While You Sleep

I pushed her down behind a car just as an armored vehicle came out of the gate to the palace compound. They went down the street in the direction we'd just come from. I pulled out my Sig and grabbed her hand. I ducked down staying behind cars on the street. The darkness of the early evening served as excellent cover for us.

"What are you doing?" she asked. "Was that a tank?"

"It was an APC," I said. "Be very quiet please."

We went around to one of the areas of the wall where there was no guard station and no gate. It was a section near the garden. The palace was mostly ceremonial. I'm sure that wars had been fought over it before, but that was before they had armored vehicles and artillery. The section of the wall that I looked for, I'd noticed on the tour we got of the palace grounds on the previous day. There was a wide opening and the section of the wall was only about nine feet tall. I ran along next to it and leaped up and grabbed the edge of it. I pulled myself up by my fingertips and looked at the scene on the other side. I could hear voices but it was dark.

"Come on," she said. "Follow me." I shrugged my shoulders and walked behind her. She stopped in front of a sewer grate.

"Pull that up," she ordered. I looked at her crazily. "Just do it," she said.

I did and she dropped down into the darkness. I quickly lowered myself over the edge and hung by my fingers. It was good that I hadn't just jumped like she did because I'd have landed on top of her.

"Polly told me about this," she whispered. "There are three of them around the walls. She learned about them from her grandfather. Even her father and brother have forgotten that they're here. She used them to sneak boys in and out of the palace. The real sewer grates are round manhole covers. This tunnel opens into a storage room in the palace. We went through the tunnel and came out as she'd sad in a storage room. We looked out through a crack in the door and could see outside of the palace into the compound surrounding the bungalow. A group of ten or twelve men in fatigues with what looked like ski masks over their faces had everyone lined up in front of the bungalow.

"Where is she?" asked a man who was obviously their leader.

"I have no idea," said Mr. May. "This isn't a political visit. It's just a case of her socializing with a friend."

The man punched May in the stomach as hard as he could and May folded up and fell down.

"Stop," screamed Polly. "He is a guest of the royal family. You will be executed."

The man walked over and slapped Polly in the face. Prince Gregor stepped up and spoke to him. "For striking my sister and our guests you have signed your death warrants. When my army gets us out of this, you will all die like dogs in the street."

"How will we die?" asked the man. "You have no idea who we are."

As I watched the interplay between the two men it seemed a bit off to me. "They want you ma'am," I said. "We have to get out of here."

"We just have to go back through the tunnel. The army of Pacmanistan will help us get out of here," she said.

"I don't think so," I said.

"Why not?" she asked.

"Because I think that Gregor is a part of this," I said. "Think about it. Over the past couple of days, we've seen hundreds of Pacmanistani soldiers around the palace. How could they have been overwhelmed or thrown out by ten or twelve guys. There's something funky going on here."

"Rick, you're just being overly protective of me," she smirked. "Only now I know why."

We went back through the tunnel and came out where we'd gone in. We ducked behind cars and went back towards the town. When we got near the bar that we'd just come from I pulled her into the shadows just as a group of men came into view. They all had the same fatigues and ski masks on that the men at the palace had worn. There were no members of the Pacmanistani army around.

The men had pulled everyone out of the bar and as we watched they questioned them all. When they got to my pinball buddy he'd smiled at them and told them that we'd vanished in a puff of smoke.

One of the men shot him in the stomach and left him to die in the street.

"We have to get out of here," I said again.

We ducked into an alley and I climbed over a wall. I grabbed some clothing that was hanging on a clothes line to dry and jumped back over the wall.

"Put these on," I told her.

"If you want to see me naked all you have to do is say so," she smirked.

"Millie, this is serious," I said.

"I know that Rick," she said. "I was with you. I saw that guy that you were playing the game with get shot. I'm really scared too. I'm just trying to keep the mood light and relaxed."

I changed into the clothes I'd grabbed for myself. I looked at us and we looked like a couple of locals. It would make it harder for them to spot us but not that much harder.

