A War of Shadows

EIGHTEEN

Sandra O’Connell awoke. It was pitch dark wherever she was, and damp, and terribly smelly. Everything seemed odd; she tried to sit up and found for a while that she could not. Finally, after several tries, she did it, but her head was spinning and her whole body feeling oddly numb, distorted, misshapen.

She tried to think, to remember where she was and how she’d gotten here, wherever it was. Memories were misty, fragmented, disjointed, but she had a sense of identity, she knew who she was. She remembered, as if through the wrong end of a spyglass, walking out into the lobby of NDCC, being approached by the security men, going into an office—and that was that. Nothing more until now. How long ago? Days? Weeks? Worse?

Almost as disturbing was the quality of the memories; nothing would go together right, get connected. There were odd scenes, strange places and faces, and she couldn’t connect names or situations to any of them. It was a disembodied collection; she seemed to remember those things as if she’d been a third-party observer there, and her mind sometimes pictured her own image in a place or conversation fragment as if she were seeing through someone else’s eyes.

She moved her arm out a little and touched something soft and large. It startled her, and she almost screamed, but managed to get hold of herself. Steeling herself in the darkness, she reached back out again, felt it, then grabbed it and picked it up. It was a real job picking it up, although it was neither heavy nor bulky. Her hand and arm didn’t feel right, wouldn’t quite do what she wanted and willed them to do.

At first the shape of the thing puzzled her. There was no light to see by although the perception of a slight glow coming through slats somewhere assured her she was not blind. Finally she felt the sewn mouth, the button nose and two plastic eyes.

A teddy bear? she thought, totally confused.

She tried to collect her thoughts. It was easier to concentrate on one thing at a time, although matters were still cloudy, dreamlike and easily lost.

Drugs, she decided. They had drugged her with some sort of hypnotic or hallucinogen, and for quite a long while, too. This was bad; some such drugs had lasting, even permanent side effects and aftereffects, and this scared her.

Somehow, though, she knew, she’d been drugged and locked away and had still managed to escape. That was the only explanation for her being here. But if she had escaped, then they were looking for her, and could find her at any moment.

She felt around the shed, finding the two half-broken boards that had been her entryway. Slowly, carefully, she edged over to the opening, and carefully dangled her legs down.

Her feet touched water. It was odd; that tingling numbness was still there, and contact with the water produced a sensation more like wading in gelatin, but the message of water came through.

She hesitated for a moment, first to listen for any sounds—there were none she could hear except insects and the lapping of the water—and then because she had no idea how deep the water would be. Finally she decided to chance it; it couldn’t be very deep or she’d never have gotten inside in a drugged condition. Cautiously she lowered herself down. It was little more than knee-high, which was a relief.

She bent low and emerged from under the boathouse, looking around. It was still dark, but her eyes, accustomed to it from the moment of awakening, saw fairly well the lake and the looming shadows of boats, lights, and equipment. Only one small light was on now, far over to the other side. There seemed to be some movement there, a guard perhaps, but whoever it was had to be pretty far off. The sky was overcast, and the humid air had the feel of thunderstorm about it.

She moved away from the light, back to the shore behind the boathouse, and looked around. Trees all over, it looked like from the darkness and the sounds. She knew she had to get moving fast or else they would catch her, even though she didn’t know who “they” were. Then she heard the sound of a distant truck just off to her left. A road! she thought excitedly. Not too far, either. She decided to head for it, despite the risk of exposure there. Roads went somewhere, and somewhere was where she needed to go.

She was still uncoordinated; it took a little time for her to get things moving in a semblance of normality, but she made the trees and bushes nearest the direction her ears assured her the road was.

Once concealed in the foliage, she paused, feeling momentarily safe and hidden, and took stock of herself. It was dark and she was farsighted without her glasses, so visual checks were blurry and tenuous. Still, she found that she was dressed in tattered shreds of what must have been a hospital gown, and nothing else. She was dirty and covered with grease and grime, but, mercifully, someone had cut her hair extremely short, so it was the least of her problems.

She was a little chilly, but it was the result of the high humidity and approaching storm—and yet the overall warmth and humidity cheered her in that they said that it was still summer, and perhaps not a whole lot of time had passed. The thought that she might be in Florida or some other warm climate area crept slightly up to her thoughts, but was pushed back as unacceptable.

The sound of another truck came, somewhere ahead of her, and she started for it. Stumbling, still dizzy and feeling somewhat disembodied, she made the road in about half an hour.

It was a pretty fancy freeway: four lanes in each direction cutting a swath through the wilderness. It would take a lot of traffic to justify a road like this; in normal times it would be crowded day and night. It was empty now.

