The Prisoner - Carlos J. Cortes [74]
Laurel stood rooted to the spot, like a rabbit pinned in the open by oncoming headlights, her hands darting up to shield her eyes. Heavy treads followed. She lowered her hands a fraction to see a mountainous shape in formal army fatigues bearing down on her, backlit by truck headlights. The figure marched past the group and stopped a few feet away from her.
Closer, the soldier looked smaller. He was a tall man but not physically imposing. She blinked to clear her eyes, squinting to make out his features against the light glare. Over his short sleeves she counted the stripes: three, but with two bars underneath. A sergeant, but not an ordinary one. His dark eyes shone, then his mouth parted and she caught a glint of white. The man was smiling. “Who are you?” He had a pleasant voice.
“Cole. Laurel Cole.”
Silence.
Laurel walked a step forward. “And you are?”
“Drooling down my shirt.”
“I can see that. But what do they call you if they want you to answer?”
“Santos. Santos Hernandez.”
A guffaw echoed from the group as Henry strode past Barandus, his hand outstretched. “Already measuring up the talent? Have you no shame?”
Sergeant Hernandez pivoted on his heel, gripped Henry’s hand, and pumped. Then he reached for his forearm and jerked his hand back. “Shit, you’re soaking wet, and”—he made a face and turned toward the group—”you stink!”
“Pardon me, sir, I forgot. I’ll gargle with Chanel before our next date.”
Hernandez walked before the group, as if inspecting recruits. “Holy mother …” he muttered. When he drew abreast of Raul, he gave him a quick once-over. “And him?” he called over his shoulder.
“The other lawyer,” Henry said.
He sniffed loudly and nodded once. “Get in the back of the truck.” Then he marched with long strides toward the blazing headlights.
After a ten-minute drive skirting an airfield, the truck slowed down to a stop. Lying on the floor of the truck like felled timber, Laurel held her breath, but no hand parted the canvas flaps to inspect the vehicle. The muffled sound of conversation followed, then laughter, before the engine revved and the vehicle moved. Then the floor tilted and she slid against Susan, who was lying next to her. They were descending a ramp of sorts.
They exited the truck in a cavernous hangarlike room brightly lit with mercury lamps, its center occupied by a gigantic machine almost one hundred feet long and set on railway tracks. The contraption consisted of a huge tube, perhaps six or seven feet in diameter, with one rounded end. The other end was separated and set on tracks so it could push or pull a table of sorts into and out of the tube. When closed, the thing would look like a colossal double-ended sex toy.
“So that’s it?” Henry asked, stepping forward and laying a hand on the separated end.
Santos joined him. “That’s her. A beauty, wouldn’t you say?”
Under the lights, Laurel watched her companions. With no shadows or darkness to disguise edges, colors, or textures, she couldn’t think of a single word to describe the humanity beneath the layers of drab, soggy rags. Raul and she, with their plastic suits and lack of hair, could pass for filthy workers back from a day cleaning cesspits, but the others looked like a malignant species of … trolls, that was it. Trolls. Barandus, tall and thin and decked head to toe in a long black overcoat, looked more than ever like a filthy Rasputin. By his side, Susan, short and plump, in a horrid raincoat four sizes too large and her nondescript scarf tied around her head, added to the illusion of a scene from the aftermath of a nineteenth-century Russian pogrom. Thin-as-a-rake Jim and well-padded Charlie seemed to have dropped from a mud fight in a Stan Laurel