by Luna, David
As soon as he was on the couch—soft ice packs covering the treatment areas for the pain and swelling—he pulled the blanket off the back of the couch and draped it over his chest and legs. His two cuddly, little Egyptian Mau kittens snuggled up on his chest, under his chin. He scratched them between the ears until they purred for him and then settled his hands on their tiny bodies and promptly passed out.
GIDEON LEFT THE OLD AUTOMOBILE tire production and distribution center on the outskirts of Timisoara, the city in Romania that Alan called home. As he neared Alan’s home, he got out to open the gate, pulled in, shut the gate behind him, and entered the single-story house.
Alan’s car was nearly ten years old, his home outwardly appeared as rundown as those nearby, and he had very little in the way of technological advances. The fact that the man didn’t have a cell phone was just one more thing on the list of WTF-isms the man had going on. He began to search the small house, quickly finding the vacuum in the tiny closet just off the kitchen.
He pulled the heavy vacuum out of the closet. It was an older canister style number so he knelt and flipped up the top of the vacuum’s body where the bag was housed. He lifted the bag, which was attached to the filter housing with a round rubber connector.
Once he detached the connector and lifted the vacuum bag, he flipped it over and discovered a cut in the back of the bag by the top. He slid his hand in and was surprised to grip a handle of some sort. He pulled out whatever it was he’d grabbed, but couldn’t have prepared himself for the item he held in his hand.
He fell back on his ass and stared at the small branding iron in his hand. It matched the brands he’d seen on the victims’ bodies. He dropped it as if he’d been burned and his stomach turned as he pulled out a small blow torch. Dropping it angrily by the iron, he shoved his hand back into the bag and removed three full manila envelopes, each with the number thirteen written on the front in thick black marker, and finally, four black plastic film canisters.
He replaced the bag, attaching the rubber connector properly before closing the lid and putting the vacuum back where he’d found it. He got up and walked to the dark room, turned on the light, filling the room with a red glow. He began a more thorough search of the room and all the photography supplies than he’d done in the beginning, gathering up about ten more film canisters.
He gathered everything into a small shopping bag and left the house. He took his time driving back to the distribution center, knowing the wait would increase the anxiety, not to mention the pain Alan would be subjected to. When he arrived, he took the steps leading to the basement quietly, picking up the crowbar in the same manner. Alan, eyes squeezed tightly shut, was moaning softly and despite the small boiler door being left wide open, shivering from the cold.
He slammed the crowbar down on the wooden table, causing the man to cry out in shock. He stacked the envelopes on the table beside all the film canisters, tossing the iron and torch down on the table with a clatter, pulled the chair up, and sat. “Let’s see what we have here. Care to walk me through it, or do I get to be surprised?”
Alan growled and began thrashing in his bindings again, spittle flying as he yelled out his frustration. “Fuck you! FUCK YOU, MCCADE! I’m not saying shit!”
Gideon pulled the first envelope forward. “Well, I don’t think you’re going to have to. I think I have what I need right here, don’t you?”
Gideon set about discovering what he’d really unearthed from that vacuum bag. Ignoring the piteous noises across the room, he opened the first notebook and slipped into a nightmare. An hour later, eyes scratchy, headache brewing, and utterly horrified by what he’d learned, Gideon stood slowly. Swallowing down bile, he was thankful he hadn’t had anything to eat since lunch. He’d have lost it for sure.
He knew it would be bad and he’d seen some of the worst the world had to offer, but those disturbing acts of unbelievable violence with such blatant disregard for human suffering was almost more than he could handle—and he could handle a lot. He knew how to compartmentalize better than most and he never let emotions cloud his judgment, but what a mindfuck.
Taking several deep breaths, the nausea subsiding, Gideon reached toward the other side of the table. He wrapped his fingers around the leather handle of the sjambok and approached Alan. He watched as the man’s eyes widened in horror as he tested the pliability of the whip, grabbing both ends and bending it nearly in half.
It was three feet in length and the leather handle was about an inch thick, the body, made out of thick black pliable plastic, tapered down to around a quarter of an inch. “So, how’s the head feeling? It’s painful being hung upside down for any length of time, isn’t it?”
Alan’s moans stopped long enough for him to spit out, “Go to hell!”
Gideon lowered the whip down along his side and tapped it repeatedly against his lower leg hard enough to make a loud thipping noise. “I had quite a bit of evidence coming into our little meeting today, but your treasure trove of material here is exactly what we needed to help shut down the syndicate for good. There’s still a lot that doesn’t make sense though. That’s where you’ll come in handy. I want information, Alan. But what I need to know is if you’re going to make this easy, or if you’re going to make it fun.”
Alan crunched his stomach muscles and threw himself backwards, succeeding only in making himself sway back and forth. He growled in frustration and bit out, “I already told you, I’m not saying shit.”
Gideon chuckled humorlessly. “Well, we both know that’s not true. Don’t we? Your vacuum was a veritable fount of information. Thanks for that, by the way.” Tap, tap, tap. “What I don’t quite get are the locations for the other dead, branded bodies. The ones in your—for lack of a better word—district, all tie back to your meticulously kept records, which all stem from Southeastern European countries.”
