Chapter 10

Duncan woke to blinding rays of sunshine that beat down on the other side of his closed eyelids. Everything hurt; everything except his arms. They were numb. He blinked, then squinted in the blinding light. It shone through an opening that seemed to have been a garage door at one time. Blinking from one side to the other, he realized he was not alone. And he was hanging.

A man sat on an overturned five-gallon bucket surfing through his smartphone. Duncan feigned sleep and closed his eyes again to assess his situation. Although his mouth cracked with thirst, his shoulders were the most concerning. They ached with pain and may both have been dislocated. He couldn't feel the rest of his arms or his hands and only knew they were still attached to his body because they were what kept him from falling to the dirt floor.

The throbbing from his shoulders was little compared to the pounding of the side of his head. Turning away from the light, he opened his eyes and scrunched his face. Dried blood from the side of his head cracked and pulled his hair.

He tilted his head upward. It took several seconds before his dizzying focus cleared enough to see his wrists. They were secured with zip ties and hung by rope from a low-hanging wooden ceiling joist. A barn swallow shrieked and narrowly missed his head before landing in its nest along the joist.

The balls of his feet barely reached the concrete floor, keeping a small portion of his body weight from pulling at his wrists and shoulders.

The man glanced up from his phone and spotted Duncan awake. He blinked a long blink. Pressing the side of his cell, he stuffed it in his pants' pocket and stood. He was long and lanky with skin the color of caramel. Sweaty brown hair stuck to the man's forehead. A small, decrepit wooden table stood next to him. A handful of bloody blades, knives, a mallet, a handful of zip ties, a machete, and Duncan's cell phone lay in a line on the splintered and dirty wooden top.

Without so much as another glance toward Duncan, he walked out through the large garage door opening. Duncan heard a conversation spoken in Spanish. It might as well have been the barn swallows talking, because Duncan made out only a single word from the entire conversation. Gringo.

He didn't know what time it was and hoped he hadn't remained unconscious more than overnight. He may have been dehydrated, but he decided not enough for more than a night of captivity.

His brother. Andy. Oh no. His mind cleared and everything came rushing back. With the way his head was wedged between his arms, he could hardly turn to look around the room. Had they captured Andy? Where was he?

Duncan jutted his chin forward the fraction of an inch his arms allowed and used the balls of his feet to rotate to the right. It was, indeed, a garage. The Durango sat empty next to a newer Jeep Cherokee. It wasn't the largest structure Duncan had spotted from his boulder vantage point, but it was large enough that it could have fit a half dozen cars if needed.

Wall-to-wall dirt floor. Corrugated metal walls with a single window centered in each. Two on the side with the garage door. Outside of the door opening, the place seemed deserted. The sun was barely over the horizon, but since the horizon was above a mountain, he estimated the time to be maybe 10 a.m.

He scuttled his feet in the opposite direction to the left. A wooden picnic table covered in empty cans and cigarette butts sat in front of three white box trucks. The man from the overturned bucket came back with three other men. Each dressed in black except the one in front. He wore tan linen pants, a white shirt and a tan blazer.

He walked to the spot in front of Duncan and stopped. He stared at him, tilting his head one way, then the other as he slid his cell phone from the outside pocket of the blazer. He spoke something to the men behind him, then lifted the phone and clicked some pictures of him.

Duncan was in a Fu Haizi lair in South America. The magnitude of this brushed the sides of his mind, but his brain was clouded with thoughts of Andy and his Nickie. Their safety and whereabouts.

His eyes must have wandered in his thoughts, because the man reached up and grabbed his face with a thumb on one side of Duncan's mouth and fingers on the other side. He turned his face to the right, then left before tossing it to the right, making his entire body swing in almost a complete circle.

"Who sent you?" the man said in a thick Peruvian accent.

Duncan stared at him through half-opened lids as he noticed a head peer around the opening to the door.

Andy. No, Andy, no.

The man closed his eyes in a long blink as he turned his gaze toward the bucket guy, then gestured a thumb at Duncan.

Bucket guy stepped forward, pulled his arm back and dug his fist into Duncan's gut.

He sucked air as if he'd just come up from three minutes under water, and coughed as he swung from his hands.

"I asked question."

It was hard for Duncan to concentrate. Not from the pain or the threat, but because Andy's head had disappeared. He sucked air and said between gasps, "I wanted... to watch."

"Who sent you?"

Duncan winced at the impending next blow. "I came to watch the kids. I like to watch." His brother was about to be captured and tortured. His Nickie was who knew where. It was all he could come up with.

The man squinted, his eyes black and lifeless. "Alexander say you have friend with. Tell me where is friend."

Bucket guy slipped on a pair of brass knuckles.

"The friend said I was a sick motherfucker," Duncan croaked, then raised his voice. "I told him to go back to his woman." As he spoke, he twisted his fingers, wrapping them around the ropes that held his wrists. "I think he found a whore instead."

The man gestured to Bucket guy and Duncan braced. This punch was metal and it was followed by two more. He heard a crack. Then, came the pain.

Spitting blood, he opened a single eye. The man poked the screen of his phone with his index finger. Andy appeared in the window opening next to the garage door.

