When nothing happened, I could tell he was getting frustrated because he was cursing and yanking harder. I tried to stay as still as I could. I didn’t want to give him any reason to take his attention off of his limp dick.
Nothing happened. He couldn’t get hard. I was now convinced that some higher power had my back. This was a testament to the Don’t Do Drugs campaign…the thing about chronic drug use, or just stimulants in general–they could cause erectile dysfunction. Someone couldn’t get it up.
I couldn’t help it, I smiled.
“You laughing at me, bitch?” He dropped his sad excuse for a dick and came at me fast, yanking on my ankle and dragging me to him.
The bad thing about stimulants– aggressiveness and added strength.
I barely had time to get my arms up to protect my face when the first punch hit me. It glanced off my arm but it still hurt like a bitch, he was strong. The second one landed along my jaw and had me crying out in pain. I kicked out against him, but I had taken too much in the last few days. I was as weak as a kitten and it did nothing to him.
It was like one of those dreams. Those fight dreams where you’re fighting an attacker but it feels like you’re under water. Your arms are like jelly and nothing you do even makes an impact. I tried fighting, but nothing I did had an effect on him.
And this wasn’t a dream. This was reality. This was my new reality. Each blow caused flashes of light to sprinkle across my vision and each one hurt a little less but a little more. At one point I wanted to die. I wanted to close my eyes and have it end.
The last one I remembered came hard against my temple and the stars that popped across my eyes quickly faded and he finally stopped. I knew I should probably try and stay awake as he lumbered across the room and grabbed for a bottle, but I just wanted to sleep. I let it take me. Sweet fucking oblivion.
Nineteen | The Art of Obedience
ZACH
Ito, Romeo, and Jimmy came in hot. Jimmy wasn’t exactly who I would have chosen for this mission, but he was eager and had been training hard with Martinez. I wanted fucking Cole. Cole had interrogation experience, Cole wouldn’t freak when I did the things I had planned. But Cole’s wife wouldn’t let him off the island if she could help it. Guess he was sitting this one out, again.
I wanted to fault him, the pussy, but for some reason I found it reassuring. To have someone care about you enough that they bossed you around…okay, maybe it wasn’t that reassuring. Cole should have been here.
I gathered the troops and laid out the plan. It was going to be easy. We go in, we take ‘em down and we hold them until they give up Lex and Clara. Lex could be in that house right now. She could be enduring God knew what kind of treatment and I was just sitting here, watching. Waiting for heavier darkness, waiting for optimal conditions. If my logical side hadn’t kicked in, I would have busted in with just Blake at my back. But these rednecks were wildcards. I didn’t know what kind of weapons they had, how many of them there were. It was frustrating. but it was logical. Wait, watch, then move. Standard Operating Procedure. SOP. Live by it, die by it.
“Ito, Romeo, Martinez, you’ll go up the stairs on the west side, take the back room, we’ll move in from the south entrance, take the front. Move all EC’s to the front room. Then we find Lex.”
“What if Lex isn’t on the property?” Baby asked.
“Then we interrogate them, treat ‘em like ECs, the usual.”
“So, we do this? We’re treating them like Enemy Combatants? Do we have intel that they are the ones that took Clara and Lex?” Baby asked, but she didn’t look like it mattered, just asking a question, no opposition.
“From this point, you’re with us or against us, there isn’t a gray area,” Blake spoke up from the back of the room. “No matter what, these are the men that have fired on us and tried to take down Ito. They’re the enemy, even if they didn’t take Lex.”
“They took Lex, end of story. They’ll pay with their lives,” I said stubbornly. They had to have taken Lex. If it wasn’t this group then there were no other leads, no other options.
“Well, then let’s get her back.” Baby clapped her hands and as usual I wasn’t sure if she was being sarcastic or if she was behind me. She was so hard to read. She followed orders like a champ, but her dry sense of humor was hard to interpret.
The landscape was pitch black when we converged in the ground floor patio area. I only had two pairs of night vision goggles. I handed them to Blake and Martinez. I could do without. The plan was simple. We were ready. Two quick hand signals and we split, my group heading toward the highway, Martinez and his group heading toward the lake.
We had to make this quick. We had to go up the stairs and hit the house before the occupants inside could muster any of their weapons and defend themselves. We also needed to take them alive. Most of them.
I quickly crossed the expanse of marshy grass toward our target. Blake was at my rear and Baby five paces to my right. We made it to the bottom of the stairs and I waited until Martinez confirmed that they had made it to the other access stairwell.
