by Dalton Fury
THIRTY-SEVEN
The office was just a small room with two windows that faced out toward the distant sandstone hills. A desk was centered against the wall opposite the windows, and it faced into the room. The door Raynor entered through was to the left of the desk, and this gave Kolt an easy target, as Helmut Buchwald sat behind the desk, totally exposed to Raynor’s Kalashnikov.
There was no one else inside the office.
“Hände hoch, Arschloch,” Kolt said. Hands high, asshole.
The older German’s hands slowly moved skyward as his eyes flitted off toward the doorway. Kolt saw the glance. He spoke English now, principally because he’d exhausted a good portion of his German knowledge in his previous three-word sentence. “Your babysitters are dead. No one is coming to help you.”
“Who are you? What are you doing here?” The German’s English was clear and idiomatic.
Bob spoke as he stepped into the room behind his partner. “Well, that all depends on your perspective. As far as you’re concerned, Helmut, we are the bad guys. And just how bad we are all depends on you.” Kopelman walked forward, past Raynor, grabbed Buchwald by the collar of his short-sleeved button-down, and rolled the man in his wheeled chair out from behind the desk. While Raynor covered the German with his AK, Kopelman tore wires from a banker’s lamp and a telephone on the desk and a space heater in the corner next to a cot. He spent the next two minutes strapping his prisoner to the chair with the wires. The German started to shout but Kopelman just slapped him with an open hand to quiet him. “Knock it off!”
“You are Americans?”
“Who else?” Bob said as he pulled off the German’s loafers and his socks and tied his bare ankles to the horizontal legs of the rolling chair. “How about from now on, we ask the questions? Alles klar?” Bob tied the older man’s hands behind his back, looping the wire through the metal of the chair back.
Once it was clear that Helmut wasn’t going anywhere, Raynor went forward to the windows and looked out into the street. He could not see the two sentries on the other side of the metal gate, but he assumed they were still there. Nothing else looked out of place. No alarm had been sounded as far as he could tell.
Jamal’s yellow pickup rolled into view. He was moving through the streets to avoid suspicion by the factory’s sentries.
Kolt turned back and nodded to Bob, then motioned to the far corner of the room.
Several pieces of luggage were there, packed and stacked on the cot. “Going somewhere?” Bob asked Helmut, but the German just looked away.
Bob looked at Kolt now. “Watch the hall.” Kolt followed orders, went to the hallway and knelt, kept his rifle’s muzzle on the open doorway to the ramp down to the factory floor.
“Now, Helmut,” Bob began. “I’ll tell you what we do know, and you will tell me what we don’t know. You may not want to, but it’s going to be in your best interests to keep this conversation quick, friendly, and painless.”
Still nothing from the German.
“We know you were an arms maker and an equipment manufacturer with Heckler & Koch, we know you are working with a Turkish man, and we know he is al Qaeda. We also know al Qaeda is planning an operation to send Chechens posing as American Rangers to infiltrate a coalition location. We know about the Black Hawks at the warehouse that you and your Turkish associate have rented, and we know you met with the American prisoners held in Shataparai to test the authenticity of your phony gear.”
Buchwald looked positively poleaxed. “I do not know what you are talking about.”
Bob sighed. He did not take his eyes from his captive. “We know, Helmut. And we aren’t leaving until we get what we want from you.”
“What is it that you want?” Helmut’s German accent was more pronounced now, perhaps due to fear or surprise.
Bob ignored this question. Posed one of his own. “What is the target location of the Chechen forces?”
“I told you! I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Bob punched the sixty-five-year-old German in the jaw.
Buchwald started to scream but Kopelman deftly spun around behind him, wrapped a meaty forearm over the older man’s mouth, and stifled his noises. He leaned intimately into the gray-haired man’s left ear. “Let’s try and keep it down, okay? Can you do that for me?” Slowly the man nodded. Bob pulled his arm away. Stepped back in front and looked the German over. “That was just a love pat. You aren’t even bleeding.” Kopelman paused, then said, “Yet, anyway.”
