by Mark Greaney
Matt Hanley turned, glanced at the man in the corner. Pfleger’s black balaclava mask worn with khakis and a white short-sleeved button-down were an odd combination in a room where the other three masked men were decked out in full SWAT gear and guns. Pfleger did not speak, did not move. Just stared back. Hanley shrugged. “Not my problem.”
Court spoke again, though the words came out through winces and muscle spasms. “He’s… he’s running a criminal ring… selling visas to illegals.”
Hanley glared at the bound prisoner. “Yeah?” He turned back to Pfleger again. “How’s business?”
“I… I’m not really. I just—”
“Look at me, boy!” Hanley’s voice, a low West Virginian drawl, boomed in the concrete dungeon.
“Yes, sir?”
“Take that stupid sock off of your face.”
Pfleger looked to Carlos, the Black Suit in the room, for help, then to the federales. Then to the Little Butcher, then to the young protégé with the leather apron. All the Mexicans just stood there, did nothing at all. Slowly, Jerry removed the mask. Stuck it in his pocket.
“Do I look like I’m with the Office of the Inspector General?” Hanley asked, again his voice boomed like artillery.
Jerry shook his head a very little bit. “No, sir.”
“Okay, then. Relax. I’m not with State, and I’m sure as shit not here for you.” Hanley turned back to Gentry. “I’m here for the big fish.”
Jerry breathed an audible sigh. Said, “So this is the guy you are looking for?”
Hanley nodded. Confirmed. “It’s him.”
“Awesome. And there is a reward, right?”
“Yep.”
“Awesome,” repeated Pfleger. “What did he do?”
Hanley looked close into the face of the prisoner once again. Studying it. “What did he do? What did you do, Violator?”
“I did what I was ordered to do. And you gave the orders.”
“Not when you went off the reservation.”
For the first time Court lifted his head, as if his anger gave him strength. “I never went off res. I followed Zack’s op orders to the letter. Always! And then you ordered the team to kill me!”
“Ancient history.”
“Then why are you here?”
Hanley smiled. Took a step back from Gentry and looked around the room.
Hanley looked over the torturer’s gear on the rolling cart. He spoke Spanish. “Nice. Primitive, but nice.”
“¿Primitivo? What do you mean? This is the best—”
“Nah, chubby, we were using shit like this in the late eighties.” That was Spanish, but he turned to Court and switched to his native tongue. “I lit up a bunch of Noriega’s enforcers with one of these bad boys at Howard Air Force Base during ‘Just Cause.’ ”
Hanley reached for the dial. Switched back to Spanish. “May I?”
The Little Butcher smiled just a bit. “Of course, but he is tough. I’ve blown two fuses on this gringo… this norteamericano, I mean.”
Hanley looked at Court, turned the dial. Sent a strong electric shock into the central nervous system of his ex-subordinate. Gentry’s body spasmed and jerked; every muscle flexed taught; the sinews in his jaw looked like guitar strings wound tight under his skin.
After he’d turned the dial back down, Hanley chuckled. “That never gets old.” He looked at the fat man. “It’s a little weak, isn’t it?”
“The battery is drained. This man has taken most of its power.”
“He is tough.”
Carlos, Spider’s second-in-command, stepped forward and spoke in English. “Now that you know we have the man you seek, we will take you back to Chapultepec Park. Once we have finished with the prisoner, we will dump his remains near the embassy as agreed.”
Hanley nodded. “He has some information you are trying to extract, or is all this just for shits and grins?”
Carlos just looked at the blond American. He did not understand. “Shit… a… greens?”
“The prisoner. You need him to tell you something?”
Carlos just nodded.
Hanley looked down to the bucket on the floor. The metal prod jutted out of it. “Oh… I see. It’s about to get intimate around here.” He continued looking around. At the surgical implements on the table, at a shelf full of containers, restraints, electrical tape, and other odds and ends. He looked back at the men in the room around him.
No one spoke.
Hanley continued. “I would like to stay for the interrogation.”
