“Tighter. Don’t mess with me.”
She hears a metallic click. She pulls the cuff hard enough to hurt.
“That dog’s trained, right? I saw him obey you.”
“Yes.”
“Good. I don’t want to kill him. I’d much rather kill you, but if you can’t back him way off and have him lie down again and stay, I’ll shoot him.”
Lana hand signals Cairo into the forest. He backs away, as though grudgingly, keeping his eyes on her. “Down,” she says.
He drops to the position.
“I want you to kneel again. Hands in the air. Let them drop and I’ll belly shoot you.”
Lana goes back on her knees and raises her arms, the look of a worshipper.
Here she comes.
The woman lowers herself in a climbing harness, now wielding a handgun with her rifle strapped across her back. Her descent is as smooth as a paratrooper’s, the pistol never shifting from her target. She’s pretty, too. Her appearance doesn’t add up. Has Vinko found a woman to do his dirty work?
She sheds the harness and advances past Lana, pressing a semi-automatic to the back of her head. Lana’s skin tingles, her stomach clenching. She’s been a total fool. She’s on her knees all ready for an execution-style murder.
But before she can beg for her life — and Emma’s — the woman tells her to put her hands behind her back.
Lana’s relieved, for surely she wouldn’t bother to cuff her if she were about to bury a bullet in her brain.
The cuffs tighten on her wrists, then the woman comes around to help her stand. She has flawless skin. Youthful. She looks familiar. “I know you,” Lana says. “Where do I know you from?”
“It’ll come to you,” she replies. “Don’t move.”
She gets behind Lana and cuts off the ankle cuffs. “Walk in front of me. Don’t do anything stupid. And if that dog breaks your command, he’s dead.”
Lana walks through the forest, trying to see everything around her, to remember trees that have fallen or tilt precariously so she can find her way back to the van, if she can escape with Emma. She searches so intently she spots tiny cameras mounted in the trees. A dozen of them at least.
“Are you going live with this?”
“Not yet. But I’m documenting everything so the world will see exactly what happens here.”
“Isn’t that stupid? Documenting your own crimes?” Wanting to get a rise out of her, some hint of who she is.
“Not in the world I come from.”
The world I come from? Lana’s heard those very words before. Who is she? What world would celebrate this?
Islamist radicals, yes. Russian oligarchs, indeed. North Koreans, them, too. Lana could go on with her list of people who want her dead. The successes she’s known, both in cyberspace and in ferocious combat, have created enemies around the world. And to think some stupid neo-Nazi and his gal Friday, or whoever she is, have caught up with her.
They find your weak spot, the way you love your kid, and they control you.
The woman nudges her with the gun, accelerating their pace. Within minutes they come to a bungalow. Lana still can’t see the lake. The woman opens the back door and tells her to go down to the basement. It’s lit, and the moment she descends Emma yells, “Mom!”
Her daughter stands clinging to the bars of a cage, naked. A man whose hands are cuffed behind his back and whose mouth is duct taped looks over, too.
Oh, God. His bloodied penis hangs from his fly.
Lana has never seen this much fear on her child’s face. Her mother has come not in rescue but as a prisoner, too. The woman opens the cage, telling Emma to stay back. The man simply stares. If possible, he’s even more frightened than Em.
Lana notices metal posts sunk into the floor with snap clamps attacked to each one. The next second brings an even more wrenching sight: chainsaw.
Pushed from behind, Lana stumbles into the cage. Emma, who remains unbound, catches her. She holds her mother, hugging her fiercely, crying loudly.
“That’s the great Steel Fist,” the woman says over Emma’s sobs. “His name is Vinko Horvat. Okay, Stinko, you’re coming out.”
He backs up.
She picks up small pruning shears. “I will come in and cut it off completely if you don’t come out of there.”
Vinko Horvat, looking wretched, steps out of the cage.
She grabs his penis with her free hand. He twists away, which only stretches his organ, making it an easier target.
“I really don’t want your dick, Stinko. Just do what I say and you’ll get to keep it the rest of your life.”
Lana doubts that will be more than a few more minutes. She’s just spotted three more cameras in the cellar above the metal posts.
As ordered, Horvat lies on his back, the look of terror deepening in his eyes.
Always holding the gun on him, the woman clamps his hands with two quick snaps, then one leg as efficiently before Horvat explodes in panic.
He rears back with his free leg, kicking her hard enough to spill her across the floor. Rolling to his side, Horvat pounds the post holding his other leg with his foot. It doesn’t budge.
The woman stands and watches him exhaust himself, then seizes his leg and clamps it with practiced ease.
When he turns his horrified gaze on her, she leans forward, smiles, and shoots him in the crotch.
His muffled agony sounds like an earthquake is ripping him apart from the inside out. Gouts of blood spill onto the floor. He twists and yanks on the metal clamps, bloodying his hands and ankles down to the bone.
An Obama mask covers her face and hair. Waving away gun smoke, she ties on a full-length white splatter apron, then opens a wall console with a computer and works the keyboard. She stares at the screen for a few seconds before pulling on thick black rubber gloves. She looks Felliniesque, but for the chainsaw she quickly hoists. She jerks the starter rope. The saw’s roar fills the cellar, obliterating Horvat’s tortured moans.
She walks toward him, blade screaming, as though she’s committed this horror a hundred times before. She points the saw at the camera above him, then nods to Lana and yells, “Now we’re going live.”
Chapter 32
Don’s frantic. He hasn’t heard from Lana since yesterday. Can’t reach her. He’s tried over and over. Not a word from Emma, either. Wife and daughter have vanished.
He paces the kitchen, pulling out his phone—again—this time to call Jeff Jensen.
“Is she in Idaho?” Don demands.
“Idaho?”
“Don’t get coy with me,” Don says. “She texted me last night saying she was going after Emma out there. Has she found her? Are they okay?”
There’s a pause. In Don’s experience, that’s never a good thing.
Jensen clears his throat. “She’s in Idaho. We can’t say where right now.”
“Can’t or won’t? And don’t dance around this. We’re talking about my wife and kid.”
“Can’t. We’re waiting to hear from her.”
“I’m not hearing from her, either.” Don feels like putting his fist through a wall.
Sufyan rushes into the kitchen, holding his own phone, shaking his head and mouthing, “Nothing.” He’s been trying to reach Emma.
Jensen, a Mormon, swears, startling Don.
“What is it?” Don shouts.
“Something’s just come up on a website we’re monitoring.”
“Which one?” Don stops pacing at the cooking island and flips open a laptop.
“Steel Fist,” Jensen replies.
Don squeezes the edge of the island, then starts typing.
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Jensen says.
Hearing Jensen this upset freaks Don out in a serious way. Lana always said he was the coolest cucumber in the garden, no matter how hot it got.