by Mark Graham
The first thing Dick did was to call the Director, telling him they had successfully taken Pamela to the assigned room. Using well padded handcuffs they cuffed her to a chair, and tied her feet to the two legs of the chair.
Jane put a gauze pad in Pamela’s mouth and attached a couple inches of adhesive medical tape. By then Dick had gone into his bag and pulled out a what was the same thing Ice had done with his torture victim. He didn’t use much as he jabbed her in the immediate area of her voice box. She would be able to speak very clearly but without much volume. He then gave her a shot to counteract the chemical they had gassed her with and she was waking up within three minutes, and was totally aware about two minutes later. She looked terrified. Both Dick and Jane grabbed two other chairs that were put immediately in front of Pamela, off to both sides so if seen from above looked like a triangle. Both Dick or Jane could reach any place on Pamela’s body.
Dick took a small black plastic box from the bag he had and plugged one end into the wall outlet. He took a small length of wire that he plugged into the box. There were two ends that had small clamps attached. Dick had always thought they were just like the little jaws that marijuana users held their joints so they wouldn’t burn their fingers. Only the two of them knew what kinds of acts Dick could perform with the small gadget. Although small the wires and gadget were made of wiring that allowed a lot of voltage to be used.
“Hi Pamela,” said in a kind voice. You feeling alright except for the scratch in your throat?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “What the hell is going on? Why am I here?”
“Let me tell you Pamela,” Dick said a little more threatening. “You need to keep your mouth shut unless one of us has a question. You are expected to give us the correct answer. These wires I have here on the arm of your chair can be used in a variety of ways.”
Pamela looked at the wires and got a tear in her eye.
“This is the way it is Pamela,” Dick started. “You’ve been set up. Both of us used to be agents for a federal agency and are on contract with your Director.”
Pamela started to say something and Jane slapped her across the face.
“They have been working on this for a long time, and found you to be guilty of being a rat in their department.”
Pamela teared up more and started moving around, trying to get lose from her shackles.
Dick turned a little nob on his box and touched one end to her arm, the other one further up her arm. There was actually a fast, quick arch as the second end touched. Pamela screamed as well as she was able and quit fighting.
“Pamela, that was at one of my lowest settings. I don’t know if you have ever heard of us but we are the best there is in electronic torturing. You will give us any information we want, so don’t even try to keep your mouth closed. If you just honestly answer, there will be no further harm done. Now, if you lie, and lie repeatedly let me tell you what will happen”
Dick took a minute and turned another knob on his little box, more so for affect. With these two wires I can do anything to you I want. I can give you pain like you just got, or intensify it a hundred times. I can short out your entire nervous system. If you weren’t tied down I could have you doing the chicken dance for as long as I like. Our specialty includes not killing our clients. However, if you lie to us you might feel like you want to be dead. We got your medical records and found you to be healthy with no heart disease so know whatever we do won’t kill you.”
We can permanently kill every nerve in your body, or in any part of your body. We can use this as they use to do with shock treatment, and if we go all the way you will be a living vegetable, left with being able to hear, and think, and hurt; but unable to do anything else. In that condition you will be hospitalized, cathetered, and put in a little room to live out your existence.”
“So Pamela,” he asked, “Are you ready to answer some of our questions?”
“Yes, but if you don’t mind I would like to ask a couple of questions,” she said with tears in her eyes, but relatively calm.
“Okay,” Dick answered.
“How did you know it was me?” she asked.
“You were set up by your own people,” Dick said. Jane got up and went into the bathroom and called the Director.
“It was a case of narrowing the field, one at a time. There aren’t that many of you. With the information given to only the five people in management it was easy to get somebody in the trap. Guess that’s you,” Dick said, both he and Jane smiling.
They heard a slight knock on the door and Jane answered it. The Director walked in wearing the usual expensive suit and jewelry. When Pamela saw who it was she seemed to panic a little.
In reality Pamela was scared of the Director. The kind of fear that many of the agents had for the man. Mostly because his power and they knew from older agents that his capacity to deliver pain might only be seconded by Ice or these two. Pamela knew she needed to come clean or she was going to be in a lot of pain within minutes. She hoped that maybe she could get sympathy from the Director. She knew she had been a good agent, except for this flaw, which she allowed her anger to take control and do something she should have known she couldn’t do anyway. She was very afraid for her life.