“Fucking Americans! You think you can do whatever you want! You cowboys are all — ”
“Save your spiel for some Berlin coffee shop!” growled Bob. “You tell us what we need to know and we’ll let you walk. We don’t care about you. We’re just trying to stop more bloodshed.”
“Nein! You are the invaders here. All the bloodshed is the fault of — ”
Bob hit him again, harder this time, hard enough for Raynor to look away from the empty hallway and back over his shoulder.
Kolt was a little surprised by the rough stuff so early in the interrogation, but he understood the haste. They wouldn’t be able to make a day out of this, sitting in the middle of an enemy stronghold trying to coax information from a man at the center of an enemy operation. He could not imagine remaining undetected here for more than ten minutes or so. There would be another radio check sooner or later between the sentries, and that would alert the four men still alive to the loss of their comrades.
“I do not know anything except my duties here at the factory. I was hired to oversee local arms makers in the fabrication of some rifles. Also, I was asked to oversee and provide quality control for the design and creation of some American Army uniforms and other personal gear.”
“For who?”
“I don’t know. I was hired by the Turk. I did not meet anyone else.”
“The Turk? That is what they call the man who rented this factory?”
“Yes. I only know him by that name.”
“You’re lying, Buchwald.”
Kopelman and Buchwald stared into one another’s eyes for a long moment. Finally Helmut spoke again, his voice soft and plaintive. “I do not know names.… But if I tell you anything … anything at all … they will kill me.”
Bob knelt, closed the distance between the two men’s faces. “You’re dead already without our help. I have a network of contacts in the Pashtun community here. If I tell them that I had a long and fruitful conversation with Helmut Buchwald, how long do you think it will be before the wrong guy gets wind of that, and the black turbans show up at your door? Even back home in Germany, it won’t be a week before an al Qaeda operative guts you like a fish while you’re walking down the street.”
“I have told you nothing! I know nothing, and they know I do not! The Turk did make me go out into the FATA to see some American prisoners. He wanted me to be there when they tested out the equipment on them. I then came back here, worked on refining the guns, and then I finished.
“I did my job, my job is complete, and now I am leaving! You have no right to — ”
Kopelman lifted his rifle off the desk, pressed it against Buchwald’s forehead. “You aren’t going anywhere, asshole.”
The German did not even blink. “You won’t shoot me. I am not afraid of you.” He looked past Kopelman, out the windows across the room. A vista of rooftops in the foreground gave way to brown hills a half mile in the distance. “I am, however, very afraid of them.”
“I’ll have to change that, won’t I?” the big American said. He lowered the rifle, placed it back on the desk. Bob punched the German again. Buchwald cried out.
“Bastard! I know nothing! I promise you!”
“What about the laptop?” Kolt asked from his position guarding the hallway. He’d noticed the open MacBook Pro on the desk. If the German wasn’t going to reveal details of the plot, perhaps his computer could give them some answers.
Kopelman slid a metal chair up behind the desk, s
at down, and played with the keys on the computer. A few seconds later he announced, “Locked. Encrypted.” Slowly his head turned to the German seated to his left and staring ahead. “I’m gonna need that password, old buddy. How I get it is entirely up to you.”
“I cannot be threatened,” Buchwald said, his narrow jaw jutted forward in defiance.
“Yeah, I expect you’re right.” Bob shrugged. “No time for that, anyway.”
Kolt stepped away from the doorway, tried his luck with Buchwald. “We don’t have time to dick around. We need the password, right now, or you are going to get hurt.”
The German just stared up at him. He was frightened, unquestionably, but he appeared resolute.
Bob walked over to Kolt, and together they stepped to the far side of the office. “His manufacturing operation is shut down. His bags are packed. He’s stalling.”
“Yep. Which means either he’s expecting help to come for him or — ”
“Or the op is about to go down and every minute he can buy will help the AQ operation.”
