Threat Warning by John Gilstrap Page B

along—to do as they were told, just as they’d been instructed—then their captors would have cause only to treat them well.
    Jesus, it was cold. Even with her coat on, and the blankets pulled all the way to her nose, it seemed impossible to get warm. It had to be warmer than freezing, she figured, because the bottled water they’d found was still liquid, but it had to be close.
    Until about an hour ago.
    The rising sun had just begun to lighten the darkness beyond the tiny windows at ground level, near the ceiling, when she heard the sound of a shovel scraping concrete, a sound that propelled her back to her childhood visits to her grandparents’ house on Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia, where coal fueled everything that produced heat, from the stove to the furnace. It wasn’t just the timbre and pitch of the scraping that made her think coal; there’s a rhythm to coal shoveling that is unique.
    The shoveling continued for about twenty minutes, she guessed, and by the time the noise had ceased, the temperature in their little room had risen dramatically. Now, as the sky beyond the windows glowed pink, the heat had driven her out of her covers and caused her to shed her coat, and she was still sweating. She pegged the temperature at maybe eighty degrees now, and rising—high enough to cause Ryan to stir.
    He bolted upright with a loud gasp. “Jesus!” he proclaimed. “Why is it so hot?” He stood and shrugged out of his coat. “I’m soaked.” His sweater came next, leaving him bare chested. He brought it to his nose and sniffed. “I stink.”
    “I already knew that,” Christyne teased.
    Noise outside their cell distracted them both, the unmistakable sound of the lock being removed and the bolt sliding open. An instant later, the door crashed open with enough violence to slam it into the perpendicular wall and a team of men, all wearing black with masks covering everything but their eyes streamed into the room. There were four of them, and they all carried machine guns locked against their shoulders and ready to fire.
    Ryan yelled and darted over to his mom.
    “Up, up, up!” they yelled, followed by a stream of orders yelled by all of the gunman, some of them contradictory. “Up! On the floor! On your feet! Hands up! Hands on your heads!”
    The effect was utterly terrifying. The contradicting orders froze them in place. As the men yelled louder, Ryan stood with his hands out, as if warding off an angry dog.
    Christyne yelled, “Ryan! Put your hands up, for God’s sake.” She demonstrated by raising her own.
    Finally, the message got through and he raised his hands.
    The gunman settled down, too, to the extent that only one man now shouted orders. “Both of you step away from your beds.”
    The gunmen never broke their aim as the Nasbes did as they were told.
    The man in charge pointed at Ryan. “You,” he said. “Step away from the woman.”
    The woman? Christyne thought. What an odd way to refer to her.
    “Now turn around and face the beds.”
    As Ryan complied with the order, he shot a look of pure terror to his mother.
    “Please don’t hurt him,” Christyne begged.
    The gunman closest to her shouted, “Silence!” and tightened his grip on the gun that was leveled at her forehead.
    “Please,” she whispered.
    “Boy,” the boss commanded. “Put your hands behind your back and cross your wrists.”
    Again he complied, and Christyne started to cry when she saw how badly his hands were shaking. While three gunman held their aim steady, the one doing the talking stepped forward and slipped a loop of plastic over Ryan’s wrists and pulled it tight enough to dimple the skin. That done, the gunman produced a three-foot strip of black cloth which he wove elaborately and expertly around the boy’s arms, and then pulled tight. Ryan choked back a sob as the man drew his elbows together until they nearly touched behind his back.
    “Does that hurt?” the man asked.
    “Yes.” The pain was