11- Hunter Unbound

11

Hunter Unbound

Kim sprinted down the halls and was surprised with how fast her pursuers were.  She was small and had been a runner her entire life but the two chasing her managed to stay only a couple of steps behind.  The only thing keeping Kim alive was her knowledge of the platform and its ins and outs.  She zigged and zagged around corner after corner in order to keep the two men behind her from getting a clean shot at her.

It was just a stall tactic, however.  The chess match would not end in her favor.  The only way she would be able to gain some distance was to find a straight-away and turn on the speed, but if she did that, they would have plenty of time to take aim and blow her away.  If she kept on like this though, her capture was absolute.

She decided she had one chance.

She cut another corner as the men behind her yelled to stop, their voices getting louder as they closed the distance.  She had to do something crazy.  She had to trust her memory and gamble everything.

Gamble her life.

She cut one more corner and found herself on the inner walkway on the lower level. Over the railing, the ocean’s call could be heard from hundreds of feet below.  She was panting and the lack of oxygen to her brain must have been making her hear things but she could swear the water in which the platform sat, sounded… hungry.

She picked up speed as she heard the two guards come around the corner behind her. Would the walkway be there?  Would it be where she remembered it?  Was she leaping to her death?

She heard the guards scream their final warning as they shouldered their weapons to take the shot.

Kim stepped up onto the railing.

The guns behind her fired.

She leapt.

****

Cazador stared at Ein in disbelief.  This little pudgy man was full of surprises.  How had he evaded capture and sure death at the hands of Chavez and his men?

“You are an interesting man, Gringo,” Cazador said with a smile.

Ein stared down.  His eyes were searching Cazador for something.  “Who are these people?  What are you doing on this platform?”

Cazador raised an eyebrow.  “What makes you think I know them?”

“I know you do,” he said, his stutter all but gone, the desperation in his soul taking over.  “I know, because my father owned this rig.  I know you and Chavez have been here before.”

Cazador seemed to stare for a long minute then smiled, “We are both ex-military.  Mexican army.  He was in charge of my unit.  We were high level wet work men.”

Ein looked confused.  “Wet work?”

Cazador smiled.  “Illegal operations.  Black operations.”

Ein looked generally surprised.  “There are Mexican black-op’s teams?”

Cazador rolled his eyes.  “Just because our country is smaller doesn’t mean we have less secrets.  You looked smarter than that, Gringo.”

Eisenhower felt embarrassed and Cazador smiled.  “In any case, eventually we had enough of the government telling us what to do, especially since we understood how everything worked better than they did.  Chavez saw an opportunity to go rogue and become freelance drug and gun runners.  So, that’s what we did.”

“The Mexican government didn’t come after you?”  Ein was shocked that Cazador had made the whole thing sound so simple.

Cazador began to frown.  “They did.  But we put an end to that.”

Cazador was suddenly assailed by the images of the children, the bodies, and the terrible realization that even he could go too far.

“So, why hasn’t he freed you?”  Ein asked the obvious question.

Cazador smiled.  “We had a little disagreement some time back. The nasty Scar over his eye is evidence of that.”

Ein nodded, understanding.  “So you have been hiding out here, right under his nose, ever since.  That’s why the power was already on when we showed up.  You have been keeping it running.”

“You’re catching on, Gringo,” Cazador replied.  “In fact, I was in the engine room to turn off the power because I knew Cazador would be coming to switch out his stock soon and if he saw the power was on, he would know someone was here.”

Ein seemed to retract into himself as if considering some things.  Cazador put two and two together and figured out why Ein had come to see him.  It wasn’t that hard, actually.  The gringo had been banking on him having some problem with Chavez, or maybe being willing to barter his freedom.

“I see why you are here, Gringo.”  Cazador broke the silence and captured Ein’s attention.  “I can do what you can not.  I am the monster you need to slay your enemies.”

“How do I know I can trust you?”  Ein asked, quickly.

“You can’t,” Cazador responded.  “Not yet, but give me a chance to earn it.”

“What if you just take off?”  Ein inquired.

“Then you are in the same place, and have lost nothing,” Cazador responded, never breaking eye contact.

