Viper: A Thriller

by Ross Sidor

  Rivero thrashed and shuddered. Suddenly all sensation had returned to his body and the drug-induced clouds cleared from his mind. The Black Eagles held onto him to keep him still. His high-pitched screams bounced off the factory walls.

  When the tip of the bit finally emerged through the soft tissue behind the knee, the Black Eagle clamped a hand onto Rivero’s leg to hold it steady as he pulled the drill back with the other hand. The grooves of the bit scraped against bone and snagged tissue on its way out. Blood poured steadily through the tiny hole, collecting on the floor. As his body slipped into shock and released natural pain killers, Rivero gradually stopped screaming and relaxed. He rested his head back and stared up at the low ceiling as he tried to place his thoughts elsewhere and detach himself from what was taking place.

  Avery watched from the shadows, unflinching and transfixed. He didn’t avert his gaze once. He wasn’t moved by Rivero’s trauma, but Rivero’s determination surprised him.

  The color had drained from Rivero’s face, and he sweated rivulets. His eyelids fluttered. The Black Eagle holding onto his shoulders slapped Rivero a couple times to bring his attention around and keep him from passing out.

  Now that he was softened up, had a sampling of what was in store for him, the Black Eagles questioned him in Spanish.

  When Rivero failed to provide satisfactory responses, the drill was turned on once more, and this time it went through the opposite kneecap, followed immediately by an elbow. In the process, they had to splash a bucketful of water over Rivero to prevent him from slipping away. There was only so much the body could take before it shut down.

  “He’s not going to talk,” Avery said quietly.

  Rivero would have talked already if he could be coerced by pain alone. After this, continuing to put holes in him simply wouldn’t be productive, but the Black Eagles still enjoyed the effort. A part of Avery admired Rivero’s conviction. Even the most hardcore, dedicated jihadists gave in after just a couple minutes of relatively harmless water boarding.

  “He’ll die before he betrays her. These guys better change tactics, because I have a feeling Rivero can go through this all day.”

  “I believe you’re right,” Daniel said after several seconds, checking his watch, “but we still had to try. I sincerely hoped that it wouldn’t come to this, but it’s become necessary to threaten Senor Rivero with something he may value more than his own life.”

  Avery hadn’t been briefed beforehand on Daniel’s interrogation strategies, and what happened next came as much a surprise to him as it must have for Rivero.

  Three of the Black Eagles walked away from the interrogation floor into a back room, out of sight, while the fourth paramilitary lined up four wooden chairs.

  Rivero watched them with a permeating sense of dread, and Avery shared the feeling.

  Avery soon heard Spanish speaking voices coming from the back room, and he was sure he heard a woman’s voice, muffled and afraid, until it was cut short by the sound of a slap.

  A minute later, he saw movement through the shadows.

  When they stepped out from the dark, under the lights, Avery saw them.

  The Black Eagles dragged a tall woman with black hair and soft features, along with two girls and a boy, to the chairs and instructed them to sit down. The oldest of the children looked to be in her teenage years, while the other two were both below the age of ten. They reacted in shock and horror at the sight of their husband and father exposed, broken, and bleeding on the floor before them. Even from behind the thick strips of utility tape plastered over their lips Avery heard the muffled, whimpering cries from the females and the boy.

  Avery tensed and glanced over to Daniel for an explanation.

  “The Black Eagles picked them up yesterday afternoon, shortly after I contacted them,” Daniel said.

  Avery didn’t need to ask who they were. He knew from the dossier on Cesar Rivero that the man had two daughters and a son, and hadn’t seen them since he’d come to Bellavista.

  “You told them to do this?” Avery asked.

  “I instructed them to do whatever they felt was necessary.”

  When Rivero attempted to get up, a Black Eagle kicked him in the chest, toppling him over, and then kicked him in the side.

