I put some real edge into it, but whether I approximated the voice of the Darkness, I will never know. The memories of those other interrogations give me some of the words but none of the true flavor. Was that good or bad? No way to know.
Casanova eyed me, taking inventory of the off-market body armor, the computer strapped to my arm, and my various weapons—a pair of Randall Mark 14 Attack knives strapped upside down to my armored vest, a Sig Sauer 9 mm in a shoulder rig, and a gun of a type he’d likely never seen before in my hand. That was a Snellig 22A-Max gas dart gun, which is proprietary tech, made exclusively for Rogue Team International. No one else has it. All Casanova knew was that the barrel of a nasty-looking pistol was pointing at his favorite crotch.
He had a lot of reaction choices, but Casanova opted for nonchalance. He sat back, his shoulders resting against the cold concrete. “You come in here with your dog and … what do you call that? Some kind of ninja costume? All black and scary?” He spat on the floor an inch from my shoe. Not a lot of sputum, but enough to make a statement. “I will tell you what I told the last ten interrogators.”
“Oh,” I said, “and what was that?”
“I told them to go fuck their mothers up their asses,” he said calmly. “And to not bother with lubricant. Really. You should do the same. It’s how your mother likes me to fuck her.”
He grinned. Casanova had large horse teeth, and one of the front ones was gray, evidence of a dead nerve.
“Here’s the thing, buttercup,” I said. “That’s usually a good line if you want to start a fight. And you’re a pretty big lump of shit, so maybe you’ve made somebody piss his pants once upon a time. Maybe you’ve pushed buttons that made other people lose their cool and swing on you, which is a nice way of canceling an interrogation. Blah blah blah. Sad truth is you don’t have the gravitas or the cool to sell that line to someone who’s actually in the game.”
He got slowly to his feet and did his level best to loom. “Fuck you and your mother.”
Ghost stepped forward and gave a menacing growl, but I clicked my tongue, and he immediately sat down. Ears up, tail flat, eyes merciless.
“I’m not afraid of you or that fucking dog,” he said.
“Statements like that speak poorly of your ability to read the room,” I said.
There must have been some quality in my voice because I saw a flicker on his face. He looked me up and down, head cocked to one side as if trying to remember where he might have heard my voice before.
“Who are you?” he asked.
I took off my helmet, removed my goggles, and pulled off the black balaclava I wore beneath, and then let him take a good long look at my face. I didn’t have to say my name, and I could see the exact moment when he recognized me. His eyes slowly widened, and his lips parted to say a single word.
“No,” he breathed.
I said, “Yes.”
CHAPTER 95
DAS VERARBEITUNGSZENTRUM
SECURITY OFFICE
Korporal Heinz Kepler looked up from the duty sheet he’d been filling out and stared at one of the twenty-eight video screens on the wall over his desk. Most screens showed nighttime stillness. A few showed guards patrolling the halls. However, there was movement in one of the exterior screens—the one covering the front gate. A big white Mercedes Vario was idling on the turnaround. It was similar to the supply trucks used to deliver supplies to the processing plant, but no deliveries were expected, and certainly not at this hour.
Kepler tapped his shift partner on the shoulder. “Hey, Grunner, look at this.”
Grunner, who had been reading a copy of Der Spiegel, looked up over his reading glasses. He grunted. “Lost,” he said. “Maybe looking for directions.”
The driver’s door opened, and a slim woman slid down to the ground. She had a blond ponytail sticking out of the back of a blue billed cap and wore a blue windbreaker, tight jeans, and a black leg brace around her left knee. She walked up to the fence and stared directly into the camera. The blonde blew a kiss to whomever was watching, then turned and walked toward the back of the truck.
“What the hell?” murmured Kepler.
They leaned forward to study the video.
Grunner touched the screen. “Hey, what’s that? Who’s that with her?”
CHAPTER 96
DAS VERARBEITUNGSZENTRUM
CELL 13
Casanova knew he was in trouble.