Eisenhower’s eyes suddenly narrowed.  “Years ago when you came to this platform with Chavez, there was a man named Nakatomi.  An engineer who oversaw the platform’s operation.  Do you remember him?”

Cazador’s face broke slightly and he looked nervous.  The look on his face had a hint of guilt to it.  “What does this have to do with anything?”

“He died in a tragic accident right after he refused to help you and the general,” Ein continued.

Cazador felt the room’s air change.  He didn’t want to remember this, another sin on a long list Cazador could never outrun.  “What do you want?”

“Did you kill him?” Ein asked, dead serious.

There was a silence as Cazador considered how to answer, when suddenly, they could hear voices down the hall.  The guards were returning.

It was now or never.

****

Harriet had shouldered the rifle like a pro, using every crappy action movie trailer she had ever sat through as an instruction video on how to be a gun toting psycho. “EVERYBODY FREEZE!”

The room stopped moving on queue.  The women stopped beating the guard behind her.  The one eating cereal froze with the gun halfway to his hand still hanging off his shoulder, his bowl having dropped and shattered lucky charms all over the floor.  The one who had struck Thad had his gun shouldered and pointed directly at her downed friend, but he watched her with his eyes.  The sleeping one on the floor had woken up but still sat there, arms crossed, starting at disbelief.

“DROP YOUR WEAPONS!” Harriet yelled in the silence and all the men stared.

There eyes were seasoned soldier’s eyes and Harriet knew their training was trying to find a way out of this, a way to regain control of the situation.  They hadn’t retired yet.

Would she actually have to kill someone?

“My English… not so good.”  The one who was sleeping on the floor began to speak in a kind and almost frighteningly nurturing voice.  “But senorita… this not good for you.”

“Tell them to DROP THEIR GUNS!” she yelled back to him.

He shook his head.  “These men… they not drop guns.”

“I’LL SHOOT!  I SWEAR TO GOD!” Harriet felt herself getting hysterical and tried to will herself back to sanity.

“You…” The Mexican constantly searched for the right words as he spoke. “You can no win… They no think you will shoot, and if you do, you not fast enough to get us each…”

Harriet tried not to listen, tried to keep control of the situation.  “So what are they waiting for then?  If they have me so screwed, why they haven’t made their move?”

The Mexican shrugged.  “They no fear you, senorita.  They wait to see who you will shoot.”

Harriet grimaced as she listened, as the Mexican continued to lay out the scenario in his broken English.  “If you shoot Miguel,” he nodded toward the one behind the counter, previously eating cereal, “you will kill him.  But Sancho,” the Mexican nodded at the man with the gun pointed at Thad, “will kill your friend and then you.  The same will happen if you… how you say… visa versa?”

“What if I shoot them both?”  Harriet questioned his strategy.

The Mexican did what was now becoming trademark shrug.  “I kill you.”

Harriet stood there stuck in the standoff, unwilling to give up everything they had just worked for.  “You are going to kill us anyway?  Why don’t I at least take one or two of you with us?”

“You could…” The Mexican replied calmly.  “But as your amigo on the floor could say… it is harder to look down the barrel then to say you can…  You want life.  Even if only small time left.”

Tears dripped down Harriet’s face.  They came from anger.

They came from fear.

She gritted her teeth in pain and anguish.

 “This is hard.  But you must choose soon.” The Mexican continued.  “If you do not… we will all move and force you.”

Harriet’s lip quivered as she tried desperately to keep it together, but the fact remained…

…she had already lost it.

Her hands felt numb.

The gun fell to the floor.

As did their hope of surviving.

****

She was dead.  She leapt over the edge and plunged to her death.  The guards were shocked by the action but what’s done was done.  They then realized their place and headed back to their post.

They made small talk about what they had just witnessed.  In all their years they had seen a lot, but never a woman work so hard to leap to her own death.  It was downright strange.

Either way, it was done.

They returned to the door and decided it was best to check on Cazador, just to make sure.

They opened the door and there stood a short, slightly pudgy American with his hands in the air.

“Don’t shoot!” He said in English.

