The Lance

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Elizabeth pulled into the garage at the safe house. She'd made a run with Steph and Selena for supplies while Ronnie kept watch on the security monitors. They began unloading the car. Lamont's mother had needed emergency surgery and he'd gone to the hospital in the Capitol. Nick was meeting with Rice's principal aide at a discreet restaurant in Washington.

Elizabeth, Selena and Stephanie walked into the kitchen, their arms full of groceries. Ronnie sat with his hands on the table before him. His expression was rigid.

"Hey, Ronnie, we're back." Stephanie looked at him. "What's wrong?"

General Dysart stepped into the kitchen from the living room. With him were six men holding Ingram Mac-10s with noise suppressors. Nicknamed "whispering death" in Vietnam, the Macs put out over a thousand 9mm rounds a minute. Obsolete technology. Very, very lethal. Elizabeth froze in place.

"You've caused me a lot of trouble, Harker." Dysart clenched and unclenched his hands. "Put those sacks down. Slowly."

They set the bags on the floor.

"Take your weapons out and lay them on the floor. Put your hands in back of you. One mistake, my men fire. Don't tempt me."

Elizabeth saw Stephanie think about going for her pistol.

"Don't, Steph. Do as he says." They laid the guns down on the floor. One of Dysart's men kicked them aside.

"Get down on your knees, all of you. You, too." Dysart pulled Ronnie's chair out from under him.

One of the men handed his weapon to Dysart and took plastic ties from his pocket. It took only a minute to truss everyone's hands together behind their backs.

"You can't get away with this," said Elizabeth.

Dysart laughed. There was no mirth in it. "Of course I can."

"How did you find us?"

"Your computer hacking. Difficult to trace, but here we are. You're not as clever as you thought. You shouldn't go looking at other people's emails." He sat down by the table. "Why don't you tell me what you've learned?"

"I've learned you're a traitor." Elizabeth said. "But you already know that."

Dysart stood up, walked over and punched Elizabeth hard in the face. She fell to her side, dazed. Blood poured from her nose. Ronnie made a movement toward Dysart. One of the men hit him in the back of his head with a gun, knocking him to the floor. Dysart turned to Selena and Stephanie where they knelt on the kitchen tiles.

"You won't make any trouble, will you? No, I didn't think so."

Dysart smiled at Selena, an unpleasant, frightening smile. "We have something special planned for you."

He reached down and grabbed Elizabeth's hair, jerked her to her knees. "I enjoyed that." His eyes glittered. "Tie their ankles."

They were trussed up with more ties. "Take them into the cellar and make sure they can't go anywhere. We'll wait for the others to get back and question everyone at the same time. It's instructive when you show someone what happens when they don't want to talk."

Dysart's men dragged them down a narrow flight of stairs into the cavernous cellar. Elizabeth's head bumped on the cellar steps. Their captors bound them sitting against two columns supporting the floor above.

One of the men crouched down in front of Selena. She could smell his stink, a rank, sour smell of unwashed body odor and cheap cigarettes. He reached out and squeezed her breast, twisting her nipple with his fingers, watching her reaction. He grinned as she winced.

He pursed his lips in a mock kiss. "You're mine, sweetheart."

"In your dreams, asshole." Selena's feet were tied but her legs were free. She brought her knees to her chest in one fluid motion and kicked her tormentor hard below the belt. He grunted and flew halfway across the room. His companion laughed.

The man rose to his feet, face black with anger, clutching his groin. He started toward Selena.

"That's enough, Carl," the other said. "There's time for that later. Come on, the General wants us upstairs."

"You'll pay for that, bitch," Carl said.

"That's original. You get that line from a movie?"

"Come on Carl."

The men went back upstairs and closed the door to the kitchen behind them. A single, dim bulb cast scarce light into the basement gloom.

In another time, long ago, wounded soldiers from the Army of Northern Virginia had lain in rows in this same basement. The damp stone walls had seen more than their share of pain and misery.

Elizabeth was frightened. She blew a bubble of blood from her lips. She took a labored breath and thought of her father.

The Judge had been sitting in his favorite green wingback chair by the fire in his study, a fresh glass of bourbon in his hand. Elizabeth had been fourteen years old. Outside, the sub-zero cold of a bitter Colorado winter had covered the Western Slope in ice and snow, but in the Judge's study it was warm and comfortable. They'd been talking about Stephen Crane's book, The Red Badge of Courage. Elizabeth had wondered aloud how men could overcome their fear, be so brave that they would march into the mouths of cannons and almost certain death.

"Everyone gets afraid, but sometimes you just have to go ahead."

"What do you do when you're afraid, Daddy?"

"Well, the first thing I do is admit it to myself. It doesn't do any good to pretend I'm not scared, or that I don't feel the way I really feel. That's where courage comes in."

"Courage?"

"Courage is accepting your fear and doing whatever needs to be done anyway. Cowards are people who can't face up to their fear and let it get the better of them. There's always a place for courage. There's always something that can be done. You might not see it right away. Sooner or later something comes to mind that can help you through it. You make up your mind that it's okay to be afraid and you are going to be all right. Then you do what has to be done. That's courage."

Courage. She needed that now.

Elizabeth heard Ronnie groan.

"Ronnie, are you okay?"

"Unnh. Yeah. Head hurts. I'm all right. I'm going to kill that bastard."

"How did they get in?" Elizabeth took a deep breath through her mouth.

"I was watching the monitors. Next thing I knew there was a muzzle at the back of my neck. I never saw them or heard them coming. They beat the alarms somehow. NSA bullshit."

Elizabeth took another breath through her mouth. "Dysart has to kill us. We've got to figure this out, and fast. I wonder if he knows about the tunnel?"

"Doesn't help unless we can get free."

Stone fireplaces took up each end of the basement, big enough to stand in and wide enough for eight foot logs. In the days before central heating they had warmed the house above. The concealed escape tunnel began behind the back wall of the fireplace at the far end. On the other side of that wall were weapons and a straight route out of the safe house. It might as well have been in China for all the good it did them.

"How long you think we've got before they come down and start asking questions?"

"I don't know, Ronnie." Elizabeth spit blood. The flow from her nose had slowed to a trickle. She coughed, gasped for air.

"Your nose looks broken." Selena looked over at Elizabeth. "The bleeding's almost stopped."

"When is Nick due back?" Elizabeth breathed through her mouth.

"He didn't say." Ronnie twisted in his restraints, but it was no use. "I hope it's soon."

They waited for their executioners.