Shadow Tag

11

Berry heard the keys working the lock seconds before the door to the authors’ cell swung open. He was ready, sitting patiently on his mattress with his back against the wall.

The door creaked open, and the two now-familiar goons stepped in. One — the driver — stayed by the door. The other had a full carrier bag in his hand.

“Your food,” the man with the bag announced — then he stopped in his tracks.

His eyes, wide with alarm, scoured the large, empty space.

“Where’s your friend?”

Berry sounded surprised. “Friend?”

The goon was quickly losing it. The bag just tumbled out of his hand and he reached for his gun. “Your friend. The other writer.”

Berry looked around the room with mock bewilderment. It was, in fact, empty. Apart from Berry and the two goons, there was no one else in the room.

“I don’t know,” Berry said in a surprised, concerned tone. “He’s not with you?”

“No, he’s not with us. Where is he?”

“I don’t know. I fell asleep, and when I woke up, he was gone. I assumed you took him to use the toilet or something. Speaking of which—”

“No,” the man screamed. “Where is he? Where is he?” He was now leaping around in a mad panic, waving his gun around like a lunatic.

“I’m telling you I don’t know,” Berry said, then his worried tone turned conspiratorial. “Man, are you boys going to get in trouble?”

The man looked at him in utter bewilderment, then turned to the other goon and started rambling something in Arabic. The driver had now also stepped into the room and was walking around its perimeter, scrutinizing the walls as if anyone could just melt into them.

Berry couldn’t understand what they were saying, but it sounded like they were having a heated debate about what to do. You didn’t need to be the Amazing Kreskin to guess what was going on: they were crapping themselves about what the head goon was going to do to them when he found out one of his prized authors had somehow escaped — and, more critically, which one of them was going to be the one to tell him about it.

The hissing match kept going until a fierce tirade from the gunman finally pummeled his cohort into submission. With drooped shoulders and a fatalistic shrug, the driver muttered something as he shuffled off into the darkness beyond, leaving the first goon alone with Berry.

“Where is he? How did he get out of here?” the man asked, his face sweating in an intense fear and bewilderment combo.

“Honestly, I have no idea,” Berry said with forced sincerity and compassion as he pushed himself up to his feet and took a few steps away from the mattress.

The goon kept his eyes locked on him, his gaze and his gun tracking Berry as the author skirted the long side of the room, ambling slowly towards the opposite wall, where the other mattress lay.

“I mean, it’s not humanly possible, is it? For a fully-formed adult male to just vanish like that. Is it? Unless,” Berry added as he stopped, turned and raised a questioning finger with dramatic flourish, “unless he managed to go through the wall.”

“‘Through the wall’? What are you talking about?”

“What, you don’t know? No, of course you don’t. Not many people do.” His expression went all professorial. “It’s called quantum tunneling. I only know that because Raymond told me he was researching it for his next book.”

The man had rotated to keep facing Berry, his face a pained mix of confusion and worry.

“See, there was this fellow in Paris by the name of Dutilleul who worked as a clerk in the Registration Ministry. This man had the ability to walk through walls,” Berry informed his captor, “like at platform nine and three quarters at Kings Cross in the Harry Potter books — but you probably haven’t read them, have you?”

The goon gave him a sheepish shrug. “Actually, I saw the movies.”

“Pirated downloads?”

The man’s eyes dropped guiltily to the ground.

“Of course, what else.” Berry raised a chastising finger. “Anyway, I’d love to tell you more about it, but now’s not really the place or time for it.”

He added and emphasis on the word “time,” and, as he did, looked over the goon’s shoulder.

But nothing happened.

The man seemed confused. “You really think it’s possible?”

“I do, but like I said, now is not the right time.” Again, he raised his voice when saying the word “time,” and again, he looked over the goon’s shoulder.

A sudden, loud rustle coming from behind him surprised the goon. He turned and saw the mattress Berry had been sitting on rise up off the ground, on its side, along with a loud shriek. The man raised his gun in fear — but before he could fire, Berry, who was now behind him, unleashed a vicious side kick, buckling the man’s knee.

The man yelped as his leg collapsed, and he went down, lopsided, the gun falling from his grasp as he hit the ground.

Berry didn’t wait.

He’d already moved in and followed his first strike with a savage kick to the man’s kidneys, followed by a punch to the side of his head.

“That’s for threatening my family, dickhead,” he added as he knocked the man out with a final hammer-fist to the man’s neck.

He grabbed the gun off the ground and crossed the room to where Khoury was extricating himself from the mattress.

They’d used the holes opened up by the lead goon’s gunshots to tear open the cover of the mattress, then they’d pulled out some of its innards — springs, foam and cotton — enough for Khoury to be able to fit himself into the mattress, just like the character in his script had done to the car seat of the bad guy’s Porsche before stuffing the man into it and sitting on him. Like a puppet master, his character had manipulated the bad guy’s arm to clear the fingerprint scan, while the overhead scanner only saw the thermal image of one body since he was sitting on top of him.

The two writers had then taken the bits they’d removed and spread them under the other mattress, flattening them evenly so it was barely noticeably higher off the ground.

Then Khoury had waited for Berry’s signal.

“I thought you were never going to make your move,” Berry said.

“I couldn’t hear you,” Khoury replied, brushing his ears. “I’ve still got cotton in there.” He looked across at the downed goon, then took in the gun in Berry’s hand. “Malone would be proud.”

“I guess that Krav Maga training I did for research paid off.” He gestured towards the door. “Let’s get the hell out here before the others get back.”

They scooted out of the room and into a long, dark corridor that led to a staircase, Berry leading the way in a slightly crouched stance and on high alert. They were passing a door to their right when the goon leader and his other underling appeared, coming down the stairs.

Shots exploded around them, as the goons started firing.

“Shit,” Khoury said as they both hugged the wall, looking for cover. “What are you waiting for, shoot back.”

“You do realize I’ve never fired a gun in my life,” Berry yelled.

“Just point the damn thing and pull the trigger.”

Berry did just that.

Two, three, four times.

The two goons scrambled back up the stairs as bullets bit into the walls around them just as shouts came from the room next to where the authors were huddled.

“Hey, who’s out there? Get us out of here.”

Berry looked at Khoury in confusion, then leaned closer to the door and said, “Who are you?”

“FBI agents,” the voice said. “You American?”

“Through and through,” Berry replied. “Stand clear.”

He stepped back and fired a shot into the door lock, destroying it, then kicked the door in.

“You’re getting real handy with that thing,” Khoury said.

Malone and Reilly emerged from the darkness. Their hands were still zip-locked, but they were no longer behind their backs. Adrenaline was running high all around.

Malone asked, “What’s going on?”

“The guys who grabbed us,” Khoury said, “one of them’s knocked out back there. The other two are up there.”

“Let’s go,” Reilly said. “Stay behind us.” Then he told Berry, “Give me the gun.”

Berry handed it over.

They moved quickly but quietly, down the hall and up the stairs — Reilly, Malone, Khoury, and Berry. They crept up the stairs, Malone’s gun leading the way, and emerged into what looked like the ground floor of an empty warehouse. But a door that looked like the main entrance hung wide open.

Reilly shouted, “Come on,” and he and Malone rushed out into the daylight.

Khoury looked at Berry, shrugged, then said, “What the hell. We’ve written about this kind of thing often enough. Might as well live it for once.”

“Go,” Berry said.

The two writers charged after them.