Ethan raised his eyebrows in a sign that Aaron took to mean that he could continue.
“We know where she is,” Aaron said, slowly and clearly. His eyes bored into Ethan’s. “We know where they’re holding her.”
“You have a locale on the sons of bitches?” William exclaimed.
Aaron nodded. “Yeah. One-hundred percent.”
“How the fu––” Ethan began.
“Black Swan, man, how the hell else do you think?” Aaron said. “My orders were to meet you here. If you showed up and brought the scientist as agreed, then I was instructed to give you the location of Maelstrom.”
How did she know? How did she find out?
It was hard to guess and close to impossible to know. The best deduction that Ethan could make was that Sam’s intricate and convoluted network of moles included informants planted in the heart of the Mossad. Who they were, and how Sam had managed to attain their services, Ethan was certain that he would never find out.
“She was testing us?” Ethan said, his words dripping incredulity.
Aaron shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Who gives a shit?” William exclaimed. “If it was a test, we passed. Let’s goddamn saddle up and get the hell out of here. Where is this place?”
“It’s a warehouse in the Zona Franca,” Aaron told them.
Ethan made an exasperated gesture. “And where the hell is that, then?”
“It’s the port district, an industrial zone. Noisy, made up of factories, warehouses and manufacturing plants, people and trucks coming and going at all times––even at the moment with all this COVID bullshit going down. It’s like a warren. The perfect spot to squirrel someone away for safekeeping.”
“Perfect place to put someone through the goddamn ringer if you’re tryin’ to squeeze some information out of them too,” William muttered.
Aaron nodded severely. “No doubt.”
“You’ve got an exact fix on them, an exact address and target building?” Ethan shot at Aaron.
“Roger that,” his friend replied.
“How far?” Ethan asked. His mind had made it through the turbulent, perilous waters that embodied the current situation and was now sailing in the glassy, smooth bay on the other side. He had clarity now. A single purpose. All they had to do was get Bretta out and, what was more, it sounded like they would have surprise on their side.
Edges; they’re for holding onto, Ethan thought, and they’re for cutting.
“How long?” William butted in before Aaron could answer Ethan’s question.
“In that thing,” Aaron replied, nodding his head at the Nissan Patrol, “and with Huntsman driving, it’ll take us about a quarter of an hour to get down to the port. Five minutes to make sure we’ve got the right warehouse. Call it twenty-minutes tops.”
“All right,” William drawled, “the only thing we need to sort out now is gear.”
Aaron made a face and punched the big man on the shoulder. “Please, I don’t know how you do things down Texas ways, but where I’m from the host of the party provides the snacks. He doesn’t ask his friends to bring their own.”
“You’ve got a few bang-bangs for us to choose from then, partner?” William asked.
“I do,” Aaron affirmed. “I’ve got everything we’ll need in the back of the vehicle.”
“You sure this is sanctioned by Black Swan?” Ethan asked.
“Would it matter if it wasn’t?” Aaron replied.
“Probably not.”
“Well, how about we quit hollerin’ down the well and hit the road then, huh?” William said, slapping Aaron on the back.
His face set, his eye steely, Ethan was already marching towards the Patrol.
24
Bretta came to with a jerk and a cry. With the instinctive reactions to preserve life at all costs that transcended people and, indeed, species, she pushed herself up onto her elbows and crawled pitiably backwards until her back came in contact with the rough cinderblock wall.
Back to the wall. At least that’s something.
It was amazing how quickly one’s prioritized changed. One day you’re worried about what wine to drink with your lunch, and the next day all that concerns you is making sure that the beating you’re about to take isn’t going to be sprung on you from behind.
She wasn’t sure how long she’d been here for. It felt like days had passed––a week.
She looked over at the ten-liter plastic container, now only half-filled with water, at the table that was tilted at precisely the right angle, at the straps and harnesses that had been used to tie her down to that table.
Bretta shivered. There was a reason why waterboarding had been a family favorite that had never gone out of fashion.
She gulped, trying to force away the memory of the way the water had irresistibly flooded her sinuses. How, in seconds, her brain had felt like it was simultaneously on fire and waterlogged. How her throat had swollen, her lungs gone into uncontrollable paroxysms as her body had instantly believed that it was drowning.
Enough. That won’t get me out of here.
She couldn’t help but admit to herself, in her heart of hearts, that things were looking quite dire. Even in her line of work––and Bretta had been in some awfully uncomfortable positions––she hadn’t been in such a hopeless scrape as this.
She was still naked, with nothing on her at all, not even her necklace. In an odd way, the loss of that little piece of jewelry pained her more than any of the physical abuse she had suffered over the past however many hours it might have been. It had been the last link that she had retained to her old life––her life before Sam had found her. Bretta was, in almost all aspects of her life, about as sentimental as a praying mantis, but that pendent had embodied something important. It had symbolized the best that she could be and––in a way––the purest and least sullied that she had ever felt in her whole life.
Now that last link to her past had been taken from her.
Don’t be so pathetic. You can have a whine over that later. Right now you have to do everything in your power to stay alive, to get out of here.
