Countdown: H Hour (12 page)

She hesitated for a moment, then amended, “Well . . . one of them wanted my ass, once, but that’s not really kinky.”

“Takes all kinds,” Lucas said, with a shrug. “You see anything we can’t handle?”

“I dunno,” Maricel answered. “They’ve got the guns. They’ve got body armor that they wear
religiously
when they’re working. Some funny goggles that see in the dark; one of them showed me once.”

Again, Lucas shrugged. “Okay, so they’re an unusually good personal security team. Nothing we can’t handle if we go about it the right way. Have you paced off the house?”

Maricel nodded.

Pushing a pad of paper and a pen across the table, Lucas commanded, “Sketch it out.”

“What about my
baby
?”

Lucas held up a palm and waved it in negation. “
After
you make me a sketch of the place. And then, I think, I’ll have to give you a little something to put the guards to sleep, because, realistically speaking, they sound a little tough to take on without some extra advantage.”

Maricel shivered slightly, then said, “In case I wasn’t clear enough, these are not some run-of-the-mill business types that you can drug and rob or drug and kidnap. You want me to drug them? Then
you
figure out how to give it to them at one time, then have it act on them all at the same time, or in a set sequence, when they’re all different sizes and weights, while not only getting the armed guard on the inside but also the one outside? When I’m probably going to have to be fucking one of them.”

Lucas rocked his head from side to side, then reached for his cell. “Okay, good point. I’ll check with Loo Fung and see what he might come up with from China.”

Safe House Bravo, Muntinlupa, Manila,

Republic of the Philippines

“Hey, Sarge, are there any egg rolls left?” asked Malone.

Benson shook his head, answering, in a New England accent, “Nah; that asshole Bakah took the last one. And when did you say Maricel gets back? And if you call me ‘Sahge’ again, I’m gonna kick yah ass.”

“Sorry, Mr. Benson. Tomorrow morning.”

Benson puffed out his cheeks and blew air through his lips in a raspberry. “I am
really
not comf’table having a potential spy in the house with us. Even if she’s both a Christian and a very good self propelled vacuum cleanah.”

Malone gave a one-shouldered shrug. “It’s like Lox and Graft said; we either accept that risk or we accept the greater risk of standing out more than we do and getting the attention of some people we really don’t want to notice us.”

“Yeah,” Benson conceded, “but I still don’t like it.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung

—Kipling, “Gentlemen Rankers”

Interrogation Room #1, Safe House Alpha,

Hagonoy, Bulacan, Luzon, Republic of the Philippines

It was easy to be brave and defiant, Kulat discovered, just so long as there was no possibility of your bravery and defiance being tested. When they were tested, when they were
seriously
tested, by, say, having a set of vise grips tightened on one’s testicles, or having electricity sent coursing from one’s anus to one’s penis, or having a blow torch played over one’s toes . . . then bravery and defiance tended to fall away.

Now, having endured all those things, defiance was a dim memory and bravery a concept totally devoid of meaning. Now it was,
Oh, God . . . please . . .
please,
ask me something I can answer
. Anything
I can answer. Please . . . just stop hurting me.

In his agony, he wasn’t quite sure if he’d merely thought that, or whispered it.

He sobbed quietly, half from the pain that had not yet gone away, and perhaps never would, and half from the humiliation of begging and pleading. They’d hosed him off after the session, but he could still smell the shit he’d deposited on the concrete floor.

There was the sound of a turning doorknob, followed by a thin sliver of light appearing at the door’s edge. Kulat screamed.

In a nearby room, likewise dug into the hill behind the main house, Lox had an ear piece stuck in one ear. He was listening for any softer sounds coming from Kulat’s cell.

“I don’t get that first question you asked,” Mrs. Ayala told Lox. She could hear the prisoner weeping—sobbing really—inside. This was understandable, since the vise grips had been adjusted shut enough to more than half crush one testicle. “For that matter, I don’t understand
any
of the questions you asked.”

Lox looked vaguely ill, though Madame seemed pleased enough with progress so far.

“To convince him that we’re madmen who can, if he tries really hard, be placated. To make him want to satisfy our most absurd requests. To rob him of reason. To train him not to lie.”

“You seem to know your business,” Mrs. Ayala complimented.

“Not really,” Lox disagreed. “Oh, I know the principles of the thing. But a really good interrogator could get as much information, faster, with less coercion. There’s always
some
coercion, of course; there probably hasn’t been a totally noncoercive involuntary custodial interrogation in history, and only liars and fools think there has. Sadly, the world has a shortage of really good interrogators and so we must make do with me.”

“So long as you can find where my husband is being held.”

“We probably can,” Lox nodded agreement, “but it possibly may not be from these two. Even if they only lead us to someone who knows where your husband is, I’ll be minimally satisfied.”

“Why wouldn’t they know?” she asked, bright eyes flashing. “They were there.”

“I’d be very surprised if they weren’t blindfolded for the trip,” Lox replied. “At least once they were away from shore.”

