by Blake Banner
“I told you I don’t know. I think I’m writing a book. But I don’t know.”
Hunter looked at the colonel. “He claims he lost his memory.”
“Last thing you remember?”
“I don’t remember a goddamn thing. I woke up in my Jeep in the desert with no idea who I was or how I got there. Now I am getting pissed. I said I would cooperate. I didn’t say I was OK with being bullied and manhandled by the goddamn army!”
The colonel stood and stared at me. “You going to invoke your rights as an American, boy?”
I held his eye. “Yeah. What you’re doing is against the law, and breaches my rights.”
He curled his lip. “Seems to me you got a problem, boy. See, you ain’t got no rights as an American citizen, because you can’t prove you even are an American. I say you are a goddamn Muslim terrorist, here spying on the American facilities and installations at White Sands. Now, can you prove you’re an American?”
I jerked my chin at him. “Screw you. I don’t need to prove a goddamn thing. You allege, you prove!”
He glanced at the major.
Outside, a Jeep skidded to a halt. The door at the end of the corridor slammed open and boots tramped down to the office. There was a loud knock. The colonel barked and the door opened. A grunt came in and stood to attention. Then he handed him my sports bag containing just short of five hundred grand and the Sig Sauer I had taken from Mendez.
“We conducted a search, sir, according to your instructions. These were the only things of significance that we found.”
The colonel dismissed the grunt and tipped out the contents of the bag on his large desk. The bills scattered in a green landslide and the heavy pistol clattered onto the wood.
He observed the pile for a moment, then shrugged. “What is that, four, five hundred grand? And this pistol.” He looked up at me. “When we run this through ballistics, do you think it will match any recent killings?”
“That’s not my gun. I took it from a son of a bitch who tried to shoot me with it.”
He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped the pistol in it, then handed it to Hunter. “Have this dusted for prints, trace them and have it tested by ballistics.”
Hunter took the gun, saluted and left the room. That left me alone with the colonel and two armed grunts. The colonel sat again and I studied his face, watching mine. I wondered if he knew who I was.
“Do you know who I am? Why are you doing this? This is not your jurisdiction.”
He shifted his eyes from my face and asked, “Where did you get all this money?”
“That’s none of your goddamn business.”
“It is if you received it for spying on American military bases.” He gave me a moment, then asked, “Who gave you this money?”
“Who am I?”
“That’s what I am trying to find out. Who gave you this money?”
“If you don’t know who I am, then why the treatment? Why are Military Intelligence involved in the murder of two punks at a diner?”
“For the last time, who gave you all this money?”
“I found it.”
“Where?”
“I can’t remember. I have amnesia.”
He considered me a moment, then stood, put his hands behind his back and made a slow circuit of the room. When he was standing behind me, he spoke suddenly.
“You’ve heard of the vigilante they are calling the Verdugo?”
“Sure.”
“Mean anything to you?”
“No.”
“I have a feeling that Sig says otherwise.”
“Your feelings are your own business, Colonel. And I’m still waiting to hear how any of this is MI’s jurisdiction. If you have suspicions, you should inform local law enforcement. This is not your business.”
When he spoke again, his voice was close to the back of my head.
“You deny you are the vigilante everyone is calling the Verdugo?”
“Yeah, I deny that, and I can’t wait to brief my lawyer. I am going to sue the US Army for every dime you were going to spend invading Iran.”
He walked around till he was standing in front of me. I knew I’d overplayed my hand and I was ready for the backhander when it came. But it still hurt like hell and left my head ringing. What I wasn’t ready for was the right cross that sent me crashing to the floor, half-unconscious. Or the vicious kicking that followed.
It lasted maybe five minutes, but it was enough to leave me badly bruised and weakened. I knew a couple more of those would incapacitate me, and clearly the constitutional rights of the US citizen card was no ace of trumps in this neighborhood. The same grunt who had kicked me to the ground earlier now grabbed a handful of my hair and dragged me to my feet. The colonel, panting from his exertion, shoved me backward into the chair. He thrust his face into mine, just an inch away, and screamed like a hysterical hyena, “Who are you and what are you doing here?”
And I knew in that moment I was going to kill him—him and his grunt. Whoever they were, they did not represent the government of the USA. They had their own agenda. I kept asking myself what it was, and why they were interested in me, and I only knew of one way to find out.
I had the iron taste of blood in my mouth, and I could feel my lip and the side of my face swelling. I said quietly, patiently, “I don’t know who I am. I am suffering from amnesia. I am here because you brought me here. I don’t know what you want or who you think I am, but you have made a mistake.”
He stood erect and looked down at me. The contempt was palpable, like slime. “Prove it!” He spat the words at me, literally, and I felt his saliva rain on my face. “Prove you are not a murdering vigilante! You were at the Casa Castaneda! You had Mendez’s gun on your person. All the murders have occurred since you arrived in the area! Prove to me that you had nothing to do with them.”
Now the bits started to drop into place. They did not know who I was, at most they suspected, but I doubted it. Their real concern was a very different one. I smiled.
“How can I prove a negative?”
“Who do you work for?”
I spoke without thinking, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You have an accomplice? A superior?”
