Sacrifice

by

Chuck Brownman

“First one to talk, lives.”

Gabby and I exchange looks. Will he break? Will I?

Zhu positions himself between us. “Disclosing the information will not betray your country. It will end the war sooner. You will save American lives.”

He didn’t know how right he was. This was the moment I’d been waiting for.

“No more, no more,” I said, putting as much urgency and pain into my voice as I could. “I’ll talk.”

“No!” yelled Gabby. “You can’t tell this asshole anything.”

The guard hovering over Gabby hit him, causing the wooden chair Gabby was tied to to fall. He hit the cement floor with a thud.

I answered Zhu’s questions, feeding him the false information about where and when the invasion would happen. How many divisions, aircraft, destroyers, carriers. He absorbed the information like a sponge.

“You’ll pay for this,” Gabby said to me.

Gabby would eventually be returned or traded back to the U.S. He would tell what I did. You’ll be branded publicly as a traitor,they’d told me. Citizens will spit your name, couple you with Benedict Arnold. But those who count will know how you saved us.

A sacrifice I was willing to make.

Bio:

Becoming an “overnight writing sensation” after twenty-five-plus years, Chuck Brownman’s short crime fiction has been published in several anthologies, including the “Eyes of Texas,” and several volumes of the annual “Death Edge Tales” anthology. He’s a past winner of the Arizona Mystery Writers Short Story Contest and was a finalist in the Criminal Element.com short fiction contest. His latest stories appear in Shotgun Honey, multiple seasons of the “Mysteries to Die for” podcast/anthology, and on the Kings River Life “Mysteryrat’sMaze” website.