The Other Brothers - Chapter 3

Chapter 3a

Tommy – Time to Escape

I opened my eyes and saw the two henchmen who had attacked me.  I lashed out on first impulse.  One of them hit me over the head.  “Bad idea,” I thought as my vision faded brown and the crown of my head throbbed.  I blinked away the unconsciousness.  I took a deep breath, looked around, and saw Dicky sitting beside me.  I sat up and my head started spinning.  It was then that I noticed we were in a moving vehicle.

Dicky whispered to me, “They said if we promise to be quiet, they’ll take off our gags.”

I looked up at one of the thugs.  He smirked and asked, “Promise?”  I nodded vigorously, so he took off the duct-tape that held the gag in.

“Ow,” I complained.  “How quiet do we have to be?”

“As quiet as we want you,” one of the thugs said.  His English was heavily accented.

“How do we know how quiet that is?” I asked.

“When I hit you, you are too loud.”

That made sense, but otherwise I was confused.  “Dicky,” I said, “Do you know what’s going on?”

“Well, I’ve had some time to think about it…”

“How long?” I interrupted.

“Oh, fifteen minutes, I guess.”

“Where do you think we are?”

“How should I know?  Can I continue?”

“With what?”

“With what’s going on.”

“Oh, right.  Sure.”

“I think they are French…”

“French?  Oh that’s really bad.”

“And they captured us for ransom.”

“Ransom?  Oh crap.”

“Exactly.”

Suddenly, the van swerved wildly and a car horn honked.  Dicky and I were thrown against the side of the vehicle.  We swerved again and the sound of screeching brakes was followed by the sound of crunching metal and breaking glass.  My head hit the wall as we slammed to a stop.  “Ow, whiplash,” I grumbled.

“Stay here,” one of the Frenchmen said.  They left out the back doors, and then slammed them shut.  I crawled to the door and tried the handle with my foot.  The door popped open.

“Alright,” I whispered excitedly.  I swung my legs out the door and stood up.  I ran into the woods beside the road.

“Tommy!” I heard from behind.  I turned to look.  Dicky sat in the door way of the van with his feet taped together, dangling down.

“Oh Great!” I walked back towards Dicky.

“Carry me!” He whispered.

“No way!”

“Tommy!”

“Dicky…” I started to protest, but then I changed my mind.  “Alright, whatever.”  I turned my back toward him and he swung his hands over my head.  I hoisted him up and headed for the trees.  My foot went into a little dip in the ground and twisted.  I buckled under Dicky’s added weight.  “Have you considered going on a diet?” I asked.

“Tommy, look,” he whispered.  His voice was oddly shaky.

I dumped him off my back and turned to see.  A car was crashed against a tree.  There were two men in the front; one was slumped over the steering wheel, and the other was pinned in the passenger seat, but trying to escape.  I recognized them as the lawyers who had brought the will of Dad’s French cousin.  The Frenchmen were gathered around.  The man was crying for help switching between French and English, “Sortez-moi!  Call an ambulance!  I’m stuck! S'il vous plaît!  Get me out! Je suis coincé! Appelez une ambulance!”  One of the bad guys started shouting at the man in the car in French, and the man in the car replied back, a little angry and a little scared.

“I wonder what they’re saying.” I whispered.

“The Bad Guy wants the original will and all copies,” Dicky started translating, “but the French lawyer doesn’t want to tell him where they are.  The Bad Guy claims that Dad’s cousin’s money should belong to a guy called ‘The Horrible’…”  Dicky gasped, and then French lawyer gasped.

“What’s wrong?” I asked nervously.

“Oh crap,” Dicky said.

“What?” I asked again.

At this point, the man in the car started screaming, “Non! No! Mercy! Pitié! S'il vous plaît!”

The Frenchman in charge dramatically put on a pair of gloves, and then ripped a piece of metal off the smashed car.  He slowly pushed it through the French lawyer’s chest.  The lawyer screamed in pain, until he choked on the blood flooding his lungs and mouth.

The Frenchmen left the scene of the crime.  I hoisted Dicky back up and snuck over to the car.  I knew for certain the guy that had been conscious was now dead, but I was curious about the other guy, the American.  I felt the artery in his neck and felt a weak pulse.  He was still alive, but probably wouldn’t be if he didn’t get to a hospital.  I heard the Frenchmen yelling.  They had noticed we were gone.  I ran away as fast as I could.  Then I saw a small gas station down the road.  When I got there, I saw that it was closed for the night.  Then I remembered, I had my cell phone in my pocket!  I set Dicky on the ground and stuck both my hands into my pocket and pulled out my phone.  I really had no idea that it was so difficult to use a phone with your hands taped together.  I dialed 911.

