In The Company Of Snipers: Zack Part 17

"Here." He unholstered one of his pistols from under his arm, checked the magazine and handed it to her grip first. "Take this."

"I don't need a gun."

"Take it," he insisted. "I'll feel better if you can protect yourself while you're inside."

"I have no place to hide it." She didn't want the weapon near her, much less when she fully planned to be carrying a child with her. "Besides, I don't know how to use it."

He frowned, the gun still in his outstretched hand. "Do you ever do what you're told?"

"I did. Once. A long time ago. Maybe." She would have smiled if she weren't so scared.

"I doubt it." He secured his weapon and faced the house again.

Taking a big breath, she opened the door and stepped outside. The chill wind of the dismal day reminded her to pull her jacket tight. Her knees shook as she made her way back to the front door. As quick as she rang the doorbell, Jun answered, only this time she barely opened the door a crack.

"Why you here? What you want?"

"I'd like to talk to you about one of the babies my husband and I saw yesterday."

Jun peered past her to the car where Agent Lennox waited. "Where other car? Why he not come with you? He scared?"

"No, he stayed in the car because he has your money." Mei played her ace in the hole. "We're willing to pay you for the child if you will let us take her with us."

Jun's eyebrows shot up, but she recovered quickly. "How much money you got?"

"May I come in?" Mei resorted to her alter ego. "Or are you going to keep me standing out here in the cold while you ask stupid questions?"

That did the trick. Jun opened the door and stepped aside for Mei to enter. "You want same baby he like yesterday?"

"Yes. Do you still have her?"

"Maybe." Jun glanced down the hall where a group of older girls stood in a line. All dressed in their orange dresses, they looked like they were waiting for a fire drill.

"What's going on?" Mei asked.

"We moving," Jun admitted. "Again."

"What do you mean, you're moving?" Mei's heart skipped a beat. Was the baby already gone?

Jun shrugged and walked toward the hall where the girls waited. "Come. We talk money. Then we talk baby."

"No." Mei stood her ground. "I want to see the baby first. Once I have her, we'll talk money."

Jun glanced over her shoulder. "I think you come now. We see baby you want." She lit a cigarette as she walked, so Mei followed. The money was secure for now. She intended to signal Agent Lennox once she had the little girl safely in her arms. There was no way their plan could fail.

Once in the hall, she spotted the man she'd seen the day before. He stood at the back door, his arms folded over his chest. A look pa.s.sed between Jun and him that Mei couldn't interpret. He nodded, but Jun kept leading, so Mei continued to follow. Her fingers clenched with worry. Saving this child meant everything right now. Then it was LiLi's turn.

The smell of the place hadn't improved. Mei took a deep breath before Jun opened the nursery doors. Once again, every child's head turned to her. All those eyes. The bleakness of their situation encircled Mei, an invisible snake that constricted the joy out of saving just the one. All of these children needed rescue.

Jun marched over to the playpen where the baby girl lay sleeping on her stomach. With the cigarette bobbing on her lip, Jun reached into the pen and jerked the baby up by her arm. The poor little tyke blinked, her lips puckered up for a cry that never came. Jun shook her once like she needed to shake the sleep out of the baby.

"You want this one?" she snapped. "You like? Yes? No?"

"Yes." Mei couldn't take the baby from Jun fast enough. She smothered her to her chest. "She is the right one."

"How much money?" Jun glared. "You say we talk money when you have baby. How much?"

"What do you want for her?" Mei asked. There were so many others. If Jun asked for less, maybe she could rescue one or two more.

"I think not." Jun's face crinkled into an ugly sneer as she glanced over Mei's shoulder.

Too late Mei saw the young black man sneaking up behind her.

Too late she felt his fist in the side of her head.

Too fast the reeking floor reached up and swallowed her alive, along with the child in her arms.

Where the h.e.l.l is she?

Zack drummed the steering wheel through bandaged fingers. Every tap hurt. He didn't care. Mei had been in there too long. Something was wrong. The old dude he'd seen inside with Jun yesterday was out and about today. He'd already made two trips to the dumpster at the end of the driveway, even waved once when he spotted Zack in his car. Still no Mei. Still no signal.

How long can it take to grab one baby and run?

Low gray clouds raced overhead on their way westward. If she didn't come out soon and at least give him the signal to bring the cash, he'd have to turn the engine and the heater on. His gut screamed. The cold was the least of his worries.

"Come on, give me a sign, d.a.m.n it." He grabbed the door handle, rolled the stress out of his shoulders, and watched the front door. "Wave to me, Mei. Do something."

The door of the house opened, but it was Jun. She waved all right, a fast come-quick kind of a wave, and Zack bolted out the door.

"Come now," she called to him. "Baby girl sick. You must come now."

He ran. One step hit the porch before he heard the vehicle screeching toward him. A blue van? That blue van. He froze. Which way to go? Forward or retreat?

"Must come," Jun screeched. "Hurry. Hurry."