The woman’s face sank to match her heart. “If they don’t know . . . ”

“Don’t worry, Madame,” Lox reassured her. “They either know or they know who does know or, and this is quite likely, they can describe enough of the area where your husband is being held for us to figure it out by map and terrain analysis.”

“What are you going to do with them once you’ve got all the information we need?” she asked.

“Kill ’em, I suppose; it’s become that kind of a world. And even if it weren’t, we can’t let them go after what’s been done to them.”

“I assume, then, that you would like the deaths to give a certain impression?”

“Talk to Welch,” Lox answered. “It’s his area of specialization, not mine.”

“I’ll talk to him,” she said. “I need to talk to him. My husband’s kidnappers have sent me a demand, and a set of instructions. As for this one; I’ll do the killing.” Her tone brooked no quarrel. “Rather, Pedro and I will.”

“That’s fine,” Lox agreed, “but there are certain parameters you must meet or the information we’ve gathered will soon be useless.”

He heard a word, a bare whisper, in his earpiece. “And on that note, it’s about time to get back to work.”

As soon as Lox had the door opened by three quarters of an inch, his ears were assailed by a long, loud, and—for the pure terror in it—heartrending scream. He opened the door fully, walked into the interrogation cell, and slapped Kulat several times across the face to make him shut up. Then he bent slightly and began turning the knob to release the vise grips from his victim’s testicles.

“Oh, thank you . . . thank you,” Kulat whimpered.

“Mr. Kulat,” Lox said, “it would be normal, at about this time in your interrogation, to introduce you to what we call ‘the good cop.’ This would be someone who would pretend to be your friend, to have your best interests at heart, to stop the pain if only, if
only
, you would cooperate. We don’t have the time or the people for that.”

“But you don’t really need that crutch, do you, Mr. Kulat? You really do want to cooperate now, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes . . . oh, yes . . . just ask me something I know, something I
can
answer.”

“Very well,” Lox agreed. “But you must remember that your cameraman is as eager to talk to us as you claim to be. And if your answers do not match, there will be more pain and more damage.”

“Let me talk to him,” Kulat begged. “I’ll convince him to cooperate.”

“No,” said Lox, somewhat regretfully, “that doesn’t really work. You will answer separately until your answers match.”

“Describe the beach where you landed!” Lox demanded.

“There was a high cliff, to the left!” Kulat exclaimed frantically. “We pulled up to a short pier . . . ”

“How many piers were there?”

“One!”

Lox signaled Semmerlin to start the electricity flowing.

“Two, there were TWO!” Kulat screamed, between spasms.

The juice cut out after a moment. Lox asked, “Which of the two was longer, north or south?”

“Nor . . . aiaiaiai! Southsouthsouth!”

“The first bunker, guarding the trail from the beach, what was in it?”

“A mach . . . aiaiaiai. Nonono . . . sorrysorry . . . please, no more pain . . . it was a cannon of some kind.”

“Describe it.”

“Big . . . three, maybe four inches across, the part I saw. It was something funny shaped on that end, like a cone.”

“A recoilless rifle?”

The answer was a sort of long, drawn out, moan. “Yes . . . I think so . . . I hope so. But please, no more pain?
Please
?”

“Look at this diagram,” Lox said, pointing to a large sheet of white paper with penciled in symbols. His finger traced a dotted line. “You and Mr. Iqbal came in along this trail”—the finger tapped—“past these two bunkers.” The finger floated to the right and up. “What was here?”

“A tent,” Kulat answered. “A big tent with smoke coming from the ground nearby. It was thin smoke, coming from a hundred holes. You could barely notice it until you smelled it.”

“Did they feed you there?”

“No. No, but when they brought us food it came from there on big leaves.”

“A mess tent, then.” Lox’s finger drifted. “And what was here . . . ?”

Both Kulat and Iqbal had been given their clothes back and released from their bindings. With Sergeants Trimble and Yamada as guards, Lox escorted them to a different cell, this one without any instruments of torture. Instead, there were some cots, a couple of bottles, and some packaged food.

“We can’t let you go until our mission is complete,” Lox informed them. “You’ll be staying here while you’re with us. The clear bottle is water; the darker one is a
tore
of Tanduay rum.” Tanduay—or at least this mark of Tanduay—was perhaps not the highest-end rum distilled in the Philippines, but it would do. This particular bottle had been further laced with a modicum of opium. Mrs. Ayala’s man, Pedro, was nothing if not resourceful.

“If your religious scruples forbid you from drinking it, that’s on you. You might find that it helps the pain, though, and, if memory serves, alcohol is permissible as a medicine.”

In a side room in the main house, Lox poured a San Miguel pilsner for Madame. He placed the amber-filled glass on the table next to her. Also on the table was a voice activated tape recorder, and a speaker that certainly had some desktop computer in its ancestry.

“And now?” Madame asked, picking up and sipping at the beer.

“And now we listen. It’s just possible, not likely, but possible, that they’ll talk about something they managed to hide from us. It’s even more likely they’ll confirm what they told us separately, once they start comparing notes.”

“And if not?”

