CHAPTER TWO.
"Wakey wakey, Sunshine."
It was an immediate snap back to reality. But what was colder, the tone of the unknown British voice or the ice water now drenching every inch of her body, she did not know. It had lashed painfully at the delicate skin of her face and brought her out of her previous blackout, soaking through every fibre of her clothing and making her feel a ridiculous kind of discomfort. Involuntarily, her body broke out in to increasingly violent shaking of which she'd convinced herself was thanks to the cold and nothing else. Not fear. If they wanted her dead, she would be dead already. This man was British, too, weren't they supposed to be the good guys? Now that she was awake, she was painfully aware of the injuries she'd received during her capture. The back of her head that had collided with the wall was throbbing incessantly and the right side of her face felt tight like it was swollen and stretching her skin. What felt to be a broken nose was a cherry on the cake.
Once her attention was dragged away from her wounds, she took note of her position. She was sat on an uncomfortable wooden chair, her hands bound behind her back with what felt like plastic cord. Her legs and waist were also tied in the same manner and she determined there was no way she could work herself out of this one any time soon – but that of course was the point of the predicament. Lastly, the blindfold stopping her sight meant that there was no way she could identify her captors.
Then came a swift slap to her face, from what felt to be a hard, calloused hand. The heat from the collision was an extra-painful contrast to her numb from the cold cheek.
"I'm awake! I'm awake."
Although she had let no sound out in response to the slap, her desperate tone let them know it hurt.
"Good. You speak English."
"How observant."
That earned her another smack, without warning or verbal accompaniment. Clearly answering back cockily wasn't approved and wouldn't be tolerated. Although it had amused her slightly and helped to calm her nerves, her body stiffened once more at the pain from the physical contact. A shooting pain shot down her neck and through her shoulder as her head lolled back slightly.
"Who are you? What do you want from me?" She grunted through a heavy accent, not bothering to lift her head back up straight for fear of being struck once more.
"You seem to be missing the point. This is an interrogation and I'll be asking the questions." His voice trailed off and was interrupted by what sounded like a wooden chair being dragged towards her slowly. She couldn't help but take notice of how distinct his accent was.
"Then ask me something, won't you? I have not got all day."
This time it wasn't so much of a slap as a punch to her lower jaw. It was enough to make her neck click nastily and the already bruised and swollen area of skin throb angrily in response. This man had some strength behind him, alright, and he knew how to throw a real punch. The words were spilling from her mouth before she could even think about the obviously violent consequences, but she still let out a cold laugh once she'd recovered from the blow. A cold laugh that continued shakily as she tried to calm herself once more. It was hard to not be some kind of scared, being held captive and cold and beaten by unknowns, but letting those emotions overrun her wasn't going to get her out of the chair, was it? They obviously wanted information but she wasn't that easy.
"Where is Makarov?"
Well wasn't that one hell of a question. Straight to the point then? It didn't surprise her for even a moment that this whole thing was about Makarov because she didn't exist to anyone else on the planet. How could she possibly be of any interest to anyone? Looked like this was going to suck no matter how she answered. If she answered cockily, this man would be further unimpressed and she wasn't sure how short his fuse was. But the truth was she really had no idea where Makarov had gone and if she told him that he was just going to assume her to be telling lies to cover up for him.
"Picking out drapes for our new apartment, I think. We have had a bit of a domestic before he left. We could not decide between red and gold..."
Everything fell silent and she waited for her punishment. Dead silent. The only thing she could hear was her heart pounding in her ears. No noise from the man before her or from what could be happening on the outside world, beyond her blindfold. Before the click of a cigarette lighter snapping open, lighting what she assumed to be a cigarette and then snapping shut again stole her attention. A cloud of cigar smoke engulfed her face a few seconds later and she felt herself struggling for breath against the bitterly familiar scent. It was sour smelling and utterly revolting.
"That is just rude." She muttered, coughing to clear her chest.