Carlos shook his head. “That will not be possible. We do not know how much time it will take.”
“Too bad,” said Hanley, then he turned back to Gentry. “Hey, asshole. Wake up. Do you have any idea how much pain you have caused me?”
Court’s head hung low again, but he managed a smile. “You aren’t the first to tell me that.”
“I was going places. I was on the way up.”
“Then what happened?”
“Then one day I get word that one of my door kickers fucked up. It was a fuckup that could have been extremely politically damaging for the United States. A deal was done, a deal between us and another nation, and an agreement was made. If we cleaned up our own mess, if we got rid of the offending party, then this foreign nation would let the matter slide.
“So I am told that Gentry goes in the dirt. What the hell am I supposed to do, Court? I send Zack and the guys over to your place. I felt like shit about it, but I had my orders. Next thing I know you slaughtered your entire team.”
“I am familiar with the story.”
“All that shit ran downhill on my head. And now, here I am: fifty-one years old and assistant chief of station in fucking Haiti. There’s out to pasture, and then there’s assigned to the dark side of the moon. I hate the heat; I hate the disease, the bugs, the storms, the drugs; I hate every fucking bit of my life now. And it’s all because you could not be a good boy and just fucking die like a soldier!”
Louder and louder, spit flew from his puffy lips.
“You, you worthless piece of shit, ruined my fucking life!”
Carlos, the only Black Suit in the room, stepped forward. “Enough! The van is ready to return you to the park.”
Hanley looked at the Mexican for a moment as if he had forgotten there were others in the room with him. He put his hands up in apology. “Fine. Lo siento, amigo.” He turned back to Gentry. “I wish I could stay around and watch you die, you son of a bitch, but I have to go.” He turned away, and the Mexicans around him turned, too. Then he turned back to the prisoner once again. “A short farewell, a little saying I learned from my ancestors back in the old country.” He looked at Gentry and spoke slowly: “Tugo zakroi rot I derji ih za sheiu.”
Court’s sweat-soaked brow furrowed.
It was Russian.
Odd.
Matt Hanley’s family was Scottish.
Hanley turned towards the elevator, took two steps past the policemen, and just as he arrived flush with the Little Butcher’s table full of torture devices, he shot his left arm out and grabbed a long, thin scalpel.
FORTY
Carlos had turned towards the freight elevator; the federales had their hands off their weapons so they could replace the hood over Hanley’s face.
Surgical steel sparkled in the light of the bare bulb as the spike flashed through the air. Hanley plunged the blade into the neck of the Black Suit in front of him, perforating his carotid artery and causing blood to jet sideways across the room. As the narco grabbed at the pain, Hanley spun 180 degrees, towards the federales, and grabbed both of the smaller men by their ammo vests, turned them around, and shoved them with all his considerable size and might towards Court and the iron fence. The cops were taken completely by surprise, they stumbled headlong, slammed against the metal grating on either side of Gentry. Court used his outstretched hands, bound at the wrists, to take hold of each man. One by the collar of his uniform, the other by the sling of his
rifle.
Hanley knocked the Little Butcher back away from the table; he then spun the dial on the electroconvulsive machine to the max. Gentry just had time to get his hand out and around the back of the neck of one federale, and immediately, the two men spasmed under the current of the car battery. The other cop tried to rush away from the fence but was caught by Gentry’s hold on his rifle sling, and the federale stumbled back on his heels, slammed into the metal, and made a connection with the voltage. He began writhing as well with the intense current running through his central nervous system.
The torturer’s apprentice had taken several spurts of arterial blood from the Black Suit to his face, causing him to spin away from the action and wipe his eyes. Finally, he turned back and pulled a weapon from under his apron. Hanley saw the threat and he stiffarmed the young man, pinned him up against the bloodstained wall, and yanked the small Argentine-made .380 automatic from the apprentice’s trembling hand. Matt turned the gun around, pressed it to the protégé’s forehead, and shot him dead without hesitation.
