Eva Gilliam felt the jeep slowing down as she and Mark Dornbush, the agent who had rescued her from the Agency safe house, approached a third roadblock.
The first two checkpoints had gone smoothly. The guards at them seemed more interested in looking at Eva’s bare legs and sports bra than they had been in asking too many questions, just as Mark had predicted.
Which was a good thing.
Mark had stolen the jeep they were in and had no papers for it. And the back of the jeep was filled not only with food and emergency medical supplies, but weapons. Eva had brought serious weapons, including an MP23 carbine with a grenade launcher, dozens of grenades of several varieties, thousands of rounds of ammunition, and several pistols. The MP23 by itself, the most advanced US infantry assault rifle invented, would turn heads. They weren’t yet common outside of special forces.
She and Mark had buried the weapons duffel bag underneath the food and medicine, but if discovered, she didn’t know what checkpoint guards might think about her arsenal.
The third roadblock they approached was different than the others, more fortified. A heavier gate blocked the one lane of the freeway that remained open, concrete barriers funneling them into that lane, tire shredders raised underneath the gate facing both directions, and there were more guards.
Mark glanced at the desert on both sides of the checkpoint, but barbed wire and signs warning of mines extended in either direction as far as they could see.
“Must be the border,” he muttered. “I wish you’d left your clothes off.”
Eva shook her head in disgust. Men. She’d put her tank top, camo pants, wool socks, and boots back on once she thought she’d gotten enough sun to make up for sitting in the dark for a week. She’d also put a ball cap on and rubbed sunscreen on her face and shoulders.
Two guards moved into the roadway, both holding rifles. One of them signaled for Mark to slow down and stop. A third guard stood behind the other two. Eva could see two more in the booth, which had been reinforced with concrete. Sand bags surrounded it, enough room behind them for soldiers to use for cover in a firefight.
A machine gun on the roof poked out from behind more sand bags and there was at least one more guard up there. The gun pointed away from them, towards the freeway past the roadblock, but even if they could crash the barrier and somehow avoid the tire shredders, there’d be no way to escape that gun. Unless the gunner were blind.
Eva resolved to herself that they would have to negotiate past this barrier. She slid her Glock down the side of her chair where it wouldn’t be seen by any of the guards.
“Don’t try anything funny without giving me a heads up,” Mark said quietly to her.
“I love you, too,” she replied and smiled at the guard who came up on the driver’s side of the jeep. Mark came to a complete stop.
Eva looked around as the guard asked for their passports. A white SUV sat near the booth. She saw no more than the six guards she originally counted, but a bunkhouse a few hundred yards away could contain more.
The guard who spoke to Mark had his rifle lazily strapped around his neck, and he rested both arms on it like this was a routine stop. But the other two held their weapons ready, pointing at the jeep.
“Passports?” Mark asked in reply to the guard’s question. “What do we need passports for?” He had a big grin on his face and he smiled at Eva like they were newlyweds. He took her hand. “We’re just going for a drive.”
“Sorry, sir. It was announced yesterday. There’s new controls on the state border. We have to prevent the wrong element from getting in. You know how it is,” the guard said, a stupid grin on his face.
“But we’re leaving,” Mark offered.
That confused the guard for a moment. He was clearly new at this.
“But you’ll need your passports to get back in,” he finally said.
“I still don’t understand.” Mark was playing dumb.
“You need passports to cross the border.” The guard leaned over and said conspiratorially, “The federal government’s falling apart. We have to take matters into our own hands.”
Eva kept her surprise to herself. Were things that bad? And so quickly?
Mark didn’t respond. He either kept his face under control like Eva, or he already suspected what the guard was telling him. The idiot smile the guard wore showed how proud he was of himself, his state, for keeping it together.
Mark smiled just as stupidly back at the guard. “Let’s hope it doesn’t get to that.”
The guard shook his head and said, “To each their own. You won’t be able to return without passports.”
Mark nodded understanding and the guard seemed about to wave them on when his face suddenly fell.
“Ma’am, is that a weapon by your side?”
Eva must not have hidden the Glock well enough.
“Self-protection,” she replied calmly.
The guard pulled his rifle up, not pointing at them, but more ready. The atmosphere grew tense.
“Ma’am, I’m gonna have to ask you to step out of the vehicle and away from that firearm. Do you understand?”
Eva put her hands up in the air and said in a helpless voice, “It’s just for protection. There’s some not nice people out there.”
“I understand that, ma’am, but unregistered firearms are not allowed to be transported in the state. For safety, you know.”
His words caught Eva off guard. Utah was a state full of hunters and the right to bear arms had always been a hot political issue. They had been one of the states that had fought desperately against federal gun laws. What was going on?
“But as you pointed out, we’re leaving. We have no intention of coming back,” Mark offered helpfully.
The guard stared at them. He clearly didn’t know what to do next.
“Enough playing games. Get out of the vehicle,” another guard commanded, the one who had been back behind the first two. He had his rifle aimed and ready, pointing at Eva. Eva opened her door and stepped out slowly, keeping her hands in the air. Mark did the same, on his side.
The guard moved quickly towards her, and Eva froze, her head down, her arms high in the air. She knew she had to signal submission to the man. She didn’t look at him.
“Faster!” he commanded. He used the butt of his rifle to shove Eva away from the jeep. “On your knees!”
Eva stumbled from the shove, took another couple of steps away from the jeep in a direction also away from the fortified booth, then sank to her knees. She kept her head down and her arms up.
“Cross your legs and clasp your hands behind your head.”
In the movies, that’s when someone gets shot in the back of the head.