As even the hardest men and women are apt to do though when they think they’re fast approaching the end of their lives, Bretta ruminated on just how it was that she had come to end up here.
Whatever choices and decisions led me to this pass, they were my own. I made them, and I made them the best I could with the information that was available to me at the time.
She tilted her head back against the cold, rough cinder block and closed her eyes for a second or two. She angrily blinked back the tears that prickled in the corners of her eyes.
She looked about her. After her initial beating, she had been dragged down a nondescript corridor and deposited on the floor of this chamber. The waterboarding equipment had already been set up. Unsurprisingly, that was the first thing that she noticed: the bottle, the tilted board, the towel. After that horrible shock had worn off, her professional instincts had kicked in, and she had endeavored to look about her and find any clue as to where she was. However, there hadn’t been much. The walls were bare cinder block, the floor poured and smoothed concrete. The ceiling of this room was not high and invisible like that of the huge space in which she had been originally beaten. It was low, crisscrossed with rusting metal girders covered in a flaking green paint. There were no windows.
Having exhausted all there was to make note of in her makeshift cell, Bretta moved in to making a rudimentary examination of herself.
Gingerly, she started to move every part of her body in turn, starting with her feet and ending with her head and face. She rotated every joint that she could, flexed every ligament and muscle that she was able to. She was rewarded with a veritable symphony of pain; ranging from the deep bass throbbing in her swollen face to the high-frequency staccato needles of agony that came to life in her lower back and kidneys when she stretched her spine.
Her wrists were still shackled with a pair of han
dcuffs that she recognized as good old Peerless 700s. They were bruised all to hell from the tightness of her bonds and the way she had thrashed against them. The adjacent skin was torn, bloody and irritated.
Like how I feel in general at the moment, I suppose.
A length of chain led from her cuffs to a sturdy ring that had been set into the wall. The chain itself was fastened to the handcuffs with a forty-millimeter padlock.
It was, as far as an outfit like the Kidon were concerned, very low tech. That wasn’t to say it was not effective: there was only so much a naked woman could do to a set of restraints made completely from steel.
She had just started to rotate her hands and feet to get a bit of blood flow back into them when the metal door screeched open on rusted hinges.
She fancied she could feel every hair on the back of her neck stand on end at the sound. Her jaw clenched involuntarily, sending little lightning bolts of discomfort flickering across her gums from teeth that had been loosened during her beating. She thought of herself to be fairly sturdy and resilient when it came to weathering the storms that life flung at her, but there was nothing that she could do to stop her gorge rising at the thought of another round of waterboarding. Her breath began to whistle hard and fast through her nose, which was congested with dried blood.
Celeste padded into the room. She was closely followed by the other Kidon female, Mia. Both women were dressed in the all black combat fatigues they had been wearing that night in Tehran.
The night I almost put a bullet through that smug bitch’s head. How different things might now be if that bullet hadn’t misfired.
She had thought about that a lot. The misfire of a primer from a factory-made round was extremely rare, as were jams or breakages. But they still happened from time to time, usually in a firefight when you needed the weapon most.
She wasn’t sure if that thought comforted her or added a fresh layer of despair to her situation.
Wary as a fox that has been brought to bay and cornered by a couple of hounds, Bretta watched the two women from her position on the floor. She flinched and pressed herself up against the wall as Mia flung something at her.
“Get dressed,” Celeste said in a calm and reasonable voice.
“Wh–what?” Bretta asked, her voice croaking up and out from her swollen throat, the word tripping clumsily out from between her chapped and split lips.
“Get dressed, Death Angel,” Celeste repeated.
Mia tossed down a pair of boots next to the little pile of clothes.
“The clothes are mine,” Celeste told her. “Even after all this time, and after so many years of subjecting yourself to eating that fecal matter they call food over there, we’re still the same size, or near enough. I’m impressed, Death Angel. I know I’ve said it already, but for a girl who so callously cast aside the great State of Israel for an insatiable capitalist country that so neatly encapsulates everything wrong with our world, you’ve kept in shape. Well, under all the contusions and lacerations, I mean.”
Stiffly, Bretta used her foot to hook the clothing and pull it towards her.
“It’s all about resisting those free soda refills,” Bretta said in her broken voice. She pulled on the plain cotton briefs and then the cheap black jeans. She winced as she worked the jeans up her sore, badly bruised legs. It wasn’t hard to make it look as if every move was agony––it was––but Bretta made sure to play it up as much as she could nonetheless. It always paid to put your enemy at their ease, if you could. Even just a touch of carelessness on the part of the Kidon could translate into an advantage that Bretta might be able to use.
“Do you mind?” Bretta asked, holding up her shackled hands and rattling the chain at Celeste.
Without a word, Celeste drew out a small key from the pocket of her chest webbing and tossed it onto the ground in between Bretta’s feet.
“For the padlock,” Celeste explained.
