Freedom Incorporated (76 page)

Dan shrugged. “Maybe my
message scared them off.” It was disheartening, but he had to
consider the possibility. He couldn’t hear anyone in the
compound.

“
I think this
place is bigger than we imagined.”

Yeah,
possibly… it has to provide living quarters for several
women.
Three new corridors branched away
from the lounge room.
Which
way?
Dan decided to go left. If he always
chose left, he’d always be able to retrace his steps if he became
disorientated.

He edged
silently forward, glad for the muffling carpet.
Where are you Jen?
The corridor they’d
chosen had a number of nodular rooms branching to the left and
right. They all looked used on a semi-regular basis, but none was
in use now. They were bedrooms, and Dan’s imagination coloured in
the emerging pattern. People –
Probably
powerful men
– used the place as an
overnight stopover when they didn’t want to go home.
If they have homes to…

Noise from an ablution
block severed further contemplation.

A shower was running. He
could hear the muted patter of water through the door. He motioned
to Simon and they entered the room, a billow of steam engulfing
them. Dan frowned, waving his Colt left and right in order to part
the steam enough to see.

Jesus, how
many people are showering?
There was enough
steam to theorise that there were at least a dozen. But his theory
collapsed a moment later when the person in the shower turned off
the water and the sound trickled away, Dan’s noise buffer vanishing
with it. His boots clicked on the tiles, giving him away. Realising
that whoever was in the shower would be unarmed – it simply wasn’t
somewhere men took weapons – Dan strode the last several paces and
ambushed the shower cubicle, prepared to shoot if the person turned
hostile.

He hadn’t been expecting
a naked woman. She looked up and tried to cover her oversized
breasts with her hands, surprised by Dan’s intrusion. “Who the hell
are you?” she demanded, frowning when she failed to recognise the
intruder. It was against protocol for men to enter the women’s
shower. They encouraged the women to take hygiene seriously and
shower often, for which they needed to feel safe in the ablution
blocks.

Her high-pitched voice
was piercing with the onset of panic.

Dan held a finger to his
lips and lowered his gun. “Shh! I’m here to help.”

He could see the
confusion scrawled on her face. There was no telling how long the
Guild had held her against her will. She’d resigned herself to
spending the last of her days in the luxurious underground prison.
She therefore found it difficult to process the fact that someone
had gained unauthorised access and wanted to help.

“
What?” she
whispered yieldingly. “How?”
Why?

“
I’m here to
get you out,” Dan said to reassure her. “I’m with the police.” It
was technically true. Simon was a cop, and he was there with him.
So… maybe it was a white lie, but he didn’t think it would cause
harm. “I’m looking for a woman by the name of Jennifer Cameron, do
you know her?”

She shook her head.
“No.”

“
She’s new.
She was only brought here a few days ago,” Dan prompted, his heart
sagging.
What if Adrian was lying? What if
she’s in a different compound?

“
Oh, her.” She
didn’t seem too self-conscious about being naked; too many men had
raped her for that to matter much. But she was getting cold and
reached for a towel to dry herself. “I didn’t know her
name.”

“
Where is
she?” Dan asked, an overwhelming excitement replacing the
desolation of a few heartbeats ago.

“
She could be
anywhere down here,” came her unwanted reply. “But her room’s
across the other side, you’ll have to go around. Here, like this.”
She drew a basic map on a steam-covered mirror. “You’re here.” She
marked an X on one segment of the compound. “And your friend’s over
here.” She marked it with another X.

Dan’s eyebrows shot up,
he’d imagined the compound was large but had no idea it was
enormous. He thought about how far they’d walked from the portals
and estimated the compound was 200 metres wide. “Okay, thanks. Now
I want you to stay here until this is over, okay?”

She nodded, hiking her
towel up before it slipped from her wet skin. “Okay. Good
luck.”

Dan couldn’t
shake the feeling that there was something wrong with her. She’d
displayed no emotion about her plausible future freedom. She’d just
accepted it as the next twist in her life.
Is that where numbness leads?
It was
scary. Dan didn’t want to end up that way, unable to feel the
terror of the bad but also unable to connect with the joy of the
good. He shrugged it off for later analysis; he had urgent matters
to focus on.

They followed the woman’s
directions, carefully sweeping forward, and Dan was beginning to
hope they’d find Jen without encountering hostiles. Of course, that
didn’t mean they’d happily scarper, hoping to escape without a
fight – there were other women to free. He couldn’t leave them. He
could bear to think of lonely families wondering what’d happened to
their daughters and wives. And nobody deserved to spend their lives
trapped in an unlawful prison, serving as slaves.

A shout came from his
left, “Hey, what the hell are you doing here?” And it was loud
enough to raise the alarm. Within seconds, others had spread the
warning and everyone in the compound knew something was
wrong.

He was a large man,
sporting a barrel chest and sagging girth, the product of too many
three-course luncheons and not enough exercise. His neatly trimmed
moustache came to life when he talked, wiggling with a mind of its
own. “How did you get in?” He yelled, taking a pace forward. Then
he saw their weapons.

Dan hesitated no longer.
He raised his Colt and squeezed the trigger. His silencer muted the
shot to a predatory hiss and he clearly heard the clank-clink of
the semi-automatic reloading. The bullet entered the man’s eye,
ricocheted inside his skull, and make soup of his brain, killing
him instantly. His body jerked and, without the necessary nerve
impulses to support his considerable bulk, his knees crumpled and
he thudded facedown on the floor where some of his mashed brains
leaked through his obliterated eye-socket onto the
carpet.