Without warning, she jerked a little as she felt the stinging, burning sensation of the lit cigar end being pressed into the sensitive skin of her neck. As much as she wanted to pull away from it, she was too secured to the chair to move. It elicited a shout on her behalf, somewhere between pain and the shock of the unexpected action. After a few seconds he pulled it back and took another drag.
"Rude is ignoring my question."
It amazed her how utterly calm his voice was. Almost bored sounding, if anything.
"I didn't ig-"
"Have you heard of a man named Khalid Al Ghazi?" He cut in before she could finish off a statement that would only make him angrier. Losing control and ending up hurting the only real lead they had on Makarov wasn't going to do anyone any good.
The name set off warning bells inside of her head and she froze for a moment, trying to remember where she'd heard it. It was badly accented as it left his lips but it was definitely familiar. The burning wound on her neck was distracting. Racking through everyone important that she had tried to memorize, their files and their faces, she attempted to come to some realization. And then it hit her like a shovel to the face that she did know of this man. Vaguely. And that this man was a Saudi Prince.
"No." She lied, but the fact her comeback had been straight forward and not some kind of joke to throw him off gave the man sat on the chair before her all the confirmation he needed that the word was a blatant lie.
"Now, are you sure about that?" He asked, his voice sounding more dangerous and threatening this time. Although she prided herself in not being overly scared by the situation thus far, his voice sent a little tingle down her spine that insisted she could be in real trouble here if she didn't start to cooperate. How was she going to get out of this one? Makarov wasn't supposed to be back for days and even when he returned, would he try to look for her? No one knew where she was. No one knew who she was, besides him. Would, thinking she will have spilled her guts about everything she knew about him, he choose to abandon her and seek revenge on the people who killed his men at a future time in a well calculated and thought out manner?
Before she could say anything in response to his question, she heard what sounded like a metallic door creak open on rusty hinges. A nasty, cold draught reminded her of just how chilly and damp her body was and sent a whole other set of shivers coursing through her body. It smelled dusty and mouldy and she couldn't help but want to know about where exactly she had been stashed.
"Got anything out of her yet?" A Scottish accent filled the room but the gravelly voice sounded a little weak, like talking was painful for him. It wasn't confident and calm like the man who was interrogating her. More desperate and sceptical than anything. It was a wounded looking MacTavish looking on at his Captain Price.
"Bugger all. I was thinking we could let her loose with Kamarov's men. The ones she injured. Maybe she'd be feeling a bit more talkative after that."
Clearly that statement was more for her benefit than his.
"You cannot be serious..." she scoffed.
Once more, she started to laugh and it was beginning to grate on Price's nerves that she wasn't going to break down as easily as they'd first thought. It wouldn't be long before the resorted to a real, more serious violence and he could only hope that this wasn't a complete waste of their time. But it soon became clear she wasn't talking about their questionable interrogative techniques.
"John?"
Price's face contorted into a look somewhere between confusion and suspicion as he stared at the girl, silently searching for some kind of explanation. Obviously it wasn't directed at him, instead, the younger male who shared his first name. Soap looked just as confused as Price but took a few wary steps in their direction.
"MacTavish, come on! Get this blind fold off of me!"
This time her accent had changed – it was no longer a strong, struggling at English Russian accent, now it was something foreign and unfamiliar. Something a little easier to understand and softer on the ear. Soap wasn't sure whether it was because the room was dark and his bleary blue eyes were tired from having just awoken, but he couldn't find anything familiar about the girl. But she sure as Hell knew who he was, which begged only one question: what the fuck was going on here? Running his hand across his Mohawk, his eyes narrowed slightly as he stepped up beside the chair Price was sat on. In honest truth, he was unsure of how he was supposed to respond.
"Who are you?" Price asked, relieving Soap of the pressures of finding a feasible reply.
"Untie me and I'll tell you."
Until now, the well built Scottish man had been unsure of what exactly was going on here. But at those words, the woman's lips had curved into a smirk that had been etched into a small, closed off part of his memory and he knew just where he'd seen her before. His eyebrows furrowed into an impatient frown as he stepped forward and yanked the blindfold up over her head, without any consideration for the way it caught on her broken and bruised nose. It was coming back to him now, that face. Slowly but surely, he remembered.
