Perhaps guarding another room or a cell?
Could Greer be in there?
I take one last lingering look over the feeds, and finally say into my mobile hookup with Dozer and Bebe, “That hallway. That’s where she has to be.”
“I’m looking at the building plans,” Bebe says. I have the same plans on my computer, but I don’t want to exit from the camera feeds, so I rely on her. After a few seconds, she says, “Yes… I don’t see any other place she’d be other than that hallway or Mejia’s office. His office is on the main level, but that room where he’s at now—I think it’s in the basement as well.”
“Please tell me the door on the west side is the best way in,” I plead with her as she peruses the plans on her computer. “There’s only one guard there, and that will be my easiest point of entry.”
I could go in guns blazing through the front, use explosives and create a catastrophe, but I’d rather go in stealth.
“There’s a stairwell about twenty feet from that door,” Bebe says, and I sigh in relief.
“Do you have control over the lights?” I ask.
Bebe snorts. “Please… do you think I’m an amateur?”
No, I know she’s not. She’s the best. “Give me five minutes to make it back to the north side of the property. I’m going to cut through the chain-link and take out that guard. I’ll tell you when to cut the lights.”
“Got it,” she replies, and I can hear her fingers once again tapping her keyboard.
“Good luck, brother,” Dozer says. “We’ll be listening the entire time and will do what we can on our end.”
“Thanks, man,” I reply and close the laptop. I’m not going to need it.
I rearrange what I need in my backpack, recheck my pistol, and sling the bow and quiver over my shoulder. I nab the night vision goggles and pull them down to hang around my neck for later use.
It’s go time.
CHAPTER 4
Greer
It wasn’t the sound of heavy-booted feet coming down the hallway that caused my heart to hammer in fear. It was the look of sympathy the guard leveled my way before he turned and walked in the opposite direction. If one of Mejia’s trusted guards feels sorry for what is coming, whatever’s coming is going to be bad.
Time’s up.
Mejia is going to get his information one way or the other.
At least that’s his confident theory.
As for how I feel about the matter, there’s no way I’m going to give up the location of the intel I stole. I’m never going to give Mejia the satisfaction of taking it back, especially if I lose my life over this.
I try to console myself with the fact that the USB drive could still be found by my compatriots. The drive has a built-in tracker that will start pinging within forty-eight hours. I might be dead, but the information will make it into the appropriate hands, and Mejia will be taken down. It will be my revenge from the grave for what they are about to do to me.
Mejia appears on the other side of the bars. He looks grim but determined. Four more men stand behind him, including the large guy who cut off my pants earlier. I try not to let it intimidate me, but all four men look savage. There’s no doubt in my mind Mejia called in the worst of the worst of the worst, those who would have no hesitation in violating a woman as a means of torture.
Mejia smiles at me confidently. He believes he’s going to win this battle.
It sucks… because my torture is going to be long, slow, and brutal. I’m not going to give up the information from gang rape. It’s going to shred my soul and probably my body, but it won’t make me talk. When I continue to maintain my silence, they’ll turn to other methods. It could be burning, cutting pieces off my body, or if they’re privy to the tried-and-true torture techniques, they’ll cane the bottom of my feet. I actually know what that feels like because I took a course on how to withstand torture, and each of the students had to experience a caning. Granted, we only got a couple of whacks whereas real torture would be extended, but I had enough to know I don’t want to experience it ever again.
I try not to forget the golden lesson they taught at that course: It’s okay to break. Everyone does sooner or later. But you should try to withstand for as long as possible to allow time for a rescue attempt. All I can hope for now is that CIA agents are on their way. They’ll know that when I missed my ex-filtration rendezvous, I was either dead or taken. They’ll make efforts to figure it out.
Mejia unlocks the door and pulls it open. The groaning creak sounds more ominous than ever, causing the hair on the back of my neck to stand on end. He doesn’t enter, though, stepping aside to let the four gang members walk in, creating a semicircle around me. Two are at my back. I can’t see them, but I think the attack will start there.
I’m not ready for this. I talk a big game, but I’m also scared… so scared, in fact, I’m afraid I might vomit. The only thing I can do is try to delay the inevitable.
I laser my eyes on Mejia and sneer in Spanish, “Aren’t you man enough to do this yourself? Having a hard time getting it up?”
Rather than be offended, Mejia shakes his head with a sad smile. “Señorita… I am a family man. My heart belongs to my wife, and I would never betray her that way.”
Damn if the man doesn’t sound sincere. I hate when the villains have some shred of decency within.
But I don’t let it go. I appraise him with my eyes slowly roving over his person with disdain. “Oh yeah… you can’t get it up. I bet your wife is frustrated with you. Hell, I bet she’s even banging the pool boy as we speak.”
That does the trick and Mejia’s face flushes, his teeth bared. He stomps into the cell, cocks his hand, and lets it fly. When his palm connects with my face, I taste blood where my teeth shred the inside of my cheek. My eyes water from the pain.
But I don’t show fear, nor do I cower. I slowly turn my head to glare at him. “Is that all you got? Because you’re not convincing me that you don’t have a limp dick.”
I had hoped my goading would anger him to the point that Mejia would just kill me. The best way to anger a man is to question his virility. But he’s too wise to fall for my taunts and too patient to reach the end goal of learning where I dumped his stolen property.
He nods at the thug to my right. “Jorge… as the senior man, you get to go first. Enjoy.”
A lightning bolt of fear hits me dead center, causing my nerves to sizzle and my head to swim. I know I’m moments away from being violated in a way that has never happened to me before. I’ve been through a lot of shit during my career as a CIA agent, but I’ve never had my sex as a female used against me. I try to shut my brain down, hoping I’ll be able to turn off what’s about to happen and crawl inside a safe place so none of this touches my soul.
Mejia leaves the cell but doesn’t shut the door. He has no need to lock me in and doesn’t look backward. The man named Jorge moves before me and grins with yellowed teeth. He has three dots tattooed on his right cheek, another symbol for Vecindario 18. He puts his face close to mine and snarls in Spanish, which sounds so much more menacing than English, “I’m going to tear you up inside.”