The gunman came back into focus gradually. Grinning, he rested his weapon on his thigh. In heavily accented English, he said, “Stay on the floor. No sudden moves.” He nodded to one of his buddies, the one who looked to be still in his teens.
The young man spoke into a telephone. “The package is ready,” he said in Spanish and, after a moment, “Comprendo.” He dropped the telephone onto its cradle. “Traffic—he’ll call us.”
“You took Faust’s whore,” the man sitting over Alex said, shifting back to English. He shook his head. “Man, that was dumb.”
“It’s the deal he agreed to.”
The gunman chuckled. “No way would he let her go. He’s—how do you say in English?—obsessed with her.”
Alex eased his head to the side, gritting his teeth against shards of agony sparked by the effort. It brought Pia into his field of vision. Her eyes looked empty. He couldn’t tell if she was still there, or if she had withdrawn irretrievably.
The second man on the couch looked to be well into his middle years. Speaking for the first time, he said, “For someone filled with passion, I can’t say much for how Faust treats her.”
“She could have been his steady punchboard,” said the youth. They had reverted to Spanish, either unaware or unconcerned that Alex understood. “But she had to act stupid. She asked for it.”
“How?” the older man asked. “What’d she do to get treated like that?”
“Called him a piece of garbage. In his own house, with two of us standing right there.” The teenager giggled. “He has these electrodes hooked to a car battery. The bitch was on the floor, looked like he’d been working on her for a while. She sat up while we were connecting a charger to the battery. Called him garbage, and he went berserk. She—”
The telephone clamored, and the teenager broke off to answer it. “Si, amigo.” He tossed the receiver back onto its hook. “They’re here.”
The man with the suppressor-equipped pistol stood. Switching to English again, he said, “On your feet, gringo.” The men gave Alex a moment and then lifted him upright.
He wobbled but stayed on his feet. Good that his hands were in front instead of behind him. Otherwise, he could not have maintained his balance.
A dilapidated van met them at the hotel’s delivery entrance. The older gunman helped Alex climb in and stretch out on the floor. He used cord similar to that on Alex’s wrists to bind his ankles together. For perhaps forty-five minutes the van bumped and rattled through Lima’s winding side streets. Pia sat with her back resting against the van’s side. Alex could not see her eyes, but the memory of their vacant look in the hotel haunted him.
They parked in front of an isolated hacienda midway up a mountainside that Alex guessed was in Lima’s outskirts. The two older men dragged him from the van and lugged him into the attached garage. They dumped him on the concrete floor. The teenager guided Pia out of the van and into the garage to sit on the floor.
Alex’s head felt pulpy. Bolts of agony shot through it in rhythm with his pulse. But his mind had cleared. Turning his head slowly, he took in his surroundings.
No windows, but two overhead fluorescent fixtures flooded the garage with harsh light. A car battery sat on a wall-mounted work shelf next to a charger that was plugged into a wall socket. What looked like a set of heavy-duty jumper cables lay coiled on a nearby workbench.
The older man and the boisterous teenager bade the third man good-bye and left the garage. Alex heard the van’s ancient engine cough to life, heard a grinding of gears and a clatter of worn valves. The engine noise surged and then faded rapidly. Alone with his two captives, the remaining gunman kept his distance and looked watchful.
Faust entered the garage through a rear door. The gunman nodded respectfully and backed further away. He rested a haunch on the wall-mounted work shelf. With one foot dangling, the other on the floor, he balanced the semiautomatic’s suppressor-equipped barrel on his thigh.
Looming over Alex, Faust nudged his shoulder with a foot. “I was your friend, and you betrayed me.”
Alex forced himself to be unresponsive.
Faust kicked his ribs. “Look at me, you maggot-ridden pile of dog shit.”
Eyes open, Alex locked gazes with his tormentor.
Bending over, Faust tested the knots and the tension of the cords holding Alex’s wrists and ankles. “We figured you and Koenig’s kid cashed in your chips up there in the mountains,” he said. “Since you’re still breathing, the kid must be too.” He stabbed a finger toward Pia. “Unless you want me to take that two-timing bitch apart piece by piece, you tell me where to find him.”
“I was out hunting,” Alex said. “I came back to the cabin and found Pia gone. Frederick and Jake were dead.”
Faust shook his head and turned to Pia. “Stand up.”
She looked at him as if she had barely heard, stared as if she were having trouble deciphering the command. Then she struggled glacially to her feet.
“Strip.”
Still moving at a sloth’s pace, she slipped the smock over her head and dropped it on the garage floor.
“Watch him,” Faust said to the man with the semiautomatic.
The gunman heaved himself off the workbench and stood over Alex. He kept his weapon centered on Alex’s head.
Faust hoisted the battery jumper cables off the workbench and plopped them onto the shelf by the battery and its charger. He clamped one end of the cables to the battery terminals.
The other end of the cables had been modified, their usual spring-loaded clamps replaced or altered into shiny copper probes. Alex realized he was looking at the torture device Pia had described.
Faust eased the probes close together, and blue fire danced between them. An explosive crackle sounded loud in the closed garage.
