Abandoned

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

The car slows down and stops. It idles, waiting. I hear the sound of something moving, something mechanized. A gate?

I’d tried to get some idea of how long we traveled. I was surprised at how difficult that was to do with no watch, in the dark. There’s no sense of distance. I had tried to count the seconds but kept getting lost in my own fear.

The panic is crippling. I don’t know if it’s better or worse for me than it was for Heather Hollister. I have more training. I know what I’m up against. I’ve been under fire and have survived more than a single attack on my life.

None of it seems to be helping. Images of my rape and torture at the hands of Sands, images I thought I’d put to bed long ago, rise in my mind. My heartbeat is out of control and I’m close to hyperventilating.

I attended a conference once for law-enforcement personnel. It had various lectures on a variety of subjects: personnel, firearms, interrogation, etc. I attended one entitled “The Psychology of Fear: Conquering the Flight Urge in Combat Situations.”

The speaker was a man by the name of Barnaby Wallace, an ex-Delta Force operative turned Special Forces instructor turned private consultant.

The problem in most situations where fear takes over is a lack of training on the subject itself, or improper training. We’ve promoted the idea in this society that fear is found only in cowards, men who aren’t worth the title of men. We’ve promoted the concept of being ashamed of fear. In World War Two the Russkies approached it from a more practical angle: You could choose between the guns of the soldiers behind you—which would kill you for sure if you ran—or the guns of the enemy in front of you, which you might still survive.

The history of the military is one of dealing with fear. We train soldiers to “obey orders, no matter what.” Desertion is frequently a capital offense, punished by a firing squad.

What’s it all show, though? He’d leaned forward a little to emphasize his point. Obviously, that fear is a natural response. In fact, in my years of command, it was always the fearless men who gave me the most trouble. They generally had a screw loose.

The audience laughed, and you could sense in that laughter a low relief, as though we were all being given a sudden pass on some hidden shame, a time we’d felt fear and had to hide it.

Fear is probably one of the oldest biological imperatives. It was developed to keep the organism alive. Fear demands flight from the stronger opponent, because, at the animal level, might does tend to make right. The bigger opponent will generally be the winning opponent.

Things have changed. We can think, and because we can think, we can create advantages that nullify the size or superior armament of the enemy. At this level, fear still serves a purpose, but only if we learn to harness it for our own ends. He smiled. Fight or flight, everyone’s heard that one, and it’s true. Fear was designed to encourage us to run, but it had a fail-safe: If running wasn’t an option, it delivered the adrenaline we’d need to put up a good fight. So there’s a flip side to fear. It tells you that you’re in danger, that you need to get your shit together quick, and that you need to either retreat, or fight, or die.

So the first step of conquering your fear is to embrace it. It’s telling you something. Listen. Don’t resist. That’s the first mistake, and it’ll be the one that kills you. You’ll be so distracted trying to push that fear aside that you won’t notice the guy with the gun ’til he’s right up on you. Fear freezes us first, and that’s a problem in a combat situation.

You have to take fear out of the instinctive level. It’s just an indicator, like a speedometer or your blood pressure. Apply your intellect to the indicator. Observe it. What’s it telling you? Is flight the answer? Could be. How about fight? Maybe. Observe it, embrace it, intellectualize it. When you do that, fear becomes a tool, nothing more or less, and you lose no forward motion.

Stop treating fear as a defect or something alien. It’s probably the oldest part of you.

I close my eyes and force myself first to breathe and then to examine my fear. Why am I afraid?

Number one is the visceral answer: because of what Sands did to me. I’ve been in the hands of a madman before. It almost destroyed me. It’s happening again, here, now, and the possibilities terrify me.

I examine this and throw it aside. It’s neither pertinent nor helpful. Dali is not Sands. There’s no indication that he’s a rapist. His attitude with Heather Hollister seems to have been that of a zookeeper with an animal. He might beat me, but he probably won’t fuck me.

My heartbeat slows a little bit.

Second: Heather Hollister herself. She wasn’t a weak woman, but eight years alone in the dark drove her crazy. She was a strong woman, a competent, confident police officer; now she picks holes into her skin and talks in circles like a child.