There was a green exit sign off to her right, and she headed for it, hoping that it would tell her where she was. Keeping close to the bushes and trees in case another truck should come out of the darkness, she came close to the big sign in a few minutes.

And, suddenly, she felt real panic, and started to tremble and feel sick. Despite her farsightedness, she was in good position to read the huge white-on-green letters and they stood out reasonably well in the lightning flashes.

They just didn’t make any sense. Her mind simply refused to put the symbols together into words she could recognize, no sounds or images forming as she stared at them.

She spent a few minutes getting hold of herself, telling herself it was another byproduct of the drug that would wear off in time, but that thought only helped a little.

There was a rumbling sound off in the distance, and before she could move a large tractor-trailer truck came over the hill and rumbled toward her, its bright lights cutting like knives through the darkness. She flattened against the ground, and it came toward her as she held her breath. Finally it passed, fairly close to her, its lights briefly illuminating her but obviously not enough to give the driver a clear look at her. It went past without slowing down, a big rig with a tandem trailer, and passed out of sight.

She turned slowly and looked at the sign again. It still made no sense to her, but now she noticed the little blue signs underneath. These were symbols telling what could be found at the exit. The little white words underneath were so many random squiggles, but there was the tent sign that meant camping—the lake, of course—and an additional white cross that meant hospital.

Hospital, she thought. Of course.

She looked at the squiggles underneath, knowing what they must say, but they just wouldn’t say the words to her.

She’d heard of the effect, but its happening to her was terrifying.

Still, there was nothing that could be done about it. It was probably something that would pass, she had to believe that, and clung to it. For now, she had to get moving, and that meant away from that hospital, away from this exit sign.

She was starting to feel hungry, with a particular craving for something sweet, but she knew that meals might be few and far between in the near future.

Now what, though? she mused, a dark feeling of hopelessness coming on. She was as good as naked, hungry, in a wilderness the whereabouts of which she didn’t know, and with, undoubtedly, a search on for her.

Escaping was a lot easier in the movies than it was in real life. Still, the alternative, turning herself in and going back to wherever she’d come from, was as good as death to her. That truck had to be going somewhere important; she decided to keep hidden but follow the road.

Several hours later, when the sunrise told her that she was heading west, she was itchy and aching and even more hungry, but at least the storm had not hit and the clouds seemed to be breaking up a bit.

At the next exit there was a military checkpoint. Several trucks were backed up as soldiers examined cargoes, bills of lading, and the truckers’ passes and orders before allowing them to proceed. They were not looking for anyone on foot out here, though, and she avoided them easily.

A bit later in the morning she came upon a small pool, panicking some deer who’d stopped for their early morning drink. In the surface of the pool she could see herself for the first time.

The water could be used to wash off some still painful cuts and to get rid of some of the dirt and grime. It made her feel better, but the gown was only a collection of rags held by tenuous threads into a semblance of a garment now, and stained with oil and grease. Her hair had been cut in a boyish style and to within three centimeters in length. Even slightly blurred and distorted by her vision and the pool, she thought her face looked more like a young man’s in his mid-twenties than a woman in her early forties. It looked like a different person entirely. The rest of her body, however, betrayed her sex if not her age. She was in very good condition and had a nice shape which the remains of the gown did nothing to hide.

She drank some needed water and headed back into the woods toward the road. After a minute or two she hit a huge patch of moss and lichens growing out from and connecting several fairly large trees. The result formed a mat which felt soft and nice, and she was terribly tired. She stretched out on it to rest for a few minutes, and was soon fast asleep.

She awoke when the sun was across the sky. She felt rested and refreshed, although her back ached from the uneven natural bed. The disembodied and uncoordinated feelings remained, but could be controlled. A result of the sleep, though, had been, in twisting and tossing, the end of the bindings of the gown.

She considered what to do now. Oddly, being alone and naked in the wilderness had an oddly sexual feeling. This feeling of arousal disturbed her, but she couldn’t fight it.

Still, naked she was even more restricted, and she turned finally to the remains of the gown. It was a long one, of course, which had caused some of the problems, but there was a fair amount of whole cloth left. Carefully experimenting, trying it several ways, tearing a bit here and there, she managed to make a makeshift wraparound that covered her from bust to a little below the thighs. Binding it together was a pain. She finally managed, by a combination of biting and tearing, to make a couple of small holes and use the remnants of the gown’s straps as a sort of tie, done in front so there would be little chance of slippage without her knowing it.