They were looking for a couple by now so they'd probably stop every couple they saw. Just as we stepped out of the alley, there was a group of people running away from the town. Millie and I jumped into the group and ran with them.

I was able to gather bits of information from them every time we stopped. "A group of men broke into the palace," said a woman. "The king is dead. They killed all of his guards."

I wondered with all of the hundreds of soldiers around the palace how a small group of men could get to the king. Shit, those guys out there couldn't have gotten to Millie. There had to be someone on the inside giving them access and information. It couldn't be Polly or any of the women because I was sure that they knew where Millie had gone and when. If they'd been in on it, they'd have sent the men to the bar first instead of the bungalow.

As we jogged down the street and then slowed to a walk, three men with guns jumped out at us. The entire crowd stopped and held up their hands. They started asking us questions in Russian and Czech, both of which were spoken in Pacmanistan. As each person in the crowd answered the questions, they moved on. I spoke a bit of Russian and had a pretty good accent but I wasn't sure I could fool them. I didn't know whether or not Millie spoke anything other than English.

The man asking the questions got to the woman next to Millie and made her take off her scarf. I shifted over in line so that Millie was between me and the man instead of her going next.

"Why did you change places dog," he asked me angrily.

I coughed nervously and then grabbed him by the shoulder pulling him between me and his two friends. I pumped two rounds into his chest and held him up to shield myself and Millie as I shot the closest of his partners through the face and into his brain. His remaining team mate was quicker on the uptake and actually got a shot off before I drilled him in the chest. I immediately grabbed Millie's hand and we were off and running, leaving the still startled group of people we'd run with gawking in our wake.

As we ran I looked around us and ducked into an alley pulling Millie with me.

"Damn that was stupid," I hissed. I slapped the sides of my head several times and Millie grabbed my hand.

"You need to stop that," she said gently. "I kind of like that face." As she looked at me I didn't see Millie's face. I saw Millie's features but the expression on that face was her mother's. It was the same calming expression and inflection to the words that her mother used on her father when he was torn over a piece of legislation or a decision. In that stressful moment in the alley, I wasn't seeing the young, wild, crazy, Millie from the newspapers and tabloids. I was seeing the woman that she might someday become.

Despite the peril that we were in, she didn't seem afraid or even nervous. That alone scared the shit out of me because I did things like this for a living. I was trained for this type of thing and I was scared shitless. The main things going through my mind were that no matter what happened to me, I had to get Millie someplace safe. Add to that the fact that I didn't want to die without seeing my daughter again or finding some way of telling her that her dad loved her.

I couldn't die in some stupid country, thousands of miles away from her and let her grow up hearing Danielle's twisted version of everything. I couldn't let her grow up being influenced by Danielle's ideas about right and wrong. I just couldn't see my daughter learning her morals from a whore and when you got right down to it, that's how I saw Danielle now.

"So what are you so angry about?" she asked me.

"I did everything wrong back there," I said.

"Hmm, there were guys who wanted to possibly kill us," she said. "You killed them. There isn't a scratch on either one of us and we got away. I think that you did really well. Let's hear this from your side."

"Right now my greatest priority is your safety and getting you out of here," I said.

"You're winning then," she said.

"After that, we need to establish some kind of communication with our side. Intel on them would be good too. We need to know exactly what they're after. Then there are supplies. I only have one spare ten round magazine. I've already used four shots in the one in my Sig. That means that we have 16 rounds of ammunition left. Doesn't that worry you?"

"Nope," she smiled. "Not at all. I'm with you."

"What exactly does that mean?" I whined. "I blew it back there. I should have checked the bodies and taken weapons and possibly even a radio or whatever they're using for communication. We'd be a lot better off. Also, the shots we fired have to have alerted someone that something happened. So we can't even risk going back there now."

"Okay," she said. And she still sat there smiling at me. "So you have a lot on your plate right now. I'll give you a little more time."

I was puzzled. "You're giving me a little more time for what?" I asked.

