by Jack Du Brul
“Come again?” Lauren hadn’t known about the nuclear angle so this was the first the general had heard of it.
“What we first thought was an attempt to destroy the canal has turned into something more. The CIA will be getting a call shortly from DGSE, the French intelligence agency. Lauren and I were working with one of their spies. They are going to confirm our findings. In a Chinese-controlled warehouse, Lauren and I stumbled across eight DF-31 strategic missile launchers.”
“Were they armed?”
“Not yet, but I’m sure they will be soon. Things are moving pretty fast down here.”
General Vanik blew out a long breath. “All right. You’d better start from the top.”
Keeping the briefing as concise as possible and avoiding mentioning Lauren’s name, Mercer laid out their findings, starting with the book auction in Paris and ending with the upcoming meeting with Maria Barber.
“You think she knows something?”
“I do, sir. I think she can provide enough proof to nail Liu.”
“Question is, who’s gonna do the nailing?” Vanik said, his Southern accent emerging more as the conversation went on. “There’s gotta be some higher-ups in Panama’s government involved. Don’t think they’re gonna want to hear your story.”
“Do you have any suggestions?” Mercer asked crisply. If the general could subvert his feelings of loss, at least temporarily, Mercer owed it to him to do the same.
“I need to check with the CIA and our own intelligence yahoos, see if they’ve detected anything going on with China’s rocket forces, like if a few of them were moved recently. For now just sit tight, talk with that woman, then call me back when you’ve found something.” Vanik paused. “She was a good girl, wasn’t she?”
“The best, General,” Mercer replied. What else could he say?
“I’ve lost hundreds of men. Vietnam, Kuwait, Bosnia, a dozen ops you never heard of. I’ve always understood my responsibility and I’ve always carried on. I don’t know. It’s all such a damned . . .”
“Waste,” offered Mercer.
“There are a lot of people in this world who like nothing more than killing and there are precious few who are willing to stop them. I hear you’re one of ’em. So was Lauren. Don’t seem right.”
“It isn’t.”
“Shit,” Vanik drawled. “If I hadn’t been a soldier, she’d be alive right now.”
“With all due respect, that isn’t true. I knew her a short time, but I learned that your daughter was her own person. You didn’t pressure her into the military, nor did you pick her duty stations. Lauren chose her path.”
The line remained silent.
“Maybe, but it doesn’t make it easier. Call me when you have something,” the general said hastily. “I’ll do the same.”
The phone went dead. Mercer shut it off. “I’m done, Harry.”
“How’d it go?” Harry asked when he returned from the bedroom.
“As well as it could, I suppose.” Mercer noticed that his friend had filled in half of the crossword from the Spanish-language newspaper. “What the hell are you doing? You don’t speak Spanish.”
Harry held up the puzzle. “I’m putting in English words with the right number of letters and making sure they mesh.” He shrugged. “Better than nothing. In fact I’ve gotten myself in a bit of a jam. Know any six-letter words with the middle ones r and f ?”
Despite his jumbled emotions, Mercer needed just a second. “Try barfly.”
Harry looked at him sharply, wrote it in, then with a malicious glint said, “That’ll work if I change eighteen across from donnybrook to”—he gave another significant glare—“douchebag.”
Mercer smiled, grateful for the repartee. “You don’t have enough letters. Has to be douchebags.”
“You’d think so,” Harry muttered, “but there’s only one of you.”
Fifteen minutes later, Foch arrived with Rene Bruneseau and a pair of Legion soldiers. All wore civilian clothes that hid the bulges of their handguns from untrained eyes. Mercer called Roddy Herrara up to the suite so he could phone Maria to make sure she was home. Roddy disguised his voice so she wouldn’t recognize him and hung up as soon as he’d woken her, apologizing for dialing the wrong number. He gave the men a thumbs-up.
It was time to snatch Maria Barber.
When she first realized she was still alive, she didn’t even remember what had happened at the last second. She remembered sinking. She seemed to recall seeing a light, but that was it. Everything else was blank.
