End Game

by John Gilstrap

  After a minute or two of manhandling, they rested him on a hard surface. It felt cold against his sweat-soaked T-shirt. The chill was a relief at first, but then not so much. It was a little too cold. They laid him faceup so that his bound hands pressed into the small of his back, hurting his thumbs and stretching his spine backward past the extent it was supposed to go.

  Graham knew that people were talking around him, but there were no discernible words, only muffled rumbles that had the rhythm of speech. He jumped as someone touched the bare flesh of his knees, and jumped again when they touched his ankles. When hands fumbled at his head as well, he understood that they were in the process of untying him. That in itself was a relief until he realized that the serious business of why he was here was about to begin. For the time being, they needed him alive. That gave him a few more minutes, anyway.

  They freed his ears first. He felt the pressure of the bindings releasing from around his head, and then there was a soft pop as the clay stuff was pulled away.

  The tape didn’t come off easily from around his mouth. The effort jerked his head first to the side, and then off whatever surface he was lying on. When the final loop came free from around his mouth, it hurt like hell. He wondered if they’d torn skin off with it.

  “Ow!” he said through the gauze in his mouth.

  “You can spit that out,” the man with the accent said.

  Graham tried, but his mouth was so dry that the edges of the material stuck to his lips. Ultimately, he had to force it out with his tongue.

  “I would help you,” the familiar voice said, “but I fear that you would bite me. Then I would have no choice but to pull all of your teeth out with a pliers. I wouldn’t want that. I don’t think you would want that, either.” The man spoke the horrible words with such an easy tone that Graham didn’t doubt one bit that he would do exactly as he said.

  “Now, sit up, Graham,” the man said. “Let’s give your arms and shoulders some relief.”

  They helped him roll to his side, and as he did, he jumped as his feet and legs fell.

  “You are on a table,” his captor explained. “Do not be afraid. We will not let you fall.”

  Graham relaxed a little, and then realized how stupid that was. They could just as easily push him down on his face as live up to their promise.

  Only they didn’t push him down on his face. Hands gently leaned him forward as they worked first on his elbows and then his wrists.

  “There will be some discomfort in your arms,” the man said. “They will feel stiff, and your hands are swollen from being tied. Do not worry about that. The discomfort will not last for long.”

  After his hands were freed, Graham tried to flex his fingers, but they wouldn’t work. It was as if they were frozen open.

  “That is the swelling,” the man said.

  The compresses were lifted from Graham’s eyes, and his first instinct was to look at the swelling. His fingers were the size of sausage links, and they were purple. His heart skipped.

  Gangrene.

  “Do not look so frightened,” the man said through a heavy accent. Graham realized now that he was the same guy who had chased him down in the woods. The same man who had killed the Markhams. “You might have guessed that I have done these things many, many times. The swelling is really perfectly normal.”

  The smile on his face matched the smile in his voice. Relax, kid, I’m a professional torturer. You have nothing to worry about. I’ll only hurt you as much as I need to, and not a bit more.

  Graham squinted against the yellow light of the room. The table he sat on was made of metal, and it seemed to be in far better, cleaner shape than anything else in here. The room itself was maybe twelve by twelve feet, and except for the other men in the room—all of whom wore beards and burned hatred in their eyes—the table was the only furniture. Dozens of sharp, menacing hooks hung from the ceiling. They looked like fishhooks for a whale, only without the barbs. It took him a while, but Graham recognized them as meat hooks.

  He shot a look toward the man who’d taken him.

  “This is a meatpacking plant,” the man explained. “Or, it was at one time. Now it is merely a playground for people who do my kind of work.” He cast a glance over his shoulder at the array of hooks. “Frightening things, aren’t they? I imagine that they would hurt wherever I put one of those, but I can think of a few places where they would hurt particularly bad.”

  The man shifted his eyes to Graham. “I bet you can think of some of those places, too. Yes?”

