Games of State

CHAPTER NINE

When Jody Thompson heard the shouts outside the trailer, she thought Hollis Arlenna was calling for her.

Standing in the bathroom, she flipped even faster through the garments, cursing the prop people who had labeled them in German and Arlenna for being such a dork.

Then she heard the gunfire. She knew it wasn't a scene from the movie. She had all the guns in here, and Mr. Buba was the only one with a key. And then she heard the cries of pain and fear, and knew that something terrible was going on. She stopped checking the garment bags and leaned an ear close to the door.

When the trailer engine first roared, Jody thought that someone was trying to get it away from whatever was happening on the set. Then the door slammed and she heard someone moving around inside. The person didn't speak, which she knew was a bad sign. If it were a guard, he'd be on his walkie-talkie.

Suddenly, the bathroom seemed very warm and close.

Noticing that the door wasn't locked, she gingerly lifted the bolt and threw it. Then she squatted between the garment bags, holding on to them so she didn't fall over. She was going to stay put until someone came to get her.

She listened intently. Jody hadn't worn her watch, and her only sense of time passing was through sound. The intruder looking through the daggers on the far left table.

Footsteps moving around the table filled with medals. Chests opening and closing.

Then, over the drone of the ceiling fan, Jody heard the intruder rattle the closet door, on the other side of the trailer. A moment later there were four loud pops.

Jody squeezed the garment bags so tightly that her nails went through one of them. What the hell was going on out there? She backed against the wall, away from the door.

Her heart was punching up against her jaw.

She heard the closet door bang open as the trailer turned a corner. A table leg scraped the floor as the person moved around it— not gingerly, as Jody had before, but roughly, impatiently.

The intruder was coming toward the bathroom door.

Suddenly, it didn't seem like such a good idea to be in here.

Jody looked up, around, behind her. She saw the frosted glass of the window. But because of the metal bars, no one could get in. Or now, out.

Jody ducked down as the bathroom door handle jiggled. She hunkered down low behind the gently swaying clothes, then crept back beside the toilet. The tiny shower stall was to her rear and she leaned against the glass door.

Her heart beat a heavy crunch, crunch, crunch in her ears.

She started to whimper and bit the side of her thumb to keep from being heard.

A burst of gunfire drowned out the sound of her heart, of her whimpering. She screamed into her thumb as wood and plastic chips flew from the door, pelting the floor and garment bags. Then the door squeaked outward and a gun barrel pushed through the neat row of German uniforms. It pushed them to the side and a face peered down at her. A woman's face.

Jody looked from the compact machine-gun-like weapon to the coldness in the woman's liquid gold eyes. The girl was still biting on her thumb.

The woman motioned up with the gun and Jody stood.

Her hands dropped to her sides and perspiration poured down her thighs.

The woman said something in German.

"I— don't understand," Jody said.

"I said pick up your hands and turn around," the woman barked in thickly accented English.

Jody raised her hands face-high, then hesitated. She had read, in one of her classes, about how hostages were often shot in the back of the head.

"Please," she said, "I'm an intern. I was assigned to this movie a few—" "Turn!" the woman snapped.

"Please don't!" Jody said, even as she did what she was told.

When she was facing the window, Jody heard the uniforms being moved aside and felt the warm metal of the gun against the top of her neck.

"Please…" she sobbed.

Jody started as the woman patted her left side from breast to thigh, and then her right. The woman reached in front and felt along her waistband. Then she turned Jody around. The gun was pointing toward her mouth.

"I don't know what this is about," Jody said. She was crying now. "And I wouldn't tell anyone anything—" "Quiet," the woman said.

Jody obeyed. She knew that she would do anything this woman told her. It was frightening to discover how completely her will could be suppressed by a gun and a person who was willing to use it.

The van stopped suddenly and Jody stumbled toward the sink. She hurried back to her feet, hands raised. The woman hadn't moved, didn't look as if her thoughts had been disturbed.

The trailer door opened and a young man walked over.

He stood behind Karin and looked into the bathroom. He had a pale complexion and a swastika carved in his head.

Without taking her eyes off Jody, Karin turned slightly toward the young man and said, "Begin." The man clicked the heels of his boots, turned, and started loading the relics into the trunks.

Karin continued to stare at Jody. "I don't like killing women," the woman said at last, "but I cannot take hostages. They slow me down." That was it. Jody was going to die. She went numb.

She began to sob. She had a flashback to being a little girl, to wetting her pants in first grade when the teacher had yelled at her, to crying and not being able to stop, to the other children laughing at her. Every scrap of confidence and accomplishment and dignity flooded away.

With the trickle of poise that remained to her, Jody fell to the floor. Facing the back of the bathroom, seeing the toilet and sink from the sides of her foggy eyes, she pleaded for her life.

But instead of shooting her, the woman ordered another man, an older man, to remove the uniforms. Then she closed the bathroom door. The girl waited, surprised, half-expecting gunfire to tear through the door. She stood sideways, on the toilet, to make as small and removed a target as possible.

But instead of gunfire, all she heard was a scraping sound followed by a loud whump.

Something had been pushed against the door.

She isn't going to kill me, Jody thought. She's only going to lock me in here.

Perspiration soaked her clothes as she waited. The three hijackers finished quickly in the trailer, and then were gone. She listened. Nothing.

Then one of the hijackers was outside the window. Jody leaned her ear to the wall, and listened. Something metal was turning, followed by clanking, and then the sound of metal being punctured once, twice, and then a third time.

Then she heard fabric being ripped and she smelled gas.

The fuel tank, she thought with horror. They've opened it.

"No!" Jody screamed as she leapt off the toilet. She threw herself against the door. "You said you don't like killing women! Please!" A moment later Jody smelled smoke, heard footsteps running from the van, and saw the orange of the flame reflected against the frosted glass of the window. They were going to burn the trailer with her in it.

The woman isn't killing me, Jody realized then. She's just letting me die.

The girl threw herself against the door. It wouldn't budge. And as the orange grew brighter she stood in the middle of the small room screaming with fear and despair.