That made Flynn’s decision-making process easy. The line about the CIA might get under the guy’s skin. It might make him think about the repercussions of his actions. Torturing a CIA agent didn’t generally help an intelligence career in an allied country like Denmark. First he would have to confirm who Flynn was. That meant fingerprints, which they hadn’t taken yet. Poor protocol on a subject they knew nothing about. But they wouldn’t find anything—certainly not with the CIA and probably not anywhere, which would make things complicated. A guy with no ID and no fingerprint file did start to look like a terrorist, and Flynn knew these guys, whoever they were, could be serious. They had killed the reporter. There was at least one line of logic that led to Flynn following in Olsen’s footsteps.
He rolled away from the wall and wriggled his wrists under his feet so his hands were now bound in front of him. Then he grabbed the mattress and pulled it back to the wall where he had originally sat, the first wall that anyone who opened the door would see. He moved back to the other side of the room and stood against the wall near the hinges of the door.
There were six that he knew of. The team leader and the door guy, and then three other similarly dressed guys in the anteroom, plus another guy in a sweater. That last guy was different, probably a tech of some kind.
Flynn didn’t wait long. He heard the metal latch pull back, and he primed himself, coiled hard, all potential energy.
The door opened. The guy likely expected the mattress to be at the rear of the room, so there was a slight pause when he saw it and registered it as empty, then he pushed the door open a touch more to look in and, as he had done last time, stuck his head in.
Poor protocol.
Flynn slammed his shoulder hard into the door, the edge of which rammed back into the red-haired guy’s head. His head then bounced back into the doorjamb, and he was toast before Flynn came around the door and swung it open.
The team leader wasn’t second in line as Flynn had assumed. He was third. In between was the guy in the sweater, the tech guy, who turned out to be something more than a tech guy. He held a small steel container in which Flynn saw a couple of syringes. But he didn’t linger on them, because they were immaterial at that moment.
As the redhead dropped toward the floor, Flynn flicked open the leather pouch on the guy’s belt and pulled out the can of pepper spray. He brought it up and across the shoulder of the tech guy and sprayed a heavy dose into the team leader’s face and gaping mouth. The team leader started gagging and screaming.
Flynn pushed past the tech and shoved the team leader in the chest and kept on moving. There were two other guys in the room, and the element of surprise was gone. A blond guy was sitting on his side of the table, and a brown-haired guy was at the far end. The guy at the end jumped from his seat toward the lockers on the wall. Flynn went the other way.
The blond guy was already standing, feet splayed, balance stable, ready to fight. Flynn had no boots and his wrists were tied together. He dropped his hands to the table and kicked out with his feet. It wasn’t any kind of martial arts move. His feet missed the guy easily, but that was the point. The guy took a reflexive step backward, and Flynn’s feet landed so he had his back to him, and he used his momentum to drive his elbow up and into the blond guy’s face.
It connected hard, and Flynn thought he heard something go pop, and the guy’s nose exploded and his eyes were filled with tears and blood. Flynn brought his elbow back for a second shot, this one a touch lower, and he cracked him in the throat. Now he had tears and blood and no air.
Flynn looked across the table at the brown-haired guy. He was fumbling at the lock on one of the lockers. Flynn knew why, and he knew it was checkmate if the guy got it open. He was across the table, seconds away. Too far. Flynn picked up the chair that the blond guy had been sitting on, wound up like a discus thrower, and heaved the chair across the table. The chair bounced off the table and hit the guy in the ribs, stunning him but not stopping him.
Now Flynn ran around the table and down toward the guy, his socks not providing the traction he had hoped for. Brown hair finally opened the lock and reached inside what was surely a weapons locker.
Flynn launched himself like a missile. He had a target but no particular trajectory, so his shoulder hit the locker door, slamming it home with a hollow metallic crack. Brown hair was pulling up out of the locker, so the door missed his head by a match width. It would go on to hit his arm but without much effect. Not compared to where Flynn’s head landed. His forehead drove past the door and into the guy’s cheekbone like a steel plate hitting a chopstick. The impact was absorbed across the thick flat bone of Flynn’s forehead, but the same could not be said for the guy’s cheek. Flynn smashed into the guy right at the lower part of the zygomatic bone—his eye socket.
The impact itself probably didn’t knock him out, but the cracked bone and pain driving through his eye sent him flying backward and onto the floor. Like the room Flynn had been incarcerated in, this floor was solid concrete. The high impact flipped the guy, feet flying in the air, and he landed hard directly on the back of his head.
There was no movement from him after that. Flynn landed on his feet and shook his head to focus his eyes after the head butt. He pulled open the locker and found a collection of Heckler and Koch USP 9-millimeter handguns. Each gun was on its own shelf with the name of the owner written on tape below it.
Flynn took a weapon and scanned the room with it. Four guys down, one left standing. He redid his math and realized there was a guy missing. There had been five plus the tech.
Flynn pointed the gun at the tech. “There’s another guy. Where is he?”
The guy looked petrified. “Getting a fingerprint kit from the van.”