“Pamela, Pamela, Pamela,” the Director said looking down into the depth of her soul she thought. “We trusted you so much and you had a great life to experience until this shit.” At that point Pamela realized her being able to get sympathy wouldn’t be possible. The Director had went dark and his eyes became very similar to Ice’s whenever he went over into the abyss. The bad part was that she knew that she would be knocked into the abyss with him; but she would not return.
“Okay Pamela,” the Director said very seriously. “We know you’ve been a rat, and we know you are somehow tied to the guy who is trying to threaten or kill Ice. Come completely clean and we can see what we can work out.”
It gave Pamela a slight feeling of relief. The Director seemed to melt a little and actually sounded sensitive to her needs.
She stared at the Director as he looked into her eyes. After a minute he said to her, “Well? let’s get this show on the road. I don’t have all night.”
Pamela knew that to try to lie to the Director would bring absolute pain with it. She started, talking as well as she was able to insure she could be heard. She wondered why her voice didn’t work well.
“Well, sir,” she said looking at the Director after he had sat down in one of the chairs. Jane set beside him and Dick went over to the bed and laid back as if nothing was even happening.
“It stated a long time ago,” she started. “probably about ten years ago. My husband and I were living a nice calm life with two little kids. Perfect little house, perfect kids, and a perfect life.” She started to cry.
“My husband was just finishing a degree in accounting and had already been accepted to a CPA firm where he work part time to help him get through school. I was an English teacher.”
“I came home one day to find Scott, my husband hanging upside down with his feet tied. Whoever did it had broke some of the ceiling out so that he could tie the rope around one of those beams that’s up there in the attic.” She went into a weeping spell and couldn’t even talk. The Director was a patient man and just looked at her.
“I opened the bedroom door and could see Scott was dead, and should have been. Both hands were missing, and his guts were hanging out of his belly. Before passing out I saw that his face was partially missing as was his ears. It was such a shock I fainted. I don’t know how, but the ambulance was there and para-medics were kneeled next to me on the floor.”
“So how did you get from there to here, at this time in your life?” the Director asked.
She continued, “Well, at first I was in pathetic shape for a couple months, then that grew into anger. A lot of anger. I want’d to find out what kind of animal had done that terrible thing to my husband.”
“I needed a better job, that paid
more, so I caught a pretty good job at one of the larger security firms as an executive assistant. You know my record from there,” she said looking at the Director.
“Go on,” the Director ordered.
“Well, it ended up that the manager liked my work so had me trained as an investigative security person. Kind of like the people we see on TV, except it was for a big firm that was owned by a bigger firm.”
“To this day,” Pam said looking at the Directive, “I really can’t remember how I learned about what and who was behind my husbands murder. I did find out who was responsible for his murder, but not the who that killed him. Some of the information I got from having a friend that was a hacker and we ended up following a lot of rabbit trails.”
“Can you please give me a hanky?” she asked looking at Jane. Jane opened her purse and handed several to her.
“To continue, somehow I learned about this organization. At first I learned that it was a top secret kind of thing. Then I found out you were located in New York.”
“Yeah, back then,” the Director said, “our computer systems weren’t a fraction of what they are now. We even had a business office with whatever name we went by back then.”
“Right,” she said. “I found out that someone in this organization was probably the person who killed Scotty. It took me a year and a half before I was offered a job. Then you, Director, thought I could serve better as an agent. You assigned me a mentor like you did then, but back then it was nothing like it is now.”
“After several months I was well trusted by everybody, yourself included. I started asking around with broad questions to learn if anybody in the organization actually killed people and tortured them. I remember two agents laughing and looking at each other, then at me.”
“Why, that’s Ice more than likely,” one of them said. “Back then I think we only got together about once a month. For some reason I either missed a meeting or two, but had never met Ice.”
“Finally at a staff meeting with most of our agents attending I saw a man I didn’t recognize. At first I was impressed. He was a good looking man, polite, and seemed to be more intelligent than the other agents. I asked whatever agent was sitting by me “who is that man?”