  The other Black Eagles started to tie the woman and her children to the chairs. When Rivero’s wife resisted, she was punched twice in the side of the head. When the boy tried to defend his mother, jumping out of his chair, he was backhanded across the face and landed on the floor near his father. As a Black Eagle grabbed onto the boy and hoisted him back up, Rivero looked into his son’s eyes and told him that it would be okay, but his voice wavered. Neither of them believed the lie for a second.

  “What the fuck is this, Daniel?” Avery’s voice barely rose above a whisper.

  Daniel didn’t respond.

  Avery silently willed Rivero to cooperate, for the sake of the noncombatants, but Avery also didn’t think that it made much difference at this point. The Black Eagles enjoyed inflicting pain for the fuck of it. They got off on the suffering of their victims, and terrorizing them before finally killing them, and they’d already gotten a taste of blood.

  Avery thought this was now well outside of Daniel’s control.

  The Black Eagles resumed questioning Rivero, who told them he didn’t possess the information they sought. He told them he hadn’t been in contact with the Viper or anyone from FARC or the cartel during his time in Bellavista. Then he pleaded for the release of his family, but the Black Eagles were unmoved by his emotions.

  But Rivero’s words betrayed the fact that he had indeed personally and knowingly worked with the Viper before, and Daniel nodded with satisfaction, knowing they were on the right track.

  Still, Rivero’s answers weren’t satisfactory.

  The lead interrogator drew a pistol, cocked the hammer, and executed Rivero’s nine-year old son. The shot echoed inside the factory. The boy’s small head slumped forward against his chest.

  Rivero’s wife spewed vomit across the floor and screamed.

  “This is going too far, Daniel,” Avery said, surprised at how calm he felt, once the concussion of the single shot cleared. “Do you hear me? This needs to end now.”

  Daniel didn’t even look at Avery.

  “Goddamnit, you son of a bitch, if you don’t stop this, I will.”

  “I strongly advise against intervening,” Daniel finally said. “These men will surely kill you. Despite the connotations of your nickname, you have a rather weak stomach, don’t you, Carnivore?”

  Avery turned to Aguilar. If he was looking for support, he found none. Aguilar was still, his breathing short and heavy. His face showed nothing.

  Rivero was screaming now, begging them to release his family.

  When the Black Eagle put the gun to the head of one of his daughters, Rivero finally provided a single name, one suddenly recalled from the deepest recesses of his memory, one that hadn’t entered his mind until that second. He said that Sean Nolan would know where to find Moreno. Nolan had been a close friend of the Moreno siblings, and was one of the rare members of the Viper’s inner circle. He’d accompanied her on the Medellin operation.

  Avery never heard the name before, but he detected a glint of recognition register on Daniel’s face.

  Over the next ten minutes, Rivero freely divulged everything he knew about Sean Nolan, and described in detail how the Viper planned and executed the Medellin courthouse operation, and there was no further abuse inflicted upon Rivero or his family during this time.

  The Black Eagles questioned him again and repeatedly for the next thirty minutes, trying to catch flaws in his story or trap him in a lie, but he was consistent and insisted that they find Sean Nolan. Even under further torture, with more holes drilled through his bones and organs, and threats to do the same to his wife, Rivero was unable to provide a location for Nolan, stating only that he travelled between Colombia and Bolivia, but Rivero suggested they lo
ok for him in Cali. That’s where he did most of his business.

  When it became clear that Rivero had nothing else to offer, and Daniel notified the Black Eagle leader that he was satisfied with the information, Cesar Rivero was finally put out of his misery with a single shot through the center of his face.

  “I think we’re through here,” Daniel said.

  “What about the family?” Avery asked.

  “What about them?”

  “What happens to them?”

  “What do you think is going to happen to them? Unless you are a true sadist and want to watch, we should leave immediately.”

  Daniel turned his back to Avery and walked away.

  Avery had been ordered or forced to do plenty of dirty things for the Agency, but even he couldn’t believe how easily Daniel could abandon this woman and her daughters. For Avery, children were always off limits. The objective part of his brain commanded him to leave with Daniel, but a deeper, intrinsic voice, one he didn’t hear often and usually tried to ignore, told him about the right thing to do.