The two Americans just looked at one another for a moment, until Bob broke the staring contest. “We can get him to talk.”
“How?”
“The question is not How do we get him to talk? The question is How far are you willing to go to get him to talk?”
Raynor’s jaw tightened. “Look at me. Do you think there is anything I won’t do to stop the infiltration and get Eagle 01 back?”
Kopelman did just what Kolt asked. He looked into Raynor’s eyes, measured the younger man’s resolve. “I’m going to have to rush this. It might get ugly.”
Kolt looked out the window. He didn’t like this part of the work. But he looked back at his older associate. His voice was strong. “That asshole over there strapped into his chair is the one driving this boat. My conscience will be clear no matter what he makes us do.”
A nod from the big spy. “Good. Now, go downstairs, get the big green contraption sitting in the southwest corner of the factory. I noticed it’s on wheels. Roll it up the ramp to me in here.”
Kolt Raynor nodded, though there was a flicker of shock on his face. “Okay.”
“I don’t want you in here when I do it. I told you I would relieve you of that burden. But before I send you out, I need you to haul that thing up here.”
Kolt looked at the German, then slowly left the room, hoping like hell the old man would reveal the password before Bob had to resort to desperate measures. He moved down the hallway, across the steel landing, and then down the ramp carefully, his weapon at the low ready all the while.
The factory floor was as dark and quiet as he had left it.
Kolt found the machine, and his stomach turned. It was a German-made one-ton flywheel punch press, a heavy metalworking device that could stamp and pierce holes in steel with its powerful vertical ram.
Damn, Raynor thought. He hung the Kalashnikov around his neck by the sling, unplugged the heavy tool, and began rolling it on its wheels up toward the ramp.
It took a minute to get back in the office. He found the scene to be much the same as he’d left it, Buchwald nervous but defiant, Kopelman composed but resolute. When Helmut saw the big green device roll into the room, he began tugging at his bindings. Sweat drained off his forehead and down onto his shirt and tie.
“You cannot do this! You are mad! You — ”
Kopelman smacked him again. Raynor rolled the press over to Kopelman and plugged it into the only 220-volt plug in the wall. Bob deftly flipped two buttons, and the machine burst to life.
Kopelman knew exactly what he was doing, which uneased Kolt even more.
The German started to say something else, fast and frantic, but Bob just covered the man’s mouth with his hand while he spoke to Raynor over the buzz of electrical current and the spinning flywheel on the side of the device. “Now, can you give me a few minutes alone with Herr Buchwald? Shut this door behind you, go out to the landing, and cover the front door to the factory. I’ll try to stifle the screams, but I can’t promise the guards at the gate won’t hear this bastard beg for me to kill him when it gets bad.”
Kolt nodded, looked at the petrified German for a few seconds, then left the room, shutting the broken door behind him on the way out.
* * *
Kopelman took off the German’s tie, then found a roll of packing tape on the desk. He tore off a length of the tape and secured one end to the edge of the desk, letting the rest dangle next to his prisoner. Then he knelt down in front of the seated man. The machine press was to his right. “Listen. This is going to just about kill you, and I can’t very well expect you to keep quiet. No, you’re going to want to scream bloody murder, and we can’t have that. So I’m going to seal your mouth up, which means you won’t be able to give me the password to your laptop to stop the pain, even if you want to. We’ll work on one of your hands for a minute. I’ll punch some holes through the flesh and bone, lop off a finger or two, and then I’ll take the tie out, give you another chance before we ruin the other hand. Theoretically we could go on to the toes after that, but by then you’ll probably be running out of blood and short on time, so I figure you will give me the password once your hands are useless. Are you understanding my English?” Kopelman’s actions and tone were calm and matter-of-fact.
Buchwald’s wide eyes dripped tears. “You are bluffing.” he said, his voice cracked along with the words.
Bob calmly rolled the black necktie into a ball while he continued speaking. “Only one way to find out, I guess. Don’t talk.”