“Go,” I spoke harshly into the com and we all moved as one up the stairs. I didn’t hesitate when I hit the porch. I went straight for the door and kicked it in. The door was weatherproofed and reinforced but it went in easily from the force of my kick. There were two men sitting on the sofa, their bloated faces staring at us with stunned shock. I pointed my rifle at the two, recognizing the one furthest from me as the douchebag from the truck.
They were well-trained in the art of obedience. With the rifles, combat gear and precision movements it was obvious we were military or police. Their hands went right into the air and their mouths opened and closed with inaudible defensive sounds. No opposition here.
“Down on the ground,” I shouted. They obeyed and Baby and Blake were quickly on them, zip-tying their wrists and pressing guns to the back of their heads just for a bit of psychological reinforcement. Obey or die. This wasn’t our first rodeo.
My head shot up when I heard a weapon discharge. Handgun, small caliber. It wasn’t one of ours.
“Hannah.” I motioned for her to follow me and we made our way down the hallway, kicking open door after door. We found a woman cowering in the bathroom. She was an older woman, overweight and unkempt. She had the handgun clutched in her hands which were shaking like a poodle with palsy. She had discharged on accident.
“Put the weapon down!” I yelled.
“Ya gonna shoot me if I do,” she called back her voice wavering, scared.
“We’re not going to shoot you. Put the gun down. You can’t even do any damage to us, we’re all wearing body armor.”
“Are you the police?” She asked, her hand dropping down.
“No ma’am,” Baby said, pushing into the bathroom, grabbing the gun from her hand just as her arm dropped to the floor. She clicked the safety and then under-hand pitched it over to me. I checked the chamber and then pushed it into the waistband of my pants.
Baby pulled on the woman to get her to her feet, which was quite a task, she was being obstinate and had to outweigh Baby by at least a buck. The woman was now sobbing and blubbering. Her dramatics seemed a little forced so I kept the gun trained on her.
“Get to your fucking feet,” I ordered.
The woman finally did as she was told. Baby quickly tied her hands behind her and I backed out of the room. Turning, I headed down the hall, Baby pushing the woman behind me.
Martinez came in, leading another man from the back. He put him on the floor next to the other two. Blake had set up lanterns so the whole room was illuminated and Ito moved the tables out of the way so there was plenty of room to work.
“She’s not here,” Martinez said, meeting my eyes. I had already figured this out, unless they had her stashed somewhere, she wasn't in this house. Or they had dumped her dead body…could not think that way.
“Put the old woman on the sofa, she should get the best view,” I said to Baby. “Mart
inez, Ito, take watch at the entrances. Let’s get this over with. Blake…
Twenty | Waterboarding for Dummies
BLAKE
Zach never had the stomach for interrogation, so when he looked over at me I knew what he was asking. Neither one of us had taken point on operations like this when we were in the shit, that was something you left up to the spooks. But, we were almost always on site at any black operations that involved our muscle. As the officer, I was sometimes asked to sit in on monitoring the interrogations to provide clarification. I had never gotten my hands dirty before though. I knew how to do it, had even had it done to me in SERE training. It wasn’t fun. But it didn’t kill you.
“Sit ‘em up,” I ordered. Zach and Baby pulled on the men until they were on their knees, lined up in front of me, a captive fucking audience. They were scared. I could almost smell it on them, among other things. They all stank, body odor and grease, clothes drenched with so much sweat they smelled like piss. It was rank, they could all use a good bath.
Not one of them had a full set of teeth, or a full head of hair. I had to hold back the urge to just lay into them. What had they done to Alexis? To think that she was forced to come with these men, that they might have done something to her had the rage boiling over inside me. Had they raped her? Had these nasty subpar humans touched her? I slipped my rifle off my arm, just in case I was tempted to use it. I couldn’t kill them, we needed info. We were just assuming they took Alexis. We had to be sure. We had to find out what they did to her. We had to find out where she was. This would take more finesse than bashing heads.
“Last night you took two women from Highway 90. They were driving a white SUV, you took them and left the SUV,” I said it as fact, I wasn’t asking a question, they had to know I knew.
I looked down at the men for confirmation. None of them could look me in the eye.
“Two women, one short and blonde, the other tall and brunette, both attractive. You brought them to the bait shop a mile from here. We found your other man…the one we saw with you.” I stood in front of the man from our earlier confrontation. “You took the women, where are they?”
“We didn’t take no women. Lloyd, he got bit, we had to kill him.”
“What about the other guy, on the road? On the road by the crashed SUV, is that what you do, just leave your men where they fall? Who killed him, did the brunette take out your man, did she kill your friend? Y’all couldn’t even take down a woman without losing someone? Two someones?”
“We didn’t take no women. Let us go, man! We’re just trying to survive!” he hollered.
