I AWOKE, GROGGY and disoriented, and in an uncomfortable position. It felt like they tied me up in a chair. An uncomfortable chair. My hands were down at my sides, and my feet felt tied together, but not tied to the chair. It all felt like zip-ties. Not those big nylon ones the cops use, but smaller plastic ones from the hardware store. They’d doubled them up on each tie point. There was a clammy wind against my arms, and I shivered a little. From the numbness in my fingers, I guessed I’d been knocked out some time ago, and moved to this location. I’d have to see a doctor if and when I got out of here, since that kind of blow will almost certainly cause a concussion.
I sat this way for a while, listening to the room. It sounded vast, like an industrial building. I shifted in my chair for a while, and figured out it was a steel folding chair, the kind used everywhere you needed a chair to get out of the way when you were done sitting in it. I tapped my feet on the floor. It was hard and sounded like concrete. It was very smooth and there was a thin layer of dust.
After about half an hour, I heard a door opening. A heavy steel door with a push handle. I slumped back down in my chair and waited for the two sets of feet to reach me. There was a heavier one—Zander was my guess—as well as a lighter set of footfalls. Wendy, probably.
My amateur deducing came to a halt when I felt a heavy fist against the back of my head. It surprised me, and it hurt a lot more than usual, because of the strike from earlier. I think they meant to wake me up, since someone yanked the bag from my head.
My vision took a while to clear, but I was already formulating a plan by the time I saw who was in the warehouse with me. Zander, as I’d guessed, was the one who hit me and removed the bag. The other person was someone I hadn’t seen before. Another Middle Eastern guy. Younger, well-dressed, with small wire-rim glasses. Nervous. He had a brown leather doctor’s bag with him. This must be the interrogator.
Honestly, I was a little disappointed. Zander could have doubtless pulled off a half-decent interrogation: he was a muscular guy and had no problems hitting people. I smiled at the both of them.
I asked if anyone else was cold.
In response, Zander cuffed me again. He told the other guy to get started. I did my best not to react to the hit, although by now, it was quite painful. I sunk into my fighter’s mindset and made the pain go away. When you box for fun, you find a way around the pain. I’d be good for another three or four rounds.
The warehouse itself was about fifteen meters high, and was a maze of shelves filled with various pipes and what appeared to be other kinds of plumbing-related joints, junctions, valves, and wooden crates. A quiet forklift sat nearby, and there was no sign of a door or other way to escape. I figured I was in a building attached to Jim and Wendy’s place of work, or at least peripherally associated with it.
The other guy reminded me of Art Malik’s character from True Lies. The terrorist leader. I think he was the same actor in one of the Timothy Dalton James Bond films. Let’s call this guy Art. That’s a fun name. Art opened the bag, produced a medical vial and a syringe. A small one, like you’d get an allergy shot with. He unwrapped a needle, fastened it to the syringe, then withdrew a quantity of liquid from the vial. He inverted the needle, gave it a few flicks, then shot a small amount out. Looked like he’d done this before. He withdrew a second syringe and did the same, but replaced the cap on the needle and put it back in the bag. One for now, one for later, perhaps.
I was wearing a T-shirt, so there wasn’t any sleeve to roll up. He swabbed my arm and awkwardly injected me.
I’ve been drugged before, sometimes for fun, sometimes for work. But this was a little scary. I could feel the effects almost immediately. My head felt hot, and a wave of sickness washed over me.
I hung my head, feeling my muscles relax. I played it up a little, wondering how long I’d still have my faculties. Through the growing haze, I could hear Art say it would be about ten minutes before I was ready. Cool. I had about twenty minutes before I was dead.
It was already hard to overcome the effects of the drug, but it was doable. I listened to them as they talked about timelines, some kind of package, what questions to ask, and what to expect from me. Then, how to dispose of the body. That instantly cleared my head.
After a minute or two, they headed back the way they came, and as soon as they were out of sight, I got to work.
One thing I’ve practiced over the past couple of years is how to escape from restraints. It’s a hobby of mine, along with lock-picking, self-defense, and podcasting.
Just kidding about the podcasting. I’m still trying to figure out how to break into that line.
There’s a trick to escaping from cable ties or zip-ties. They’re generally very brittle and have some obvious points of failure. The flat strip of plastic is strong enough, provided no dynamic load is placed on it. The locking mechanism is much easier to circumvent when a shearing stress is applied. If you have a free hand and a shim, like a toothpick or nail file, you can open it easily enough, but otherwise a good solid twist attack often does the trick.
