We landed in Budapest, Hungary at 6:45 the next morning. We headed to a CIA safe house to discuss how we are going to conduct this mission, we have 48 hours to find the hostages and 72 hours to save them and recover the lost item. After a few hours of talking, we got dressed in normal civilian clothes and went for a walk around Budapest trying to kill time until that night when we had the chance to conduct the mission. While we were walking, we were taking this chance to search the city looking for any places that could possibly be the hide out of the kidnappers.
“We should be getting the exact location by tonight, if not, and then we are going to have to go on our own and find out where they are.” I stated, breaking the silence that stood between us like a brick wall. I looked over to Brian, waiting for the reply. Brian was a tall, lean man with strong shoulders, much like myself. I can understand why we were partnered together. Side-by-side we look threatening enough.
“We will get the location, Agents lives are on the line.” Brian replied. “But you know that we can’t go out on our own. I personally don’t want to be written up as a rogue agent, because we went on our own.”
“Yeah, dude I feel you. I don’t want to be counted as rogue either. But my fiancé could be part of this hostage situation. She’s been missing for about three days. I have to find her. God, if anything happens to her, it’s going to be entirely my fault. How could I live with that? Knowing that she was tortured and killed because of my job, and the worst part is, is that I can’t even explain to her that I am an agent.”
“We’ll find her, I promise. We will do everything we can to get her back for you, and you know, all the other agents to.” Brian stated, trying to break the tense air surrounding us.
“Thanks man, now let’s stop here and eat.” We stopped at this restaurant called Szépvölgyi Restaurant. We walk in and are seated almost immediately. After looking at the menu, I order the most normal sounding item, Stuffed Cabbage, and then wait for my food. I stare out the window, thinking, daydreaming.
“I hope she’s okay. This is entirely my fault. If she had never met me she would be back in the United States safe at her job.” I imagine her tied up to a chair, gagged, with masked men around her. I can’t even think about what they are doing to her. It scares me too much, and I do not like thinking that she is in pain.
The waitress comes and sets my Stuffed Cabbage down and asks me if I need anything else. I reply no, thank you with perfect Hungarian fluency. I look at my plate and see that it is not something I would normally get, but it probably tastes better then fried chicken liver.
Brian and I eat fast and go walking around some more. I see warehouses and old factories. With everyone, I wonder if she’s in there, if she’s awake or passed out, hating me or hoping I would come. While I’m in my train of thought, I hear gunshots. Automatically Brian and I drop to the ground and whip our guns out, ready to shoot. I look around. I see the shooter; he is on the corner of Tavasz Utca and Határ Utca. I duck behind a building, reload my gun, aim and fire at the attacker. He sprints behind a building. I quickly follow.
Suddenly, there are more shots. I duck behind a parked car and wait for the shower of bullets to stop raining down on me. I waited three seconds then started shooting in the direction I see them. I manage to see two of them run into a building. I signal to Brian and have him stay outside and cover while I run inside and find them. Planting myself against the wall, I inch my way down the hallways. A couple of pedestrians sprint by me, looking like they had just seen a ghost. Swallowing fear, I force my legs to keep going forward; my gun is pointed and ready. Up ahead of me is a corner I stop and take a quick glance around, keeping my back against the wall. There they are, hiding, like the cowards they are. They have their backs turned to me, making them easy targets. I don’t want them dead so I take a foot shot in both of them; use the butt of the gun to knock them out.
Once I am sure they are knocked out, I drag them out of the building, down the street to a car. I break the window and unlock the doors, throw the men in the trunk. Brian gets in the passenger side while I hot wire the car and get it started. I speed down the street to one of the warehouses we found. We grab the two men, our handcuffs, rope and tape. After entering the building, we tie them up and wait for them to wake up; of course after we strip them of all grenades and other weapons. You know, just being safe.
After thirty minutes they finally wake up, dazed and confused. Brian and I walk around them. I grab on guys hair and yank his head back.
“Where are the hostages,” I yell. I get silence in return. “Well, this is going to be fun, don’t you think so too Brian?”
“Heck yeah! I want my people back,” He replies. “Now, if you don’t tell us where you and your colleagues are holding our people, then I am going to have to force it out of you. And personally, I don’t think you would want to have to go through that. So how about you make it easy on yourself and tell us.”
