by Jack Du Brul
“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, Senor 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, Senor 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, Senor 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, che
cking 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.
Lauren threw herself to the ground, rolling across the stiff grass as a pair of shots split the air above her. She spun back to her feet and continued charging. The sergeant held his aim for a second-why, Lauren would never know-but it gave her the time she needed to dive again and throw off his aim once more.
Maybe he was letting her go, or at least giving her a chance, in order to make up for his own feelings of distaste about the torturer. Whatever the reason, Lauren reached the corner of the garage before he could fire again. The other Chinese troops running from the house couldn’t target her either. She blew off the garage’s side-door lock with the Colt. The SUV was a green Ford Explorer and, blessing of blessings, Liu trusted his security staff enough to leave the keys in the ignition.
She had the engine running before the first of the Chinese led by the sergeant were a quarter of the way to the garage. The troops carried type-87 assault rifles. The automatic weapons crackled the instant she pulled from the garage. Glass exploded around her and no matter how low she ducked in the seat she felt she presented a huge target. Flooring the big truck so the V-8 growled, she tore across the lawn away from the advancing soldiers, the 4x4 giving excellent traction despite the dew covering the grass.
More rounds hit the back of the truck, shattering the rear windshield, but each second increased the range and decreased the accuracy. Lauren dared sit straighter. She twisted the wheel to get back on the driveway and floored the gas.
She had no idea what kind of force Liu had at the end of the meandering drive, but she was sure they’d been alerted by radio that she was coming. She was also sure that in a few minutes guards would give chase in the sedans.
With the speedometer reading eighty miles per hour, she drove with single-minded purpose, keeping her focus on what was coming up, not what was already behind.
Every few seconds she had to wipe her sweaty hands on the front of her uniform. She saw the car phone clipped to the center console when she reached down to engage the air conditioner. Now wasn’t the time, but having the phone gave her spirits an added lift. She had to tell Mercer that Liu planned to destroy the canal the next day using a ship called Gemini.
After ten miles, she spotted the end of the driveway. A guardhouse constructed of wood sat at the juncture of a main highway and Liu’s access road. A chain-link fence topped with razor wire stretched parallel to the highway and a heavy gate had been closed across the drive. The trio of guards had also maneuvered a pair of matching SUVs to bolster the gate.
Lauren hesitated for a second then mashed the accelerator again. As she approached the gate she fired off her Colt’s magazine, keeping the guards down for the seconds she needed. Ten yards from the barricade, she eased off the gas and gently turned the wheel, mindful that the sport utility wasn’t known to be nimble.
She ducked an instant before the front of the truck smashed into the guardhouse. Wood and cheap furniture exploded around the hurtling vehicle like they had been tossed aside by an enraged bull. The truck barely slowed and continued through the far wall with so much momentum that Lauren had to slam the brakes to make the turn onto the highway. The black marks in the asphalt indicated that the traffic entering or leaving Liu’s compound came from the right, leaving Lauren to believe that was the way to Panama City. A minute later she saw her assumption was correct. A road sign said she was thirty miles from the capital. As soon as she reached a long straightaway she pressed the button on the steering wheel that activated the car phone’s voice-recognition program and she asked it to dial her cell phone number.
She couldn’t wait to hear Mercer’s voice.
The difficulty in snatching Maria Barber began with her anger at being woken for a second time when Mercer and Bruneseau hammered on her fourth-floor apartment door.
Lieutenant Foch and two Legionnaires waited in a van outside the nondescript apartment house.
She came to the door after five minutes of pounding. She was yelling at them in Spanish even before swinging open the door. She wore a tattered housecoat, her hair was awry, and her breath was sour with stale alcohol. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. Whatever beauty she’d once possessed was being washed away by the booze.
Seeing her, Mercer felt a hot stab of anger surge through his body. Maria was partially responsible for Lauren’s death and had callously told Liu about her husband’s discovery, knowing that Gary and everyone else living with him on the banks of the River of Ruin would be murdered. That a quirk of geology had killed them first didn’t absolve her in his mind.
She continued her tirade, not bothering to identify who had disturbed her. Mercer stood rooted, his lips compressed in a white line and his eyes narrowed to angry slits. He let her go on for a few more seconds then slapped her across the face. The blow was just enough to stun her into silence.
“Mercer!” she cried when she finally recognized him.
Rene and he pushed her into the dingy apartment and closed the door.
“What are you doing here?” Maria clutched at her robe.
Two empty wine bottles sat on a coffee table next to a dinner plate overflowing with cigarette butts. Wads of tissue like the bodies of dead birds littered the floor next to the sofa. Maria had been crying the night before as she tried to drink away some pain. Mercer felt no sympathy. Gauzy curtains diffused the light streaming through the window and cigarette smoke still swirled in the stuffy room.
Lapsing into a wary silence, Maria watched as Mercer made a slow circuit of the living room, peering at the cheap curios she displayed. There were open spaces on the walls where photographs, probably of her and Gary, had until recently hung.
Mercer’s body vibrated with the effort it took to put up a calm front. “He was right, you know,” he said when he could finally look her in the eye. “Gary, I mean. There was a clue in that book I brought from Paris. The Twice-Stolen Treasure is at the lake very close to where he was working.”
Maria blanched. She staggered back and dropped onto the sofa. Keeping her face to Mercer, her hands searched out, then lit, a cigarette. “I always knew he would find it.” She couldn’t muster enough conviction to cover the lie.
“Don’t bother, Maria. We know everything. About you and the Chinese. How you gave up your husband for whatever Liu promised you. I assume it was money, but I don’t really care. I also know you called Liu yesterday when you found out I was still in Panama and had gone out on Lake Gatun.”
To her credit, Maria didn’t continue the charade. Instead her voice turned furious. “And that son of a bitch tossed me aside last night like I was a whore.”
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Rene stepped closer to her. “You are a whore, Madam Barber.”
She threw him a halfhearted curse in Spanish.
“Get dressed,” Mercer ordered. “You’re coming with us.”
“Like hell I am.”
Mercer’s urgency to get away from the apartment suddenly grew. Liu Yousheng wouldn’t be satisfied with just breaking up with Maria. She had information he needed protected and only her death would ensure silence. He was somewhat surprised that she was still alive now. “I can’t promise to keep you out of jail, but I can save your life. Liu is going to have you killed the same as he’s killed a lot of other people involved in his plot.”
“I don’t care.” Plucking a fresh tissue from a box she dabbed her eyes and blew her nose.
Mercer yanked her off the couch and shoved her toward the back bedroom, pushing her through the door into the dim room. The bed was unmade and mounds of clothes threatened to topple from chairs and dressers. A mirror, razor blade, and a rolled dollar bill sat on the nightstand. Mercer’s expression twisted with disgust. “I’m giving you one minute to get some clothes on or so help me God I’ll drag you out of this building naked.”
“That’s all men want from me anyway,” she sobbed.
“Keep your self-pity and get dressed!”
With eyes a mix of contempt and fear, Maria shucked off the robe. If she was looking for Mercer to react to her nudity, she didn’t get it. She snorted and threw on panties, jeans, and a T-shirt that strained against her chest. He handed her a pair of sneakers. Back in the living room, they found Rene on his cell phone.
“We have trouble,” the agent said to Mercer.
“What’s up?”
“Foch said a car just pulled up outside. There are three Chinese men in it. They’re talking right now as if finalizing a plan. Also an army patrol is just down the block. Ten men at least.”
“Shit!” Mercer and Rene drew their weapons. He gave Maria a look as if to say I told you so. “Is there a fire escape?”
