Spiral

by David L Lindsey

  Although her death had not occurred in an operation for which he was responsible, it was the last torture Bias had ever seen. He would not allow them under his command, nor would he witness them in the command of another. He would execute, but he would not torture.

  Rubio would talk. Negrete already knew about the RDX; all he needed from Rubio was where and when. Where and when. How long could Rubio hold on to where and when? Maybe a better question would be, what would Negrete do when he found out? He would not risk digging it up himself. He wouldn't call the police. Bias assumed from today's actions by the police that Negrete was just as much a fugitive as he was. No, Negrete would simply alert Gamboa in the hope that by doing so Gamboa would consider that he had saved his life, and Negrete would have ingratiated himself enough to be rewarded for it sometime in the future. Then he would disappear into Mexico. That is all that was left in it for him, hope of ingratiation. It was typical of Negrete that he would kill, and risk his own life, for so base a reason.

  Bias made a decision, quickly and firmly. At the next traffic light he turned right, continued around the block, and headed back to the Loop. He would commit himself through noon the next day, although he believed it would happen before then, because he expected Gamboa to use the cover of darkness to leave the city. The next six hours, he thought, would be the crucial ones.

  Logistically, the Remington Hotel would have been the ideal place, but he did not want to go through the process and hassle of checking in, or to draw attention to himself in a place less than three hundred yards from where he hoped to detonate the explosives within the next several hours. That would be cutting it too close, especially since the explosion would cause a tremendous sensation within the hotel, and anyone leaving the hotel immediately afterward might be remembered later.

  During the past days' planning, he had not made a detailed reconnaisance of the buildings along the Loop near the San Felipe intersection, but he had taken note of the several buildings that would have a clear view of the railroad crossing from the west side of the expressway. The difficulty, in fact, was not getting a clear view, for there were a number of those. The greatest problem would be to find a building that would allow him not only a good view but also access to a balcony. Commercial architects planning workplace buildings for Houston's equatorial heat and humidity were pretty well locked into fixed-window designs. Unfortunately, Bias could not trust the Futaba transmitter to work correctly from the inside of the building.

  Still driving with one hand, he approached the Post Oak area from the south, looking at the buildings to his left for alignment with San Felipe as he dropped down on the exit. The custodial crews had been in the buildings since before dusk and would work on into the early-morning hours. As he turned under the expressway, he decided there were three possibilities: a long, wide building with silver bands that seemed to be about twenty stories high, on the north; a white rectangular building just south of the first and approximately the same height with its narrow end presenting row upon row of square windows to the expressway; and a third building with black trim and a slightly faceted three-part front with gold louvers running perpendicular in each facet from the ground to the roof.

  Bias followed San Felipe toward Post Oak Boulevard, and al the last moment turned into the same Steak 'N Egg diner he had already been in twice before. Though he had considered his last visit a risk he should have avoided, now the diner was the only place he saw open in the vicinity where he could easily walk in and have his thermos filled with coffee. In the interest of time, he would go in once more. He took the thermos from the seat and went in. The woman who had waited on him earlier was busy making hamburgers for a couple of lime-haired punkers, the only other people there. Bias paid and left. He had now been seen in the diner by three different waitresses. He didn't like that, but it was better than being seen by one of them three different times.

  He pulled out onto San Felipe again and turned left through the corridor of buildings composing the West Loop District. When he came to Ambassador Way he turned left again and approached the rear of the three buildings he had seen from the expressway. What he had not seen from the other side was that each building had adjoining parking garages, the tallest of which was that of the last building on the south, Tri-Corp Plaza. Not only was it the tallest garage, but il did not totally conform with the lines of the building itself, protruding on both sides in two setback sections.

