The system had the added benefit, for which Sam had paid a hefty premium, of not containing the NSA-friendly trapdoors that all surveillance systems sold in the US contained. She had worked for Big Brother long enough to know that she couldn’t trust Big Brother.
“Sadness. I was looking forward to whooping some ass.”
“I wouldn’t mess with you, but I’m glad he slinked off nonetheless,” Brock said with a laugh. “Can I come out yet?” Brock was a big, muscular guy and a minor legend in his own world, but he knew his limits. He wasn’t a trained spook, or a trained spook catcher, and Sam was grateful that he was content to leave that kind of business to the pros. Like her. She was also grateful that he was well-hung, which, she believed, made dating a bona fide badass such as herself slightly less emasculating.
“Not yet. I’m not entirely sure that’s a real cop behind me.”
“I’ll bring the shotgun.” He hung up. She knew he meant it.
She wasn’t wrong. The front door opened about the same time the police officer came up to speak with Sam. Her attention was divided between Brock, stark naked and brandishing a shotgun, and Officer Davis of the DC Metro Police Department.
The badge and cop trimmings all looked real, but she called Davis’ badge number in to the DHS duty desk for verification. “I sleep with the naked guy holding the 12-gauge,” she reassured Davis while she waited for the DHS duty officer to look up the badge number in the system. The officer nodded, but kept his eye on Brock.
“Thanks,” Sam said when the duty officer finally vouched for the patrolman. “Now my boyfriend can get dressed and put his gun away. Or put his gun away by getting dressed. Whatever.”
The DHS response team pulled up in their black Suburban, which looked a little ridiculous with its antennae sticking out everywhere. Sam asked them to secure the perimeter, which was polite spook-speak for “stay the hell out of the way.” They cooperated by milling about unproductively at the corners of her lot.
She invited Officer Davis in for coffee, and he appeared happy to accept. She quizzed him on the evening’s events, hoping he’d heard some snippet of radio chatter or observed something unusual that would help shed some light on the confusing situation.
But Officer Davis hadn’t heard or seen anything, and based on his slow uptake, Sam figured that he wasn’t a strong candidate for detective any time soon, so the time was largely wasted. Still, a girl had to try.
After Davis drove off, Sam and Brock returned to the panic room to review the video footage for any clues it might hold. They were largely disappointed. The “officer” who parked at their curb and rang their doorbell a hundred times had worn a policeman’s wheel cap, which shielded his facial features from the camera’s view. The camera angle also prevented them from seeing a license plate number or other markings that might identify the police cruiser, if in fact it was a police cruiser.
But there was something peculiar. As the man approached the walkway leading up to the front door, his arm appeared to make a tossing motion. The camera didn’t pick up anything leaving his hand, but Sam felt it was worth investigating.
She and Brock looked through the bushes with a flashlight, fruitlessly, then remembered her multi-spectral camera. She took a few photos of the front of her house, then forwarded them to her deputy to analyze along with the earlier pictures she had taken at John Abrams’ place.
There wasn’t much else to do. The Stooges, as Sam called them, were guarding the house, which she reckoned meant the house was probably less safe than if nobody were guarding it. So Sam and Brock retreated back to the panic room, cuddled up in the cozy bed in the corner, and dozed off while awaiting the multi-spec photo results.
They hadn’t yet reached REM sleep when Dan Gable’s call woke them up. It seemed the object the “officer” had tossed into the bushes had shown up terrifically well in the ultraviolet spectrum, because it was a beacon. “For what?” Sam asked.
“Dunno. Satellite maybe, or a handheld transponder. It’s tough to say,” Gable said. “But we’re dealing with someone fairly sophisticated. I’d advise you to evacuate your house for the night, just as a precaution.”
“I figured you were going to say that.”
“Discretion is the better part of valor,” Dan said. “Even for you, Wonder Woman.”
Sam started to make a smart-assed response, but an explosion rocked the house on its foundation and rudely cut her off.
4
The howls were surreal. Always were. Sometimes they sounded comical in isolation, until Quinn considered that the ridiculous noises were coming from a fellow human being, suffering in unspeakable agony.
Maybe his victims had it coming to them, or maybe they didn’t. Quinn had long since stopped trying to assuage his conscience with delusions of some moral rectitude, some higher purpose to justify the barbarism.
He’d caught his employers in too many lies over the years to believe anything they told him, so he had slowly given himself permission to submit to his own inner beast, do what he had to do, and not worry too much about it.
Plus, the pay was outrageously good. That helped.
These particular howls had been caused by applying an electric belt sander to the subject’s lower back, then sprinkling salt on the resulting abrasions. It wasn’t terribly sophisticated, but it was terribly, terribly painful.
In fact, Quinn was briefly afraid that his subject—forty-something, good shape, expensive clothes, an upscale address, and an ivy league last name Quinn kept forgetting—would pass out from the pain, so he moderated the salt application a bit.
As always, Quinn had a list of questions in need of answers, and he judged his guest to be just about in the right frame of mind for truthful and forthcoming conversation. Salt was magical like that.