Both the guards pulled up their guns and leveled them on the American, and he took a  breath and closed his eyes.

That’s when the guard noticed the chair out of his peripheral view.

He noticed the chair was empty.

****

Ein watched as Cazador moved forward out of the shadow of the open door.  He took a breath and closed his eyes.

He didn’t want to die here.

He heard one of the guards scream something in Spanish, then a wet thud noise.

He opened his eyes to see one of the guards hit the floor.  The other reacted, spinning a second too late.  Cazador had moved in close and grabbed the end of his gun with his right hand.  The guard pulled the trigger out of reaction and a burst of gunfire exploded throughout the room.  The shot was so much louder then Ein had expected and his ears rang in pain.

Cazador’s other hand lashed out to the guard’s belt, where a large hunting knife was sheathed.

Cazador grabbed the hilt of the knife and, in one quick motion, drew the blade and slashed the Mexican’s carotid artery with his own weapon.

The guard dropped to the floor, clutching his own neck in a vain attempt to keep his blood from rushing out of his body.  In another second, he laid back and ceased to be a human.

The other was already dead, Cazador’s first blow having pushed his nose into his brain.

Two men lay dead at Ein’s feet and he stared in disbelief.  He had never watched someone die.

Never watched someone killed.

Never been a responsible party to such events.

Eisenhower Mills would never be the same.

Cazador picked up the machine gun, pulled the clip to check the ammunition, popped the clip back into the gun and racked the slide to chamber the gun.  He then turned to see Ein standing there, white as a sheet.

Cazador raised an eyebrow.  “Are you alright?”

Ein looked at him, and then promptly vomited.

TO BE CONTINUED….  

10-Personal freedom

10

 Personal Freedom

Long Before…

None of the workers could figure out how a kid so young could be on the rig for so long and never hurt herself, or fall off, or something else equally as terrible.  Kimberly Nakatomi was different.  She had been raised, nearly her entire ten year life, on the giant oil rig, Monoliths.  She had personally been on seventeen different oil rigs, each unique in its own way.  She had lived on every type as well, from floating production platforms, to compliant tower types, and now this semi-submersible.

 Kim was half Japanese and half American.  Her American mother, Mary, had died during Kim’s birth, leaving her father alone with the child raising responsibilities.  Kim’s father, Sato Nakatomi, was one of the world’s foremost platform engineers and was currently working under contract with Holster Oil.  Sato could not quit the one job he knew how to do and ended up taking Kim with him wherever he went.  Although children her age were never allowed on the platforms, the owners made a special exception for Sato because of his skills.

Kim dodged a worker as she sped along one of the lower catwalks.  She grabbed a railing and swung herself out and over the edge to the other side of the worker.  The worker, a man named Harry, who was exactly what the name sake advertised, spun.  “Jesus H Christ, kid!  Your gonna get yourself killed!”

Kim turned, still running backwards, “Don’t worry Harry, I’m fine!  Where’s my dad?”

Harry shook his head calling after her.  “Meeting room three!  But he’s in a…”

Harry trailed off as Kim disappeared from sight.

Kim moved at top speed seamlessly through the rig.  In her years aboard the rigs she had become adept at navigating the places, memorizing all the nooks and crannies, much like her father.  She couldn’t have an accident.  She was invincible.

She broke onto the outer edge and stopped at the railing, the pure sight of the Pacific Ocean standing before her.  The backdrop of a beautiful afternoon made her smile. Many kids would hate this kind of life, always moving around, never having a best friend or other things normal kids would have.  Not Kim, however.  To her, this was freedom. She loved her father and enjoyed his company and the workers aboard the rigs had always treated her like a little sister.

Kim was positive there was not a happier kid on the planet.

Kim was snapped out of her sudden loss into the beautiful view as she heard voices coming around a corner to her right.  She stood and waited, trying to catch her breath in order to hear what was being said.  A couple of seconds past and three men stepped out onto the walkway.  One was her father, the sight of which made Kim smile.  The others were two young, but overbearing Mexicans, both dressed in military attire.  One looked like a General, the other wore a plain green field uniform.  He wore a cap and aviator sunglasses, dark hair spilling out from under the hat.

