Placebo Agenda (eBook)

CHAPTER
1

An American blonde, draped in nothing but a silk sheet, ran screaming for help down an alley in Venezuela’s Petare slum. The sheet snagged on the corner of a small house built from unpainted concrete blocks. She tried to grab it, but it held fast to a nail, refusing to flee with her. She turned her head and froze at the sound of footsteps behind her, her mouth and eyes widening. Abandoning the sheet, she continued sprinting down the stepped passageway, naked as the day she was born. Her cries drew stares from onlookers peeping out the windows of their ramshackle houses made of tin and brick, one house stacked on top of the other. Her sharp glances to see if her pursuer was getting closer cast a wave of fear among the curious.

She tripped at the sound of approaching footsteps coming from up the alley. The echo of her tibia smacking against concrete drew winces from a few neighbors—winces that evolved into widening eyes when the naked woman jumped back up and continued her descent despite her injury. Even hurt, she moved in an elegant way, with a touch of grace to guide her through hell. Still, the neighbors knew better than to jump in to help. They knew who lived up those stairs. And he was fast approaching.

A half a dozen or so armed teenage gang members sitting along the narrow stairway jumped to attention at the sound of a screaming woman, drawing their weapons by reflex at the hint of trouble. They stared up the alley ready to put the cries in the crosshairs, not trusting anything, not even a beautiful foreign blonde screaming at them in English.

“Shoot him! He’s right behind me,” the injured and naked American shouted, toppling toward them. A taller, older member in his early twenties caught her as if they were part of some amateur gymnastics move. “Shoot the bastard. You know who he is. He’s not your fucking leader and doesn’t have your back. Now shoot him!”

The gang members frowned. One tossed a cigarette down the steps, checking her out from head to toe, excited but wary. Despite the soft, golden, and perfumed rarity that had flown across their transom, he and his buddies were still confused and caught off guard.

“He’ll kill us all if you don’t shoot that fucking monster,” she said in Spanish this time, apparently surprised at her command of the language.

No one said a word.

“You know he’s not one of you. You know that deep down,” she said.

Still no reaction.

A fresh bolt of logic shot through the young woman’s head. “Just look at your shiny new assault rifles! A little pricey for street thugs like yourselves, right? You didn’t buy them. He gave them to you. I saw a ton more up the hill. Think, you idiot pawns, and shoot him, or he’ll do to you what he did to my husband!”

She reached for a gun, but the teenager backed away, refusing to let her touch it. Blood ran down her neck where an open knife wound pulsed in the afternoon September sunlight. It took about a minute for the gang to realize she was bleeding, their eyes fixated below her neck.

An old woman peered down the alley from a shantytown house above. Her eyes narrowed at the group of young men.

“You boys didn’t do this, did you?” she shouted.

They shrugged and threw clueless glances at one another, and their confusion let the old woman know that this time around, they really weren’t at fault for whatever crimes had taken place in her neighborhood.

“Get her out of here before he sees her!” the old woman screamed. She slammed her window shut.

“Jesus, look at you! You’re naked! What happened?” the tall one who had caught her said, now grasping the situation.

“I got away. From that freak up there!”

“You realize what happens to gringas in here, let alone hot, naked ones?” he said.

The American woman tensed up.

“The police are even afraid to come in here. There’s nothing that can save you,” he added.

“I know that. I’ll take my chances with you over him,” she said, eyes darting from the young man back to the top of the hill.

“Did anyone touch you, you know, do anything to you?” another one asked.

“No,” she said, her gaze fixed up the stepped alley. Sharp gulps and darting eyes let all know she was thinking only of her survival. “I got away first. Look, I’m not some random kidnapping victim. Something is going on up there that you don’t know about,” she said. She looked up, and the memory of her recent trauma hijacked her brain and took control of her body, throttling her sensory systems way past fight, past flight, and into panic mode. She started hyperventilating and shaking. “I can’t breathe. I’m having a heart attack,” she said, her eyes losing focus. A few of the armed adolescents laughed at her quivering body.

“Cut it out,” the taller one, who had caught her, said to them. They shut up, and then he turned to the woman. “You’re not having a heart attack,” he said.

A shorter one with a shaved head, caramel skin, and blue eyes, donning a conspicuously new blue Oxford shirt, nodded, checking out her body. “You look fine to me,” he said. He threw her a large smile, but his eyes narrowed. Nostrils flared. “Yeah, you weren’t raped. You probably…”

“Look, idiot, he didn’t rape me, but he was going to. I mean…” She took a moment to catch her breath, hoping to channel racing thoughts into some reservoir of logic in her head and comprehend something. Anything. “He didn’t rape, but he… he did stuff! Oh God, sick stuff, to my husband, and, my God, there are more!”

Tears broke free from her bright blue eyes and took some stress and confusion away with them. She took a few very deep breaths and managed to calm herself. She looked up the hill and back at the gang. Then reality set in, and it wasn’t a pleasant one. “My God. You’re all with him!” She eyed each and every one of them. Her fear contracted as if withdrawing into some emotional cocoon, quickly transforming itself into something else, and exploded out in its new form—justified anger.

“Fuck you! You’re part of this!” She took a swing at the taller one who had caught her earlier. He sidestepped her punch.

“Get her some clothes and get her inside,” he said, as if he were dodging the hands of an infant curiously grabbing an adult’s reading glasses as opposed to the flails of a confused woman fighting for her life. “I don’t care if she’s hot. If she’s one of his up the hill, she’s off-limits. And I don’t want any trouble from the police or embassies,” he added to no one in particular. He squinted. “Or worse. I don’t want any trouble from up there.”

“You definitely don’t want trouble from up there, but we might already have it,” interrupted a thin teen with curly hair and what seemed to be brand-new imported jeans and a designer T-shirt. “I mean she’s got a point. Why are we getting free assault rifles and clothes? Nothing’s free anymore, especially in this country.” He smiled at the woman and spoke to her loudly in English so that everyone could hear. “She says Ricardo will kill us with these new guns he just gave us.” He looked down at his own weapon, a Kalashnikov assault rifle. “See this bitch? This shit is Russian. Fuck you up,” he continued in English, cocking the weapon. All flinched by reflex at the universal sound of a loading firearm.

The woman’s eyes widened, sparkling with an idea. “Nice English! Good use of reported speech. I’m impressed. Let’s see if you all can write as well. Give me a pen and paper. Now!”

The kid shrugged, withdrew a pen from his pocket, and grabbed a crumpled white fast-food bag off the street. He ripped it in half and handed the wrinkled piece of paper to the blonde. She snatched it from him and shoved another gang member against the alley wall, the young man’s confusion whirled with pleasure at being pushed by a naked woman.

“Flex those pecs, kid,” she said. She pressed the paper against his chest with one hand and wrote with the other. Before the kid had time to react, she had finished writing and tossed the pen down the alley, thanking God it was a felt tip. She read her message. It was clear and legible.

More echoes of flip-flops shot down the hill, sounding like bare fists smacking against soft, boneless meat.

“Dear God,” she said, her jaw quivering. “Guys, sooner or later you’re all dead if you don’t kill him. Now is the perfect time.”

A young man in his early twenties emerged from out of nowhere, no confusion in his big brown eyes at all, his calmness separating him from his peers. His long...