Matt then fired twice into the ample gut of el Carnicerito, sending him down to the cold basement floor clutching his abdomen. Hanley turned the electricity dial back down, spun towards the ironwork and the three men there: one nude and shackled to the fence, the other two in SWAT gear and now dropping to the floor stunned and spent.
Matthew Hanley stood over the incapacitated federales and fired a round into each man’s head, killing them both.
Jerry Pfleger had dropped to the floor in the corner. His back was to the concrete wall next to the dead protégé, blood splatters were painted across his sweaty white short-sleeved dress shirt like a tiedye design. His face was as white as his shirt had been ten seconds ago, and his eyes were open and blinking quickly. He stared at the blond-haired American in the center of the room.
The Mexicans were sprawled out on the floor in various unnaturally contorted positions. The Little Butcher’s apron had flipped up over his face. He was alive and bleeding heavily from the stomach.
Matthew Hanley flipped off the overhead light, shrouding the room in near complete darkness. The only faint light now was a dim glow from the stairwell. He then pulled a submachine gun from the neck of one of the dead federales, kneeling on the floor below Gentry to do so. He turned low in a crouch, pulled the charging handle back on the weapon, and aimed it at the stairs.
“How many?” he asked. He was all business, intense concentration preparing for the threat to come.
Gentry was barely conscious. That last jolt of electricity, administered by Hanley himself, had almost killed him. Still, he muttered a guess. “Don’t know. A couple of federal cops, maybe more.”
“Okay.”
Several sets of footsteps on the stairs, running down.
Hanley waited.
Court hung from his bindings, a spectator; he felt completely exposed.
Federal police in black appeared in the dim of the stairwell; Matt Hanley fired bursts into their legs to drop them, then more bursts into their faces and necks, hitting them above their body armor. Two men, three men down now. A fourth man took a round to the throat and stumbled on through the doorway before toppling in the middle of the room; his rifle flew from his hands and clanked across the concrete.
It bounced into the lap of Jerry Pfleger. When the embassy clerk recognized what it was, his eyes opened even wider, and he pushed the weapon off of him like it was a live rattlesnake. It landed at his feet, and he kicked it away frantically, his arms raised high.
He didn’t want anything to do with that rifle; he made it abundantly clear. He was not going to fight back. He did not want to give Hanley any reason to shoot him.
Hanley grabbed the new weapon and stepped into the stairwell. He neither heard nor saw anyone else.
As he returned to the torture chamber, he flicked the overhead light back on and the Little Butcher grunted. He held his bloody stomach with his fist, looked up at the armed American with eyes of fear and confusion.
“You need him for anything?” Hanley asked Gentry, motioning to the fat torturer with the muzzle of the MP5.
Gentry shook his head. “Nope.”
Without hesitation Hanley shot the man three more times in the chest, and his groans stopped.
After several seconds of quiet, Court said, “Thanks, Matt.”
Hanley reloaded the weapon with a fresh magazine taken off the chest of one of the dead federales. As he manipulated the magazine release to recharge the weapon he said, “Fuck you, Violator. I don’t like you much more than these assholes.”
“Okay.”
Hanley then began unscrewing the restraints on Gentry’s wrists. “Glad to see you didn’t bite your tongue off. I was worried you’d forgotten your Russian.”
“You told me to shut my mouth tight and to grab the men by the throat.”
“Neck, actually, but close enough.”
Hanley got both arm shackles removed then unfastened the ankle bindings. Court staggered forward, went down on one knee, and then sat on the cold concrete floor. His muscles hurt and spasmed uncontrollably. His right leg shook so badly he held it to the floor with his hands to quell the movement.
Matt had already begun stripping the boots and pants off of one of the dead federal police. He stopped what he was doing to reach for the Bersa .380 he’d taken from the Little Butcher’s protégé, and he slid the weapon across the floor to Court.
Hanley nodded towards Jerry Pfleger, still sitting in the corner, now shaking with fear.
“I left that dumbass for you. You can kill him if you want. I really don’t care.”
“No. I need him.”
