by Tom Kratman
“No clue, sir,” Malone answered. “I barely got a glimpse of some shadows. Little guys. Locals. That much I can say. I’d guess, from voices, there were half a dozen or so.” The sergeant scrunched his eyes, thinking hard.
“I think the one I’m sure I shot was tattooed.”
“Pattern?” Lox asked.
Malone shook his head. “No clue. It was too quick.”
Welch’s disgust was palpable. “How did they find you? Why did they target you? Don’t bother answering; it was rhetorical.”
Lox offered, “Could have been anything . . . the neighbors . . . following their SUV when they were out on recon . . . their maid.”
Malone carefully avoided mentioning just why he’d chosen Maricel.
“Any chance it was our principal?” Welch asked.
“I can’t rule it out,” said Lox. “But I also can’t see a motive.”
“No . . . no, it makes no sense. Goddam . . . ” Welch’s cell phone rang before he could finish. He picked it up, looked at the tiny screen, and saw it was Benson.
Tondo, Manila, Republic of the Philippines
All four of the prisoners were tied to chairs in a back office of TCS’s headquarters. There was a puddle of vomit on the floor next to the big black. Standing in front of them, Diwata scrolled through the numbers on Benson’s cell until she came to the one labeled, “Boss.”
“Who is this ‘Boss’?” she asked Benson. She sounded as if she’d been brought up in California.
The sergeant simply glared at her. The drug had worn off by now and he’d spent the last fifteen minutes coming up with a story. Fortunately, the people who had them hadn’t been clever enough to separate them before interrogation, so at least the others would have the basis for the same story.
Lucas raised his foot and smashed it down on Benson’s bare and unprotected instep. The sergeant grimaced, but made no sound.
“The lady asked you a question, Kano. Answer it or next time will be your balls.”
“He ansahs to Terry,” Benson said. He didn’t think these people would be particularly expert at torture. He also didn’t see the point in finding out, personally, just how inexpert they might be.
“I don’t know his last name” Benson lied. “I was nevah told. He runs guns, drugs sometimes. People sometimes. I was hired to do reconnaissance and security. I don’t know anything else about his business.”
Diwata looked intently at Benson’s ashen face, seeking the lie. She didn’t see it. Though that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Hard to read Kanos, sometimes.
“Your people sometimes call you ‘Sarge,’ I understand.”
“A couple of us served togethah before,” Benson said, thinking, That fucking idiot, Malone. That brought another thought . . . distant at first, hard to grab hold of. Then, Oh, crap. That maid Malone hired; she’s the only one who ever heard it. She was working for these people.
“I’m going to call your boss,” Diwata said, “and tell him what we want for your safe return. You shut up until I tell you otherwise. Don’t try to pass him any information; the price you’ll pay for it is really high.”
“I don’t have any information,” Benson lied.
Safe House Alpha, Hagonoy, Bulacan, Luzon,
Republic of the Philippines
The phone was still ringing, unanswered.
“It’ll be them, probably,” Lox said, “whoever has our people. Assuming they’re still alive. Act—talk—sleepy, as if you didn’t know anything about this. Listen carefully. Get their demands, if any. Ask to speak to one of one of our men.”
Welch nodded, then said, “Everybody shut up. Lox, you get a pen and paper in case someone has a bright idea to pass me.” Then he pushed the answer button, followed by the speaker key, and said, in as sleepy-sounding a voice as he could muster, “Hello?”
“Terry?” asked the female voice on the other end.
“Yes.”
“My name doesn’t matter,” the female said. “Though if you need something to call me, call me ‘Princess.’ I have some of your people here with me. Benson, whom they call ‘Sarge,’ Zimmerman, Perez, and Washington. We’re sorry, truly sorry, about the one we shot. We won’t charge you for him. For the other four, though, if you want them back, it will be four million dollars. In a week we’ll kill one of them. But the price for the other three will still be four million dollars. In another week, we’ll kill a second one. The price after that will still be four million dollars. If you don’t talk to me now, we’ll hang one right away, video record it, and put the video online. Then I’ll call you again, and tell you again, that in a week we’ll kill another one, but the price will still be four million dollars.”
“I see,” Terry agreed. He made his voice sound more naturally awake now. “How do I know you have my people?”
“How do you think I got this cell phone?” Diwata countered. “No matter; you can talk to one of them briefly.”
Tondo, Manila, Republic of the Philippines
Diwata held the phone up to Benson’s ear. “Again, no games,” she warned.
“This is Sahgeant Benson, Terry. We’re all heah, just like the lady said. I’m worried about the maid, though. I don’t know about her. I’m awful concerned about her, Terry.”
“Forget her,” Diwata said. “She’s none of your business.”
Safe House Alpha, Hagonoy, Bulacan, Luzon,
Republic of the Philippines
Welch almost said, “Screw the maid.” Then he wondered, Why would Benson think I’d care? He shot Malone a questioning look. And why did Benson admit to his rank?
Malone looked away and chewed his lip.
The voice on the phone changed back to the woman. “Happy now?”
“Happier,” Terry replied. “Don’t do anything drastic, Princess. I’ll pay to get my people back. But it’s going to take some time to raise the cash.”
