Act of Vengeance

by Michael Jecks

  Louis Keen and Will Barnard joined him a moment later. There was no need for their regalia today. All were in their suits.

  ‘Problems?’ Will Barnard asked.

  ‘We have had a serious leak. The new boy, Sandford, was somehow compromised and died in a road traffic accident last night. It is a great shame. He showed promise,’ Amiss said.

  ‘How badly “compromised”?’ Barnard said.

  ‘It seems that a British agent, Jack Case, has somehow managed to get to understand a lot of our plans.’

  ‘It was fucking Lewin, wasn’t it?’ Louis Keen spat. ‘I knew that faggot Brit was no good! He was screwed from the start!’

  ‘I cannot disagree,’ Amiss said. ‘But at the time he came highly recommended and we cannot turn up good operatives. It’s not as if there is a professional body we can go to and ask for a man with the qualifications we need!’

  ‘But the mission is not compromised?’ Barnard said, eyeing Amiss keenly. ‘Are we into damage limitation?’

  ‘There’s no need to think about fragging the captain, Will, if that’s what you mean,’ Amiss said easily. ‘The Brit is being entertained by Ed Stilson at our main facility and we’ll get all we need to from him.’

  ‘What of the others?’

  ‘I’m afraid there were two Seattle-based Feebies who were convinced by him.’

  ‘You mean Rand and the woman who were supposed to be removed in Vegas?’

  ‘Yes. They were threats then, and so they remain. But we will find them and remove them both.’

  Keen looked about him at the chamber. ‘We’d better. Because if we don’t, we’ll need to exercise our exit strategies.’

  Barnard nodded and glanced at Keen. ‘In that case, I think we should begin to plan for the worst. Remove all evidence from our sites here. Everything to be stored securely.’

  Amiss nodded again.

  ‘OK. And we need to make sure that our own covers are updated. Look at your alibis for the last few days and make sure that they’re watertight. We don’t know how far this could go.’

  ‘What about you?’ Keen asked. ‘Are you remaining here?’

  Amiss looked at him for a moment, his eyes hard.

  ‘D’you think I’d run from my own country?’

  *

  10.46 Langley; 15.46 London

  ‘How much longer?’ Debbie asked.

  After the sudden appearance of the police and men at the house, Frank had driven straight to Quantico. It took a short time to verify that Stilson’s house was empty. Agents had hurried there, and a group had been sent to Amiss’s house, only to discover that this too was deserted. Then a sharp-eyed agent had checked for flight plans, only to discover that Amiss’s Learjet had taken off for Anchorage. A witness at the airport said that there was a man on a stretcher who was taken onto the plane. It wasn’t Tony. Stilson’s street was crawling with officers, ever since Tony’s body had been found.

  Anchorage. Frank and Debbie had quickly arranged for their own plane and had taken off from the small airport at Quantico, Frank all the while considering where Stilson could be heading. He had no doubt Stilson was on that Lear. But why Anchorage?

  And then a comment Jack had made came back to him. It was something Sorensen had said when Jack was asking about the men he worked for. He said something about a ‘Dollar’ – a Dollar building. The FBI plane had satellite communications, and he fired up a laptop, searching for anything to do with Dollar in Anchorage. He found investment comments, mentions of golden opportunities, but nothing about a building. But he was sure that there was something there.

  He tried Buck Alaska. There were pages about knives and hunting, pages about individuals, but nothing that seemed remotely relevant.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Debbie asked.

  ‘This place, the “Dollar” building Sorensen mentioned to Jack. I’m wondering whether that could be there – maybe it’s the place they’re heading.’

  She looked over his searches.

  ‘Buck?’

  ‘I’m just trying anything I can,’ he said.

  At Ted Stevens Airport there would be cars waiting to follow Stilson’s plane when it landed, to see where it was heading. The local SWAT team would want to take Stilson, but Frank and HRT had discussed that and decided not to use them. Stilson’s men had shown themselves competent already, but that wasn’t the real reason. The HRT group wanted revenge. They wanted to get Tony’s killers themselves.

