her head and fastening them snugly to hold the apparatus in place.
When Sarah was able to breathe well enough so her head had cleared again, she glared defiantly once more at the first man, who took up a position directly in front of her and picked up his explanation where he had left off.
"Ms. Walker, as I was saying, we have brought you here to show you something. The messages we have sent up to now have not been as effective as we would have liked. Your government and those of the other nations that we have chosen to send our message to are timid, afraid to take a decisive stand, so we find ourselves in the position of having to sharply escalate our – let us call them 'activities.'"
Sarah had to turn her head from side to side now to keep the man in view as he began to walk casually to her left and then turned and retraced his steps to the right, his eyes on the floor and a look on his face as though he were concentrating on getting the words just right before he raised his head again and continued.
"The Brotherhood – ah, I see you've heard that name – is determined to bring about a certain event. So determined, in fact, that it will stop at nothing until its aim is accomplished. Now, you might think this is a bad thing, and it appears so at first blush, but I assure you, it will mean an eventual vast improvement in the lives of several millions and perhaps, after some time, billions of people all around the world."
He stopped in front of her again, looking for all the world like a sincere and learned scholar delivering his favorite lecture. And Sarah was his captive audience.
"All we need now is the cooperation of the nations of the world with the military strength and political influence to join us in our endeavors. We tried to approach them through regular channels but were ignored. So much for diplomacy, hmm?"
Sarah was unable to join the man in appreciation of his little joke and continued to fix him with a steely glare, her brows drawn tightly together over her nose.
"So we were left with no alternative but use, shall we say, more graphic methods to promote our proposal. And this is where you come in."
The man then approached Sarah's chair, bending down so his face was close to hers, close enough so she could smell a delicate, tangy aftershave of the best quality and see that he had recently had a very close shave and his fingernails were carefully manicured.
Whispering into Sarah's ear, he said, "Please, Ms. Walker, make yourself as comfortable as possible. I have been instructed to ensure that you understand in no uncertain terms what the situation is, and so we may be here for some time until you reach a satisfactory level of understanding."
He straightened up and turned, moving away from the chair, and made another signal with his hand. Apparently there were other people present outside of Sarah's field of vision delimited by the weak light from the lamp, and she could hear the movement of several pairs of feet, presumably of unseen minions hurrying to do this man's bidding.
He turned back to Sarah again and said, "You will be a messenger for us. And here is the message once more, since it bears repeating: We will not stop until we get what we want."
The man paused and raised his eyes towards the ceiling, Sarah figured for some kind of dramatic effect, and clapped his hands twice. The lights came up swiftly, blinding Sarah with their brightness. She blinked several times, looking around herself, and discovered that she was inside a warehouse, probably the same one that she and Chuck and Casey had tried to see into on their failed mission.
Sarah cursed the gag they had put on her, wanting to ask what the message was and demand her release so she could deliver it for them. Wasn't that what the man had just said? But it seemed they were going to make her wait to find out why she was being held here, and she snapped her head to the right when she heard the creak and squeal of a large metal door that was beginning to swing open on its rusty hinges.
"Ah, here they are now," the man said, as though the first guests were just arriving for an elegant evening party.
When the door had opened fully, two uniformed henchman entered carrying submachine guns and flanked the entrance. Then a procession of gagged men and women, some in military uniform, some not, came through the door, hands tied behind their backs. More armed guards were following beside them at intervals, coaxing them along rapidly.
The prisoners appeared to be of ages ranging from early 20s right up to 60s, maybe even 70s, and some were having trouble moving as quickly as their guards wanted them to. Sarah gasped but no sound came out because of her gag when one of the guards reversed his rifle and aimed the butt at an old man who was having difficulty walking, jabbing him sharply in the kidneys with it and causing him to fall to his knees.
Sarah could only watch helplessly as the man's tears fell on the cement before another guard hauled him up by his bound wrists and pushed him back into the line, which now consisted of about twenty people. With more pushing and prodding and gesturing with the barrels of their rifles, the guards made their captives stand in a single line in front of Sarah's chair, the cultured man standing in front of them, as a new noise could now be heard from above.
Sarah turned her head up and watched as the warehouse's overhead gantry moved towards her along the length of the building's ceiling and stopped when it was aligned with the row of people standing and waiting quietly, fear and bewilderment showing in each one's eyes. The next sound Sarah heard caused her to turn her head to the left, and her eyes now mirrored the fear that she had seen in the others' as she recognized what was swinging towards them.
There were twenty stout chains hanging down, swaying left and right as they slid smoothly along their track and stopped, one behind each person in the line. Twenty chains, each ending in a sharp and shiny meat hook.
Sarah groaned and her eyes widened in shock as two beefy men, one carrying a sledge hammer, approached the first woman in line to Sarah's left. They went around behind her, the one man positioning the hook to point to the middle of her back, the second one taking one mighty swing to impale her on it, and as she screamed though her gag and her legs buckled underneath her, the chain tightened and took up the slack, raising her into the air a couple of feet.
Sarah wanted to yell or even scream herself. She wanted to help the poor woman who was writhing and twitching on the hook, whose look of fear had been replaced by one of disbelief and horror.
Then it hit Sarah. This was just like the photograph. And then she saw a third man.
Oh, God, no, please, Sarah thought. Don't do it! I'll do whatever you want! Just take the gag off! Please!
The third man was wearing a clear Plexiglas mask covering his face and head, heavy duty gloves, and a rubber one-piece coverall and rubber boots. He stood underneath the woman on the hook, planting his feet widely apart to brace himself, and started up his chainsaw.