Buchwald said, “I don’t intend to talk.”
Bob nodded, continued rolling the tie tighter into a ball as he spoke. “Once I have the password, and your hands are shredded hunks of torn meat hanging off the ends of your arms, I’ll go ahead and shoot you if you want me to. But if, for some unknown reason, you decide you want to live, well, I guess that’s all right by me. You’re not going to be any good to anyone with a couple of stumps, but I won’t kill you unless you beg me to.”
“I will never give you the info — ”
As his lips formed the o in “information,” Bob Kopelman jammed the balled-up necktie ball deep inside the German’s mouth. He took the strapping tape off the side of the desk and secured the gag tightly.
Helmut Buchwald screamed through the gag as Bob slid the machine closer, untied the German’s left hand. “I hope you’re a righty and not a lefty,” he said. The German’s head jacked back and forth from side to side, as if to say No! No!
Bob said, “I hate to do this, really do, Herr Buchwald, but even more than that, I hate to think where those two Black Hawks full of terrorists are heading, and I can rationalize this little descent into Psychoville, because this is the only way I can get a proud and obstinate son of a bitch like you to give me that password.”
Kopelman was much stronger than the German. He surprised Buchwald by grabbing his left hand tightly at the wrist and yanking it out straight. With a short struggle he managed to force it onto the floor plate of the machine press under the half-inch-diameter circular ram punch.
Buchwald fought to free his arm from the American’s grip, but he could not. He tried to ball his hand into a fist, but the ram was only two inches above the plate, and there was no room.
Kopelman winced with effort as he held the panicked German’s arm steady with his left hand, but still, he looked him in the eyes as his right hand rose slowly to a button on the side of the press.
The German shook his head from side to side so hard it looked like he would break his neck.
“Are you saying ‘No, you don’t need to do this because I will happily give you that password you politely requested?’”
Buchwald stopped. Looked up at the big American spy through eyes wide with shock and drenched with tears. After a long moment he shook his head again.
“No password?” Bob asked for confirmation.
The German shook his head, but it was tentative. Almost imperceptibl
e.
“Aw, Helmut, dass ist nicht gut.” Bob reached for the button.
A sudden scream into the gag, followed by a frantic nod from Buchwald. Then another. Now it looked as if he’d give himself whiplash.
“You gonna give me that password?”
Buchwald hesitated. Blinked more tears of terror from his eyes. Then he nodded again.
Now Bob gently shook his head from side to side. No. “Who’s bluffing now?” Bob could see it in the man’s eyes. He was stalling. He wasn’t going to give him what he wanted.
Not yet, anyway.
Bob Kopelman stabbed the red button with the index finger of his right hand. The clutch on the press released the flywheel and the ram shot down three inches, eviscerating the center of Helmut Buchwald’s left hand as it plunged down into the hole in the floor plate. When it recoiled to its previous position it left a perfect half-inch circle in the man’s hand. Blood splattered left and right from the wound while the German screamed into his spit-soaked necktie. Every portion of his body that was not strapped tightly to the chair convulsed.
“Let’s do a finger next.” Bob said it in a normal voice, but Buchwald could not hear him over the mind-numbing agony.
* * *
Kolt had pulled a shirt off of one of the bodies in the hallway and exchanged it with his own. The new kameez was relatively clean and white, whereas Raynor’s was soaked in blood from the man he’d killed in the bathroom.
He then went out to the landing and covered the entrances to the factory. Raynor heard noises in the office behind him, but they were stifled by a door, the length of the hallway, and, as near as he could tell, some sort of gag over or in the German’s mouth. Still, he could plainly hear the torture, and it sickened him as a human being.
But he was one hundred percent certain that this was a necessary measure.
He did his job now, watched the door, hoped the surviving sentries would not initiate a radio comms check anytime soon. He’d taken a walkie-talkie from one of the dead men in the hallway and attached it to his belt so he could listen in on any transmissions.