  Graham felt a chill, and he started to tremble. “W-who are you?”

  “I am nobody,” the man said. “I am just a soldier in an army you’ve never heard of.” He seemed amused by his words, broadening his smile. “But I understand that names are important. Call me Teddy, then. As in a big cuddly teddy bear. Do you like the name Teddy?”

  Graham had no idea how to answer the question. He worked his mouth, but the resultant squeaking sound embarrassed him.

  “I understand that you are frightened,” Teddy said. “And for good reason. Here you are, away from home, away from your parents, and away from your nanny. You’re in this frightening place with so many sharp hooks. They used to hang cow carcasses from those back when the factory was still in business.”

  Moving with the speed of a striking snake, Teddy grabbed the nape of Graham’s neck and enclosed it in a viselike grip, squeezing hard enough to make the fibers of the muscles in Graham’s neck feel as if they were being pried apart. With his other hand, Teddy poked his forefinger under the boy’s jaw, in the soft spot just behind the point of the chin.

  “This is my favorite spot to put the hook on people who do not cooperate with me.” He pressed hard with the finger. “The point goes into the flesh and out again under the tongue. People can hang that way for longer than you probably think.”

  Graham found himself crying. He feared he might throw up.

  Teddy let go and Graham coughed.

  The torturer smiled again. “I know that the table is not very soft, but try to make yourself comfortable. Sit back. Relax.”

  Graham didn’t move. He didn’t know if the man’s words were a trap, or if he really wanted him to do something. In the end, it seemed not to matter.

  “You know, Graham Mitchell, we are very nearly friends. Did you know that?”

  Graham shook his head.

  “Sooner or later, you will need to speak words,” Teddy said. “Now is as good a time to start as any.”

  Graham cleared his throat. “No,” he said. “I didn’t know that we are friends. I don’t remember ever meeting you before.”

  “I overstate by saying friends,” he clarified. “You spoke with a colleague of mine this morning. You called him with a message, and then you hung up without giving him the information that you were supposed to give. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

  Graham nodded. “Y-yes. But like I told him, I forgot what the number was.”

  Teddy landed him with an openhanded slap that felt more like a closed-fist punch. Graham saw stars and smelled blood. He damn near fell off the table.

  “Now, you see, young man, I believe that was a lie you just told. Lying is a sin, and I cannot abide liars. You disappoint me.”

  Teddy glared at Graham for what felt like thirty seconds, and then he changed. Tension seemed to leave his shoulders. He looked to the four other men in the room. “Come,” he said. “We should give young Mister Mitchell time to think about his options.”

  As one, the men all moved toward the heavy metal door that led out into what appeared to be a concrete hallway. Teddy was last to leave. As he got to the door, he paused and looked back at Graham, who hadn’t moved from his spot on the table. “Try to stay warm,” he said. “This is, after all, a freezer.”

  Teddy stepped out into the hallway and closed the door behind him.

  A heavy lock slid shut on the other side of the door. Graham was trapped.

  Somewhere behin
d the walls—maybe from up in the ceiling—a motor started. Within seconds he felt a breeze of frigid air pouring out of three huge vents that hung too high to reach.

  To avoid the direct blast of air, Graham lowered himself from the metal table onto the tiled floor. He pulled his legs up, Indian style, and he pulled both arms out of the stretched-out sleeves of his T-shirt and he hugged himself. He’d stay as warm as he could for as long as he could.

  This is, after all, a freezer.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  It took the better part of an hour for Boxers to pilot the Expedition to the coordinates Venice had dictated over the radio, only to find that the coordinates were approximate, at best. They took them to the right neighborhood, but from there, the search went manual and old-fashioned.

  “I don’t often think we’re under-gunned,” Boxers grumbled as he approached the turn from Gratiot Avenue onto Maple Ridge Street. “But tonight, I’m worried.”

