Annabel Lee Read online

  He drops me, casually, and shoves me forward.

  “On your knees,” he says to Trudi. She looks confused, acts like she don’t understand . . . but he’s not buying it. Not this time. He reaches for my hair again, and Trudi quickly complies.

  “Hands inside the front of your pants,” Samir commands. Then he shrugs. “I left my zip ties in the car.”

  Trudi grimaces. She shoves her palms into the front of her jeans.

  Samir is feeling good now, in control.

  “I know, I know. You can still use those hands if you need to, but you American harlots wear your pants so tight that it’ll take at least a second or two for you to get them all the way out. And you’d be amazed at what I can do with a one-second head start.”

  He takes a slow look at the surroundings, listening. He nods.

  “It won’t be long,” he says. “That inept fool did at least radio out for the others. They’ll be here soon. Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen at most. And they’ll have plenty of zip-tie handcuffs. Meanwhile . . .”

  He notices me again, looking at me with an expression that makes me feel like something less than human. Like a guinea pig or a rat in a lab. He shoves me, a palm-kick that feels like a punch on my shoulder. I stumble.

  “You,” he says to me, “facedown on the ground.”

  I look at Trudi and she nods, slightly, at me. She wants me to cooperate. For now.

  I lay on my stomach, and Samir steps on the back of my neck, shoving my face into the ashen ground. His voice echoes around my head.

  “You stay here, understand?” he purrs down at me. “If you move, first I kill her. Then I kill you, understand?”

  I want to nod, yes, I understand, but I can’t move my head with his foot on my neck. I can’t speak either. His weight presses down on me, making it difficult to breathe.

  “I kill you, understand?” he says again, emphasizing it with a shove of his heel.

  “She gets it, moron,” Trudi interrupts at last. “You don’t have to say ‘understand’ thirty times. She’s an educated girl.”

  Trudi winks at me, and I feel an unexpected flush of pride.

  “I get it, moron,” I echo, wiggling just enough to allow air back into my lungs. “Understand?”

  Trudi smiles with pleasure. Samir looks annoyed.

  He shoves at me again with his foot and then takes a step away, a step toward Trudi. He walks slowly over to her until he stands behind her, looking down at her.

  “You are feisty,” he says. “I like that.”

  “Bet you say that to all the girls,” Trudi quips. To me she rolls her eyes and says, “You believe this guy?”

  And now I get it. Samir isn’t just an enemy. He’s a bully. And the thing bullies hate is not being able to scare someone they’re trying hard to scare. So Trudi’s eggin’ him on, making it clear she ain’t afraid of him or anything he might do. Getting him flustered, waiting for him to make a mistake so she can make her move.

  I figure I should add my two cents.

  “No, I don’t believe this guy!” I say. “Whatever, right?”

  Even as I say it, I know it ain’t poetry. I ain’t never been great at trash talk, not like Figgy or Truck. They could talk smack like it was a natural-born tongue. But despite my deficiencies, my words have the right effect.

  Samir glowers at me, then turns his attention back to Trudi kneeling on the ground with her hands immobilized, dug deep into her jeans. He leans in close to her, whispers something I can’t make out, then he licks along her jawline and earlobe. It’s disgusting and creepy, and I know that’s what he meant it to be.

  Instead of cringing like I am, Trudi laughs out loud.

  “Is that supposed to be foreplay?” she says. “’Cause really, it just tickles.”

  He pushes her forward, angry, and now I have to admit I’m more than a little scared.

  He wraps his gun arm around her neck, pressing the butt of the pistol against her left cheek. Then, without warning, he kicks her in the spine, knocking her facedown onto the ground. She rolls onto her back, still keeping her hands stuffed into her pants. I can see she has ’em in tight fists down there now.

  She looks him dead in the eye and snorts like he just told a lame joke. His face looks inflamed with anger.

  “Seriously?” she mocks. “You think you’re the first psychopath ever to touch me? Clearly you’ve never met my ex-husband.”

  She laughs lightly, then nods in the direction of his bandaged nose.

  “Oh wait, you have met him. I almost forgot. He gave you that busted nose and a good long nap to boot.”