“Zach, I need water, fill up anything you got, jugs, just use the marsh water. Hannah, I need a cloth, like a small towel.” I paced in front of the men while Baby and Zach rounded up what I needed.
I knelt down in front of my target.
“What’s your name?” I asked as docile as I could force my voice.
“Clem, Clem Cook.”
“You look like the smartest of this lot, Clem. You know you can just tell me what you did with the women and we’ll go away, leave y’all alone.”
“We didn’t take no women,” he hissed.
“I know you’re lying, Clem, and I don’t know why. Why don’t you just tell us? We’ll go away, leave you…and who is that, your momma? Is that your mom, Clem?” I looked over at the older woman who was glaring at me.
“Yeah, that’s my momma.”
“I bet your momma wants us to go, right Momma?” I asked her.
“Fuck you,” she spat and I smiled, if she would have acted like a scared mother I might have balked, this made things easier.
“Y’all are fun,” I stood back up. “You know what isn’t fun?” I asked in general. “Three tours in shithole countries where everyone wants to kill you. Where just saying you’re an American paints a fucking target on your back. Where women and children strap fucking bombs to their bodies and try to give you a fucking hug. But, see, those people, those enemies that tried to kill me…at least they had a fucking reason, a fucking passion and a belief system. I might not have agreed with it…but at least there was a reason. You bunch of lowlifes, what’s your reason? Can’t get a woman that’s not your sister to fuck you? Is that why you took the girls?” I pushed the man next to Clem back with my boot and he fell over awkwardly on his tied hands.
“Is that what it was? You saw pretty girls and your inbred dicks got hard? Y’all a bunch of rapists?” I asked, my voice still even and moderated even though I was seething inside.
Zach and Baby came into the room. He had filled a tub with water and put down a large Big Gulp cup next to it. Baby handed me the towel.
“My boys ain’t rapist, they didn’t touch those girls,” the woman cried.
“Then what the fuck did you do with them?” I screamed. All of them flinched, but said nothing.
“We know you took them, all you have to do is tell us where they are,” Zach spoke up quietly from the corner of the room.
“We didn’t take ya women, let us go. You got the wrong group, we ain’t them, man,” the one closest to the door spat.
“I guess we need to change things up a bit.” I smiled down at them. I don’t know why they were being so obstinate. Maybe they thought if they denied it, we would eventually let them go. Wrong.
I reached down, pushing Clem forward and cutting his zip ties. He pulled his hands from me and instinctively rubbed at his wrists.
“One last time, Clem…I know you took them. Where are they?”
“Fuck you,” he responded.
“You keep up with politics, Clem?” I turned and walked away from him, trusting that he would just sit there like the senseless slug he was.
“I don’t vote, this ain…ain’t right…whatcha talking about, ma-ma-man? This is crazy,” he stuttered.
“Political agendas, that sort of thing. You follow that kind of stuff?”
He just stared up at me stupidly.
“You ever heard of waterboarding? Caused quite a controversy a few years back, all the bleeding hearts pitched a fit, didn’t care much that we were torturing terrorists to get information. Of course, they rejoiced when we killed the bad guys. They just didn’t like how we got the information to kill the bad guys. You ever been waterboarded, Clem?”
“Fuck, no, what the fuck>” He pushed himself off of the floor and Zach was behind him in an instant.
“I’ve been waterboarded, had to in SERE training. Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape, now that was a blast. Wasn’t as bad as some of the other shit they put us through, but it breaks someone quick. Really quick. Humans don’t like to feel like they’re drowning. Hold him down.”
Zach took Clem down with a few quick moves and then threw him on his back, tying his hands in front of him. Baby went to his legs and Zach went to his head. I grabbed the towel and soaked it in the tub of marsh water Zach had brought up. The water stunk of fish, an added bonus. I squeezed the excess water out of the towel and then grabbed the cup, filling it to the brim with the water from the tub.
I leaned down next to Clem who was now thrashing with Baby and Zach holding him in place. The two other men had pushed back against the sofa and were practically whimpering, staring at us. The situation wasn’t optimal, the subject was usually tied down to a plank. I wouldn’t be able to maintain a steady stream, but I was pretty sure the one cup would be enough. They had no reason to hold onto the information.
“You see, Clem, the thing about this little brand of torture…it isn’t going to kill you. It’s not even going to leave any lasting marks. None you can see anyway. You ever almost drowned, Clem?” I put the wet cloth over his face, covering his nose and mouth. I waiting for a couple of seconds for him to try and take a breath through the saturated material. He heaved and Baby and Zach held him tight.
Live (NOLA Zombie Book 3) Page 8