She was so proud of her fast-thinking handiwork that it was all the more frustrating when she couldn’t seem to tie bows in the straps. She finally managed to make knots, knots that might have to be broken to be untied, but it made an unholy mess and drew the thing tightly where tied. They were like a little child’s attempts at knots, she thought angrily, but after a lot of false tries they seemed to hold and that would be enough for now.

Near dusk she reached some vineyards. The country was picture-postcard style, with rows upon rows of grape vines stretching out in all directions. They were sour and probably not yet ripe, yet she ate them and ate them, spitting out seeds with abandon. They filled a need, and if they made her sick later, well, so what?

She crossed the vineyards by the light of a three-quarters moon, disturbing a couple of dogs that stayed mercifully distant, and skirting around the large farm area that was obviously the headquarters for the vineyards. She still couldn’t read the logo on the sign, but it was obvious that this was part of a major winery operation.

Wine country, she thought. The soldiers at the road check had been in familiar uniforms, so she was sure she was still in the United States. If that were so, where would major vineyards be? Northern California or New York State, most likely, she decided. The land didn’t look like the Napa Valley, and the trees looked more northern than anything else.

Upstate New York, then, she decided. It made her feel better. New York State—she tried to think. Wasn’t the wine country somewhere in the northwest part? That would make the road the New York Throughway, which went to the Great Lakes, to Buffalo, Niagara Falls—and Canada.

Canada.

And she was heading west!

But how far, she wondered. Hundreds of kilometers, or was it over the next hill?

No matter. For the first time she dared to hope.

The next hill didn’t reveal Buffalo, but it did reveal a small town nestled in a pretty valley with a small river flowing almost through it. In the moon-light it looked almost storybook in quality, a fairy tale village of a couple of thousand homes. A number of older houses on a series of very large lots were off on a small road by themselves. She was attracted to them by the long clotheslines they all had in their backyards. She hoped that at least one of them would do washing today, and that, somehow, she could sneak down and steal something, even if a sheet and clothespins, to replace her disintegrating makeshift garment.

She picked a spot and settled down to wait. It didn’t matter how long, she thought wearily. The grapes had soured her stomach but stayed down; she could always sneak back for more. She would wait until the opportunity presented itself for her to get clear with what she needed.

Down at the far end of the road, where it met the main road from the town to the freeway, she spied a phone booth. She chuckled to herself. With a quarter she could call for help.

Or could she? she suddenly thought. Who would she get? While she waited for them to find someone she could trust, the inevitable security patrol tap would pick her out, and it would be back to the hospital and the drugs again. The operator could be called without money, of course, but it would bring the local cops and the same result.

No, she decided. She was on her own and she would remain so as long as possible. If she were going to place any calls, they would be from Canada or not at all.

For a while she dozed, awakened once when a curious dog came by. The small black and white mutt proved friendly, however, and didn’t betray her. She petted him. He licked her face, and, after a while, lost interest and wandered off.

Nobody did their washing the next day, but the house at the end of the row of a dozen or so caught her interest just the same. She watched through the day and saw a young woman leave the house and walk down the hill to a lot where there were a number of school busses parked. The woman got in one, started it up, and rolled off; soon the others were started by men and women walking from different parts of town.

She watched the house for some time. There was no sign of life there, although other houses along the row had people going to and fro, being picked up in clearly marked company cars and minibusses, and from a few there were the sounds of radio and TV and stereos.

But not the house on the end. The woman was gone about two hours, then came back and parked the bus out front of the house, next to a very dusty little foreign car.

The little black-and-white dog was doing what dogs have done for an eternity in her backyard, and the woman spotted the mutt as she drove up. She jumped out and ran back, yelling at the dog to get out of there. The dog got, but it was too late; he’d already left a messy souvenir.

Muttering to herself, the young woman turned and opened the back door of her house. This excited Sandra O’Connell; she’d opened the back door without a key. The house had been left unlocked.

The back door was still open now, and no noises issued from the screen. The placed looked a little big for just one person, but she dared to hope. Reservists would be off on security duty now; it was just possible that, for one reason or another, the woman was alone in that house.

She waited and watched through the hot, muggy afternoon. Twice the woman in the house emerged for one thing or another, but nobody else. Finally, after a long and hard wait, in which the temptation to return to the vineyards or find a brook for a drink was almost overpowering, the woman of the house left again, entered the school bus and, making a three-point turn, started off down the hill again.

She had to take the chance, she decided. Had to. There was no choice in the matter. Later, when she could—if she could—she would pay this woman back somehow.

Just when she was preparing to make her move, the back door of the house next door opened and a middle-aged woman emerged, dressed in a skimpy garden-type suit that made her look ridiculous.