Bretta had to kick the key awkwardly up towards herself so that she could reach it with her chained hands. She grimaced as her aching muscles and battered body protested, but on the inside Bretta was glad; the movements were helping to wake her muscles up and warm them. It would be easier to act, if the opportunity presented itself, with muscles that were not cold as ice from sitting so long on the unforgiving concrete floor.
As she fumbled with her numb fingers with the key and the padlock, another key tinkled down next to her. It was a simple-looking little silver key that looked almost like a child had made it.
“For the handcuffs,” Celeste said, coldly.
When Bretta looked up she saw that Celeste had drawn her pistol from the holster strapped to her thigh. Bretta recognized it at once as a Smith and Wesson M&P pistol, one of the most versatile and customizable handguns available to contractors and civilians alike. It could chamber almost any type of pistol round, from little .22 LR rounds to .45 ACP rounds that would leave an exit wound the size of an orange.
Something tells me dear Celeste won’t be chambering anything that isn’t likely to cause a real mess.
Celeste wasn’t pointing the gun at Bretta. It was just there as a little reminder. When she saw Bretta watching her, Celeste flicked off the safety with her thumb and gave her a small wink.
“You’re not called Death Angel for nothing, are you?” Celeste said. “Now, hurry up and get dressed.”
Bretta did as she was told, pulling on the bra, then tight, black long-sleeved t-shirt overtop. She zipped up the black jacket.
Once she was done Bretta looked down at her new attire. “You need to add some color to your wardrobe. Might improve your mood.”
Mia gave a small sigh of impatience.
Celeste said: “Get up.”
Bretta did as she was told. As much as she wanted to make things as difficult as possible for these two, the thought of another beating made bile tickle at the back of her throat.
“Finally had enough of me?” Bretta asked as Mia walked carefully around behind her. “Finally realized I don’t know where that damned scientist is? Gonna put me out of my misery?”
She knew she was babbling a little, but talking kept her mind off the very real possibility that these two coldblooded women were leading her to some nice, quiet, easy to clean spot so they could put a couple of bullets into the back of her skull.
“We’re not going to kill you, Death Angel,” Celeste said.
“We wouldn’t have bothered waiting for you to get dressed if we were going to kill you,” Mia agreed.
“Then why…” Bretta said.
“Perhaps we’re taking you home to Israel,” Celeste said. “Or perhaps, just perhaps, your colleagues have agreed to trade you for the scientist.”
Bretta felt a surge of hope, but then sighed internally. She knew Sam would never allow it. There would be no trade.
Unless, of course, it was a ruse.
That thought caused the hope to rekindle. Though only slightly, because she knew it would be hard to pull off such a ruse. The Kidon would kill Bretta the instant they realized they’d been double-crossed.
She smiled grimly, her gaze darting to the pistols of her captors.
Not if I can help it.
25
Zona Franca––along with the adjacent area of the Port of Barcelona was, essentially, the primary logistics and industrial area of the greater Barcelona region. It was a great expanse of land that played host to a multitude of factories, including enormous complexes owned by Nissan and Volkswagen, as well as the Mercabarna food-trading estate, where the suppliers of the city’s many restaurants came to barter for their produce.
“Well, it seems the Kidon have been recruiting,” Ethan said, sitting back on his haunches and removing the pair of Moskito TI rangefinder binoculars from his eyes.
It was the first time he had used this particular brand of binoculars and, in spite of all else that was going on, he had to admit that the nerd inside him was very impressed. Aaron had told him these particular field glasses we
re not available to civilians, only local, state and federal governments, as well, of course, as the Department of Defense.
“What do you mean they’ve been recruiting?” William whispered, coming up alongside in a crab squat, which looked extremely awkward given his height and bulk.
“Take a look,” Ethan said, passing him the binoculars.
William took them and trained them onto the compound that, Aaron assured them, was where Sam’s intelligence indicated the Mossad’s Barcelona black site resided.
“Shit, looks like you’re right.” William growled as he scanned the disused-looking factory, which was comprised of a single large warehouse surrounded by the sort of modular buildings that could be brought in on the back of a truck, lifted off with a crane and used as offices, toilets or accommodation.
William passed the Moskito TI back to Ethan. “Who the hell have they managed to rope in to helpin’ them beef up their security, though? Private military contractors? By the way, those Moskitos are a hell of a piece of equipment.”
Aaron grinned at William. “Pretty cool, right? Best compact system I’ve ever used for surveillance and recon. The laser rangefinder is good for up to ten-thousand meters––the laser can also be used to paint targets. Thermal and low-light imaging, built in GPS, connection capabilities with every interface you’re ever likely to encounter, situational awareness for day and night, and a digital magnetic compass.”
William laughed and slapped his colleague on the arm. “You sure you don’t work for Moskito? You’re such a fucking geardo.” That was the army term for a soldier who has all the gear and more often than not––though not in Aaron’s case––no idea on how to use it. “You’ve got to get out more. Come out with me in San Antonio and I’ll introduce you to some ladies that’ll give you a night you’ll remember for the rest of your life.”
“They’ll give you a venereal disease that you’ll remember for the rest of your life as well,” Ethan muttered.
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