“
Here they
come,” Dan warned, listening to the not-so-distant shouts of
co-ordination. They crouched in the sunken entrances of two
bedrooms, their niches the only protection from bullets that would
soon be zinging past.

Damn.
Dan had hoped to reach Jen
before anybody noticed them. At least then he could’ve done his
best to protect her. For all he knew, Esteban would use her as a
bargaining tool. And Dan didn’t want to know what he’d do under
those circumstances.

Two men scurried into the
lounge room ahead. They overturned tables and ducked behind couches
amidst a few well-aimed bullets from Simon and Dan. Then they laid
some covering fire to enable other Guild members to take up
strategic positions. Simon fired another two shots, his massive
cannon booming and a foot-long flash coming from its barrel. It
didn’t have a silencer and left his ears ringing. “They’re digging
in.”

Dan nodded.

“
So you know
what that means?” Simon fired another shot between volleys from
Guild members.

“
That we’re
fucked?” Dan said pointedly.

“
They’re going
to come from behind and trap us here.”

“
So we’re
fucked.”

Simon nodded,
wishing he’d brought more ammunition. Dan too was starting to think
he’d made a grievous error in his calculations. He didn’t
have
in believing he
enough ammunition to cater for this type of gunfight. He tried
not to fire until he had a smiling face to shoot at, and even then
he was careful to make every round count.

*

Esteban’s
frown was extending in ripples over his forehead, mirroring the
confused tension that mustered in his mind.
But that doesn’t make sense.
He was
watching Dan’s movements, wondering why he’d portaled to The
Netherlands. He couldn’t think of anything strategic in the
move.

And it irked
him.

He needed to
know.

So his brain
revved to its limit, trying to figure it out with the pitifully
limited data he had on hand.
Why the hell
did you go to Holland? What’s in Holland?
Friends?
It was possible.
Maybe he’s getting
reinforcements.
But that didn’t make sense
either. He couldn’t get into the Guild even if Adrian had squawked
and told him where it was.

The buzzing of his mobile
interrupted his thoughts and he decided to check the display. After
all, Dan wasn’t posing an immediate threat so the pressure was off.
It was Junior. Esteban heaved a sigh and mentally disengaged from
his quandary to answer the call.

“
What is
it?”

“
It’s Dan.”
Junior sounded excited and panicky at the same time. “He’s
here.”

Esteban sat bold upright.
“Where?”

“
In the
Guild.”

That’s
impossible.
Esteban’s first impulse was to
call Junior a liar, but then he heard the muted crackle of gunfire
filtering through the receiver. “Hang ten. I’ll be right there.” He
was already halfway to the nearest portal, loosing his automatic
and coming dangerously close to colliding with walls as he banked
hard around corners.

*

Jen’s head felt as if it
was stuffed with cottonwool, but the sound of gunshots penetrated
the haze. Initially she thought somebody was having a party and it
was party-poppers or firecrackers, but people were shouting when
they ran past her door – things were not as they should
be.

She wobbled to
her feet where a wave of nausea slammed her to her knees. There she
knelt, shaking with the ugly threat of vomiting. She was about to
give up and allow the nausea to overpower her when her sluggish
mind correctly processed the sounds of battle growling outside her
door.
It’s Dan.
The
thought revived her and she stood again, still wobbly but
determined to stay upright. She wanted to help, in any way she
could.

But
how?
She tentatively laced her fingers
around the doorhandle, feeling the cold metal chill the pads of her
fingers. She wished she could think of something to do. She hated
feeling helpless and didn’t want Dan, the strong knight, to have to
rescue her.
Is that what I am? A useless
princess that needs saving?
Another lashing
of nausea made the room spin but she doggedly twisted the handle,
opened her door, and strode into the corridor.

*

“
So now what?”
Dan asked, hoping Simon had a miracle in store.

“
Well, unless
you want them to trap us, we have to go back that way” – he jerked
a thumb over his shoulder after ducking from a volley of shots –
“and we have to hurry.”

Dan
grimaced.
Fuck me dead with a stick of
broccoli.
He didn’t want to abandon the
cause, not now, not when he was so close. If they fled, the Guild
would pack up and go elsewhere. But they’d lost the element of
surprise and, the way things were developing, they’d be dead in ten
minutes. And dead men couldn’t help anyone.
What the fuck are we doing in a goddamn
corridor!
They wouldn’t be able to hold
their position for long.

“
Okay, let’s
go.” Dan squeezed off several shots while Simon dashed low for the
next door. He followed a few moments later, hugging the wall to
avoid a bullet in the back.

They turned right after
the showers and entered the lounge room they’d first encountered,
the one with the corridor that led to the portal chamber. “If we
leave now we’ll never get Jen out, not alive. You know that, don’t
you?” Dan held back, hoping Simon had brewed his
miracle.

He just nodded
solemnly. “I know.”
But there’s nothing we
can do.
“If we’d found her before they
raised the alarm we would’ve had a chance. Or if we’d taken the
bulk of them by surprise then we’d be cruising. But…” He didn’t
need to finish his sentence.

Besides, he didn’t have
the chance. Dan shoved him hard in the stomach and Simon sagged to
the ground, a fraction of a second before a bullet ripped through
the space where Simon’s head had been. He lay winded on the carpet,
safe behind a couch.

“
Daniel,
Daniel, Daniel.” Esteban’s voice came bright and clear. He was
hunkering low in the corridor to the portals. “Funny I should meet
you here.”

Dan’s control was
starting to fracture and he knew he could only withstand so much
taunting before he’d implode. And he had no idea what would happen
then.

“
I was hoping
you’d come and join our party,” Esteban said, his mirthful voice
betraying his self-satisfaction. It was Esteban’s sweetest dream
come true.