High Treason

by John Gilstrap

  “Step into the open where I can see you,” Jonathan instructed. “And keep your hands exposed.”

  Griffin Horne emerged slowly and tentatively from behind the door. Maybe five-eight and thick through the middle, Horne looked like he’d been born into a long tradition of bureaucrats. The pastiness of his skin told of far more hours indoors than out. If you saw the guy on the street, you might mistake him for a lawyer or an association executive. You’d never in a million lifetimes guess him to possess the special skills for which he was so famous in the covert community.

  “Big Guy, check the inside of that room while I check out Arc Flash.”

  Boxers made a point of growling as he brushed past Horne and disappeared into the back room.

  “I’m getting an ungrateful vibe from you, Jonny,” Horne said as Jonathan patted him down for weapons.

  “Code names, Torture Boy.”

  “After all the good times you’ve had here at my place, I’d think a little deference would be in order.”

  It was cold enough to see your breath in here, yet somehow Horne had managed to work up a sweat. “It’s nothing personal,” Jonathan said. With the thorough frisking completed, he picked up the revolver Horne had dropped, unloaded it by dumping the cartridges on the floor, then slipped it into the patch pocket on his thigh. “You get this back when I leave.”

  “May I put my arms down now?”

  Jonathan answered with a nod. “So, what’s going on in there?”

  Horne gestured to the open door with his palm. “Look for yourself. I’ve been setting up for you.”

  “You first,” Jonathan said.

  Horne smiled. “You really are spooked, aren’t you?”

  “I’m not one to toy with tonight. Read the body language. If not mine, then the Big Guy’s.”

  Arc Flash made a point of smiling even more broadly before stepping through the open doorway into a brightly lit room. Five steps in, the temperature had climbed twenty degrees

  Boxers turned to meet their approach, his fists planted on his hips. “Wait till you get a load of this,” he said.

  The hidden room turned out to be only about twelve by twelve feet—leading Jonathan to conclude that there must be several more such rooms lining the back side of the barn. To the left, on the far end, Vasily and Pyotr sat naked in high, straight-backed chairs, bathed in bright white light that emphasized their facial bruises in a kind of three-dimensional relief. Horne had positioned them so that they were facing each other, and he’d spared no expense in dispensing the duct tape. Loops of the stuff bound every joint to the structural elements of the chairs—forehead, chin, biceps, waist, thighs, knees, and ankles. Every tender part of their bodies was fully exposed, and they would be powerless to protect themselves.

  Jonathan found himself recalling his last encounter with Arc Flash in a stinky, steamy basement in Yemen. The prep there had been nearly identical.

  “What’s the plan?” Jonathan asked.

  “We’re going to learn things that we didn’t know before,” Horne replied. “I’ve been tendering them up with a little electricity, but I thought you’d want to ask the questions.”

  It wasn’t until Horne mentioned the electricity that Jonathan noted the cables that disappeared from view into the men’s respective crotches. He knew without looking that the cables led to heavy alligator clips on the prisoners’ genitals. On the other end, the cables led to a hand-cranked generator.

  Jonathan looked away. The pain of the clamps alone would be unbearable. The thought of high-voltage electricity turned his stomach.

  “Take those off,” Jonathan said.

  “But they haven’t told us anything useful.”

  “I said take them off.” Jonathan drilled the man with a glare. “My interrogation, my rules.”

  Arc Flash glared right back. “Don’t kid yourself, Scorpion. My property, my rules. And you are not my client. I’m letting you ask the questions as a courtesy.”

  Jonathan said nothing.

  After maybe ten seconds, Horne broke. “Fine,” he said. “If you want to play the good cop, I suppose I can go along. For a while.”

  As Horne removed the clamps, Jonathan found what could have been a milking stool and carried it to a spot roughly between the two prisoners.

  Boxers stood at the back of the room, blocking access to the closed door. He kept his hand on the grip of his rifle, poised to hurt anyone who posed a threat.

  Jonathan shrugged out of his rucksack and laid it on the floor. He worked his shoulders a couple of times to ease away the phantom strap marks and sat on the stool.