No, that’s not true. The more she regained consciousness, the more the memories returned. The light came from a wrist lamp strapped to the body of the second Chinese commando who’d entered the intake tunnels with her. She remembered falling toward the dead diver and pulling his regulator to her mouth. She’d just filled her lungs when the divers who’d earlier avoided the sucking torrent entered the lock from the open doors. She had been in no condition to put up a fight.
They took her someplace. Where?
“A diving chamber,” Lauren Vanik whispered through chapped lips.
The Chinese had a diving bell near the lock that the frogmen used while they worked underwater. While the four men who’d survived the fight returned to the surface, she’d been guarded by another two for a few hours. Back on the surface she was gagged and blindfolded and then tossed into the back of a van.
Now she was awake, tired but alert. She levered her eyes open. They were about all she could move. She was strapped to some sort of frame, a bed maybe. Her legs were splayed and her arms were secured over her head. She could tell she was naked. The air was stifling and the absolute darkness was cut by a sliver of light leaking from under a door she could see if she tilted her head.
When she tried to speak she managed just a hoarse croak. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Come on, you bastards,” she yelled. “Get it over with.”
A minute later she heard footsteps outside the door and a key being inserted into a lock. When the door swung open, she could tell by the angle of the sun it was just past dawn and that she hadn’t been taken to the Twenty Devils Mine. The landscape outside her cell didn’t look familiar. She also saw that her prison must have been a garden shed. There were racks for tools bolted to the wall and from somewhere close she recognized the taint of fertilizer.
The man who entered was Chinese, a soldier in a uniform without insignia. He was old enough to be an officer, but had the hard look of a drill instructor. She guessed he was an NCO. When the sergeant turned on the overhead lights he made sure his gaze didn’t wander from her face.
“Very gallant of you,” Lauren sneered.
“Your strength,” the soldier said not unkindly. “Keep it.”
Lauren knew what she was in for. She’d known as soon as she realized she’d been tied up. The terror of Mercer’s stories about the acupuncturist filled her mind. Strangely, this veteran soldier seemed bothered by her fate. Why else would he have warned her just now? She wondered if she could use that concern.
“You can help me,” she pleaded. “Don’t let them touch me.”
The soldier’s eyes dropped.
He felt shame. Was it enough? Would he let her go?
“You know what he’ll do to me. You’re a soldier. Like me. Where is your honor?” Her cry was met by silence. “Please. You can’t let him do this to me. The other man. The American. He’s in a hospital. He hasn’t spoken since his escape. He’s a vegetable.”
Sergeant Huai was unable to hide his revulsion.
“It’s true,” Lauren continued. “Mercer is his name, but he can’t even remember it. Listen. I don’t care anymore about what you’re doing in Panama. My country doesn’t care. Please, let me go.”
“I cannot.” Huai answered.
“Then kill me.” Lauren’s eyes blazed, not knowing she echoed Mercer’s exact words when he was first faced with torture. “If that’s what it takes to prevent that sadist from raping and torturi
ng me then do it. Kill me now!”
“Sun no rape.”
“Bull! It’s a proven method of torture. He’ll do it.”
“Sun, ah . . .” Huai pointed at his crotch. “No longer a man.”
“But he’s man enough to stick needles in my body that will destroy my mind. Is that how you people fight? Is that your way?”
“Not my way. Sun’s way.”
“You’re the same. If you let him do it you’re just as bad as he is.”
That concept made Huai pause again. Lauren was sure she was on the right track. The NCO had the look of a man who fought his nation’s enemies on battlefields, not in horror chambers. If only she could get through to him, weaken him.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “You’re not the same. You’re a soldier. He’s a monster. It’s not your fault that your country uses men like Sun. You only follow orders. Just like me.”
“Yes. Orders.”
“And when you get home and tell your wife about what he did here, you can tell her that you were ordered to let a woman get tortured to death. She will see the honor in that. She will think you are a hero.”
