Annabel Lee Read online

  Trudi

  Trudi felt herself take a deep breath and hold it. She was ready.

  She reached across her body and slid the key into the last dead bolt, twitching it into the unlocked position. A moment later the handle turned from the outside, and the door began to swing inside the bunker. Trudi hoped that Samuel would be smart enough to get out of the way quickly, but after the door was open, nothing happened. No one entered.

  Trudi was beginning to regret that she was holding her breath.

  She heard several feet shuffle, then Samuel’s voice.

  “Well, are we going in or what?”

  “Quiet,” another voice said, and she heard Samuel grunt. A blow to the ribs, she figured. She heard a radio frequency click open. “We’ve found the girl,” the voice said. “Underground bunker.”

  Trudi looked across the room and saw Annabel peeking out from the doorway in the wall, staring straight at the entrance to the bunker.

  “On the way,” another voice answered through the radio.

  Trudi couldn’t place the accents. Were they German? She couldn’t tell. She split her lips and tried to let air slide silently out between her teeth. Come on, come on, she fretted.

  As if in response, Samuel stepped into the room. She saw his eyes catch sight of her in his periphery vision, but he didn’t react.

  “Come on in, fellas,” he said jovially. “You afraid of a little girl or something?” He winked toward Annabel. Trudi saw that his hands were bound with a zip tie in front of him and that he was no longer wearing his jacket. Worse yet, the holster strapped to his side was empty.

  So he’d been ambushed on the way to find The Mute. But what had happened to The Mute? A question for Future Trudi. Right now she had other things to worry about.

  Samuel turned around and faced the doorway. He reached up and scratched his nose with two fingers.

  Two bad guys, Trudi thought. Thanks for the tip, Samuel.

  Samuel stepped backward as the first bad guy entered the bunker, drawing his attention away from where Trudi stood hidden beside the door. She was going to steal a page from Samir’s playbook, but she needed to wait until the second goon entered.

  The guy holding the gun on Samuel was thick and athletic. He wore a black military outfit that featured several weapons attached in various places and a radio Velcroed to the shoulder. His hair was dirty blond and short, cropped so close to his head it was almost nonexistent. His eyes surveyed the main room of the bunker but gratefully failed to check behind his back where Trudi hid.

  The second goon was dressed similarly, but his hair was brown and fell down just over his ears. This was the man Trudi accosted.

  When the brown-haired goon was two steps into the room, Trudi stepped forward and pressed the muzzle of her Beretta Tomcat into the top of his spine, just where it entered the base of his skull. She also delivered a sharp blow into the man’s left kidney at the same time, making sure her gun followed, and was felt, as he sank down in his boots.

  “I’d keep still if I were you,” she said. The man started to turn, so she cracked the meat of her pistol across the base of his skull. This time he sank to one knee and kept still.

  The blond goon swung around at the sound of Trudi’s commotion, and when he did, Samuel struck, sweeping his manacled fists into a double-barreled uppercut that landed squarely under Blondie’s chin. The goon’s eyes rolled up into his head and he crumpled to the floor.

  “One shot and he’s out?” Trudi said admiringly. “You been working out, Samuel?”

  Samuel ignored the comment, but Trudi could see his eyes twinkle at the compliment.

  “You won’t succeed,” the brown-haired goon said through a thick tongue. “We are many.”

  Samuel ignored him too. Instead he beckoned to the girl peering into the room.

  “Annabel,” he said. “You did great. Now, do you have a knife or something to cut me loose?”

  “You should give up now,” Brown Head said. “You—”

  He didn’t finish because Trudi smacked him in the skull with her gun again. “Thought I told you to keep still,” she said. “That includes talking.” The goon fell silent.

  It took only seconds for Annabel to cut Samuel’s bonds. It took a little longer to prevent the dog from biting into the flesh of Brown Head and Blondie.

  “They ambushed me about halfway out,” Samuel said, retrieving his Glock 36 from the now-groggy blond goon. Once he’d reholstered his gun, he also relieved the two goons of their weaponry. “They said they had mercenaries surrounding Truck’s farm on all sides, and then they brought me back here. When they saw the opening to the tunnel, they forced me down here.”

