The Good Soldier

by L. T. Ryan

  "Freeze!" Frank's voice echoed through the warehouse.

  The man forgot about me and turned toward Frank. Bright muzzle blast exploded in front of me as the man opened fire on my partner.

  Frank didn't return fire, hopefully in an effort to avoid wounding me, and not because he'd been hit. I couldn't worry about that, though. The man stood five feet away, his body turned and his arms outstretched over the steel railing. The time to make a move was now.

  I lunged forward, left arm out, right arm up, closing the distance before the man could react. I wrapped my left hand around his throat from the side, letting my thumb slide below his Adam's apple. He grunted against the pressure. At the same time I drove my right arm down, catching him on his wrist, which extended out a few feet over the railing. I twisted his arm and drove it down into the steel railing. Bone and steel met with a sickening crack followed by the sounds of the man screaming. His broken arm and spasming muscles could no longer muster up the strength required to hold the sidearm, and he dropped it. It hit the floor below us with a clank.

  "Frank?" I yelled.

  No answer.

  The man reached across his body with his left arm and punched at my face, his fist connecting with my nose. Although he didn't have enough momentum to do any real damage, the blow managed to disrupt my grip on his neck. The center of my face stung and my eyes flooded with tears. I felt him break away from my grasp.

  "My arm," he said. "You bastard, you broke my damn arm."

  I heard the sound of a knife being pulled from a sheath, blade against leather. I brought my palms to my eyes and wiped away the tears that blurred my vision. Once again, the man stood six feet away from me. His fractured right arm pressed against his chest. In his left, he held a knife with a six-inch blade. The light caught and winked off the stainless steel as he twirled it in his palm.

  This time six feet didn't matter. I didn't have to contend with a bullet. In a fluid motion, I lunged forward and grabbed the railing on either side with both hands. Then I swung my legs forward while drawing my knees in. I drove the soles of my combat boots into his chest. He shrieked as they connected with his broken arm. The knife fell from his hand and bounced off the catwalk and fell to the concrete warehouse floor.

  My momentum carried my body through, knocking the man down. He turned onto his stomach and began crawling away. His left arm scraped and scratched against the worn wooden planks while his right dragged behind, bent awkwardly at the wrist.

  "Jack," Frank shouted from below.

  I walked up behind the man and stood over him and said nothing. I reached down and wrapped my right arm around his neck. His pulse thumped hard against the crook of my arm. I reached around with my left arm and grabbed my right elbow and pulled back hard. The movement squeezed the man's neck shut. I didn't care whether he died from asphyxiation, a broken neck, or if his head popped off.

  The man clawed at my forearm. He swung his hips side to side, but he was no match for me. Desperate attempts to breathe were cut off by the force I exerted against his trachea.

  "Jack, let him go."

  I looked up and saw Frank standing at the end of the catwalk.

  "Come on, Jack," he said. "We need this guy. He's got info for us."

  "I don't care," I said as I squeezed tighter.

  Frank approached with a hint of caution, perhaps thinking I'd snapped. He'd have been right if he thought it, too. "Let him go, Jack. Let's get him to the office and question him. Then you can do whatever you want to him."

  The man's knit cap had fallen off and his sweat soaked hair brushed against my face as his body went limp. I pulled back and looked at Frank and then the man. Frank's words filtered through the rage that kept me from thinking straight, and suddenly they made sense. I let go of the man and his body fell against the catwalk, limp and lifeless.

  I reached over and grabbed the railing and pulled myself up. "Christ, I think I killed him."

  Frank tucked his gun and squatted down. He reached out and placed his hand on the man's neck. After a few seconds, he said, "He's got a pulse. Help me get him downstairs and into the car."

  "So that's where you were," I said. "Pulling the car around instead of chasing him in here with me."

  "You took off, Jack. I lost you." He looked up and I met his gaze with a smile.