“I’m recording our conversation for posterity,” Quinn began. He tightened the straps holding his subject spread-eagled and face down on the hard cement of the safe house’s basement floor. The heavy leather straps, one for each limb, attached to thick metal loops, which were arranged in an eight-foot square and bolted into the concrete. “Name, please.”
“I’m pretty sure you already know my name,” the prone and naked man said between gasps.
“Tsk tsk,” Quinn chided. “See, you’re going to make me lose a bet. My friends said I’d have to remove at least one fingernail, but I told them you were smarter than that.”
Quinn noticed that the man’s breathing quickened, and his hands involuntarily balled into fists to protect his fingers. Quinn sprinkled a little more salt on the man’s back, and said, “Dammit, I can’t seem to keep from spilling that salt. So clumsy of me.”
The victim’s back arched in pain, and he thrashed against his restraints. Quinn let the wave of agony subside before speaking again. “Now, let’s start our conversation again, shall we? Your name, please.”
Silence, then a long sigh, then, “Peter Kittredge.”
“Good. I like the decision you just made. Cooperation is a smart move,” Quinn said, absentmindedly feeling the long scar under his eye as he hovered over the naked man lying on the bare concrete floor. “Tell me your job title, Peter Kittredge.”
“Deputy Special Assistant to the US Ambassador to Venezuela,” Kittredge said, long breaths punctuating his labored speech.
“Sweet. Pete, we’re on a roll. Now, don’t lose momentum on this one. It’s a little bit tricky. You might be tempted to answer a number of different ways, but I would urge you to think of your fingernails. It really, really hurts when someone pulls them out.” Quinn watched Kittredge squirm. “Ready for the big question?”
Kittredge didn’t move.
“Here goes, Pete. Mind if I call you Pete? I feel like we shared a moment a while ago when I took your clothes off and tied you to the floor.” Quinn chuckled as Kittredge’s butt cheeks clenched visibly.
“So here’s the big question, Pete: what is the name of the Venezuelan man who pays you to spy on the United States?”
But he also hadn’t answered the question.
More salt.
More agonized screams, writhing, twisting, and thrashing.
But still no answer. “I’ve got all week, Pete. We’re going to be good friends, you and me. We’ve talked about the fingernails already, but sometimes a deep-cycle marine battery hooked up to the gonads is a great conversation starter, too. We’ll just have to see what kind of mood we’re in later.”
There was just something special about a man’s balls. Nine times out of ten, just describing testicular torture got some sort of positive movement out of even the most recalcitrant subjects. “Okay,” Kittredge finally said. “But I need something first.”
“A drink of water? A skinny male hooker? What could you possibly need before you answer the question, Pete?”
“I need a guarantee.”
“Okay. I guarantee,” Quinn quipped.
“Guarantee what?” Kittredge asked.
“I’m asking the questions,” Quinn said, laughing at his own humor. Then he tossed more salt on Kittredge’s bleeding, ablated skin.
When the most recent wave of salt-inflicted pain subsided, and Kittredge was again able to speak, he tried a new tack. “I can be useful.”
“Not to me,” Quinn said. “I’m just the hired help.”
“I can be useful at the highest levels of your organization,” Kittredge said.
“Ahh, you’re asking for a Mephistopheles to your Faust, yes?” Quinn read too much, and fancied himself a Renaissance man. “Through the miracle of modern technology, the devil himself is watching and listening right now. Make your offer.”
Kittredge took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and rested his head on the cold, damp concrete. He knew he was about to embark on a path that had a strong chance of ending very poorly.
But it didn’t appear that he had many other options at the moment. If he merely sang, he could be executed for treason, depending on who was listening. Worse, he could wind up spending the rest of his life in prison. He was a small, slight man and he wouldn’t fare well in a penitentiary, he knew.
On the other hand, if he made a deal, he would likely spend the rest of his days beholden to whoever was currently holding him captive. They’d have the kind of leverage they’d never be willing to relinquish, and he’d find himself doing all kinds of dangerous, unsavory work for them.
Either way, and even in the best possible scenario from this point forward, his treachery would hang forever over his head. It was bitter like bile, all the more so because he had sold out for not nearly enough money.
It was time, he knew, to sell out again. “I’ll give you what you want in exchange for the US Attorney General’s signature on a lifetime immunity letter.”
Quinn laughed, harsh and barking. “That’s all?” he quipped. “I thought you were going to ask for something difficult.” Another sprinkle of salt drove home his displeasure. “Stop playing games.”
“No games,” Kittredge said between clenched teeth, the strength of the salt-induced agony still surprising in its brutal intensity even after half an hour of abuse. He felt tears streaming from his eyes, felt his heart pounding in his chest, and felt the impossibly painful fire covering his lower back. He rallied every ounce of his resolve: “Kill me if you want. No immunity, no names.”
Quinn snorted derisively. “Pete, you would be surprised at how many people say things like that, before they really understand how much pain a person is capable of experiencing.”
Quinn knew his words had found their mark. Kittredge’s body shook, and his tears intensified. But the clenched jaw told Quinn that, for the moment at least, Kittredge remained resolute in his decision.