  Debbie had never seen Frank like this before, and she felt a strange dislocation, as though she had herself been kidnapped. The plane was filled with black-clad men who moved about quietly, carefully storing heavy-looking bags made of some black ballistic material. There were seven of them, and she felt quite sure that these were more of Frank’s friends from the Hostage Rescue Team. They were sombre, quiet and tense. A close-knit unit, they were grieving for Tony.

  She said, ‘Look up military. See if there’s something there.’

  He typed ‘Buck Military Alaska’ and one of the first pages had a piece on Whittier. ‘The Buckner Building,’ he breathed.

  In a few minutes he had obtained detailed plans of the building from the army, and was studying a picture on his screen.

  ‘They’ll have the interrogation blocks underground, I reckon,’ Frank said. He was looking at a building plan that he’d managed to print out from the plane’s inkjet.

  ‘It would keep things out of the way,’ one of the men said in agreement. Two others were craning over Frank’s neck as he studied photos, some from the sea, some close-up, and three from the air. All gave good indications of the location.

  ‘Leave it to us, Frank,’ the two said, and took the maps and pictures to another table behind them.

  ‘You want to be with them, don’t you?’ Debbie said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Frank admitted. There was a look of wistfulness in his eyes as he turned back to the table. A coffee was sitting there, and he added a carton of cream and stirred it moodily. ‘When I was new to the Bureau, it was the one thing I wanted above all else, to join the HRT. Now? I have to play second fiddle even though I am Assistant Special Agent in Charge in Seattle. I want to be there with them.’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ she said. Not that the idea filled her with enthusiasm. She kept an eye on all the men with the wariness borne of suspicion.

  Frank grinned.

  ‘Another couple of hours to Anchorage, and then we’ll get the cars and ride straight out.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And then we’ll get Jack out and kick the crap out of these pricks.’

  *

  08.12 Whittier; 17.12 London

  Jack felt his head being jerked back just a moment before the water hit his face, and then he was choking and coughing, eyes closed, his head pounding from the blows he had taken. There was a sore bruised feeling in his neck and his arms, and he knew that he had been administered drugs to keep him quiet. That was more than likely the cause of the nausea too.

  ‘Wake up, asshole!’ was screamed, and a second bucket of water drenched him.

  It was freezing cold. Sprawled on the concrete of a floor, it felt like he was only a little above freezing, and he was naked. He could feel the wash of air all around him on his soaking flesh. It was enough to send a shudder through his frame.

  ‘Come on, you prick!’ was shouted, and then there was a hand under each armpit, and he was hauled to his feet.

  He had to open his eyes. His wrists hurt like hell. They were still gripped in the bracelets of some kind of handcuff, and he could feel something at his ankles too – probably shackles. Americans were very fond of that kind of thing still, he reminded himself. The sort of restraints that the British had long since outlawed were still in use in America. No doubt enterprising British firms were still vying for the business, just as the rope manufacturer was who sold hangman’s ropes to the old colonial countries.

  Jack was in a small cell. There were four-inch pipes running along the flaking paint o
f the ceiling overhead, and nearer he saw that the walls were concrete or cinder block. Any plaster than had once adorned them was long gone, and in its place was a mess of algae and decaying vegetation. But the lights worked, and he was dragged along the room to a heavy, green painted steel door with a peephole. Out through that, into a corridor with lights overhead – bulkhead lights with metal wire covers to protect them. There were doors on either side now, all green or grey.

  He let his head sag, conserving the little energy he had. There was no need to act exhausted. It was all he could do to keep his eyes open. Whatever the drugs they’d shot into him were, they were potent.

  He had to wake up. Take notice. Make himself alert. But he was so tired. All he wanted was to go to a bed somewhere and find a little peace. He’d sell his mother for the chance of a long sleep. No, he had to wake himself up. Take notice.

  Two men, then – one either side. Guards, dressed in US army fatigues. Green T-shirts under green camo shirts, trousers of the same cloth tucked into boots. Haircuts in similar shaven Marine-type fuzz, and hard faces. These weren’t guys who’d listen to a reasoned argument.