Was there indecision in his eyes? Lauren was almost certain it was there. Her ploy was working. Huai looked outside then back at Lauren. He was about to make a move when another soldier stepped into the shed. Younger than the sergeant, he also wore a uniform without insignia. The newcomer barked an order and the NCO saluted. He gave Lauren one last look, and left.
“What is your name?” The young officer spoke clearer English and had no compulsion about studying Lauren’s nude form.
“Vanik, Lauren J. Captain. United States Army. 05894328.”
“Who are you working with?”
“Vanik, Lauren J. Captain. United States Army. 05894328.”
Unfazed by her response, the officer asked several more questions that Lauren answered by giving her name, rank, and serial number. “Enough,” he said at last. “You will answer our questions in due time. A specialist will be here shortly. I recommend that you tell me everything now.”
“Screw yourself,” she hissed.
The officer turned smartly and relocked the cell after stepping out. Lauren was left with her fear and her disappointment. She’d been close with the sergeant. So close. Had the officer not arrived maybe he would have let her go. Now the opportunity was gone. Mr. Sun would arrive soon and it would be over for her.
She’d always considered herself a brave person, having faced down countless dangers and physical hardships, but she held no illusions about resisting the kind of torture in store for her. The army classes she’d taken in psychological warfare told her that there really was no way to hold out forever against physical abuse. And what the acupuncturist did went far beyond the mere physical. Mercer had escaped before being subjected to a second round with Mr. Sun. Lauren doubted she’d get such a chance. For her there’d be no escape once Sun got to work on her.
She spent the next ten minutes, until her cell was opened again, fighting her imagination. Each time she saw what was coming, her heart would race and she’d hyperventilate. The heat was only partially responsible for the sweat coating her skin.
When the cell door swung open, she looked back to see a cadaverous Chinese man wearing dark gray trousers and a long shirt of the same color. What hair remained on his large cranium was as fine as spider silk. In his skeletal hand he clutched a rolled-up piece of black cloth. Lauren noticed immediately that Mercer’s TAG Heuer watch dangled from Sun’s emaciated wrist.
With him was a Panamanian dressed in fatigues. Lauren guessed his age at fifty, for his face was lined, but his hair was a thick lustrous black and his body was still trim. Above his mustache, his nose was large and bony and his eyes were lifeless black spots. She recognized him immediately.
He was Hugo Ruiz. A major under Manuel Noriega in the G-2, Panama’s murderous secret police. Ruiz had once been a deputy warden at La Modelo Prison, responsible for running tours of the facility so well-heeled sadists could watch the degradation heaped on the inmates. His specialty was organizing the gang-rape indoctrination of new prisoners and selling cocaine and peasant women to inmates who performed for his guests. Ruiz had also trained under Nivaldo Madrinan, Noriega’s chief torturer, perfecting dark skills that few could believe humans capable of.
For a while the CIA believed Ruiz had been executed during a purge before Noriega’s ouster, but in 1992 he’d been spotted in Cuba, where he’d once been part of a smuggling operation to ship the dregs of the island’s population to Miami. The latest reports had him selling his interrogation skills to Colombian FARC rebels. That he was back in Panama now meant he had secured a place within President Quintero’s regime.
“Ah, Señor Ruiz,” Mr. Sun said to his companion in English, “I didn’t realize we’d be making friends with a woman today.” He sounded delighted.
Lauren remained motionless, resisting the urge to flinch when Sun unfurled his cloth and adjusted the hundreds of needles it contained.
Ruiz studied her closely. “And a buena one at that. I look forward to seeing your techniques in practice. Your instruction over the past days using cadavers wasn’t very satisfying.”
“But necessary,” Sun said as he examined Lauren’s skin, awed by its suppleness. “So soft,” he whispered intimately. His breath was a fetid caress. Bits of skin fell on Lauren like scaly ash.
Lauren’s flesh crawled and she had to bite her tongue to keep from screaming.
“Young lady, you have caused a number of problems for us in the past week. My job is to see how many of those problems go away with your death. Before we are through, you will tell me exactly who you are working with, how much you have seen and what steps you and your superiors have taken to stop us.