  He was conscious of the weight of the Glock at his right hip. It carried a full magazine of fifteen .40 caliber rounds. The Black Eagles had two guns amongst the four of them—the pistol in their leader’s hand and the Uzi sitting on the workbench, ten feet out of reach of the nearest man. Avery thought he could quickly and easily take them on. His mind choreographed the movements, and assessed the position and threat potential of each target and the order in which he’d take them. He re-positioned his right arm slightly so that his hand hovered over the holstered Glock.

  “Let it go,” Aguilar said, breaking his concentration.

  “The fuck?”

  “Trust me. You’ll only get more innocent people killed. These guys aren’t stupid. They’ve told their commanders that they’re doing an operation for the security services. If they turn up dead, the Black Eagles will think they were double-crossed, and they’ll put dozens of police officers and their families in danger.”

  Fuck it. Avery sighed, relaxed his hand, switched off the emotions, and tuned out the dissenting voices telling him what to do. The clouds dissipated from his mind, restoring cold objectivity to his thoughts.

  It was a shit deal for Rivero’s family, but that’s the way the world worked.

  Avery thought of all the other people raped and murdered in this country, names he’d never know. What difference did a couple more make? Why were they more important than any of the others? Because this time he had names and faces to put to the victims?

  Avery started after Aguilar, who was now halfway to the doors.

  But he stopped short when one of the girls screamed. Desperate, terrified, and powerless, she cried out for help, the only thing she could do.

  The child’s plea was bad enough, but the sadistic cruelty of the man’s laughter that followed finalized Avery’s decision, and he at once felt disgusted with himself for thinking he could turn away and still live with himself.

  He turned back around to see the Black Eagles, thirty feet away, beneath the glow of the lights, going to work on Rivero’s daughters, holding them down, smacking them. The elder daughter’s shirt and bra were sliced open, exposing her breasts, putting her on display, and a Black Eagle was on his knees between her legs, with a hand undoing his belt. Another Black Eagle had the younger girl pinned face down, one hand holding a bundle of her hair, while Rivero’s wife remained tied to her chair, crying, forced to watch.

  As he stepped forward, Avery detected one Black Eagle’s gaze on him, and saw the glint of realization in the man’s eyes, recognition of an impending threat.

  The Black Eagle tried to alert the others, but they didn’t hear him, too preoccupied with the girls, and by the time he finally caught their attention, Avery had already drawn the Glock. He took the Weaver stance with his arms extended straight out in front of him, left hand wrapped around the right, finger over the trigger, with his left foot stepped forward.

  He kept a tight grip around the Glock, struggling against the painful tremor in his shoulder, to keep his sights level and still. He held the tiny green dot over the only armed Black Eagle, who was on his knees with the barrel of his Taurus pistol inserted into the mouth of the younger Rivero daughter.

  Avery aimed high so that he didn’t place the girl in danger. He hit the trigger twice, the shots thundering loudly inside the factory and at once silencing and freezing everyone else in place.

  The bullets cored through the target’s face, and fragmented inside his chest skull. His blood spattered the screaming girl, and his slack body fell on top of her.

  Continuing forward, Avery shifted aim and drew a bead on his next target.

  Caught by surprise, the Black Eagle between the teenager’s legs was in the process of jumping up onto his feet, his pants dropping to his ankles, when Avery shot him three times high in the chest and face from seventeen feet away, dropping him like a sack of a shit. The girl shrieked and rolled out of the way as the body slammed face first against the cement and emptied its bladder and bowels.

  Then the terrified girl was on her feet, entering Avery’s line of fire as he tracked his next target. He swore and angled his barrel up, clear of her head, as she ran past, and reacquired his target.

  The third Black Eagle was on his feet and running. Avery nailed him cold with a single shot high and center in the back, below the neck, severing his spine.