Sandra O’Connell watched nervously, knowing that precious minutes were being lost, while the woman pulled open an aluminum-framed lawn recliner, lay down, slapped on some tanning lotion, and relaxed.

It seemed like forever until the old bag fell asleep. There was the sound of gentle snoring, and her mouth was open.

Sandra saw that the woman with the bus hadn’t closed the back door; there was only the screen door to contend with, and without waking up the sleeping neighbor.

Cautiously but deliberately Sandra stepped out of the bushes and walked toward the door. The little dog saw her and ran to her, running around her playfully. She was almost to the back door when the dog started after a butterfly, went over into the next yard, and almost ran into the sleeping woman there.

Silently the amateur burglar opened the kitchen door and closed it quietly behind her, and just in time, too. The dog had made one leap too many at the butterfly, started barking, and awakened the matronly sunbather.

Once inside the house Sandra didn’t worry about what was happening outside; time was pressing.

The house was smaller than it seemed: a one-story affair with a large kitchen, a dining room, a small living room, and two bedrooms, one of which was made up to look like a tiny den.

The bedroom contained a queen-sized bed and some dressers. A photo next to the bed of a man in uniform confirmed her belief that the woman’s husband was, in fact, away.

Sandra couldn’t get her own makeshift garment untied, and finally ripped it off. She opened a closet, and came face to face with a full-length mirror which startled her.

She looked a mess, it was true, but still somehow young and attractive, far younger than her years, although the image remained slightly blurry to her.

Finding a perfect fit was something she didn’t expect and didn’t achieve, either. She rejected a lot of clothing that would fit, though, simply because it required some kind of undergarments, and those definitely would not fit.

An old, ragged, washed-out and faded pair of jeans proved a tight fit, but she managed to pull them around her thighs and zip them up, although it took tremendous effort and more precious time. She felt like she had a tightening noose around her waist.

The woman had some shirts but they didn’t fit; she found under a pile of old clothing some white tee shirts that were obviously destined for a rag bin. They were the man’s shirts, or undershirts, but they had shrunk in the wash. One of them went on all right, but felt wrong in the shoulders and didn’t go all the way down to her jeans, exposing her navel. She looked at herself in the mirror. A bad fit, with the very short haircut setting it all off wrong.

She looked like an overage high-schooler on the make.

Well, it would have to do. None of the shoes or sandals fit; she was in a hurry and decided to abandon them. She took a few precious seconds to put everything back in an undisturbed condition, hoping that it would be some time if ever before the theft was noticed. The remains of the gown she picked up and took with her; it would be discarded outside later, perhaps in a convenient garbage can.

Going back to the kitchen, she noticed, on the small dining table, a purse. She couldn’t resist. Looking in, she spotted the wallet with several bills inside. She took them and a little change and squeezed the money into a front pocket of her incredibly tight and uncomfortable jeans. She went back to the kitchen, looked in the refrigerator, and grabbed a piece of cake from a half-finished store-bought creation. Now she went back to the back door, looking out.

The matronly woman was awake and petting the dog. A middle-aged man farther down was mowing his lawn.

Panicked, she walked to the front door, opened it carefully, and looked out. Nobody was in sight, although, down the road, she could see a yellow school bus pulling into the lot and she was pretty sure who was driving. She decided to chance it, walked out the front door, closed it firmly, and went out to the street and slowly started walking down. She was still holding the remains of the gown, and when she got near the bottom of the hill, at a little bridge over a brook leading to the river, she walked down, shoved a rock into the cloth, and pushed it down into the wet stream bottom. A couple of rocks on top finished the job.

And now, for the first time, feeling satisfied with herself, she suddenly realized that what she’d done meant very little. Up on the overpass to her left was a military checkpoint; to her right and ahead was a small town where a stranger, particularly now, during the emergency, would stand out like a sore thumb.

She didn’t care immediately. She was hungry, and there seemed to be a drive-in food stand a couple of blocks away. She headed toward it, thankful at least that she could now walk in civilized company. Even barefoot and in painfully tight old clothing, she no longer felt like a wild beast, naked in the wilderness.

There were three trucks stopped at the drive-in, big, long-distance rigs. She considered it. Trucks and military vehicles were obviously the only things that moved without a lot of official help these days.

She still felt uncoordinated and distant, but she had to risk it. She went up to the drive-in, a little two-person shack, really, and looked at the hand-lettered menu. Nervousness started to creep in again; she couldn’t keep it down. The jittery feeling seemed to affect her thinking; it muddied, and she felt confusion where, minutes before, she’d been thinking fairly clearly.