  He negotiated the lanes and driveways, his headlights raking hedges and landscaping shrubs, until he came to the garage's entrance. A wooden arm operated by a magnetic card blocked the drive. Bias pulled the car over to the right, jumping the curb and squeezing next to the building, and eased forward until the arm touched the windshield. Carefully cradling his throbbing left wrist, he stretched across with his right arm and pushed on the wooden arm, finding a little play in the mechanism, enough to catch the end of the arm on the roof as he let the car inch forward. Then he let go, and drove through with the arm scraping along the roof of the car until il dropped off the rear window.

  Wanting to avoid being seen from the offices above, Bias did not go to the top floor but to the one just beneath it, and drove to its northwest corner. He pulled the car right up to the low wall and stopped. He had a clear view of the San Felipe railroad crossing. He killed the motor, reached under the front seat, and took out a pair ol powerful night-vision binoculars. He focused on the crossing and the street beyond it. There wasn't going to be a lot of lead time. While the crossing itself was in the clear, the street approaching it was obscured by trees to within a couple of hundred yards of the crossing. Bias could see headlights flickering through the trees, but could not identify the vehicles until they emerged. It would be close.

  Still afraid he could be seen from some of the neighboring buildings, he got in the car and backed down the aisle to the first fluorescent light mounted in the ceiling. He stopped the car and, balancing awkwardly with his one good hand, climbed onto the hood, then onto the roof. Reaching above his head, he loosened the long fluorescent bulb until it flickered out. He jumped down, got in the car, and pulled over to a neighboring aisle, where he repeated the same process, and then again in the ramp lane closest to him. When he got back to the spot he had chosen, he was alone in the shadows.

  He got out of the car, taking the briefcase and his suit coat with him. He sat the briefcase on the fender and took out the transmitter. Laying his suit coat on top of the cement barrier, he put the transmitter down on it and sat on the car's front bumper. He looped the binoculars around his neck and focused them on the rail crossing by propping his elbows on the low wall, using the suit coat for padding. He practiced holding the binoculars with his right hand while he pretended to flip the toggle switch with his left, an action which required no movement of his wrist. After several tries, sitting, crouching, standing, he was satisfied that he could do it quickly enough from any position if he was caught off guard.

  Sitting back, he rested the spot just below his shoulder blades against the grill between the headlight and the hood ornament. He would not have until noon now, only until early morning. Or more realistically, until the black, still hours after midnight. If Gamboa was going to run, Bias could not feature him leaving after that. But it didn't matter. At dawn he was going home, whether Benigo Gam-boa Parra was still breathing or not. He wanted to smoke, but he was afraid of being seen. A cup of coffee would have been good, too, but he didn't allow himself that either. He would need the caffeine later. The waiting began again. He wondered if the toolbox was still safe in the stand of Johnsongrass. He wondered, too, what was happening to Rubio at that moment. It was a fleeting idea; he didn't dwell on it. He thought of going home, back to Mexico. Alone. That had happened to him twice before. This would be the third time he had returned from an assignment as the sole survivor. It was the sort of trip that prompted morose thoughts, or could, if you didn't discipline yourself.

  Chapter 52

  LUCAS Negrete knew all abou
t the theories of torture. He had cut his teeth fighting the rural guerrillas in Mexico during the 1970s, and had served with the government-formed secret unit of counterinsur-gency police known as the White Brigade which was largely responsible for the hundreds of "disappearances" of political dissidents during that time. He also had learned a few things at the infamous First Military Camp in the heart of Mexico City. Captain Negrete understood the fictions, and the facts, of torture.

  He knew, for instance, that given time, torture was invariably successful. Sooner or later, everyone broke. Well, of course, there were stories—he considered them apocryphal—of a man or woman who had not responded, but he himself had never witnessed that. He knew that torture was more trustworthy as a means of gaining information than for eliciting confessions. Some people had pain thresholds so low they would confess to anything under certain degrees of pain. Obtaining confessions by means of physical coercion was a stupid business. He did not respect the validity of coercive confession. But to use pain as a means of obtaining information was a different story. After specific amounts of specific kinds of torture, an intelligent interrogator could obtain reliable information—if it was there. Time and technique were the crucial factors in this endeavor, however, and neither of them were working in Lucas Negrete's favor in the matter of Rubio Arizpe.

