Being new to any job is intimidating, but I somehow picked the one that seems most crucial to the world right now. When I applied to the Secret Service, I expected to keep a low level diplomat safe or even scan a million faces in a crowd, hoping to notice one that is off and catch a terrorist before they can strike. I never expected to be assigned to the President’s detail. Granted my assignment places me in one of the decoy cars, so I still won’t get to meet POTUS, but at least I get to protect him and the destiny of our great country from harm.
As we pull into the convoy, I peer out through the tinted windows. The other agent assigned to this car stares out his own window. Years of protecting and serving have given his face a hardened expression that keeps me from trying to strike up a conversation. He notices me looking at him and raises an eyebrow.
“Your attention should be on our surroundings not on me.” He advises gruffly.
I nod and return my attention to the world slowly rolling past as we get underway. As the cars begin to diverge, taking different routes to our destination, I can’t help but wonder if the tinted windows of the car we are following really hide our president from prying eyes or if we are truly the decoy. I shake the thought away, my attention caught by the glimmer of an oncoming car. My mouth drops open as the shimmering silver car jackknifes in front of the lead car, bringing our trio to a halt.
“Keep your eye on the prize, boy,” my partner says as he draws his gun and opens the door.
He begins firing before I realize that men in body armor have begun descending from the overpass. I follow his example, using my door as a shield as I try to take down as many of our attackers as possible. Apparently, I miss the most important one because I feel a sharp sting on my neck and the world goes dark.
I groan as the world begins to brighten again. The more light filters through my eyes, the more my head feels like the inside of a snare drum. That doesn’t stop me from opening them again and again to try to get a feel for my surroundings. With each blink, new details come to light. I lie in a dimly lit room. My partner leans against an unpainted concrete wall. Hunched over, he must have awakened before me but still feels the same dizziness that keeps me on the floor.
As he raises his head and notices my eyes blinking open again, he grunts in my general direction. “They took our guns and possibly our wits.”
I nod agreement, not trusting my own voice.
“Come on, son. Get up. It seems to be helping.” As if to prove his words, he stands up straight and takes a few timid steps toward me.
I rest my hands against the wall and slowly shimmy up from the floor. A few minutes later, we meet in the middle. We lean toward each other but we don’t touch. We don’t dare show weakness in this moment.
“So what did they leave us?”
“What?” I ask, taking in the bare walls and unfinished concrete floor. “The room is empty.”
“We still have our shoes.” He pats his pockets. “Odd. They let me keep my sunglasses.”
I pat my own pockets. “I still have my chewing gum.”
“Now how can we use what we have to get us out of here?”
I shrug. He sighs.
We are still silently pondering our options when the door above us creaks open. A figure sheathed in black descends toward us.
“Thought you might be awake.” The mask over his face muffles his voice, but I am sure I detect an accent. “How about you sit down against the wall over there.” As if we look like we have any fight in us, he punctuates his words by leveling his gun at us.
I follow my partner’s lead and lean back against the wall to slowly lower myself to the floor. When our bottoms settle to the floor, he relaxes a little.
“You boys just stay here and chill out. I will be back with someone who has some very important questions for you.” He laughs. “And he will get them. I promise you that.”
As soon as the door closes behind him, my partner leans toward me. “I think I’ve figured it out.”
“What?” I ask, my own mind racing through the horrible ways they might try to make us talk.
“Chew that gum, son.”
The look in his eyes convinces me not to ask questions, luckily, he chooses to share his thoughts in whispers as I begin chewing. “When they return, I am going to be leaning against the wall, facing the door with my sunglasses on. You stand beside the door. As they come in, slip that gum over the lock. Hopefully, it will keep it from locking when they go out.”
“That’s genius.” I interject.
“If it works. The other problem is that we need a plausible lie to tell them, so they will go to check on the intel they get from us.”
“But we don’t know what they are going to ask us about.”
“So clearly I will have to be the one who cracks and tells them something. You might have to let them rough you up to motivate me though.”
“If it gets us out of here, I will do my best.”
“That’s what I wanted to hear. Now get into position.”
He leans against the wall, dropping his sunglasses onto his nose as he takes a casual stance. I take my spot beside the door. Footsteps echo down the hall, punctuated by gruff voices discussing our fate. Even with all my training, their words chill me.
“So what do we do with them once we get what we need?”
“Once it’s verified, we won’t need them anymore.”
“And how will you know they aren’t lying?”
‘We have someone on the inside.”
“Ah. That explains a lot.”
“Yep. John has been imbedded in the President’s entourage for a while. It finally paid off. His security detail slipped up just enough for us to slip in.”
They laugh as keys jingle in the lock. Their guffaws distract them enough that neither notices as I slip behind them long enough to put my gum over the lock. I quietly shuffle to a far corner of the room as their eyes fall on my partner. He doesn’t move a muscle. His arms remain calmly folded over his chest.
The new man smiles, showing yellowed teeth. “Too cool for torture, are we?”
The other man takes notice of my position and waves me closer with the barrel of his gun. As I move to stand beside to my partner, I can see his eyes shift to look at me out of the corner of his eye. I wink with the eye closest to the wall. The eye I can see closes in response. Then my attention turns to the new man. From my new vantage point, his obvious combover fails to lend the threatening aura he wants to exude.
He steps toward my partner, clearly agitated by his lack of response. “Are you going to talk now or do I get to make you?”
No movement.
The older man pulls a slender tool pouch from his back pocket and selects an instrument from it. “Take off the glasses.” When his command doesn’t produce immediate results, he raises his hand and slaps my partner hard in the face.