She couldn’t read the menu. That hadn’t changed. But she could see a small grill near the window, and smell hamburgers cooking. It was irresistible.

She went up to the window. A girl who looked young enough to be in high school stared at her curiously and asked, “Yes ma’am?”

Sandra started to say something, suddenly realizing that these would be the first words uttered since she woke up in the boathouse, and she stammered. She wanted to say, “I’ll have a hamburger, please,” but she couldn’t seem to get it up. Finally she pointed to a picture of a hamburger on the side of the service window and asked, “How much is one of those?”

The girl gave her something of a pitying look, and she suddenly realized that she must have looked and sounded like a retarded person.

“Two dollars with a Coke thrown in,” the girl told her.

Sandra reached into her pocket and brought out the bills. She was suddenly doubly confused, and the more confused and frustrated she was the more so she became. She took one of the five crumpled bills and handed it with some difficulty to the girl.

She was patient, at least. “You need one more,” she said softly.

O’Connell fumbled, got the other bill and handed it to the girl.

“And twenty cents for tax,” the girl persisted. Sandra reached in, took some coins out, and put them on the window ledge.

“Take out what you want,” she told the girl.

A quarter was removed, the sale was rung up, a nickel was replaced, and, shortly, a hamburger and a Coke arrived.

Embarrassed, upset, and ashamed as well as a little afraid of her conspicuousness, she put the change back in her pocket and took the food and drink over to a picnic table.

She ate the burger greedily and sloppily, and the Coke was gone almost as quickly. She wiped off her mouth with a paper napkin and calmed herself down.

The drug they had given her, she decided, must be a particularly nasty one. Two days after it’d worn off, her brain still wasn’t working nearly right, and she was afraid that it might not ever get back to normal.

The problem wasn’t really with her thinking, though. It was with making her body do what her mind commanded. A series of little short circuits kept coming up. She knew what a hamburger was, knew the word, but somehow couldn’t get it out when she wanted to. She could count, too, except when she had to.

She was still sucking on the ice, sitting there, letting the sun which had already darkened her body warm it more, when one of the truck drivers came over to the table, put down two burgers and a shake, and sat down opposite her.

“Hello, there!” he said pleasantly.

She broke out of her reverie. “Hi,” she managed, listening to how childish it sounded floating from her lips, both a little higher and softer than it should have been.

He was a rough but kindly-looking man, perhaps in his mid-forties, with a sleeveless blue shirt and jeans over cowboy boots.

“You look kinda lost,” he said.

She smiled crookedly. “I am, kinda,” she admitted.

“You’re not from around here, then?”

She shook her head, and now her will power forced itself through. The same mind that couldn’t think of hamburger when it needed it managed something more difficult, although haltingly, with effort great enough that it reinforced the retarded image.

“I’m from Belo,” she volunteered. “I been stuck here, run outta money an’ all.”

The trucker looked her over, trying to fit her into his current world picture. The woman was older than she looked, he could see it in her face, but he couldn’t guess how old. Mid-thirties, maybe. So here was a woman, mid-thirties, dressed like she was twenty and talking like she was a slow twelve. He made a guess.

“You have an identity and movement card?” he asked suspiciously.

That question unnerved her. It was outside of her available memory, this encounter with military checkpoints, monitoring devices, and such things as identity and movement cards. Since the emergency had begun, she’d been drugged and locked up. She’d had a card, of course, but never the occasion to need it.

“N—no,” she stammered.

He shook his head slowly. He was pretty sure he had it, now.

“You wanna get back home, honey?” he asked her casually.

She leaped at it. “Y-yes, sure, yeah.”

“I’m headin’ to Buffalo. There’s plenty of room. I’ll take you,” he volunteered.

She was stunned. This was better luck than she had reason to dream about. Suddenly a thought entered her head. “The soldiers…”

He smiled. “Don’t worry none about them. I make this run between Syracuse and Buffalo so many times they know me by my first name.” When he had finished his burgers, they tossed their trash in the can and went over to his rig.

She’d never been inside a tractor before. There was lots of room, and even a bed behind the seats. There were too many gearshifts and pedals and such to figure out; driving one of these rigs was definitely a lot harder than driving a car.

With much shifting and double-clutching, he backed up, then moved forward and around to the road. It was an interesting and somewhat exciting view; had the man not been so much in command of his cab, she would have been even more nervous, though. They were sitting over the engine, so when the front of the truck cleared a tree by inches it was inches from the windshield as well.

He pulled onto the entrance ramp, climbed laboriously up, and entered the highway.

“Lots easier since they got the cars off,” he muttered.