  Samir is nearly gone with fury now. I wonder how much more he’ll take before he snaps. I worry that Trudi’s gone too far, that maybe we won’t get out of this after all.

  He starts shouting at her, calling her all manner of nasty names, both in English and in Arabic.

  Still, she just grins.

  In a sudden motion, he skids forward onto one knee and jams the barrel of his gun into her mouth. She gags, and I can see even she didn’t expect this.

  “When I’m through with you,” he seethes, “you will beg me for—”

  The black and gray flashes by me so fast that at first I’m not sure what I’m seeing.

  My dog made no growls or barks to warn of his comin’. One moment we was alone with the psychopath. The next, Dog is here, tearing toward him with teeth bare and muscles rippling.

  Samir barely has time to pull the gun out of Trudi’s mouth before Dog is onto him, biting, chomping. Crushing.

  The man’s hand is captured first within the fangs of my dog, gun and all. Samir screams, screams, screams. Dog clenches his jaws tighter, resets, does it again.

  I can almost feel the bones in Samir’s hand splintering. Like sonic shock waves rippin’ at the air around me. The gun slides away, covered in saliva, and drops to the ground. Still my dog is yanking, slashing at the man’s hand, refusing to release the prize it now holds captive in its jaws.

  Samir tries to pull away, fails, and falls to the ground. Screaming. Cursing. Screaming again.

  Dog jerks his head hard to the right, and Samir’s eyelids flutter.

  Dog steps back, jaw still snapping in anger.

  There are fingers missing on Samir’s right hand.

  Four fingers gone. Only Samir’s bloodied thumb is left, bone gashing out through the thin layer of skin that keeps it attached.

  Trudi has regained her hands and rolled away from the fray. Even in her eyes, I see shock at the brutality of Dog’s attack. She stands frozen, eyes wide, unable to do anything but watch.

  Now Dog begins to growl. Samir is crying and moaning, begging for help, begging for mercy. My dog has none to give.

  Fast as a viper he charges again. Smart as an executioner, he targets what he must know from Truck’s training is a man’s most vulnerable spot. Samir doesn’t even scream when his manhood is crushed through his pants, when my dog grips and shakes that area so hard that, in spite of myself, I do throw up in the burnt grass in front of me. His eyes roll into the back of his head and the beast of a man goes limp like a torn pillow.

  I wonder if he may be dead. He don’t move, don’t even twitch.

  Dog worries the body some more, treating it like a brutal play toy, sinking teeth into this spot, then that one, dragging the body to the left and then the right.

  “Call him off,” Trudi croaks toward me at last. “Call him off, Annabel. Stop him.”

  Yes. It’s over. It’s more than over.

  “Aufhören!”

  I try to say, “Cease!” but my throat is too dry and sore. It comes out as “Afghn.” I swallow once, twice, and try again.

  “Aufhören!” I say.

  Dog pauses, Samir’s left hand now locked in his jaws. Dog looks at my eyes.

  “Aufhören!” I say again, willing myself to be this dog’s master, his prōtos.

  Dog drops the psychopath’s hand.

  “Lass es.” Leave it.

 
Dog steps away, back from the body. He’s panting. There’s blood in his teeth, on his tongue, already matting in his fur. The sickly stench of copper and bone cakes his nostrils, fills the oxygen in my breath, hovers in the pink-tinged air that surrounds us all.

  Dog trots around the carnage and comes to where I am now kneeling in the burnt grass. He sits beside me, panting, licking, working to get the bits of flesh and taste of blood out of his mouth. Other than the licking, he’s still and docile, a killer completely in my control.

  Trudi follows the dog with her eyes until she looks at me. There’s true horror in her face. And relief. She says nothing.

  “I’m . . . I’m sorry,” I say at last. “He was just protecting . . . Dog was . . .”

  Trudi stands straight and stares deep into my eyes. She looks strong again, composed.

  “Don’t apologize, Annabel,” she says grimly. “For anything. That dog of yours just saved both of our lives. Saved me from a brutal rape before being killed. Saved you from who knows what torture that evil man would think up. No, don’t apologize.”

