Chapter 11 Busted, Broken?, Abused and Used
BUSTED
Lena initially could not believe what she had heard.
"You are arresting me, Lewis."
"Yep, for violating the Free American States under God confederation law against transporting a woman across state lines for immoral purposes. The old United States Mann Act was enacted by the Free States in its original form to cover transportation of both adult and minor females and has been interpreted to cover women who transport themselves for immoral purposes. You will recall that you flew to Oregon, drove from Oregon to Wyoming, from Wyoming to Montana and then back to Wyoming intending to commit adultery in Oregon, Wyoming, Montana and Wyoming."
"You have got to be kidding."
"Miranda warnings are not required in the Free States as a result of a decision by the Free States Constitutional Convention not to adopt the Fifth Amendment of the old U.S. Constitution and the decision of the Free States Supreme Court not to incorporate Miranda v. Arizona into Free States law. Therefore, instead of advising you of your right to remain silent, I will tell you that your future is not what you thought it would be, but it will only get worse or end soon if you don't follow orders now and shut the fuck up.
"There, down the road, I can see the vans of the lynch mob driving here. I gather it is an alliance of religious extremists that want to stone you to death and Klansmen and Brown shirt types who merely want to gang rape you and drown you in the river.
"You will have to pardon me while I go down to my car and get more firearms. In the meantime, keep your head down just on the river side of the levee and don't dream of getting away on foot. There is zero chance of getting away and a very good chance of getting killed. Oh, and don't slip down into the river here either. The river is really deep at this point and has a strong current because of the levees and control structures in the Lower Mississippi.
Huddling behind the levee out of sight, Lena heard a sporadic gunfight for the next forty minutes. She wished she could have watched but followed orders.
As it happened, while the lynch mob had nine gunmen, the nine had little training. They shot a lot and hit nothing. Killer, a highly trained soldier and sniper, could have killed half of the mob if he'd wanted, but he instead focused on taking out the mob's car tires so they could not travel after them and shooting flags and hats to embarrass the Stoners and Brownshirts.
Eventually, Lena and Killer heard a loud horn sound from the river, and several of Killer's fellow confederation agents lowered a bridge to the shore, ran out with rifles and joined Killer in firing shots calculated to show the mob that they would all be dead if the central government agents began shooting to kill. Shortly after, one of the agents shouted through a bullhorn that if the mob tried to climb the levee, they would be promptly shot to shit. The mob members decided that discretion was the better part of valor.
Killer, the other agents and Lena were soon on the boat crossing the Father of Waters to Arkansas. Too late to arrest Lena himself, Sheriff Connor Tauro and his deputies arrived from their effort to find Lena in the resort in time to tell the lynch mob to forget about trying to drive north to the nearest bridge to try to catch up with Lena in Arkansas and to go back home after getting their tires fixed.
On the Arkansas shore, Max Klug and his wife Zoe were waiting in another black Dixieland Security SUV designed to carry prisoners. Lena was handcuffed and tossed in the back seat as the SUV started for Little Rock.
Killer waved bye. He took the boat back across the river to get the SUV he had left there.
It was a very long drive to Little Rock. Lena had so many things racing through her mind. The man she thought she loved had just arrested her. She had not gotten the data from Deputy Seele that she wanted to use to expose the sheriffs and help women illegally confined on sex boats. There was a chance she might be brutally killed and a likelihood that she would spend her next 20 years or more as a breeding sex slave on a boat on or near the Mississippi, Missouri, or the Gulf of Mexico.
Lena often had missed seeing her parents for Christmas but felt overwhelmed with the reality that she might not ever see them again.
In a self-punishing stream of consciousness, Lena went over and over in her mind everything she had done wrong and wondered if there was any way to kill herself if they put her on one of those strict bondage boats where the women were used as living sex toys. She wondered if the other boats were all that much better. She cursed herself a thousand times. How could she be so stupid? The brilliant Lena Fesch got turned into a sex slave because she trusted a man she thought loved her? Was not this the plot for thousands of stories about poor girls from Romania and Bulgaria who did not know any better because they had a fraction the knowledge and experience as Lena?
Just how could she be so stupid? What else could she have done? Was there some death wish she had or a secret wish to be free from freedom? Just what could she do to keep the rest of her life, however long that went, from being a sex worker version of a "Day in the Life of Ivan Desinovich."
Finally, she had to wonder whether, somewhere in her mind, she was suicidal or wanted to be a breeding sex slave. She was 35. Maybe her biological clock had hit her in a completely outrageous manner and forgotten to tell her rational mind about it? Maybe she had always wanted to be a breeding sex toy? No, that's ridiculous.