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THE DOOR OF THE FACILITY clicked closed with the finality of a prison cell, the locks snapping shut with a snick. Mitch adjusted the near empty pack on his back. It felt immeasurably lighter now that the container was missing. The incessant hum of the buzzing bees was also absent. The sun was still an hour away, the formations around him ghostly shadows. He searched the darkness for the Seiko warrior who was to be his guide back to the Mustang. Crickets chirped, the only sound in the predawn gloom.
“Hello?” he called to the dark.
There was no answer. He fumbled around in his pocket and withdrew his flash light. A watery beam lit the immediate area, barely lessening the darkness. “Damn, the batteries need charging,” he muttered. He flipped the crank out of the side and with quick movements, spun the handle to create the charge to be stored in the batter, while he waited for the Seiko warrior to appear.
Suddenly a figure glided out of the gloom into the path of the weak spill of light from his flashlight. Mitch jumped, startled, his automatically dropping to where he would normally carry his service revolver. It was not there, of course, but the warrior’s eyes did not miss the movement. Mitch saw his hand flash and the glint of steel told him that a switch blade lay between the clenched fingers. Mitch held his hands above his head, palms out, one hand still clutching the flashlight.
“Whoa there, son. You startled me, that’s all. I meant no aggression. Put the knife away.”
The warrior hesitated, then folded the knife and tucked it back up his sleeve.
“Good thing you apologized, old man. My brothers would have run you through before you could twitch.”
He gestured around him and six heavily painted warriors stepped into the dim pool of light cast by the flashlight held aloft by his rigid hands. Mitch swallowed.
“I am lowering my hands now,” he said in a firm voice. “We are on the same side, you know.” Slowly, he lowered his hands.
The faces around him did not soften. A young warrior with a plethora of skinny braids grabbed him by the arm and jerked him into movement. Silently, Mitch followed the young warrior out into the badlands, shadowed by his muscular companions.
Not a word was spoken during the first half hour of walking. He followed in silence, assuming that Pam had given instructions to the warriors as to how to find the Mustang and her old camp, but forty five minutes into the walk, he noticed that their general direction of travel was away from the Mustang, not toward it. He reached out and tapped the leader on the shoulder to gain his attention.
“You do know that you are to be taking me back to my car, right? Pam gave you the location of it?”
The warrior turned his head, smirked, and continued on, picking up his pace to a quick, effortless trot.
Mitch was forced to increase his speed to keep up and said, in a breathy voice, “Hey, answer the question. Where are you going? I need to get back to my car.”
The warrior behind him, red hair bouncing as he ran, said, “Shut up and keep moving.”
Distrust swelled and his mulish, stubborn side kicked in. He stopped dead in the path and his sudden arrested movement startled the warriors. As one they pulled knives and leveled bows at his torso.
Mitch ignored the show of weaponry and addressed the leader, who had turned back, anger drawing his brows into a straight, furious line. Mitch crossed his arms, facing the youth. “Well?”
“Who said we were your escort back to your car? You are really stupid, for a cop.”
A frisson of alarm skittered across Mitch’s nerves.
“If you are not my escort, then what are we doing here?”
“That,” said the youth with a flick of his hand, “is none of your business.”
That moment a burlap sack dropped over Mitch’s head and was pulled tight against his throat. Mitch swore, grabbing the edge of the cloth with both hands as he kicked out at his attackers, but he missed. Off balance, he was tripped, falling heavily to the ground, barely breaking his fall. The pressure on his neck did not ease and he gasped for air. A knee shoved in his back immobilized him. Mitch’s arms were pulled back and a plastic tie snaked around his wrists tightening painfully, cutting into his flesh. He was yanked back to his feet, and the pressure around his neck eased as the sack was tied tight. A rope dropped over his head, tightening painfully against his Adam’s apple, and then the warriors began to run again, in complete silence.
The pace and the inability to see the ground under his feet had Mitch stumbling and falling on a continuous basis, and each time the rope around his neck tightened painfully like a hangman’s noose. More often than not, the warriors pulled him back to his feet by the rope, choking him until his sight tunneled towards unconsciousness. After the third fall, they cut the plastic tie and moved his hands round to the front and rebound them. With his hands now in front, he wrapped his hands around the rope by his neck to maintain the slack he needed to breathe.
The ground leveled out and his falls became less about the ground underfoot and more about his exhaustion. The heat of the sun beat down on him and the rough woven strands of burlap scratched despite the film of sweat that ran down his face. The coarse fibers dug into his skin, a thousand tiny pricks of annoyance.
Around midday, the pace slowed then the party came to a halt, with Mitch in their midst. He stumbled, wavering on legs that quivered with exhaustion. Into the still, heavy air, the drone of a plane split the silence, growing louder as it approached. The drone of the engine identified it as a twin propeller prop plane. A welcomed breeze gusted past them and Mitch realized that the plane had landed nearby. The engine cut, and the crunch of boots grew louder as the pilot approached where he stood, coming to a halt a few feet away.
Not a word was spoken. Mitch sensed that something changed hands between the pair and the murmur of quiet speech reached his ears. He leaned forward to try and catch the gist of the softly spoken words exchanged between the pilot and the braided warrior. Without warning he was struck on the head from behind. The blow made Mitch’s world spin and he crumpled to the ground, unconscious.
The warriors picked him up and carried him to the plane, loading him into the back seat. The tall man in the dark suit spoke for a few moments longer, then shook hands with the warrior and climbed into the pilot’s seat.
The engine turned over and caught with a powerful roar, then taxied down the desert floor, stirring clouds of dust as it sped down the flat, boulder free stretch. Lifting off, the plane made a slow circle as it climbed into the sky, before straightening out, and vanishing from sight.