  There’s silence between us, no sound except Dog, licking, licking, licking his teeth. Now it seems even he’s disgusted by the violent act, like he’s trying to clean away the awful deed.

  I try to hold it in, but I can’t any longer.

  I start to cry, hard, hurtful tears. I feel them draining all of me, and I know I’m crying because I’m scared, because what I just saw was awful in ways more than words. But I’m also crying for Truck, for the man who scared me so much and loved me so much more. For my uncle who taught me, protected me, and even trained a dog to eat human flesh for me. It’s more than I can take, I think—or am I praying? More than anyone should have to take. The tears burn me, inside my eyes and outside on my skin. I can’t stop trembling. I can’t find air to breathe, like I’m gonna suffocate, like I might be drowning and there’s no one to save me. No one.

  And then I feel her arms, her strength. She wraps me, holds me tight, spends herself to cover me and bring me back to sanity. I see that she’s crying too, crying like me, crying with fierceness and anger and sorrow. Holding me, holding me. Saving me.

  We stay like this for what feels like a long time. And then, as quickly as it started, it’s over. She feels my body relax; she knows the time is done. She gently releases me, puts her hands on my shoulders, and looks at my face. And her face softens from sorrow into something sad but less severe.

  “Sheesh,” she says at last, “do I look as bad as you do?”

  I laugh in spite of myself. “Yeah,” I say. I wipe wetness from her face. She pushes hair out of my eyes. “No,” I say after a moment, “you look worse.”

  She snorts and gives me a playful shove.

  “It’s okay, Annabel,” she says. “We’re going to be okay.”

  I nod. We both look at the world around us, a world that’s changed forever, a world that lives and dies in colors more real than they were just one hour ago.

  “What do we do now?” I ask.

  She stands, and as she stands, we hear a pathetic groan. After all that awfulness, Samir, somehow, remains alive. Trudi looks his direction, pain in her lips and eyes.

  “Ten minutes ago I hated that man more than any other,” she says softly. “And now all I feel is pity for him. Pity and sadness.”

  She reaches behind her back and produces her gun. Somehow that Beretta kept its place inside the waistband pressed against the small of her back. I don’t know how, but I’m glad it did.

  “I guess even the worst of us deserve some measure of mercy,” she says, to herself more than to me.

  She walks to Samir, and he groans again, eyes unseeing, body unmoving. She raises her pistol and points it at his temple. One shot ends his misery. A second shot guarantees him that it’s over.

  I feel exhausted, like all of me has been pulled out of me. Then I remember.

  “Trudi,” I say, “he said there’d be more comin’.”

  She starts to swear, then stops herself, grimacing. She returns her pistol to its holster in the back of her waistband. She sits hard on the ground beside Samir. “I forgot that. I can’t believe I forgot that.”

  She looks around at the burnt-out forest, at the two dead men in the grass, then at me.

  “Annabel, honey,” she says, “I think it’s time for us to run again.”

  37

  The Mute

  The Mute saw the sun disappear on the horizon and realized too late that he’d left his night-vision goggles in his Jeep Wrangler. He wished for a full moon.

  He checked his watch. Clearly they’d all missed the rendezvous. He kept working methodically through the trees, targeting the direction he’d heard the gunshots come from. Twice he’d stopped, waited, unsure if there were mercenaries somewhere out of sight in the woods around him. Both times had proved to be false alarms, but they also reminded him of the necessity of caution. There were seven of them left, plus Samir Sadeq Hamza al-Sadr. He had to be careful none of those guys saw him before he saw them.

  He kept walking.

  Before long, he heard another gunshot. And a second shot soon after. It was closer this time, but north and east from where he was walking, behind and up from his current position. He gauged it was at least a mile away. Had he overshot? Walked right past them? Taken the wrong line to Truck’s farm and missed them completely? Or had they been pushed off course by the mercenaries, forced to go deeper into the woods than they should have gone?

  The Mute had no answers, and now he was split between two destinations. Should he follow the gunshots again, keep trying to find Trudi Coffey and Samuel Hill in these woods? Or should he make his way to the farm, try to find out if they’d been able to free the girl? What if the girl was now in the hands of the people firing the guns?