In my case, they’d tied my feet together, but not to the chair. I raised my legs as high as I could, then dropped my feet hard to the floor while spreading my knees wide. It didn’t immediately work, but I gave it a second try with more force, and my feet broke free. My running shoes made little sound in the empty building, but I didn’t want to stall for too long.
Freeing my arms was a different problem, but now that I could stand, I could apply that twisting pressure to them. I backed into the closest shelf, leaned forward as far as I could without falling over, and hooked the feet of the chair over the shelf. With a deep breath, I dropped on my ass, keeping my shoulders as tense as possible. This ripped away the ties, and I felt a flash of pain in my arms as they bent at an awkward angle.
The chair itself clattered to the floor, and I knew I needed to act fast. I grabbed the chair, but immediately tumbled, feeling the powerful effect of the drugs. It was the worst vertigo I’d ever had, and it took everything just to avoid throwing up. I righted the chair and moved it back to its original spot, grabbed a nearby foot-long piece of half-inch galvanized pipe, and made my way back into the chair. I tucked the pipe on the inside of my arm and gripped the side of the chair.
Within seconds, the two returned, and I was hamming up the drug’s effects, lolling my head back and forth, groaning.
Zander grabbed my chin and pulled my face up. I stared off into space, allowing my eyes to lose focus, while hoping to keep my brain as sharp as possible.
He asked me who I was. I told him. Honestly. This surprised me.
Zander then asked me who I worked for. I said I worked for Vijay, knowing both that it was the truth, and that he’d have no idea who that was, or what that meant.
My head spun, but I smiled and brought my eyes into focus. I looked over at Art, who was staring at the floor. He gasped and pointed at the broken plastic ties by my feet.
The moment Zander’s eyes moved away from me, I brought the pipe up across his face, shattering his jaw and sending him flying.
I turned to Art, stood up, and felt myself dropping to the floor again. Art regained his composure and reached into the doctor’s bag, withdrawing the second syringe. He looked at me impassively, popping the cap off the needle.
The back of my mind wandered off to a Raymond Chandler story I’d read a while back. Or it might have been Dash Hammett—I’ll go look it up later. It was something like, “Never pull a gun on a boxer. By the time you get a bead on him, he’ll have moved ten feet and punched you out.” While it wasn’t a gun, poor Art barely had time to finish with the cap before I’d scrambled over to him, wrenched his arm, and stabbed him in the neck with his own needle.
It later occurred to me that if he was calibrating the dose based on my height and weight, he was in for a heck of a night.
Okay, I’m going to pause here to reflect on things.
This—the kidnapping and drugging—this isn’t why I’m writing the blog. It’s not the thing which triggered the nightmares. Honestly, aside from the drugging, which scared me a little, I was kind of having fun. It’s been a while since I’ve had a good fight. Sure, I feel bad about hurting those guys, but let’s look at this pragmatically: they were going to torture and kill me. Definitely on one, and probably on two. I’m an easy-going guy. Pretty normal, I think. But I’ve been in a lot of situations where this kind of stuff happens—where my life or someone else’s life is on the line. I’m not defending my actions. But I am explaining them.
They both lived, by the way. Charged with a variety of offenses, including terrorism. So, yeah.
That said, I think I’d like to get back into boxing. Or some kind of recreational MMA, if that’s a thing. Maybe take a few classes. Start a fight club.
I’ve heard about these birthday events or special vacations, similar to the thrill of an escape room. Basically, you’re faux kidnapped and forced to take part in a mock spy caper, or scavenger hunt. There’s lots of role-playing involved in these things, and if you get an appropriate scenario, I bet it’s an amazing experience. I think I’d enjoy doing one of these events. Even if only to compare it against all the real times I’ve been abducted, interrogated, beaten up, and shot at.
I bet it would be a blast.
I barely remember anything after the fight. I have flashes of the parking lot outside the warehouse, crawling through some bushes, crossing some railroad tracks. As soon as my head cleared a little, I called Lacroix. I just wanted him to come by and help me get home, but he must have realized how far gone I was. Soon there were a half dozen police cars, and they had swarmed into the warehouse looking for my captors.
And they found them. This wasn’t that big of an operation, and no one came by while I was incapacitated to sterilize the scene. The police found the two kidnappers, both alive, though Art was in his own medically induced coma, and Zander went straight to the ICU with a fractured skull.
They gave me a quick check-up and released me after the liberal administration of smelling salts and charcoal tablets. They also gave me Naloxone, in case any opioids were involved.
Not going to lie, the charcoal tasted better than kombucha.