“We might even keep you alive,” I added. “But, that’s only if you don’t give us a hard time.”
“We are not going to tell you anything, torture us all you want, but it isn’t going to help,” the guy on the left taunts.
“Well if you want to play it like that, I guess the next few hours are going to be killer. Maybe literally.” Brian warns. “Now, where are they? Tell us!” All we get is silence in return. I punch the left guy in the face, breaking his nose. “There’s more to come, and it will only get worse.
“Brian, do you mind coming with me for a second” I ask and pull him to the side.
“What’s up, bro?”
“Well we don’t have anything to do anything to them with, Is it all right if I go back to the safe house then to the store to get some supplies?”
“Yeah go ahead man, we’ll be fine here. Won’t we boys? He tells me.”
I leave and head back to the safe house. I hate doing this, but it’s the only way to get information out of intelligence officers, even though we have all been trained to handle any torture and what not. After about twenty minutes, I arrive. The fax machine shows no sign that we have received the where-a-bouts of the hostages, unfortunately. In the first aid kit there are 20cc’s of adrenaline. In a tool box I found pliers and a box-cutter. Who knows what we can do with these, might as well bring them.
I start heading back to the warehouse. While walking down the street, I see something black out of the corner of my eye. Looking to my right and slightly up and on the top of a two story building I see the tip of a black gun. Slightly to the right of the building there is an ally that may have a staircase or a door that I can use to get to the roof and get the sniper. Acting normal, I walk up the street to the building. It turns out to be some type of bakery; I stop and look at the display in the window, and then ducked around the corner into the ally. On one end there is a rusty old fire escape that could be used, on the other there is a back door that probably leads to the kitchen. I jiggle the knob and to my dismay it’s unlocked. After taking a quick glance up, I duck inside the building. To my right, there is a door that looks like it leads to the actually store then on my left there is another door that might lead to a stair case, I open it up and find a steep set of stairs. Okay, let’s go, I grab my gun out and have it ready. With my back against the wall I inch my way up. I turn and look around a corner when out of the shadows, someone comes and hits me in the back of the head and the world goes black.

“Damn, where is Michael at? He should have been here a few minutes ago.” I said thinking out loud to myself. “He should be back by now, the safe house is not that far away.” I grab my phone from my pocket and call him, it rings but there is no answer. Now I know something is wrong, he normally answers his phone. Right away worst-scenarios start playing in my head. He could have been run over, shot, killed, captured and taken along with the other agents and civilians. Now, it is my turn to save him.
To my right is a room where we were keeping the shooter we found. I take a deep breathe, prepare myself for what I am about to do, then I walk through the door into an open dark room. The light switch is on the wall to my right and it turns on lone light bulb in the middle of the room illuminating a small area around the shooter. The room is dirty. Dirt and trash litter the floor and I have to kick away some of the litter as I make my way to the middle.
“We meet again,” I state, walking around him. “It seems some of your little friends have taken my partner. Now, if you tell me where they are at, I will let you go. That will be, however, after I find them.” After waiting a few minutes with no response, I give him something to reply too. There are many nerves under the fingernails. Just the feeling of them having the pressure of being pulled off can cause any grown man to cry. I stick a pen from my pocket right under the nail at the tip of the finger and give a slight amount of pressure.
“Tell me, and it will stop, don’t tell me. Well, I guess you lose a fingernail.”
“I won’t tell you anything regardless of what you do to me.”
“Okay, your choice.” I started prying the nail up slightly. Still nothing and the nail comes off the nail bed.

My head is pounding and feels like it is going to explode. When the light doesn’t make my head throb so hard, I take a look around. I observe that I am in some type of a warehouse. Above me to my right, there is a small window letting a little bit of light through. When I move my mouth, something cracks on my face; it might be blood. Suddenly, it all comes back to me. I was walking down the hallway somewhere, when someone came up behind me and hit me. After that I vaguely remember someone tying me up and throwing me into the back of a car. After that, unfortunately, I don’t remember a thing.
A couple minutes later, a door opens and someone comes in.
“Hello,” He says. I don’t reply, knowing that it will only make him even angrier than he already is.