“I’m not saying shit!”
Gideon continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “But there are so many others in my dossier whose locations range from South America to Africa to Asia. Which leads me to believe that you are not who the CIA desperately wants you to be… No.” Tap, tap, tap. Gideon circled him. “I don’t believe for a second that you’re Diabo Feio. I think you’re one tiny, little cog in a very big machine.” Tap, tap, tap. “So, Alan, why don’t you enlighten me? Who is Diabo Feio?”
A terrified look had etched itself across Alan’s face. “FUCK YOU!”
“It’s gonna be like that, is it?” Tap, tap, tap. He circled the man again. “You should have gone with easy, Alan. But I guess you prefer fun.”
The first crack of the whip against Alan’s side elicited a howl like none Gideon had ever heard. And a burst of satisfied warmth wended its way through him when he realized he was exacting a small bit of vengeance for Alan’s many victims. He hadn’t tortured anyone with a sjambok in years. And it was an instrument of torture, and not the type of torture he enjoyed inflicting on willing submissives at his club. No, the sjambok—for him—was and would always be, a method of torture from his past life, used as a means to an end.
Putting his whole weight behind the blow, he admitted to himself that he may have let the contents of the vacuum bag color the intensity and strength of his swing. He’d never before let his personal feelings get in the way of his duty, but that man had proven to Gideon—like none of the others before him—that he was not the robotic killing machine he’d once been dubbed.
There was nothing robotic or unemotional in him now. As he landed his fifth blow, each one leaving a long bloody welt on the once clean canvas of Alan’s skin, he called out another of the names of the man’s victims on his downward swing. Before moving onto the next hit, he detailed everything the coroners could glean from each of that victim’s many injuries. He’d read the CIA’s file so many times, he had the facts memorized, doubtful now that they’d ever leave his mind.
Ignoring Alan’s pained shouts, Gideon continued on—name…lash…list of the victim’s i
njuries…lash…name…lash…list of the victim’s injuries…lash. As he lifted the whip up for the ninth time, in preparation for a blow across the man’s right pectoral, the blood humming in his ears finally ebbed enough to allow him to hear that the groaning and moaning had become a desperate plea. “Please, no more. Please. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Just please, no more.”
Gideon lowered the whip down along his side again, wiped the whip along his pant leg, a smear of blood left in its wake, and pulled in several deep breaths. He was sweating and his muscles were bunched. He shrugged his shoulders and moved his head back and forth, loosening the tightness there. One more deep breath in and his calm was restored.
He circled his prey, admiring the marks he’d left behind, and settled in front of him. As he focused on the red-rimmed, bloodshot, and teary eyes of his target, he tapped the whip against his leg again, eyes narrowing as Alan’s body jumped involuntarily with each slap. He waited in silence and was finally rewarded.
“I don’t know who he is and before you tell me that’s bullshit, it’s the fucking truth. None of us know who he is.” Alan struggled, handcuffs clinking together as he adjusted his arms behind his back. “You gotta let me down, man. I’ll tell you what you want to know, but you gotta get me down. Please, it hurts. Everything hurts.”
“It’s supposed to hurt, Alan. I was trained by the very best to ensure that it does. And that answer is not gonna cut it, I’m afraid.” He raised his arm again without warning and brought it down on Alan’s chest while calling out another child’s name and their many injuries.
“Oh god, stop. Just please. Stop. I’ll tell you everything. I’ll tell you everything!”
Gideon nodded. “I thought we might be able to come to an agreement. Let’s start with your current employer, and then you can clear up a few issues from our shared past.”
Stepping back, Gideon folded his arms across his chest, sjambok still in his hand, now wedged under his armpit and pointed upwards. He tilted his head, watching as Alan’s eyes followed the movements of the whip and raised his brow when the man’s eyes finally met his again. Alan mumbled unintelligibly. Gideon stepped forward, unfolding his arms and saw Alan flinch violently as the whip was brought down to Gideon’s side once again.
“What did you say?”
Alan squeezed his eyes shut, his face scrunched in pain, tears falling. Gideon watched, indifferent, as the man seemed to gather himself enough to be able to talk. “He knows who we are, but he never uses our names. He calls us his ‘cem’—his one hundred men. I’m lucky number thirteen.”
Gideon recalled the number thirteen being on nearly everything in those envelopes. He watched as Alan closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. Keeping them closed, he continued. “We each have a region. We funnel the children in with strict orders to never pull in anyone older than twenty. We mark them with his brand so it’s visible in photos. We take the pictures, process them ourselves, and write on the front of the eight by tens where they came from and where they are going.”
Alan continued to tell Gideon what he knew. What was clear was that he didn’t know anyone else’s side of the business. He was kept in the dark about anything that he didn’t need to know, but was able to give enough to Gideon that they’d eventually be able to find Diabo Feio after gathering more of the “cem” to provide enough information to dismantle and destroy the syndicate. With the last of his strength, Alan explained what he’d done to the men in Gideon’s unit and to Mason all those years ago.
