Sean Black - Lockdown

‘Now we can go.’

Carrie stepped off the sidewalk. She didn’t even see the Hummer as it ran the light and barrelled straight towards her, ten thousand pounds of chaos doing forty miles an hour and picking up speed with every foot of blacktop rolling beneath it. She looked up at the last minute, and hauled herself and the dog back up on to the sidewalk as the vehicle’s rims scraped the concrete at the top of a drainage hole.

An old man in his sixties, milk-bottle-thick glasses, touched her arm. ‘Are you OK?’

Her heart was drumming against her chest. Her whole body seemed to be vibrating. It was coming straight for me! she thought.

‘Those damn things don’t belong on the roads!’ the old man shouted after the receding Hummer as it ran the next lights, slowed, and swung left out of sight.

‘Man, we should have popcorn for this.’

Brand was like a guy who has to go to work at the start of the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl and decides to TIVO the whole game to watch later. As soon as Lock was inside the cell he’d radioed the CCTV operator to make sure to dump the footage from Mareta’s cell on to hard drive.

‘You got it cued up?’

The operator nodded. ‘All ready to go. This one here,’ he said, pointing to the centre screen in a bank of monitors.

The image was frozen: Mareta, the grieving widow, staring down at the wounded soldier as he crawled his way towards her.

‘Man, when this is over, I’m uploading this shit on to Live Leak. Come on, lemme see.’

The operator hit play, and Brand leaned forward to enjoy the action.

Lock had had a few things already worked out before the door into the cell had opened. It was clear that Brand was enjoying himself immensely and in a manner that went way beyond the satisfaction he would have gotten from just locking him up. Something lay on the other side of the door that was giving Brand one hell of a woody.

From the design of the building, both inside and out, Lock was clear it hadn’t been built just to prevent escape, but also to limit and contain movement to the nth degree. That meant the occupants were deemed dangerous to staff.

Lock had readied himself for a fight. To the death, if necessary. His or the other guy’s. Then Brand had dropped the bomb about Carrie. Brand had obviously expected the news to cut Lock off at the knees, but it had had the opposite effect. He’d felt a surge of energy, and with it a surge of adrenalin. Even in his diminished physical state he’d felt that the raw anger would carry him through.

When he looked up from the floor of the cell to see a woman, the decision had been simple. Natalya dumped in the East River with her brains blown out. Carrie, the victim of an unfortunate ‘accident’. Two dead women was enough.

He lay still and waited.

‘You sure this thing’s working?’ Brand asked, slamming a meaty hand down next to the keyboard.

Lock and the detainee had hardly moved on the tape. Just remained where they were, watching each other in some goddamn Mexican stand-off.

‘Yes, sir,’ the operator replied.

‘Move it on. Let’s get to the action.’

The operator moved his mouse, pulling the slider along. The woman jerked forward as Lock lay on the floor.

‘OK. There.’

On screen, Mareta laid the knife down on the floor. Still within reach should she need it. Then she knelt down next to Lock and helped him to his feet.

‘What the hell?’ Brand exploded. He’d got halfway through the first quarter only to find one of the defensive linesmen break through and start waltzing with the opposition quarterback.

Mareta had heard the men approaching. Even after all this time she hadn’t been able to escape the low dread that clouded her mind as the cell door opened. She’d tensed and then relaxed each part of her body. Less chance of breaking a bone if you were relaxed. Bruises and lacerations were one thing, but she’d spent three months in a prison in Moscow with a fractured fibula and no medical attention. The bone had healed on its own but left her with a limp and the memory of the intense pain.

They’d rushed in, one at a time. The biggest of them had dragged her off the bed and pinned her shoulders against the wall. The other man had reached down to her waist and grabbed her wrists with one hand while his other hand fumbled in his pocket. There was a click and one of her hands was free. She’d waited for him to uncuff her other hand and scratched at his face. She’d felt his skin wedging in a strip under her nails. She’d tried to get hold of his hair but it was too short. He’d shouted at her, calling her a bitch, and punched her in the face.

She’d gone down under the force of that punch. One man had sat on her chest and the other on her legs, sending a shard of pain shooting up her left leg, the one that had been broken back in Moscow. She’d heard the shackles clanking against the concrete as they too were taken off.

The men had then retreated from the cell, and she’d run at the door as it closed. Slamming her fists against the steel. She’d heard a door open and slam shut. Then they’d come back, her cell door opened again, and another man was thrown inside.

He was dressed normally. He looked American, or at least how she imagined Americans looked when they weren’t in uniform. His hair was shorter than the guards’ and he had a fresh scar that ran along the top of his head. He’d looked from the knife to her but made no move towards it, not even when she bent down to pick it up.

His gaze had met hers. There was no fear in his eyes. She’d held the knife in a hammer grip like she’d been taught by her husband. Still he hadn’t moved. They’d stayed that way for what seemed like an eternity. She’d sensed he was conscious of the knife but he never looked at it. Not once.

Then, finally, he’d spoken. ‘I’m not going to fight you. So if you’re going to do it, then let’s get it done.’

She’d looked from the man to the unblinking eye of the camera mounted in the corner, put down the knife, and put out her hand. He’d taken it, and she’d helped him on to his feet.

Back in the control room, Brand had tired of the love-in. ‘OK, go live.’

The operator punched a key. The screen went blank. The operator hit it again.

‘What is it? What’s the problem?’ Brand asked, agitated.

‘We’re not getting any signal from that camera.’

‘Try again.’

‘I just did.’

Brand kicked out at the wall in frustration. Half an hour ago the cell had been occupied by a solitary woman, cuffed and shackled. Now it was her, Lock and a knife. What the hell had gone wrong?

Lock handed the knife back to Mareta — a calculated show of trust he hoped he wouldn’t have cause to regret. If he was going to get out of here he’d need her cooperation.

An alarm that had been shrieking in the background for the past five minutes fell silent. Lock prowled the cell, examining its construction from every angle. Mareta watched him.

‘The only way out is through the door,’ she said.

‘You speak English? Sorry, stupid question.’

‘They don’t know I understand them,’ she said, nodding to the disembowelled camera which lay on the bed.

‘Who are you? Why are you here?’

‘My name is Mareta Yuzik.’

That piece of information alone went most of the way to answering both questions. Lock wouldn’t have recognized her face, because very few people had seen it. And most of those who had were dead. But he sure as hell knew the name. In fact, it sent an involuntary shudder all the way from the base of his spine to the back of his neck.

Mareta was the most infamous of Chechnya’s black widows, women whose husbands had been killed by the Russians and who operated as suicide bombers in the Chechens’ bloody guerrilla war to win independence from the motherland. Mareta’s husband had been a notorious Chechen warlord. But that wasn’t what had made her exceptional. What made her stand out was the fact that she’d disavowed martyrdom to assume command of her former husband’s group of fighters.