“Steve’s signal is very clear, he is not far away,” said Rock, “time to go looking around. Do not leave anything behind except our clothes.” Soon they went off looking for us and Brenda’s men watched as they left, making sure they were actually going before they went to check our room for that envelope. Then they quickly went up to our room on the second floor and once inside the main man of the group went and checked under the mattress right away.

Sure enough, the envelope with the coded message was there. “Amazing we never thought to look under the mattress,” said one man. “Well, it is a stupid place to hide something, everyone looks there first,” said the main man. “Yeah, except us,” said the third man. “Just do not keep mentioning that to Brenda,” said the main man, “she knows how to use that whip of hers.”

Meanwhile, back with Brenda and I… “What are you planning to do with us?”, I asked Brenda. She just laughed. “That should be obvious,” she answered, “you I will need to take with us for protection now that your friends have arrived. But your girlfriends are expendable.” “Why not let them go?”, I asked again, “after all, they cannot hurt you once you leave town, which is what you will be doing.”

“Oh, so you have decoded part of it?”, she asked. “Just the first couple of lines which were in Norwegian and one of my team members speaks Norwegian,” I answered. “That must be the girl with the odd name,” said Brenda. “Well, it is only odd to some people,” I said. “Whatever,” said Brenda, “but we will take her along, she might be useful since none of my team speaks Norwegian.”

“And the others?”, I asked. “I said they were expendable, but, I will let them live if you are willing to take some pain for them.” “Such as?”, I asked. She brought out a whip to show me. “One stripe for each of them,” she said, “and they live.” I did not really believe her, but it was worth taking a chance. She told me to take off my shirt and stand with my hands against the wall.

She then proceeded, and she was good at her whipping. Then she splashed something on my back which she said would help keep out infection. I think that hurt more than the whipping. She then called in a man and told him to get the girl in number 3. He brought Sigurbjorn in and Brenda told her to put bandages on me.

Right then the 3 men came back with the envelope. “Tell the druggist to come in,” said Brenda. That scared me, but Sigurbjorn touched my shoulder, her way to tell me to stay calm. I guess she noticed me tense up. “Do you have some mineral oil?”, asked Sigurbjorn, “it will help.” She told the man to mention that to the druggist.

An older man came in with a bottle of mineral oil and gave it to Sigurbjorn who rubbed it on my back before applying the bandages. “Here, look at this,” said Brenda to the druggist, and she handed him the coded message. Kristina, who is our ephemera specialist, copied the original message onto the same type of paper, perfectly, from what I could see last night.

We then hid the real copy in a safer location. She also made a few changes to the message to mess things up for Brenda. That could be a problem for Sigurbjorn and I, but it was necessary. “It is real,” he said after looking at it with a magnifying glass and feeling the paper. “Okay, get to the plane everyone, we leave now,” she said.

We just made it to the plane and got on board when our team members showed up and spotted us. Meow!=Give me small boom boom! Rock gave it to him and he ran as fast as his legs would go, and just managed to attach it to one of the front wheels, then he ran off to the side quickly. Rock pressed a button and a small explosion knocked the wheel off and the plane fell over coming to a halt.

Everyone came out and a gunfight began with my team. “Grab the girl and go!”, yelled Brenda as a van approached. But Muffin had arrived and “Thwock!”, poor Sigurbjorn went down like a stone. Brenda yelled back to forget her and the man began to leave, but, “Thwock!”, and down he went. Rock and the others came running over but the van got away.

“Do not worry about them,” I said slowly, holding my head which was bleeding. “Muffin, how could you miss and hit Sigurbjorn?”, asked Rock. Meow,meow.=Me not miss, want to hit Sugar so they not take her. Only use rubber ball to knock out. Oooo, I hope she not be mad at Muffin. “The others are in cells in that building,” I said, as I started to shake.

“He is going into shock now,” said Rossana. “I know how to deal with that,” said Tracy, and she got out a blanket while Benson carried me over to the building. Rock carried Sigurbjorn. The cats came running along with us. Rock and Benson went to get the other girls while Tracy helped me and the rest stood guard. Once Sigurbjorn and I were okay, we drove back to the hotel…

To Be Continued.

©2022 Steve McLeod.