As Alan wound down, his words were coming slower, pain etched in the lines of his face, exhaustion not allowing him to continue. Gideon set the sjambok down on the table, picked up the blowtorch and approached Alan. He switched it on and brought the flame near Alan’s cheek, providing enough heat to get the nearly unconscious man’s attention. Alan’s lids slid slowly open, too fatigued to react quickly, even while the flame heated his face. “Is there anything else I need to know?”
Alan whined and tried to shake his head. His answer was barely a whisper. “No.”
Gideon tucked the torch in his back pocket and took out his blade. He’d gotten the information he needed. All that was left to do was finish the job. As Alan was close to losing consciousness completely and was beyond comprehension at that point, he quickly slit the man’s throat and stepped back several paces, waiting patiently until the end.
Afterwards, he stripped down to his socks and underwear, pulled on some fresh clothes and shoes, and a new pair of gloves. He took his bloody clothes, along with the tattered remains of Alan’s, to the boiler and tossed them into the flames along with the knife he’d just used. He closed the door of the huge machine, wishing, not for the first time, that the opening was large enough for Alan’s body, but knowing he’d have to leave it and trust that it would be taken care of properly.
He shut the door to the boiler room, gathered everything he’d brought into his military duffle, and shouldered the bag as he climbed the stairs, leaving what was left of Alan behind. Pulling his sat phone out of his pocket, he dialed and waited.
Boone answered on the third ring. Gideon dove right in. “The men you put on me have a mess to clean up.”
“I didn’t—”
“You did.”
“Wait, a mess? You were supposed to bring him in! We need everything he’s got on this fucking syndicate, Gideon! You fucking took the guy out? That wasn’t what we agreed—”
Gideon snarled. “We didn’t agree to shit! You dangled this guy in front of me knowing I’d reel him in like a fish. Well, I reeled him in and gutted him. If your boys are fast and industrious, they’ll have him in pieces fairly quickly and make good use of the boiler room.”
“Boiler room?! What the fuck? Gideon, listen—”
Gideon’s voice was more of a growl when he responded. “No, you listen. You dragged me back into a life I no longer want and a mess you know very little about. Your two best men just became my fixers. That should keep them busy long enough for me to get gone. If one of them remains on my six, you’ll have another mess that needs cleaning and you won’t get any of the information I have.”
“Gideon, you need to be debrief—”
“I’ll come to you when I’m goddamned good and ready.”
He hung up before Boone could do more than grunt and exited the back of the building. He walked several blocks west and hotwired a car to get him to the city center where he picked up a cab to the airport and was in the air and headed out of the country within three hours. He was exhausted and needed a shower, but it would have to wait for one of his many pit stops before his final flight home. His patience with the day—let alone the past two months—had worn thin.
The trip home was a long one. There was a lot of what he called “travelling hopscotch,” which was part of his routine. Lots of zig zagging, flying in no discernable pattern with multiple IDs, until he arrived at his final destination. It was probably a precaution he no longer needed to take, but there were many reasons why he was still alive—after spending a majority of his career killing people for a living—and that was one he refused to change, no matter how tiresome.
IT TOOK TWO DAYS FOR the swelling around Sebastian’s right eye to diminish enough to see out of again. He’d taken some sick time from work and managed to get himself past the worst of the pain and swelling since the Wednesday treatment. When Monday rolled around he was back to work. His stress level was high as he had a couple appointments at the hospital to do composites of two different suspects with two different victims. As he approached room one hundred seven in the emergency department, he rubbed his sweaty hands on his pants. He was about to enter, but he heard escalated voices.
“…with us and that’s all there is to it!”
“Absolutely not, young man! You’re newlyweds! The last thing you need is your grandmother staying with you and cramping your style.”
“Nana, you can’t just go home. You’ve got a cast and you can barely walk, how are
you going to do anything for yourself?”
“It’s only one arm. I’ll be fine.”
“It’s your right arm and your knee is messed up! You won’t be able—”
He heard a deeper voice interject in a much more muted tone.
“But, she—”
More muted talking, the deeper tone calm but firm. Sebastian found himself stalling outside of the room, not wanting to interrupt, enjoying listening to the muted voice even though he couldn’t make out much of what was being said.
He nearly jumped out of his skin when someone tapped him on the shoulder. Whirling around, he glanced way up into the questioning eyes of a doctor who looked ridiculously like one of his previous clients.
The man, arms folded across his chest, smiled politely at him. “May I help you?”
Sebastian gestured behind him to the room. “I’m the police sketch artist from San Francisco PD. I have an appointment, but didn’t want to interrupt.”
The doctor’s brows rose. “Interrupt?”
Just then the woman spoke up. “What are you going to do, wipe my ass for me?”
Sebastian’s eyes popped wide and he nearly sputtered when the laughing doctor clasped his elbow and turned him back towards the door. “That’s our cue.”
Sebastian let out a soft gasp and tried to pull his arm free as he frantically whispered, “What? No! That’s not our cue! That should never be anyone’s cue!”
His protests fell on deaf ears as he was unceremoniously, but gently, dragged into the hospital room. He barely had time to register the fact that not only was a McCade dragging him into the room, but another McCade was already there, as the curtain beyond the door that the doctor had pulled to the side swished back in place and partially covered him.
