Chapter 14

Pov Calla

As I have waited for a few hours for the ships departure I notice something worrisome. To make sure I heard right, I have been hugging the wall for the last thirty seconds and I can now confirm what I heard.

Listening to the footsteps and short conversations I hear, I can ascertain that they are systematically checking the ship. Every hiding place, ventilation shaft and container is being checked. I remember they did that also when I was traveling inside the containers but then it was easy to go unnoticed.

Then I just had to remain quiet and wrap myself with a sheet that looked like folio. Back then I didn’t realize that they checked the rest of the ship also.

The footsteps are coming in closer so I decide to leave the room, as there wouldn’t be places to hide here. I go to the empty, white metal walled corridor and go to the corner where the footsteps are coming from.

I peek around it.

Customs officers. Or so it says on their uniforms. Two coming this way but I can hear there are more on board. I run for the opposite direction of them and come to a different corridor, but identical to the one I was a moment ago. I hear footsteps from my right so I turn left.

I peek at the rooms I walk by and try to find a good hiding place but I cannot see any.

A staircase comes to my right and I go for it. I don’t want to head any lower so I start going upwards. I hear people in the same stairs with me but I still have time.

By the time I have gone up three floors, I start risking exposure so I leave the stairs. The floor to which I arrive has customs officers too, or so I think. I hear people’s steps echoing in the corridors, and from what I gather, they too systematically check every nook and cranny on the floor.

I run the corridor, trying to find a good place to hide but there isn’t any. Some of the rooms has windows so I know I have come above the water line at least. If the windows would open I could try to hide outside the ship, hanging from the window but I don’t see any handles to open them, and a broken window could seem suspicious.

At some point, I’ve been surrounded. How could I let that happen? I know about, and hear them when they are oblivious to my existence and yet I’m now hearing footsteps from the front and behind.

I should have just got to the cargo hold and find a place there but no, just run around the narrow corridors looking for your perfect hiding place… Damn.

I rush to the door on my left and get in. It’s a bathroom. For the crew by the looks of it. There are five stalls and five showers, the stalls on the right and showers on the left. At the end of the room are five sinks.

They’ll be sure to check the stalls. There’s nowhere to hide. I survey the room more accurately now and spot a ventilation shaft in the middle of the ceiling. That is my only chance.

It isn’t screwed to the ceiling so I jump and give it a little push. It rises a few centimeters before falling back to its place.

Determined that I found my hiding place I jump again, push it a bit and take a hold of the ledge.

I’m hanging from the ceiling now and the footsteps are dangerously close in the corridor.

I pull myself up and push the hatch in the shaft with my head. I pull myself to the shaft and in an awkward position I manage to put the hatch back to place just as the bathroom door opens.

I hear as the men beneath me are checking the stalls one by one. I’m crawling ahead as silently as I can in the very dusty and small vent. No grown man could hope to fit in here so I’m not sure will they check it but to be on the safe side, I take distance from the hatch.

I barely got behind the corner in the shaft when I hear the hatch being lifted. I look towards my feet and see that someone is pointing a flash light down the shaft. I hope they don’t realize that the dust is cleaned to one way when the other way is as dusty as ever.

The hatch closes and I hear the man saying it’s clear, and finally I can give a breath of relief.

I’ll wait here until the ship takes of, and after that I’m going to use the shower. I’ll clean myself with my clothes. I doubt that the crew men come here just after the take off, and if they come, I’ll make sure they’ll slip and forget I was ever here.

I cannot stand my new, fabulous clothes being this dirty, along with my hair and face.

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I’m currently hiding in one of the lifeboats in the main deck. I heard the crew members talking yesterday that today we should arrive to Washington DC so I moved away from my hiding place, and made my way to the main deck.

The journey went without any complications after the initial search. After I had cleansed myself, I moved back to my original hiding place in the lower decks.

It took nine days and I didn’t have to change my hiding place even once. There was this one time when a crew member came to get some tool but I was quick to react and hid behind some shelves.

During the journey I attached my photo to one of the ID’s and maintained my guns. There were plenty of oil to use in the room I was hiding. Also during that time I taught myself to use the tracker software that I took from Omega along with the trackers.

I peek from my hiding place to get a look at the capital city of the United States. I’m a bit disappointed. I thought there would be skyscrapers all over but there isn’t. The most notable structures I can see are a rectangular tower like thingy with a sharp top, two big majestic looking buildings, one with three towers and the other one with one. Seems to be a clock tower. And then there is a dome roofed white structure.

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It’s impressive but I expected more. Looking to where the ship is headed I can see a harbor which is full of shipping containers. It’s not near the city itself but it shouldn’t take long to reach there. I check my stuff once again that I didn’t leave anything to my hiding place and it seems I didn’t. Now I just have to wait for the final approach.

…

It’s night time now even though we arrived during the evening. I had to wait sometime to leave the ship undetected. I’m walking between the stacks of containers, trying to find my way outside of the harbor area. There are some security guards patrolling the area but they have no hope of detecting me.

I can hear footsteps from behind me and a car approaching from the front. I’m in the middle of the container stacks and have nowhere to hide so I start to climb. There are three containers stacked on top of each other but I make it in time.

The car comes to a stop next to the two security guards that came from my behind.

“Where is the delivery?” The driver asks. One of the men points to a stack of boxes that was unloaded from a different ship I came on.

The large pickup truck drives next to the boxes and the driver gets out of the car and starts loading the boxes in.  I move closer to them on top of the containers and try to read the a4 sized papers that are stapled to the boxes.