“You have my best workers held hostage,” He starts out. “Now, you have two choices. One, you can tell me where he is and I will let you all go free. Two, you can not tell and I will force you to tell by any means necessary.” And what he does next is something I can never forgive myself for.
He brings my fiancé, Paige, in. She looks like she has been through hell. Her beautiful chocolate brown hair was matted with what looked like blood. Her lips, eyes, and nose was swollen, dried blood surrounded her features. It killed me to look at her this way.
“Paige, Paige honey, can you hear me” I murmured to her. “What the hell did you do to my wife, you bastards!” I screamed at them. I could feel the blood boiling in my veins, what seemed like a red curtain covered my eyes and all I could think about was what they did to her.
“Now, you see what the consequences are. However, they won’t be coming at you, but too her then you. Tell me where the nitrogen battery is.”
“Don’t hurt her, I’ll tell you…it is in Moscow, Russia.”
“Wait here,” he said. And then he left. Currently, I was tied to a chair, but they didn’t use handcuffs, they used rope. After about five minutes of struggling, I was able to work my hands free. Breaking fee, I took the tape off my ankles and freed Paige. I felt that I should look for the others but I couldn’t do it alone with Paige. So, I made the decision to take her back to the safe house and then get Brian, and together, we will come back here and search for them.

“Brian! Brian!” I called.
“Michael, oh my gosh, your okay. What happened to you? You look like s***.”
“I was captured, they tied me to a chair and brought Paige in and threatened to hurt her even more if I didn’t tell them where the nitrogen battery was. I brought her back to the safe house,” I explained. “How are the captives?”
“I got nothing out of them, even after putting them through some torture, but do we need them now, I mean you know where they are.”
“We don’t need them to find the people, but we might be able to use them for something else. I don’t know what, but they could become useful. We tie them up better and sneak them to the car, and then we go to the building I was held at. I grab a gun and head in, Brian follows my lead. I find a door about 10 yards down and it leads to a basement. I open the door and head downstairs, unknown to what I am going to find when I get to the bottom. In the basement, there is a small laundry room, a bathroom and a door with the dead-bolt locked and an extra lock on the door.
“It’s locked twice. What should we do, pick it? I asked
“Don’t you have some of the bomb gum Ben gave you?
“Oh yeah, I totally forgot about that.” I reach into my pocket and find a strip mesh it together and put some on each of the locks, then stand back. There is a small bang, smoke, and the door was open. I look at Brian, nod, then head into the dark room and turn on the light. Then, to my dismay, I find that it is empty except for a skinny door in the back of the room. I took a deep breath and head to the door, open it, and I see about five people, tied up, bruised and bleeding.
“Brian!” I call, and he joins me and gasps. “Come-on, we need to get these people out before they come back. Let’s move!” We go and untie them, both arms and legs and lead them out of the room. The agents are moving better than the civilians, since they are used to it. I remember that I have some shots of adrenaline; I bring them out and give a shot to the two remaining civilians. About a minute later, they are starting to look more alive. Brian and I lead them out to the car and bring the Americans and the captives back to the safe house.
“Brian, we have to call Jesse and tell him we have the Americans and we are going to need to come back, get more supplies then we have to find the nitrogen bomb. I lead them to Moscow, so we should be good.”
“Sounds good, buddy,” he said. After ten minutes, we get to the safe house. That night we get picked up and flown back to CIA headquarters to get information on how to gets the nitrogen battery back. A couple minutes go and Paige wakes up and asks questions:
“Michael, baby, what happened? Why am I here? What is going on?”
“You were taken hostage by some terrorist in Budapest, Hungary in order to get the location of a nitrogen battery from us. I came looking for you and a few other agents and civilians. Paige, honey, I am part of the CIA. You can’t talk to it to anyone, over the phone, text internet. Only to me in person, or else they will kill you. You need to pro…”
“Kill me, Michael, I don’t understand.” She rushes, cutting me off.
“Shush, be quiet. I will explain everything later. Just get some rest.”
“Okay, I love you,” she mumbles quietly as she lays her head on my shoulder, and her eyes slowly close. The pain of the past week leaves her expression, as she falls into a peaceful sleep.
“Everything will be okay, I promise, I love you Paige,” I whisper in her ear, and then I gently kiss her check and look out the window. Hopefully, everyth