  “He called for backup,” Trudi said. “That means it’s time for us to go.”

  “Gonna have to keep them from following us,” Samuel said. He picked up one of the mercenaries and shoved him roughly toward the bunk beds. A moment later Blondie’s hands were zip-tied around a wooden beam on the beds. Brown Head was quickly subdued in the same way.

  “What about the guns?” Trudi asked. “Too many to take with us. But we can’t leave them here either. They could be used against us later.”

  “I know what to do,” Annabel said, jumping into motion. She loaded the weapons into her arms and disappeared into one of the openings in the wall. They heard the clatter of machinery, and then Annabel returned.

  “Tossed ’em down the sewer,” she said. “Gone.”

  Trudi was really beginning to like this kid.

  Samuel turned to Brown Head. “How close are your buddies out there?” he said. “And how many?”

  Brown Head sneered. “Eat worms and die,” he said.

  Samuel laughed out loud. “Wow, do you watch old movies or something? Keep working on it, bro. You’ll come up with something better next time.”

  Brown Head braced for a blow, but Samuel just patted him on the head. “Kids say the darndest things, don’t they, Trudi?”

  Even Annabel chuckled at that. Trudi holstered her Beretta and tapped her watch. “Time to go, Sam.”

  He looked at the dog and then at the girl.

  “What do you think, Annabel?”

  “I think I can handle him,” she said. Samuel nodded. Annabel turned to the dog and said one word. “Geht!” She motioned toward the open doorway.

  The animal shuffled up beside her, nudged her with his nose as if to say, “Okay, but you come too,” then he bolted down the tunnel. He was out of sight before they could breathe.

  “How far do you think he’ll go?” Trudi said, and she saw Annabel’s face go white.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then let’s go find out,” Samuel said.

  The man and the girl started on a trot after the dog. Trudi paused long enough to pull the heavy steel door closed, then she followed. When she got to the end of the tunnel, she found Samuel and Annabel standing on the steps just under topside. The dog was nowhere to be seen. She gave a questioning look at Annabel.

  “Gone,” she whispered. “Somewhere out there.” She pointed to the hole above her.

  “Why aren’t we out there?” Trudi asked Samuel.

  “A guy with a gun is out there.”

  “Did he see you?”

  “Don’t think so. He showed up about thirty seconds after the dog ran out and was gone. He’s right above us now. Looks like he’s waitin’ for some friends to join him.”

  Trudi leaned up close to the tunnel entrance, peering above her. Then, before Samuel could say or do anything, she leapt out the hole and into daylight.

  The mercenary was caught completely unaware. He fumbled for his gun, but Trudi was too fast and too precise. She slammed her shoulder into his chin and tackled him like a linebacker blitzing a quarterback. He was dazed but not out. She rolled off his body and readied a side kick for his throat. But now she was too slow. Before she could let fly, Samuel was there, pressing a knee into the chest of the mercenary and hammering him with fists to the face. The man went
limp.

  “All right, let’s go,” Trudi said breathlessly. “Annabel,” she called. “Let’s go.”

  The girl was by her side in an instant. Samuel, meanwhile, was binding the mercenary with a zip tie.

  “He was facing the south,” Samuel said to nobody in particular.

  “So what? Let’s go, Samuel. No time to waste.”

  “That means the rest of the mercenaries are coming from that direction.”

  “Good. We’ll be running the opposite way.”

  Samuel shook his head. He pointed toward a Kawasaki ATV parked a few feet away.

  “They’re on all-terrain vehicles. If they’re as close as I think they are, they’ll catch us before we’re a mile away.”

  “Then let’s get going.”

  “No.” Samuel hefted the limp mercenary up and dropped him heavily on the ATV. The man groaned but didn’t fight.

  “What are you doing, Samuel?”

  Trudi’s ex-husband grinned, and in his face she saw a ten-year-old boy playing war games in the backyard. His eyes were bright, his body taut and excited. This was his playground; she knew it. This was why he’d stuck with Truck and the CIA for so long. It wasn’t simply money or loyalty. This man enjoyed it. He enjoyed the strategy, the tactics, even the fisticuffs and gunplay. Something about being so close to death made him feel fully alive. It was a rush Trudi would never understand and something she could never compete with.