During my time in the forest I came to a suspicion about my senses and my time in the Omega confirmed it that they are abnormal. And the reason I think that is I’m currently reading the paper from the distance of about nine meters. And that is one of the things I want to have an explanation when I confront the people I came here to look.

I cannot read the smallest texts on the papers but I can read that they are to be delivered to the National Museum of Natural History.

I wait for the men to finish their work and when the two security guards starts leaving, and as the driver is going for the driver seat I climb down from the stack and hide in the back of the truck.

Just as I slipped to the back, the truck starts. As the truck begins to move I hide between two boxes.

Now I have time to plan again. First things first, I will probably spend a month or two in DC so I need a place to stay. My brilliant plan how to acquire a bigger gun and the safehouse scheme can wait for a few days. And I probably should try and find the Al-Aman’s go back from here too if there is one. I find it and change its location.

I have no need for money yet as I still have plenty left and I have six clips of ammo. That means eighty-four bullets. That means I could kill small company’s worth of soldiers if my aim holds true.

I have pretty much nothing to do as I cannot even see from my hiding place so I open the pad I bought from Paris and start browsing the net.

The internet came as a surprise in the ship. I knew what it was and I was thought about it in theory but never allowed to access it. In the ship I discovered that there was a wi-fi and using the small information about hacking I was taught, with trial and error I managed to get in.

And there it was. The net. Though it only worked yesterday and the day after we left from La Rochelle. Filled with cats and other disgusting things there was the whole world on my fingertips.

It was actually too much information. I shiver as I think about the time when I opened an unknown link and the picture that appeared about a man that was sprea…. Don’t think about it. If I could erase that memory I would. All the blood and gore I have lived through, that will be the material of my worst nightmares.

While searching google I find some possible places to stay. Though I have to pay something called the rent. I’d rather find some abandoned place and make it my base.

While going through my options I realize that I have been in the car for some time already so I decide to take a peek outside.

We are already in the city, so I’ll wait for a while and when the car slows down I jump of it, doing a battle roll on the street. That turned quite many heads but I pay it no mind as I leave the area. My jacket got a bit dirtied but I can clean it.

But that reminds me I need another set of clothes along with this one. I don’t want these to get all bloody and as my experience shows, I really am bad at killing people and staying clean at the same time.

I spot a tall building with the sign of hotel and head there. When looking for places to stay, hotels were the ones that popped up at first. You pay for every night you spend there but it doesn’t matter as it’s only a couple of days. I rest for the remaining night there and start figuring out my housing situation tomorrow.

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Ten days later.

I ended up staying five days at the hotel when I found out about this awesome thing called room service. At some point, they wanted me to pay upfront but that wasn’t a problem for me.

I spent my time searching the net for a place to stay and eventually I found one. A cab took me there and I paid three months in advance to the owner, aka, landlord.

The landlord is a twentysomething man named Theo. He has a bald head, pierced ears and nose. He has the number 88 tattooed to his arm and is always wearing jeans with chain and a sleeveless t-shirt. He didn’t have any problem with my age and the fact that I paid with cash… unlike the hotel. Fuckers. They threatened to call the police if I didn’t tell them who I am and where I got the money.

I showed them my ID to calm them down but that actually only worsened it. What does it matter if the passport is Swedish? They started asking about some green colored card and something called visa or visum or something and questions about my parents but I had no idea what they were talking about so I packed my shit and left.

Theo didn’t ask me anything except money.

The area of where my apartment is located is a little shady but that’s fine with me. For the other five days, I spent just wandering around the city, learning its streets and finding a good location for my foolproof plan.

And I found one. I made preparation for it, secured few escape routes and scouted a few roofs. I still must decide on the details but that can wait for now.

And I also cased the surroundings of the safehouse, looked for escape routes and good ambush and sniper positions. But to need a sniper position I need a sniper first. And that is where my plan comes in.

I think I will execute it tomorrow I muse to myself while leaning against the wall of my apartment.

My apartment is small, but big enough for me. When you come in there is the bathroom immediately to the left. After the bathroom door is the small kitchen to the left and on the right side is the living room with dimensions of 3m x 4m. By the side of the living room is an alcove for the bed.

The floor is wooden and the walls are plain concrete. There isn’t anything hanging from them and there are no other decorations to be seen. It’s nothing much compared to the hotel room I had, but compared to the ship, this is luxury.

There were already a bed, a table with chairs and two armchairs when I moved in. I’m now cleaning my pistol and thinking about tomorrow. The big gun I’ve been wanting is the sniper but other weaponry would be welcome too if I find a way to get some. Something that goes boom would be nice…

Well I’m sure an opportunity will present itself if I’m patient enough.

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La Rochelle

Pov Dan

I should have never told my wife about it. Now she is nagging nonstop about it. She is always nagging about something:’ Do that Dan, fix this Dan…’ but now she wants me to go to the police! I took a bribe and she wants me to go to the police.

Women…

I told her about the girl with a gun that gave me a grand for information about the ship routes. And that is a felony.

“God dammit Elise! If I go to the police I get arrested. Don’t you understand it was a crime to tell her about the routes and accept the money!”

“Tell them that she threatened you or something. Don’t you worry about the girl at all?? She could be in trouble!”

“She didn’t look like she was in trouble. She was pretty carefree at the time!”

“DAN! Don’t raise your voice to me!”

Fucking cow. I should’ve never married her. I should have realized it at the time that looks don’t last forever but a personality might.

“Fine! I’ll fucking go to the cops! Don’t blame me if I’m not home for dinner for a few years!”

‘The only bright side of this thing is that if I go to prison I get rid of you’ I’d like to say but I’m too much of a coward to voice the thought. If I was a brave man I would’ve divorced the hag years ago…