"Do either of you want to tell me what's going on here?" Price asked, impatiently this time. It was clear he didn't like the idea of being out of the loop.
As the woman cursed in pain from the removal of the blindfold, she opened her eyes with a couple of quick blinks. It took some time to adjust to the small amount of light in the room, the discomfort from the bruising around her eyes, all thanks to the nasal injury, now clear. But as soon as they were open and working, she focused them on MacTavish without hesitation. It stung for a while and she couldn't help but wonder how long she had been out of it before she'd even been blindfolded.
"We're barking up the wrong tree, Price. This isn't Makarov's girl. She isn't even Russian. This whole thing has been a waste of time." Soap stated impatiently.
"Then who the Hell is she?"
"You realize I am sitting here, right?" she rolled her eyes, sighing out through her nose and tugging slightly at the bindings fastened securely around her now sore wrists, in hopes they would take it as a cue to finally release her. But no such luck.
"Only know her as Yael, sir." Soap stated, his tone holding that of distaste. "We've caught ourselves a Mossad operative."
Price didn't seem to be expecting that. He looked visibly - if only a little - surprised.
"See. So, I am one of the good guys."
"Supposedly." Price grumbled quietly, stubbing out the end of his cigar on the hard concrete floor beneath them. The older man didn't seem to be convinced by her claim, eyeing her up in a cold silence as he contemplated the best way to handle the situation. Of course there was the possibility that he was convinced, but just didn't like what he was hearing. You could never trust those foreign intelligence agencies, you know. Not even from the countries you were supposed to be allied with. "Are you sure about this, Soap?"
"Positive."
"Then what exactly are you doing with Makarov?" Price demanded, turning back to the woman.
Yael ran her tongue along her top lip slowly, her eyes travelling from MacTavish to Price, before returning to MacTavish, lingering slightly as if she would rather speak to him. Although it hadn't been that long since she'd seen him, he'd seemed to have aged a great deal. She paused for a moment, determining exactly what she should be saying and revealing. The two men before her had well and truly screwed up seven long years of undercover work in a matter of hours and only now was the realization dawning on her. It was stirring anger in the pit of her stomach, something that she often struggled to contain. They were on the same team, after the same man and yet she was still tied up in this chair, undergoing unnecessary questioning.
"I was put 'undercover', as you say. I relay information about activities with Islamic extremists. Weapons, drugs, trafficking... They could be a direct threat to us."
"Why haven't you put a bullet in his brain?" Price asked, almost as soon as the last syllable had left her dried lips. He sounded disgusted but still strangely intrigued. "How can you spend your time with him and not feel like a traitor?"
"Don't insult me by suggesting I do not wish to kill him, because I do. Every single day I spend with him. But our war is bigger than any one man, understand that." Although she had said it, bitterly, she didn't expect him to understand and that was one of the most frustrating things she had to live with. America had her enemies and Great Britain had hers. But Israel was surrounded by governments and radical militant groups who thought they had no right to exist. "The information I gather saves many lives in my country. In many other countries in the Middle East. Even around the world. If I have to sell my soul to the devil, this seems like a good reason for doing it."
"You didn't save lives at the airport and now it's ended in war." Soap piped up before Price could get another word in.
"I cannot protect the world, John. If I was to kill him, someone would rise up to take his place. For the same things he stands for and with the same vicious ways of fulfilling their goals. But I can use him," her voice sounded hushed, her dull eyes narrowed meaningfully. It seemed to him as if she was almost trying to justify her actions to herself as well as to them. "I can use him to rid the world of people who fund such men. I can make it harder for them to unveil such brutal plans. That is our goal. That is my goal."
There was something about the way she spoke that seemed very genuine to him, regardless of what he wanted to believe about her. But she had the same kind of charm on his last time, wrapping him up in a world of lies, there being nothing genuine about her. How could he be so sure that every word leaving her lips wasn't untrue? The truth was he couldn't be sure and trust was a luxury nowadays. One that he wouldn't be giving out to her any time soon.
