22
Captain McKinley Clute heard the footsteps coming across the floor and he sat up, trying to see through a small hole in his hood. He managed to cock it just right, flipping his head to keep it in place, but caused a string of drool to fly up from the cloth gag in his mouth.
He stared at the door, hearing the footsteps approach, wondering if it would be his or Kaelyn’s that was opened.
It was his.
He heard the boots clomp across the floor and tensed his stomach, curling into a ball. In the past, they’d kicked him just because they could, and he’d taken to protecting himself whenever they approached.
His hood was ripped off, the command “Rise” echoing in his ears. He blinked his eyes, getting used to the light, and stood. This could be either good or bad.
Sometimes he met Kaelyn in the central den to eat—the only time he saw her—both being forced to their knees, hands tied behind their backs, a rabid bit of punching and shouting to keep him off-balance. He’d begun to believe it was just harassment, designed to ensure he didn’t entertain the notion of fleeing, but the pain was real all the same.
He shuffled through the door, hands behind his back and head bowed. He reached the den of the apartment and saw his sister on her knees, looking up at him in concern, her mouth gagged like his. The sight brought a sense of relief, for one because he knew he wasn’t getting a beating, and two, because he could see she was okay, even with the cloth cinched tight into her mouth.
A hand was placed on his shoulder and he was made to kneel like Kaelyn. The flex ties were switched, with their ankles bound together and their hands released, then the gags removed. A bowl was placed in front of each of them, some sort of oatmeal-like gruel with the color and consistency of wet concrete.
The man who’d led out McKinley said, “Eat. Fifteen minutes.”
The man turned away and sat on a rusted metal chair, the only furniture in the room. He pushed the chair onto its hind legs, the back leaning into the wall precariously. He crossed his arms, staring at both of them. The other man stood inside Kaelyn’s doorframe behind them, out of sight, making McKinley want to protect his kidneys from an unseen kick.
McKinley dipped the spoon into the paste and took a bite, wincing at the acrid smell but knowing it would be the only sustenance he was given. He brushed Kaelyn’s arm on the way down, receiving no punishment, even though he knew they’d seen it.
It confirmed something in his mind. He’d put some serious thought into their captivity, not having anything else to occupy his time, and while it was alternately brutal and barely tolerable, he was sure it was all scripted. There was a reason they were separated for twenty-three hours a day. It was to instill a sense of hopelessness and prevent any collusion, the same reason they spent their days in the dark with a hood on their head. His beatings appeared random but were designed solely to convince him that his captors were on the ragged edge and prone to snapping at the slightest provocation. To prevent him from even thinking about escape. But they never touched Kaelyn.
The gags were the final proof in his theory. They’d never had them crammed in their mouths for the entire trip, through hours on boats, planes, and cars, sometimes drugged, but most of the time not. They’d been subjected to the indignity only when they were first tied up in the apartment, the drool running freely from the cloth to the floor. Which meant one thing: The captors were afraid of the damage the noise would do if they started screaming. That, along with the beatings to keep him cowed, told him they were very, very close to other people who had no idea what was going on. Perhaps in the apartment next door.
He didn’t know where they were, not even the country, having woken up in the trunk of a car and been brought into the building in the dark, but he was sure it wasn’t some murky safe house full of thugs. He’d been forced to walk up four floors, and he now believed he was surrounded by innocent civilians. People he might be able to contact, if only to get them to investigate. To call the police.
He surveyed the room again, focusing on the locks of the front door. He saw the bolt lock was worked by a key and felt his hopes dim. He couldn’t break through that, and they always kept it bolted. He surreptitiously glanced around, eating his cement, and realized something was missing.
The explosives were gone.
The first time he’d eaten in the room, he’d seen packages of RDX stacked against the wall, the white crystal spilling out of one waxed paper container, the chemical name CYCLOTRIMETHYLENETRINITRAMINE clearly stenciled on the outside, something he’d seen in predeployment training for IEDs in Afghanistan. A powerful explosive, it had been invented in World War II and was the weapon of choice for terrorists.
Next to the packages had been an assortment of equipment that would have made his Marine Corps IED instructors shiver: cell phones, electronic wiring, detonation cord, and containers designed to camouflage and increase the fragmentation of the blast. Things that had made him wonder if he was the bait for an ambush. The goat tied to the tree, waiting for the tiger to enter so it could be killed.
The fact that he’d been allowed to see it at all meant that they had no intention of him or Kaelyn being a witness, able to report what they’d experienced. No intention of them surviving whatever was planned. The goat never survived, whether the tiger escaped or not.
Now the explosives were all gone. And they were waiting to be chained to a tree.