I group this one with the third and fourth. Third: Dana Hollister. What if he decides to lobotomize me in the same way? What if he makes the darkness last forever? And, finally, fourth: He could just decide to kill me.

These things, on the advice of Barnaby Wallace, I embrace. They’re real. They make sense. They are things that could actually happen and thus are the problems to solve.

My heartbeat and breathing have both returned to normal.

Thanks, Barnaby. You go on the Christmas list, if I make it out of here cognitive.

So, fight or flight? Which makes the most sense in this situation? I tick off the factors in my mind. He’s got the weapons, which gives him a distinct advantage. If he’s had military training, he’ll be conversant in close quarters combat. The most troubling thing is his experience. He’s been doing this for years. He knows what to expect when that trunk opens.

Flight, then. But how?

I remember what Heather Hollister said. She’d been ready to jump out and attack when the trunk opened. She’d been pepper-sprayed and stun-gunned for her efforts. It was the most obvious tactic, and the first one he’d be braced for. Jitter-step.

It was one of Kirby’s words. She’d challenged me to a little hand-to-hand combat one weekend, and I’d accepted. I prefer my gun but am aware it’s not always an option, and I knew my jujitsu could use some serious updating.

We had a good time, and Kirby, as it turns out, was a good instructor. She was skilled but never brutal, and she was able to explain everything she did. At one point I thought I had her. I’d caught her from behind, in a headlock, and she was straining hard to escape. She suddenly relaxed, sagging, then strained again, then sagged further, then strained again. It was confusing, and I found myself off balance, struggling to anticipate and react. In the midst of this calculation, she went from straining a little to a huge burst of resistance that threw me off utterly. She surged forward and flipped me over her shoulder. I landed on my back, hard.

Kirby had grinned down at me as I struggled to catch my breath. Jitter-step, Smoky-babe. One step up, one step down, one step up, one step down, and then, just when they think they’ve got your rhythm, make it two steps, see?

The car moves forward again.

I decide to make my move as I’m climbing out of the trunk, when my back is to him. It should be when I seem the most vulnerable and off balance. I’ll pretend to struggle with the exit, as though I’m lightheaded or faint. I’ll try once, fail, try twice, fail, and on the third time, rather than fail, I’ll kick back, catch him with a foot, and run.

I hope.

The quality of the sounds has changed. They are subtly deeper, as though they contain an echo.

A garage. We’ve pulled in to a garage.

I take a few deep breaths to steady myself and chant one of the phrases Barnaby used later in his lecture. It had seemed cheesy at the time, but it helps me now.

Fear serves me. I do not serve fear.

The engine stops. A pause. I hear a door opening and the muffled sounds of footsteps against a hard, smooth surface.

The trunk pops open slightly, a crack of light. There was no key in the lock, so he must have used the remote on his key fob. Smart.

“I’m going to open the trunk door halfway. I’ll throw in a pair of handcuffs. You’ll put them on. If you make a single move I’m uncomfortable with, I’ll hurt you. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

The trunk opens a little more but not completely. The handcuffs are thrown in.

“No tricks. Put them on tight or I’ll hurt you. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

He sounds bored, as if he’s reading from a prepared script. Just a job, done it a hundred times, same old same old.

I ratchet the cuffs onto my wrists, ensuring that they’re tight. “Okay, they’re on.”

The trunk opens fully. He’s standing behind the car, relaxed but alert. He holds my gun in one hand, pointed at me. The other holds a can of what I assume is pepper spray, also pointed at me.

We’re inside a concrete structure with a roll-up door. The door is up and I can see night sky and a fence behind Dali. Freedom.

“You’re going to climb out of the trunk and stand with your back to me. I’ll walk you forward. You’ll go where I direct you. If you make any sudden move, I’ll shoot you. I’ll injure you if I can, but I’ll kill you if I have to. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Climb out.”

Now or never. This is the chance. Jitter-step.

I struggle to get out and fail.

That’s one.

I take a quick breath, steady my nerves, and get ready to try and fail again.