All the pieces clicked. I’d come in wearing nonregulation clothes and equipment and had not brought the usual kind of backup. No other guards with shock rods or Tasers. This was clearly off the books. That … and he recognized me. He knew he was in a very small room with Joe Ledger and a nasty dog.
He was bigger and heavier than I was, but he shrank away, backing up until he thumped into the wall, eyes clicking left and right as if magical doorways would suddenly appear. The door behind me was closed. The fact that the cell was soundproof was something he’d already know about.
That left him in the exact center of shit creek. Not a paddle in sight.
So he tried for it.
He suddenly pushed off the wall and swung a punch at me that had every ounce of his massive body weight behind. If it had connected, he’d have broken my jaw at the very least, and possibly my neck. His fist was the size and hardness of a bocce ball. Then all he’d have to do was fight Ghost, who would not attack unless I ordered him to, or if he perceived I was losing a fight. And by then, Casanova might have been able to take a gun from my body as I fell.
If he’d connected.
I saw the muscle flex of his waist as he began that push-off, his power turning to put torque into his attack. I saw it and walked right into the center of that turn and smashed my right forearm across his upper chest while chopping at his punching arm with my left elbow. His mass and momentum collided with my surge and precision. The physics were all wrong for him—he had momentum but no balance. He crashed back against the wall, grunting out a deep huhhh of breath. I pistol-whipped him with the Snellig and then swept the inside of one ankle with the arch of my shoe; and as he dropped, I pounded down on both shoulders with the bottoms of one fist and the butt of the dart gun. Really damned hard. His ass hit the floor, and there was a muffled wet crack that I knew was his tailbone breaking.
His scream was incredibly shrill for such a big man.
I stepped between his thighs and placed the sole of my boot on his scrotum. Not hard. Not yet.
In a very quiet voice, I said, “Shut. The fuck. Up.”
He did.
Ghost was on his feet now, baring his teeth, ready to take a piece.
I moved my foot, and Casanova fell over onto his side, pulling his knees up to protect his balls and to take some pressure off the damage to his coccyx. He groaned and sobbed and started to say something else about my mother but stopped himself. Probably weighed the risk-reward thing and didn’t like his odds.
I didn’t like those odds, either. And, no, not because he dissed my mom. She died years ago, though if she’d been alive, she’d have fed him his own dick. Mom had always been a sweet lady, but only up to a point. Let’s just say that someone calling me a mama’s boy was something I’d take as a compliment.
I sat on the edge of the bed.
“Listen to me, asshole,” I said quietly. “You’re between a rock and a hard place. Rafael Santoro will kill you if you talk to me. So will Kuga. We both know that.”
He’d been squeezing his eyes shut, but he forced them open to look up at me. He was sweaty, his skin was gray, and there were tears in his eyes.
“Rafael Santoro murdered my family. All of them. Even an unborn baby. No … no, don’t close your eyes. Don’t you dare look away. I want you to see my face. I want you to look into my eyes and listen to my voice and then decide if you are more afraid of those men—who are hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles away—or me. The guy who is right here with you this very minute.”
I gave him a few moments on that.
It took him a moment to find his voice. “You’re just going to kill me. Why should I tell you anything?”
I shrugged. “You only heard about Italy, Johannesburg, and Kraków, but you didn’t hear about the other places I’ve been? Want to know why?”
He said nothing, but he was as attentive as a schoolboy.
“You didn’t hear about the other places because I didn’t leave blood on those walls,” I said. “How do you think I found those other places? Those other labs and warehouses, the other safe houses? I’ve had conversations like this quite a few times, sport. I’ve had meaningful chats with some people just like you. Or maybe they were smarter. Maybe they valued their own lives enough to answer my questions without trying the sucker punch crap. Don’t get me wrong, though, sometimes I had to ask in very specific ways. You think you’re in pain now? Imagine how you’ll feel if you fuck with me or stonewall me. I’m leaving here with information, that’s one of life’s few certainties. The question is whether I get all cranked and cut your balls off and feed them to my dog first … or whether I leave happy and you get medical treatment for a slip and fall. Your face isn’t marked, so no one here will ever know we had this chat.”
