American Terrorist Trilogy Page 5

  The door closed behind her, and she stood there for a moment looking down at him with her hands on her hips. Her blazer was unbuttoned, and as Carl glanced down and up her frame, he got the feeling that she was fit, though she was perhaps five years past her prime and maybe fifteen or twenty pounds heavier than her ideal weight. She was a desk jockey. Still, she was attractive and had what he considered a really nice chest. Larger than average.

  By the time he raised his gaze back to her face, he found a dark, almost hate-filled look in her brown eyes. He swallowed with great difficulty and spoke, but his voice rasped through his dry throat.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  She stepped up and sat on the table just to his left. The table was one of those old appliances that he’d seen way back in his early military days. It was fitting for a jail cell. It was a dark gray metal thing with square, hollow legs that were wide where they met the table top and narrow at the floor. The table top was overlaid with decades-old, scratched, and beat up Formica that was white fifty years ago when the government bought it.

  The cop just sat there silently. If she was trying to intimidate him, she was doing a damn good job. Carl took a deep breath and looked forward. He didn’t give her the satisfaction of looking up at her. When she tapped her knuckles on the table to get his attention, he turned his head and focused his gaze to his left, eyes level with her breasts. He could see that she wore some kind of thick, under-wire bra, which he could certainly understand, being that she worked with a bunch of testosterone-filled, macho cops. A thick stitched bra like hers wouldn’t give men anything to fantasize about.

  When she spoke her voice was deep and husky, though still feminine. From her tone, he had no doubt that she was accustomed to getting her way and having her questions answered. From his military days, he recognized the commanding presence in her voice. She didn’t bother to introduce herself.

  “Where is the girl?” she said.

  He kept his gaze locked on her breasts, the only defiance a chained man could show.

  “What girl?”

  She leaned down with her left hand on the table until her head was in his personal space. Carl turned away and faced the concrete wall in front of him again.

  “Look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

  He grunted at her. “You mean the harder way?” He wiggled his wrist and foot chains.

  “This is your last chance to cooperate, Mr. Reyes.”

  Carl looked her in the eye. Her face was barely six inches from his.

  “Do I look like a fucking Reyes, you racist—”

  She struck fast. One moment she was sitting on the table leaning sideways. The next, Carl saw a flash of motion and felt an explosion of pain under his armpit as she jacked her right knee hard into his ribs. He felt the tight grip of her hand on the left side of his head as she slammed his face onto the table. The right side of his head throbbed in pain as she held him there.

  He gasped. “Bitch!”

  “Where is she?” she whispered. “Give me a location, a contact name, something.”

  He felt her fiddle behind his ear and suddenly that nerve bundle erupted in pain. He screamed and squirmed, but he couldn’t escape the pain. If he’d been in a wrestling contest, he could have surrendered by pounding a palm on the mat. All he could do was stomp his chained feet on the floor, but she got the message and let up the pressure.

  He hadn’t realized he’d closed his eyes, but when he opened them he could hardly see through the tears of pain. He blinked, and his breath hissed through clenched teeth. A new wave of nausea swept over him as he tried to find his voice.

  He heard a ping and saw the female cop retrieve her cell phone from her left pant pocket. She checked the screen, then replaced the device in her pocket.

  She said, “You can either tell me or you can tell my friends from Homeland. They’re not as friendly as I am.”

  Carl nodded, and she let him up. He raised his head and glared at her. Cops can’t beat the shit out of prisoners. No way was he going to let her get away with that. He’d hold out until someone of authority arrived, then he’d get his attorney and sue the crap out of the city and ruin this woman’s career.

  “I’m waiting,” she said.

  “You must be from Arizona, where all the cops think brown people are Mexican, aren’t you?”

  Without shifting her seated position on the table, she kicked him again. She rammed her knee into the same exact point of impact as the first kick. He howled in pain, then nodded.

  “You want to know who has her?”

  “Well?”

