Without Remorse (1993)

by Tom - Jack Ryan 08 Clancy

  "But he's not crazy, you say."

  "No, I doubt he's disturbed in a clinical sense at all, but sure as hell he's motivated by something. People like this are highly disciplined, just like you and I were. Discipline shows in how he operates--but his anger also shows in why he operates. Something made this man start to do this."

  "'Ma'am.'"

  That one caught Farber short. "Exactly! Very good. Why didn't he eliminate her? That's the only witness we know about. He was polite to her. He let her go ... interesting ... but not enough to go on, really."

  "Except to say that he's not killing for fun."

  "Correct." Farber nodded. "Everything he does will have a purpose, and he has a lot of specialized training that he can apply to this mission. It is a mission. You have one really dangerous cat prowling the street."

  "He's after drug people. That's pretty clear." Ryan said. "The one--maybe two--he kidnapped ... "

  "If one is a woman, she'll survive. The man will not. From the condition of his body we'll be able to tell if he was the target."

  "Rage?"

  "That will be obvious. One other thing--if you have police looking for this guy, remember that he's better with weapons than almost anybody. He'll look harmless. He'll avoid a confrontation. He doesn't want to kill the wrong people, or he would have killed this Mrs. Charles."

  "But if we corner him--"

  "You don't want to do that."

  "All comfy?" Kelly asked.

  The recompression chamber was one of several hundred produced for a Navy contract requirement by the Dykstra Foundry and Tool Company. Inc.. of Houston. Texas. or so the name plate said. Made of high-quality steel, it was designed to reproduce the pressure that came along with scuba diving. At one end was a triple-paned four-inch-square Plexiglas window. There was even a small air lock so that items could be passed in. like food or drink, and inside the chamber was a twenty-watt reading light in a protected fixture. Under the chamber itself was a powerful. gasoline-powered air compressor, which could be controlled from a fold-down seat, adjacent to which were two pressure gauges. One was labeled in concentric circles of millimeters and inches of mercury, pounds-per-square-inch, kilograms-per-square-centimeter, and "bar" or multiples of normal atmospheric pressure, which was 14.7 PSI. The other gauge showed equivalent water depth both in feet and meters. Each thirty-three feet of simulated depth raised the atmospheric pressure by 14.7 PSI, or one bar.

  "Look. whatever you want to know, okay... "Kelly heard over the intercom.

  "I thought you'd see things my way." He yanked the rope on the motor, starting the compressor. Kelly made sure that the simple spigot valve next to the pressure gauges was tightly shut. Then he opened the pressurization valve, venting air from the compressor to the chamber, and watched the needles rotate slowly clockwise.

  "You know how to swim?" Kelly asked, watching his face.

  Billy's head jerked with alarm. "What--look, please, don't drown me, okay?"

  "That's not going to happen. So, can you swim?"

  "Yeah, sure."

  "Ever do any skin diving?" Kelly asked next.

  "No, no, I haven't," replied a very confused drug distributor.

  "Okay, well, you're going to learn what it's like. You should yawn and work your ears, like, to get used to the pressure," Kelly told him, watching the "depth" gauge pass thirty feet.

  "Look, why don't you just ask your fucking questions, okay?"

  Kelly switched the intercom off. There was just too much fear in the voice. Kelly didn't really like hurting people all that much, and he was worried about developing sympathy for Billy. He steadied the gauge at one hundred feet, closing off the pressurization valve but leaving the motor running. While Billy adjusted to the pressure, Kelly found a hose which he attached to the motor's exhaust pipe. This he extended outside to dump the carbon monoxide into the atmosphere. It would be a time-consuming process, just waiting for things to happen. Kelly was going on memory, and that was worrisome. There was a useful but rather rough instruction table on the side of the chamber, the bottom line of which commanded reference to a certain diving manual which Kelly did not have. He'd done very little deep diving of late, and the only one that had really concerned him had been a team effort, the oil rig down in the Gulf. Kelly spent an hour tidying things up around the machine shop, cultivating his memories and his rage before coming back to his fold-down seat.

