Viper Strike c-2, page 19
part #2 of Carrier Series
Hsiao smiled at him. "I promise you, Commander, that you will come to know pain very, very well in the next few hours… unless you tell me exactly what I wish to know."
By the clock on the wall, less than an hour passed, but it was an hour which crawled through an eternity, endless questions punctuated by seemingly random applications of the electric cattle prod. There were five men besides Hsiao, a scarred civilian named Phreng and four others who Tombstone thought might be soldiers, though they did not wear uniforms. Once, Hsiao referred to those four as his "Burmese assistants," which did not explain for Tombstone what they were doing in Bangkok. After the first few minutes, Hsiao turned the merely physical aspects of the interrogation over to the others, standing by only to ask the questions themselves.
Tombstone remembered very little of the details of that hour, but the pain, the sheer horror of being deliberately and methodically hurt while being physically helpless, took more of a toll on his mind than on his body.
Hsiao removed his glasses and polished them on a flowered shirttail.
"Once again, Commander. We know that Jefferson has both antiaircraft missiles and a close-in defense system called Phalanx. What we need to know is if those systems are operational while your ship is in port."
The air stank with the by-products of the interrogation, with the sour-mingled stenches of vomit and feces, urine, blood and burnt hair, and fear.
"Go… hell…" Tombstone's lips were swollen and bloody, and the words came out cracked and distorted.
Hsiao nodded to Phreng. "Again."
Tombstone watched through swollen, slitted eyes as the grinning That extended the prod again. The contacts brushed against the tender skin of his armpit.
When the ragged echo of the scream had died away, Hsiao shook his head sadly. "Don't think you are helping anybody by being so… noble, Commander.
We have all the information we need, courtesy of three of your seamen." He pulled a notebook from his pocket and flipped through the pages.
"Yes, here we are. Signalman Third Class Charles R. Bentley. Radarman Third Class Frederick K. Paterowski. Seaman Ernesto Rodriguez. These men told us everything we wanted to know. They were quite thorough in their rundown on Jefferson's defensive systems. We know, for instance, the operational parameters for the VPS-2 search and track radar incorporated in the Phalanx CIWS." He read the letters from his notebook, letting each fall like a blow. He flipped the notebook shut. "All we require from you, Commander, is verification. You are an aviator. Your life depends on the way your ship's defenses work each time you approach the Jefferson for a landing.
If you give us this verification, I promise you that you will spare yourself a great deal of unpleasantness!"
Tombstone remained silent.
At this point he wasn't entirely sure why he was holding out. Concepts such as duty and defense of country seemed remote indeed each time Phreng's thumb came down on the cattle prod's firing button.
What was not remote was the purpose behind those questions.
"Shall we talk about aircraft approach procedures, Commander? What if a That helicopter wanted to land on Jefferson's flight deck? Who would they call? What would they have to do?"
The silence was broken only by the harsh wheeze of Tombstone's breathing.
So many of Hsiao's questions were like that… questions which could be assembled into only one pattern that made any sense at all.
These bastards were planning some sort of attack against the Jefferson.
Possibly they were terrorists, possibly something else. All Tombstone knew was that the lives of his shipmates might well be riding on whether Hsiao got the verification he demanded.
"You are being needlessly stubborn. You must know we will get what we want sooner or later." Hsiao gestured to Phreng for the cattle prod.
Stepping close to Magruder, he slapped the rod against his open palm for effect. "I will have the information I require, Commander. I will have it out of you! You can give it to me freely or I can tear it word by word from your broken body, the way a fisherman guts a fish!"
When Tombstone still didn't answer, Hsiao shook his head. "Perhaps, though, we are following the wrong approach. We hold two friends of yours prisoner, you know. Lieutenant Commander Bayerly… and your pretty friend, Pamela Drake." He paused and smiled. "You see, we… how do you say? Hold the aces. I'm sure you don't want your lover subjected to the same sort of treatment that you have been experiencing."
