With a snap of his fingers, his men turned on us, pointing their swords and spears threateningly at Santino and me. I looked around, hoping for a way out, but found none. I dropped the sword and ejected the magazine from my HK416, Penelope, before handing it reluctantly to one of the Gauls. He looked at it curiously before shrugging, passing her to one of the other Gauls who also looked at it skeptically. He banged it against the wall and I winced at the abuse. Santino did the same and we surrendered our knives as well.
“A pity,” Madriviox continued. “I hoped to use you for a few months, but we will go to Rome now. The empress will be pleased. As for you,” he said, whispering in the small girl’s ear. “I let you live. Keep them company tonight. It may be the last time they see a woman.”
“Hey, Gender Confused Moron,” Santino chimed in, “you realize Agrippina’s got lady parts dangling between her legs, right?” He crossed his arms confidently before smacking his forehead in realization. “Oh wait, I got that one wrong again, didn’t I?”
Madriviox glared at Santino, my friend’s small joke sparking a wave of chuckles amongst his own men. He barked an order that stopped them mid laugh, and they filed out of the area as quickly as they could. Anger swelled around Madriviox as he dropped the girl and watched as she crawled to a corner before curling up into a ball, trying to hide her shame. With nothing left to say, he sent me another sharp look before exiting the cell, locking the door behind him.
Santino and I walked over to the bars and rested our heads between them.
“How did we let this happen?” Santino asked. “We were just tricked by a bunch of illiterate Vikings.” He shook his head. “Agrippina was one thing, but this is pretty pathetic.”
“Don’t sweat it,” I assured.
“And why not?”
“Because they broke the first two rules in the ‘How-to-be-a-Good-Bad-Guy’ Handbook.”
“Do tell.”
“First,” I said, holding up a finger. “They let us live.”
“Always a bad idea,” he agreed.
“Second, they didn’t search us very well. We still have our pistols, and I still have this.” I held up a small brick of plastic C4, more than enough to blow open the lock.
Santino chuckled. “Clearly they don’t watch enough TV.”
“Clearly. Still, we should wait till nightfall.” I thought for a second. “Is your UAV picking up our signal down here?”
Santino pulled his computer from his bag and consulted it. “No. Guess the rocks are blocking it.”
“Figures,” I muttered. While it wasn’t exactly a shit show, the mission was quickly turning into one of our worst. “See if you can pick this lock so we can bust out of here real quiet like.”
“Me? What are you going to do?”
“Just do it,” I told him perhaps a little too hastily.
I ignored his hurt expression and moved towards the cowering form of the young Roman woman. It occurred to me that I could have simply told Santino that I feared his scarred face may frighten the young woman, but my patience with his whining had worn thin long ago. I pulled off my bag, which the Gauls had also stupidly left us, and pulled out a thin blanket. I knelt beside the girl and tried to wrap it around her, but she recoiled from my touch, forcing me to back away. The poor girl was so frail and beaten; I wasn’t sure how to interact with her. I tried holding the blanket out innocently, and was happy to see her gingerly reach out and take it with a shaky hand. I took a step back and enticed her to wrap it around herself by mimicking the gesture over my own shoulders. It took her another few seconds before she understood what to do.
“What’s your name?” I asked her gently, crouching a safe distance away.
She didn’t say anything. She just looked at me out of the corner of her eyes as she trembled, the blanket covering everything from her nose down.
I reached my hand out but didn’t touch her. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m here to bring you back to your mother.”
The girl’s eyes widened at the revelation, and her trembling slowly subsided. Quietly, through chattering teeth and eyes streaming tears, I heard the girl whisper, “Julia.”
That was the name her mother supplied me.
“Try and get some sleep,” I told her. “We’ll take you to your mother in a few hours.”
She didn’t react outwardly, but her tears finally stopped flowing and her eyes closed before she quietly went still. She was already asleep. The poor girl was exhausted. I reached out and tucked her exposed arm under the blanket, careful so that I didn’t disturb her. She may have been kept awake for days, probably for reasons I never wanted to think about it.
I joined Santino by the bars again. “What do you think? Four hours?”
“Three,” he corrected. “Most of these guys already look drunk enough as it is, and it’s getting late. What I don’t get is how they expected these bars to hold us. You blew up a coconut just by snapping.”
“I figure they’re either too smart or too dumb for their own good,” I deduced. “Either they’ve figured out we faked it somehow or else they’re just too dumb and drunk to think we can do the same to iron bars. Either way, we win.”
“Right,” Santino agreed. “I picked the lock by the way.”
I looked at the bars to see they were already slightly ajar. We could leave at any time.
Santino waited for some form of acknowledgment from me, but when one didn’t come, he crossed his arms, leaned his right shoulder against the bars and looked at me. He was never one for awkward silences.
“Sure you don’t want to talk about what happened back at the tavern? We’ve got plenty of time to burn.”
“No,” I said. “There’s nothing to talk about, especially not with you.”
He flicked his eyebrows into the air and looked away. “Well, that was rude,” he mumbled. After a second he looked back at me and seemed to perk up. “Hey, here’s an idea, why don’t you feel free to blame me for all of your problems.”
“I’m not,” I countered, amazed at how angry I now was. “It’s not your problem.”
“You’re damn right it’s my problem because your problems always become my problems.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know what it means, Jacob. Everything you’ve done since I’ve met you has affected my life in one way or another, and you know what, some of it ain’t good.”
I stared at him, the frustration dripping from his tone paining me more than I thought it could. He was my best bud, after all. We’d had our share of disagreements and arguments over the years, sure, but he’d never said anything quite so personal before. Different perspectives and ideas on how to run an op, definitely, but never something with so much disguised meaning behind it. But it was more about what he had left unsaid that was the most upsetting, the implied lack of faith in the decisions I’ve made and frustration at the actions I’ve done.
Santino, Helena and I had grown so close over the first few years of our joint friendship that it seemed so insane to me now that, suddenly, I was losing them both.
I turned and pressed my back against the bars. I stood there a while before smacking the back of my head against them once, and then twice.
“What’s wrong with me, John? How did I lose Helena? How am I possibly losing you?”
Santino pushed himself off the bars and walked towards the center of the room. “Hey, don’t go all weepy-eyed on my, Jacob. You know you can’t get rid of me that easy. Helena, on the other hand, well, she is a woman, and they do things in mysterious ways and all that, so I can’t really be much help there. That said, you do have a way of pushing all your personal shit on others, whether you know it or not.”
“How so?”
Santino took a step forward to answer, but the sound of his boots clinking against the stone floor jarred the sleeping girl awake. She bolted to a sitting position, her eyes terrified at the mere sight of us. Neither Santino nor I knew how to react, but we were lucky enough that we didn’t have to when recognition finally spread across her face. As soon as the realization took full effect, she slumped against the wall again and was out cold.