by Patrick Dent
“Three? These are quality?”
“The highest quality, Honorable One.” Tartus knew it was dangerous to promise something he hadn't seen himself, but this was the opportunity of a lifetime. King Fahr had purchased dozens of girls from him in the past decade, but all were from Third World countries.
“When can we meet?”
“Twenty days, Honorable One.”
“Very well. We'll meet for lunch on the seventeenth at Kahlid's in Riyadh. You will have the merchandise nearby?”
“As you wish, Honorable One.” Tartus smiled as he replaced the receiver. He knew he could command almost any price for three clean, middle class American girls. He suspected King Fahr al-Azon Al Saud would love showcasing them in his harem.
Chapter Seventeen
International Waters, East of Norfolk, Virginia
Commander Rymes stared blankly over the deck of the Prometheus. The sea was choppy. White-capped green mounds slapped against the hull with relentless effort. He was nervous about his new command. When Fulton had recruited him, Rymes was given the barest of details. He was to navigate the oil tanker to a certain set of coordinates just northeast of the Suez Canal and await the transmission of double blind launch codes. Neither he nor the technician who transmitted the codes would know the missiles' targets.
Fulton had told him the encoded launch codes would be transmitted a few moments before the launch. Rymes would then translate the message into another code that only the missiles could decipher. Until they received the transmission, he and his crew had a boring assignment - posing as commercial sailors.
As a career Navy man, Rymes was accustomed to waiting. 'Hurry up and wait' was a common slogan among the armed forces. Still, he couldn't help but speculate. He looked out over the deck at his men. They were a good group of soldiers. Many had combat experience in Vietnam, and all were expert sailors.
Their mission was a simple one - sail, launch, and return home. Although not particularly challenging, this mission could restore his good name and get him back in the game. But why was he here? He wasn't aware of any Middle Eastern activities warranting a sneak attack of this magnitude.
Although he considered himself lucky to be given another crack at command, something just didn't add up. He felt the familiar sting of guilt that always accompanied his memories of his last combat mission.
The one question that perplexed Rymes most was why his ship's missiles were all Soviet SS-18's.
* * *
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Drake stood at the Marriott Rio desk. Gip was two meters behind him, broadening his line of sight.
“Good Morning, Sir. How may I help you?” the desk clerk asked.
“My friend and I are new to Rio, and we'd like to arrange a tour,” Drake replied. Drake and Gip were dressed in 100% Armani - casual slacks, T-shirts and sport jackets; basically like the perfect marks for conmen. It didn't take Hector long to slither his way into the conversation.
“Mr. Drake,” Hector said, having instinctively filed away his name, “I am Hector, the hotel concierge. I'm sure I can help you gentlemen with whatever arrangements you'd prefer.” He turned his gaze to Gip as he spoke. Gip met his eyes levelly.
“Well, we're sort of taking an unofficial vacation. Neither of us has been to Rio before. Money is not an issue. We'd also prefer a little female companionship, if you know what I mean,” Drake said, producing a hundred-dollar bill. “Do you think you could fix us up for couple of days?”
“Well,” Hector began, “I do have a dear friend who owns a taxi. This is extremely important in Rio, Sir. If you hail a taxi on the street, you never know what you're going to get. My cousin, who grew up here, by the way, hailed a taxi off the street once. He was taken to a remote place where other men were waiting. They beat him so badly he permanently lost the hearing in his left ear.”
“What's your friend's name?”
“Name? Uh, his name is Felipe.”
Bingo! “How much does Felipe charge?” Drake asked.
Within moments, Drake and Gip were in the back of Felipe's cab pretending to listen to his tour speech. John paid careful attention to the driver, and although the man did have a seedy air about him, he gave no clear indication he was a kidnapper. Drake decided any approach was better than no approach.
“Felipe.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“My friend and I are interested in something that is not on your tour.”
“Sir, I am a man of many talents and connections. All you need to do is ask,” Felipe responded with a grin.
“Felipe, we are interested in girls.”
“Well, Sir, who is not? If you are looking for girls, you have come to the right place. Rio has many girls.”
