>>> Interlude Three
>>>> Six years and six months ago
>>>> Western Sicily
Of the thirteen who left Madagascar and journeyed to Sicily, one man and two women couldn’t take the increased intensity of the training and fell out, physically unable to continue. Each one was carried from wherever he or she fell and not seen again. As a group, they were physically exhausted, worn, stressed, and emotionally broken down, barely able to make it from day to day.
They were also learning how to do things few other people in the world could do.
Lois knew, intellectually, that the goal was to mold their minds to obey any and all orders and develop their bodies to carry out those orders, but she didn’t have the energy to resist or even truly care. She was one of the youngest and most athletic of the group, but it was all she could do to get through the day. The only plus at this time was that the food was excellent, even though there was rarely enough to make her full. There were no scales around, but she had to take up her pants in the waist twice.
She lay in bed one night, thinking about her sculpted body. There were rich women in Metropolis who would have paid dearly for a shape like the one she had now. Of course, those same women wouldn’t last half a morning in Rodolfo’s training regimen. Lois almost smiled until she remembered that Rodolfo’s training regimen was designed to make her a soldier, not a fashion model or trophy wife.
Then she almost smiled because of what she knew she could do. Like the army commercial boasted, she did more before breakfast than most people did all day.
Lois was determined not to be one of those who broke.
*****
After about three more weeks, the boot class, which now consisted of six men and four women, entered a new, even more intense phase. Each man was paired with another man as a training partner, each woman with a woman. The complete training regimen was intense, it was brutal, and it would take a total of eight months. Each pair trained with all sorts of weapons, continued training in multiple forms of hand-to-hand combat, and for day-to-day wilderness survival. It wasn’t unusual for all ten of them to drag themselves to bed at midnight and be awakened at three-thirty the next morning for a thirty-mile hike with full pack, dummy weapons, and fake ammunition. And they did all this while continuing to learn enough Arabic, French, Italian, Spanish, Farsi, and German to blend into the general populace in just about any country in Europe or the Middle East.
They were still fed, of course, but the meals were sometimes delivered to them cold in the field, then scooped out of plastic or metal containers and eaten with fingers. Lois lost a few more pounds, but by now she was whipcord lean and rock hard, just like the rest of them.
They were graded on their team’s performance, not their individual scores. Both members of each pair had to succeed for either of them to continue the training.
And they were all told that from that point forward, the penalty failing any part of the training was death.
They were told repeatedly what the price of failure would be. They were told that their former lives were over, that their loved ones were convinced that they were dead, and that there was no life for any of them to go back to. They would either finish their training or die in the attempt, along with each one’s training partner.
Lois thought it was a stupid and wasteful way to create mercenaries, but they had taught her not to complain. Rodolfo’s training methods were brutal but effective.
One woman named Nancy never quite believed either that Rodolfo would kill them for failing or that they could never go back to their former lives. Nancy and her training partner Tiffany argued about the consequences of failure for six weeks before Nancy fell during an obstacle course run and wrenched her knee badly. Tiffany tried to get her off the trail and hidden in the brush before the sweepers found them, but it didn’t happen.
Lois and her partner – a tall, hard-faced French redhead named Carla – finished the course first and were surprised when they were kept at the finishing area, since the usual procedure was for the teams completing the course to move on to the next item for the day. The three male teams were also kept there as they completed the course.
Then Rodolfo arrived.
The first thing he did was have canteens of water passed out to the finishers. Then he told them to sit down and rest. Carla almost refused until Lois tugged on her sleeve and whispered, “You’d better sit down. He wants us to see something.”
Carla sat. “I would wager that he will force Nancy and Tiffany to run the course once again. They are late.”
“I wonder if one of them got hurt?”
Carla tipped her head to one side. “Of course. That must be the answer. Rodolfo is going to show us his magnanimous nature and his compassion by allowing them to continue despite a single failure.” She leaned closer to Lois and smiled with just her mouth. “Congratulations. You have once again discovered the real reason we are here.”
“Uh-huh. You should have a warning light in your forehead that comes on when you pour on that much sarcasm at one time. A person could overdose on it.”
One of the guards lifted his 12-gauge riot gun and audibly snapped off the safety. “Silence!” he growled. “Rodolfo will tell you when to speak!”
Lois nodded to the man and ducked her head, but Carla glared daggers at him. Lois wanted to tell her to cut it out, but she didn’t. Not only would she be talking after being ordered to be silent, she didn’t know if Carla would take her literally and try to remove something from the man’s body with her knife. Carla carried the largest and heaviest combat knife of any of them, kept it razor sharp, and not only did she know very well how to use it, she relished each and every opportunity to demonstrate her skill with it.
After a long few minutes, during which Lois slipped her backpack from her shoulders to the ground between her feet, two men carrying a stretcher brought Nancy to the clearing. Tiffany followed a moment later and knelt down beside Nancy when the men set the stretcher down. They could hear Tiffany reprimanding Nancy for not moving into cover quickly enough, and Nancy’s response that she had been hurt made no impact on Tiffany’s stuttering apprehension.
Rodolfo slowly walked over to the two women and smiled. “I understand that one of you is injured.”
Nancy said, “Yes. I fell and twisted my knee.”
“Did your partner not attempt to move you to concealment?”
“Yes!” Tiffany blurted. “I tried, I really did, but she wouldn’t let me!”
“Is that true, Nancy?”
Nancy sighed. “Yes. Tiff tried to help me get up, but my leg hurt too much. I’m going to need a doctor for my knee. I’m pretty sure I tore something important in there.”
“Oh, I do not believe that you will need a doctor.”
“But my knee is really hurt and—”
Rodolfo drew a small revolver from his pants pocket and shot Nancy in the belly three times as she lay on the stretcher.
Tiffany whimpered as she fell back and tried to crab-crawl out of the way, but she didn’t make it. Rodolfo shot her twice, once in the middle of her chest and once in the face.
She was dead before her head slapped against the ground.
Then, as Nancy bled out between her clasped fingers, Rodolfo turned to the remaining eight trainees. “I am sorry that you had to learn this by an object lesson. You were warned, but at least two of you did not listen. If you fail, you die. If you die, your training partner will also die.”
Rodolfo seemed to grow huge in Lois’ eyes. The small pistol looked like a cannon as he pointed it at Lois’ face.
Then he pulled the trigger.
The hammer clicked on a discharged cylinder.
He smiled at Lois’ panicked expression. “A utility weapon, caliber .38 Special, sometimes called a hideout gun. Although it holds but five rounds and is accurate only in close range due its very short barrel, it can be very useful at times. You should remember just how useful.” The revolver slid back into his pocket. “We will now take a brief break while Lois and Lester change their clothing.”
Still panting, Lois glanced down at herself, wondering what he meant. Then she saw the dark wet stain spreading out below her belt and she understood. A glance at Lester told her that he, too, had emptied his bladder.
Rodolfo had intended to terrify the rest of them with his ruthlessness. It had worked on her and on Lester. It probably had even made Carla’s heart speed up for a moment.
It would not work on Lois ever again. She swore it to herself.
She stood and pulled her spare trousers and underwear out of her backpack and stripped without moving behind a bush or a tree. The flare of terror in her chest transmuted to cold fury and settled deep in her belly. She would do everything Rodolfo told her to do. She would obey his every command. And she would finish this training and become whatever he wanted her to become.
Because then she would be fully capable of killing him.