  “Hello, Vasily,” Jonathan said. Under the bruising, the man had broad Slavic features, complete with the orbital ridge and the pugilist’s nose. Something flashed behind his eyes—it was there and gone in a second, but long enough to show Jonathan that he’d struck the truth.

  “You, too, Peter,” he said to the other one. Jonathan wasn’t going to take a shot at the pronunciation of Pyotr. He figured he was close enough. “Welcome to America. I apologize for my friend’s attraction to male genitalia. Are you both reasonably comfortable now?”

  Neither prisoner spoke. Instead, they stared at each other.

  Jonathan pulled his iPhone out of his trousers pocket, thumbed it to life, and navigated to the dossiers Venice had downloaded to him. He recapped the intel that they’d discussed in the War Room.

  “So, let’s get past all the covers and bullshit Secret Service identities,” he concluded. “You know how this works. You answer my questions through a haze of agony, or you answer them because you know it’s the better solution. Which will it be? Peter, I’ll ask you first. Are you going to cooperate, or are we going to hurt you?”

  Pyotr started to answer, but Vasily cut him off. “We are here legally,” he said. David had made no mention of so thick a Russian accent. Jonathan figured that under stress, he’d forgotten to fake his words. “I don’t know what you want to know.”

  Jonathan laughed. “Really? Is that the best you can come up with? I guess you don’t remember that we’re the ones who kicked your asses when you were trying to kill an innocent couple.”

  The prisoners continued to look exclusively at each other.

  “Okay,” Jonathan said. “Let’s start with the obvious. Why were you intent on killing David Kirk?”

  “Who?” Vasily said.

  Jonathan sighed. “Oh, dear. This is going to be such a long night.” He shifted his gaze to the other prisoner. “How about you, Peter? Are you going to be this difficult?”

  Pyotr shifted his eyes to the floor. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  “Very well, then,” Jonathan said. “Let’s come at it this way. Why were you at the Eastern Towers Apartments this afternoon?”

  “You don’t have to answer him, Pyotr,” Vasily said.

  “He’s not the boss anymore, Peter,” Jonathan said. “Never again will be. You should feel free to answer if you want.”

  “Say nothing, Pyotr.”

  Jonathan kept his gaze locked on Pyotr. Vasily didn’t matter; that was the context. Just a chat between you and me, Pete.

  “Peter, it will be so, so much easier in the long run,” Jonathan said. His tone had never sounded so reasonable. So kind. “I don’t like to see people get hurt. I am not like my little friend. While he may be a monster, I assure you that I am not.”

  Pyotr cheated with his eyes, leaving their lock on Vasily’s face and shifting to evaluate Jonathan.

  “Pyotr, don’t!”

  Jonathan pointed to his own eyes. “Look here, Peter. Not at him. Right here. Right at my eyes. I’m telling you the truth. This doesn’t have to be difficult.”

  Pyotr’s eyes shifted back over to Vasily. And they grew huge.

  From his black side, Jonathan more sensed than heard Boxers shifting his weight. “Threat left!” he yelled.

  Jonathan reacted as reflex, rolling from the stool to the floor. A half-second later,
he was back up on his knee, his .45 drawn and gripped in both hands, ready to neutralize the threat he still hadn’t seen. Boxers hadn’t yet fired a shot, and that fact alone kept Jonathan’s finger off the trigger.

  If he’d turned a few milliseconds later, Jonathan would not have seen Arc Flash deliver the full overhead swing of a sledgehammer onto Vasily’s left shoulder. The crushing blow landed squarely on the sweet spot where the clavicle, scapula, and the proximal condyle of the humerus met to form the shoulder joint. The bones splintered with a sickening crunch, and Vasily’s entire left side sagged from the impact. Somehow, the sound of shattering bone reverberated more loudly than Vasily’s guttural shriek.

  “Aw, fuck!” Boxers yelled.

  Jonathan’s stomach nearly emptied itself. “Arc Flash!” he yelled. “Jesus!”