  There was very little time, perhaps only a couple of hours. And the techniques best suited to this circumstance required a professional setting. Negrete had only the motel room, no instruments to allow him the precise application of pain. But he was not totally unprepared. He had brought certain articles with him that, though he had not administered them himself, he had seen work with remarkable speed and effectiveness when applied by others.

  Negrete walked to the foot of the bed so that Rubio, who was just beginning to come around, would have to look at him over the top of his naked stomach. All of his clothes had been removed, a routine preliminary in any torture, and he had been tied to the bed with his arms and legs spread apart. Urbano held a tiny bottle of ammonium carbonate under Rubio's nose, and he jerked awake, gasping.

  "I'm down here, Rubio," Negrete said. He waited a moment until he knew the Indian had gotten his bearings. As he looked at Rubio, he listened with approval to the roar of traffic on the expressway. "In the interest of time I will tell you from the start that we want to know where and when Bias is going to detonate the RDX. Since I do not expect you to tell me voluntarily, I am going to torture you."

  Negrete motioned to Siseno, and moved around to the side of the bed to let the other man take up his position between Rubio's legs.

  "I know you are familiar with such methods of questioning, and are already preparing yourself psychologically to endure them. But I must tell you, coyote, that your Indian mind is no good to you this time."

  Again he motioned to Siseno, who took two thick rubber bands from around his wrist and bent down. He double-wrapped one of them around Rubio's scrotum above the testicles, and the other around his penis.

  "As you can see, Rubio, we are not in the proper setting for this. We do not have the instruments. So I am sure you are expecting something rather primitive, and messy."

  Negrete nodded to Luis, who removed a large roll of surgical hose from a flight bag and began uncoiling it as he went into the bathroom. Negrete saw Rubio's eyes following him.

  "Not so," Negrete said. "You are going to suffer intensely, but relatively neatly." He pulled a chair over to the bed and picked up the end of the hose lying on the floor. He reached into the flight bag, took out a piece of rigid rubber shaped like the end of an enema tube, and began affixing it to the end of the surgical hose. While he did this he continued talking.

  "I have received some recent education, Rubio, which I will happily pass on to you. A doctor taught me these things, so you can rely on what I say. You will learn some new words, and maybe in the ecstasy of your pain, I will give you wisdom, too.

  "As even you know, everyone has his own individual level of tolerance to pain. Yes. But the physiological process by which that pain is experienced is the same in everyone. If I put a needle under your fingernail, I will stimulate nerve endings that set off complicated sets ofXchemical chain reactions in little things called . . . well, let me use the proper name: receptors." He gave the hose a quick twist, ramming it up on the shank of the tube.

  "These receptors will cause you to sweat. They will speed up your blood flow, and they will start processing the chemicals that cause you to experience pain: histamine, serotonin, large peptides like bradykinin, and the prostaglandins." He stopped. "Those are the correct names, Rubio," he said precisely. "I memorized them."

  He stopped again, the tube and surgical hose hanging from his hand, and then he stood looking at the Indian's dark body spread helplessly upon the musty bedcovers. Listlessly using the black rubber nozzle as a pointer, Negrete continued, dragging the nozzle down Rubio's arm. "These chemicals, they send the message of pain along nerve fibers to the spinal cord, up the spinal cord"—the nozzle traveled over Rubio's shoulder to the back of his neck—"to the thalamus in the brain, and finally to the cerebral cortex—a place you wouldn't know about, Rubio—" the nozzle circled around and around the Indian's forehead—"which tells the body where it ought to feel the pain. In the example of the needle, under your fingernails." Negrete slapped Rubio's left hand with the rubber nozzle.