  He gave her a line from one of his favorite TV shows.

  “Ima.”

  “Ima who?”

  “I’m a gonna kick your—”

  Blam!

  He saw another flash of motion as she raised her left palm off the table. He heard the crack of bone on bone as her elbow hit his forehead. His head snapped back and then he fell forward onto the table, almost out cold.

  He was dazed by her blow and let his head fall so that he faced away from her. He didn’t want to give her a reason to keep beating on him, so he just played possum until someone else arrived.

  He heard her mumble, “I’ve seen that show too, asshole.”

  What the fuck is going on? Cops don’t beat prisoners! They can’t.

  He kept his eyes closed even while the door buzzed open.

  Chapter 8

  1752 MST Friday

  Albuquerque, NM

  He was saved. Once he raised the specter of having been beaten by this cop, he’d be isolated from her and other cops would investigate his claim.

  Heavy footsteps entered the room. He thought the footfalls sounded more like combat boots, rather than street shoes of other detectives in suits. The door closed again with a metallic echo in the empty room. Carl was just about to raise his head when something about the voice of the new arrival sent chills down his spine. The man had a deep voice that was smoky and gravelly. He sounded like a cross between Vin Diesel and Jack Bauer, and he spoke in an almost hushed whisper.

  “What are you doing in here, Agent?”

  The female cop answered, “He’s my prisoner, Agent Klipser.”

  “Your instructions were clear. No one was to be allowed in here.”

  “And no one has been.”

  “You have.”

  The female cop remained silent. Agent Klipser’s hard-edged voice paused for a moment, then said, “Did he wake up? Did he say anything?”

  “No.”

  What the hell? She lied!

  Carl realized the female cop was afraid of this new man, and suddenly so was he. His fantasy of appealing to someone who might protect him from the raging cop had morphed into the nightmare of a man who was even worse than she was.

  The tone of the man’s voice changed, and Carl got the feeling he was addressing someone else.

  “Check him. Make sure he stays out for the next six hours for the trip back to Virginia.” The man paused. “And you. Special... Agent... Cummings.” The way he emphasized each word of her name gave Carl a mental picture of a big bully poking her in the chest with each word—Special, poke, Agent, poke, Cummings, poke.

  “Get us an APC with full police and SWAT escort to the airport, and police chopper coverage. I’ll give you the route once we’re on the road.”

  Armored personnel carrier? What the fuck?

  Cummings said, “Yes, sir.”

  The door buzzed open, and heels clicked on the concrete floor as someone—presumably Cummings—left. One of the newcomers moved closer behind him, and something hard landed on the table near his face.

  The man to Carl’s right said, “She is a complication.”

  The one with the gravelly voice, now known to Carl as Agent Klipser, said, “Operational security is Director McGrath’s call. He still wants to recruit her.”

  “Mmm-hmmm,” the other voice said. “Well, if they hit us, they’ll hit us hard. Proba
bly on the interstate, a known route to the airport from here.”

  Klipser replied, “I want everyone to think we’re going to the airport, but we’re not going anywhere near there. I’ve arranged for the Air Force to send a chopper to take us down to Holloman Air Force Base. I’ll send our jet down there ahead of us, and we’ll fly out of there to Virginia. I want to keep everyone guessing.”

  Carl opened his left eye, the one nearest the table since he was facing to his right. Unless the newcomers leaned down to the level of Carl’s face, neither would know that his eye was open. He spied the case as a pair of hands opened it, and one of the hands remove a syringe with clear fluid in it. The syringe disappeared from his view, then the clear needle cap bounced on the table.

  He remembered the intense pain from the first injection, and he pretended he was waking up to cover his gasp when he felt the agent roughly jab the long needle deep into his neck. Then the heat spread from his neck and into his chest again.

  Then darkness enveloped him.

