Private Wars

by Greg Rucka

  She wondered how badly she’d been hurt when the Audi exploded, if anything had broken.

  It was cold in the room, very cold, and Chace saw her breath, and she shivered, and heard chains rattle as she did so. They had taken most of her clothes, her boots and socks and pants and jacket and sweater and shirt, everything but the underwear. They’d left those for later, she knew, the threat implicit.

  She was sitting in a chair in what she thought at first might be a basement storage space or perhaps a boiler room. She tried moving her arms again, more carefully, and felt metal around her wrists and heard the clink of the handcuffs on the chair. They’d used two sets, one for each wrist, twisting her hands up to the middle of her spine before securing the other end of the cuffs to the back of the chair. The chair was metal, too, and conducted the cold from the concrete floor. Her feet felt like they’d already been soaked in ice water, and she realized they hadn’t bothered to restrain them, and she wondered if that’s where they would start, first.

  Chace turned her head, taking in the room, trying to catalogue it, trying to find a means of escape. She saw a bathtub in the corner, and a tripod with a video camera. The camera appeared off. Lightbulbs hung naked overhead, high wattage so bright she winced when she looked at them. There was only one door into the room that she could find, metal and rust-stained, and she’d been positioned directly in line of it, just to make sure she could see how close it was, and how far away.

  And so she could see that between her and the door there was a table, and at that table sat Ahtam Zahidov, looking at her like she was meat on a butcher’s hook, and he was deciding where to begin cutting.

  He’d brought two others with him to wherever this was, both dressed in similar suits, both looking tired and angry. One of them lit a cigarette as she watched, staring at her the whole while. He was tall, looked young, perhaps mid- to late-twenties, broad-shouldered and big-handed, and there was nothing approaching sympathy in his expression. She guessed the beatings would come primarily from him.

  The other one, the one who’d roused her with the ammonia, looked to be at least ten years older, shorter and fatter. Now he was ignoring her, more concerned with the contents of the red toolbox that rested open on the table, by Zahidov’s left elbow.

  Chace tried not to be afraid, and found it impossible.

  Zahidov stared at her without speaking, then removed his glasses and held them up to the lights, making a grimace of displeasure. He took a handkerchief from inside his coat and, leisurely, began cleaning the lenses. By Chace’s guess, it took him over a minute to complete the job.

  Then he replaced the glasses on his face and nodded slightly, and the big one, the bruiser, moved forward, toward Chace in the chair, while the older one removed a short length of pipe from the toolbox.

  “Don’t,” Chace warned.

  Zahidov barely shook his head, and the bruiser came closer, bending as he reached for her legs. Chace twisted in the chair, feeling the cuffs trapping her arms, lashing out with a kick. The bruiser had expected it, blocked it with his forearm, then tried to grab her ankle again, and she kicked with her other foot, and caught him in the face. The bruiser grunted in anger, and the cold and the impact with bone made pain ride up Chace’s leg like fire. She kicked again, but this time he caught her, trapping her calf between his chest and arm.

  She brought her free leg up, firing off obscenities without realizing she was even speaking, not hearing herself, and thrust with her toes into his crotch. He tried to catch the foot, missed, and groaned as she felt the kick sink into him. He lost his grip on the leg he’d been holding.

  “Don’t you fucking touch me!” she yelled, hearing her voice rebounding off the concrete. “I’m a British citizen, don’t you fucking touch me!”

  “You’re a British spy,” Zahidov answered in English.

  The bruiser was trying to right himself, gritting his teeth, and Chace planted her feet on the floor and pushed off, taking the chair with her, lunging at him. She hit his nose with her head, felt the collision snapping cartilage, the ache in her head expanding. She staggered back, bending and turning as fast as she could, striking him with the legs of the chair. Her arms felt like they would tear free from their sockets.