  "Only giving you a hard time." I bent over, scooped my hands under the man's shoulders, and lifted him up. Frank grabbed his legs and we carried him down the rickety stairs, which screamed in response to close to six hundred pounds of force pressing down on them.

  Frank had parked the car right outside the warehouse entrance, trunk to door.

  "I'm going to make sure it's clear out there," he said.

  I nodded and leaned against the heavy steel framed door for support. The man started to come to. He coughed a few times and a deep, guttural groan emanated from his throat. I thought about rendering him unconscious again, but decided against it. A blow to the head might dampen his memory, and we needed to know everything he knew.

  Frank opened the back door on the driver's side of his Lincoln and gestured for me to come out.

  I backed out of the warehouse, dragging the guy with me. I looked to the left and to the right. The area was empty. I didn't bother to stare into windows, though. If someone was watching us, so be it. We'd be gone by the time the cops came. And even if they caught up to us, there was little they could do. We were, for all intents and purposes, untouchable.

  The rain had stopped and the sun peeked through the melting clouds. The light penetrated my eyes like shards of glass. Cold wind whipped around the sides of the building, meeting at the spot where I stood. It felt like being pelted with icy snowballs from both sides.

  "Give me a hand," I said.

  Frank came closer and reached out for the man's right arm in an effort to stabilize it. Together we slid him into the back seat and buckled him in. I handcuffed his left wrist to the metal post that connected the headrest to the front passenger's seat.

  "Sit in back with him," Frank said. "If he gets out of line," he looked at the man and smiled, "well, you know what to do."

  I nodded, then walked around the back of the car and got in on the opposite side. I slid in next to the man and, for the first time, realized that he smelled like he hadn't showered in a week.

  "If you hadn't been armed, I'd have thought you were a bum," I said.

  The man pursed his lips and spit, his saliva smattering the back of the seat in front of him as well as the center console next to Frank.

  I drove my elbow into his solar plexus. He coughed an exhale as the air drained from his lungs. His body doubled over, chin to knees.

  "Try it again," I said.

  He turned his head toward me. His face was deep red and the veins in his forehead stuck out like a snake swimming through water. His mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water as he tried to suck in air, but couldn't.

  "Keep him quiet," Frank said.

  I nodded while staring at the man as he held his arm close to his chest. I said to Frank, "Go ahead and call the doc in to set and splint that arm."

  Chapter 2

  Frank drove us to SIS's unofficial headquarters. Though we said unofficial, the building outside of Washington, D.C. was our primary location. However, any building we occupied for the purpose of advancing our mission would be considered our headquarters and always labeled unofficial. The SIS was an agency that didn't exist. The primary focus of the group was counter-terrorism. We had complete and total autonomy. We could push any other agency to the back of the line if we felt our cause took precedence. The agents in our group were considered elite, and often handpicked from among the top recruits of the CIA, FBI and DEA. Only a handful of politicians and higher ups in the military knew of the agency's existence, and if you asked them, they'd flat out deny it, even if there was a gun to their head.

  We pulled up around the rear of the building. Frank stopped in front of what appeared to be a wall. If y
ou stood close enough, and in the right spot, you'd see a tiny crack that ran up its center, then turned to the right and met another thin crack. Frank pulled a device out of his pocket and pushed a button. A wide door opened out and Frank drove into a dark garage. The place was empty except for my car, a large SUV, and a four-door maroon Lexus that belonged to the doctor.

  I waited in the back seat after Frank parked and cut the engine. He got out, walked around the back and opened the door next to the man. I removed the handcuff from his left wrist and pushed the man out while Frank pulled. The guy stumbled out and fell to the ground. He groaned and clutched at his broken arm.

  "Get up," Frank told the guy.

  I slid through the open door. The guy was on his knees, bent over with his forehead resting on the concrete floor. I grabbed him by his shirt collar and pulled the man's upper body straight up. Frank reached under his left arm and started pulling. I grabbed his collar and the waistband of his pants. We got him to his feet, and then led him to the only door in the garage.