It was bouncy and uncomfortable, but it was a ride to where she needed to go.

Checkpoints were infrequent on the freeway; for the most part it was exits that were monitored, so it was about thirty miles before they had to slow to a stop. They’d talked little, which was all right with her, and he played irritating country music on his radio and sang along.

Now, as he slowed for the checkpoint, he shut off the radio and glanced at her.

“What’s your name, honey?” he asked, seemingly unconcerned.

She was going to give a false name, but “Sandy” came out.

He nodded. “Okay, Sandy. Just sit and look bored and let me take it. This is the only one we’ll face until we get off in Buffalo, so relax.”

He pulled to a stop, set the brakes, and got out of the cab. She could hear him talking to the soldiers, all of whom looked very young and very bored, and once he came back and reached in, grabbed a sheaf of papers on a clipboard, winked at her, and returned to the soldiers.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, he climbed back in, stuck the clipboard back in its holder, and put the truck in gear.

She was amazed. “How—how did you get me past?” she asked him.

He grinned. “Told ’em a tall story. They like tall stories, they’re young enough to want to believe. Don’t worry. We’ll have you home sometime tonight.”

About ten miles down the road darkness overtook them; about three miles beyond that he took a turn for a rest area, pulled up in the rear parking area where it was almost completely dark, and turned to her.

“Okay, honey, time to pay the fare,” he said jovially.

She was confused, and reached into her pocket, pulling out the remaining bills. “This is all I got,” she said apologetically.

He laughed. “Now I see what happened to you,” he said. “They took you out for a party with the soldiers, with some other girls, and when it came time to do what they brought you for, you wouldn’t —so they stuck you there. Right?”

She was appalled. “Nooo…” she protested.

“Oh, yes,” the driver said, still not unkindly.

Sandra O’Connell had been raised in the upper middle class, had gone to sheltered parochial school and a good Catholic college. She was not a virgin, but she had lived alone for a long time. Her whole life had been a protection—the right schools, the right neighborhood, the right government hospitals and agencies.

Even at her age, she was naive about the real world.

Now that real world caused panic to race through her. She fumbled for the door, but the driver reached out, grabbed her with powerful arms, pulled her to him, and started kissing her. She kicked and started lashing out with her arms, and that finally made him mad. He slapped her, hard, and while she was reeling from it she felt him undo her jeans. She tried to pull away, but he’d partially undressed her now and, holding her wrists together with a brawny, incredibly powerful hand, he turned her over and bound her hands with some cord and her feet with a spare belt.

And, for some time afterward, he did to her exactly what he pleased in that little bed in the back of the cab.

When he was through, he climbed back into the front seat of the truck, put his own pants back on, then his cowboy boots, and put the truck in gear. Once back out on the road he turned on the country music and started whistling to it. She was still bound in the back.

Sandra O’Connell felt sick, disgusted, furious. She would cheerfully have shot this animal at the wheel if given the chance, but she didn’t have the chance. She was as helpless now as she had been during the ordeal.

She lay there, stunned and helpless, as he rolled on. Finally, after a period of time she could not judge, he stopped again, climbed in back, picked her up and brought her to the front seat. He released her bonds, and when she started for him he belted her almost senseless.

She gave up.

“Git your pants on,” he ordered. “Time for you to get out.”

She had a hard time complying with that, and he helped, somewhat painfully, with the zipper. Finally he said, “Okay, now we both got what we wanted. Now git, and don’t fall for any more party gags again.” His tone of voice infuriated her even more. He was giving her a lecture in morality, as if she’d done something terrible and he’d meted out punishment for it to cure her of future wrongdoing.

“I’ll tell on you!” she warned him.

He shrugged. “Go ahead. See if anybody’ll listen. All you’ll do is get arrested for no IDs and passes. Hell, woman, they don’t care about people like us any more. They never did.”

He pushed her out of the cab, slammed the door, and roared off.

She collected her thoughts, looked around for the first time, and saw that she was not, as he’d said, quite in Buffalo. He’d let her out at a roadside area by the river, before he had to exit and go through another checkpoint.

What made her feel even more helpless was that the man didn’t realize how safe he was. She couldn’t read his licensing or pass information, couldn’t read the name of his trucking company, or even the numbers on his truck. What was worse, even if she knew his whole history and full address, she could still do nothing. She had police to avoid and capture to evade.

So she climbed down the side of the embankment, bruised and hurting all over, and found a culvert, and there she sat down and cried like hell.

She dozed fitfully in the culvert, finally giving it up as an impossibility. She hurt too much, so at last she made her way around and looked out on the water. It was very dark, but a large ship was going by, a Lakes tanker of some kind, and its flag, lit by stern lights, was not her flag. A Canadian ship, she thought wistfully. That must be Canada over there, she realized with a surge of renewed energy and hope.