  Chapter 9

  Time: Unknown; Day: Unknown

  Location: Unknown

  Carl floated slowly to full consciousness and found himself completely immobilized. In the full-length mirror before him, he saw that he was standing, strapped to a panel against a wall, except his orientation felt wrong. His brain’s internal gyroscope told him he was lying on his back, as if gravity was pressing against the front of his body, but the mirror against the wall six feet in front of him told him that he was, in fact, standing up.

  He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He heard voices nearby, but he couldn’t distinguish what they were saying. He felt uncomfortable, and his jaw hurt. He tried to work the kink out of his jaw, but he couldn’t move it. He couldn’t swallow, either, which was extremely disconcerting because his throat was so dry it hurt. In fact, he couldn’t move his mouth at all, he realized suddenly, because there was something stuck in it.

  He opened his eyes again and realized he was, in fact, lying horizontally, and the mirror was mounted on the ceiling above him. At first he studied the reflection of his own face. There was some kind of clear rubbery disk locking his mouth wide open. He explored the device with his tongue. It was smooth and had a hole in the center maybe half an inch in diameter. He tried to wrestle the disk out with his tongue, but it was lodged tight. He tried to bite through the material, but the rubbery material flexed just enough to prevent him from breaking his teeth on it.

  Then he focused on his body. He was naked and there were dozens—no, hundreds—of long and extremely thin acupuncture-like needles protruding from his body. The needles were stuck into his flesh from the top of his skull to the tip of his extremities and everywhere in between. The tip of each needle was connected to some kind of hair-thin, insulated filament wire. The filaments were loosely strapped into several bundles, and the half dozen bundles extended up toward the ceiling, then across and down to a small metal box on a table that he could only barely see at the extreme edge of his peripheral vision. A man in a white smock was working at a laptop connected to the box.

  At first, Carl thought he was undergoing some kind of surgery, and he had regained consciousness in the middle of the procedure. He tried calling out to the man who looked like a doctor, but only unintelligible grunts came from his throat because his mouth was locked open.

  The doctor turned and studied Carl with emotionless eyes. He touched a Bluetooth device on his left ear and said, “The terrorist is awake.”

  Terrorist? What the hell?

  Carl protested and tried to speak. If the doctor would only take the plug out of his mouth, he could find out what they wanted and answer their questions.

  The doctor listened for a moment, then said, “Very well.” He looked down at Carl. “This is going to hurt a bit. You see these leads.” He pointed at the bundles of filament wires. “They will allow me to direct microvolts of electricity along any nerve path of your body that I choose. Let’s begin with your right arm.”

  Carl saw the doctor retrieve a small tablet from his table and begin tapping on the surface. Suddenly, a jolt of electricity flashed from his shoulder to the fingertips of his right hand. The instantaneous pain was excruciating, and his arm felt like it was being microwaved, burned from the inside. He screamed, but only for a moment, because the pain disappeared as quickly as it had begun.

  Carl lay gasping, panting partly through his nose and partly through the hole in his mouth piece. He watched in the ceiling mirror as his chest heaved with each breath. It was then that he noticed how many straps held his body to the table. Each leg had a leather strap at the ankle, at the shin, above and below the knee, and at the upper thigh.

  His pelvis was strapped tightly to the table, as was his abdomen, but his ribs were not, and he realized that was so he could breathe. Each arm had straps at the wrist, above and below the elbow, and at the shoulder. There were foam pads under each elbow, no doubt to prevent injury.

  His head lay in some kind of padded cradle, and his forehead was firmly strapped in. He also had two straps crossing his upper torso: one extended from his right armpit to his left shoulder, and the other extended from his left armpit to his right shoulder. The result was that his body was locked to the table and was completely immovable.

  He had just watched his right arm tense and jitter violently under the jolt of an electric current. If he wasn’t so thoroughly strapped down, he would either break a bone, pull a muscle, or tear a tendon or ligament from the strain.

  “Okay, now you’re going to feel this from your left shoulder, down your left leg, and down to your ankle, but only on the surface skin, not inside as you just experienced.”