The assassin pondered his next play. Though he hadn’t yet made his presence known, Bill Fredericks, Quinn’s CIA case officer, was indeed watching and listening to the interrogation. Quinn knew that the prisoner’s offer was an attractive one, despite how outrageous it might have seemed on the face of it. A lifetime of immunity would certainly come with a lifetime of obligation, something the assassin knew from experience that the Agency would salivate over. While the Agency’s budget was appallingly, obscenely large, its real currency was leverage.
“It’s your lucky night, Pete,” Quinn finally said. “In my mercy, I have decided not to hurt you while the devil considers your request.” Quinn spoke the words more for Bill Fredericks’ benefit than for the prisoner’s, in case Fredericks was napping in the observation room and hadn’t recognized the juiciness of Kittredge’s offer for what amounted to a lifetime of servitude.
The Agency’s answer took a little over half a minute. Two knocks on the door.
“Lucifer accepts,” Quinn reported.
Kittredge let out a deep breath, and his body stopped shaking.
5
“Holy shit,” Brock said, looking over Sam’s shoulder at the security system monitors in their basement panic room. Whatever had detonated in their front lawn just seconds earlier had left a crater four feet across and several feet deep. The trees and shrubs were all either scorched clean of foliage, or missing altogether. A car parked on the street was windowless and on fire. Their white picket fence was flattened.
There was no sign of the DHS security detail that had been posted at the corners of their property. Had they known about the attack in advance and fled? There was no carnage visible on the video feed, so Sam didn’t rule out that hypothesis.
She gritted her teeth and began assessing the damage to their home through the surveillance feed. The heavy stone and mortar construction had held up remarkably well, and it didn’t appear that the house was in danger of collapsing on top of them.
But even on the camera monitors, it was obvious that the blast had taken large chunks out of the stone and strewn shrapnel across a wide swath of their homestead. There wasn’t a window on the front of the house that wasn’t shattered.
Camera views of the interior of their home showed that most of their things in the front two rooms nearest the explosion were a total loss. Blast, heat, and bomb fragments had redecorated. It wasn’t a good look.
“Holy shit is right,” Sam said. “Half an hour earlier, and we’d still have been upstairs when it exploded. We’d have been minced.”
Brock put his arm around her and kissed her cheek. She shook with rage, fear and adrenaline. “Have I mentioned that I have some concerns about your work environment?” he joked. Brock and his fighter pilot buddies always seemed to have a way with gallows humor. She laughed, and a tear escaped, which she quickly wiped away. She hated her human moments, but Brock loved her all the more for them.
“Listen,” he said. “I’m no cop or spy catcher, but I’ve spent my whole adult life dropping bombs and making explosions. That was at least twenty pounds of Tritonal, or an equivalent amount of blast power in another type of explosive material. And I can tell even in the monitors that those fragments aren’t screws or nails, like a poor man’s anti-personnel weapon. Those fragments are from a steel bomb casing.”
Sam connected the dots. “Professional.”
“Military,” Brock said. “No doubt about it. Or at least paramilitary.”
“So we’ve been attacked by a foreign military on US soil?” Sam asked, incredulous.
Brock shook his head. “I didn’t say that. I just said that it’s obviously a military weapon. And whoever detonated it on our front lawn didn’t care about disguising that fact.”
Motion caught their eye, and they both turned to the video surveillance monitors. A police cruiser roll
ed to a stop in front of the house, and a fire truck stopped near the burning car at the curb. Seconds later, water doused the smoldering car.
A patrolman got out of his cruiser and made his way tentatively toward the front door, which hung ajar on wrecked hinges.
Sam zoomed the camera in on the patrolman’s face. She squinted. “What is it?” Brock asked.
“I can’t figure out why that cop’s face is familiar,” she said.
Then she remembered.
She dialed Dan Gable, and while the phone rang, she ordered Brock to lock the basement vault door. He started to ask why, but she shushed him impatiently.
“Dan, I need your help,” she said when her deputy picked up. Gable started a sarcastic retort, but she cut him off. “Shut up a minute. A bomb blew the shit out of my house a minute ago. I think our three Homeland stooges took a powder right before it happened. And do you remember the cop with the Taser I told you about earlier, the one who jumped out of John Abrams’ bushes? He’s walking in my front door.”
6
“The United States government hereby accepts your offer,” Quinn said to Peter Kittredge, sliding the printed copy of the immunity agreement with the US Attorney General’s signature at the bottom. “You’re a lucky guy, Pete. They woke the deputy AG up on your account. Should I give you a little immunity idol, just like on that TV show?”
Kittredge didn’t appreciate his torturer’s humor. He strained his eyes to read the fine print of the agreement, hindered by the wrist and ankle straps that anchored him face-down on the cold basement floor. The small of his back still felt like it was on fire, though Quinn had thankfully stopped sprinkling salt on the belt sander abrasions inflicted earlier in the evening. “Any chance you could untie me so I can read this?”
The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich Page 3