  He let his head droop. A long corridor. Left turn at the end, and then another door – no, pair of doors. They were pushed wide, and he was in a large room. This was a work room, he saw. There were some plastic chairs set about the place, a table with three chairs at the far side, and a lamp. Nearer, was a metal chair’s frame, beyond that a large metal tub filled with water. A table with restraints was set up on it for a man’s torso, legs, biceps, and wrists. And near that were two large batteries, with wires attached and clamps on the other ends. They looked strong enough to shear through a man’s skin.

  Jack shivered again. He tried not to, but he knew what this room was for. It had been going to be Lewin’s office, if Lewin had accepted. Now, it was the special preserve of someone else.

  ‘Mister Case. Good to meet you at last.’

  Jack managed to turn his head, and found himself being watched by a tall, heavy-set man.

  ‘I think you know who I am,’ the man said.

  Suddenly Jack realised where he had seen this man before. It was the man in the Hilton’s bar, the man all alone sitting there watching the game on TV.

  ‘No,’ Jack mumbled.

  ‘My name is Brian,’ he said. ‘Brian Peachfield. You know my friend Mr Stilson. Ed, say hello.’

  Stilson was leaning against the wall.

  ‘I tried to have your colleague Danny join us here, but he wouldn’t. Instead we had to sort out a way to keep him quiet. It was easy enough. A three-fifty-seven works fuckin’ wonders as a silencer. But he did bring you to us, and that was a problem.’

  ‘It was you who tried to kill me in the tunnel, at the cop shop, and in the hospital,’ Jack said.

  ‘It was my guys, yeah. You were very hard to kill, you know that?’

  ‘Sorry to give you so much trouble,’ Jack said, as his breath misted before his eyes, and he shivered again.

  ‘Ah, you’re cold. Take him to a seat. Tie him down,’ Peachfield said.

  Jack started to try to resist, but Stilson walked to him and took what looked like an effortless swing at his belly, and Jack couldn’t help but double over. The pain was nothing compared with the hideous inability to breathe, and he was still desperately gasping as they shoved him down onto a metal-framed seat with a high back and cold steel seat. It was so cold that he felt like he was going to lose the flesh from his buttocks and balls wherever he touched it. Leather straps were tightened over his chest and, when he looked, the whole chair was bolted to the floor. He wasn’t going to escape from this in a hurry.

  ‘Good,’ Peachfield said. ‘Now go fetch André for me.’

  The two guards left the room, and Peachfield was quiet a moment. He looked at Stilson, then back at Jack.

  ‘This may be instructive for you. What your colleagues like Lewin were doing out in Iraq and Afghanistan with our guys was not pleasant, but it was necessary. It led to the safety of your country, same as ours. Now, this is a kind of lesson for you, because what I want is to get you to tell me everything you know about us. I have to know what you know, and who you told, of course. We know that you’ve had some involvement with government agencies over here, and we would like to know who you’ve spoken to in there, how much you’ve told them, and when. After you’ve told us all that, we’ll move on to the British services too.’

  ‘Fuck you!’

  ‘Well, I am pleased to see you have some fighting spirit. It means you’ll feel the pain a lot more keenly. The guys who’re already broken are far less helpful. More pain is difficult to impose. It was one of the ironic things that Danny Lewin used to talk about – the fact that an interrogator only had the one option – the threat of never-ending, constantly increasing pain. As soon as the subject realised that he’d hit the wall, that there was no worse sanction, the interrogator had lost. Can you imagine that? The number of subjects who realised that they’d got to the absolute limit of what the interrogator was capable of inflicting on them was quite large at first. That was when the rendition flights really took off, if you see what I mean. They started to move the really dangerous suspects from Iraq to all those countries where the systems were more lax than ours. And there, they knew that the boundaries of their pain were limitless.’

  The door opened, and Jack saw a naked Asian man dragged in. He had wide, terrified eyes in his dark face and, as Jack watched, he saw the horror increase as he took in the steel chair frame in front of him.