"To answer my question," she said. "I don't want you to think that I've forgotten about it."

I just shook my head. "Weren't you even afraid back there?" I asked.

"Truthfully," she said. "No...I knew that you wouldn't let anything happen to me. Even when the guy stepped up to the woman next to me and made her take off her scarf and I was next. I was a little bit apprehensive over what you would do, but I knew that you'd do something. But when it happened, it was so fast I barely had the time to process what had happened."

I just shook my head. "Okay we're starting the game over from right now," I said. "We need to let someone know that we're in danger."

"That might not be a good idea," she said. "Remember they have people all over the palace. And like you pointed out, Prince Gregor might be a part of this somehow."

"I meant someone on our side," I said. "I think we need to find a way to phone home. The problem is there is no cell phone reception here. And I'm thinking that they probably monitor all of the radio bands. I still have my iPhone, so if we got to a place with Wi Fi we could get an E-mail out. We also need transportation. We need something fast enough..." I smiled then.

"What?" she asked.

"I know where we're going," I said.

* * * * * *

Gregor

"Where would he take her?" I asked the leader of the men who'd taken over the palace. Over the last two hours I'd had men searching the entire town. They'd gone over the palace and my stupid sister's stupid bungalow and hadn't found her anywhere. Things seemed to be going from bad to worse. I'd had years to plan this and everything seemed to be going tits up over-night.

I had dreams of how my country should be run. The power pellet technology had been discovered purely by accident. It was a completely different type of energy. One of the raw elements that we mined in the mountainous area around the outskirts of the southern part of the city was found to create a small electrical charge when immersed in a non-flammable liquid solvent. The miners had discovered it purely by accident. We'd then brought in students from an American university who'd refined the process and we now could make extremely strong flexible batteries that could be shaped to conform to any space.

The power of the batteries could be changed based on the saturation volume of the pellets or the ratio of pellets to solution. Pacmanistan now had something the world needed. Pacmanistan could go from third world backwater to world power over the course of a generation.

My father preached neutrality and patience. I didn't have time for that. I love my father and my sister but they have no vision. My sister wants only what she considers good for women. She obviously has not absorbed the concepts outlined in the good book. Women are only placed on the earth to be helpmates for men. In Pacmanistan, a man can have as many wives as he can afford. There are many men here with several wives. Some with a dozen, but very few of the men here have a clear vision for where the country needs to go.

My father, as much as I love him, isn't one of those men. By the time he got off of his ass, the rest of the world might have discovered alternatives, possibly even more powerful ones, than the element we currently use for the batteries. If that happens, our advantage would very quickly dissipate. We need to strike quickly and get rich while we have the chance. We can go from just another minor country to world power very quickly or at least become the richest and most influential country in our region. But we must act quickly. Technology changes so rapidly, that if we wait all might be lost.

Unfortunately, that meant that sacrifices had to be made. One of those sacrifices was my father. No one realized that his slow and lingering illness of the past few months had been slow and steady doses of a nearly untraceable poison that he'd been ingesting. It might ordinarily have taken another month or two for him to get sick and die. But time and fate had forced my hand.

Pacmanistan's army numbers in the thousands. But they are a very small and very outmoded army. My own secret police number in the hundreds. They masquerade as a terrorist organization that supports the most extreme version of our religious doctrine. I initially started it as a response to my father's decision to outlaw polygamy and try to allow women in the country more rights. They've staged several demonstrations in the country that I, as a loyal son, speak out against, while in actuality, I orchestrated them.

I already have two wives myself, but for a very long time I've sought a third. I wanted to have my own famous western princess. I wanted to tame one of those wild and wanton women that you see cavorting across the pages of the newspapers and magazines.

When my stupid sister decided to invite Millicent Cameron to the spring festival, I decided that she should disappear. That was the original plan. The palace is full of secret passages and hidden rooms. My grand scheme had been to have several attractive young men be seen talking to Millicent Cameron during the festival and then to have some of my men simply pluck her from her room in the middle of the night. With a reputation like hers, it would be assumed that she'd simply run off on an adventure of some sort. She'd done that before.

