Brian Mcgrory - Dead Line

A moment later, I heard the voice of the ringleader say, “Let’s go.”

I felt him lean into me as he said, “Same rules. You say a word, I’ll punch your face. You say a sentence, I’ll break your neck.”

At that rate, I assumed a paragraph would get me killed, so I stayed church quiet.

I heard a door shut hard somewhere to my right and in front. I heard an engine start. I assumed we were on some sort of small airplane, flying off to destinations unknown, though I could be fairly certain it wasn’t going to be anyplace I’d particularly want to be. I wanted to tell them that I didn’t bring a change of underwear, but again, wisdom and its accompanying silence prevailed.

A new voice called out from the front of the plane, “We’re set for departure.”

I heard the sounds of buckling around me, though no one bothered with mine. What the hell. I didn’t know how many of the morons from the car were actually on the plane with us, but I suspected I’d find out.

As I readied myself for the plane to begin rolling, the oddest sensation occurred instead. Rather than taxi, we lifted straight up in the air. We weren’t on an airplane at all, but a helicopter.

I’ve always wanted to take one of those chopper tours of Boston, seeing my hometown in all its grandeur from high above — the nooks, the crannies, the parks and the treetops, the relationships between streets and neighborhoods and rivers and harbors that you can never possibly appreciate when you’re literally in the thick of things. But I suppressed my desire to pull off my woolen mask, lest I encourage an immediate physical relationship with the ringleader’s fist or the pavement below.

We kept rising and rising, the whirl of the propeller overhead overriding what would have been a stifling silence. We leveled off at God-knows-what altitude, and then thrust forward for a place that I didn’t yet know.

It was like that for nearly twenty minutes, the helicopter swiping through the night air, occasionally bumping and grinding, dipping and rising and turning. Normally I might find myself getting airsick in these situations, but my body was on such high alert that I don’t think it had the capacity to feel much of anything at all.

Without fanfare, the copter finally slowed and hovered for a long moment, then began to descend, not straight down, but at a forward angle, gradually slipping toward the ground, lower and lower and lower. And then came a significant jolt, rocking the helicopter from one side to the other. Seconds later, the door flew open. I immediately smelled salt air, even through the hood. I heard what I suspect were the stairs thrust into place. Someone grabbed my arm. Evidently, the shared experience of the chopper ride didn’t lend itself to any sort of fraternity, because whoever it was threw me forward like a rag doll. I braced my arms out in front of me to try to cushion my fall. As I did, someone else grabbed me, squeezed my arms painfully hard and said, “Walk down the stairs. Now. Step. Step. Step.” I did what I was told until I found myself on the soft, cool ground. And I mean, on the ground.

When I got to the bottom, I heard the familiar voice of the ringleader say, “I’ve got ’em.” At the same time, I felt an arm come hard underneath mine and swing me violently around. I staggered and kept falling until I was rolling on the damp, muddy earth. I heard laughter, then I felt a shoe connect hard with my chin, and for the briefest of moments, aside from a ringing in my head, I felt nothing at all.

“Get the fuck up,” the ringleader said. I assumed he was talking to me. He repeated himself, less pleasantly the second time than the first, even if that didn’t seem possible. “Get the fuck up.”

I pawed at the dark expanse with my hands, reaching, groping, for anything that would help me in my struggle to stand. But there was nothing there, so when I got on my two feet, I staggered again, and one more time felt an arm swing under mine and fling me, and this time I went crashing into a hard, round surface, which I could only surmise was the solid trunk of an old tree.

While I was lying on the ground in a light fog, I heard another voice, strong but distant, yell, “Hey, cut the shit.” And I thought to myself, here we go again.

Then I heard the ringleader, my tormentor, say, “I’m just showing him who’s in control.”

The first voice, closer now, replied, “Keep your fucking hands off him.”

“Fuck off. He broke TJ’s nose.”

And then came the sound of fist into flesh. I grimaced, assuming it must be mine — the flesh, not the fist — but felt nothing other than relief. I heard it again, and again, along with a string of profanity, and a couple of other voices yelling out “Hey.” One guy said, “Let them go.”

I lifted the wool up over my eyes for the briefest of moments and saw two seriously enormous men rolling on the ground about ten yards away beating the living bejesus out of each other, punching and clawing and flailing and kicking. Two other men stood near them, unsure what to do.

I gazed around. I felt salty wind on my face, as if we were next to the ocean. We appeared to be on the edge of a thick grove of towering pine trees. It was dark, moonless, and right there and then, I knew if I slipped into the trees I could have easily escaped my captors, possibly made it to a main road, and flagged down a car to take me to safety. It was, by every measure, the instinctual thing to do. Probably the wise thing as well.

I lay on the ground, my mind running faster than my legs ever could, figuring, processing, playing the angles and the ramifications and the scenarios that would make up a very important future. One of the men in the fistfight screamed. The two onlookers jumped into the fray, and I was even freer than before to bolt into the night.

But something stopped me, and that something was news. Yes, if I ran, I might still make it to a phone to call in the Dan Harkins story, but there was too good a chance that these guys who had ferried me to this distant point had done so in the name of Toby Harkins, and despite the physical abuse, I wasn’t willing to walk away from the distinct chance that I was about to come face-to-face with America’s most wanted fugitive.

So I stood up. I pulled the wool back over my eyes, so to speak. And I waited. Maybe I’m an assholic moron. Maybe I was about to be killed. But I couldn’t bring myself to run from even the slightest potential of information this good.

Five minutes later, the fight receded into a kind of “Fuck you,” “No, fuck you,” volley. I eventually felt a hand grab my elbow, and heard the voice of the new man say, “Come with me. Don’t try anything funny.”

We walked for about three minutes, across what felt like a grass and dirt path covered with leaves and twigs that crunched underfoot. The crickets continued to chirp. The air was filled with the scent of fresh pine. I was filled more with curiosity at that point than fear.

He tugged at my arm to stop. He said, “So far, so good, so don’t do anything stupid now. I just need to pat you down.” And he did, pulling the cell phone out of my pocket and not returning it. “You’re clear,” he said, as I heard him push open a door. “Step down.” I felt around with my foot and descended one stair. A door shut behind me.

“Do you have to use the head?” he asked me.

God, yes. I nodded, still unsure if I was allowed to speak. He led me by the arm, shoved me gently through a doorway, told me, “You can take your cover off in the bathroom. Put it back on when you come out.” And he shut the door behind me.

I pulled off the cover to see that I was in a tiny, spartan, windowless bathroom, with just a toilet and an old sink, the kind where the drain plug dangles on a chain from a dank faucet. The walls were cinder block. There was no mirror, no towels, no soap, nothing that I could fashion in any way into a weapon, not that I’d have even the slightest idea how, or, for that matter, the desire to do it. I felt around my face for blood, and saw none on my hands. I did my thing, I put my hat back on, and I walked out.