The words were as sharp as the discharge of the prod. Tombstone wrenched wildly against his bonds, summoning all his strength in a useless struggle against them. Hsiao, standing only two feet away, laughed up at him. His need to strike back drowned everything else. Summoning what moisture he could in his dry mouth, Tombstone snapped his head forward, and a glob of spittle mixed with blood struck Hsiao's face. "Fuck… you…!"
Hsiao darkened. Throughout the past, hellish hour the Chinese interrogator had never lost his temper, but now he whipped the prod up, jamming the tip into Magruder's groin. Tombstone's body twitched and spasmed as fire seared along every nerve, every muscle. His mouth gaped, screaming, but there was no sound. He hung suspended in a deadly dance of snapping, convulsive agony. Hsiao continued pressing the prod's button over and over, again… again… again…
Then the current ceased, and Tombstone sagged from the hook, sinking into the black comfort of oblivion.
CHAPTER 17
1315 hours, 19 January
The Warehouse, Bangkok
Pain. It had become a part of him, a part of his very existence.
Tombstone opened his eyes and his surroundings swam blearily into focus. He was in a small and empty room, probably a supply closet of some kind, with a light fixture hanging out of reach from a high ceiling and a single wooden floor which looked as solid as the concrete block walls around them.
Tombstone was lying on a cot, wrapped in rough army blankets with his feet propped up on several pillows. The handcuffs were gone. His captors, evidently, were taking care to see to it that he didn't die of shock between sessions.
Memories of the ordeal flooded back, and he squeezed his eyes shut.
Chief among his emotions was shame. He could remember the taste of his own fear while hanging on that hook, remember losing control of his bladder and bowels, remember screaming until his throat went raw.
Finally, at the end, he'd not been able to scream… only jerk and twist under the terrible fire of Hsiao's cattle prod until blackness had taken him.
Struggling against weakness and the nausea clawing at his stomach, Tombstone managed to kick free of the blanket and swing his bare legs over the side of the cot.
Vertigo nearly claimed him, but after a few minutes of deep breathing, the dizziness receded, leaving him light-headed… but conscious. His injuries, while painful, were not serious. There were angry-looking raw patches encircling his wrist and ankles where his bonds had chewed away at his skin, and inch-long burns everywhere that the cattle prod had arced and sparked instead of making a solid connection. Every muscle in his body felt stiff and sore, as though he'd been methodically worked over with a ball bat, and each movement threatened to overturn the delicate balance of pain and emptiness in the pit of his stomach.
The real injuries, he feared, were in his mind. There were tremors in his knees and hands still, and a fear-born, cramping hollow in the pit of his stomach where the terror threatened to rise again at any moment.
Something which might be a bundle of wet rags in the far corner of the room caught his eye. Shakily, he stood up and took a tentative step toward them.
The overhead light illuminated raw horror, three bodies dumped against the concrete wall as though casually discarded there. Tombstone squeezed his eyes shut, trying to turn away, but that first stark, blood-smeared image remained burned in his eyes and his mind as though branded there. Control over his empty stomach failed and he sank to his knees, retching, trying to rid himself of the sight and unable to do so.
Finally, reluctantly, his heaving stomach quieted.
While the public image of hero had been troubling him, Matthew Magruder was no coward. On the contrary, he was an aviator in the U.S. Navy. The ability to pilot an F-14, to land on an aircraft carrier in conditions ranging from calm seas to stormy pitch-darkness, to face enemy aircraft in one-on-one aerial duels reminiscent of the knightly jousts of another age… this set him apart from other men in training, in discipline, in sheer nerve.
But always before when Tombstone had faced death, it had been in the cockpit of an aircraft. There, death was a constant possibility… but as a flash, an instant of terror followed by painless nothingness. He stared down at the torn and tortured bodies sprawled on the concrete and for the first time felt the reality of another kind of death, not the clean death of aerial knights, but a filthy, lonely, agony-wracked ending that would go on and on and on.
