Chapter 26

Friday afternoon

Easy Self Storage

Port Jonesby Washington

Ben first thought as he regained consciousness was, ‘why the fuck can’t I just wake up like everybody else does’? As he gathered his senses for the second time that day he realized that he was chained to a bed, Still a little groggy, his next irreverent thought was ‘I bet Kelly or Sarah or hell maybe even Lizzy would love this setup’.

Ben was again cautious about letting anyone know he was awake. He could hear a woman speaking on the phone in what sounded like Chinese and she sounded highly stressed. Through partially open eyelids he surveyed his surroundings. The space he was in looked like a small open warehouse. The kind a business might rent on a temporary basis. A small office in the corner, metal walls and ceiling with a concrete floor and a large rollup door at the front comprised his total view point.

Ben continued his inventory by quietly testing his bindings. No duct tape this time. He was cuffed with solid police grade equipment by one leg and one hand to what was apparently a large rolling hospital type bed, probably the kind you could rent for your home use.

Ben completed his survey by determining his physical state. Yep, everything hurt like a real sonofabitch. He had a headache and swollen knee as well as who knows what his face looked like. It felt swollen and puffy; he could only hope he had done a little damage to the rock in revenge.

Ben heard the woman say something angrily and hang up the phone.

“Ben what am I going to do with you?” said the woman’s voice.

That was the last thing he heard as he drifted back off to sleep...

Mei really didn’t know what to do with Ben. It had seemed so simple this morning. All they had to do was dart him, set up a disappearance scenario that would hold for a few days. Then deliver him to a clean site that she had set up where he could be interrogated and have some samples drawn. The lab doctors would then use a small dose of rohypnol to confuse his memories and he would be released not far from his vehicle. No fuss no muss. The worst Ben would have ended up with would be a headache and some embarrassment at missing work.

Even if he did get the local police involved it would be a complete non-starter as there would be no evidence and no will to continue an expensive investigation. That’s one reason why Mei and her team operated in the more rural areas. They seldom had to overtly influence anyone in local government or police. Laziness and bureaucracy and lack of funds made it much more effective to just let inertia work. Mei and her team did this kind of thing 2 or 3 times a year, generally when they needed private industry intelligence and had never even had to bother with a cover up.

Mei should have known something was up when her handler had insisted on adding the two special forces goons to her team. These guys were serious hitters and generally were only called on when wetwork was possible or required. As much as she liked to complain about them, the two American idiots she already had were decent types who really thought they were the good guys. The two spec ops killers forced on her were most definitely not. Mei was secretly very pleased that Ben had schooled them on their jobs. The support team had eventually located them late in the morning dazed and confused and barely conscious just a few feet away from where Ben had ambushed them. One had several broken ribs and a severe concussion, the other had a fractured skull. Both had to go to an actual hospital requiring that an extensive backstory be implemented to keep their cover intact, Mei had really enjoyed pointing out to their boss that an unarmed 45 year old school teacher had outran, then disabled and disarmed two of his best killers.

Fortunately for the operation the two Americans had eventually gotten Ben’s vehicle extracted from the ditch and back on the road. Once they had called in to the support unit they had been directed back toward the main road to provide cover for the team chasing Ben. By sheer coincidence they had spotted a disturbance at the large campground near the main road. Campers there had been in the process of calling an ambulance for the unconscious Ben who had been found in a ditch next to the trail leading into the campground. Thinking quickly they had told everyone at the campground that they were ex- army medics and could get Ben to the hospital more quickly than an ambulance. Instead of doing that, of course, they threw Ben in the back of his own vehicle and brought him to Mei’s clean site.

Now Mei had to figure out what to do with him. Her conundrum started when the two Americans had brought Ben’s broken body into the clean facility. His pulse was thready and weak and he had lost some blood from his head wound and his left knee was the size of a cantaloupe. The fall on the trail had done what the two killers hadn’t been able to. Mei took one look at Ben’s unconscious form and nearly fainted. Not from the blood or the damage to his head and knee- she had seen plenty of both types of injury. No, this was just guilt. This was a good man who had done nothing to deserve any of this. Mei knew that this time there was no justification for what she was doing.

Then to make matters even worse was the phone call from her handlers. She knew that they had been lying to her. They confirmed it with the call. They had never intended to just detain Ben. Instead Ben was to be sedated again and prepared for transport to Beijing the next night on the smuggling vessel that they used for the fentanyl shipments. Her handler never specified but Mei knew the lab unit he was destined for. If Ben were lucky he would die quickly, otherwise it could be years of medical experiments and testing (effectively torture) and none of his loved ones would ever know what had happened to him.

There was also the likelihood of further sanitization. Certainly the two Americans would end up crab bait somewhere off the Washington coast. Maybe even some or all of Ben’s lovely girlfriends. Mei was probably still too valuable for them to dispose of, but she couldn’t be certain of that.

Unless she defied them somehow. If that happened, should they catch her, a quick death would be her most fervent hope. She had seen others turned over for personal use to the spec ops goons that worked with the fentanyl smuggling ‘Red Dragon’ unit. Those women had been begging for death before it was granted to them several days later.

Mei was terrified, but the events of the last few days had given her some clarity. First, there was her vivid dream, then seeing her dream come to life when she had seen Ben for the first time. Finally, there was the event in the coffee shop and just for a fleeting moment feeling the love that she so longed for with Ben and the women around him.

Mei’s life had consisted of choices that weren’t really choices at all. Every path seemed to lead to the same darkness. For this one time in her life she was going to defy the darkness. She would choose the right hand path of her dream, where Ben played with his children. Even though she would never get to pass through that archway into the light herself, Ben and the others would. That would be her legacy and she would know when the time came that she had done the right thing at least once in her bleak life.

“Carl, I need you and John for a second,” Mei called out from the door of the tiny office in the corner of the clean facility.

“Yes’m” Carl called out as he and John walked in.

“Look I know this is not the kind of job you signed on for.” Mei stated

“Uh...” John and Carl both started to reply

“No it’s alright” Mei interrupted. “It’s not what I had planned on either. Listen it’s about to get way worse and there’s no reason for you to take the hit for this. By now you’ve probably figured out that you aren’t working for the CIA exactly.”

“Well yeah, we’ve been wondering about that.” replied Carl.

“You should probably forget all about this part of your life. I’d recommend that you get as far away from here as possible, as quickly as possible. Here’s a guy up north who can get you fake ids that will stand up.” Mei wrote out an address and a name. Just tell him ‘Ice Queen’ sent you.” Mei almost laughed as the two Americans realized that she knew the nickname they had for her. She continued, “Now don’t dick around, you need to disappear. The people that are involved will find you and kill you and anyone around you without compunction.”