There were other, smaller boats about as well, she saw. Small, fast patrol boats that seemed to keep closer to the other side, perhaps a kilometer or less from her perch.

She searched her memory, and recalled that a narrow neck or peninsula of Canada came over almost to Buffalo, splitting Lakes Erie and Ontario. But why the patrol boats?

Suddenly she was brought up short. She remembered idly reading that the centuries-old unfortified border between the two largest North American nations was now effectively patrolled by both sides, and that fences and guards were being erected all along it. The U.S. wanted to take no chances on an infiltration from Canada, whose borders were far less secure and much vaster than those of the U.S., and the Canadians, in turn, didn’t want anyone coming over and bringing any funny bacteria. They were hardly sealed off; there was too much economic interdependence for that. But they were a lot tougher than they used to be.

So near and yet so far, she thought. How will I ever get across?

She considered swimming. She’d always been a good swimmer, but the current was fast here and she was still uncertain of how much stamina and control she had in her body.

And yet, the mare she thought about it, the more the idea appealed. There were some bridges, of course, but they were sure to be guarded and restricted. The odds of finding a boat and being able to use it were slimmer still; the boats would be carefully watched and examined.

A kilometer, she thought again. Perhaps less. The small patrol boats seemed to come out in a regular pattern every few minutes to roughly the center of the channel, go down it for a bit, meet others coming the other way, and turn. If worst came to worst, she could hail one of the boats and take her chances. If the swim proved too much, there were alternatives like floating for a while and eventually getting back to shore on this side.

It was worth a try, she decided. She was almost ready to jump in when she saw a different looking, slightly larger white craft cruise by, spotlights trained on the U.S. bank. It wasn’t hard to make out the U.S. Coast Guard logo. The Canadians weren’t the only ones patrolling the border.

The light was haphazard and missed her easily, but the patrol gave her a moment’s pause. There was that danger, too—as well as the danger of being shot at, perhaps, by either side.

There was no choice. It was dark and the boats were far away now. She slid into the water.

It was damned cold, and that gave her some worry at the beginning, but she soon grew accustomed to it. Her wet clothing was in the way, but she was damned if she was going to shuck it and go through this to the end stark naked.

The current proved deceptively slow; dams and canal locks kept it from rushing with the force of Niagara only thirty or so kilometers north, and the old swimming skills came back to her, were there as if she’d never been out of the water. She wasn’t a particularly strong or fast swimmer, but she could swim reasonably well and for long periods. Ordinarily she could take this distance in a moderate pace, but some grapes, a piece of cake, and a hamburger and Coke weren’t the best stores of energy. She tired quickly, and let herself drift until she got her breath back, then started again.

The patrol boats with their searchlights came again, and again, but they didn’t see her. She reached and clung to a center-channel buoy for a while, until she was ready to try the rest of the way. She was in Canadian waters now, and somehow that felt safer.

Inside of ten more minutes, she was within sight of shore. Some automobile lights were moving on a road back from the dark shoreline, an indication in itself that she was in Canada now, nearly safe.

She made the other side, and faced a wooden wall that didn’t look at all hard to climb although a bit slippery. She reached the top, only three meters above her, hauled herself out of the channel and lay there on her back, gasping and exhausted but feeling exultant.

She’d made it!

Suddenly a voice said, in a slight Canadian accent not too far from her, “Just lie still there, ma’am, and don’t move. I have a rifle trained on you and it has an infrared sniperscope attached.”

She lay still as ordered, too tired to care what he said and too washed out to have made a move if she’d wanted to.

She heard the sentry or whatever he was talking on a walkie-talkie, but couldn’t hear either end of the conversation.

“What is your name and why have you swum the channel?” the sentry demanded.

“San-Sandra,” She forced herself to speak.

“Sandra O’Connell. I have been drugged and kept in a pris’n. I got away. I need help.”

The sentry relayed this through his walkie-talkie.

A couple of minutes passed with no words between them. She just lay there and looked at the patrol boats and city lights across the way and marveled to herself that she’d swum that. Now an ambulance arrived, and she heard people getting out. She turned, and was surprised to see that they wore protective suits of some kind.

They lifted her gently onto a stretcher and wheeled her efficiently to the ambulance, slid her in the back, and closed the doors. No one got in with her, to her surprise, and they were soon under way.

There was a hissing sound, which, she discovered, was oxygen being pumped into the rear chamber which was, incongruously, sealed.

