The Last Avengers Story, Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve: The Avengers

PRESENT DAY

MONTREAL

Tara Truffaut (Tara King that was) sat with her captors at the table, dining on delicious pressed duck. Henri was a gourmet cook, she'd give him that.

Things had not gone bad so far, Tara thought to herself. She'd had to ride in the back of a closed-in van so she'd been unable to see where they were going, and Henri (for that was whom she had hit over the head watched her with gun at the ready at all times. She had sat quietly, eyes closed, paying attention to the left and right turns, and the time between those turns, and the sound of the van speeding down a highway.

They'd come to a halt and she'd been ordered out, to see that she was at a country house. Henri jerked the gun for her to enter the house. Tara tensed up as she did so, eyes darting this way and that assessing possible weapons. If they were going to shove her into an airless closet with a bag over her head, she would have fought back tooth and nail.

But they turned out to be gentlemen after all. They gestured her to a living room with television and bookcases and told her to make herself comfortable. Henri had returned his gun to his shoulder holster and gone into the kitchen to make dinner. The other man poured glasses of wine from a decanter and handed one to her. Tara accepted it cautiously. Since it had been poured from the same decanter odds were it wasn't drugged, and she could certainly use a drink.

She also noted that the man moved close to her without fear. He obviously wasn't expecting her to try anything. She thought about that. She was getting good looks at each of them, and she knew their names. Either they expected their ploy to catapult them into the safety of power immediately, or despite their politeness they did not intend for her to survive to be able to identify them.

For the rest of that evening, Tara King played a difficult game. She didn't want to appear without fear - that might give them ideas that they'd better be a bit careful about how close they got to her. Nevertheless she didn't want to appear like a spineless jelly fish, either.

"The thing is," she said now, placing another piece of delicious duck into her mouth, "that terrorism accomplishes nothing. Terrorists kill a lot of innocent people, and may end up getting what they want. Then another group of people decide that they don't like the way things are, and they turn terrorist. It's a never ending cycle, don't you see?"

The other man, whom Henri called Gerrard, merely shrugged his shoulders gallically. "We want what we want, and we shall force the current government to give it to us."

Tara shook her head and gritted her teeth in frustration. You just couldn't reason with people.

After dinner, they returned to the living room.

"Would you like to play cards, madam?" said Henri.

"I'd much rather watch television, if you don't mind," Tara responded. "It's almost time for BBC news."

"Oh, yes." Henri and Gerrard exchanged looks. "Our colleagues will have delivered our ultimatum to your husband by now. We will see if you our on the news, n'est pas?"

He turned on the set, and punched the channel for BBC news.

After about ten minutes of dialog that Tara listened to and didn't hear, the news presenter suddenly reached out as if handed a sheet of paper and began to read from it, out of sight.

"Strange goings-on in the town of Tibet-By-The Sea this morning," the presenter said.

Tara's ears pricked up. That's where Steed lived.

"Tibet-By -The-Sea is home to a naval base, and that entire base seems in the thrall of some kind of sleeping disease...everyone on the base from Naval personnel to civilians has been found fast asleep.

Today was the day that the HMS Triton was supposed to head to sea for its sea trials, and it did, so apparently the crew aboard ship were not affected.

And in other local news, an entire coach party of old-age pensioners from the Mulberry Luxury Retirement Center have gone missing! Their transport has been found at the naval base, but they themselves haven't been seen."

Whatever else the presenter might have said was lost as Tara's face went white and she flopped back in her chair, gasping for breath. "I'm...oh, dear...I feel faint. Please...please, a glass of wine."

Henri moved quickly, pouring a glass of wine and bringing it to her. He bent over her, holding the glass to her lips.

Tara King's hand moved faster than a striking snake. She reached up as if to steady his hand on the glass, and then darted to remove the gun from his shoulder holster. Then she placed her foot in his chest and shoved.

Tara was on her feet in an instant. "Drop your gun now, Gerrard," she commanded. "If I have to tell you twice I will shoot you instead. Don't believe I won't do it."

Gerrard grinned. "Oh, please, madame."

Tara pressed the trigger and a bullet whizzed past Gerrard's ear. His face went white and wordlessly he took out his gun - very slowly, and placed it on the floor.

"Kick it over here. Gently."

Gerrard did so. Tara bent down to pick it up, while keeping her head up and her eyes on the two men. She placed the new gun in the waistband of her trousers.

"Now, your car keys."

Gerrard blinked. "Quoi?"

"Your car keys, man. Give them to me."

Gerrard pulled his keys out of his pocket and slid them along the floor as well. Tara picked them up, and began backing towards the door.

"All right, gentlemen, listen closely, because I will say this only once. I don't have time to turn you in, right? I've got to catch a plane. But I shall inform my husband that you released me of your own volition, because you saw the error of these kinds of tactics. Right?

Now I'm going to go visit my friend..." and she shook the barrel of the gun rather raggedly in the direction of the television before bringing it back to bear on them..."and if anything has happened to him I will personally track you both down, stick your heads into that duck press and press them until all the juices run out. Get it?"

And then she whirled and ran out of the room, out of the house, into the van, and gunned the van down the road.

Her two former captors stood staring at each other, their arms still raised in the air.