“You have a week. Call this number when you have it, and we can arrange the exchange. If it takes longer, the exchange will be easier, because there’ll be fewer people involved. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” Welch whispered to the silent phone. He shut it off, then turned to Malone. “Is there a little something you haven’t been telling us, Sergeant?”
Malone sat in front of a laptop, scrolling through the pictures of the literally thousands of escorts available in the Manila area.
Meanwhile, Welch, Graft, and Lox considered the options.
“Will the regiment pay?” the latter asked. “I mean, we’ve never set a policy, officially, because we’ve never had to. But the whole ethos of the organization would be ‘don’t pay.’ ”
“That’s easy to say,” Graft said, “when it’s strangers. When it’s your own people, though, it becomes a little different.” He shrugged. “Four million sounds like a lot of money. Hell, it is a lot of money. But there’s no value you can place, in dollars and cents, on your friends.”
Welch’s mouth formed a moue. “My instinct is don’t pay. My feelings, though, say, ‘whatever it takes.’ Well . . . half my feelings. The rest of them say, ‘Get even, with interest.’
“Here’s what we’re going to do: If the girl was, in fact, a hooker or escort used for bait for kidnappings, we’re going to try to find her, take her, and wring her dry. Don’t care what it costs her; don’t care in the slightest. The bitch, if we find her, is already dead, anyway.
“Meanwhile, I’m going to message the regiment, explaining what happened—shit, I’m going to hate explaining this; you fuckhead, Malone—and asking for a bank draft. I’m also going to need some advice from Boxer. If regiment won’t provide, I’m going to ask our principal for an advance against expenses.
“If the girl, if we can find her, provides enough information for a rescue we’ll do that. If not, we pay to get out people back. Then we do the original mission. Then we punish whoever took them in ways that will give their great-grandchildren nightmares.”
Lox nodded. “If you’ve got the time, I’
ve got a book on my reader, from some hack sci fi writer, that has a lot to say about punishing people.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Misery, mutilation, destruction, terror,
starvation and death characterize the process of war
and form a principal part of the product.
—Lewis Mumford
Caban Island, Pilas Group, Basilan Province,
Republic of the Philippines
There were two slaves kneeling on the dirt floor of Janail’s command hut, their hands bound behind them and their faces pressed to the dirt. A pair of guards flanked each of them, though one was a boy of perhaps fifteen and the other a girl not much past twelve. The boy’s body shouted defiance, despite the dirty foot pressing his neck down. The girl, on the other hand, shuddered with sobbing, her tears wetting the dirt to either side of her nose.
One of Janail’s many jobs, as leader of the Harrikat, was to serve as a judge. Sometimes this was both tedious and dangerous, as when two of his followers had an issue with each other. Wherever justice might lay, there was always the risk of the loser of the case going juramentado, which was to say, in this sort of case, arming himself, possibly drugging himself, and going berserk against the judge who had ruled against him and anyone else unwise or unlucky enough to get in his way.
As a general rule, Janail had found it wise to recompense the loser from his own purse and possessions, thus maintaining the loser’s honor and giving him no good excuse for going on a killing spree.
Most cases, however, were much, much easier. Of those, the ones involving the many Christian slaves on the island were easiest of all. Really, there were only four punishments. Women and girls were usually beaten, but sometimes beheaded. Men and boys were sometimes whipped, but about as commonly crucified. Three permanent crosses were kept north of the camp for just this purpose, while the whipping posts and chopping block were located down by the mosque. Conversely, the females could be beaten pretty much anywhere, with no real ceremony required.
Barring only a few that he’d given to the personal use of his Datus, the rest of the slaves were more or less public property. That meant that for any serious punishment the slaves always had to be brought to Janail for judgment, since public property, in this case, meant his property.
The nice thing about passing judgment on the Christian slaves was that Janail detested Filipino Christians and rather enjoyed punishing them.
“What did these two do?” asked Janail, as he walked between the slaves before turning to sit on his throne. His right palm came to rest on the copy of the Koran resting there, albeit mostly for show.
“We caught them making for the small boats,” answered Molok, one of Janail’s senior datus. “They had a parcel of food and two canteens stolen from stores.”
“Related?” Janail asked.
“Brother and sister,” answered Molok. “We grabbed them from a coastal village not far from Ipil.”
“Been here long?”
“No,” Molok replied. “Maybe three or four weeks.”
“The rules were explained to them?”
“Yes,” the datu said. “As soon as they arrived.”
“Tsk, And they still didn’t listen.” Janail put his elbows on the arms of this throne and rested his chin on his clasped hands. “Are we short slaves?”
“No, not really,” Molok said, curling his lip and shaking his head.
Janail made a show of consulting the Koran before giving his judgment.
“Crucify the boy.” The girl screamed and the boy tried to rise to run before his guards kicked him over then dragged him to his feet.
“What about the girl?” Molok asked.
Janail shook his head. “No . . . I take a certain limited pride in tempering justice with mercy. The girl’s not entirely responsible. We’ll leave her her life but beat her—not too severely—and then—since she’s old enough—she can entertain the guard shack for the next three nights.”