  “You two start running.” He pointed northwest into the tree line. “Get to The Mute at the rendezvous point and get out. I’ll take Junior here and lead the other mercenaries on a wild goose chase.”

  “Samuel.”

  “Done it a million times, honey.” He clapped his hands in anticipation. “In lots of worse places than this. When the mercs show up, I’ll get their attention, then take off on the ATV. If they get close, I’ll dump Junior off the side. They’ll stop to pick him up, and when they do, I’ll ditch the ATV and hide in the forest. I can last for days in there. Easy as pie.”

  “Samuel.”

  He leaned close to Trudi until their lips almost touched. “I know,” he said softly. “I love you too. But you’ve got to go.”

  Trudi searched his eyes, smelled his skin, willing herself to remember his face. She completed the distance between them and brushed her lips quickly across his.

  “Okay,” she said. She turned to Annabel. “All right, sweetie. You feel like going for a jog with your Aunty Trudi?”

  36

  Annabel

  “Mercenaries,” Trudi grunts to nobody. “I hate mercenaries.”

  We’d only been runnin’ a short time before they caught us. When we left Samuel Hill, he was trussing up a soldier and getting ready to cause some manner of mischievous distraction. Trudi grabbed my hand and pulled me into the forest, setting a steady, jogging pace, watching me closely to see how I could keep up. But I’m a country girl. Runnin’ comes natural to me. It makes me feel clean and strong.

  Pretty soon she picked up the pace and we both settled into a good run. Behind us I heard shoutin’ and figured Samuel was doing his job. Ahead of us was nothing but burnt-over trees and grasses, with open spaces sprinkled here and there along the way.

  I’d guess it was about a mile away that the mercenaries caught up with us. We was just entering into a jagged space underneath the tree cover, almost like if someone plowed a short field into the shape of a lightning bolt and surrounded it with oaks. Trudi paused long enough to get her bearings, to make sure we was still headed the right way. Then just when we started up runnin’ again, she saw the soldier pop out from behind a tree.

  “Mercenaries,” Trudi said to the ground. “I hate mercenaries.”

  “Hands behind your heads!” the bad guy shouts at us now.

  Trudi stands tall and places her palms behind her head in surrender, so I copy what she’s doing. The mercenary is wearing all black, with a police-style radio Velcroed to his left shoulder. He pauses to grumble something into that radio.

  “Annabel, honey,” Trudi says to me through clenched teeth, “I have to kick this guy into dreamland. When that happens, I want you to run behind him and use one of those big tree trunks to hide until I’m finished. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I whisper back. She seems unafraid, like it’s no big deal to face down a bad guy with a gun. I figure I should at least act like I’m not scared, just to keep up.

  The mercenary steps toward us, his gun aimed at Trudi’s midsection. “On your knees,” he orders. Trudi looks confused. She leans her head in his direction like she couldn’t quite make out what he just said. He steps closer. Now he’s just a few feet away, so close I can smell the sweat under his arms and see the red streaks in his irritated eyes.

  “On your knees!” he says again. But he’s too late.

  Trudi moves so fast it takes me a full second to react, then to run away from the fray. I can’t take my eyes off her, it’s like she’s runnin’ a clinic on butt-kicking and I want to be sure to catch everything she does.

  First Trudi lashes out with her left hand, gripping the inside wrist of the mercenary’s gun hand and twirling like a dancer into his body. A shot fires, but it spits harmless into the space she’s just emptied. He tries to club at her with his left hand, but she ignores it like it’s nothing. Instead she presses her back against his chest and pulls his right arm into a mock embrace around her. He grunts like she’s just dislocated his shoulder. Maybe she has.

  In a heartbeat she’s got both hands on him, sliding her left hand to cover the butt of the gun while her right hand wraps like a snake just below his wrist. Then in a blink, she smashes the soldier’s wrist down, hard, against her upraised knee. It makes me flinch. Even from where I’m standing, I can hear the crack of bone breaking.

  The man screams like an animal. He claws toward Trudi’s neck and face with his good hand. The gun flies toward the ground while his broken hand hangs limp at the edge of his arm. It looks a little like an unstrung yo-yo, dangling and spinning in the air.