  Horne beamed with delight as he spun the sledge in his hand the way a drum major might flourish a baton.

  “Like that,” Horne said. The effort left him short of breath. He pointed the sledge at Pyotr, an extension of his arm. “Aren’t a few answers worth not having that happen to you?” He emphasized the point by tapping the white flash of bone that protruded from the ruined shoulder, triggering another scream.

  Pyotr vomited into his own lap.

  Jonathan hadn’t yet broken his aim. “Put that down, Arc Flash. For Christ’s sake.”

  Horne grabbed the back of Vasily’s chair and jostled it. Vasily howled like a wounded animal.

  “Stop!” Boxers boomed.

  Horne turned to face the Big Guy full on. He stepped out in front of Vasily, his arms held wide, cruciform. In the bright light, blood shimmered on the sledge’s head.

  “What are you going to do, Big Guy? Shoot me?” he pivoted a quarter-turn to his left to address Jonathan. “How about you Scorpion? I’m all the way over here and you’re all the way over there. Are you going to separate my soul from my body just because I break a few bones?” He emphasized the last word with a golf swing that brought the face of the sledge through the face of Vasily’s right kneecap. An erection showed through Horne’s trousers.

  He turned back to face Boxers. “All right, Mr. Snake Eating Delta Operator. What are you going to do? Decision time. Either shoot that thing or holster it.”

  “Big Guy, don’t,” Jonathan said.

  Boxers had a long history of treating rhetorical challenges as real. Jonathan didn’t want to deal with the Horne’s corpse. Not tonight. “Disengage,” he commanded.

  When he didn’t hear sounds of appropriate movement, he looked back to see Boxers thoroughly committed to a shooter’s stance. Eight feet away, Horne’s entire being screamed, Shoot me.

  “Hey, Big Guy,” Jonathan coaxed. “He’s a shit, but he’s on our side.”

  Boxers hesitated for maybe a second, and then let go of his 417, letting it fall against its sling. “This isn’t right, Scorpion,” he said. “We don’t do this shit.”

  You knew you’d crossed a moment in the space-time continuum when Boxers was the conscience of the group. What was done was done. Arc Flash’s tactics were disgusting, but they were already in play. This wasn’t the time to put righteous indignation in the way of collecting valuable information.

  Jonathan slipped his Colt back into its holster and resumed his seat on the stool.

  Everything about Pyotr had changed. He was three shades paler, he was drenched in his own nastiness, and though it was physically impossible, he looked ten years younger and ten pounds lighter. By any measure, that meant he was ready to talk.

  Jonathan cleared his throat. “So, what’ll it be, Peter? The easy way or the hard way?”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “This is bullshit,” David said. He and Becky sat together in his room. For the past couple of hours, they’d been biding time by doing nothing. So far, this Scorpion guy had been true to his word, up to and including the nice old black lady who’d seen to their every need.

  “There’s been a lot of that today,” Becky said. “Which part are you finding particularly bullshitty?”

  “It’s stupid to trust my future—my life—to people I’ve never met before,” he said.

  Becky stewed on that for a few seconds. “I can’t disagree entirely,” she said. “But give credit for the fact that we’re alive because of them.”

  “I thought you were against all of this,” David said.

  “I don’t have a clue what I’m for or against anymore, David. Everything I’ve ever known, everything I’ve ever been—all of my accomplishments, such as they are—don’t mean anything anymore. Maybe I’m just grasping at straws. Pretending that I still have choices.”

  “Here’s the thing,” David explained. “When I met with Grayson, he gave me the name and address of a guy in Lake Ridge—it’s in Prince William County—who he said should be able to give us some information.”

  “A guy. Which guy?”

  “His name is Billy Zanger. He’s on the president’s staff.”

  “President of the United States?”

  “That would be the one.”

  “You want to meet with a staffer of the president of the United States?”

  Hearing the question asked with such incredulity gave him pause. “He’s been bought and paid for by Grayson. Or so Grayson says.” The bought-and-paid-for line didn’t even raise an eyebrow.

  “Why is Grayson sharing his sources with you?”

