by Mick Farren
"If you don't get away from me, you'll regret it."
"Oh, yeah? Who's gonna make me? You some kind of big shot, or do you just have fun threatening women?"
"I'm warning you…"
"Don't be warning me, Jack. If you're so fucking righteous, how come you're out here at five o'clock in the morning?"
"You tell the bastard, Bernice."
Now the vagrants were joining in. Winters took a step toward the woman. At precisely that moment a black van came wheeling into Broadway out of Twenty-eighth Street, running the lights in a shriek of tires. It came straight at the corner where Winters was waiting and squealed to a stop. The side rear door slid open and an electronically distorted voice echoed from the dark interior.
"Get in."
The face of Bernice took on a look of horror. "It's fucking Dracula."
Winters scrambled inside. The door slammed, and the van accelerated away.
"What were you doing, Winters? Hiring on a little entertainment while you were waiting?"
The distorted electronic laughter was reminiscent of the sounds in an old-time video parlor. There were four other men in the back of the van, sitting on bench seats. They were dressed pretty much like him, except their heads were encased in the same visored helmets that had been worn at the first meeting. Their voices came through the same distorters. They all had.60 Mossbergs cradled in their laps. The nearest man indicated that Winters should sit down on an empty stretch of bench. Another Mossberg and a helmet were passed down to him.
"Take these, Winters."
The helmet was identical to the others except that it was a dull gray. He was clearly the novice on this job. He put on the helmet and dropped the visor.
"Test the distorter."
"One, two, test."
He sounded like the others. With the visor closed and the heavy Mossberg gripped in his fists, he experienced a sense of power greater than anything he had ever known. This was why he had joined the service. He was an anonymous and vengeful angel dispensing justice and death. These really were the final days.
There were no introductions. "Okay, Winters, listen up. I'm only going to say this once. This is your first mission, so you keep quiet and strictly run backup. You understand?"
"I understand."
He was cut down to a very junior avenging angel. The Magician went on.
"We are going to park outside an apartment building on Thirty-eighth Street. The woman Kline lives there. In ten to fifteen minutes, Carlisle will come out and we will take him. Alive. We want him alive. That is crucial."
"What about Kline?"
"We leave her alone, for the moment."
The driver was in a separate, partitioned front section. The partition was also used for racking a redscope and a heat surveillance scanner. The Magicians seemed to be able to get the best and most advanced hardware. After driving for about ten minutes, the van pulled over to the curb and stopped. The Magician in the blue helmet turned on the redscope. It showed a wide-angle view of a deserted street. "Now we wait."
Carlisle
Harry Carlisle let himself out of the front door of Cynthia Kline's building, wondering about his chances of getting a cab so early in the morning. He had left before Cynthia, giving her a few minutes alone to get ready for work. He could not imagine what they were up to at Astor Place, calling her in at this hour. At first, he did not notice the black van. There was no reason why he should – it was just one more in the line of parked cars at the curb. It was only the sound of the rear door being wrenched open that made him turn and look at it. When the five armed men jumped out, his first thought was that it was a particularly elaborate mugging. Then he saw the visored helmets and the weapons that they carried, and he realized that it was something much more sinister and much more exclusively directed at him. He was still warm from Cynthia's bed and a little sleepy. He clawed for the.357 under his arm, but his reactions were slow. His fingers touched it, but suddenly there were five Mossbergs pointed at him. The voice was like that of a robot.
"Take your hand away from the gun, Carlisle, or we'll blast you where you stand."
The fact that they knew his name confirmed his worst suspicions. It was a deacon death squad. Pure terror clutched at his guts as he raised his hands.
They were all around him. The Magnum was removed from its holster. Hands grabbed him and threw him headfirst onto the hood of a parked car. His hands were pulled roughly behind him and a pair of old-style steel handcuffs were clamped onto his wrists. They were locked too tight, and the metal cut painfully into his wrists. With his arms immobilized, he was carried to the black van and thrown inside. He finished up on his knees on the floor of the van. The interior was loaded with high-tech snooper equipment, but he was given no time to look at it. They were far from finished with him. One of his captors grabbed the chain that linked the cuffs and pulled his arms hard up behind his back. The chain was clipped to hook into the roof of the van, and he was left hanging, knees bent and head thrust forward. The pain was excruciating. His hands were going numb, and his shoulders felt as if they were being dislocated.