  "How are you feeling?"

  "Look, okay, all right?" Rather a nervous voice, actually.

  "Ready to answer some questions?"

  "Anything, okay? Just let me outa here!"

  "Okay, good." Kelly lifted a clipboard. "Have you ever been arrested, Billy?"

  "No." A little pride in that one, Kelly noted. Good.

  "Been in the service?"

  "No." Such a stupid question.

  "So you've never been in jail, never been fingerprinted, nothing like that?"

  "Never." The head shook inside the window.

  "How do I know you're telling the truth?"

  "I am, man! I am!"

  "Yeah, you probably are, but I have to make sure, okay?" Kelly reached with his left hand and twisted the spigot valve. Air hissed loudly out of the chamber while he watched the pressure gauges.

  Billy didn't know what to expect, and it all came as a disagreeable surprise. In the preceding hour, he had been surrounded by four times the normal amount of air for the space he was in. His body had adapted to that. The air taken in through his lungs, also pressurized, had found its way into his bloodstream, and now his entire body was at 58.8 pounds per square inch of ambient pressure. Various gas bubbles, mainly nitrogen, were dissolved into his bloodstream, and when Kelly bled the air out of the chamber, those bubbles started to expand. Tissues around the bubbles resisted the force, but not well, and almost at once cell walls started first to stretch, and then, in some cases, to rupture. The pain started in his extremities, first as a dull but widespread ache and rapidly evolving into the most intense and unpleasant sensation Billy had ever experienced. It came in waves, timed exactly with the now-rapid beating of his heart. Kelly listened to the moan that turned into a scream, and the air pressure was only that of sixty feet. He twisted the release valve shut and re-engaged the pressurization one. In another two minutes the pressure was back to that of four bar. The restored pressure eased the pain almost completely, leaving behind the sort of ache associated with strenuous exercise. That was not something to which Billy was accustomed, and for him the pain was not the welcome sort that athletes know. More to the point, the wide and terrified eyes told Kelly that his guest was thoroughly cowed. They didn't look like human eyes now, and that was good.

  Kelly switched on the intercom. "That's the penalty for a lie. I thought you should know. Now. Ever been arrested, Billy?"

  "Jesus, man, no!"

  "Never been in jail, fingerprinted--"

  "No, man, like speeding tickets, I ain't never been busted."

  "In the service?"

  "No, I told you that!"

  "Good, thank you." Kelly checked off the first group of questions. "Now let's talk about Henry and his organization." There was one other thing happening that Billy did not expect. Beginning at about three bar, the nitrogen gas that constitutes the majority of what humans call air has a narcotic effect not unlike that of alcohol or barbiturates. As afraid as Billy was, there was also a whiplash feeling of euphoria, along with which came impaired judgment. It was just one more bonus effect from the interrogation technique that Kelly had selected mainly for the magnitude of the injury it could inflict.

  "Left the money?" Tucker asked.

  "More than fifty thousand. They were still counting when I left," Mark Charon said. They were back in the theater, the only two people in the balcony. But this time Henry wasn't eating any popcorn, the detective saw. It wasn't often that he saw Tucker agitated.

  "I need to know what's going on. Tell me what you know."

  "We've had a few pushers whac
ked in the past week or ten days--"

  "Ju-Ju, Bandanna, two others I don't know. Yeah, I know that. You think they're connected?"

  "It's all we got, Henry. Was it Billy who disappeared?"

  "Yeah. Rick's dead. Knife?"

  "Somebody cut his fuckin' heart out," Charon exaggerated. "One of your girls there, too?"

  "Doris," Henry confirmed with a nod. "Left the money ... why?"

  "It could have been a robbery that went wrong somehow, but I don't know what would have screwed that up. Ju-Ju and Bandanna were both robbed--hell, maybe those cases are unrelated. Maybe what happened last night was, well, something else."

  "Like what?"