"How'd you manage to get so close? How'd he not figure you out?"
"Patience. It was three long years before he even laid eyes on me. Another two before I retrieved any usable information from him. It was a delicate situation. If I had pushed too hard he would have become suspicious and I would have no chance. Instead I focused on earning his trust. Being consistent. I was sceptical he even knew what the word trust meant, but there is more to him than you would think. There is still a human, somewhere inside of him."
"There is nothing human about him." Captain Price stated firmly, his voice as monotonous as ever.
There was something she considered to be very deranged about this man.
"With all due respect, you know only one side of him. You have not seen him in the same ways I have, yet you are quick to judge."
Price rose from his seat, pushing the light, wooden chair aside with ease. It clattered against the concrete floor as it lost its balance and fell over. He stepped forwards with a cold and hard expression, locking eyes with the woman he now considered to be quite insane. Leaning his head down, he whispered a few inches from her ear. It was in a tone that made her swallow hard, for the first time feeling genuinely terrified. There was something about this man that she didn't like. She looked away from him, slowly, so as not to alert him of the affect he was having on her. His fists were clamped so tight that his knuckles were beginning to turn white and he contemplated hitting her once more for good measure.
"With all due respect," he began, lifting his hand to grip her chin, causing her to forcefully look at him after an attempt she'd made to turn away, "if you sympathize with him, you're just as much of a scumbag as he is. You can't be trusted."
"Easy, Price..." Soap murmured, reaching his hand out to take the man's stiffened shoulder, hoping to ease him away from Yael before he did something stupid like strangle her. It took a lot to make Price look visibly angry, he'd learned. Usually he was the focused one, not letting emotions cloud his vision for a moment. When that happened, things went wrong, he'd always told him. But now Soap could practically see a vein throbbing in his forehead and it was off-putting to see this woman cower away from him. That wasn't to say that her answers weren't making Soap angry too, however. At his words, he felt his Captain loosen up slightly and he slowly began to return to a standing up straight position, his eyes not leaving Yael's until he turned and left. Agonizingly slowly. Without anything more to say to Soap, or the shaken up Mossad operative, he disappeared through the door, slamming it behind him.
Yael looked to Soap, clearly in hopes of some explanation for his friend's inappropriate behaviour but she gained no such thing.
"He's right, you know."
"If I had wanted your opinion, I would have asked for it. Untie me."
"Do you actually think that attitude is gonna make me let you go?" His eyebrows pulled together in a confused frown, looking at her in a way which suggested he couldn't comprehend her way of thinking. There was something about her that made her instantly easy to dislike and he wondered how on Earth she'd ever pulled off wooing Makarov. Maybe that was exactly what he liked about her; after all, he was a psycho. Truth was, Soap didn't have a fucking clue and didn't plan on spending too much time thinking about it. All he needed to think about right now is how they were going to get rid of her and focus their sights back on hunting down Makarov once more, because clearly this girl wasn't in a sharing mood. The amount of time it would take to beat the answers out of a Mossad operative might have taken longer than it was worth.
Soap shuffled over towards the chair that Price had pushed over during his rare outburst. Well, it could only be defined as an outburst when you were describing him. Lifting it back to its standing position, he took a seat, straddling it so his chest was pressed to the back. He draped a heftily muscled arm over it and moved his eyes to lock with hers once more. Although he hadn't noticed it before, he had now, her eye was awfully damaged.
"What happened to your eye?"
"Is that really relevant to this situation?" She scoffed.
"Was it Makarov?" Soap asked, raising one eyebrow as he scanned for her reaction to his question carefully.