“Felipe, we want a special type of girl. The type we can take off your hands with no questions asked.” Drake let the statement sink in. “Permanently.”
After some thought, Felipe responded, “Mr. Drake, I know just the place.”
Felipe made a U turn at the next light, and drove to the nearest pay phone. When he returned, he said, “Mr. Drake, Mr. Gibson, the arrangements have been made. The cost to you will be ten thousand dollars each.” Felipe anxiously waited for his mark's response. This was a risky business, selling to strangers.
“That won't be a problem,” Drake responded. Felipe had progressed from seedy character to prime suspect in Drake's mind. He scratched at the duct tape strips encircling his arm, and thought of the full-contact conversation he planned to have with Felipe.
When Drake returned to the cab, he said, “We'll be ready in one hour. We'll meet you in front of the Marriott.
An hour and a half later, they pulled into a small hotel, about twenty minutes drive out of Rio. Felipe turned to face his guests. “My friends, this is where we part ways. Your girls are waiting for you in room one thirty two.”
“Felipe, do I look foolish to you?” Drake asked. “I'm not about to hand you twenty thousand dollars for merchandise I haven't seen. My friend and I will require your accompaniment to the room. Once we are comfortable with the situation, You'll get the cash. Understand?”
“I understand,” Felipe said, without surprise.
Felipe entered room one thirty two first, quickly followed by Drake and Gip. Two young girls, no older than their late teens, were naked and hog-tied on the bed. Standing at the foot of the bed was one of the largest men Drake had ever seen. His obsidian, soulless eyes panned from Drake to Gip. Shark's eyes, flat, black and hungry. The giant wore a tacky rendition of a business suit. His jewelry was gaudy. Gold chains hung from every extremity.
The bathroom door was closed, suggesting the presence of at least one other man. The giant roughly frisked Drake and Gip. They were not surprised. Drake remembered his Ranger training – no one was more relaxed than immediately after they searched you.
Gip slowly worked his way around the perimeter of the room toward the bathroom door while Drake casually looked for a weapon. His eyes registered but did not linger on the ink pen on the desk. He calculated his move to take about two seconds. The giant, with his gun still holstered, could not beat that time. He split the difference between Felipe and the girls in his field of vision, studying each in the periphery. When he saw Felipe catch his eye, he jerked his stare toward one of the girls. The feign worked. Felipe turned to face the girls. Time slowed to a crawl as the entire balance of two men's lifespans was compressed into the next five seconds.
Drake grabbed the pen, flipped off its protective top with his thumb, and promptly buried it in the giant's left carotid artery. The giant gurgled in the warm metallic soup of his own blood, staring at Drake in disbelief. Before he could reflexively draw his weapon, Drake had the man's .38 revolver. He immediately tossed it to Gip. When the second man burst out of the bathroom, Gip was ready.
“Hey!” Gip shouted, mainly to add confusion. Gip's hand was shaking slightly, but at this range the man knew he couldn't miss. The man froze for just an instant, but th
at was all Gip needed. Gip lowered the pistol to his victim's solar plexus, using the man's spleen as a silencer. The molten lead traveled upward at a steep angle, lodging between the second and third cervicals. The man was dead before his flaccid body slapped to the floor.
Meanwhile, the giant silently bled out on the carpet. When Gip turned to face the room, he saw Drake had Felipe in a sleeper hold. Felipe was unconscious in twenty seconds. The sleeper was an excellent hold. The old saying that the brain could live four minutes without oxygen was a myth. Actually, there were four minutes of oxygen left in the bloodstream once the lungs stopped breathing. When the carotids were pressed shut, unconsciousness ensued within seconds.
Two minutes after the door to the hotel room closed, Drake and Gip had secured the scene. Gip searched the pockets of the two dead men and came up with a switchblade and a set of Mercedes keys. Both would come in handy.
Having brought no weapons with them other than their special forces training, Drake & Gip had to improvise. They knew company could arrive at any minute.
“Gip, get us into the next room.”
“Consider it done.”
