A Tale Tail Heart tale no.3

Bogran looked in his rearview mirror spotting one bogie on his tail, and another taking a shortcut in order to cut him off at the next intersection, but he was used to riding through the crosshairs and considered himself a rider with rare talent for evasion during active conflict. He had torn through the Karni border crossing on his Ducati when the noise from Mossad indicated a bombing would take place, and consequently only six Israelis were killed. Again, he had torn through the streets of Gaza sometime later with three little kids on the back of his motorcycle as he got them safely out of harm’s way while bombs were dropping on beaches and on hospitals. That was personal. He had a thing for their Nasrani mother. The point was, he knew how to ride through a war zone and two Comic-Con wannabes from the Neo-Yamnayan military police were nothing to shake off.

The biker in back was gaining on him, and he needed to get off US 1/9 as soon as he could. He spotted the one coming from the right, twisted heavy on the gas and did a weave around a traffic pile-up. He was losing both of them and just as he was about to veer off, an irate passenger, a nobody, opened his car door getting out to see what the hold-up was. The last thing Bogran remembered was flying into the air in what seemed like slow motion, his ride spinning to the side and rolling toward the swamp, landing on a patch of concrete with the sickening clunk of crushed metal. Or maybe that was his helmet splitting like a snapping turtle shell under an eighteen-wheeler. It was hard to tell;and then he woke with a massive headache cuffed to a hospital bed. And what was that music? Why was there a sucky soundtrack to his inevitable death?

Not a bomb, not heavy artillery fire, not even a scorned female hurling a Molotov cocktail through the window of his fishing cabin on the Black Sea. A fucking car door. A Jersey driver’s dumb-shit greige-coloured car door. This was why nobody could 100% predict outcome in conflict. The unknown factor. The idiocy of men on the ground, the random civilian crossing into the kill box just seconds after the payload has dropped.

“Plans are nothing, but planning is everything,” Eisenhower said. He would turn in his grave if he could see the country today. Our forefathers would gather a ghostly militia if they knew what was becoming of the land of the free. Sure, we-the-people were a drag, any politician would agree, especially after public media allowed every nut on the planet a personal soap-box to spew forth from. But even if all the loonies had all the microphones, this was not how it was supposed to go down.

Bogran had been trained to withstand interrogation and he knew what to expect. It was surely coming, he could feel it. He sure hoped that Raff made it to the depot and that his death was worth it. The upshot of his combat training was that he would literally fit into a matchbox before they would finish him. That was going to hurt and he wasn’t looking forward to it. He’d had his heart locket removed so today’s torture could be fully enjoyed. Yay.

“Get up. Let’s go,” the beefier of the two Sentries said to him as they pushed into his room.

“I would love nothing more than to oblige you, but as you can see, I will either have to take this bed with me, or you will have to unlock these cuffs,” he said, pleasantly.

“Unlock him Seth, and watch his hands,” the large man said standing in front of the door to guard it in case Bogran were to try anything.

“Come on, gentlemen. Do I look like I am going to put up a fight?” Bogran said cheerfully, displaying his banged-up arms and legs. Seth bent over the patient and held the electronic release gun over the far cuff and it snapped open.

Bogran would have used old-fashioned zip ties. With all of this electrickery, zip ties were the cheapest and least able to foil of all the restraints. With these, the second they jumped open Bogran could grab Seth by the side of the neck, pinch hard on his artery with his free hand and neutralise him in a few seconds while it looked like he was unfastening the other cuff. By the time it was opened, Bogran let the man fall on top of him, and when he rolled off the bed, the other Sentry was on him like white on rice. Bogran grabbed the stunner out of the second man’s pocket and aimed it at his attacker’s heart, and he collapsed on top of the other. Heart lockets were fun. Fuckers.

Bogran crawled out of bed and had to work at standing. He hoisted the top Sentry into the bed and covered him up. Realising he was naked under the hospital gown, his ass hanging out, he took the clothes off of the man called Seth and put them on, leaving him on the floor and the other one on the bed. He hoped there were no cameras in the room, but he couldn’t see any obvious ones.

Bogran took their weapons and rolled Seth to the side of the bed you couldn’t see through the window. Dressed as the Sentry he exited the room.

“What’s going on in there?” A guard asked him as he made his way down the hall.

“The prisoner is pretty messed up. He drifted off while I was questioning him, I’m just getting coffee,” Bogran lied, “Hopefully he’ll be up when I get back,” he said.

