Josse Stanton answered the question in English. It was a small bit of defiance.
He was punched in the mouth.
They lifted his head and yanked off the hood. Blinking, he tried to focus what was in front of him. A person with an old-fashioned video camera on a tripod was facing him. Behind him, a man in a mask held a huge knife and was gesturing with it. He spoke in English.
“…know that this man will be executed if we do not receive the ransom we request within the next thirty days.” The man held the knife to Josse’s throat and said, “Unless he proves to be uncompromising.” The point of the knife went into his throat, a pinprick of pain compared to what they had already put him through.
Josse’s broken and dislocated arm was pulled back and tied to his other wrist, so they couldn’t see how swollen his arm was. He was kneeling, which was better than standing, something that he knew he couldn’t do for long. His wrist on his other hand was broken, and his hand swollen up like a balloon.
They put the hood back down, and roughly yanked him to his bare, cut feet. They dragged him across the sand, onto asphalt, and then he was thrown head-first into a van. Someone inside grabbed him and sat him up on a bench, while a door slammed shut behind him.
For the hundredth time, he blamed Nabih.
Nabih, his boss, said that he did excellent on the Turkish negotiations, so why doesn’t he go to Turkey to see how they were? Ignoring the klaxons that went off in his head after he read about how Turkey was a hot bed of terrorists and terrorism, he decided to travel there anyway. Besides, they were going after ISIL, or ISIS, or DASH, or whatever they were called, weren’t they? Weren’t they part of the coalition against those terrorists?
He didn’t even get to the hotel. He looked the businessman, talked like an American businessman, and that’s who they kidnapped. At first, he was treated well. Then they took everything away from him. Food was Arabic and tasteless. Mysterious, stringy meat and a cold porridge. What he wouldn’t give for a slab of bacon.
When they found out that he was only from an import/export company, they treated him roughly. Said he was a spy. Said he was CIA. He confessed; he was not a strong man. He confessed to raping women and girls and boys. He confessed to bestiality. He confessed to being from the CIA and that the women he was supposed to meet at the hotel were whores and spies and he came all this way just to have sex with them.
For all he knew, the two women he was supposed to meet, the ones he had been negotiating with all last year, were also captured and being set up for torture. He didn’t know. All he knew was his own pain and torture, and he easily gave up.
They gave him a cell with a bed this time, so he didn’t have to sleep on the floor. A doctor came in and checked his arm and hand. He set both in a cast, working silently all the while. Josse had known not to talk to his captors, especially in English. He had learned some Turkish from his work with the women last year. He knew enough to embarrass himself. Arabic, he knew nothing.
Time passed. Bed, toilet, door, bed. While sleeping, he heard hissing coming from the door. He got up, rubbed his eyes, and his door fell inward off its hinges.
Standing there was a woman in purple and blue, her hair bound up in a pony tail. Two robots that came up to her waist stood next to her, and there were two floating orbs.
“Come on!” she yelled at him. “We’ve got to get you out of here.”
“Who – what–”
She came in and dragged him to his feet. He didn’t yelp in pain, but he winced. “Oh, no, you’re hurt. How bad?”
“I’ll be fine,” he said. “Tell me what to do.”
“I can’t give you a gun, so you’ll have to follow me. Blitzer, Strum, covering fire.”
The two robots turned from them and aimed out into the hallway. “Follow,” she said, and he nodded, following her.
They went down two corridors before Blitzer started firing in front of them. She pulled him back, and Strum stepped forward. Bullets bounced off the little robot, ricocheting around them.
“There’s a kit in the car,” she said, and Blitzer came out to join the other robot, while she ran across the hallway with Josse in tow. She dumped her magazine and put in a new one as he asked, “Who are you?”
“Your cousin.” She turned to face him. “Don’t remember me, do you?”
“Joanne?”
She chuckled. “They call me Tink now.” They went down more hallways, and burst out, setting off an alarm. “Damn, was hoping that wouldn’t happen. Blitzer, Strum, follow.”
The two robots clicked and whirred, and their guns disappeared inside their arms. They had rockets on their feet, and they used that to hover, and later follow. They hugged the side of the building. “Can you jump the fence?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Yeah, neither do I.” She pressed a button on her shoulder. “Wombat One secure, quarry is injured; repeat: quarry is injured.”
He heard nothing, but she directed him with a wave of her gun toward the front. “We’re running Plan F, which means you need to be at the front door.”
“They’ll shoot me.”
“Of course they’ll try and shoot you.” She pressed something on her arm. One of the floating pieces of machinery came and floated between them, covering them both in a force field that he could see through, but it looked like whatever was on the other side was slightly blurry. The two robots were outside of the bubble.
“We need to be there in five seconds. Let’s move!”
He ran as well as he could over gravel and with bare feet, staying within the force field. Someone shot at him, and then there were a whole bunch of shots, but they hit the force field and bounced off. The little robots got hit as well, and one went down. He almost stopped.
“It’s just a bot, I’ll make a new one!” she yelled, as they got to the front door the same time a truck came barrelling down the street. It slammed into a car parked right in front, shoving the car up onto the sidewalk and against a pair of pilings. The side door burst open, and gunfire came out of it.
He dove to the ground. Joanne doubled back and grabbed him, getting him back to his feet and pulling him to the side, He got into the van during a pause in the shooting, and then Joanne got in.
He heard something explode, and looked out to see that the robot that had been left behind exploded violently, its concussion blowing people away from it and shattering glass.
“Good Sturm,” said Joanne, as the van sped away.