  To say this was a bad neighborhood was to give bad neighborhoods a bad name. This was the worst of Detroit’s urban blight. North of Grosse Point Park, they were square in the middle of zip code 48205, the deadliest real estate in one of the deadliest cities in the Western Hemisphere.

  Jonathan took in the scenery. Despite the darkness of the night, which got very little help from the streetlights that were mostly burned out, the Expedition’s headlights washed over the facades of buildings on Gratiot Avenue that clearly had once been thriving businesses. This was a well-built downtown area—lots of brick and stout construction—but as many of the buildings were boarded up or burned out as they were still alive. Those that still seemed to be in business sported bars and barricades that were every bit as intimidating and secure as anything he saw in the war zones where he’d served.

  “Not exactly Mayberry, is it?” Jonathan asked.

  “Only in a world where Barney Fife is played by John Malkovich,” Boxers said.

  Jonathan laughed. The image tickled him. “And Christopher Walken as Andy,” he said.

  That elicited a big, genuine laugh from Boxers. “That’s a whole different show, isn’t it?”

  Now that they’d turned the corner onto Maple Ridge Street, the boarded-up businesses had become boarded-up houses. Again, it was sad. You could see the middle-class roots in the homes. Most of them were one story to one and a half. Jonathan imagined that they had been built post–World War II, and at one time they were occupied by families whose futures were bright. They couldn’t have foreseen the strife and the riots and the neglect that came to define what was once one of the greatest cities in America.

  And now was simply a mess.

  Jonathan keyed his mike. “The license plate we’re looking for is—” He recited the number from his notes.

  “That’s it,” Mother Hen confirmed. “It will be on a black sedan. A Lincoln. The make and model are not clear from the video, but from what I can see, the size and the shape of the car are consistent with a Lincoln. Not the big one, but an intermediate one.”

  How many could there be? Certainly, a new vehicle— anything younger than ten years old—should stand out like a beacon against the primer-coated wrecks that lined the streets.

  Most of the houses were surrounded by chain-link fences whose height spoke more to keeping dogs in than keeping intruders out—though the two goals often intersected. Jonathan had donned his NVGs—night-vision goggles—in an effort to make out the terrain and the license numbers, but even in the intensified green light that mimicked a weird lunar form of daylight, the cars along the street all looked similar—and precious few of them had license plates.

  As they cruised the neighborhood, the spacing between the houses opened up. Before long, they were in the middle of an abandoned industrial area. Dormant, diseased factories rose up against the urban backdrop, black stains against a black night. Jonathan noted one smokestack in particular that rose from the middle of a long, wide, flat-topped building, as if to flip off the community for the terrible fate that had befallen its inhabitants.

  “Kill your lights,” Jonathan said. “Go to NVGs.” He was worried that the slow-moving headlights would attract the attention of whatever street gangs controlled this part of the city. And he bore no doubt that the neighborhood was controlled by a gang. In cities like this, where only one out of five ambulances was operational, and the average response times for police approached two hours—God knew they couldn’t come with less than a platoon of cops and an arsenal of weapons—citizens depended on gangs to keep them safe. Hell, they had to depend on somebody.

  Jonathan imagined that Boxers appreciated the opportunity to drive with NVGs instead of headlights. They’d replaced the two-tube NVG arrays that they’d gotten used to in the service with the more current, higher tech four-tube arrays, which solved the age-old problem of tunnel vision. Now, when they viewed the world through their NVGs, they had nearly a panoramic view. Jonathan’s only problem with them were that they looked funny. Every upside came with a downside, he told himself.

  “What do you think about this factory?” Boxers asked.

  “By the nature of the question, I think you have a concern you’re not sharing with me,” Jonathan replied.

  “Well, we’ve got these big fences,” Big Guy said. “They present a perimeter of, what, a hundred, two hundred yards?”

  “Something like that.”

  Boxers shrugged. “I’m just saying you can hide a lot of rolling stock back there and we’d never see it.”