“I wish I could tell you I do or I don’t, but I just don’t know! I don’t know!”
He turned to the guards by the door. “Take him to the cell.”
They seized my arms and dragged me away. They shoved me stumbling and weakened down the corridor and back out into the desert sunshine. I shaded my eyes and they pushed and dragged me across the yard to a building that was little more than a shack next to some hangars. They unlocked the door and threw me in. There were no windows and the place was dark. I dropped to the floor, rolled on my back and listened to the door lock behind me.
Ten
I lay for half an hour, nursing my wounds in the dark and allowing my eyes to adjust to the absence of light. I had thought to begin with that Major Hunter and his colonel had some idea who I was, and some interest in confirming it. But what had come across from his inept interrogation was much simpler than that. They were interested in catching the vigilante, El Verdugo. They suspected, correctly, that I was the Verdugo, but that was the extent of their knowledge about me. They suspected that they knew who I was now, but they had no idea who I had been before.
After a time, when my eyes had adjusted, I dragged myself to my feet and had a look around. It was a plain, empty room with a wooden door and no window. The door had a simple Yale lock—a cinch if I’d had my knife. Nothing immediately sprang to mind as a weapon, either. Though killing members of the American military was probably not the smartest thing I could do right then.
Unless…
I slid down the wall and curled up on the floor. If there was nothing I could do right then, my best plan was to sleep and try to recover some of my strength. I was pretty sure I was going to need it.
They came back about an h
our later, the one who’d hit me with the rifle butt and another one. They didn’t put much enthusiasm into it. They kicked me around for about five minutes, like an old football, but they’d obviously interrupted a cheap porn or a rerun of their favorite sitcom, because they finished up quickly and left. But enthusiasm or not, they left me in even less of a fit state to make a run. I tried to find a place on my body that didn’t hurt so I could lie on it, but there wasn’t one.
So, I thought about Sole and the silk-clad Mendez instead. What was her tie to him? How much trouble was she in now? Would he bring reprisals against her? The chances were he would, and as long as I was stuck here, being interrogated by these bastards, I could do nothing to help her. I didn’t know how I was going to do it. I doubted I could even stand right then, let alone run, but I had to get out.
After a while, I managed to doze fitfully. I don’t know how long, but eventually, I heard boots tramping outside again and groaned. They were coming back for more. I pushed myself up against the wall and prepared to try to stand. I was out of options. I was going to have to either kill them or die.
The door opened and the two grunts came in, followed by the colonel. They’d brought an old, rickety wooden chair with them for him to sit on. He sat and produced the Sig from his pocket. “Where did you get this?”
“I took it from Mendez when he tried to shoot me this morning.”
“So you were targeting Mendez, the same way you targeted Ivory and the Gomez brothers?”
“Why should you care?”
“Just answer the question. Were you targeting these people for execution?”
“That’s ridiculous. Look at the state of me after your half-assed grunts have had a go at me! You think I’m capable of the stuff the Verdugo does? You’re out of your mind.”
“We have your prints and we will pass them along to the Sheriff’s Department and the FBI, for them to compare with prints found at the scenes…”
I interrupted him. “No, you won’t.”
He hesitated a moment.
Before he could say anything, I went on. “The last thing you want is local, or state, law enforcement looking into your interest in these cases. The Verdugo is hurting you, but you cannot afford for anybody to find out, can you?”
His voice was quiet, the way a snake’s voice is quiet. “What are you talking about?”
“What am I talking about? I am talking about using the proceeds from major drug deals to finance dark operations in…where, Colonel? Iran? Or are we still active in Afghanistan and Syria? Maybe we’re making the odd dark excursion into Pakistan, huh? But the federal government cannot be seen funding that kind of illegal operation. So there cannot be a paper trail. The money must be untraceable.”
He closed his eyes, like he was sad, and shook his head. “You are fantasizing. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Marxist Muslim propaganda being fed to simple, vulnerable minds.”
“So I am no longer an ace ninja vigilante? Now I’m a weak-minded Marxist Muslim?”
He jerked his head and the two grunts grabbed my arms. “If you won’t talk here, we’ll take you somewhere you will.”
The colonel stood, walked out of the room and I made my play. I made a feeble attempt to shake free of the grunts and snapped at them, “I can walk!” He didn’t like my tone and he curled his lip, swore at me and shoved me hard. I stumbled and fell onto the wooden chair. As I’d expected, it splintered underneath me and I crashed to the floor.
They came after me, grabbing me by the scruff of my neck and dragging me to my feet. I made a big show of cowering and covering myself, and by the time they’d gotten me up and out of the room, I had my weapon. It wasn’t much, but a long, jagged piece of wood is as lethal as a samurai sword, once it’s inside you.
They dragged me outside, where the late dusk was turning the desert from copper to formless gray, and threw me in the back of a Jeep again. It was no surprise to see the colonel being driven away ahead of us in a black Audi, with the glow of his headlamps picking out the path, and a big plume of dust trailing behind him.
He turned left and west onto the blacktop, moving away from US Highway 70 and deeper into the desert, toward the larger facility I had seen earlier. Now it was a ghostly, floodlit pool in the middle of the quickening blackness.