But Eva had been trained for such scenarios. If the man had been a terrorist, she would have waited for him to get a little closer, then whirled around and tried to grab the end of his gun to point it away from her, tried to maneuver her body so that the guard’s body was between her and the other guards, then, depending on how well all that went, get behind the jeep and start shooting, after killing the guard.
It probably wouldn’t have gone that well. Even if she and Mark took out the three guards outside the booth, the machine gun on the roof would get them. But it would be better to die fighting than to take a bullet in the head.
However this guard wasn’t a terrorist. He was a Utahn. Half this group was probably Mormon, and Eva couldn’t see them assassinating two travelers because of a pistol. Plus she had seen three security cameras on the booth. Every action these men were taking was being recorded. A female voice yelling out from the booth further reassured her.
“Take it easy out there, Shay.”
“You shut up,” the guard yelled back.
Eva decided to comply with his original order. She remained on her knees and moved her left foot over her right and clasped
her hands behind her head, interlacing her fingers over the back of her ball cap. She breathed slowly and stared straight out into the desert, not looking at anyone.
But she didn’t like the position she found herself in, in front of this armed man.
“You okay over there?” Mark called. That relieved her. It was his way of signaling they should do nothing.
“I’m fine,” she called back, confirming their inaction. If Mark wanted to attack the guards, he would have yelled, “Do you need some help?” and she would have responded, “Yes,” and the fight would have been on.
“You two shut up!” the guard named Shay yelled. He came up close behind Eva and hissed at her, “Not a peep outta you, you hear?”
Eva nodded slightly. She had a sense of foreboding and steeled herself against what would happen next.
“I gotta check you for weapons.”
She could feel his grin.
He frisked her roughly, grabbing her everywhere.
“You like that?” he whispered harshly in her ear while he did so.
She didn’t react.
She did review the military options available to her. He was sufficiently distracted that she knew she could reach her hands out and grab his neck, flip him over her, break his arm and have his weapon trained on the other guards before they knew what had happened. If it weren’t for that machine gun.
She endured the abuse.
“Stop fooling around over there,” one of the other guards suddenly yelled. “They got guns in here. A big gun. And grenades. Woowee. We got us some terrorists.”
Eva’s guard stopped what he was doing and looked towards the guard in the jeep.
“Get over here, Shay. Check this out,” the guard in the jeep said, holding up the MP23.
“We ain’t done yet,” Eva’s guard hissed in her ear.
“I can’t wait,” Eva replied and regretted it instantly. He leaned away from her, bringing his rifle up, and struck her with the butt, smashing her fingers against her head. She pitched forward, the baseball cap flying off, her head smarting and her fingers aching. She deserved it. She knew she should have kept her mouth shut. She knew the protocol in this situation.
When it had come time during training for E&C, Evasion and Capture, she thought, along with everyone else, she learned later, that if she could evade long enough, she could avoid the worst consequences of being captured.
Everyone was captured.
The first time someone hit her, she wanted to cry out, to threaten to report them, and her captor sensed that. He yelled at her, belittled her, struck her again and again, and finally reminded her if she couldn’t handle a little interrogation in a safe environment, she wouldn’t be able to handle it in ‘real life.’
Still, the brutality of the techniques used during the Capture phase of E&C shocked her.
They did nothing to her that would leave permanent physical damage. But they taught her, even as they performed what could only be described as torture, how to endure. How to think clearly, how to react, how to not react, and how to maintain her identity. The techniques used were meant to break her spirit, to make her feel like she had somehow lost her humanity and should simply submit to those inflicting punishment on her, and she was taught how to withstand those same techniques.
It had been a week of pure hell.
Not everyone passed.
She did.
She knew what to do in this situation now, and mouthing off to the guard had been idiotic. Macho. Brain dead. She wouldn’t do it again, and the pain in her head and hands would remind her.
When Eva got back up on her knees, she rotated a little so she could see the jeep and what was happening. Mark was on his knees on the other side; she could just see his head. A guard stood a distance away from him, a gun pointed at Mark’s head. The guard who had stopped them was in the jeep, holding up the carbine he’d found. A female guard, unarmed, came out of the booth. The machine gun was trained on them now.
“You need any help over there?” Mark called. There was no way he could get to his guard. They’d both be dead in seconds.
“I’m fine,” she yelled back. No go.
“You both shut up!” her guard screamed.
Eva put her head down and her arms over her as he lifted the butt of his rifle to hit her again.
“I’m sorry,” she cried, making it sound as helpless as she could. She could take more beating if she had to, but it wasn’t fun and she’d be sore in the morning. She’d rather not.
The blow didn’t come. She peeked up through her hair, which had fallen forward over her face, and she could see the female guard’s hand on the barrel of her guard’s weapon. Her guard pulled his rifle roughly away.
“Back off, Lizzy.”
“Calm down, Shay.”
“They’re terrorists. They’re up to no good. We should just shoot them now.”
“We’re not going to shoot anybody. We’re going to handcuff them and search their vehicle. Lindsey already called it in.”
Shay shrugged away from her and raised his weapon at Eva. The female border guard, Lizzy, put her hand on it again and pushed it away. He shoved back at her and pointed the weapon at her briefly. He moved it immediately, pointing it at the ground.
But the damage had been done. Lizzy eyed him with hatred.
Eva suddenly worried that this guy was going to start shooting, even if on accident. She moved her foot off the back of her other foot and tensed for a spring.
Shay stepped back, keeping his rifle pointed at the ground. Lizzy glared at him, then produced a pair of handcuffs from her belt and moved behind Eva. She took one of Eva’s arms and put a cuff on it, then moved Eva’s hands down behind her back and cuffed them together. Eva’s last chance at fighting was now gone. At least for the moment. The female guard moved over to Mark and did the same to him.
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