Pfleger nodded forcefully; his eyes wide with newfound hope. “That’s right! That’s right, buddy! You need me!”
“I don’t need you to dance.”
“To dance? What do you—”
Court took the pistol proffered by his ex-boss, shot Jerry Pfleger in the top of his left foot, a round hole with a tattered edge of sock and leather appeared on his brown loafer.
The young man stared at his bloody shoe for several seconds before screaming.
Hanley winced with the shouting and screaming, and he tossed a pair of black tactical pants to Gentry.
“Did you have to do that?”
Court continued to gasp; he lay back flat on the cold floor for a moment to rest from his torture. Matter-of-factly, he said, “I don’t want him running away. I really don’t feel like chasing after him right now.”
Jerry screamed, spit, and snot and vile curses ejected from him like water from a fire hose. “I’m gonna fucking kill you, you crazy sick mother—”
Gentry crawled on his hands and knees over to the wounded man in the corner; the stainless automatic clicked on the concrete in the process. He sat back down, pressed the muzzle of the weapon onto the top of Pfleger’s right hand, pinning the hand to the concrete. “Don’t guess I need you to type, either.”
“No!”
Court hesitated. “Will you try to mind your manners?”
“No! I mean, yes! Yes!”
“Okay, stop the bleeding. You’ll be okay.” Gentry stood slowly on shaky legs, crossed the room to a shelf, and grabbed a towel and a roll of electrical tape, threw them both to the man who, in his writhing on the floor, missed it and had to scramble after it on his elbows, screaming and crying and cussing all along.
Court slid the tactical pants onto his naked body slowly, still dazed and slowed by the electric shocks. Hanley pulled an undershirt off another guard and handed it over.
In another minute they were heading up the stairs.
They made it to the front of the warehouse; it was eight o’clock in the evening, and they encountered no one else on the property other than some dogs fenced in a long kennel. DLR was long gone by now, Court knew, and with him Laura Gamboa. Looking around briefly, he saw barrels of acid lined up against the wall. In the top of the liquid human hair floated. The only remnants of the former guests of th
is death house.
He and Pfleger staggered out the door together while Hanley hotwired a car in the street. Within minutes they drove out of the neighborhood in a stolen Ford station wagon. Hanley was at the wheel; Court’s continued muscle spasms prevented him from driving. Pfleger was in the trunk; Court had used the rest of the electrical tape to bind Pfleger hands behind his back. As they approached a busy intersection, Matt scanned the street signs. He said, “Okay, I know where we are. Tepito. Bad part of town, but not too far from civilization.”
“Where are we going?”
“We’ll find a place to talk in a minute. Then you can take the car. I’ll catch a cab to the embassy. DLR’s men are going to learn about what happened if they don’t already know. You don’t want to stick around the capital for long.”
They drove in silence for the most part; Jerry’s occasional groans and cusses in the trunk were audible but muffled. Gentry worked on getting control of his muscles; his arms and legs felt weak and rubbery, his abdominal muscles ached, and his back and neck throbbed in pain. There were electrical burns on his back, his butt, his wrists, and his ankles. He wore pants that were too short and a white T-shirt that was too small. There was just a trace of blood on the collar.
Court’s feet were bare.
He carried the Bersa Thunder .380 semiautomatic pistol with a fresh magazine he’d retrieved from the pants pocket of the dead apprentice torturer. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was small and concealable. As Court’s mind fought for control of his body, he reserved a portion of his thoughts to work on a plan, and that growing and evolving plan would necessitate a low profile. The MP5s and even the big Berettas the federales carried on their hips would just not do.
The Bersa was wimpy, but it was very easy to conceal.
Hanley had retrieved a Beretta for himself just in case they ran into either narcos or street thugs while making their escape.
Court was surprised when Hanley pulled up to a bodega on República de Ecuador and hopped out of the car without a word. He returned in less than a minute with a bottle of tequila in his hand. He pulled back into traffic and jabbed the bottle between his legs, unscrewed the cap, and took a long swig.
