Читать книгу State Of Honour - Gary Haynes - Страница 17

Linda lay face down in the rear footwell of a car that was now travelling at a sensible speed. She had a boot on her neck and another on her ankles. Her hands and feet had been secured with flex-cuffs. She was gagged with grey masking tape and a hessian sack had been placed over her head. The car radio blared out what sounded like a string of Pakistani pop songs. She hadn’t seen her captors’ faces. They hadn’t spoken. She’d travelled in the footwell before, after a nut had fired what turned out to be a starting pistol at her. An agent had covered her whole body with his and hadn’t let her up for what seemed like miles. This time it was different.

She felt sweat bead on her forehead, and dug a fingernail into her thumb to stop herself from weeping. She thought about her husband, John, and her two girls. She cursed herself for agreeing to visit the hospital and for not heeding the advice of the deputy director and Tom Dupree. But she still had the presence of mind to know that that wouldn’t help her now, so she did her best to concentrate on counting her breaths.

Two minutes later, she decided to survive by whatever means and fought to focus on something more positive to assuage her escalating fear. She told herself that her people would be looking for her, that roadblocks had been set up. They could follow her, after all, at US Air Force bases, via drones, or whatever else they had that even she didn’t know about.

Then she did her best to remember what Tom had told her about how to respond if she were ever kidnapped. Do not resist them, she thought. Act upon all reasonable instructions without complaint. Refrain from making retaliatory threats or unrealistic promises. Attempt to build up a rapport, but slowly to avoid it being considered contrived.

But then she began to waver again. For now she was in the hands of men with no humanity, who had snuffed out life as most people sprayed mosquitoes or swatted bugs.

She knew her see-saw emotions were reasonable in the circumstances. But she had to survive. For John. For her girls.

Oh, God, hear my prayer. Help me.