“As you command,” Molok said, bowing his head slightly and beginning to withdraw.
“On second thought,” Janail amended, “have the girl watch what’s done to her brother. It may save us having to kill her, later on, too.”
No one actually knows where crucifixion began, or how whoever it was figured out that hanging someone with their arms above forty-five degrees would eventually cause death. It is possible, at least, that a few civil servants, in the middle of administering a judicial whipping somewhere, somewhen in Achaemenid Persia, decided to take a break for a cup of wine at the nearest public house. Perhaps they joked with their hanging victim, “Don’t go away, Rustam; we’ll be back.”
Also, perhaps, as such things go, with one cup turning to two, to three, to an hour or so, they returned to find their charge, still hanging by his wrists with his feet just above ground, but now rather dead: “Doubt the whipping did it, we’d hardly given him a dozen strokes. Let’s bring out another and see if we can’t duplicate it.”
Perhaps thus was born the scientific method.
As it has turned out, nails aren’t necessary; tieing will do nicely. Nor is the crosspiece necessary, since the victim may be nailed or tied to the upright to the same effect. Indeed, as those long ago enforcers of Persian justice may have found, as did more modern researchers in Dachau, the upright piece isn’t necessary either. A victim may be hauled up by a single rope tied to the wrists, with death following in, typically, about an hour.
There are, of course, those who feel that an hour’s worth of slow suffocation isn’t quite enlightening enough as regards the witnesses. For these purposes, the upright piece, the “stirpes,” in Latin, is most useful since the feet can be affixed as well, with the knees bent. Done this way, death by crucifixion can take days. And the cross piece, the patibulum, also has its uses, for better efficiency, since the victims tied arms can simply be draped over it, or separately pulled by rope up to it, without all the bother of having to take down and erect the cross.
The girl—her given name was Maria—wept not for herself, though she knew what lay in store for her, but for her brother, Roberto. There were already two bodies hanging there, rotting and half eaten by birds. The idea that that would be her beloved brother . . . Maria began to shriek. On her knees she begged and pleaded, promising anything and everything she could, and some things she could not, for their captors to spare Roberto’s life. The Moros were having none of it. And besides, “Don’t be silly, girl; we’ll take what we want from you with or without your permission.”
For convenience’s sake, one of the Moros punched Roberto in the solar plexus, just before untying his wrists. That reduced his struggles to a bare minimum as those wrists were rebound to long ropes draped over the patibulum. A few long pulls and the boy hung with his feet a yard or so above the ground.
There were already a couple of stout spikes driven into the stirpes. Loops of rope were run around these and around the boy’s ankles, then tightened.
None of that was actually very painful. The downside of that was that without pain, the victim might show defiance. This was not to be tolerated, nor even risked. Pain there must be and pain there was as the Moros placed two circles of wood over the boy’s heels, then took two long spikes and drove them through the wood, through the flesh, through the bone, into the stout stirpes below. The boy shrieked like a little girl, which shrieks were echoed by his young sister, with each hammer blow.
Then they peeled Maria away from the base of her brother’s cross and dragged her by her hair to the guard shack.
Alone in his hut, the hut covered by the light-blocking jungle of the island, at night, with only a candle lit, sitting on a thin cushion, staring into the flickering light, Janail’s innards were in turmoil. One might have thought that the earlier crucifixion, or the boy’s screaming still filtering through the jungle from the north were the source, but no. Neither was it the sobbing girl whose multi-hour gang rape proceeded apace from a bit to the south. No, Janail was worried about his mo
ney and his nukes.
The Russian is threatening to sell to someone else. Chopping off one of the old bastard’s fingers didn’t get me immediate delivery. And now he’s sick and the doctor says he might not make it if I chop off another one. ‘Weak heart,’ he says. ‘Got to expect that in an old man.’
I could chop another one and publish the video, then demand a partial payment up front. Ah, but no, what’s the use of that. One nuke gets me nothing. They either won’t believe I have it or, if I use it, that will be it.
He stood up, the abrupt motion unsettling the air and causing the candle to flicker. Shadows danced around the hut’s woven grass walls.
Pacing, Janail continued to ponder. But . . . no, not necessarily. If I have one I can claim to have another. Would they take the risk that I might not? Would they risk millions of people?
Then again, Prokopchenko insisted they were a package deal, so what good does partial payment, that won’t cover the both, do me? None.
Does he actually have another buyer? Who are you kidding, Janail? Be a realist. He has as many buyers as he wants. The only limit is on how many he’s willing to let know what merchandise he has on offer.
Could I take them from him? Janail laughed at the notion. Hah. He’s got dozens of well armed, highly trained guards. I saw dozens. But it felt like hundreds. And that—hundreds—wouldn’t surprise me a bit. Nor is his yacht a lobby, nor the sea a crowded city, where it’s easy to sneak up on someone or set an ambush. Nor do I have anyone aboard to help. Even if I did, there’s no telling what Prokopchenko would do if he were attacked and was losing.
I have no desire to be at the center of . . . what’s that Americanism? Oh, yes, an “Earth-shattering kaboom.”