The pain became even worse as the van started to move. He had no way of stopping himself from swinging from his wrists each time the van braked or made a turn. Five blank black visors looked down at him, masking the wearers' expressions. All he could see was his own reflection, made grotesque by the curve of the visor. He could not even tell from which of them the robot voice was coming.
"We're going to mess you up, Carlisle. You've caused a lot of trouble, but now we're going to mess you up. There's no one to help you, and no way that you're going to crawl out of this."
One of them pushed him with a booted foot to set him swinging even more. His arms felt as if they were on fire.
"Yes, Carlisle. We are going to mess you up very profoundly."
Winters
Since no one had told him, Winters had no idea where he was or where he was going. At one point the sound of the tires had changed briefly. He had assumed that they were going over a bridge, probably to Queens or Brooklyn. They had taken Carlisle very easily, and now Winters' hated enemy was hanging in front of them, handcuffed and helpless. There would be no more of his smart mouth and subversive attitudes. All the small humiliations that Winters had suffered at his hands would be paid for a hundred times over. The best part was that Carlisle did not have a clue as to who was doing it to him. Winters laughed silently behind his visor. I'm going to watch you die, you bastard, he thought. I'm actually going to watch you die.
They drove for just over a half hour, then made a turn and started bouncing on an uneven surface, probably a dirt road or a parking lot. Sweat stood out on Carlisle's face. The idea that the man was in pain and no doubt terrified out of his mind filled Winters with a deep satisfaction that was almost a sense of freedom. He was free to go all the way with his hate. Previously there had always been limitations. He had only been a small component in the machine that dispensed justice. Here it was an angry, face-to-face justice, a cruel ancient justice where a righteous man could relish the hurt and the death of his enemy. There was a power growing inside him. Jesus Christ, he was looking forward to this.
The van stopped and the door was opened. They were in a parking lot, long abandoned, overgrown and full of potholes. It was empty but for the remains of a long-dead tractor trailer rusting away amid dark weeds and drifts of garbage. They seemed to have come to an industrial wasteland in the depths of God knew where. Rotting skeletons of buildings were on three sides of them, and the air stank of black water, decaying chemicals, and clogged drains. A drab, gray, overcast dawn was just breaking. Winters smiled to himself. He thought that to Carlisle it probably looked like one of the outer circles of hell – and, indeed, it might prove to be exactly that. They undipped Carlisle from the hook and manhandled him out. One of the Magicians had walked away across the derelict parking lot. He was opening a door to one of the more substantial ruins. A light shone out, orange amid the ge
neral gray. They carried Carlisle toward it.
The interior of the ruined factory was a place of towering shadows, collapsed gantries, and loops of impossibly thick steel chains, red with rust. The first pale light of the day was creeping through the holes in the roof. Rats scuttled in the twisted falls of masonry. The massive bulks of forgotten machinery were scattered, as if by the hands of some giant child. There was a pool of bright electric light, and within that luminous circle everything had been made ready in advance. There was a single, low stool set directly under the light. On a table to one side, surgical instruments had been laid out beside a small hand-cranked generator. There were also undisguised instruments of torture: a metal and plastic reverb helmet; a length of steel cable, frayed at the end, that could be used as a whip; a number of clamps; an electric branding iron. Above the stool, there was a pulley system of ropes and chains. A large rubber sheet covered the floor of the area. A single helmeted figure presided over the ad hoc dungeon. As the men from the van entered, he greeted them with a strange finger and thumb hand signal.
Even the torturers' creature comforts had been taken care of. On a second table there was a coffee machine and a tray of plastic-wrapped sandwiches. Three robot camcorders were standing silent, waiting to be activated to record the event for posterity.