The woman before him stayed silent but looked back at him coldly, as if it were almost natural, not moving more than her chest heaving with each breath she took. The day her eye had been damaged was one she remembered the most vividly out of all her dangerous encounters at Makarov's side. It had also been the closest attempt on anyone's life she had ever seen. Somehow, they had managed to escape relatively unscathed although he definitely reached a whole new level of paranoid afterwards. Unscathed apart from her eye and one of his men who had been escorting them, of course. It was one of the few times she had been scared of the idea of dying. Her life didn't flash before her eyes or anything, but she had been the kind of scared she hadn't experienced before. It wasn't so much the manner in which it would have happened - even though she really did hate bombs - but more so the circumstance. To die as an accomplice of sorts to one of the most hated men on the planet would rain shame down on her for an eternity. Yael didn't exist to Israel anymore (at least not officially) and according to papers, never had. People wouldn't know that she was put there to do good things. They would see her face and would pin unspeakable things to her that she had never taken part in. She only existed when she was with him now and it was the biggest of all curses.
It was clear to him she wasn't going to answer so he strayed to another line of questioning, hoping that she would give something interesting up eventually. During times like these, he wasn't the most patient of men and more often than not, that was a bad thing.
"How did you do it, get close to him? How'd you find him?"
"Why should I tell you of anything?" She asked rhetorically, her tone bitter at the thought of sharing anything with him. She suspected he wouldn't be willing to share any intelligence they had gathered on Makarov.
"Thought you were supposed to be one of the good guys?"
When her credibility or motives were called in to question, it was reflexive that she became defensive.
"I am good. I was doing good by these things."
"So you keep saying." Once more, he sounded unconvinced by her statements. To earn Makarov's trust, he naturally expected the worst. That maybe she had been involved in other, smaller demonstrations Makarov orchestrated. He didn't doubt for a second that she held the capability to kill an innocent person and still sleep at night; otherwise she wouldn't have been given the task. "Yet you're unwilling to tell us what exactly you did. Seems strange, that."
It was only then she decided she would, reluctantly, speak up. The way things had gone, there was no way she could get back on side with Makarov and to reveal these details would not put her at any real risk. If it was going to get her out of this dire hell hole and away from this man, she would take the chance.
"I moved to a small, Loyalist village. It was not far from Vladivostok. It was actually rather nice, there." Her lips curved up in to a small, bittersweet smile and she closed her eyes, as if reliving the memories over in her head. Soap watched on with a genuine intrigue, shifting about in the chair silently. They'd seen firsthand what Makarov's men could do to a loyalist village and he could only assume this story did not have a pleasant ending. "Not many people had stayed after the other villages were taken by his men. Those too poor to leave for somewhere else. Those with families. Those who refused to bow down in fear to the Ultranationalists. They had no choice but to pray he would spare them. I was very lucky that night. It was unusual he would come to raid, but in this village there was a man who betrayed him."
"If you posed as a Loyalist, why didn't he kill you?"
"Those were the lucky ones..."
Everything outside of her window was a beautiful kind of peaceful. It was warm for this time of year, you know. The moon was so large in the sky it was as if the small, wooden houses were glowing in the dim light. It appeared and disappeared at the will of the light gray clouds filling the starry sky. The badly worn roads that twisted through the collection of houses, around the church and the gas station, past the make-shift park, were silent of all travellers. For it was late enough for most people to be tucked up in bed and dreaming of a better life. Life in the village wasn't bad but it was nothing to be envied, either. This place had been a stark contrast after living her whole life a short drive from the enthralling, lively city of Tel Aviv. It had been three long years since she had moved here and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't be uninvolved with the inhabitants.
The house in which she stayed was small sized in comparison to many of the others dotted around. It had two bedrooms and a bathroom on the upstairs level and a kitchen and a living area on the downstairs. It was large enough for two people though and she had opened the residence to share with a woman she met a year in to her stay. Her name was Yuliya Plyushchenko and she was the closest thing Yael, or Nina as she was known, had to a friend. At that moment, Nina knew she would be asleep, curled up in the uncomfortable bed in the adjacent room, but there was too much on her mind to follow suit. It had been three years she had waited in this village and there was still no sign of any of the Ultranationalists taking interest. No sign of the one she wanted. The man who had betrayed Makarov still lived here, in his large house at the top of the steep hill, so she knew it was a mere matter of time. But she didn't know for how much longer she could remain patient. Nina was itching to get her hands on him and hurt him until he begged for her mercy. Sometimes, the ideas of how she would punish him once she'd used up all of his sources were the only things that got her off to sleep. But not tonight.