  Frank swiped an access card through a security card reader and the light changed from red to green. He then placed his thumb on a pad. There was a series of beeps, and another light turned from red to green. Then the lock clicked and Frank turned the door handle. We walked down a short hall and came to the area of the main floor that we called the lobby. There were two doors on the far wall. Each door led to an interrogation room. A four by six foot mirrored window was placed a foot away from each door. Opposite the interrogation rooms was our infirmary, a state of the art medical facility that was equipped for everything from bee stings to surgery. There were six offices in the lobby, three on the north wall, and three on the south. My office was next to Frank's. The third office on our side was designated for all of team B.

  The stale air of the lobby enveloped us. The smell of ammonia hardly affected me anymore, but the guy we were dragging down the hall coughed and gagged as he breathed in the fumes.

  The doctor stood in the doorway of the infirmary. He was tall and middle aged. His full head of hair was half brown, half gray. His long, pointy nose was the only distinguishing feature on his face. He nodded toward our prisoner. "What's wrong with him?"

  "Broken arm," I said. "Maybe a concussion, too. But that shouldn't matter."

  The doctor shrugged and nodded over his shoulder. "Drop him in there."

  "You want one of us to stay?" I asked.

  "Him." The doctor pointed at Frank. "You ask too many questions, Mr. Noble."

  Frank laughed and the doctor joined in. I said nothing. He had a point. I did tend to ask a lot of questions when he was working on one of us. I often thought that if my life had gone a bit differently when I was young, I could have ended up a doctor or trauma surgeon.

  I left the infirmary and went to my office. I stacked a few manila folders and moved them to the corner of the desk, then started a pot of coffee. The rich aroma of the dark grinds soaked the air in my office. I didn't feel like waiting for the full pot to brew, so I emptied it into a stained mug as soon as there was enough. I held the mug in both hands and leaned back in my chair. The caffeine coursed through my veins, providing the jolt I needed.

  I got up and left my office and walked back to the infirmary. Frank glanced at me and said nothing. He concentrated on the guy's broken arm. I took a few more steps and stopped inside the doorway and leaned against the frame.

  "Out," the doctor said.

  I could tell by his tone that he was serious. We tried hard to avoid pissing Doc off, because you never knew when you were going to need him to treat you. I shrugged and backed up a few feet. Turned around and leaned back against the wall a couple yards from the door. I lifted the coffee to my face and inhaled. Steam singed the inside of my nose for a second. I took a sip. It was strong. Perhaps a bit too strong, if there was such a thing. I decided it didn't matter. The brew helped clear the cobwebs from my head, and that was always welcome.

  Behind me, I heard the sound of bone grating against bone. The doctor was setting the fracture. The man screamed as his ulna and then radius were placed in their natural positions. I took his cries of pain as a sign that the doctor hadn't bothered to numb the guy up. I was OK with that, and apparently Frank was too. Why waste our supplies on a criminal?

  With the doctor almost finished, I started to think about what questions to ask the man. We didn't know much about him, except that he showed up at a place that our intel indicated would be a spot where something would happen. But we had no idea who this guy was. What was he doing near the bus stop? Was he a part of the group we were tracking, or doing business with them? Why did he run from us? Why did he try to kill me?

  Both Frank and I had a feeling we were closing in on something big. Every piece of evidence we had gathered so far pointed to this being a terrorist cell. The only good thing about that was that we didn't have to turn it over to the FBI or DEA. These guys had been running drugs and guns and smuggling people in and out of the States for months. If it were one of those activities, we'd be out of the loop. But it wasn't one activity. It was the full gamut.

  It also appeared that they had funding from some big businesses in hostile places, as well as possible connections with powerful people in the U.S. Homeland tried to take over on account of this. Frank managed to push them back.

  The men themselves were a mix of U.S. citizens, Colombians, and guys from the Middle East. That was the only thing that clouded our initial assumption. Why were so many different groups working together? I hoped that this guy, who looked like he might be Colombian, could tie some of those loose ends together for us. Assuming he talked, that is.

