This is for all the people who so faithfully read this series of mine on my other account ChinaDolly. Here is again, with slight differences and a promises of continuuation.
Priozersk, Russia
02 January 2012
06:30
Day 4
"Keep running little soldier, this hide and seek game cannot carry on forever." His cruel voice danced through the air like some sort of twisted waltz she had stumbled upon without any notice that there had been a party that night. She had known that there would be no chance of escape the moment she had stepped foot from the encampment without a weapon, and wearing nothing save the uniform she had been captured in. She wore her black bandana over her nose and mouth, hoping to stifle the smoky fog that drifted up into the air as she ran through the cold Russian winter night. He would find her...eventually...but the fact remained that whenever He did find her, He would realize that she was not some simpleton woman who would quietly sit and wait for Him to butcher her as He had all of her men before her eyes.
Major Emily O'Brian felt her stomach roll painfully at the thought of the men. Her men. They had been hard pressed enough to follow a woman into the notorious drug Lord's territory, much less follow her off of the plane into the heart of the Russian wilderness, and now every one of them was gone. They had followed her all right, right into the lion's den and to their deaths. Jason's face floated through her mind as she ran through the tree's. Jason...He had been in his late forties, and a veteran of only God knew how many wars. He had never thought the young major was capable of handling such a mission...and nor had she. She had been deployed to Kuwait a few times...but nothing combat related. She had promised his wife and children before she had left that she would get Jason home safely, as she had promised all of the wives and children of the men. It didn't matter now...He had been trying to say something before he died, and this something was probably the only reason she had been allowed to live two days longer than her soldiers.
"Go southwest...Vyborg...find Vitya Mihailov, safehouse...set up...sorry..." Jason did not say anything more before one of the Russian men twisted the large knife deeper into his heart, an act which caused the man's own death a few moments later when his Commander realized Jason had been whispering something to Major Tyler.
"Stop it." She warned herself quietly, as she slowed to a walk. "If I'm going to die, why not make it fun?" She asked herself, knowing that she could not very well do that if she let Jason's face plague her thoughts much longer. It would all be over soon anyway. She lifted her gaze up to the trees, sighing when she realized the leafless, skinny branches offered no sanctuary for her during a winter like this. Ever the forest was an enemy to her here.
"Come out, come out wherever you are." That thick Russian accent called from somewhere in the distance.
"Fuck you asshole." Emily snapped under her breath. She scanned the area and noticed what looked to be a river a few hundred yards in front of her. Iced over and covered with snow...and extremely out in the open. "He probably thinks I'll follow the river..." Emily thought to herself, "No dumbass, he's following your tracks in the snow. Cross the river. He's going to catch up eventually, don't make it so easy." This was true. He and his men from the sounds of it were on snow machines, perhaps with the weight...
"Whatever." She sighed and made a break for the river. It seemed stable enough, even with the few sickening cracking noises as she ran across it. She could not remember crossing the river as they had made their way to the camp...she could not even remember where they had each landed after jumping from the C-130. "Fuck, fuck fuck fuck fuck." She cursed, tripping away from the river and into the woods on the other side. What exactly it was that had ever possessed her to stop for even a second and look back across the river, she would never be quite sure of, but stop she did. There He was, standing there on the other side of the river, somehow still as clean cut and sickeningly handsome as if He had not just spent six hours gallivanting through the woods after some 5'2 skinny little Irish girl. The sneer that crossed His face as their eyes met knotted her stomach with a fear Emily believed only He would ever be able to instill in her, whether she chose to acknowledge it or not.
"This could all be easy, Major." He called, with the same deceitfully soothing voice He had used for hours as He had personally come up with every creative way in the book to torture Jason's words from her lips. "All you have to do is tell me what he said...That is it! When you do that I will personally deliver you to your embassy. You will be received by your government as a hero! Come to me of your own accord and you have my word I will not throw you to my men like the used up whore that you are." His hand was outstretched in her direction...and for a brief second, Emily battled with the idea of His promise. She could go home...For a moment it all sounded so wonderful...Emily made sure his eyes...those chilling, cruel eyes, were glued to hers as she lifted her middle finger and let the naughtiest smirk she could summon pass over her face before she yelled, "Potselui mou zhopy..Motherfucker!" She disappeared into the woods after that, but not before she could hear the engines of the snow machines flare to life and a violent, masculine voice holler, "Nu vse, tebe pizda!"
"That's it, your dead." Emily translated to herself with a very near maniacal giggle that would have disturbed the general public any other day...but this day, she didn't care. She kept running...and she would keep running as fast as her legs would carry her, until the very moment that they were right behind her. The moment, where she guessed He had jumped from his own vehicle and knocked her hard in the back of the head with something very blunt...his gun. "Fuck...he didn't kill me." Was her last thought as she tumbled forward into the blanket of freezing Russian snow...and into an all encompassing and unforgiving blackness.
Emily felt the cold before she felt anything else and for a brief moment, for a few blissful seconds, she thought she was dead. It was when those seconds passed that the familiar smell of sulfur mixed with the musty scent of the commander's tent reached her nostrils. Moments after that, a sharp pain split mercilessly into her skull where, what she figured had to have been His pistol, had connected with the back of her head. "Fuck." She thought groggily to herself, and began the painful task of forcing her eyes open.
In any other situation, in any other place and time, she might have laughed when she realized the drug Lord had decided to tie her securely to a chair this time, but at that moment, it took all that she had not to let the ever growing fear in her mind consume her.
The tent was pitch black around her, and if the pain hadn't been there to remind her that her eyes were actually open, she would have been hard pressed to believe that they were. She hated the dark...even more now so then before. The faces of her men floated before her eyes even as she struggled to figure out a way to loosen her wrists, which had been securely and expertly tied to either arm of the uncomfortable metal chair she was seated in. It was hopeless...and she knew he would have taken extra precautions to make sure she did not cause him any more inconvenience. Emily sighed, forcing herself to accept the fact that she was now completely and utterly alone. "Just get him to kill you quick..." She thought to herself. "Please God...let him kill me...let him...."
Her stomach gave a violent and painful twist when a soft, cold, and amused chuckle came from somewhere in the darkness around her.
"Poor little Emily..." He said softly, his voice seeming to come from the darkness itself.