  Carl interpreted that comment to mean the pain would not be as intense, but he was wrong. The skin of the left side of his body suddenly felt like it was on fire, as if someone was holding a red-hot iron against the whole left side of his body. He watched in the mirror as his body twitched and jerked, but the tight straps held him firmly.

  First he tried to bury the left side of his body deeper into the bed’s foam pad. Then he tried to arch his back and jerk his body to dislodge the needles, but the straps prevented that. He couldn’t escape, couldn’t make any sudden moves, and couldn’t dislodge any of the needles by scraping them against the leather straps.

  All he could do was scream.

  For a moment the pain disappeared, then it moved to the right side of his face. He felt the involuntary fluttering contractions of his cheek muscles and felt a screaming pain rip through his ear. The pain was so intense, he swore he actually heard a ringing in his ear. It was an unbearable cacophony of sounds screeching inside his skull.

  Then he saw a flash of red as the sight in his right eye dimmed to nothing, and he was filled with panic that the doctor was taking his eyesight. He begged and pleaded with unintelligible grunts, then he screamed as the pain became too intense to bear.

  Don’t take my eyes! Oh God, please don’t take my eyes!

  It was too late. When the pain subsided, his right eye was blind. All he could perceive was a red splotch, an after-image of a burned-out retina. Then he started to cry, a great sobbing that wracked his entire body.

  He heard the doctor say, “I think he’s ready.”

  The man paused and then said, “I know. This is a new record. Didn’t even take one minute. He’s not so tough strapped to the table.”

  A few seconds later, Carl heard steps approaching the table. They were heavy, clunky steps like the ones he’d heard in the FBI cell. His unaffected eye darted to the left as a man came into view. The man looked about mid-thirties, with military-cut black hair and a scruffy five-o’clock shadow, the kind that women would find sexy. He had a razor-sharp nose that made his black eyes look even more sinister. He was dressed in all black, at least the part of his upper body that Carl could see. He was a slender, yet muscular man, and his turtleneck sweater flexed as his muscles worked. His collar covered his neck up to his chin.

  Th
e doctor handed the man a metal tool, which he inserted into the center of the plug in Carl’s mouth. He grabbed Carl’s chin and yanked downward, then easily levered the plug out. Carl worked his jaw open and closed a few times, then worked it left to right to relieve the muscle pain. Then he coughed and tried to swallow a few times. The doctor held a small plastic squirt bottle over his face with a narrow L-shaped straw. He squeezed the bottle, and a brief stream of water entered Carl’s mouth. He swallowed gratefully.

  When the newcomer spoke, Carl recognized his gravelly voice immediately. The man was Agent Klipser, one of the men who had retrieved him from the female cop. His voice was deep and husky with a rumbling texture.

  “Mr. Reyes, where is the girl?” he said. His words came out like a harsh whisper.

  “What girl?” Carl said weakly. Tears flowed from his eyes. “I don’t know anything about any girl.” He gulped again, wishing for more water, then said, “My name is Johnson. Carl Johnson. Not Reyes.”

  Klipser nodded at the doctor, and a sudden flash of pain ignited Carl’s spine. His screams echoed around the small room, as his voice was no longer muffled by the plug in his jaw. He screamed and screamed until he could no longer produce sound. He just lay there with his mouth wide open. His body jerked with an intense pain like nothing he had ever experienced. He felt like someone was cutting his back open and plucking his vertebrae out one at a time.

  Suddenly, the pain disappeared, and he gasped for air, sobbing like a child. “Why are you doing this? I don’t know anyone named Reyes. I don’t know any girl.”

  Klipser said, “Well, when your memory improves, I’ll come back.” To the doctor, he said, “Hit him where it really hurts.”

  The doctor tapped on the pad and before Carl could plead further, his groin ignited in pain.

  Chapter 10

  Time: Unknown; Day: Unknown

  Location: Unknown