Carlisle was placed on the stool under the light. He made no sound, but his eyes were closed and his hands were an ugly mottled red. There was something strangely anticlimactic about the moment, a lull in the ceremony before the next act got under way. The Magician in the gold helmet, who once again seemed to be in control of the proceedings, nodded to the prisoner.
"Take off the handcuffs."
The Magician in the blue helmet moved forward and unlocked the manacles. Carlisle gasped as his wrists were freed. He started to massage his hands. To Winters' surprise, the Magician unfastened the straps of his gold helmet, pushed back the visor, and eased the whole thing over his head. It was Senior Deacon Spencer.
"Remember me, Carlisle?"
Carlisle said nothing. Spencer pushed his fingers through his hair. He took a pack of cigarettes from his field jacket and lit one. Very deliberately, he walked to the table and poured himself a cup of coffee.
"We have a lot of time. You're going to die very slowly, Carlisle. When they find you, I want you to be a major example to the others."
One by one, the other Magicians took off their helmets. Winters' surprise continued. There was Rogers, Gleason, Proxmire, and a man that he did not know. Their faces were smug, as if they shared a secret. Winters was the last to reveal himself. He was not sure about the way the others looked at him as he took off the plain gray helmet. He was very conscious that he was the rookie and that they were waiting to see how he would make out on his first job. They probably hoped that he would make a fool of himself, that he would break down or throw up or something.
Spencer seemed to be aware of his nervousness. "Winters."
"Yes, sir?"
"Strip the prisoner."
Winters stood rooted. The idea of taking off any other man's clothes revolted him. The fact that it was Carlisle made it ten times worse.
"Did you hear me, Winters?"
The others were starting to smirk.
"Yes, sir."
He took a deep breath and advanced on the seated Carlisle. Carlisle did not resist him, but he also did not do anything to help. As Winters was unbuttoning his shirt, his eyes opened and he muttered in a rasping voice, "Are you enjoying this, boy?"
Winters did not think. He simply lashed out in a flash of discharging tension and slapped Carlisle open handed, hard across the face. Carlisle swayed on the stool.
"I told you to strip him, not beat him up," Spencer snapped.
"Yes, sir. I'm sorry."
Spencer looked at the others. "You all better remember this. I don't want his face damaged. He has to be recognizable."
Carlisle's clothes were finally removed. Winters stepped back.
"The prisoner is naked, sir."
Spencer nodded. "So I see."
He turned to Rogers. "I think we'll put the reverb helmet on him."
"Yes, sir."
The reverb helmet in its primitive form supposedly had been invented by the Chilean secret police during the Pinochet era and had quickly spread to law enforcement agencies in South and Central America and even ones as far apart as Haiti and Iran. Originally it had been a simple steel headpiece that caused the victim's own screams to ring deafeningly in his ears. The modern version was a good deal more sophisticated, using miniature electronics to amplify the sounds way past the pain threshold.
Rogers lowered the helmet over Carlisle's head and snapped it shut. Carlisle looked like the Man in the Iron Mask. The weight of the helmet bowed his head forward.
"We'll start by suspending him from his ankles. Replace your helmets and run the cameras."
Carlisle
The amplified sound of his own breathing roared in his ears. He could see nothing, and the noise was the whole world. Harry Carlisle had never known that it was possible to be so afraid. This was it. The unthinkable was starting. The worst part was that he was angry with himself. Back there on the street, he should have pulled out the gun and forced them to blow him away. He would have been spared what was coming. But he had not pulled the gun. The immediate, moment-by-moment impulse to self-preservation was formidable, and now it was too late. Something was being looped around his ankles. His feet were jerked upward. He toppled from the stool and grunted as he hit the floor. The sound inside the headpiece was like a thunderclap. He was being pulled up by the feet until his dangling fingertips cleared the rubber sheet. He could feel himself slowly turning. He had no idea where the pain would start and from what direction it would come. His whole body cringed.
Winters
Spencer seemed to take an absolute delight in what he was doing. He selected the first man. "Proxmire, we'll start with you. Is the branding iron fired up?"