"Your shipmates," Hsiao said. Tombstone turned. He'd not even heard the door open behind him. "Bentley. Paterowski. And Rodriguez. It took them most of last night to die. Toward the end they were actually begging Phreng to be allowed to tell what they knew. After that, they begged for death."
Tombstone could not take his eyes from the bodies. What had Hsiao said earlier? I can tear it word by word from your broken body, the way a fisherman guts a fish.
The comparison was gruesomely realistic.
Hsiao stepped aside, allowing Phreng and one of the Burmese to enter.
"Take him."
They half led, half dragged Tombstone from the room, leading him through the maze of stacked packing crates and boxes which filled most of the warehouse floor proper. At the place where the meat hooks were suspended from the ceiling, centered in the glare from the tripod-mounting lights was a table, ominously bare except for lengths of clothesline secured to each leg.
The wood of the tabletop was splotched with brown stains, and Tombstone wondered if that was where the three sailors had died. He shook his head, trying to clear his mind. Horror held his thoughts in a vise.
There were two chairs nearby, and he felt a moment's icy shock. One of the seats was occupied by Bayerly, his wrists handcuffed behind the chair's back, his ankles tied to the front legs. Hsiao had said that Bayerly was a prisoner, but Tombstone hadn't been able to tell whether that had been truth or an attempted bluff. Like Tombstone, Bayerly was nude, and his body showed the savage red burns and welts of an interrogation session with Hsiao's cattle prod. His face looked terrible, puffed and marred with livid bruises where he'd been beaten, and there were streaks of blood around his swollen lips. He was sagging to one side in the chair, held upright only by his manacles, and looking as though he'd been undergoing interrogation for the past hour or two while Tombstone had been unconscious.
Roughly, Tombstone was seated on the other chair, handcuffed and tied.
"This time we will try a different approach," Hsiao said. He gave a signal, and there was a sound of scuffling in the darkness. Then two of the Burmese entered, holding a struggling, naked woman between them.
"Pamela!" Matt called, her name wrenched from him by the shock of seeing her… here.
"Matt!" she screamed. Her blond hair, in wild disarray, swirled about her shoulders as she tried to look at him. "Matt! Who are they? What do they want! Matt!"
"Put her on the table," Hsiao ordered with a curt gesture. "On her back."
Her captors dragged Pamela to the table and forced her down. As they tied her hands and feet, Hsiao turned to face Tombstone and Bayerly again.
"Both of you have had a taste of our hospitality at first hand. Now we will let you watch that hospitality demonstrated with another."
"You son of a bitch! Let her go!" Tombstone wanted to beg, to plead…
knowing at the same time he could do nothing. "She doesn't know anything."
"I quite agree. But the point, you see, is not to extract information from her… but from you." He walked over to the table, reached down, and took a handful of golden hair. "You remember what we did to Bentley and the others?" he asked. "How long, do you think, before we reduce this lovely creature to the same condition? How long can we keep her conscious… aware?
How long will you be able to watch us work on her?"
Pamela twisted her head to the side, trying to bite Hsiao's hand. He snatched his hand back and chuckled.
"Her fate is entirely up to you, gentlemen. Tell us what we want to know and we will release her. Either of you can save her, at any time."
Tombstone lunged forward in the chair, feeling the steel of the handcuffs bite the raw patches circling his wrists. "You bastard! You can't get away with it…!"
"I already have, Commander." Hsiao held out one hand and snapped his fingers. Phreng reached across the girl on the table and handed him the cattle prod.
Pamela's scream an instant later rang off the warehouse walls, going on and on and burning itself into Tombstone's ears and mind as completely as the sight of the three bodies in his cell. "Stop it! Stop it!"
Hsiao lifted the prod. "Shall we start with the procedures for landing a friendly aircraft on Jefferson's flight deck?"
Tombstone shook his head, helplessly torn between horror and rage. Blood pounded in his temples. He couldn't let them do this to Pamela… but to tell them what they wanted to know…
"For God's sake stop it!" Bayerly yelled suddenly, as though the words had been torn from him. His voice cracked, little more than a harsh croak.