The glasses fly from his nose. A red handprint appears beside his his left eye. And he finally moves. His head slams into the wall behind him. His lower lip disappears between his teeth as he fights back a curse or cry of pain.
“We’re getting close now.” The man surveys the room. “But I need something to tie him to. Can’t have him moving and causing more damage than I want.”
“Now hold on.” Even I am surprised by my outburst.
The man with the gun frowns and shakes his head at me. I instantly bite back my words, but my fists clench and refuse to unclench as the older man summons a guard from the hall to bring in the chair he has been lounging on. Together, they force my partner into the chair and tie him down.
Once more, I forget the wisdom of staying still. I take a few steps toward him. Something slams into the back of my head. Lights flash behind my eyelids as the world swirls out of focus and darkness descends.
When I slowly tune back into consciousness, I hear my partner’s voice, slurred and pained but recognizably his through my brain fog. The actual words don’t make it through, however. I try not to move, allowing my throbbing head to remain pressed against the rough concrete floor.
Whatever he said has the desired effect. After a couple curses, my partner falls to the ground at my side, slumping onto the concrete beside me. I slit an eye to take a look at him. Gouges at the hairline seep blood though most of them have already begun to clot. He offers me the briefest smile before moaning and curling into the fetal position. Our captors laugh as they stomp from the room with the chair in tow.
We remain on the floor, listening to their laughter until it fades away. Surprised and pleased to hear all four voices receding down the hallway, I slowly push myself up from the ground.
“Thanks for distracting them, kid. I think you took the brunt of it.” He tilts my head as he speaks to inspect the lump on the back of my head.
As he gently probes the lump, I stare at the nearest bloody opening on his head. “I don’t know about that. What exactly did he do to you?”
“I think he thought he could dig out the answers he wanted. I finally gave him something.” He grins at me as he says that last bit and finally stops poking at me. “I hope you didn’t get a concussion, but let’s see if it was worth it.”
We stand slowly, leaning against each other as we struggle to quietly make our way to the door. When we reach it, we both take a deep breath and hold it. He reaches for the knob and twists experimentally. The door slowly creaks open.
“I’d high five you if I wasn’t afraid it would hurt us both.” He says.
“I get that. We don’t want to waste energy. We have to save the president.”
“Hopefully, this wasn’t for nothing.”
On impulse, I pull the door closed behind us. This time, I hear the lock click into place.
~
We cross the threshold and pause to listen. Relieved to hear nothing, our footsteps quicken as we head toward what looks like the obvious exit. We round a corner where stairs lead downward toward an open door. We slow down, tilting our heads this way and that to listen. As our feet touch the lower floor, an engine roars to life right outside the open door. Voices call out to each other and then one comes back toward the door. We rush to hide behind the long draperies hanging over the front windows. I hold back a sneeze as dust envelopes me.
From my new vantage point, I can see the car pulling away. One of the guards sits at the wheel. Two other figures lean together in conversation in the back seat. The glare on the window makes it hard to discern which two, but a glimpse of the second guard climbing up the stairs reassures me.
My partner notices the same details. Unlike me, he decides on a course of action. As the guard opens the screen door, his face connects with my partners elbow. He curses as the guard falls to the ground but recovers quickly and begins rifling through the man’s pockets.
“We’re in luck,” he holds up a car key.
With one more peek out the window to make sure the other car hasn’t returned, we race out to the only remaining car in the driveway. We stand at the driver’s door, staring at each other.
“It’s safer if you drive.” I answer the question lingering silently between us.
“I hope you’re right.” He climbs in and turns the key as I rush to the other side.
We follow the cloud of dust stirred up by the other car. From the way he grips the wheel, I know my partner is struggling not to go racing down the road. We want to hurry, but we don’t want to let our former captors know we are free. As I glance between the road ahead and my partner, something I overheard finds its way back into my memory.
“When I was waiting at the door, I heard something…” I pause unsure if it is important now that I am trying to share the information.
“Go ahead, son. Follow your gut.”
“They were talking about how they knew where to intercept us, and they mentioned a name.”
He turns his eyes from the road for a second, “Who?”
“John.” I swallow hard.
“I always knew that guy was too nice. I guess that means we need to find a phone and call someone from the security team to turn that leak the other way.”
I nod and open the glove box, laughing as I find a burner phone inside. “Let’s hope this has some power.”
As I press the button, my partner grins wryly at me. “Any chance you have anyone on the team’s number memorized?”
I release a string of expletives in response.
He laughs again, “As you like to remind me, son, I am old. I still have a few numbers memorized.”
As the phone lights up, he begins dictating numbers, I hit the corresponding buttons on the keypad. My boss’s voice answering fills me with hope and I explain the situation.
“Good job, boys,” he declares over the speaker phone, “I have some calls to make, but I will need to debrief you as soon as you can get to us here at the hotel.”
“But, sir…” I begin to protest.
“Don’t worry. This isn’t my first time protecting the leader of the free world. We will be moving to the tertiary hotel. Our little mole hadn’t ingratiated himself with enough clearance to know that information, but we will also double up the protective detail in the city to catch anything suspicious.” He hangs up.
“I think our first stop should be a hospital. We need to ditch this car, anyway.” My partner says.
I nod agreement as the throbbing in my head reaches a crescendo.
~This one has been a hard one to piece together. Hopefully, I have thought it through enough and it doesn’t defy believability too much for my dear readers. I also hope it doesn’t rile anyone up. We all know how controversial presidents and politics in general can be.~
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