  Now Trudi wings an elbow behind her ear and into the man-animal’s temple.

  He staggers backward as she turns to face him. Her eyes are narrowed, her body’s taut and ready to spring. A roundhouse kick, up, then arcing through the air with increasing momentum until her boot connects with the mercenary’s jaw. No one’s screaming or shouting now. We’re all just waiting for the final blow to land. It’s almost like slow motion TV with the sound turned way low. The man collapses like a game of Jenga, falling limp, facedown into the burned and broken muck that covers the ground.

  He tries to roll toward his lost gun, but it’s a feeble, childish effort. Trudi stabs the heel of her boot into his temple, and he goes still.

  There’s nothing then, no sound but panting, no motion but Trudi leaning down, hands on her knees, to catch her breath and make sure it’s over. Slowly, without taking her eyes off the broken man, she steps to the side and rescues his gun from the underbrush.

  I’m mesmerized by this woman, by her courage and skill and intensity. So much that I don’t even hear the other man comin’ up behind me.

  I got no idea he’s there until he yanks my head backward by the hair and rubs the nub of a pistol too deeply into my right ear. He pulls on me so hard it almost raises me to my tiptoes. Then I smell sour breath as he growls into my left ear.

  “Scream.”

  I try to swallow, to speak, but nothing comes out.

  He pulls tighter, and I feel the sting of several hairs popping roots out of my skull.

  “Scream,” he says angrily. He shakes me like a rag doll. “Scream now.”

  And so I let loose my lungs. It comes out as a gargling yelp, sounds more like an inflated, high-pitched moan than a real scream. But it’s enough.

  Trudi’s head snaps in my direction, eyes flecked with steam, like a big cat ready to pounce.

  The man drags me forward, gun still in my ear. I feel his joy in this moment. It practically shudders like sweat of
f his body. The smell of it sickens me.

  “Samir,” Trudi says. It’s a swear word in her language.

  “Very impressive,” Samir says, pulling more strands out of my scalp, nearly dangling me above the ground while I try to keep up by walking on my tiptoes. “For a girl.”

  Trudi grimaces. It’s almost like she’s more annoyed at this jerk’s sexism than she is at the fact he’s got a heavy firearm poking down the hollows of my head. She unrolls her arm and aims the barrel of her new gun at the head of the man on the ground.

  “Let her go,” she commands. “Let her go or your buddy here finally gets to meet God. I’m guessing it won’t be a happy reunion.”

  Samir grunts, something I think he meant as a laugh.

  “You think I care what happens to that pawn?” he says, still dragging me closer to where Trudi stands. I finally feel the pressure of his muzzle pull out of my ear, leaving the right side of my face stinging and a little hard of hearing.

  “Here,” he says matter-of-factly, “I’ll do the job for you.”

  He takes quick aim and fires once, twice, into the head and chest of his fallen comrade. I suddenly feel like throwing up but am able to swallow it down before it spews out of me. Trudi jumps backward, out of range, a shocked look on her face.

  “See?” Samir says. “You wouldn’t do it. I can tell. You’re a fighter but not a cold-blooded killer. So I did it for you. Now that’s finished and we can move on to more important things.”

  The hot barrel is back in my ear, making me whimper, burning at my skin.

  Trudi responds immediately, tossing her gun aside and placing her palms on the back of her head. “Let her go,” she says calmly. “You’re hurting her.”

  Samir looks absently at me, almost like he forgot I was there, like for the moment I was just another prop in his demented play.

  I see now that he looks out of place in this setting. He wears an expensive suit, dark blue, and is wearing fancy black loafers too. Strange shoe choice for runnin’ around in a forest, if you ask me. Maybe he didn’t expect to have to do dirty work today. His face is a little puffy, and I can see that he’s got traces left over from at least one black eye. A small bandage crosses the bridge of his nose. Lost a recent fight, maybe? Hard to tell. Whatever it was, he seems unaware that he still has a wound on his face. Like it don’t hurt or it never mattered. This worries my head a bit. Some men like pain, both in themselves and in others. I think that this guy might be that kind.