The General smoked a stogie.  He was young to be a General and bald with a heavy beard and a distinguished look to him.

Her father looked bothered, and both men looked dominating.

They looked to be men that were capable of great violence.

“All I’m asking is three large crates, once a year?  Is not what I am offering generous enough?”  Kim caught the end of the General’s sentence as he spoke to her father.

Her father just stared back with a stalwart frown.  Kim had seen the look many times before, usually when she was in trouble.

The General finally sighed, “I will not make this offer again, senor.  Think about it, set up a life for your daughter with what I offer.”

The General turned, his dark haired bodyguard following, leaving Kim’s father standing there alone.  Kim watched as his resolve faded and she could suddenly see the fear on his face.

Kim had never seen him afraid before.  It scared her.  She looked out one more time at the ocean and had the distinct feeling that very soon she was going to lose something.

Something that meant everything to her.

****

Back in the present…

Ein stared at Kim as she hit a break in her story.  She had reached a memory too painful to be easy to say.  The whole thing was quite amazing.  Ein had become sucked into a plot, bigger than life.

“They killed him, didn’t they?” Ein asked.

Kim nodded, wiping her eyes quickly to stop herself before she started crying.  “He ‘slipped’.  That was the official report.  My father worked on rigs for almost forty years.  He didn’t slip.”

Kim adjusted herself.  “Anyway, soon afterward, Holster went bankrupt and the rig got shut down.  Your father took me in, having met me many different times.  He set up a fund to put me through college and take care of me.  All I wanted though has been to get back to my place.  To get my freedom back.”

Ein started to piece it together.  “So, these people are the Mexican smugglers who wanted the place all those years ago?  The ones that arranged your father’s death?”

Kim shook her head.  “It's my guess, but I’m not sure.  With no one laying claim to the rig, they could use it at will.  I do know one thing for certain…”

Kim looked up into Ein’s eyes.  “The General’s bodyguard is the man you have tied to a chair in the briefing room.”

****

Harriet and Thad were sitting at one of the tables with the other woman, The Doctor, finally wearing pants, had been exiled to a separate table by himself.  Harriet surveyed the situation, trying to think of a way out, while also trying to keep herself calm in the face of absolute doom.

Only two of the four guards actually watched them at the ready.  Between the other two, one was napping on the floor in a corner while the last of the four had helped himself to Harriet’s cereal in the kitchen and was eating her lucky charms directly from the box.

Dirt bag.

“If we are going to do something, it has to be soon,” Harriet said quietly, banking on the fact that the soldiers didn’t speak English.

“What if we just wait it out?  Maybe they’ll get what they want, and go,” one of the blondes said.

Harriet had a moment of fear as she couldn’t remember what her name was.  “They wouldn’t be so concerned with finding the rest of us if they weren’t planning on killing us.  Do you think they are going to let us sail back to America knowing what we know?”

“No way, they are going to kill us,” The red head chimed in.  Her name was Stephanie.

“What’s the plan?”  Thad asked, his heart pounding.  Finally he would get a chance to make up for his cowardice earlier.  And, he could do something.

“The girls and I get close to one of the guards on the alert and we tackle him, hopefully the other will be distracted and unable to shoot because of his buddy.  So, you lay him out with one of those anti-Doctor right hands.  Hopefully, that gives us guns before sleepy and grubby cereal hands, get a chance to move.”  Harriet laid out the simplicity of her bum rush plan in hopes that it was fool proof.

In hopes that it could get them all out alive.

Thad nodded, trying to strengthen his will, attempting to remove the fear that was welling up inside of him.  The ladies moved, all standing at the same time and beginning to make their way towards the guard.  The guard began to yell something in Spanish and angrily raised his gun.  He didn’t fire.

The girls were on him suddenly, like a swarm of deadly scarabs, each grabbing a limb and all screaming in high pitched voices, as they wrapped themselves around the guard scratching and calling.

The other guard turned, gun raised and began to scream commands in Spanish.  He wasn’t shooting, however.  Harriet was right, he didn’t want to kill the hostages against his commander’s orders, nor did he want to risk killing his brother in arms.  Thad had his opening and he stood.