His eyes were huge, but I could see him working it out. He glanced at the door, then at Ghost, and back up at me.
There were beads of greasy sweat on Casanova’s upper lip and forehead. Some of it was pain, and some was fear. Equal portions, I’d guess.
“How do I know you won’t kill me?” he asked.
“You don’t,” I said. “You have to roll the dice. Except that one thing you do know is that if you don’t talk, you will die, and you’ll die badly. Soundproofed walls, a hungry dog, and a motherfucker who doesn’t give one little, tiny roach turd about you. That’s one of two outcomes. Take a moment and think about which option sounds more fun to you.”
I stopped talking and let him work on it.
The clock in my head was telling me to speed it up. The guard I darted at the safe house was probably awake, pissed off, and making calls. Which meant Bug knew, and Church knew. Maybe someone was already on their way. I wondered … would Church send Toys after me again? Or would it be Top and Bunny this time? Either way, someone would come.
I could feel the Darkness in my head wanting to reassert itself and do very awful things. Even if Casanova gave me what I wanted. It was so damned hard to keep the lights on in my soul.
“Tick tock,” I prompted.
His eyes were jumpy, as if he were a cornered rat, and the sweat was running down his cheeks. I made a small and unobtrusive finger gesture, and Ghost immediately came over and sat close enough so that his hot breath blew against Casanova’s face. Dog drool spattered the man’s orange prison onesie.
“Okay,” he blurted. “Okay, okay, okay.”
“Okay … what?” I asked quietly.
“Okay, I’ll tell you what you want to know, goddamn your eyes.”
“What is it you think I want to know?” I asked.
“Look,” he said, “I don’t actually know where Kuga is. I’ve heard rumors. Somewhere in Canada, somewhere in Texas, who knows? I don’t know. No one does, but I can tell you where you can find Rafael Santoro.”
My heart was throwing haymaker punches against the walls of my chest. I pushed Ghost out of the way and leaned close so that it was my own furnace breath, my own hot spit he felt on his face.
“Where. Is. He?”
It came out as three words, three beats. He flinched as if each one were a physical blow. Casanova looked absolutely terrified. Of me. Of the dark things he saw in my eyes.
He said, “If you want to find Santoro, you need to go to talk to Die Katze.”
The Cat. A code name for a guy our friends at Barrier had been tracking. No one knew his real name, but he’d been a key lieutenant in the old Ohan international black market operation, though before that had worked in the sex-trafficking business. A real evil son of a bitch. Heartless and mercenary in the extreme. After Ohan got his throat cut, the Cat had become a free agent. I hadn’t heard that he was tied in with Kuga, though it made sense.
“That’s only useful information if you can tell me where to find Die Katze,” I said.
“At the Hotel Timișoara,” blurted Casanova. Now that he was talking, he seemed to want to please me. Smart move, since his life depended on it. There is no actual honor among thieves. There’s only fear, and he was more afraid of me at that moment than of anyone else. “You need to promise me that you’ll kill Santoro. If he ever suspects I told you…”
“Oh, bet your whole allowance on that,” I promised.
The big man studied me for a moment, then nodded. “Okay, go to the Hotel Timișoara. Die Katze will be there in four days. He’s overseeing a sale on behalf of Mr. Sunday.”
“Who’s that?”
Casanova licked his lips. “He’s the head of sales for Kuga. I never met him and only ever saw him on ShowRoom.”
He explained what ShowRoom was, and I wondered if Bug already knew about this. If not, I was going to have to break the silence and tell him. The further I moved away from dominance by the Darkness, the more I realized that I needed the RTI infrastructure.