Flynn kept the gun pointed at the tech as he confirmed the state of play. Two guys were out cold—the redhead who had opened the cell and the locker guy. The team leader was sitting on the floor rubbing at his eyes, making things worse for himself in the process. The blond guy was on hands and knees, coughing and still choking for air.
“You’re a tech?” he asked the guy in the sweater.
“Medical.”
“What’s in the syringe?”
The guy looked at the tray still in his hand. “Barbiturate.”
“Put it on the table.”
With his gun, Flynn directed the guy, who then placed the tray on the table and stepped back as if it were on fire. Flynn pointed at the guy lying unconscious in the cellar doorway. “Drag him inside.”
The medical guy hesitated, but Flynn encouraged him with the H&K. He stepped across the redhead into the cell room, and then grabbed him under the shoulders and dragged him into the room. He pulled the guy all the way to the mattress and left him half lying on it. He looked up and found Flynn leaning against the door to push it open. He directed the guy to help the team leader into the room and left him up against the wall.
Then he helped the guy struggling to breathe. He was starting to normalize, so Flynn was confident he didn’t have a crushed windpipe, but he was okay with giving him one if he decided to do something stupid. He didn’t, choosing to sit on the mattress. When the tech had dragged the last guy inside, Flynn got him to take a cutting tool from one of the sleeping guys, put it on the table, and move back into the cell.
Flynn used the tool to cut off his plastic cuffs, then he heard a door. He turned and looked through the office door that led out into a stairwell and up toward street level. Someone had come in. Flynn could hear the tapping of shoes on the concrete steps. He directed the medical tech back into the cellar and pulled the door closed but not locked, then he jumped in behind the office door, leaving it open.
The fifth agent stepped through with a small case in his hand. He stopped just inside the doorway as his brain registered the lack of colleagues in the room. Flynn wondered if he thought they had all gone into the interrogation. That would certainly be poor protocol. Flynn didn’t wait to find out. He put the muzzle of the USP again
st the guy’s temple.
“Where’s your gun?”
“I don’t have it.”
“Put the case on the table.”
The agent did so.
“Open your jacket by the lapel, and show me your holster.”
“I don’t have a holster.”
“I will shoot you dead.”
“I have a family.”
“Then don’t be stupid. Show me.”
The agent pulled his jacket to reveal an empty holster. The guy was just ducking out to get the print kit. He left his weapon behind. Flynn remembered what Schmidt, the cop in Stege, had said. We don’t get a lot of crime.
Flynn directed the agent into the cellar. The guy paused when he saw his battered colleagues. He was the healthiest, therefore the greatest threat, so Flynn had him sit far from the door, under the chute.
Then he spoke to the medical tech. “Get everyone’s pepper spray, wallets, IDs, keys, and shoes.”
“Shoes?”
“Yes, shoes.”
The medical tech looked at his colleagues and then at Flynn. He was one of them but not completely. He didn’t wear the uniform—the jacket and button-up shirt and the shoulder holster. He was something different. A medical guy, but not entirely that either. The first thing medical students learned was the motto primum non nocere: first, do no harm. Somewhere along the line, this guy had shelved that ideal in pursuit of national security. Flynn didn’t hold it against him. He’d done far worse himself.
“I have a daughter,” said the medical tech. Flynn could see the fear in his eyes. He had signed up to protect Denmark, but he hadn’t expected to end up on the wrong end of a firearm.
“I’m not the killer here,” said Flynn. “Do what I say, you’ll see her soon enough. Don’t, well . . .” Flynn nodded at the fallen and pain-riddled guys on the mattress.
The guy tugged at the neck of his sweater and then stood. He collected all the wallets, IDs, pepper spray canisters, key rings, and shoes and put them on the table in the anteroom.
When that was done, Flynn gestured toward the tray of syringes. “Were you going to question me or knock me out?”
“One, then the other.”
“Okay. So the one for questioning, it’s a truth serum?”
“There’s no such thing.”
“I know. But you use it to make a subject more suggestible.”
“Ja.”
“You have a fridge here?”
The guy frowned. “Yes. Under my desk.” The guy nodded to the far table where he had been working.
“You have milk?”
“There may be some.”
Flynn checked the cupboard under the desk and found a mini fridge. Inside there was a pharmacy’s worth of drugs, and in the door, a small carton of milk. He placed it on the table near the tray.
“Bring the milk and the drugs.”
They moved into the cell. One looked at Flynn with hate in his eyes. Two looked through tears. Two snoozed. Flynn pointed at the team leader.
“Give him the milk,” Flynn said to the medical guy. “Wash out your eyes,” he said to the team leader.
The guy tipped his head back and poured milk into his eyes and onto his face. When he was done he wiped his face with his hands but left the residual dairy in place. He was white and red and splotchy, and although he was better, he was not good. Pepper spray burned the skin and was not easily removed.
“Now, give him a dose,” said Flynn.
The medical guy looked at the team leader and then at Flynn. He shook his head. Flynn was done being nice. He cocked the handgun and pointed it at him.