  ‘Set him up,’ Peachfield said. ‘This, you see,’ he continued, ‘is a refined form of torture that we had never used in America. Even in Vietnam it was unknown, but we learned of it in Damascus. It is called the “German Chair”, because apparently it was the Stasi who showed the men of the Palestine Branch how to use it. The Palestine Branch is the main interrogation centre in Damascus, you see. In Palestine Street.’

  As he spoke, the man was bound to the chair. The guards were quick and efficient. André was not placed sitting on the chair, but instead was positioned behind it, his back to the outside of the seat back. He was forced under the seat, his back stretched, with his arms brought either side of the seat back, so that his wrists could be tied to the front legs of the chair’s frame, and then his legs were pulled back beneath the seat, ankles forced to straps hanging from the front, while his knees rested on the ground. His entire body was curled back on itself, and he wept and whimpered all the while. Jack could see that his body was a mass of bruises. There were marks on his upper body, on his legs, on the palms of his hands, and the soles of his feet.

  ‘We prefer not to use the same tools as those in Damascus, though,’ Peachfield said. He had a length of electrical cable in his hand now, a two-foot long section that was at least an inch and a half thick. Walking to Jack, he let it fall against Jack’s shoulder. ‘Feel that weight, eh? In the Palestinian Branch they beat their new guests with these for two weeks. No questions, just beatings. They’re heavy enough to smash bones, but the men there are real professionals. They only damage muscles and soft tissue. Well, at first, anyway.’

  The man was beginning to mutter now, and Jack was sure he was praying. In his eyes there was a pure terror that seemed to reach out and touch Jack with its evil chill. Jack had never known true petrified horror, but this sight was enough to make his muscles shake uncontrollably. It wasn’t the cold: it was the knowledge that whatever agony was inflicted on this man, would soon be practised on him too.

  *

  09.45 Whittier; 18.45 London

  There was a slight bump, nothing more, and the jet swept across the tarmac towards the main terminal at the Anchorage airport, but then, as it approached, it turned and ran around towards a separate hangar. As they approached it, Debbie could see that there were a number of unmarked cars there, and armed men standing in a huddle.

  Frank was up and already at the door before it had opened. As soon as the stairs were extended, he was down the
m, and Debbie had to wait her turn as the black-clad men grabbed their heavy bags and followed him. Last in the line, she stood, disgruntled, and made her way down as well.

  ‘I’m Special Agent in Charge, Harry Benning. I think we’ve met before, Frank. This here’s Norm Baker, my ASAC.’

  Benning was a middle-height man who looked like a sailor: broad, with heavy shoulders, and a bull-like neck. He watched the HRT men with pale amber eyes set in a lined, weather-beaten face. His assistant was taller by three inches, a lugubrious man with fair hair and an expression of longing in his sad brown eyes.

  Frank spoke quickly about the Bucky and what he expected to find.

  ‘Fine. You have my support, Frank. Whatever you want, let me or Norm know.’

  As they all waited, a trio of Jeep Grand Cherokees rumbled towards them. They all halted and the men carefully stowed their equipment in the back before climbing in – two to one, three to another, and Frank and Debbie in the back of the third. She had scarcely closed her door before the Jeep was roaring off towards a chain-link gate, which opened and then the three vehicles were through and off on the road towards Whittier, a convoy of other vehicles trailing behind them.

  *

  09.47 Whittier; 18.47 London

  André was in agony in minutes. The strain of that hideous position was enough to test a man’s endurance to the limits, and he began muttering and wailing. Jack didn’t understand: it sounded Arabic, but he didn’t know where the man came from.

  There was no one with them. The place was silent apart from the weeping and snivelling of André. Jack recalled the man’s name now, and tried to speak to him in French, but there was hardly any way to reach the man through the waves of pain that flooded his mind and body. It took Jack a long time to simply get through to him, and even then André scarcely seemed able to comprehend what was being said to him. He just tried to lean back, to balance himself and save him from more pain.