“What is Die Katze selling?”
“I don’t know exactly. Some kind of drug. Not for street use. It supposedly has military applications. You’ll have to ask him. But whatever they’re selling, it’s important enough for Santoro to have sent the Cat.”
“Three quick questions and then I’ll leave you to get a Band-Aid on your ass.”
His eyes were wary and jumpy.
“First, I keep hearing about the American Operation. Tell me what you know.”
Casanova went a shade paler. “You … you can’t know about that.”
“Clearly, I can.” I made a small hand signal, and Ghost, right on cue, gave a nice hungry growl.
Fat beads of sweat were running down Casanova’s cheeks. “I don’t know the details. All I know is that it’s going to bring America to its knees. It’s going to make 9/11 look like a fucking birthday party.”
“When and where?”
“I don’t know. Truly. All I ever heard about is that the staging area is in Texas. Near a place called LaBorde.”
I grunted. I knew a couple of guys who lived there, out in East Texas.
“What about G-55?”
He shook his head. “I’ve heard that code, but I don’t know what it means. Not my department.”
Crap.
“Okay, let’s go back to the meeting with Die Katze. Tell me everything I need to know. If you trick me, you’d better hope I don’t live through it because I’ll let everyone know who put me onto that buy.”
From the stark terror in his eyes, I knew he believed me. He gave me some details and then said, “But, listen to me, Ledger, you’ll need to use a code phrase.”
“What phrase?”
Casanova said, “It’s—”
And then half the fucking building blew up.
CHAPTER 97
DAS VERARBEITUNGSZENTRUM
CELL 13
The explosion was so massive it picked up all three of us—Casanova, Ghost, and me—and hurled us across the cell.
We hit the wall with crushing force as the deep boom of the blast deafened us. We collapsed down onto the hard floor and lay in a gasping pile, none of us able to move a muscle. Dust plumed from cracks in the walls and ceiling.
I heard, as if from miles away, the sharp, high-pitched yelps of Ghost in pain. Everything was muffled, and the air was filled with swirling clouds of smoking dust. I rolled sideways, and there was another sharp cry from Ghost, then I felt him twisting under me, fighting to get free. I fought my way to palms and knees and turned to see the big white dog
standing there, a yard away, quivering with pain and confusion.
“Ghost,” I croaked, “report.” This was a command that had taken me a long time, and the help of a top dog psychologist and trainer, to make him understand. If he was hurt—really hurt—he’d bark twice. A single bark would tell me he was ready to play. Or fight.
He took a moment and then gave a single bark. Not a lot of authority in it, but he emphasized it with a half-hearted wag of his bushy tail.
“That makes one of us,” I groaned.
My body felt like I’d been dropped six stories into a rock quarry. The D30 composite materials inside my body armor had absorbed a lot of the foot-pounds of impact, but I still hurt. A lot. And I’d taken off my helmet to interrogate Casanova.
I turned to see how Casanova was doing, and he stared at me, and through me, and through the wall. He did it from a funny angle, his right ear pressed against one shoulder, and there was a sickening bulge in the side of his neck. The side of his skull had a weird, flattened appearance, and it was clear he’d hit the wall hard enough to crush his skull and break his neck. Ghost and me landing on top of him had ensured that whatever he’d been about to tell me was something Casanova was going to take to the grave.
I wanted to hang my head and beat my fists on the floor and yell. This was my last best lead to Santoro. I closed my eyes. I wanted to give up. I wanted to cry.
I wanted to die.
“Get up, Cowboy.”
The words jolted me. Cowboy was my old combat call sign from when I ran with the Department of Military Sciences. But the voice I heard, speaking to me there in that cell, did not belong to one of my former SpecOps colleagues. No. Nor was the use of the nickname related to my job. This was the voice of the person who’d hung that name on me a long, long time ago. A voice that could not be here. Not now, not ever.
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