  "OK, Mr. Noble," the doctor said from the other side of the wall. "He's all yours."

  I drank the last of my coffee and pushed off the infirmary wall and met Frank and the man at the entrance. The doctor had set the bone and placed an air cast over the man's forearm. The guy sat on the edge of the gurney, shoulders slumped, head hanging, and eyes focused on the floor.

  "Take him to room one," I said to Frank. Then I turned to the doctor. "Can he hold up?"

  The doctor shrugged. "Maybe. I'll stick around. I've got a few things that can help keep him up and awake through whatever you do to him."

  "You won't want to watch if it gets to that."

  "With what you guys pay me, I can watch anything."

  "Go wait in your office. We'll get you if we need you."

  The doctor held up his hands. He then crossed the room and went into his office, which was on the wall opposite of mine. He closed his door and took a seat behind his computer. I glanced in as I passed and saw the familiar green game board of computer solitaire.

  Frank had placed the guy in the interrogation room and now stood on the outside, watching the man through the smoky mirrored glass.

  "What do you think?" I said as I stopped next to him, a few feet separating us.

  "No doubt he's got information. And if our intel was right, he was at that bus stop for a reason."

  I nodded and said nothing, waiting for Frank to continue.

  "Something was about to go down," Frank said.

  I nodded again, remaining quiet.

  "Question is what, Jack? And is he one of them? Or was he there to meet them?"

  "Great questions, Frank," I said. "Only one way to find out."

  He nodded and smiled. "You ready?"

  "Not quite." I took two steps to the right and adjusted the thermostat, turning it down to fifty degrees. "Let's freeze him out for a bit."

  Half an hour passed while we downed two cups of coffee each. Neither of us said much. After two years of working together, there was no need for idle banter between us. Both of us knew what needed to be done. We each had our own tactics, and they played well off one another.

  I got up and went to check on the man. He looked considerably uncomfortable. "Let's go, Frank."

  Frank entered the room ahead of me. He sat at the far end of a rectangular wooden table. I sat in the middl
e, opposite our prisoner. The man looked between us. His lips quivered and his teeth chattered. He sniffled and shivered.

  "Can we get you anything?" Frank asked.

  "A coat," the man replied.

  "We can do that," Frank said. "Can't we, Jack?"

  I nodded. "Sure, but first you need to answer a few questions for us."

  The man stared at a spot on the table and said nothing.

  "What's your name?" I said.

  The man said nothing.

  "Your name?" I said again.

  "Pablo," he said without looking up.

  "What were you doing at that bus stop?" I said.

  The man slowly turned his head. His teeth stopped chattering as he clenched his jaw. Muscles rippled at the bottom corners of his face. He licked his lips and calmly said, "I want my lawyer. I'm not saying anything until my lawyer is here."

  Frank laughed. "I'm sorry. Do you think you have rights down here? Jack, did you read this guy his rights?"

  I shook my head and said nothing.

  Frank stood and positioned himself next to me, across the table from the guy. "OK, asshole, here are your rights. You have the right to sit in that chair. You have the right to answer every friggin' question we ask you. You don't have the right to remain silent. Your efforts to remain silent are going to be met with a pain so intense you'll wish we had amputated your arm instead of breaking it. You don't get a lawyer or a chaplain or your mommy. That doctor over there, he's on our side. He can give you medication to keep you awake through any amount of pain we put you through. You won't pass out, asshole. You'll cry until you have no more tears. You'll puke until all your stomach is barren and all you can do is dry heave. So answer my partner's question or your pain is going to start in about thirty seconds."

  The man clenched the hand of his good arm into a fist. His eyes watered. I assumed the reality of the situation hit him at that moment. We weren't the cops and there was nothing legal about us. At least not in any sense that he, or most people, understood. Frank and I were authorized to do our jobs, no matter what it took. We could come and go and shoot to kill without asking questions, and without having questions asked of us.