The problems began then. First, my stupid sister decided that instead of having her guests stay in the palace, she'd move them all into her bungalow. She turned the visit into some type of pajama party for her friends. The second problem was that Millicent Cameron brought her own security force with her. Most of them were lulled into laxity, but the two female agents were always with her and there were a couple of the male agents that were also extremely vigilant.

I decided that the best and probably only way to get her would be to use my secret police to stage another terrorist action. It would be the biggest one to date. They would protest the American incursion into sovereign Pacmanistan, whatever the fuck that meant. It had been a stroke of genius to have them also send my ailing father to his heavenly reward.

I wasn't strong enough to be there when that happened because I truly do love my father but his time has passed. I've also allowed my sister to be handled roughly to put her in her place. She needs to realize that in the grand scheme of the world, women have very little power and what power they do possess is usually given to them by men. Unlike the other women, my sister won't be raped or given away, but she does need to learn her place.

I continue the masquerade here merely as plan B, which may no longer be necessary. By being held prisoner with all of the rest, I gain sympathy and perhaps even become a hero in the eyes of the world when the news of what happened gets out. But I grow restless and frustrated over my men's inability to find Millicent Cameron.

"I have no idea, Prince Gregor," the commander says to me. "We went to the bar that the household staff insured me was the only place that he'd gone while in town. We tortured the workers there and found out that she had been there with the American agent. They left supposedly headed back to the palace but they never arrived here. We had to shoot one arrogant man who would not answer our questions. Usually, if you shoot one of them, the rest will tell you whatever you want to know. But in this case it was clear that they knew nothing."

"A good tactic," I said. "But perhaps it is wasted on the wrong group of people." I ripped up my shirt and pulled my gold buckled belt out of my pants. I smeared dirt on my face and walked towards the kitchen. The man looked at me as if I was crazy. When we got to the kitchen I opened a large bottle of Ketchup. I'd developed a taste for it while I studied abroad. I usually had it on French fries and American styled hot dogs. In this case I had neither. I dripped a little of the ketchup near my mouth and smeared some on my shirt collar.

"How do I look?" I asked. The man just looked at me.

I smiled. "See, you have beaten the shit out of me. They weren't there to see it but when I go back out there barely able to walk, they'll believe it. They'll believe it even more when you shoot one of the palace staff and if I give you the signal shoot one of the visitors. I don't care which one. No...wait...don't shoot the American black woman, I want her for myself. She will also keep Millicent Cameron happy in my harem. Don't shoot the fat English woman with the large breasts because Colonel Marmanov wants her. You can have the other British woman if you want her or either of the two female US agents but I would advise against them. They'd be hard to break and if they ever escaped...On second thought take the British woman. The two Americans will have to be put down. Don't kill the leader of the American agents; I may have a use for him. Other than that, if you kill one or two of them to make your point, so be it."

We headed back outside where the night was beginning to become a bit chilly. I knew that the exposure and discomfort would go a long way towards making the captives easier to control and more likely to go along with our demands.

As soon as the door opened, I stumbled back over to the captives and fell in the dirt in front of them. I struggled to get to my feet and my sister screamed immediately.

"Gregor," she screamed. "What have you done to him you pigs?" She tried to get to me and was slapped again by one of the masked men.

I could see the shock on most of the faces as I got to my knees and then bravely stood up. I stuck out my chest as a sign that they had beaten me but I would never be broken. The nobility came off of me in waves and they all ate it up. It was all I could do not to laugh. I probably should have been an actor.

Before I got to give my heroic speech about never giving up and never surrendering; I got that from an early Jean Claude Van Damme movie, a truck pulled up and one of the troops ran over to me babbling. The fool had almost blown the whole scheme in his excitement. Luckily, the leader of the men grabbed him by the shoulder and slapped him. "That dog no longer runs this country fool," he said. Shit, he was a pretty good actor him-self. I might have to put him in for the best supporting actor Oscar myself.