  Negrete tossed the hose onto the floor and lighted a cigarette. His long narrow face seemed even longer because of his unmistakable fatigue. In the stale light of the motel room the beaked aspect of his nose was exaggerated, as if he were wearing a Venetian carnival mask. His beautiful almond eyes swam in oil.

  "Now if this goes on long enough," he said, exhaling, "the body tries to protect itself in that place of pain, and begins producing some different chemicals known as 'pain inhibitors.' These chemicals rush to the place of pain and somehow make it possible for you to endure it. So, then, I have to produce another kind of pain in a different part of your body so you can once again feel the full intensity of it, until your chemistry produces more inhibitors, forcing me to move along to something else again. That is why effective torture, coyote, requires time."

  From the bathroom came the sound of wrenches and snapping pliers as Luis hooked the rubber hose to the shower faucet.

  Negrete smoked his cigarette, one hand in his pocket.

  "But there is a psychological factor. Some people say that the experience of having someone deliberately hurt you takes its psychological toll as well, and may even trigger other chemicals which block the inhibitors so that a man being tortured feels the pain even more acutely than if he suffered the same degree of pain as the result of, say, an accident or an illness."

  He shrugged, as if it was anybody's guess as to whether any of this was true.

  "How do you feel down there?" he asked, tilting his head toward Rubio's crotch as he blew a stream of smoke out both nostrils. "That wasn't done to cause you pain, although I suppose it does. It was done to stop you from pissing." He looked toward the bathroom, then back at Rubio. The cigarette had burned down almost to the filter, and Negrete was holding it delicately.

  "This doctor tells me, Rubio, that perhaps the worst pain the human body can experience comes not from the outside, but from the inside. From the 'visceral tissues.' That's the guts. Now, I could stab your guts or cut them, and it would certainly hurt, but this doctor, he says that worse than that is the pain of 'distension.' That means when your guts swell up. That is the very worst pain of all. Not only does it cause you to suffocate, but the pressure causes the guts to feel a special kind of pain that only the guts can feel."

  He nodded, affirming the truth of this observation, and lighted a fresh cigarette off the old one, which he dropped on the carpet and ground out with his shoe. Neither his facial expression nor his tone of voice changed throughout his monologue, but remained conversational without any particular lack or investment of emotion. Turning around once again to the table behind
him, he took a syringe and a vial from a plastic bag. Holding the cigarette between his lips, he began filling the syringe from the vial. He talked around his cigarette.

  "One more point, and then we can get to it. They say that some of the pain-producing chemicals the body generates when its nervous system is stimulated are things called histamines. They are found in all body tissues—you are full of histamines, coyote,—but the largest concentration of these little things is in the lungs. Histamines are the strongest pain-producing chemicals known." He eased the needle from the vial and expelled the air, causing some of the fluid to squirt onto his shirt sleeve. He held the syringe up for Rubio to see. "Histamines."

  He turned to yet another bag and took out a stethoscope, which he hooked around his neck. Then he produced a blood-pressure sleeve and fastened it around Rubio's right arm. He pumped it up and read the gauge. He looked at the Indian. "Very admirable, Rubio. I would have thought your heart would already be pounding." The corners of his mouth turned down in a facial shrug. He looked at Luis in the bathroom doorway, then at Siseno between Rubio's legs, and finally back at Rubio.

  "Now this is what we are going to do. Siseno will put this tube down here by my foot into your mouth, down your throat, and into your stomach. Luis will turn on the faucet in the bathroom. Very slowly you will begin to fill up like a rutting frog. Several things will happen simultaneously." He leaned forward and interpreted: "That means 'at the same time.' I will inject your nipples with histamines right away, because histamines cause the blood vessels to open up, and this will help you soak up the water more quickly. This will begin a slow process causing edema—that is, fluid will begin to collect between all the cells in your body tissue. In your skin. If that goes on long enough you will puff up like a corpse."