  "Like maybe a direct attack on your organization, Henry," Charon answered patiently. "Who do you know who would want to do that? You don't have to be a cop to understand motive, right?" Part of him--a large part, in fact--enjoyed having the upper hand on Tucker, however briefly. "How much does Billy know?"

  "A lot--shit, I just started taking him to--" Tucker stopped.

  "That's okay. I don't need to know and I don't want to know. But somebody else does, and you'd better think about that." A little late, Mark Charon was beginning to appreciate how closely his well-being was associated with that of Henry Tucker.

  "Why not at least make it look like a robbery?" Tucker demanded, eyes locked unseeingly on the screen.

  "Somebody's sending you a message, Henry. Not taking the money is a sign of contempt. Who do you know who doesn't need money?"

  The screams were getting louder. Billy had just taken another excursion to sixty feet, staying there for a couple of minutes. It was useful to be able to watch his face. Kelly saw him claw at his ears when both tympanic membranes ruptured, not a second apart. Then his eyes and sinuses had been affected. It would be attacking his teeth, too, if he had any cavities--which he probably did, Kelly thought, but he didn't want to hurt him too much, not yet.

  "Billy," he said, after restoring the pressure and eliminating most of the pain, "I'm not sure I believe that one."

  "You motherfucker!" the person inside the chamber screamed at the microphone. "I fixed her, you know? I watched your little babydoll die with Henry's dick in her, slinging her cunt for him, and I seen you cry like a fucking baby about it, you fucking pussy!"

  Kelly made sure his face was at the window when his hand opened the release valve again, bringing Billy back to eighty feet, just enough for a good taste. There would be bleeding in the major joints now, because the nitrogen bubbles tended to collect there for one reason or another, and the instinctive reaction of decompression sickness was to curl up in a ball, from which had come the original name for the malady, "the bends." But Billy couldn't fold up inside the chamber, much as he tried to. His central nervous system was being affected now, too, the gossamer fibers being squeezed, and the pain was multifaceted now, crushing aches in the joints and extremities, and searing, fiery threads throughout his body. Nerve spasms started as the tiny electrical fibers rebelled against what was happening to them, and his body jerked randomly as though being stung with electric shocks. The neurological involvement was a little disquieting this early on. That was enough for now. Kelly restored the pressure, watching the spasms slow down.

  "Now, Billy, do you know how it was for Pam?" he asked, just to remind himself, really.

  "Hurts." He was crying now. He'd gotten his arms up, and his hands were over his face, but for all that he couldn't conceal his agony.

  "Billy," Kelly said patiently. "You see how it works? If I think you're lying, it hurts. If I don't like what you say, it hurts. You want me to hurt you some more?"

  "Jesus--no, please!" The hands came away, and their eyes weren't so much as eighteen inches apart.

  "Let's try to be a little bit more polite, okay?"

  "... sorry..."

  "I'm sorry, too, Billy, but you have to do what I tell you, okay?" He got a nod. Kelly reached for a glass of water. He checked the interlocks on the pass-through system before opening the door and setting the glass inside. "Okay, if you open the door next to your head, you can have something to drink."

  Billy did as he was told and was soon sipping water through a straw.

  "Now let's get back to business, okay? Tell me more about Henry. Where does he live?"

  "I don't know," he gasped.

  "Wrong answer!" Kelly snarled.

  "Please, no! I don't know, we meet at a place off Route 40, he doesn't let us know where--"

  "You have to do better than that or the elevator goes back to the sixth floor. Ready?"

  "NOOOOOO!" The scream was so loud that it came right through the inch-thick steel. "Please, no! I don't know--I really don't. "

  "Billy, I don't have much reason to be nice to you," Kelly reminded him. "You killed Pam, remember? You tortured her to death. You got your rocks off using pliers on her. How many hours, Billy, how long did you and your friends work on her? Ten? Twelve? Hell, Billy, we've only been talking for seven hours. You're telling me you've worked for this guy for almost two years and you don't even know where he lives? I have trouble believing that. Going up," Kelly announced in a mechanical voice, reaching for the valve. All he had to do was crack it. The first hiss of pressurized air bore with it such terror that Billy was screaming before any real pain had a chance to start.