The only sound she could hear besides a small trickling stream was a familiar dog barking some way away. He would always bark like this at the moon.
Nina rolled over under the covers to face the wall, the bed creaking slightly under her average weight from the movement. Staring at the patters in the wood she felt herself finally nearing something near tiredness. She had a big day tomorrow and knew she needed her rest, so she was willing to succumb to the urge. Before her gray-blue eyes could close, however, something caught her attention. A pop. It came from outside and echoed quietly a few times as the dog fell silent. It wasn't a loud pop, not where they were situated, but it was the kind of pop that sounded like distant gunfire. Maybe it was wishful thinking and was just a firework or something... but maybe it wasn't. The first scream filled the air, it was distant but being awake she could hear it as clear as if it was Yuliya in the next room. This. As sad and grotesque and scary as it was, this was what she had been waiting for. Her heart was threatening to break out of her ribs as she sat bolt upright, slipping out of bed and heading over to the window. More pops started to echo out, from what felt like all directions. They were being surrounded. As it drew closer, she saw the light of the house next to hers flick on, no doubt the inhabitants coming to investigate exactly what the commotion was about.
Flurries of men were starting up the hill, past the church, beginning to force their way in to houses. The light in the bedroom opposite flicked on and Yuliya walked out on to the small area above the staircase, rubbing at her eyes sleepily.
"Can you hear that, Nina? What is that noise?" She groaned through a yawn, walking over to where Nina was stood.
Quickly, she headed over to her friend and grabbed her cold hand, taking the much shorter woman by surprise. Something was wrong because she could see the panic in the dark haired girl's eyes. Before she could give any kind of explanation, Nina was tugging the blonde down the narrow staircase and in to their living area. The first truly loud screams of terrified women started to flood in through a half-open window across the room.
"What is going on?" Yuliya asked in a hushed voice, her eyes widened with fear.
"The Ultranationalists are here. They are going to kill us!" she whispered back, her tone just as frightened. "Yuliya you have to hide. Hide now!"
The men were growing closer and the gunfire was loud, rapid. Like her heart beat. Pounding in her ears. It was like a constant stream of a noise that was making her feel sick to her stomach. The sound of death. People she saw every day of her life these past few years were being slaughtered by cold hearted and evil men. Men were being dragged away from their wives, their efforts to fight back futile. Children were clinging to their mothers, crying tears of fear as they watched their fathers and grandparents shot in the streets like dogs. The men showed no remorse; instead, some kind of sick enjoyment as two watched a man bleeding out from a wound on his back, crawling towards his young son, killed in the crossfire. They put him out of his misery shortly after with a few more shots to the torso.
Women were sobbing, being carted towards the church. Vehicles roared up towards the village, more men clambering out before they had pulled to any real stop.
"What about you? You must hide, Nina!"
Pulling loose one of the wooden panels, she slid it enough to the side to let the slightly tubby body of Yuliya slip in to the cavity of the wall. It was a tight squeeze as these walls were not thick or well built. She helped her friend inside, pressing a hand to her cheek quickly.
"Make no noise. Make no noise, Yuliya until you are sure they are gone. Do not leave until they are all away from this place."
"There is room for you! Nina, move another panel!" she begged, her eyes welling up with tears of fear and guilt and other emotions overrunning her.
Nina offered her a sad smile and shook her head.
"I will see you soon." The brunette told her, her voice agonizingly hopeful.
Sucking in a deep breath through parted lips, Yuliya finally accepted and nodded her head, pressing as far back into the space as she could. The girl began to break down in to silent sobs. Nina pushed the panel to cover the gap and prayed that no one would notice it was slightly out of place. She prayed that no one would find this kind woman. If she could save just one thing from this village, knowing what these Ultranationalist pigs were like, Yuliya was what she wanted to save.