  By that time, the remaining Black Eagle had reached the workbench, grabbed the Uzi sitting there, and spun around to confront Avery, bringing the submachine gun to bear on him while Avery still had the Glock angled seventy-five degrees to the left.

  Avery was aware of the threat in his right peripheral. As time seemed to freeze frame and his whole body tensed in anticipation of catching a stream of 9mm, he knew he could never get the Glock around in time, and he thought that was okay, because he’d at least been able to spare the girls and he’d never have to think again about Rivero’s dead son, who he hadn’t saved.

  But another shot exploded close by, off to Avery’s right—it didn’t sound like an Uzi, and it came from the wrong direction anyway, and he never felt a bullet strike him—and the Black Eagle’s head jerked back and his arms sagged with the Uzi and his legs gave out

  Avery spun fast around, leading with the Glock, and dropped his aim and relaxed his finger on the trigger when he saw Aguilar, who then gave the lone surviving Black Eagle, paralyzed and twitching on the floor, a head shot.

  Avery and Aguilar exchanged looks. The Colombian looked pissed off about being dragged into this, but he didn’t say anything, knowing that what was done was done.

  The girls flinched and cowered when Avery came near them, seeing him not as a savior but as another violent, threatening man with a gun. He ignored them, conscious to keep his eyes off their bodies, as he untied their mother. She sprung up from her chair, pushed past him, and took her children in her arms.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Aguilar said, after giving the killing floor a once over to make sure that nobody was moving who shouldn’t. “You’ve done all you can for them.”

  “Not really,” Avery replied, knowing it wouldn’t be enough to clear his conscience. He should have dropped those fucks, and anyone who tried to stop him, the second they threatened the kids.

  Outside, they walked to a black SUV with a Colombian Special Forces NCO waiting behind the wheel. Daniel, who had heard the gunshots and saw the muzzle flashes, didn’t look pleased, but he wisely kept his mouth shut after catching the glare in Avery’s eye.

  FOURTEEN

  Less than an hour later, they were in the air, flying from Medellin to Bogotá, aboard a Colombian Air Force Fokker VIP transport. Despite functioning on less than seven hours of sleep over the last two days, Avery had no trouble staying awake that night. Every time he shut his eyes he saw the masked man shooting the little boy, the bullet strike against his head.

  Avery chugged a Monster energy drink to further put off sleep fo
r as long as he could. He stared at the back of the empty seat in front of him and was careful not to turn his head to the right, so he wouldn’t have to see his reflection in the window eight inches away.

  Aguilar and his men were asleep in the back. Avery didn’t know how they could do it, but he supposed that Aguilar must have seen far worse. After all, he’d been fighting this war for the past twenty years, where every life was cheap and expendable. Avery had barely been here two weeks.

  Seated across the aisle from Avery, Daniel drank Cuban rum, pouring it into a lowball glass. As quickly as he downed it, he refilled the glass. Avery had declined Daniel’s offer of a drink earlier, preferring to confront the repercussions of his decisions sober and allow it to eat away at his soul. It was the least he deserved. Neither man had said a word since.

  At least Avery’s stomach had finally settled down. He’d thrown up shortly after take-off, and his body had continued to heave and go through the motions even after his stomach had purged its contents. He’d remained in the Fokker’s tiny lavatory after that, on his knees, where he did something he hadn’t done in over a decade. He broke down and cried.

  Then he returned to his seat and wondered what was wrong with him. He normally had no problem keeping himself detached and unaffected by things, but now he was ridden with guilt, regret, shame, and anxiety. It was like the brick walls he’d carefully constructed years ago in his mind were suddenly crumbling apart, and a dozen memories, and all the associated emotions, suddenly came pouring through.

  He no longer gave a damn about the Viper or the mission. He was content to leave her for Daniel and the CIA to find. He wanted only to return home, to be alone, far from everyone, and leave this deplorable place behind.

  “I told you that it wouldn’t be easy,” Daniel finally said over an hour into the flight, reading Avery’s thoughts and breaking the silent tension.