Games of State - Tom Clancy [24]
The van stopped suddenly and Jody stumbled toward the sink. She hurried back to her feet, hands raised. The woman hadn't moved, didn't look as if her thoughts had been disturbed.
The trailer door opened and a young man walked over. He stood behind Karin and looked into the bathroom. He had a pale complexion and a swastika carved in his head.
Without taking her eyes off Jody, Karin turned slightly toward the young man and said, "Begin."
The man clicked the heels of his boots, turned, and started loading the relics into the trunks.
Karin continued to stare at Jody. "I don't like killing women," the woman said at last, "but I cannot take hostages. They slow me down."
That was it. Jody was going to die. She went numb. She began to sob. She had a flashback to being a little girl, to wetting her pants in first grade when the teacher had yelled at her, to crying and not being able to stop, to the other children laughing at her. Every scrap of confidence and accomplishment and dignity flooded away.
With the trickle of poise that remained to her, Jody fell to the floor. Facing the back of the bathroom, seeing the toilet and sink from the sides of her foggy eyes, she pleaded for her life.
But instead of shooting her, the woman ordered another man, an older man, to remove the uniforms. Then she closed the bathroom door. The girl waited, surprised, half-expecting gunfire to tear through the door. She stood sideways, on the toilet, to make as small and removed a target as possible.
But instead of gunfire, all she heard was a scraping sound followed by a loud whump.
Something had been pushed against the door.
She isn't going to kill me, Jody thought. She's only going to lock me in here.
Perspiration soaked her clothes as she waited. The three hijackers finished quickly in the trailer, and then were gone. She listened. Nothing.
Then one of the hijackers was outside the window. Jody leaned her ear to the wall, and listened. Something metal was turning, followed by clanking, and then the sound of metal being punctured once, twice, and then a third time. Then she heard fabric being ripped and she smelled gas.
The fuel tank, she thought with horror. They've opened it.
"No!" Jody screamed as she leapt off the toilet. She threw herself against the door. "You said you don't like killing women! Please!"
A moment later Jody smelled smoke, heard footsteps running from the van, and saw the orange of the flame reflected against the frosted glass of the window. They were going to burn the trailer with her in it.
The woman isn't killing me, Jody realized then. She's just letting me die
The girl threw herself against the door. It wouldn't budge. And as the orange grew brighter she stood in the middle of the small room screaming with fear and despair.
CHAPTER TEN
Thursday, 5:47 A.M.,
Washington, D.C.
Liz Gordon had just finished grinding up coffee beans and was lighting her first cigarette of the day when the phone rang.
"I wonder who that can be?" the thirty-two-year-old said to herself as she took a long pull on her cigarette. Ashes fell on her Mike Danger nightshirt and she brushed them off. Then she absently scratched her head through her curly brown hair as she listened to see where she'd left the cordless phone.
Since rising at five, Liz had been going over some of the things she might say when she visited the Striker team later this morning. At their third group session two days before, the elite but very young soldiers were still in shock as they mourned the loss of Charlie Squires. Rookie Sondra DeVonne was taking his death especially hard, sad for Charlie's family and also for herself. Through tears, the Private had said that she'd hoped to learn so much from him. Now all that wisdom and experience was gone. Not passed on.
Dead.
"Where is the freakin' phone?" Liz snarled as she kicked aside the newspapers by the kitchen table.
Not that she was afraid the caller would hang up. At this hour it could only be Monica calling from Italy. And her roommate and best friend would