“We’ve learned all we can learn in the time we have before they have to make an appearance back in the real world. Maybe if there’s something dramatic, we might put them through the ringer again. But, if not, tonight you can have them.”

“Good,” she agreed, her voice filled with anticipation.

“Killing them doesn’t bother you?” Lox asked.

The old woman chuckled. “Mr. Lox, my husband and I were not always so very respectable. I’ve killed before. And you, does it bother you to torture?”

“I never have before,” he answered. “And it makes me sick.”

“Really?” She seemed surprised. “Where did you learn? You seemed quite competent.”

“Oh,” Lox admitted, “I got it out of a book by some hack science fiction writer.”

Safe House Alpha, Hagonoy, Bulacan, Luzon,

Republic of the Philippines

Whether Kulat and Iqbal were actually drunk by the time the clock had turned past midnight made little difference. A quick glance at the bottle indicated that they would be, in conjunction with the opium, drunk enough for pliability and drunk enough to have the booze show up in their bloodstreams, if anybody bothered to check. If the fire Mrs. Ayala planned left enough for a check of the blood.

“Load them,” she told Pedro and her other most trusted guard. Taking one each over their shoulders, Madame’s men dumped the two doomed journalists into vehicle trunks, one in the taxi’s trunk, the other in Iqbal’s, atop the camera, tripod, and sound equipment. Then she, her guard, and Welch loaded.

The two-vehicle convoy then drove north, before turning east at Cabanatuan. Ultimately, they stopped in the deserted section of road in Aurora Memorial National Park.

Once she’d picked her spot, Madame had the drugged and intoxicated journalists detrunked and laid on either side of Iqbal’s auto. “Measure him, Pedro,” she commanded.

“Yes, Madame.”

Pedro took Iqbal and put him in the driver’s seat. Then he rotated him forward and up, as if he’d been tossed that way by a collision. Pedro’s eye carefully noted where Iqbal’s head would strike the windshield, and his body the steering wheel. He then placed the body back on the ground and went to his taxi for a sledgehammer. With this he gave the cameraman a light rap on the skull, no more than enough to split the skin and perhaps cause some minor fracturing of the bone. The cameraman’s ribs received heavier blows, heavy enough, perhaps, to have killed him on their own, eventually.

Kulat received similar treatment. Welch, standing with his arms crossed over his chest, nodded with satisfaction.

“Now wreck the car, Pedro.”

“Yes, Madame.”

For this, Pedro retrieved from his taxi a crash helmet, as well as some padding for his legs. He sat in the driver’s seat of Iqbal’s vehicle, put on the helmet, and placed the heavy padding in front of his legs. Then he put on the lap and shoulder belt and started the engine.

With a short, three-point turn, Pedro turned the car around and then drove about a hundred meters back in the direction from which they’d come. There he made another change of direction. After crossing himself, Pedro slammed down on the gas and sped up the road. At just past the place where his taxi rested, he ripped the wheel to his right, aiming for a stout tree. The car smashed into the tree foursquare and head on, crumpling the front and causing steam to jet out through the now bent hood. Pedro was thrown forward to the limits of his restraining belt.

As he emerged, shaken, the other guard was already carrying Kulat to the passenger side. Pedro shook his head to clear it, then lifted Iqbal and carted him across the road. Mrs. Ayala retrieved the padding, then demanded Pedro’s helmet. Both of these she placed in the taxi.

“Shoot several holes in the car, Pedro,” she said. When he hesitated, she asked, “You don’t understand why?”

“No, Madame.”

She sighed. Pedro was a good man, loyal and true. He was also bright enough, and very resourceful. What he wasn’t was subtle.

“It doesn’t matter if the police think these men were murdered,” she explained. “Indeed, Mr. Welch”—she inclined her head in his direction—“has told me he wants them to. And I can buy our way out of any prosecution or investigation, even if they should equate the murder with us. What matters is that the people holding my husband not know these two spilled their guts. If they found out, they’d move and the information we’ve gained would become useless. For that, it is better that this look like a simple double murder, here on a lonely stretch of road, while they were in hot pursuit of another story or, better, being pursued. For that, we need bullet holes.”

“Fair enough,” Pedro agreed, drawing his pistol and emptying it into various random and chosen spots around the car. One of these—the only nonrandom spot—was the gasoline tank. With a flashlight, he began to search for the spent casings.

“Do you think they’ll wake up enough to feel this?” Mrs. Ayala asked, as she bent down with a cigarette lighter in one hand. Pedro shook his head. Madame sighed, “I suppose not, but I hope they do.”

Hell hath no fury
, thought Welch, watching the gasoline take fire and the flames race to where more fuel poured from the ruptured tank.

“Now, tell me about the demands and instructions they sent you.”

Welch, Lox, and Graft were seated at one end of a table holding a bucket of ice, three glasses, and a bottle, a tore, of Tanduay. Theirs was of a rather better mark than what they’d left for Kulat and Iqbal. The label said “1854,” though, of course, it wasn’t nearly that old. Fifteen years, though? That, it was.