The grunt who’d hit me with the rifle butt was sitting in front, half-turned toward me with a service pistol in his hand, and I had a grunt on either side, each holding an automatic weapon. Then there was the driver. From what I could see, he was a sergeant.
This wasn’t the time, but for the hell of it, I eyed Rifle-Butt Man up front and said, “You Army, Air Force? What the hell is this place?”
He sneered, but he didn’t say anything. I looked away and smiled at the racing blackness around us. After about ten minutes, the Audi up ahead swung right off the road and we followed it. Ten minutes later, we drove into the facility, or the base, or whatever the hell it was. The guard on duty at the barrier must have known the colonel’s Audi because he glanced at it and saluted without stopping it. We sailed through in its wake.
Before we reached the main offices of the base, the Audi turned off the blacktop and we moved across the dirt toward a collection of huts and low buildings set aside from the main complex. I figured these were the colonel’s “facilities.” I had a nasty pit in my belly that I knew was raw fear. This was it. They were going to torture me. Now.
We headed for one of the huts. The door was open and light was spilling out onto the yellow sand. The Audi was parked out front with its two near-side doors open. We pulled up behind it and they dragged me out by my arms and my hair. Then they pushed me through the open door into the hut. I saw a small desk with the colonel sitting behind it. In the middle of the room was an autopsy table and next to it was a trolley with lots of cold, steel blades on it. Beyond, there was an iron frame bolted to the wall. There was also a tap, like a garden tap, with a bucket next to it.
The colonel looked at me with eyes that were bored of looking at suffering. His eyes said he had seen human beings reduced to their most pitiful, broken state and he’d gotten used to it. He said, “I don’t know if you’re lying or telling the truth about your amnesia. But I can tell you that a powerful enough imperative drive can have a remarkable impact on the memory.” He shook his head. “I am not being facetious. I have witnessed extraordinary feats of vivid, total recall when a person is subjected to extreme conditions.”
I frowned. “But I don’t understand what you want from me. I am just a guy who lost his memory.” I gestured at the instruments of torture, his “facility.” “And this? You seriously believe you can get away with this? If the Feds aren’t onto you already, believe me, it is just a matter of time.”
He smiled at his desk and shook his head. “Is that your opinion, as a well-informed man without identity and without memory?”
The pain in the back of my legs was like nothing I had ever felt in my life. But before I could fall, I was being dragged backward by my collar and my hair and I was thinking frantically, Not the autopsy table! Not the autopsy table! That was when I saw the pulley in the ceiling. The room went upside down, my head smashed against hard concrete floor and a loop of rope bit into my ankles. My face dragged on the cement and then I was swinging, being hoisted upside-down with my arms dangling ineffectually.
It stopped when my head was four feet from the floor. Then the colonel dragged a wooden chair in front of me and sat with his face maybe a foot or eighteen inches from mine.
“First,” he said, “we will castrate you. We will use slightly blunt blades, not quite razor-sharp. The scrotum is, as you know, a very sensitive area with many nerve endings. The pain, Mr. Whomeveryouare, will be beyond imagining. But the psychological impact will be even more destructive.”
He paused to study my face. I could feel it swelling up with blood.
“Your death, however,” he went on, “will not follow quickly. We will do things to you that go beyond ho
rror. They will drive you to gibbering insanity, yet we will make it linger. If you talk now, I can promise you a quick, painless death. If you talk a lot and you are of interest to us, I may even be able to spare your life and get you treatment, for your amnesia.”
“All this, just to find out if I am a vigilante? It doesn’t make sense.”
He gave a short laugh. “Obviously! And you must know by now that you were not far wrong in your assessment. You know…” He gave another laugh and shook his head. “The liberal lobby, the people who want America to be overrun by Muslims, who would sell our democracy down the river in order to pander to half-baked politically correct ideals—that should all make me sick to my stomach, but it doesn’t. You know why?”
“Because you find fulfillment in torture and murder? Maybe you are the vigilante! Had you thought of that?”
He ignored me. “Because it means we, the military, are doing our job. As long as there are half-assed liberals out there talking shit, it means they feel safe and protected.”
“That’s very moving.”
He grinned at me and stuck his upside-down finger in my face. “But how do we keep you safe, when every day more half-assed, politically correct morons are invading Congress? They are so stupid, Mr. Whomeveryouare, that they would legislate away the very thing that allows them to be so stupid with impunity.” He spread his hands. “So the more stupid and numerous they become, the greater the risk to their security. And the greater the risk to their security, the more ruthless I must become in protecting them.”
“So you acknowledge that what you are doing is illegal.”
“What is law but rules backed by the threat of violence? Now, time to start talking…”
I ignored him. I had to. I needed him to look away for just a moment. I had to find some pretext. Rifle Butt had stepped out to take the air. Maybe he was squeamish and knew what was coming. His pal was sitting by the door watching me with bored eyes, like he wanted to fast-forward to the good bit.
I said, “You’re crazy. You can’t just arrest random citizens and torture and murder them because you suspect they are vigilantes. We have the rule of law in this country!” I was beginning to feel sick and my head was starting to ache.
