Reported location: Gobi Desert;
We knew they lied to us when the skies lit up. I am Corporal Zasekin of the Russian Border Patrol, my English is good, yes? I lived in Canada for three years, in Montreal, when I studied abroad before returning to the army. So. We were stationed near Irkutsk, near the border of Mongolia. Nikolai was just coming back from a night of drinking when he saw the lights eating the skies. About seven in the morning. I woke everyone and told them to pack their gear. The day was overcast, but even through the clouds we saw the fingers of fire burning around the sun. At noon the first tremors shook the ground, tearing the streets, and it seemed God pulled a plug from the bottom of Lake Baikal. The water just disappeared. A few minutes later eruptions started. Clouds of steam shooting into the sky. I loaded my men into our Czilim hovercraft as the streets of Irkutsk flooded with blistering water. The northern end of Baikal opened up, a tremendous explosion throwing blackness into the sky. For hours we drove south, blind, seeing not more than twenty feet in front of the hovercraft as we skidded across snow and ash. Finally we descended into the Gobi, but the skies are now black, ash falling endlessly while Baikal roars behind us in the darkness. We have stopped to clean the hovercraft manifold and intakes. GPS is down, all computers not functional, but we are sure we are just north of Ulan Bator…
Transmission ended ionization static. Freq. 5144 kHz/USB.
Subject reacquired pgs 34, 109.
OCTOBER 23rd
30
VACA, ITALY
JESS HATED BEING confined, hated any sense of something tying her down, but she’d never literally been tied up. She twisted and tore at the ropes until her wrists bled; until they kicked her into submission. The coarse black sack pulled over her head smelled like a horse’s ass, and little bits of straw sucked up her nose on every breath. She gagged and coughed, cursed at them to take it off, told them that they didn’t know the danger they were in.
All she got in return were cruel laughs.
She’d been dumped in the back of what felt like the bed of a pickup truck. Hitting a bump in the road, Jess tossed to one side, slamming her head into metal. She squirmed to stay upright, her hands bound painfully behind her back.
Stupid.
The word circled around and around in her head, beyond the pain and fear.
She could have been at the castle with her mother and father. So many things she had to say to them. In twenty-four hours it would be too late. Why did she volunteer for this? Just another stupid decision in a life-long list of stupid decisions. Most of them had been to spite her parents, in one way or the other, to prove to them…
To prove what?
To prove she wasn’t worth it. She joined the Marines because she loved her country and wanted to serve, but that was only half the story. She also knew it would shock her mother and disappoint her father when she quit college and was shipped off around the world to kill people. She wanted to disappoint them. Not that she didn’t love them, quite the opposite. She wanted to disappoint them to punish herself.
Groaning, Jess pushed her back against the metal wheel well.
But at least this time, her misadventure was for something good, to right a wrong. To help someone. That was good, wasn’t it? But really, in her heart, she knew it was driven by a thirst for revenge. If she hadn’t had an opportunity to capture Enzo, to gloat over him and teach him a lesson, would she have come? Maybe. Probably.
But maybe not.
The truck roared over another bump in the road, sending her flying. She landed on her left shoulder, her prosthetic leg twisting painfully on her stump, nearly coming off. Jess pushed herself upright again.
After Giovanni’s men turned on them, they’d bound and gagged Jess, then tied Giovanni to a chair and used him as a punching bag. She pleaded with them, apologized to Enzo for not telling him about Nomad. She said that they had gold and money at the castle, explained that Nomad was coming in a day, that they’d all be killed. Enzo laughed, took a break from pummeling Giovanni, and replied that the castle would be theirs anyway.
They didn’t believe her story about Nomad. They figured it was a scare tactic.
And it was a scare tactic.
Just a true one.
In the small hours of the morning, under cover of night, they’d pulled the bag over her head and dragged her outside into the back of the truck. She heard Hector crying, begging them, but she couldn’t understand what he said. Something else was dumped into the back of the truck. She shimmied around, felt for what it was: the inert body of Giovanni.