David Dun - At The Edge

"You said it, I didn't. Anyway, the house is only four miles up Geary Creek Road from the post office. You turn right a quarter mile past the sign that says 'Geary Creek Dump.' The road to the dump is on the left, and the road to Morgan's is on the right. The gravel road to Morgan's is a half mile long. There are two other houses on it, and you bear right consistently to get to Morgan's. The Morgans have a two-story yellow house with a big red barn out back. There's some pasture off to the north. I swore to the postal guy that we wouldn't ever divulge how we got the info."

"Great work. Conference me into the sheriff."

Corey turned when she heard Jack's voice.

"Boss wants to see you."

Corey nodded, frustrated at the setup. She was never going to get near the German, who stayed behind the two-way mirror. He was in complete control and she knew it. That had to change.

"He wants you out here now," Jack repeated.

Corey nodded and went back to Maria, still speaking in a perfectly controlled whisper. "The blindfold stays on. You touch it and the negotiations are over. Watch her," she told Jack.

On her exit from the interrogation room, Corey was confronted by the German. For some reason the Spaniard had stepped out of the barn.

"We do not have time for any more preliminaries. Cut her face now. Get her talking."

"What about the video? I thought we agreed we were making a video to show the grassroots people."

"Just find out what she knows, and make it fast. We need to close this place down. You should have killed the boy."

It was about what Corey had expected. Typical German efficiency. Make sure all the witnesses are dead, including Corey.

Corey fingered her stiletto, trying to make the move look natural, staying calm. She still didn't see the Spaniard. The German's eyes were nervous.

"How will we prove it to the grass-"

With incredible speed the German grabbed her knife and put her in a stranglehold. In the instant she felt the stranglehold on her throat, her years of training took over. Rather than grabbing the strangling hand, she kicked straight for his kneecap. But she was being lifted, and the balance required for a well-executed kick was gone. Although the boot struck its target, it did not have the force necessary to maim.

The German raised her still higher in the air, moving her toward the wall. It took her two seconds longer than normal to kick again, this time the groin. For a split second his grip on her knife hand weakened. It was enough. She had practiced the move so often she could execute it with her dying breath-which right now was still seconds away. She lacked full power in the upward stroke, but the blade nevertheless split the man's forearm like an overripe tomato.

The German bellowed, and Corey slipped from his fingers, hitting the ground and raising her knife. But she was unprepared for the pistol that came up in his left hand, now aimed straight at her chest.

"Drop the knife, Corey."

For the first time since her father died, Corey Schneider had allowed herself to get into a situation where a man's treachery might defeat her. She dropped the knife.

The moment she let it go, the German spoke to Jack without turning to him. He seemed not to notice his own wounded arm, which he tended by transferring the gun to his right and using his left hand to clamp a handkerchief over the gaping laceration. "I want this woman hanging from the rafter. Tie a noose and put it on her."

When he turned to look at Jack, his jaw dropped. Jack trained a double-barreled twelve-gauge shotgun on the German's center mass, ten feet separating the scattergun's barrel from his heart.

"I'm getting out of here. We were just going to video the mouthpiece, that was it," Jack said. "Drop the gun or I blow you in two."

The German's eyes met Jack's. His pistol-a fine German Heckler amp; Koch, Corey now noted with satisfaction-was pointed at the floor, his other hand still clamped on the wound.

"I swear to God I'll kill you," Jack said, now shaking so bad Corey wasn't positive he could hit the German square.

"You shoot me and I shoot Corey," the German countered.

"I don't give a shit what you do. I'll blow you to kingdom come."

Finally the German let the pistol slip and clatter to the floor. Corey stepped to Jack.

"Let me have it, Jack. As soon as we take care of the Spaniard, you can get out of here." Jack nodded dumbly and let Corey take the shotgun. Backing up, Corey reached into a feed room and pulled out a six-foot pole with a fine wire loop on the end. Recognition flickered in the German's eyes.

"You know what this is, don't you, Kraut?"

Corey fit the piano-wire loop over Groiter's head as she stood behind him with the shotgun. Running up the hollowed-out center of the heavy dowel, the wire could be pulled tight with a handle from Corey's end. It could cut through the arteries in seconds. With a little less pressure, slow strangulation was possible. Yanking off his hood, she paused for a second at the sight of his freckled face-somehow older than she had imagined-then pulled the wire tight enough to turn him blue while Jack taped his hands. All the time she watched for the Spaniard.

"Hold this," she whispered to Jack, giving him the end of the wire loop. "If he does anything, you choke him to death. Understand?"

"He's choking to death now," Jack whispered.

"No, he's not. He just looks it."

Outside, Corey saw a light on in the house. So the Spaniard was in there. Quickly she made her way to the back door and noticed it was ajar. From inside she heard moans and a woman crying. Looking a little farther, she saw the Spaniard hunched over the kitchen table on top of a young woman. He held a knife to her throat. So intent was he on raping the girl that Corey was beside him before he noticed.

As soon as her captor left the room, Maria went to work on the handcuffs. As a child, she had learned to slide out of play cuffs by stretching her thumb and using her double-jointed socket. Like Houdini, she needed only the slightest loosening. When she folded her thumb into the palm of her hand and pulled, pain from the chafing skin made her grunt. She tried to force her hand through, not caring about the ripping skin.

From outside, there were sounds of a struggle and threats. They were fighting each other. Hope invigorated her.

Slick with blood, her right hand popped free of the cuff, then her left. She ripped off the blindfold and began working on the tape at her waist, using her fingernails to pull up an edge. Free of the tape, she grabbed the plastic tie-wraps at her feet, ignoring the free-flowing blood from her hands that dripped onto the carpet. As she worked, it became apparent she was in a windowless room with a large mirror on one wall. She pulled frantically on the plastic tie-wraps that held her ankles together and fastened them to the chair. Finally she was able to stretch the plastic until she got enough slack to twist it. On the floor she found a screwdriver and moved the chair enough to grab it, then used it to further twist the plastic. She broke the plastic tie-wrap on her right leg. The left went faster.

When she moved to the door, she could only make out hazy figures across the barn. The chemical would not leave her eyes no matter how many tears she shed. She forced herself to wait, watching as best she could, knowing that they would probably see her the minute she went out the door. Through the blur it looked like a man had something pointed at the back of another man's head, probably a gun. Then someone else came with a gun pointed at a second man. A woman's voice. She sounded in a rage and she was tying up one of the others. In minutes he started yelling in a foreign language. Then the yelling turned to incredible, agonized screams. If ever they would be distracted, it was now.