Chapter 13

The car I was following seemed to be heading in a fairly straight line back out of town away from the warehouse, although veering north away from where I had found Ronny and his friends.

The further out of town we got, the more I let a gap grow between us. Since the traffic was thinning out, I figured I would stand out more without the traffic to blend into. I still felt like it was pretty obvious I was following him, but you hear about cops tailing people, and I hadn’t seen any signs that he was trying to dodge me. It seemed like a good sign that he didn’t know I was following him.

After a thirty minute drive, he turned onto a private road that disappeared into the trees along the side of the road. I pulled off to the side of the road just before the turn off, since there was no way I could follow him without being noticed.

We were just outside the city, getting into the more rural areas, and the amount of traffic was really light. I got out of the jeep, checked my weapon and ammo to make sure I was good, and started along the private road hugging the tree line.

There was no guarantee that this was the end of the line for the car I had been following, but it seemed like a safe bet. I figured I would head down the road for a while and if it seemed to be getting nowhere, I could always walk back to the Jeep. Of course that would mean I had lost the car and any chance of finding Renata, so I was hoping this was where the car was headed.

I walked for about an hour down the road, and was about to turn back when the tree line broke open, and I could see lights ahead. Deciding it would be a bad idea to just head straight down the road for the building ahead, I circled through the trees to come at it from the side.

Getting close enough it became obvious this was less of a house and more of a compound. The ‘house’ was an ugly, small, one story square shaped building that looked to be made entirely out of cement. It reminded me more of a bunker than anything I would call a house, and presented some problems.

There were only a few windows and two doors I could see. This place seemed made for defense, and I could imagine whoever was inside could hold off an armed force pretty well, at least for a while.

I was still considering my situation, when I heard some rustling behind me. I whirled around and started to pull my gun up when I froze. Behind me were three guys, all pointing guns at me.

There was no way someone from the house could see me where I was, so it seems my tail did not go unnoticed. I hadn’t seen anyone come out of the house so these guys either came out and circled around behind me while I walked in from the road, or were called in from somewhere else.

Either way, they had the drop on me, and there wasn’t anything I could do at this point except drop my gun and hope they didn’t just shoot me where I stood.

One of the guys pulled a portable radio up to his mouth and said something in Russian into it. There was a brief back and forth with someone. That ended when the leader of these three clipped the radio back on his belt. Whatever the conversation was, he didn’t seem happy with the outcome.

He signaled one of the guys with him, who holstered his weapon and approached me.

These guys had good discipline, with the guy who was coming at me doing so without blocking his friends line of fire, which eliminated most of the options I would hope to have in this situation.

He grabbed my arms and pulled a zip tie around my wrists. So far this was the first mistake he had made. It was always a better idea to tie a captive’s hands behind them; not that I was in a place to take advantage of the situation, yet.

He spun me around, and they marched me across the open field to the house. I didn’t get a chance to see much, since shortly after going through the front door, I was led down some stairs into a basement.

I had been expecting a house style basement, but was surprised by what I saw. Under the house was more of what I would think of as a bunker complex, rather than a basement. The construction was as good as anything I had seen in the military, too.

The stairs led into a hallway with several doors branching off of it. They led me to one of these doors, which they unlocked. They opened the door and tossed me into the dimly lit room.

With my arms tied as they were, there wasn’t much I could do but brace for the impact as my shoulder, then my cheek, smacked against the hard stone basement floor.

I lay there for a minute, taking in the contents of the room. It was a short inventory since the only thing in here was another guy, also trussed up with zip ties.

“Hiya,” I said, “could I trouble you for some help up?”

“I guess,” he said, not sounding much in a helping mood.

Regardless of his tone he slid over to me and together I was able to get turned around and sit up.

“What did you do to get tossed down here?” I asked.

I was just making small talk with him while my brain worked through the situation, trying to sort out some way out of here.

“I was stupid,” he said bitterly.

“That happens to the best of us,” I said offhand, only half paying attention to him.

“Not like this. My boss was screwing me the whole time, and I was totally blind to it. I never saw he was bought and paid for by the Russians. And my stupidity got at least five people killed.”

I didn’t say anything for a moment, since I wasn’t paying enough attention. Once the words did sink in however, I did the math pretty quickly.

“Robles?” I asked.

He didn’t reply, but instead his head whipped around to stare at me, more or less confirming my guess.

“Taylor,” I said in answer to his unasked question. “Guess we both screwed this up. Damn, I was hoping you would lay low. Since they got you, I am guessing they got Renata too?”

“Yeah, while I was off at the meeting that your boss canceled, they figured out where I stashed her. I chased them, but they got away.”