"Ask me! Ask me! I'll tell you! Whatever you want!"
Hsiao looked up, his expression one of mild surprise. "Indeed?" He seemed to be considering Bayerly's offer.
Tombstone turned his head and stared at the other aviator. Bayerly was sagging against the chair, his chest heaving as he gulped hungrily at the air, his eyes bulging with a desperate, consuming terror. His face was as pale as death, glistening under the lamps with a thin sheen of sweat.
"Bayerly, you son of a bitch!"
Hsiao gave an order, and one of the Burmese began untying Bayerly's feet.
"Come," Hsiao said as he helped the prisoner rise unsteadily to his feet. "We will go someplace where we can talk in comfort."
"What… what about them…?"
"Both will remain safe… so long as you cooperate." Supporting Bayerly with a hand under the American's elbow, Hsiao turned to the civilians and snapped something at them in That.
Phreng replied, the words singsong and incomprehensible. His hand restlessly stroked Pamela's thigh. Hsiao barked a command. There was resentment in the That's face… then a curt nod, and he began untying the girl's ankles.
Moments later they were freeing him as well. It looked to Tombstone as though the worst of the horror might be past. But at what cost? Somehow, the information Hsiao wanted was aimed at the Jefferson. What was Hsiao up to…
terrorism? Holding a U.S. carrier for ransom? Whatever his plan, it might mean the death of hundreds, possibly thousands of his shipmates.
As two Burmese guards led him back to his cell, he knew it was up to him to warn Jefferson.
The problem was how? There was no way Hsiao and his henchmen were going to let them walk away free, not now.
And Bayerly was spilling his guts. Tombstone felt the desperation rising within his chest and wanted to scream, the torture as bad in a small way as the hour he'd spent that morning hanging from Hsiao's meat hook.
Try as he might, he could see no way out of this mess for any of them.
1624 hours, 19 January
Doi Chiang Dao, Northern Thailand
The Karen party had walked for hour upon hour, stopping rarely, always moving south. Batman lost track of how far they must have come; each forest-shrouded ridge was much like the one before… or the one ahead. His legs, especially his knees and thighs, shrieked agony at him throughout the morning. By mid-afternoon he felt a kind of bludgeoned numbness all over, and he had to concentrate with a single-minded fanaticism simply on placing one foot ahead of the next.
There were increasing signs of settlement, however. More than once, the Karens filed out of the jungle and across a road, usually a deep-rutted jeep trail, though occasionally it was pothole-cratered blacktop, a sure sign of civilization. They skirted several villages, and once crossed a large open space with the watery gleam of a rice field off to the left, reflecting the brooding gray of overcast sky and mountains.
The final climb left Batman breathless, and it was so steep that Malibu had to get off his stretcher and hobble along supported by two of the camo-clad natives. By the time the slope leveled off at last, the overcast had begun to break up, allowing intermittent shafts of light to illuminate the green-clad face of the mountain rising above them. The Karens halted at a point where jungle gave way to open ground and a dirt road winding along the face of the mountain.
Htai walked up to Batman. "It is time we parted," he said. "We have brought you as far as we can."
"Now wait a minute," Batman said. "What you're just going to drop us off in the middle of nowhere?"
Htai gestured. "Follow that road. You will be able to find transportation there."
Batman looked up the road. More jeep trail than road, it looked as though it rarely saw traffic. If Htai was expecting the two of them to hitchhike back to civilization…!
He turned to argue with Htai, and stopped. The jungle was a green wall along the road, leaves and fronds stirring with the breeze. The Karens were gone, vanished.
"Htai!" Batman yelled. "Son of a bitch… Htai!"
Malibu leaned against his makeshift crutch and eyed the jungle. "Shit, buddy," he said. "I get the feeling they don't care for our company anymore!"
"Looks that way." The way the Karens had disappeared into the forest was eerie. What was it they were afraid of? "C'mon. We can't stay here all day."