Proxmire had the look of a man who had been through it all before. He nodded. Spencer smiled and closed his visor. Winters prayed that he would never see that smile directed at him.
"Confine your work to the skin around his armpits."
"Yes, sir."
"Activate the cameras."
Proxmire seemed in no hurry. He inspected the heated tip of the iron and walked slowly to where Carlisle hung upside down and naked like a side of beef. He put a hand on Carlisle's chest to stop the slow rotation of the body. Then there was a crack, and Proxmire's head burst in a spray of bloody mist.
They seemed to come out of nowhere. The first Winters saw of them was the muzzle flashes of their guns. Spencer went down, and less than a second later, Rogers was hit. There were dark figures rappelling down from the rusty overhead gantries, the chatter of automatic weapons, and indistinguishable yelling. The light over Carlisle shattered, leaving only the gray dawn to see by. Maybe a dozen of them were moving in the gloom. There was an explosion and smoke. Winters, under hostile fire for the first time, could not believe it. He froze. The chaos did not apply to him. The bullets would go around him. Then bullet spurts stitched the rubber sheet at his feet. He looked desperately for cover. He attempted to sprint to safety behind a corroded megalith of a machine, but he was cut off by another seam of bullets. He swerved and then realized that he could not go back. In terror he dropped to his knees. A figure – ski mask, night goggles, flak jacket, bare arms – was running at him.
"We're the Lefthand Path, motherfuckers!"
Winters raised the Mossberg and pumped the trigger. It stuck. The godforsaken safety was still on. He had never checked. He frantically flicked it. A rifle butt was coming at his head. The world exploded and was gone.
Carlisle
The pain still did not come. How long were they going to play with him? His muscles were starting to twitch uncontrollably. He was shivering. Then something warm spattered his body.
"What?"
His exclamation was
almost a shriek, deafening him. There seemed to be noise beyond the headpiece, but he could not tell because his head was ringing so hard. Still nothing happened. Then hands touched him. He shuddered. It was the roar of the surf. He was being lowered, gently lowered, to the ground. His neck muscles could not support the headpiece, and it banged on the hard floor. He was in a nuclear explosion. Someone tried to remove the helmet without first turning it off. Triple nuclear explosions. Then they did it correctly, and the howling was only in his head. The helmet was lifted off. A face in a knitted ski mask was looking into his. He could scarcely hear the words.
"Just be calm. We're getting you out of here."
A hand was holding a syrette.
"We're going to give you a little shot."
A second face in a ski mask entered his field of vision. The first ski mask questioned it.
"Did we leave a witness?"
The second ski mask nodded. "Just one. We greased the rest."
"Good. Get something to wrap this guy in. He'll be out in a second."
Carlisle sighed. He was out now. He was drowning in a warm black lake, and he didn't give a damn.
TEN
Mansard
"Praise be to larry faithful, government without end."
"You should watch your mouth, boss. We're on their turf now."
"Screw them all. They need me more than I need them." There were ten days to go to the Day of National Reconciliation, and Charlie Mansard was chain smoking and carrying a hip flask. He was standing beside Jimmy Gadd on a drafty outer runway in the military security section of Newark Airport, watching soldiers riding walkers and driving forklifts, breaking down the cargo mass of a C87. They had watched the impossibly bulbous aircraft come in to land. It seemed like a miracle that anything so heavy could ever lumber into the air. It was finished in winter warfare camouflage. Mansard had wondered for what ambitious scheme it had been originally commissioned. Probably some wishful but eventually aborted invasion of Canada. The government no longer had the trillions that the Reagan era had had to throw around, but considering the nation's straitened circumstances, the military continued to get most of the toys it wanted and still managed to remain ineffectual. After everything that had been poured into the Southern Border War, the Mexicans and their Havana Pact allies still held their slice of Texas, including Corpus Christi and, the crowning humiliation, San Antonio. There had been mutterings about nuking the greasy papist bastards, but everyone was well aware that any use of the aging nuclear arsenal would provoke immediate retaliation from Russia, Japan, and probably China. A red, white, and green Mexican tricolor with its gold eagle continued to flutter over the Alamo.