Standing nude in front of him, Pia seemed to come out of her trance. Shoulders hunched, arms crossed over her breasts, she whined and backed away.
“Theo,” Alex pleaded, “I’m leveling with you. You’ve got—” Panic made his voice break. He sucked in air. “When I got back to the cabin, I found the boy in a storage area, frozen. I buried him up there. I swear.”
Ignoring him, Faust closed on Pia. He held a copper probe in each hand.
She backed into a corner. A mewing sound, like a kitten in pain, oozed from her throat.
“Jesus,” the gunman rasped. “She’s leaking piss.”
“Keep your eyes on your prisoner,” Faust said. He held an electrode to Pia’s lips. “Open.”
Alex turned his face away. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the gunman.
The man’s gaze lingered on Alex for a moment. Then it shifted back to the show Faust was staging. The semiautomatic still pointed in Alex’s general direction.
Alex drew his legs back until his knees were doubled hard against his chest. With all the force his desperation and his rage could muster, he slammed the heel of a boot into the man’s kneecap.
The gunman screamed and fell sideways. His semiautomatic clattered to the concrete floor, bounced, and skittered tantalizingly close to Alex before coming to rest halfway across the garage.
Rolling across the concrete floor, Alex closed on the weapon. Writhing and twisting his reluctant body, he groped until he found it. He shifted about, fumbling awkwardly with his wrists shackled together at his waist, trying to grasp the pistol’s butt.
The gunman’s fingers clamped like steel bands around his ankle. The man pulled while inching closer, his injured knee extended behind him. His other hand held an opened switchblade. He swung it in a high arc toward Alex’s stomach.
Alex hefted the pistol, pointed it, fired.
The knife-wielder’s left eye disintegrated, and the back of his head exploded. He collapsed without making a sound. His switchblade hit the floor an inch from Alex’s stomach.
Rolling to confront Faust, Alex tried to point the pistol as he moved. But something slammed into his chest like a giant fist. He couldn’t breathe. A wav
e of helplessness engulfed him, as if a powerful vacuum had sucked away his vitality. He lost his grip on the weapon. It dawned on him that he’d been shot.
Faust stood with his back to Pia, blocking Alex’s view of her. He held a small revolver.
The weapon had to be no more than .25 caliber, Alex thought, and the ammunition low velocity. Otherwise, a bullet to his chest would have shut him down. The little revolver would be deadly at close range, but if Faust’s next shot was not to the head, he might be able to retrieve the dead gunman’s pistol and snap off a round before he died. He tensed to give it a try.
His body did not follow his brain’s directive. It refused to move.
Faust stepped forward and kicked the big semiautomatic into a far corner of the garage. “What’s wrong, old buddy? Don’t you want to see the show?”
Speaking slowly, placing deliberate emphasis on each word, Alex said, “You are one sick son of a bitch.”
“Not as sick as you’re about to be. You’re going to tell me where to find the boy, or you’ll watch this over-used whore grovel and beg. You have to know you aren’t going to leave here alive. But she can. Whether she does, and whether she has any brain cells left, depends on whether you level with me. Tell me where to find the kid, and she’ll live a long, happy life.”
He stood directly over Alex. “It’s a real show when the current hits her. Arms and legs jerking like a puppet. Bladder and bowels letting go. Drool, snot, tears. And that’s with just a short jolt. You lie to me, when I find out, I’ll leave the electrodes in her ‘til she’s just a slab of quivering meat.”
Movement behind Faust caught Alex’s attention. He glanced there but realized his mistake and quickly refocused on Faust.
Too late. Faust looked back over his shoulder at Pia.
Gripping the dead gunman’s semiautomatic with both hands, she stood in the crouch Alex had taught her while they were staying in his father’s summer cabin near Grand Junction. She held the weapon in good form, its muzzle centered on Faust.
He turned to her and chuckled. “Put it down.”
She shook her head, holding the big semiautomatic steady.
“Lower the weapon.” He put steel in his voice. “Do I need to use the electrodes again?”
She trembled, and a low moan escaped her throat. The gun barrel wavered.
“You know I don’t like hurting you.” Faust’s voice had turned soft again, like a horseman gentling a skittish colt. The electrodes lay on the floor near his feet. He pointed at them. “Don’t make me stick those back in you.” He extended a hand, palm up. “Just lay the gun in my hand.”
She took a deep breath and held it. The pistol steadied, pointing at his chest.
“Last chance,” he said, and took a step closer.
She pulled the trigger.
Surprise, puzzlement, registered on his face. He stumbled backward against the garage’s wall and looked at the dark stain spreading across his stomach. “You shot me. Why did you . . . You shot . . .”
Another slug tore into him, this one higher up, in his chest. He leaned against the wall and dropped his gun hand to his side. The weapon slipped from his fingers.
Pia edged closer. With the pistol hanging loosely from her hand, she looked up at him.