“Hello?  What’s your emergency?” a man’s voice said.

“We were kidnapped.  We got away, but there’s been a car crash.”

“Were there any injuries?”

“Yeah, one man dead, uh, murdered actually, and the other one seriously injured.”

“Murdered?  Are the crash victims the ones who kidnapped you?”

“What?  No, the kidnappers crashed their van into the car and they crashed.  Then the kidnappers, they’re French, stabbed one of them with a piece of the car, but the other one was out, so they thought he was dead.”

“Do you know the kidnappers or the collision victims?”

“No, we just figured out they were French.”

“How?”

“They were speaking French.”

“How many…”

“They’re coming,” I saw the van’s headlights.  “There’s six of them.”

“There are” Dicky muttered from the ground as he tried to free his ankles.

“There are six,” I repeated.  “Most of them have dark hair and the leader is kinda thin and, well, very French-looking, with a big nose like Charles DeGaulle.  We’ve got to go.  I’m going to leave my phone on in my pocket so you can hear them and trace the call or something.  I can’t talk any more. We can’t get away.”

I pushed my phone into my pocket and dashed down the road.  Dicky followed. “Where are you going?” Dicky asked in a harsh whisper.

I kept running.  I heard Dicky being tackled behind me.  I got a couple more yards, and then was tackled from behind.  I tried to squirm away, yelling, “Let go of me, loser!”

“Shut up!” the leader shouted at me as he walked toward where I was pinned to the ground.  “You are not going to get away from me again!”  I looked up at his ugly French face and wished that I didn’t believe him.  One of the Frenchmen tied my ankles together and stood me up.  “L'assommer! Je ne supporte pas ce plus.” the leader yelled, “et obtenir que le téléphone de sa poche!”

Chapter 3b

Dicky – Trapped!

One of the bad guys pulled Tommy’s phone out of his pocket and smashed it on the ground.  Then they held Tommy against the side of the SUV as the leader pulled a small briefcase out of the front seat.  He handed it to one of the other men who said, “C'est une bonne chose que nous apporté supplémentaire, n'est ce pas?”  The bad guy opened the case and pulled out a small syringe.  He jabbed it into the side of Tommy’s neck.  Tommy almost instantly went limp.  I panicked.

“Please don’t drug me!  I’ll be good, I promise I will.  Tommy’s always…”

The bad guy with the needle started laughing, “Que pensez-vous, Chasseur? Devrais-je lui drogue ou pas?”

The leader, Chasseur, chuckled.  “Laissez-le.” he said.  “Nous pouvons avoir besoin le reste plus tard.”

I breathed a sigh of relief as the syringe was placed back into its case.  Then I was pushed into the back of the SUV.  When all the bad guys were situated, they took off down the road.  I could see the gas station as we drove away.  “Where are they taking me?” I wondered.  “Will the police be able to find us from what Tommy said?”

The bad guy sitting to my right chuckled to himself, then he addressed me, “Your face when I took the needle was very… risible, ou comme vous le dites… fun… funny?”

“Mais oui! Et quand il a été la mendicité,” the other bad guy said, then he started in a high, squeaky voice, “‘Please, do not hurt me! I’ll good, I’ll good!’”

Laughter filled the back of the SUV.  They continued their conversation in French, cracking dirty jokes and making fun of me.  I didn’t want to listen to them, but I couldn’t ignore them completely.  “Tommy probably didn’t give the police enough information,” I thought as tears came to my eyes.  “They’re never going to find us.”

We pulled off the highway after a while.  Our guards quickly pulled a large black screen down from the front.  They pushed Tommy in closer to me, and then latched the screen onto the floor, concealing us beneath it.

“What’s going…” I started.

“Shh!  You said you did not need drug, now quiet!”

I heard the guards’ heavy breathing as we stopped.  The sound of a conversation drifted through the screen, but I couldn’t hear it well enough to tell what they were saying; then came a great clanking of a chain link gate opening.  The SUV went forward.  I couldn’t tell where we were, everything was so quiet.  We went through another noisy gate, and then stopped.  The SUV’s doors opened, and its engine cut off.  Suddenly a much bigger engine sputtered, then roared.  The screen was opened and I was dragged out of the SUV.

An airplane!  It was a small cargo plane.  They had parked in the hangar, so that the airport security would not see that they had captives.

Go on to Chapter 4!