Lucky Escape

The steel door slammed shut, sending a deep echo through the dark room. Mitch slid along the ground, until his beaten face was inches from the crack under the door. He shuddered at the feel of cold concrete against the bloody welts on his cheek and the cool sweat dripping off his neck.

“We must move him tonight!”

From the accent of the loud-mouthed guard, Mitch guessed he was in an Algiers prison. And that was as far as possible from where he wanted to be. It was hard to tell with swollen eyes, but from the size of the feet, Mitch figured the bozo guarding the door would not go down without a fight. The latching mechanism on the door slid into place, and the guard moved away until his brown combat boots were just a blurry shadow.

This wasn’t a standard prison door. But Mitch wasn’t a standard prisoner. Since joining the team, Mitch anticipated he would someday be captured. But this was not going to go down well at the Pentagon. The Defence Secretary fought hard for this Special Ops mission.

Mitch’s captors had been torturing him several times a day about the chip. But he was trained to empty his mind, particularly of anything that may get him killed on its admission. But last night they had mentioned Emily.

Emily, his five-year-old daughter, had lived with her grandparents since the death of his wife. She thought her daddy was a travelling insurance salesman. Sure, he had a level of charisma and self-confidence, but a travelling insurance salesman?

They know about Emily. He vomited again for the third time in as many hours. His captors were not forthcoming with room service, so there wasn’t much left in his stomach.

Mitch didn’t know if his team would come rescue him. It wasn’t standard procedure, but there were big egos involved who wanted results. And they knew that Mitch was in the best position to deliver. He fell asleep for the first time in days, trying to empty his mind of Emily, and awoke to hear a rattle under the floorboards. About bloody time.
“Boss, it’s good to see you. We gotta get out of here. Got the chip?”

Mitch smiled at the rookie he had hired a few months earlier. “Give me some of the local water and you’ll see it in the next few hours”.
© 2010 Elizabeth Neil All Rights Reserved