It was now, or never.  He would finally get his chance at redemption.

Why wouldn’t his legs move?

Thad stood there.  He could feel the sweat beading on his forehead and his knees were shaking.  The image of the guard turning at the last second and squeezing the trigger was clouding his thoughts.  Thad could see himself being riddled with bullets like in a cheesy action movie where the friend of the main character is shot to hell by the bad guy.

NO!

Thad felt it happening again.

Not Again!

Thad didn’t want to die…

Harriet could see what was happening as if a slow motion tragedy was playing out before her.  The girls had the guard on the ground now and were working him over good.  Stephanie was actually raining close fisted blows down on the guards face while he covered himself with his hands.  As good as they were doing though, Harriet saw it all falling apart.

Thad had frozen up again.

She could see him, one foot to the right of the other guard, in perfect striking distance. He wasn’t moving though.  He just stood there, as if fighting some battle inside his own head.

Meanwhile, the small window began to close.  Fast.  The guard eating cereal had dropped the box and was going for his gun while the sleeper had begun to awake with a confused look on his face.

The Doctor dropped to the floor predicting violence.

Harriet had to do something and she screamed desperately.  “THAD!  HIT HIM!”

Thad suddenly snapped to.  Out of instinct, he balled his fist and stepped in on the guard.  Harriet’s scream had been double edged, alerting the guard to Thad’s presence to his left.  As Thad came in with the punch, the well trained Mexican soldier countered with a quick jab of the butt of his gun to Thad’s stomach.  The blow stopped Thad’s forward motion and doubled him over.  The soldier stepped in and drove the butt of the gun this time into Thad’s face.  The blow busted his lip and sent him sprawling to the floor.

Harriet brought up the rifle, this would be the only chance they had she had to make it work.

****

“This is insane, Ein.”  Kim whispered, as the two watched the guards smoke at the end of the hall.

The two guards stood in front of the door to where Cazador was held captive.  “Last time I checked, neither one of us can fight the Mexican army.”

Kim frowned at Ein’s response.  “We don’t even know if he’s alive in there.  Not to mention whether he’ll help us or not.  He could be working with them!”

Ein shook his head.  “You don’t guard a door if there’s a dead man or a friend on the other side.”

“You hit him with a pipe and tied him to a chair!” Kim insisted.

“And he put a sword to my throat and threatened my life,” Ein began to respond.  “Our relationship is off to a pretty bad start, true, but I think this is our best chance.”

Kim stared at him and the frown became a smile.  “You lose your stutter when you’re sure.”

Eisenhower’s eyes widen as the comment took him by surprise.  “I… Er… m-m-maybe I-”

Kim took a deep breath.  “Just in case.”  

Kim then grabbed Ein by the collar and kissed him, hard on the mouth.  She let the kiss linger and go deep.  Her passion was heightened by the life or death situation.  She then released a very confused and blushing Ein and took off down the hall.

Kim was aware there was only one way into the briefing room and the guards stood in front of it.  If Ein was to get to Cazador, the guards would have to be distracted.  Kim knew the platform better than anyone, and she was a runner.

Kim blew past the two unsuspecting guards.  As she did, she yelled.  “Bandahos”

The guards were stunned as she sprinted past for only a second.  They spit out their smokes and took chase.

Ein, in the wake of the kiss heard round the world, could only watch it unfold.  He realized what Kim had done and he suddenly found himself praying to every God that there was, that she had a plan.

 ****

All that was left was to wait to die.  Oddly enough, Cazador didn’t mind this fact.  He did wish he could go by someone else’s hand, as Chavez was an evil greater than himself.  At this point, though, it didn’t matter.

Death was death.

Death was freedom.

As far as Cazador was concerned, the joke was on Chavez.

Suddenly, the door began to open and Cazador realized that it was finally time.  He began to chuckle. “So will you be beating me to death personally amigo, or will you be having someone else do it?”

The door shut and Cazador’s eyes widened.

“Hunter.”  Ein said, as he stepped in front of Cazador.  “Cazador Means Hunter.”

To Be Continued…