“I never wanted to hurt you,” he said, gasping between words. “I just wanted you to be mine. We can still—”
Holding the weapon with both hands once more, she raised it—slowly, ever so slowly—until the barrel was only inches from his face. With a low-pitched ppfitt, the suppressor-equipped semiautomatic spat again.
Faust plummeted to the floor like a dropped sack of cement.
Standing over him, Pia fired two more rounds. Then she pulled the trigger over and over to no effect, the magazine empty or the mechanism jammed. Soundlessly, she slipped to the floor. Sitting by him with her legs extended, she pounding the useless weapon on the concrete slab.
By pushing with his feet, Alex scooted to her side. “It’s okay,” he said, gasping for breath, struggling to get the words out. “Everything’s all right.”
She looked at him with what seemed to be recognition. “You are hurt.”
“Not bad. You need to find something, a knife or a saw, and cut these cords.”
She looked as if she was going to stand but sank back down, her gaze locked on his bloody side. She squeezed her eyes shut, pressed the heels of her hands to her temples, and began rocking to and fro, her breath coming in great, heaving gasps.
Little by little, Alex rolled his body across what seemed an endless stretch of uneven concrete, every inch an agonizing, Herculean effort. He had to reach the telephone in the far corner of the garage, knock it off its perch, and make a call before he blacked out from loss of blood. Behind him, he heard Pia’s gasping breath, a steady rhythm like her mindless rocking.
Chapter 32
Three weeks passed, and Alex’s father pushed him in a wheelchair along the hallway of a Denver hospital. A glass wall overlooked the hospital’s side lawn where January sunlight reflected off a fresh coat of snow.
Alex closed his eyes and let scattered memories click into place. His father and Lois had flown to Lima, Lois to accompany him home on an air-ambulance flight and his father to escort Pia along their prearranged backdoor route through Mexico. Faust’s bullet, a glancing hit, had shattered two of Alex’s ribs but was stopped by a third, an inch shy of his heart. Pia had no serious physical injuries, and Alex’s father had assured him that, though her emotional trauma lingered, she was recovering in a psychiatric facility a short distance across town.
The elder Bryson locked the wheelchair’s brake and circled around to sit on a bench facing Alex. “They tell me you’re ready to leave this place.”
“None too soon,” Alex said. “How’s Freddy?”
The reference to Frederick brought a slow smile to the colonel’s time-creased features. “He’s great. But while you goofed off in a hospital bed, a lot’s been going on. I saved this for you.” He handed Alex a week-old copy of the Los Angeles Times. A front-page article described a major battle between the Peruvian Army and Shining Path rebels, pivotal in that country’s decades-old civil war. The writer described stunning government success using helicopter-borne troops who attacked the rebels’ flanks to cut off retreat, and helicopter gunships that decimated their forces and disrupted their command-and-staff operation.
“Looks like that faulty guidance circuitry did the trick,” Alex said.
His father nodded. “The rebels may have discovered the ruse and realized too late that the chips were useless. Or they might have learned about it when they tried to use them. Either way, they got taken to the cleaners.”
“That should make for some disgruntled rebel commanders.”
“We amplified their unhappiness quotient. The day after the battle, Intelligence sent Dominga Koenig a letter thanking her for her cooperation. We e-mailed the Peruvian government a recommendation that she be decorated for helping trick the bad guys with the faulty chips. Then we made sure the press got their hands on both messages.”
“Koenig’s wife?” Alex recalled the image he’d seen on television of the woman thanking the American people for their support after claiming Frederick was on his way to Peru. “Why her?”
“Couple of days after we got you back to the States, she started linking up with Faust’s old contacts—mercenaries, arms dealers, and so on. Looks like she took over his role as Shining Path’s patron. Meanwhile, private detectives have been snooping around, asking about you. And my Pentagon contacts say there’s been an unauthorized scan of your military records. We figure she was looking for you to make doubly sure Freddy’s not breathing. Eliminate a potential rival for her husband’s estate.”
“Then we’d better keep a low profile. How soon can Pia leave that psychiatric hospital?”
“Anytime. She’s still there strictly for security reasons.”
“All right, let’s hit the road. We’ll hide for awhile,
see how things shake out.”
* * *
To foil Dominga Koenig’s thugs, Alex’s father arranged for a woman and man of Pia’s and Alex’s approximate sizes to act as body doubles for a day. The woman entered the psychiatric hospital during the afternoon shift change. The man did the same at Alex’s hospital. Wearing pajamas and a hospital robe, the man was wheeled out the emergency entrance with Colonel Bryson at his side and loaded into a government-issue, four-door sedan. They drove to the psychiatric hospital and retrieved the make-believe Pia.
Meanwhile the real Pia, dressed as a teenager, exited through the psychiatric hospital’s visitor’s entrance and caught a cab. An older woman, an armed private detective, accompanied her so they would be taken as mother and daughter. Alex left his hospital as part of a group on a church-sponsored tour. Using a cane and moving slowly in deference to his still-dodgy balance, he got off the church bus at a busy intersection where a friend of his father’s waited with a car. They pulled into a shopping center parking lot only minutes ahead of Pia’s taxi.
The Descent From Truth Page 26