  Suddenly she saw red, even through the eye that wouldn’t work, and she heard a scream. Her air left her, blowing out over her lips, and she felt her gorge rising to follow it, and then she was hit again, and she knew she was on the floor. Something pressed down on her neck, and her vision swam, then cleared, and she was being righted in the chair. Another blow struck her stomach, and she pitched forward, and then another blow, higher, and again, and she skipped consciousness for a second, swimming in icy darkness. She felt hard hands grabbing her ankles, lifting her legs, and then forcing her thighs apart, and she struggled against the grip, but didn’t have the leverage or the strength or the air.

  Vision returned enough for her to see the bruiser licking at the blood running down over his lips from his nose. He held her ankles at his waist, her calves pinned at his hips. The posture was obscene, and the bruiser knew it, and when he saw that she was seeing him clearly now, he rocked his pelvis toward her in a mock thrust, fucking the empty air between them. Chace saw the lump in his pants, realized he was aroused, and the fear and the disgust expanded inside her, and she wondered if she would be sick.

  Zahidov’s chair scraped back on the floor, and she saw him come around, between the older man and the bruiser. The older man offered him the length of pipe, and Zahidov took it, his eyes fixed on Chace.

  “That was stupid,” he told her. “Now Tozim wants to hurt you.”

  She tried to free her legs, failing.

  “Of course, I want to hurt you, too,” Zahidov continued. “That’s interesting, because mostly what I want in this room is information, and pain and humiliation, those are only tools to get it.”

  “So ask your questions already,” Chace spat.

  “No, you don’t understand. Mostly I want information, and you’ll give it to me, because everyone eventually does. But right now, I want to hurt you.”

  He swung the pipe at the bottom of her right foot, almost casually. The pain that shot through Chace’s leg was extraordinary, and brought tears to her eyes.

  “Where is he?” Zahidov asked.

  The question didn’t make sense. She shook her head, choked out a response. “What?”

  He hit the right foot again, twice, the arch and the base of her toes. Chace tried to stay silent, but it hurt too much, it hurt more than anything, and she heard herself whimpering, and that made it even worse.

  “Where?”

  She managed to shake her head, saw his arm draw back, tried to work her feet free and failed. He hit her left foot this time, four times along the arch, each blow harder than the one that preceded it. She screamed, struggling, and he struck the right again, and she was trying to move, to break free, anything to stop it, and nothing worked.

  He had stopped hitting her, letting the lingering pain do his work for him. She was out of breath again, her lungs aching. She heard herself sobbing, fought to control it.

  “There are other places that will hurt more.” Zahidov said when he thought she had calmed enough to hear him. “Places that will tear, places where bone is barely covered by skin, places that will rip and scar. Where is he, where is Ruslan?”

  Chace blinked back tears of pain, trying to clear her vision from the eye that still worked, and trying to keep what she was thinking off her face. Either Zahidov was toying with her, or Ruslan hadn’t died by the Syr Darya. She didn’t know which to believe—if he was asking her a question she could never hope to answer satisfactorily because Ruslan was dead, or if he’d escaped.

  Both seemed just as likely.

  “Dead,” she managed to say. “You killed him.”

  Zahidov frowned, examining her leg, then running his fingers along it, over her shin to her knee, stopping at midthigh, close enough that she could feel his breath
on her face. She fought the shudder caused by the touch, not wanting to give it to him. He lifted his hand, then brought it down again on her bare shoulder, tracing the strap of her bra with a finger.

  “Where is he?” he whispered in her ear.

  Chace pulled her head away, again struggling against the bruiser’s grip on her ankles, again to no avail. Despite the chill in the room, she felt herself beginning to burn with the humiliation of the posture, the helplessness, the touch.

  “I told you, you killed him, he’s dead. The last I saw of him he was lying in the dirt by the river.”

  “You planned the escape.” Zahidov continued to stroke her shoulder. “Where did he go? After the river, where did he go?”

  “There was no after the river, he fucking died at the river. He died, I ran, you caught me and his son.” She turned her head, meeting his smiling eyes. “Where is he? Where’s Stepan?”

  “With his aunt.”

  “She likes them that young, does she?”