They have me in isolation, she realized with a start.

For a moment she was afraid that she was not in Canada. However, there was a light on inside her mobile cubicle revealing no inside door handles but also showing the oxygen supply system. She couldn’t read the red warnings, but there were two sets of them, one under the other, with a maple leaf atop each.

It was Canada, all right.

The ambulance—or prison van?—stopped and backed up now. Someone fumbled with the doors, and they opened to reveal a strange plastic tunnel of some kind.

“Please get up if you can and walk through the tube,” a crisp, official voice said. “If you can not walk, say so, and we will arrange to move you.”

“I can walk,” she said, and got up unsteadily, staggering a bit. Suddenly she wondered if she really could.

The plastic tunnel went about ten meters, and felt sticky to her bare feet. She entered a doorway then, and recognized a standard-looking hospital corridor.

“Proceed to the chair facing the window to your left,” the PA voice said, and she saw what it meant and went there.

It was a comfortable chair that felt very, very good. There was a microphone in front of it, and, she saw double glass in front. On the other side sat an official-looking gray-haired man in a black suit and striped tie. He, too, was equipped with a micro-phone.

“I am Inspector Charles Douglas of the RCMP,” he told her. “You understand that you are being isolated because we have no idea what you might or might not be bringing us, and medical tests will have to be made to clear you.”

She nodded.

“I want you to tell your story into the microphone,” he instructed. “Spare nothing. Take as long as you want, but hold nothing back. It is being recorded.”

She nodded again. “I have been un’er drugs for a long time,” she told him. “Bad ones. They have hurt me, done some brain dam’ge, don’ know how bad or if it’ll wear off in time.”

The inspector nodded. “You aren’t the first one we’ve encountered,” he told her. “Just go ahead, relax, take all the time you need to collect yourself.” She did. It was tough going, telling the story in halting phrases and malformed words. She spared nothing, though. Not who she was, what she was doing, about being spirited away, about waking up and its problems escaping, even the rape.

Douglas sounded sympathetic but noncommittal. When she finished he just puffed on a pipe for a few minutes, thinking about it. Then he said, “There is a shower just down the hall, a closet with some hospital clothes, and a bed. I suggest you go make use of them and get some sleep while this information goes to Ottawa. If you’re hungry, we can send in some food.”

“I’m starved,” she told him, “but I’m more tired than an’thing.” She got up and he did the same. She looked at him seriously through the glass. “Thank you,” she said.

He didn’t reply.

She was out of the painful clothing, in seconds and showered thoroughly, particularly flushing the memories of the trucker out as much as possible.

Another hospital gown, but white this time and much better made, and a typical hospital bed which she sank into gratefully. She remembered little else.

While she slept, the recording and Douglas’s report went to Ottawa by RCMP wire. Officials there studied it, considered it, discussed it. Hospital technicians in isolation garb took fingerprints from her sleeping form, and these, too, were transmitted and matched up.

Finally, decisions were made. They called the National Disease Control Center for verification of the existence of a Sandra O’Connell, and notified the FBI through priority channels to get confirmation of her photo and prints.

The FBI check flagged the computer monitors in the Special Section, Jake Edelman’s branch. Bob Hartman was called, checked out the print information, determined that, indeed, it was Dr. Sandra O’Connell they had in Ontario, and called Jake.

Edelman was excited. It was the first real break in the domestic side of the case. “Hell, if we can get her back she can tell us a lot about where she’s been!” he said hopefully. “We can trace the sons of bitches back to here!”

The Buffalo office was called on the special line, reaching a particular agent at home. She was told to go to Diefenbaker Hospital and see Dr. O’Connell, and if possible to take her out of there and get a plane direct to Washington. One was being readied to pick them up by another friendly commander at an airbase in Vermont. RCMP’s Special Branch, which was very much in league with Edelman on this, agreed.

The Buffalo agent, a young woman named Mason, cleared the border checks with special IDs and permissions and was met by the RCMP on the other side. They sped to the hospital, about eight kilometers distant, making it in record time.

When they walked into the special isolation section, they were met by a very confused Inspector Douglas.

“What the hell is this?” he demanded.

“This is Mason, FBI,” the RCMP cop told him. “She’s got the proper papers to pick up a Dr. Sandra O’Connell.”

Douglas looked stricken. “But that’s impossible! She was picked up ten, fifteen minutes ago!” he said.

Agent Mason was upset. “Who picked her up? On whose authority?”

“An inspector from the FBI,” Douglas said. “Absolutely faultless credentials, with the proper Canadian releases as well. An Inspector Braden, I think his name was. Yes, Inspector John Braden.”