Nina stumbled away from the wall and before she could begin to figure out what she was going to do next, the door burst open and three, largely built men barged their way inside. One headed straight for her and her first instinct was to run. Running was hard when her legs felt like jelly. She let out a cry as he grabbed her roughly by the hair, pressing a gun to the back of her head. She wasn't going to die. She couldn't die. This wasn't what they did. They wanted her. The women. The other two men split from the room and headed around the rest of the house, calling out as each room was cleared and they found no one else of interest. She closed her eyes as she felt the cold metal against the back of her head. The other two men were leaving and they hadn't found Yuliya. It was the only positive thing she could even begin to comprehend right now.
"Move! Move it, now! Outside." the man shouted aggressively, saliva spraying with each word.
Doing as she was told, she started to slowly walk where she was guided.
"Faster!" he shouted, louder this time.
The air was full of screams but the gunfire had died down, somewhat.
The man pulled her by the bare top of her arm, starting along the road towards the church. The hard floor was freezing cold beneath her bare feet and the stones and shards of glass from broken windows stuck into her heels painfully. With each timid step, he only dragged her along harder as if he were in some kind of giant rush. She could see other women being carted in the same direction as her and to know of their fate was the most heart breaking thing of all.
The women were being moved to the church, their children dragged from their grips and pulled away into a separate room. Nina was practically shoved down on to the flagstone floor, letting out a grunt as she was briefly winded by the contact, quickly trying to crawl over to where the women had congregated. Men stood everywhere holding guns pointed at them. Everyone was crying. Fear and panic filled the air. Makarov's army looked on at them as if they were some kind of threat. A bunch of unarmed women couldn't exactly do a great deal to them, she thought. They were far too scared to attempt any kind of escape.
Fifteen long minutes passed, Nina watched the second hand moving the whole time as she focused on the clock above the doorway. Although time had felt like it was stood still, the item proved it hadn't. The flood of women passing through the door thinned away until it stopped. Everything outside of the church seemed to have fallen silent once more, but it wasn't a peaceful kind like it had been earlier. It was an eerie, unpleasant kind. Forced by the hands of murderers.
They were made to line up. From tallest to shortest. She was near the taller end of the group, about two or three in. The men screamed their orders, sometimes forcefully rearranging the girls until they were in the correct positions. Eyes were bloodshot and red from tears and Nina was beginning to panic.
In through the door, finally came Vladimir Makarov. This was the first time she had ever set her eyes on this man in person and her stomach turned. It took everything within her not to be sick. Or lurch forward, obviously suicidal, and attempt to murder him there and then. Every emotion she felt contradicted the other. He was different to the pictures. The look on his face made her skin crawl. A smirk was firmly in place and his eyes were shining like he was a kid with a brand new toy at Christmas, like he couldn't wait to get his hands on them. The girls fell silent at once, their sobs subsiding to the occasional sniffle and clearing of the throat. Nina noticed there was splashes of red, suspiciously like blood spatter, to the left side of his face. Looks like he'd found his man.
Makarov paced towards them, his person demanding a kind of fear and respect all rolled in to one. It was like he emitted terror. He personified the word. Walking from the short end of the line to the tall, he nodded to himself, as if impressed.
"You are better than I expected." He said loudly, causing one of the women to jump. One of his men sniggered as he watched on. "But there is one exception."
The man strolled back towards the middle of the line, his hand reaching down to pull out his hand gun. He stopped. He stayed still for a long while, leaving time for the women to panic about what was next for them. Shaking his head but not actually looking at any of the girls, he lifted the gun and shot the only visibly pregnant woman, point blank range, in the head. Her body fell to the ground with a thud and several of the women screamed out. The sobs once stifled were now freely flowing from the majority of the women. Even Nina had begun to tear up slightly, determined not to look at the dead body a few metres from her.
"I have no use for her." He told no one in particular, calmly, as if he hadn't just shot a heavily pregnant woman in cold blood. "I do however have use for one of you."