“Now I realize that you aren’t aware of Gemini’s location, nor could you know that it will be detonated in the canal tomorrow, but you must know many other things. Like what is in the Hatcherly warehouse and how the Twenty Devils Mine is, a, ah—what is the word?—a fraud. Do you know these things?”
Sun took up the first of his needles and lectured to Ruiz, “Watch closely at the angle the needles enter the body. It is not as important establishing the first of the connective links within the nervous system, but later the technique helps you better generate and control the pain.”
Just before he slid the first needle into Lauren’s throat the cell door opened and the officer who she’d seen earlier spoke with Sun in Chinese. They talked for a moment before Sun returned the needle to the cloth.
“I am sorry, Señor Ruiz,” he said and wiped his palms on his pants. “Mr. Liu wants to see me before he returns to the city. I will be about fifteen minutes.”
Lauren recognized the gleam in Ruiz’s expression when he looked down at her. “I understand, Señor Sun. Perhaps I will get started without you.”
“As you wish.” Sun bowed before following the young officer into the sunshine.
No sooner had the door closed than Ruiz punched Lauren in the side of the head. “Buenas noches, puta.”
Lauren’s head lolled and her mouth went slack. Ruiz struck her again to make sure she was out, then grabbed one of the acupuncture needles. He forced it into her thigh. She didn’t move when he worked the needle a little farther into her flesh.
Satisfied that she would remain unconscious, Ruiz studied her for a moment, distressed that his body did not react the way he had hoped it would when he’d first seen her lying naked on the table. He knew what he had to do. A lifetime spent forcing sodomy on his victims had left him incapable of even raping in the normal fashion. To get at what he wanted he needed to roll her over.
He flicked open her pupils, saw they were pinpricks and hastily unstrapped her legs before moving around the platform to untie her hands. He was just about to turn her over when Lauren sprang.
She swept up a handful of the needles Sun had left next to her and rammed them deep into Ruiz’s left eye. Before the scream could form in his
throat, she was up, clamping one hand over his mouth and using the heal of her other to drive the tiny spikes deep into his skull. The Panamanian butcher was dead before he hit the concrete floor. “Buenas noches, bastardo.”
Lauren ignored the blood dribbling from the tiny puncture in her leg when she got to her feet. She swayed against a wave of blackness. She had to sit back down for a few minutes to regain her equilibrium. Her temples throbbed. Once she was sure she wouldn’t collapse, she crushed her distaste and stripped Ruiz out of his uniform. The clothes weren’t that oversized on her, with the exception of his jungle boots, which she stuffed with handkerchiefs the pig had kept in his pocket. She cinched his gun belt and secured it around her waist, checking that the old Colt .45 Ruiz carried was loaded and had a round in the chamber.
She took a couple more steadying breaths. Her head was pounding now and no amount of massaging would ease the ache. She was sure she’d get a black eye out of the ordeal and considered it more than a fair trade for what she could have faced.
Opening the cell door a crack, Lauren looked out across the grounds of what she realized was a luxury estate. She smelled the salt of the ocean and heard it crashing someplace in the distance. Apart from the swaying of some palm trees she could see no movement anywhere in the sprawling compound. Near the front of the large house she saw a pair of sedans, but what drew her attention was the garage midway between the garden shed prison and the modern home. One of its doors was open and the front of an SUV peeked out.
With no cover protecting her approach, Lauren began running for the garage as fast as she could. Her feet flopped painfully in the boots while Ruiz’s gamy body odor wafted from the uniform.
She hadn’t yet covered half of the one hundred yards when Mr. Sun walked out of the big house and paused under the porte-cochere. He peered at her as if the distance was too great for his old eyes. The range was much too far for a pistol shot so Lauren smothered the urge to shoot at him. Sun called to someone in the house. The sergeant who seemed distressed by the acupuncturist’s tactics appeared. The distance wasn’t too far for his eyes and he drew his sidearm.