The tech took one syringe from the tray and looked again at his team leader. The leader didn’t look happy, but he didn’t move. He gave Flynn a defiant look, as if it didn’t matter, as if his training would ensure the injection would have no effect.
Flynn expected different. He knew the limits of barbiturates like sodium thiopental. He had used the drug on occasion when interrogating a subject he planned to keep alive. Its effects were varied depending on the subject but often mimicked drunkenness, lowering inhibitions and causing the subject to become giddy and laugh. It did not compel them to spill the beans, but it did often create a feeling that made the subject want to tell the truth, whatever that was for them. The medical guy injected half the syringe into his team leader’s arm.
“Put it all in,” said Flynn.
“It’s dangerous,” said the medical guy. “It can kill.”
“I know what it can do. But you were going to put the whole thing in me, weren’t you?” He prodded him with a wave of the gun. The tech pressed down on the plunger and drove the drug into the team leader’s arm.
Flynn directed the medical tech to sit farther away along the wall, and then he crouched in front of the team leader. He waited, but he didn’t wait long. The drug was fast-acting but not long-lasting. It was used as a sedative in operating theaters and would put the guy to sleep before he answered anything if Flynn wasted time.
“What is your name?” he asked first as a baseline question. He had the guy’s ID in his hand.
“Ager, George Ager.”
Flynn looked at the ID and nodded. “And what do you do for a living, George?”
“I am a policeman.” He laughed.
Flynn nodded again. It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth either.
“What section do you work for, George?”
“Politiets Efterretningstjeneste,” he said.
“In English, George.”
“The Security and Intelligence Service.”
Flynn glanced at the ID again. That was pretty much what it said, in not so many words.
“Why did you apprehend me, George?”
“You?” He looked at Flynn and then giggled. “You’re a bad guy.”
“Who says I’m a bad guy? Who told you to arrest me?”
“The CO.”
“Who is your CO?”
“My commanding officer.”
“What is his name?”
“Klaasen.”
“Why does he want me?”
The team leader shrugged, and his whole body shook. “I don’t know.” He smiled.
“Why did you shoot the reporter?”
“Who?”
“The guy in the car.”
“The car?”
“At the port, George. Why did you shoot the guy at the port?”
“Had to.”
“Why?”
“Had to.”
Flynn felt like he was losing him. The team leader’s head lolled like he was ready to sleep.
“Who shot him?” asked Flynn.
“Who shot him?”
“The guy in the car—who shot him?”
“Frommer. Told Frommer to do it.”
“Why?”
“To get you.”
“Why do you want me?”
“You’re trouble.”
“Why am I trouble?”
“Big trouble.”
“Trouble for who?”
The team leader’s eyes half closed as the pain of the pepper spray was defeated by the barbiturate. “Everyone.” He smiled, and then his head flopped back against the wall. He was out.
Flynn looked at the other men in the room. Four were still awake, but he was fairly certain the medical guy would know nothing.
He stepped out and checked the IDs again. The door guy, the one with red hair, was called Frommer. He had shot Olsen. Flynn fought the compulsion to run in and kick him in the guts, but the guy was out of it, so it would have been wasted effort. His day would come.
“What are you going to do?” asked the medical guy.
“I’m going to leave you here for now. Then I’m going to find who you work for, and I’m going to burn their damned house down.”
“You can’t leave us here.”
“You were going to do it to me, so let’s call it quid pro quo. Someone will come, eventually.”
Flynn slamm
ed the cell door, slipped the bolt home, and then looked around the anteroom. He found a small day pack under the medical guy’s desk that held a sandwich and a water bottle. He snagged both and then filled the pack with the IDs and other items he had collected from the men. He took all the guns but one from the locker, removed the magazines, and put all the pieces in the pack. He found a resealable plastic bag in the medical guy’s stuff. It wasn’t an evidence bag, not exactly, but it would do. He used the bag as a glove to collect the gun that was on the shelf labeled Frommer, and he removed the magazine and then dropped the gun into the bag and sealed it. Next he found his own boots and put them on. There was nothing else of his to take, so there was nothing to find.
He glanced around the room. There were three doors. One was the room he had been kept in. Along the wall from that door was another. Probably another cellar, perhaps storage. It had the same hefty door as his cell. The third door was the exit out past the medical guy’s desk. It was different, more like an office door, the kind of thing he had seen on a hundred military bases. He took that one.
The stairs led up. There were none going further down. He saw a dark open cavity under the stairs. He tossed all the shoes he had collected under there, where they would not be found, not immediately, maybe not for days or weeks or years.
Flynn stepped up to the street. He opened the door slowly and found himself in an alley. It was pitch black, so dark he couldn’t see the opposite wall. There was no sign of light from the cellar below. The only source was the moonlight at the end of the alley.
He walked out onto the street and stopped. The building beside him had once been a café or a bar. It had windows on the front that were frosted halfway up but had long ago been papered over entirely. He checked his watch. It was late, or early. Nearly time for the city to stir again. He didn’t know where he was, so he did what he always did: he turned left and walked.
The Rotten State: A John Flynn Thriller Page 20
