Brad Taylor - Enemy of Mine

She felt it tug twice, letting her know he was on the way. She went back into the room, aiming her AK at the open door behind the television. She heard him reach the balcony, but didn’t turn around.

He entered the room and saw the guard.

“Who’s that?”

“No threat.”

Samir said nothing for a moment, sizing her up yet again. When he saw the rise and fall of the man’s chest, he said, “You didn’t kill him?”

“No need.”

Samir shook his head. “You have real skill, but are naive. Kill him now, save a life later.”

He took a pillow and pushed it into the man’s face, holding it in place until the chest failed to move. Jennifer said nothing.

They heard a clank from outside, as if someone was kicking the wall. She motioned for Samir to investigate. He moved to the balcony and jerked the rope for several minutes before coming back inside.

“The next man is hung up in the mess of electrical wiring. It will be a little longer.”

Jesus. What else can happen?

“How long? We can’t sit in this room forever. This guy was someone’s guard relief, and they’re going to come looking for him.”

Before he could answer, gunfire shattered the night, first a few rounds, then a major firefight, with AK-47s rocking on full automatic.

Samir said, “That’s from the men at the front. They’ve made contact.”

“Just you and me now,” Jennifer said. “We can’t wait for your partner on the rope. You ready?”

He checked to make sure a round was loaded, smiled, and said, “You going to lead the way, anthropologist?”

My torturer moved the scalpel to my bare chest, and I began screaming into the gag, shaking my head to let them know I wanted to talk. Anything to draw out the time.

He pulled out the rag of my shirt and waited.

“You guys have made a mistake. If you look at my past travel and what I’ve been doing, you’ll see I’m who I say I am. I swear. I just came from Syria, where I’m working with the Ministry of Culture on an archeological site…. Please…check it out before you do this.”

He shook his head. “You and I both know that’s not true. If you want the pain to stop, you need to give me something more. Don’t waste my time with your contrived story. Nobody in this room believes it, including you. I will ask you a question, though. How many archeological firms carry laptops full of explosives?”

The question caved in my courage, because there was no way on earth to counter it. No way for me to convince them they held the wrong man, nothing I could say that would alter the cold, hard facts of the cafe bombing.

They were going to break me. The fear swept through me, my mind racing for a way out. A way to get them to kill me, but there was nothing I could do with the two toughs to my left and right. They’d just capture me before I made it out of the room.

He leaned in again, and I prepared for the pain, channeling my rage to hang on.

A single gunshot rang out, giving him pause. After a moment of silence, another one boomed, then another, until at least four weapons were firing on full automatic.

He pulled back and looked at the old man for instructions. The boss barked something in Arabic, and the two toughs to my left and right ran out of the room.

It was just me against the two remaining men, with no weapons in sight.

Big mistake.

I sprang up on my loose right foot, throwing myself backward. I got about two feet in the air and landed hard on my back, shattering the chair.

I stood up with pieces of chair still tied to me, both wrists strapped to lengths of wood that used to be the arms.

I grabbed the old man by his pristine bin Laden-wannabe beard and whirled around, like an Olympian conducting a hammer throw. I did a full circle, generating as much velocity as I could, and released his head straight into the rock wall of the room, seeing it cave in with a satisfyingly meaty thud.

I turned on the torturer, who had backed up and started waving the scalpel. I stared into his eyes and smiled.

I worked the pieces of chair loose from my wrists, giving me a stout, ironwood club for each hand. I noticed nails sticking out of each end and turned them to the rear, mimicking his voice.

“Don’t worry, I won’t use the nails. I don’t want you to die too soon.”

I moved in on him, bringing the first club down on the forearm that held the scalpel, shattering it.

He screamed, a guttural sound from deep inside. The clubs became a blur, beating him all over his body, striking any available spot. Whenever he tried to protect himself, I moved somewhere else. I broke his jaw, both cheeks, his nose, ribs, clavicles, and anything else I could harm, the clubs working like a Japanese Taiko drummer.

He fell to the ground with pink, bubbly froth coming out of his mouth. I continued on like some demented gorilla, trying mightily to burst his internal organs, the rage flowing through me and into him.

Eventually, I slowed out of sheer exhaustion and saw I was now drumming a lifeless bag of meat. The rage evaporated, and I realized I had wasted precious seconds. The gunfight was still going on, and I felt a glimmer of hope that I might not need to simply die. Maybe I could escape alive.

I ran to the back of the room, to a door that hadn’t been used, hoping it led to a back hallway out of the building, away from the gunfire. I ratcheted the knob and found it locked.

I heard shouting behind me and whirled around, raising my clubs in a ridiculous attempt at defense.

The two toughs came back through the door, flabbergasted at the carnage. One ran to the old man while another took aim at my head.

I threw a club as hard as I could, causing him to raise his weapon to block the missile. The wood ricocheted off of the AK and hit him in the head. It exploded open in a mist of blood.

What the hell?

He fell over as my brain registered a gunshot. Two other individuals had entered behind him, both armed and shooting. The second tough whirled at the gunfire and brought his weapon up, but never got off a round before his head exploded as well.

The two swept the room for additional threats. Seeing none, one went to the bin Laden wannabe I’d cratered into the wall, and the other focused on me.

It was Jennifer. Walking toward me barefoot and holding an AK, her shoes draped incongruously around her neck. I was at a loss for words.

My little protege.

She was staring at me with a crooked grin.

I said, “I’m never going to live this down.”

The smile reached her eyes, and she said, “Yeah, must be tough getting to actually live.”

She pulled an AK from her back and tossed it to me. When I caught it she saw the damage to my left hand. I quickly wrapped the wound with a remnant from my torn shirt. Through the shock on her face, I knew she understood what happened. I changed the subject before she could even ask.

“I’m not being nitpicky,” I said, “but usually an operator puts his shoes on before the gunfight.”

She looked down and saw I was right. She blushed and took the shoes from around her neck, bending down to put them on, saying, “I never got the chance…”

Over her kneeling form I saw the other man who had come in with her, checking on the vital signs of the bin Laden wannabe.

I recognized who it was, the rage flooding back.

Samir’s back was turned to me as he searched the man on the ground. I racked a round into the AK and strode right at him. I came abreast of Jennifer, and she leapt up, trying to push me back.

“Pike, stop. It’s not what you think. Samir didn’t do anything.”

I swept her aside and knocked Samir to the ground, putting a foot on his head.