  Zahidov swore at her in Uzbek, bringing the pipe down on her shoulder once, twice, then a third time, and Chace screamed from the pain of it, swearing in return, thrashing against the cuffs and the chair and the fingers gripping her. She kicked herself free, felt her foot hit the bruiser again, and screamed louder from the impact. Something hit her alongside the head, a fist, and her vision went again. There was cursing in Russian, in Uzbek, and she was struck alongside the head this time, and this time both she and the chair went over onto the floor. She felt blood leaking from her mouth.

  And she wanted to laugh. They were going to torture her, and they were going to do it until she was dead, Zahidov had said as much. They were going to rape her and beat her and mutilate her, do everything in their power to destroy her entirely. She had no illusions, she knew the purpose of this room, and she knew she couldn’t resist. At the best, one survived torture, but no one ever endured it. It was why torture was ultimately useless as an interrogation technique; hurt someone enough, and they will tell you that, yes, they murdered Kennedy, Princess Diana, and Thomas More, just please, God, please, make it stop.

  Chace was terrified, but that was all right, because she’d have to have been insane not to be. Yet in the midst of her terror, she’d found her anger, and that was what she wanted to hold on to now, what she needed now. To be angry, and to stay that way. To stoke it and fuel it and tend it so that when the worst came, she could still find it.

  This ends only two ways, she told herself. You tell them everything and then they kill you, or they kill you before you can.

  She didn’t want to die. She absolutely didn’t want to die. At that moment, more than anything, what Tara Chace wanted was to live, to go home, to her home. Not Barnoldswick and its alien world but Camden and London, and to have her daughter there with her. She wanted her job and her life, and to find a way to make them both work together. She wanted to be Minder One again, Head of the Special Section again, and then one day to leave the field and become D-Ops. She wanted to watch Tamsin grow and learn and live, and to see Tom Wallace in her every time she looked her daughter’s way.

  She did not want to die being tortured in Tashkent.

  But if she had to, she would. And if Ruslan was alive, if he was on the run, she hadn’t failed. The more Zahidov and his brutes stayed focused on her, the better it was for Ruslan, the farther away and safer he would become.

  Zahidov had given her a way in, had shown her the exposed nerve. All Chace had to do was keep her anger alive long enough to fully ignite his.

  The bruiser came around, righting her in the chair once more. Chace shook her head, trying to clear it, then spat out a mouthful of her own blood. Zahidov watched her, the older man still at the table, waiting by the toolbox. When the bruiser came around to grab her legs again, Zahidov motioned him back with the pipe.

  He extended his free hand again, running his fingers over her shoulder, then down across her chest, tracing the edge of her bra along the swell of her breasts. He kept the touch light, watching her for a reaction, and Chace stared back at him. The bruiser laughed, said something in Uzbek.

  “He says you like this,” Zahidov remarked. “That it’s making you wet.”

  “No, but clearly it’s how you get your rocks off.” Chace met his eyes. “What’s the matter, Ahtam? Not getting any at home, you have to keep feeling me up?”

  He backhanded her across the face, striking near her wounded eye. She saw blood on the back of his hand as he brought it around again.

  “You really think Sevara’s going to let you keep fucking her after she’s President?” Chace taunted him. “What’s the endearment form—Sevya, is that it? You think little Sevya’s really going to let you bang her in the big house in Dormon?”

  His expression flickered, and she saw the hand coming up again, the one without the pipe, and Chace turned her head to roll with the blow. It hit hard, rocking her in the chair, and she realized he’d pulled it at the last moment, that he’d almost lost it. The pipe would do it, she realized. If she could get him to hit her in the temple with the pipe, that would do it, that would end it.

  “We’re not talking about her,” Zahidov said. “We’re talking about Ruslan. You’re going to tell me where he went, who his contacts are.”

  Chace tried to laugh, a sound that came out like a croak. “Little Sevya, she’ll find two dozen more just like you but younger, ones that don’t need yohimbe to keep them going at night.”