The vehicle swerved over the yard. There was no time to think. He reached for his cell phone and stabbed the preset number for Alex. Mother answered.

"They're moving the girls," he bellowed.

"They what?" she asked. "Zack? Is this-?"

"Hey, you!" Two thugs scrambled out of the still-moving van.

"Mei's inside," Zack yelled at Mother. "Get someone here now. Send help."

4th Street Tigers ran at him, guns drawn, murder in their eyes.

"Where are you?" Mother demanded. "Hold on. I'm sending-"

"We're at-"

A blinding light exploded in his head. Pain crashed against his skull.

"Mother!"

"Aw. He's calling his mommy," someone taunted from very far away.

He dropped to his knees, the phone on the ground beside him. Darkness descended.

Jun lunged.

He grabbed her bony ankle.

She hit him again.

TWENTY.

Something smelled bad. Real bad.

Zack squinted through murky vision. He would've opened both eyes, but one was stuck shut. Swollen shut. A man shouldn't feel so d.a.m.ned bad. His whole head seemed swollen shut. Nose. Ears. Mouth. Darkness parted only to reveal more rolling darkness that made him dizzy. Like he wasn't dizzy enough.

She hit me. Oh h.e.l.l, did she hit me.

It was hard to make out anything in the cold dark place where he lay. A thin layer of slimy mud cushioned his cheek, offering relief. Breathing would've felt better without the burning stone in his chest.

The fog in his head lifted. Both arms were pulled tightly behind his back, making breathing constrained and difficult, but he was alive. Maybe alive was a good thing? Stiff and cold, his bandaged fingertips slid along the plastic zip ties strapped around both wrists. His feet were bound together the same way. Tight.

Details surfaced slowly through the haze in his brain. Jun. That d.a.m.ned mean Jun. The 4th Street Tigers. Even the blue van showed up for roll call. Mei was in there somewhere, lost in his head. Alex, too. Nothing made sense. The cold felt good on his cheek. Sleep beckoned. If only he could breathe.

He lay there gasping like a fish out of water. The ground moved and swelled. Breathing became all-important. Thinking, too. That's what Alex always railed on. He expected his agents to think. Once in a while, just think. But Zack's brain pounded inside his skull and thinking hurt. If that wasn't bad enough, just trying to breathe felt like it was killing him, too.

His needs became more primal the longer he lay there.

Air. I need air.

Someone groaned nearby.

"Mei?" Zack grimaced. He'd have thought of her eventually. And then he knew his mouth was full of blood, maybe a couple broken teeth, too. He spat the clot out and called again, but his voice carried no impact or volume. He croaked anyway, "Mei."

There was no answer, and the feeble attempt had taken all his strength. He lay listening and shivering. Something at the back of his mind recalled that shivering was a good thing. It was only when a man stopped shivering he had something to worry about. Of course, he probably didn't care much by then.

Think! Alex's voice screeched at him from out of nowhere.

"d.a.m.n it, Boss," Zack rasped. "Leave me...alone."

Think, Zack. Think.

"You're bugging me. 'Sides...I'm trying...to die here."

Think.

"Think I'm...losing my mind."

He stilled. Alex wasn't really here. Good. A man deserved peace and quiet when he's trying to draw his last breath.

"Mei?" he asked the darkness. She was here a minute ago, wasn't she?

He rolled to his back and pushed his hands into the mud. Every muscle screamed to lie back down. Somehow, he managed a sitting position, but that only made him dizzier, like it was possible. The ground moved in a circular wave, up and then down, around and around.

The darkness whispered a word he dreaded. Concussion.

"Yeah. Yeah. Maybe...if I live." His hoa.r.s.e voice echoed. Echoed...Echoed....

"Ah, h.e.l.l."

Pain slammed his ribcage. Inhaling fire, the blackness took what little breath he'd drawn. Barely able to squeeze a breath in, he tried to think and think fast. Mei had to be here. Maybe between the two of them, they could figure something out.

"Mei." He groaned like an old man and then he rested and listened. There was no answer. All he heard was wheezing and coughing, choking and spitting. His. Breathing shouldn't be so noisy.

Another sinister thought joined the last. Punctured lungs. A man could die from that.

He pushed the warning out of his head.

"Mei?" he croaked again.

She whimpered. Finally.

"Can you...hear me?" Nausea and vertigo buffeted his meager hold on gravity. His mangled gauze-covered fingers pressed into the mud behind him. They still hurt from when he'd pounded his car. A little more pain hardly mattered.

Why was it so important to sit up in the first place?

"Agent Lennox?" She sounded as bad as he did.

"It's...me," he hissed. For awhile, neither said anything. It was all he could do to maintain the tripod thing he had going between his b.u.t.t and his hands behind his back. He listened to mud squishing as Mei moved toward him.

"I'm tied up."

"You...hurt?"

"I feel funny, like I've been drugged." Again more squishing, sc.r.a.ping noises until she b.u.mped into his legs. "Are you hurt?"