It took Gip less than fifteen seconds to pick the cheap lock to room one thirty three. Drake easily lifted Felipe and dragged him to the adjacent room. Any onlookers would simply think Drake was helping a drunken friend, if they thought anything at all. The room change would provide them with a tactical advantage should more company arrive. Gip hastily released the two girls, returned their clothing, and sent them off in Felipe's taxi.
Drake stripped his own jacket and shirt off, and removed several bands of duct tape from each arm while Gip undressed the interrogation subject. One difference between the regular Army and the Special Forces was the Army taught the art of killing a man. The Special Forces taught the art of keeping a man alive.
Drake sat studying his quarry. Two facts kept surfacing in his mind. First, he was limited to the tools in this room, plus the switchblade Gip had taken from the dead giant. Second, he didn't know how much time he had. This would have to be relatively quick, robbing him of the most valuable tool of interrogation – time. Given enough time, everyone cracked.
When pain was quick and severe, some had the wherewithal to die nobly. He would have to skip the fancy psychology. His one hope was that Felipe was what he appeared – a weakling. Whether or not this pathetic man knew anything about Lupe Hernandez, he deserved what awaited him. Drake was repulsed by what Felipe was willing to do to those two young girls. The image sickened him. He thought of Tammy and grit his jaw.
For the first time since he learned Tammy's secret, Drake felt emotion – anger, a blinding fury focused entirely on Felipe. Although he didn't realize it, John had possessed the anger all along. It was just inwardly directed. Anger directed inward becomes depression. Now, the coin had flipped. This pathetic man personified all the injustice in the world to John. Drake convinced himself that the more he hurt Felipe, the more his rage would be assuaged - the more justice would be served.
Drake looked from the knife in Gip's hand to Felipe, who was naked and bound to a wooden chair with duct tape covering his mouth. He thought of Tammy, and the ruin that rape had brought to her life. He still saw the haunted look in her eyes. He still heard the shakiness in her voice as she recounted the terrible event that would always follow her. He also remembered the day he stood over a dying dove and took a vow never to cause the death of another living thing.
Drake wished things were like the movies, where the lines between good and evil are clearly drawn. In his current situation, the lines were hazy, and Drake struggled to determine whether he was one of the good guys or one of the bad guys. He remembered his father's words, There is no right or wrong. There's simply whose side you're on. At first, this statement had appalled him, but now it was a convenient rationalization. He hardened his resolve.
Felipe awoke and immediately lost control of his bladder. Drake noticed the subject's breathing had become labored and panicky. He knew that every minute he waited, Felipe's will grew weaker, and he didn't want him to pass out from carbon dioxide buildup. When Felipe pissed himself, Drake thought the time was right. Drake stepped in front of him.
“Felipe, you and I are going to chat. If you tell me what I want to know there's no need for you to be hurt. Now, we'll start with a few simple questions, but I'm warning you, if you don't talk now, it will be a long time before your next opportunity.”
Drake jerked the duct tape off of Felipe's mouth, tearing his lip slightly on the upper right side. As Felipe opened his mouth to cry out, Gip swiftly flicked open the switchblade and placed it in the corner of Felipe's eye. Felipe let his breath out in a hiss through clenched teeth.
“Try to scream and I dig your eye out of your face. Understand?” Gip asked, as calmly as if he were talking to a child.
“Yes, I understand,” Felipe managed between huge gulps of air.
“Felipe,” Drake said, “We want to talk about the girls. Where did they come from?” Drake had to strain to restrict himself to one question at a time, but he remembered his training and gave the subject time to respond.
Felipe responded, “I don't know where the girls came from. You killed the men who got them for me.”
“Wrong answer,” Drake said as he replaced the duct tape on Felipe's mouth. He had to impress upon the subject that he was in complete control of the conversation. He took the switchblade from Gip's hand and walked over to the desk. Drake knelt and cut a thin strip of wood from the leg of the chair. Without saying a word, he cut a two-inch strip of skin across the back of Felipe's left hand, just above the knuckles. Felipe quivered in pain as the four tendons snapped one-by-one. Drake then made two vertical cuts, each about an inch long, at the ends of the first cut. Felipe now had three quarters of a rectangle cut into his hand.