  He brought his fist up again, and she braced for the blow, but he didn’t strike. “Where did he go? What was the route? Was there a second helicopter?”

  “Maybe he went to see his sister.”

  “Why? Why would he do that?”

  Chace grinned at him, feeling blood rolling off her lower lip. “To get shit on his dick.”

  It took him a second to parse the language, and then Zahidov roared, throwing down the pipe so it clattered on the floor, ringing throughout the room. He punched her in the side, grabbing hold of her hair, shouting in Uzbek. Chace tried to shift forward, to get to her feet again, and this time he shoved her, and she went down face-first, feeling the cement ripping her skin. He was still shouting, and she saw the bruiser’s—Tozim’s—feet coming around, the Adidas sneakers he was wearing navy blue and new. There was a clattering of keys, and Chace tried to rise, then felt the air being crushed out of her as someone, Tozim or the older one or Zahidov himself, bore down on the chair.

  They freed one of her hands, then twisted it, cuffing it to her other wrist before unlocking the second set. The chair was knocked away, she heard it bounce, then slide, and the bruiser jerked her to her feet, then dragged her to the table.

  Zahidov was still swearing at her in Uzbek, yanking off his jacket. The older man had moved around to the other side of the table, and he grabbed her wrists by the chain of the handcuffs, yanking her forward. Chace twisted, trying to roll, and felt Tozim’s hands on her shoulders, pinning her down.

  She felt another pair of hands on her skin, Zahidov’s, and they ran along her sides, down to her hips, and she howled in outrage, kicking back at him. Through her blurred vision she saw the metal door past the older man slam open, two figures, out of focus. One stayed outside, turning away, but the other entered, big, blond, out of focus, in a suit like the others but somehow not like the others.

  The man said something in Uzbek, and everything in the room froze. The blond man spoke a second time, more bite in the words, and the hands holding her down left her body. First the bruiser, Tozim, then the older man, and then, finally, Zahidov.

  Chace tried to right herself at the table. She heard herself wheezing for breath.

  The blond man cast his eye around the room, and through the distortion of her vision, Chace thought she saw naked disgust on his face. He pointed in the direction of the video camera, speaking once more. Zahidov came past Chace, caught in her periphery, smoothing his shirt and tie. He spoke to Tozim, and Tozim moved to the camera.

  Chace pushed h
erself upright, trying to stand, and the pain of using her feet was too much to bear, and she dropped again, trying to catch the table to arrest the fall, and missing. She hit the floor on her side, rocking back and forth.

  More words in Uzbek, the new man speaking to Zahidov, furious. Zahidov responded, his voice rising, and then the man shouted, and whatever the debate was ended then, because there was nothing more said. Chace lifted her head, trying to see what was happening, watched as Zahidov stormed out of the room, the other two men following in his wake.

  Leaving the new man, the blond man, to kneel down beside her as he removed his coat. He wrapped it around her shoulders, and Chace’s mind flickered on the thought that this, too, might be a trick, some mind game played by Zahidov. She tried to pull away, but the man took hold of her upper arms, then closed the coat around her front.

  “You’re a fucking mess,” the man said. “Do you think you can walk?”

  Chace blinked at him, perplexed, then realized he’d actually spoken in English, his accent American.

  “I don’t think so,” she said.

  The man frowned, drawing creases along his face.

  “You’re going to need to try,” he said.

  Chace nodded, and the man slipped an arm around her waist, helping her to her feet. The pain was as intense as before, and Chace gasped and faltered, but he caught her, pulling her upright again. It felt like she was walking on a thousand splinters of glass, but somehow she managed to stay on her feet this time, using the man as a crutch. Slowly he began walking her to the door.

  “I’ve got a car outside. Just make it to the car, hon, you can do that, can’t you?”

  Chace nodded again.

  They entered a hallway, now empty, then reached a flight of stairs. The stairs were hard, and it seemed to Chace it took them an eternity to climb them together, coming through a door and into another hallway. Like the one below, this one was empty.