No, brother, no.

Duncan's Spanish was sparse, but he understood enough pieces of the next conversation between the man in charge and Bucket guy.

Pit boss. Plane. Early. Then, a slew of expletives.

Pit boss. Duncan remembered this term. It was a Fu Haizi term used for someone higher up.

The man in charge spun on his heels and lifted his phone to his ear as he barked orders to everyone around him. The others scurried behind him like ants. They couldn't have been more than ten steps away when Andy emerged from behind the Durango, a large machete in his hand. Duncan's eyes opened wide, and he shook his head back and forth.

Andy smiled from ear to ear. If they got out of this alive, Duncan was going to kill him. With both hands, he lifted the machete over his head and ran straight for the ceiling joist. Duncan increased the space between the balls of his feet and braced. In one large swipe of his arm, Andy cut the rope that held Duncan's wrists.

With soft knees, Duncan landed and froze. He and Andy turned their gazes toward the backs of the men as they stepped out of the garage door opening. Duncan's shoulders screamed. His wrists were still confined with the zip ties, but there was no time. Andy slipped into the driver's seat of the Hummer painted camo in green and brown.

Duncan's eyes burned. His brothers. His platoon.

He yanked at the zip ties on his wrist as he braced. Bogies in the doorway. One of his platoon in the Hummer on the sand. He spotted the table of enemy weapons and ran to it. Keeping his eyes on the insurgents, he used his restrained hands and grabbed a bloody blade. He stuck it between his teeth, then bit hard and cut the zip ties with the steel of the blade.

He picked up the mallet and rushed the men. The sand beneath his feet muffled the sound of his approach. The soldier in the Hummer waved his arms and shook his head like a mad man, but Duncan only had this one chance. The insurgents sensed him as he jumped with one knee and kicked with the other, but it was too late for them. He handed a solid roundhouse to the side of Bucket's head. As the adversary dropped, Duncan swung the mallet at the bodies that came at him. The man in charge stepped back as Duncan connected the hard, rubber head of the weapon with the shoulder of the taller one, then the head of the shorter one.

The tires of the Hummer spun behind him. The man in charge stepped next to the building, and Duncan to the other side of the moving vehicle. "Holy shit, brother. Get in," the solider yelled as he skidded to a stop.

Duncan opened the passenger door and spotted an enemy plane approaching as he dove in and the vehicle sped away. A trail of glass followed them as bullets shot out the taillights and back window of the Hummer.

His chest pounded and his breathing came in long, deep gasps.

"It's okay, it's okay," the driver said in a panic. The voice didn't sound like anyone in his platoon. He looked down at his hand. Lines of deep red circled the outsides of Duncan's wrists. He remembered the zip ties. He remembered looking up at them when he hung from the ceiling joist. He remembered the man who sat on the bucket. The men in black pants and mock turtlenecks. Not from the Middle East.

Andy.

"Brother," Duncan croaked. A quick rush of agony stabbed Duncan's shoulders, his ribs, his head. Ignoring the pain, he forced his head to the side to look at his brother.

Andy's hands clasped the steering wheel of the Durango as he darted his eyes from the rearview mirror to the side mirror and back again.

"Brother," Duncan repeated.

"I know, I know. It's okay, man. They're coming."

Andy swerved around barrels and vehicles. Andy would never speak of Duncan's flashback. Not this one or the ones in the past. Duncan twisted and sat; his head nearly hit the roof of the car as they bumped over the primitive road. Craning his head around, he spotted the dust from about a half-dozen vehicles as well as a small plane that came in low toward the south side of the village.

"I need a gun," Duncan said under his breath.

Regardless of the noise of the ride, Andy shouted, "And add using an unregistered firearm to trespassing and grand theft?"

"Is that why you came at me with the machete?"

Andy didn't answer. It had been dark when they arrived the night before, but Duncan remembered well the turns and distance of the path they'd taken. "The highway is at the end of this road."

Duncan patted his pockets. His local phone was on the table in the garage. If he hadn't had a flashback, he would have been coherent enough to take it and slip out in the Durango instead of attacking with the rubber mallet. Fu Haizi scum. If not for Andy, it would have been worth it.

He spotted the corner of Andy's local cell phone from his front jeans pocket and took it. Dialing Jess Larsen's cell from memory, he pushed send as Fu Haizi men rushed the plane.

"This is Jess."

"Jess, this is Duncan."

"Duncan! You never showed last night, man. It's good to hear from you. I was worried about you."

"Yes, well, we are, indeed, in a bit of trouble. Can you pick us up?"

"Samuel is here with me, yes. Where are you? Is everything okay?"

The Durango was old, dirty and sounded like it was choking on something. He glanced at the rearview mirror at the variety of vehicles that were gaining on them. "Everything is well. Let's plan on the same place he dropped us off. How about in fifteen?"

Duncan could hear Samuel's voice from the background. "Let me finish my coffee and I'll be on my way."

Duncan squinted in the side mirror at the people who climbed from the plane. The man in charge held the hand of a large woman dressed in a coral pantsuit, helping her from the plane. Ivanna Monticello.