Keeping his head down, he kept walking until he hit double doors at the end of the hall that opened as he approached. So far, so good. He continued until he reached another set of doors that didn’t open. Shit. Making a gesture like he had forgotten something to cover his lack of permission for any hidden cameras, he turned around knocking into an intern who was carrying a tray of food.

“I’m sorry, can I help you carry something?” He said to the young woman. He wanted to call her “dear” but he knew better. The Neo-Yams had forbidden endearments, and that little slip-up would have rung all the alarm bells.

“No, that is ok, you could hold that door there,” she said. “It tends to slam in my face.” He followed her to the left and light splashed across the institutional floor. The door led to an outside enclosure. He had no idea how this translated to outside-outside, but he decided it looked promising, so he followed her.

Looking people in the eyes was discouraged among staffers, and after holding the heavy door she disappeared into the light. This was a huge mistake in his estimation. How would you be able to tell enemy from friendly if you could not look people in the eye? The illogic boggled the mind.

Bogran saw a rather temporary-looking building to the right and headed that direction peeling off in a nondescript fashion. There were lights on in what looked like a command centre but nobody was in there that he could see through the window. It was a war-room, like one in the field with maps of the world on the far wall, leather chairs, and a centre island with mountains and trains and tanks and planes. He knew he should get the fuck out of dodge, but the operative in him compelled him to get in there and see what they were up to. He took the lock-opener scanner doo-dad that he lifted off the Sentry, and however unlikely it was that it would work, he held it over the door panel to unlock it, and lo and behold it did. G-d these people were thick. How had they deceived an entire nation? The banality of evil was never unimpressive.

He got into the war room and dug through the pockets of his uniform and found a phone. There would be no code on it, for personal device privacy had long ago been abolished. He opened the camera and started snapping pictures of the maps, table, books, doodles that had faded on the back of the board, everything. He snapped the corners of the room, the locks on the doors, the vents, the ceiling tiles, the window locks, the floorboards. He went through the drawers in the desk at the front, and there was nothing. Pencils, whiteboard markers, receipts for milkshakes, and dust. He took a picture of each drawer and its underside just to be thorough. He knew that an analyst could see things that he did not.

Bogran was surprised that he remained unmolested long enough to do a fairly thorough reconnaissance, but he realised that people would notice that the prisoner had not been taken to where he was supposed to go at any time and he had to extract. Where was the out? He left the room as he’d found it, closed the door, and fortune on his side it snapped and locked as he shut it. He moved down the same outside corridor, and about thirty metres ahead was a car park. All he had to do was steal a car and get out of there.

He tucked his chin, and headed across the sidewalk and onto the street that separated the buildings from the cars when a voice rang out in his direction, “Hey you, stop! Identify, please,” said the loudspeaker from a tower at the high corner of the car park.

“Seth, sir. It’s me, Seth,” he said, thinking on his toes.

“Stand on the red line for your ID scan,” the voice said, and he panicked until he remembered the number on the phone case. The device buzzed in his pocket, a light turned green, and the garage gate opened. These people were fuckwits, and fuckwits were nothing if not consistent.

“Carry on, Sentry,” the tower responded.

Bogran walked briskly and realised he would also have to check out of the facility’s exit gate. How was he going to drive through the guarded barrier if he did not choose Seth’s car in there? Fuck. This wasn’t good. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Again, he realised he had Seth’s stuff in his pockets. If there was any normal left in him at all, there would be a picture of his car, a notepad entry for insurance or something to indicate automobile ownership. He took out the phone, pretended to smile as if getting a loving text all while he surfed the picture files and apps. Nothing.

He went through the pocket and found a thin plastic wallet. Too easy. He now had the license tag number. He just had to hope that the car was in this lot.

The first level gave him no joy, the second nothing, but the third was fruitful and he found the retro hatchback.

He got in and shut the door, which was awkward for hotwiring but there was no other way. There were definitely cameras in the car park. He kept his hat down and got the engine started, pulled out of the complex, and got past the guard who was mercifully asleep. The second he made it to the main road, he drove hell for leather and found himself in Paterson New Jersey where he ditched the car, ran into the Middle Eastern supermarket, and emerged in a burka as he stole a bicycle.

Wait until Freyja saw what he’d found in the complex. She’d want to publish every last picture he took. This just might be enough to get at least one foreign power to intervene.