He sprays me with the pepper spray before I even start. It hits me in the worst way: directly into my open eyes and down my throat. The pain is immediate and excruciating. I scream as my eyes burn, and then I can’t scream because I’m coughing uncontrollably and retching. He continues to spray me, he won’t stop, and I’m unaware of him, of the car, of the fear, because everything is about the agony I’m in.

He kicks me so that I fall back into the trunk, and then he slams it shut.

I cough and retch in the dark. I scream when I can. My skin burns anywhere the spray touched it. I rub my eyes, but that only makes it worse. The pain is more terrible than anything I’ve ever experienced, not in terms of its intensity but because of its inescapability. Nothing I do lessens it, nothing will make it stop.

I burn in the dark, and writhe.

I have no idea how much time passes. Time is measured in suffering, in its lessening, and finally in its ending. Somewhere in the part of my mind that’s still capable of rational thought, I guess that an hour must have passed. I’m covered in sweat; my face drips with tears and snot. I’ve vomited on myself. My muscles are weak, and I’m filled with a deadening mixture of lassitude and despair. A hand pounds twice on the trunk.

“We’re going to try this again. If you attempt to do anything other than what I’ve told you, I will give you the same again. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I whisper, my voice trembling with fear and hate.

“Do you understand?”

He couldn’t hear me. The hate rises.

“Yes,” I say, louder. “I understand.”

What else is there to say?

The trunk opens. The scene is the same as before. The night sky behind him, the gun in my face. I gulp in cool night air. I tremble, and hate that I tremble.

“Go on,” he says. “Get out.”

I shake as I climb out, no funny stuff this time. I stand with my back to him. He places a hand on my shoulder. The gun settles into my lower back.

“Walk.”

I walk, aware that the night sky is receding behind me. Is this how the others felt? Is it always the same? The bored voice, the instructions, the fading stars? I think it probably is. Dali is pragmatic, soulless. He doesn’t deviate from what works.

My eyes are still burning, though it’s tolerable now. I try to take in my surroundings as we walk toward a door. I see gray concrete walls, floor, ceiling. The room we drove into was small. The ceiling can’t be more than eight feet high. There’s a single bulb. The door he’s marching me toward is flat gray metal, windowless. Utilitarian. I note a camera in the upper right-hand corner.

Looks like Earl was right on the money, I think. Or close enough.

We reach the door.

“Open it,” he tells me.

I reach out, turn the knob, open the door. Beyond is a concrete hallway, probably thirty feet long. It turns right at the end. There are three doors along the left wall, and it’s all lit as unimaginatively as the room we’re leaving.

“Walk,” he says, still bored.

I move forward. I hear the door close behind us, and now I’m in a tomb. There are no sounds here, just silence and coolness. We reach the end of the hallway and turn to the right. There’s a metal stairway.

“Up,” he directs.

We march up and reach the second floor landing, which is the top. “Open the door.”

I turn another knob and open another door, and now we’re in a new hallway, much more terrifying than the one below. This one has a series of ten doors on either side. These are made of steel, and there are no knobs on them. Padlocks and hasps secure them from the outside in three places. I swallow back bile as I note the locked openings at the base of each door.

That’s where he’ll put the food through.

“Walk,” he tells me, and I walk, helpless to do anything else.

We come to the end of the hallway. As we pass each door, I have to wonder: Are there women in each? The last door stands open, waiting for me.

“Enter the room,” he tells me.

I balk, and the gun pushes into my spine, reminding me of his promise. I have no reason to doubt him.

“Enter the room,” he says again, that endless bored patience.

I walk forward. As I reach the threshold, he shoves me hard, and I stumble inside. The door begins to close immediately, taking the light with it. I scan my surroundings, seeing what I can: a bunk built into the wall, a toilet. Nothing else. I whirl around and watch as the door slams shut.

I launch myself against it. I can’t help it.

“Let me out, Dali, you piece of shit! I’m a member of the fucking FBI!”

I mean for it to be anger, but it sounds like terror. He doesn’t reply. I hear the locks being applied to the hasps.

“Dali!” I scream.

I can hear him walking away.

Then I hear nothing.