  David gave her the thirty-second précis of his chat.

  When he was finished, Becky cocked her head. “What, exactly, would you ask him?”

  David started to answer, then stopped. “I have no idea. But sitting here does nothing but make me nervous. This is my life we’re talking about. And it’s all collapsing around me.”

  “You can’t, David. Your face is all over the news. Suppose someone notices you?”

  “People don’t look for faces,” David said. “Nobody pays attention to those pictures unless they’re watching America’s Most Wanted.”

  “But if they do?”

  “Then they do and I go to jail. That’s not a whole hell of a lot different than where I am right now.”

  “Except for the locks on the doors, and the absence of anal rape,” Becky said.

  David scowled. “Where did the ironic sense of humor come from? You’ve never had an ironic sense of humor.”

  She folded her arms, emphasizing her breasts. “You have no idea what I’ve had or haven’t had. I was invisible to you until last night.” The way she delivered the line, it sounded less like a shot than it probably was.

  David let it go. “I’m going to visit and talk with him,” he said. “It feels like the right thing to do. Do you believe in karma?”

  Becky laughed. “Oh, please,” she said. “Tell me that the cynical David Kirk is not going all woo-woo when the chips are down.”

  “Things happen for a reason,” he insisted. “If Grayson went to the trouble of telling me about this guy, there has to be a reason for me to speak with him.”

  Becky stared at him.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “You just continue to surprise me.”

  David sighed. “So, are you coming with me?”

  Her smile collapsed into a look of total shock. “You mean you’re really going? How are you going to get there? You don’t have a car.”

  He shrugged. “They’ve got to have taxis, don’t they? Every place has taxis. And I have a pocket full of fresh money.”

  “I have the drawings, Peter,” Jonathan said. “I know what your targets are. What I don’t have are the details of the how or the when.” Behind him, Vasily had fallen unconscious. The wetness of his breathing sounds told Jonathan that Arc Flash’s blows had caused one of the many broken bones to puncture the man’s lung. He sounded like he was drowning. Jonathan avoided looking at him.

  Pyotr, on the other hand, kept staring, and as he did, he became increasingly unnerved. He said something in Russian that might have been a prayer.

 
; “English,” Jonathan said.

  Pyotr took his time answering, dividing the silence between Jonathan and Vasily. “You don’t understand,” he said, finally. “You don’t understand because you don’t want to understand.”

  “Enlighten me,” Jonathan said.

  “Americans are always focused on the wrong thing,” Pyotr said. His accent had grown thick enough that Jonathan had a hard time understanding what he was saying. “You determine that there is a single threat to your country, and then you focus all of your resources on that one thing. Even as the threat is weakened and ultimately destroyed, you refuse to look any further.”

  “I’m not sure I understand what we’re talking about,” Jonathan said.

  “We are talking about the downfall of the United States,” Pyotr said. “It is the thing upon which so much of the world is focused.” He allowed himself a smile. “You pretend that your enemies are religious enemies, and you fear only Muslims. You believe this even though those enemies die by the dozens under the rain of your bombs and the bullets of your secret killers.”

  Vasily made a desperate choking sound that drew Jonathan’s attention. The man’s lips had turned a dull blue, and while his head bobbed as if asleep, his eyes remained open. Vasily was dying.

  “I’m sorry about your friend,” Jonathan said. “It’s a terrible way to die. But a brutal death is part of the deal we all make when we go into this line of work.” Jonathan cringed at his own words. Hearing a man die as the result of torture meted out in his presence had stolen something from his soul.

  “Look at me, Peter,” Jonathan said. “Try to ignore Vasily. It’s clear that he’ll be dead soon.”

  Hesitantly, Pyotr retuned his gaze.

  “You say that we don’t understand what are the greatest threats against us, but then you don’t tell me what the real threats are.”

  “But you already know” Pyotr said. “We are right here.”

  Boxers said, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed that you’re tied naked to a chair. I’m not feeling all that threatened.”

  Sometimes, Jonathan wished that Boxers would keep his mouth shut.