  It was a very good point, Jonathan thought. They were big buildings that sat far from the road. How difficult would it be to drive into the middle of the compound and then just park your vehicle—hell, it could be the size of an eighteen-wheeler—behind a wall and out of sight?

  “I’m switching to thermal,” Jonathan said.

  When you paid as much for a set of night vision devices as he paid for these, you got options that the hunting public never experienced. By flipping a switch on his NVGs, the device switched from image enhancement—essentially reflecting infrared beams that were shot out to the target object—to true infrared reading, which captured the heat signatures that were emitted by target objects.

  His vision flashed. After a day as bright as this one, every surface emitted heat, so he needed to dial down the gain.

  Once the images were stabilized, he would be able to read the relative heat signatures of the various buildings and vehicles. A car that had recently been driven, for example, would paint as hotter than one that had not been driven in a while, even though both may have been in the hot sun all day. It worked the same way with buildings. Those that were occupied should show up as warmer than those that were not.

  Boxers drove slowly as Jonathan scanned the horizon. Nothing jumped out as significant.

  Jonathan pressed his transmit button. “Mother Hen, can you give us anything more specific on the location?”

  “Of course,” she said, but there was an edge to her tone. “I could give the actual address and close-up pictures if I wanted to, but as usual, I’ve decided to let you wander aimlessly.”

  “Ooh,” Boxers said. “The lioness is cranky.”

  “I’ll take that to mean a negative,” Jonathan said. He made no effort to keep the irritation out of his voice. “I’ll take whatever you can give me, up to and including a reliable gut hunch.”

  “So, what’s your gut hunch, Boss?” Boxers asked. “I figure you’ve always got one.”

  “I’m thinking that if we find Jolaine Cage, we’re also going to find Graham Mitchell.”

  Boxers made a groaning sound. “Congratulations, then. Because you’re a hell of a lot more optimistic than me.”

  “Everybody’s more optimistic than you.”

  “Har, har. I’m just sayin’ that I don’t think there’s a chance in hell that either of them are still alive.”

  “The kid has to be alive,” Jonathan said. “He’s got the information they want.”

  “Unless the Ruskies got to h
im first. He’s got the information they want to keep quiet. And as for the Chechens, the second the kid opens his mouth and gives them what they want, he’s toast.”

  Jonathan waved him off. “No, now that’s not true, either. Not right away, anyway. They’ll want to buy some time to make sure that what he gave them is actually the code.”

  Boxers laughed. “Oh, good. Even better. So terrorists will wait to confirm that they have nuclear capability and then kill our PC. Yeah, good. Now I feel better. So tell me this: Why keep the girl alive?”

  Jonathan sighed. “That’s a tougher one,” he said. “I’ll only give even money on her. Maybe not even that much. Whatever it is, they drove her all the way out here for a reason. Maybe it’s just to get rid of the body, but it’s a reason. There’s also a reason why Graham wasn’t killed with those others. That tells me that his snatchers are of the Chechen variety, not the Russian variety.”

  “Well, there you go,” Boxers said. “Case solved.”

  They cruised for another two hundred feet. The first factory, first of several in a row, showed no signs of life. As they approached the next, Boxers pointed at a spot beyond the windshield. “Hey, Boss,” he said. “Trouble at twelve o’clock level.”

  Jonathan pivoted his head to the right to see a clutch of young men approaching them in the dark. They were all black, and they all walked with attitude. He cursed himself for being so involved with his survey of the area that he missed the obvious.

  “I see weapons,” Jonathan said. The young toughs were not even making an effort to conceal their firepower. Among the six of them, Jonathan recognized two MAC-10s and at least four pistols.

  Next to him, Boxers drew his M9 and cocked the hammer. “I’m ready,” he said. “I’ll take the three on the left.”

  “Not yet,” Jonathan said. “Only if they fire first.”

  “Shit,” Boxers spat. “You know, if they fire first, they might just hit something, right?”

  “This isn’t the fight we want,” Jonathan said.