Drake placed the wooden strip on the back of the subject's hand and rolled the loose skin onto it. He then proceeded to roll past the pre-cut area up the subject's left arm, leaving a path of exposed muscle approximately two inches wide extending from Felipe's knuckles to his shoulder. The sound reminded John of bacon sizzling.
Felipe screamed through his nose, clenched his teeth, and flexed every muscle in his body in a futile effort to escape the horror. Stomach acid and bile came up through his sinuses and out of his nostrils.
Felipe closed his eyes and bit hard, snapping both of his upper front teeth. Once, when Drake was just below the elbow joint, Felipe passed out from the pain. Gip quite effectively remedied this by throwing steaming hot water from the sink into Felipe's face. Felipe sucked air in through his nose with such a fury his nostrils collapsed with each breath. The muscles in his face convulsed with agony as his head shook left and right, instinctively signaling no, no, no!
When he reached the shoulder, Drake cut the flesh croissant off and held it in front of Felipe's face. “Now, this conversation is getting boring. Felipe. Let me cut to the chase. You have plenty of skin left and I have all night, so you and I can both be certain you will tell me what I want to know. I am interested in your little business of buying and selling girls. I had a friend.” He produced a picture of Lupe. “She disappeared ten days ago. If I don't find out where my friend is, I will become much more creative.” Drake produced several salt packets from his pocket and set them within Felipe's sight. “You do believe I'm creative, don't you? Or should I demonstrate?”
Although Drake displayed the calm sadism of a seasoned combat veteran, he was acting. Inside, he was seething with rage. He pictured Felipe raping Tammy. This thought threatened to bring back the hurt and humiliation he had buried along with his friends. Drake suppressed all thought but the cold fury coursing through his veins – a slurry of ice water moving through frozen pipes. In that zone, there was no pain, no regret and no hesitation. In that zone, he was the good guy, operating on his most basic instincts.
Drake studied Felipe. No major vessels were opened. Felipe's capillary bleeding was bright red and copious, bu
t not life threatening. He delivered a quick blow to the mouth before removing Felipe's gag for the second time. This time, the little sewer rat was most eager to share the details of his little enterprise. Before he spoke, Felipe spat out the jagged tips of his incisors. He took in huge, wheezing gulps of air.
“Pleath! I'll tell you everything you want to know. Just let me breathe!” Felipe's voice was weak and hurried. He had developed a pronounced lisp as the result of his broken incisors. When he spoke, Drake couldn't help thinking of Sylvester the cat.
“Don't worry, Felipe.” Drake smiled, “The one thing you can count on is that I'll keep you breathing.” Drake was pleased to hear Felipe use the phrase 'everything you want to know' instead of 'everything I know'; the latter being a sign of some remaining resistance. Felipe was not leaving himself the option of claiming ignorance. “Talk. You have three seconds to begin.”
“Fejo. Hith name ith Fejo. He has the girlth. I am just a bithneth man. Pleath don't hurt me anymore! I, I, I deliver untratheable girls to him on occathion. I don't know what he doeth with them.”
Without saying a word, Drake raised the duct tape to Felipe's mouth. Felipe jerked his head back. What he said next came out as a scream.
“No! Tarfaya! He takth the girlth to Tarfaya, Morocco. He deliverth them to a man named Tartuth. Fejo's ship is called The Lady and the Tramp. He thails out of Guanabara Bay. I think he just left two, maybe three dayth ago. Thith ith everything I know. You have to believe me!”
“I believe you,” Drake said calmly.
Drake had made no promise to Felipe about releasing him or even providing a merciful death. Somehow, that distinction was important to him. He replaced the duct tape over Felipe's mouth. There was a faint glimmer of hope in Felipe's eyes. This piece of shit thinks I'm going to leave him alive, Drake thought.
With slight hesitation, Drake pulled another piece of duct tape from his arm and placed it securely over Felipe's nostrils. He then pulled a chair in front of Felipe, staring directly into his anguished and quivering eyes. Drake expected Felipe's anguish to soothe his own wounds like some magic salve. When Felipe died, Drake expected a spike of raw, healing power to fill the void left by his emotions. He wanted the power to change the past, but would settle for the power to restore justice.