  He paused and knelt next to a thick, blackened stump of a tree, listening. In the branches above him, a woodpecker tap-tap-tapped against a massive tree trunk. He paid it no mind. He listened for human sounds, more gunshots, shouting, crisp, burnt grass crunching under running feet. There was nothing, only the forest hums of small animals and leaves crinkling in the wind. He looked to the south and felt drawn to Truck’s farm. But he’d already been there, and without the key, that was a dead end.

  He looked to the northwest and imagined what might be there. Coffey and Hill? The girl? Black-clad soldiers on ATVs?

  The easy choice would be to go to Truck’s farm, check out the situation, wait for Coffey and Hill there.

  He looked at the ring on his middle finger and knew he wouldn’t make the easy choice. No soldier would be left behind in this fight. Not Samuel Hill. Not Trudi Coffey. And definitely not Annabel Lee Truckson.

  Find your people in the forest first, he commanded himself. Then find your girl in the bunker. Bring them all out. Dead or alive.

  The forest was quiet around him, except for the scrape of a woodpecker’s bill across the bark of a tree. It might be slower going than it would have been with his night-vision goggles, but that would be okay. He was no stranger to the night or to the Conecuh National Forest.

  He reoriented his sense of direction to focus on the last place he’d heard gunshots. A mile, he decided. Go in a straight line this time. He shifted the weight of the SIG marksman rifle on his back and resumed walking.

  A pop registered in his ears, loud and insistent, as if that woodpecker had found a knot in its tree and wouldn’t rest until it turned the wood into powder. Then more scraping, followed by a tap-tap. Suddenly he froze and listened more intently.

  Woodpeckers don’t scrape against a tree, he said to himself. And they don’t know Morse code either.

  The Mute felt his blood chill. He rolled to the right and took cover behind the nearest tree of decent size. He listened.

  Tap, scrape. Tap-tap. Scrape scrape scrape. Scrape scrape scrape. Scrape, tap scrape.

  L-o-o-k.

  Tap-tap scrape. Tap, scrape scrape, tap.

  U-p.

  The Mut
e turned his head to the branches above him. A hand waved in the shadows, and he finally saw the “woodpecker” that was tapping a handgun against the tree trunk in Morse code. Samuel Hill was hidden in a dense thicket of partially burned tree limbs, crouching low and into the trunk, trying hard to get his attention.

  Now was not the time for questions. The Mute stood and started to come out from his hiding place until he saw Hill wave his arms and motion with his palms down.

  Hide.

  The Mute slid down onto his belly and unhooked his SIG rifle. He locked eyes with Samuel Hill and saw the CIA agent point his gun in a sideways direction.

  Over there.

  The Mute didn’t have to wait long. It was literally only seconds until the sound of an ATV registered in his ears, and only a moment after that when the vehicle came rolling into view. There was one black-clad soldier on the Kawasaki. Only one. He was moving slowly, following whatever signs he could read in the fading light.

  The Mute raised his rifle and took aim.

  Scrape scrape. Scrape scrape scrape.

  M-o? What did that mean?

  He looked toward Samuel Hill again and saw the man shaking his head. He tilted his gun away from the soldier on the ATV and raised three fingers.

  M-o. As in there’s mo’ of these guys a-comin’.

  The Mute let his rifle slide down. The soldier on the ATV sensed rather than heard the movement. He stopped and got off his vehicle, hand on his pistol, crouching and surveying the area around him. At that moment two more of the mercenaries came jogging into the area. It looked as if they just magically appeared. One minute there was no one, the next two men were standing between the trees about thirty feet away from where The Mute was hiding.

  Had he been in Samuel Hill’s perch, The Mute would have begun picking them off one by one like he did back at the rendezvous spot. But from this angle on the ground, success in that kind of strike would be hard to gain. He could get the first one, yes, but there were too many obstructions at ground level. The others could lose themselves before he’d get a second shot off, and then he’d be trapped here, unable to retreat without being seen—and killed.