  "I DON'T FUCKING KNOOOOOOOOOWWW!"

  Damn! What if he doesn't?

  Well, Kelly thought, it doesn't hurt to be sure. He brought him up just a little, just to eighty-five feet, enough to renew old pains without spreading the effects any further. Fear of pain was now as bad as the real thing, Kelly thought, and if he went too far, pain could become its own narcotic. No, this man was a coward who had often enjoyed inflicting pain and terror on others, and if he discovered that pain, however dreadful, could be survived, then he might actually find courage in himself. That was a risk Kelly was unwilling to run, however remote it might be. He closed the release valve again and brought the pressure back up, this time to one hundred ten feet, the better to attenuate the pain and increase the narcosis.

  "My God," Sarah breathed. She hadn't seen the postmortem photos of Pam, and her only question on the matter had been discouraged by her husband, a warning which she'd heeded.

  Doris was nude, and disturbingly passive. The best thing that could be said for her was that Sandy had helped her bathe. Sam had his bag open, passing over his stethoscope. Her heart rate was over ninety, strong enough but too rapid for a girl her age. Blood pressure was also elevated. Temperature was normal. Sandy moved in, drawing four 5-cc test tubes of blood which would be analyzed at the hospital lab.

  "Who does this sort of thing?" Sarah whispered to herself. There were numerous marks on her breasts, a fading bruise to her right cheek, and other, more recent edemas on her abdomen and legs. Sam checked her eyes for pupillary response, which was positive--except for the total absence of reaction.

  "The same people who killed Pam," the surgeon replied quietly.

  "Pam?" Doris asked.

  "You knew her? How?"

  "The man who brought you here," Sandy said. "He's the one--"

  "The one Billy killed?"

  "Yes," Sam answered, then realized how foolish it might sound to an outside listener.

  "I just know the phone number," Billy said, drunkenly now from the high partial-pressure of nitrogen gas, and his release from pain was helping him to be much more compliant.

  "Give it to me," Kelly ordered. Billy did as he was told and Kelly wrote it down. He had two full pages of penciled notes now. Names, addresses, a few phone numbers. Seemingly very little, but far more than he'd had only twenty-four hours before.

  "How do the drugs come in?"

  Billy's head turned away from the window. "Don't know..."

  "We have to do better than that." Hissssssssssssss ...

  Again Billy screamed, and this time Kelly let it happen, watching the depth-gauge needle rotate to seventy-five feet. Billy started gagging. His lung function
was impaired now, and the choking coughs merely amplified the pain that now filled every cubic inch of his racked body. His whole body felt like a balloon, or more properly a collection of them, large and small, all trying to explode, all pressing on others, and he could feel that some were stronger and some weaker than others, and the weaker ones were those at the most important places inside him. His eyes were hurting now, seeming to expand beyond their sockets, and the way in which his paranasal sinuses were also expanding only made it worse, as though his face would detach from the rest of his skull; his hands flew there, desperately trying to hold it in place. The pain was beyond anything he had ever felt and beyond anything he had ever inflicted. His legs were bent as much as the steel cylinder allowed, and his kneecaps seemed to dig grooves into the steel, so hard they pressed against it. He was able to move his arms, and those twisted and turned about his chest, seeking relief, but only generating more pain as he struggled to hold his eyes in the sockets. He was unable even to scream now. Time stopped for Billy and became eternity. There was no light, no darkness, no sound or silence. All of reality was pain.

  "... please... please... " the whisper carried over the speaker next to Kelly. He brought the pressure back up slowly, stopping this time at one hundred ten feet.

  Billy's face was mottled now, like the rash from some horrible allergy. Some blood vessels had let go just below the surface of the skin, and a big one had ruptured on the surface of the left eye. Soon half of the "white" was red, closer to purple, really, making him look even more like the frightened, vicious animal he was.

  "The last question was about how the drugs come in."

  "I don't know," he whined.