“He smiled, and said, well that’s Ice. He’s our trainer and will take on any job and do it well. He kills bad guys, will do torture if need be, or anything else the Director asks him to do. I think one time he killed twelve people outright. I was with him once while he tortured a man for six hours before killing him.”
“From that moment on,” Pamela said, “I hated him and tried to get to a place where I could do the same thing he did to Scotty. It took me years, but as you can obviously see, this week I was going to fulfill that promise I made to Scotty the day they buried him.”
The Director asked, “Now doesn’t that feel better to get that off your chest. That’s a terrible thing to go through and I can’t blame you for doing what you’ve done. What can I do to make things better for you, short of letting you kill Ice?
She actually thought the Director was serious. He was acting just like he did when dealing with her before all this. Although she feared the man she still liked and respected him. So with hope she said, “Hell, I don’t know. I would not blame you for firing me, or whatever you do to people like me.”
“You’ve given us perfect service until now, and were resourceful. This thing you’ve done was really quite resourceful and took a lot of moxy to come up with it. And to control your anger so long speaks volumes of what you can endure and still get the job done.”
“Jane,” the Director asked. “how about you two excuse us; talk amongst yourselves while I go over some stuff I think Pamela would really like to share with me. She’s proven herself worthy so I think that now that she’s come clean she’ll be such a better agent. Especially if I can somehow get her to see that we don’t allow our agents to get away with this kind of behavior. I personally know I didn’t give the order to have her husband killed, or I would have remembered his name.”
“Pamela,” the Director said while guiding her, “I need a cigar and don’t want the alarms in this place going off. Come join me. Those two don’t need to hear what I want to talk to you about.”
The Director took a long cigar out of his pocket, unwrapped the cellophane and cut one of the ends with a small set of scissor looking things he had.
The Director went out first to the balcony and closed the sliding glass door behind Pamela. He walked over to the railing which gave Pamela a feeling of security that he would turn his back on her and wait for her to join him.
“Isn’t the view great up here,?” he asked Pamela. He pointed to what looked like kind of a tower, “That over there is the tallest building in the state. They’re proud of that building. They went to every big city in the state to find out which one was the tallest.”
Pamela noticed that the Director seemed very calm, and relaxed. She then realized that it was true that he did really care for his agents.
“Hey, look down there,” the Director said, pointing at what looked like it could be a horse and carriage.
Pamela looked over the ledge at what he was pointing at. In an instant the Director pushed her head down and reached down with his other hand grabbing her thigh and literally threw her off the balcony. He smiled and said as he turned to go back into the room, “don’t take no big tower to drop somebody from. Fourteen stories should be good enough. It was.
Chapter Twenty
The Director called Ice the next day and gave Ice the details, but not the details of what became of Pamela. Ice was as shocked as the Director was when he learned about her. He did tell him that she was the former wife of a Scot somebody or other he’d be assigned to torture and kill quite a few years back.
“Oh yea,” Ice said. “I remember that guy. It was relatively a quick kill, probably a half hour.”
“Hell Ice,” the Director said with a chuckle, “That’s about twenty-nine minutes more then anybody should deserve from you.”
“Yeah,” Ice went on, “but if you remember the guy was selling financial secrets of the companies he worked for and had even sold some stuff to the the Iranians, Pakistan, and Iraq. I remember they had wanted more pain and weren’t real happy with us for only taking a half hour. How was I supposed to know the asshole was a bleeder.”
“Oh yeah, I remember that time well,” the Director said, continuing to chuckle. He loved to hear about Ice’s work, especially when it came from Ice himself.
After talking for a few minutes the Director asked, “You have that electronic device I gave you to test?”
“Yeah, it’s over at my house locked up,” Ice said in turn.
“How about you coming back in, and stopping at your house, and pick it up. Call me when you get there and I’ll have a chopper in the air for you. I think we have one available right up in Toledo and they can make it in a matter of minutes to your place.”
Both took a few minutes to exchange some friendly chat and both hung up.
As soon as they could Ice and Joyce were on a plane for Toledo. He still had a car there, which he tried to do all the time, but sometimes the car got left at the house.
~~~~~~
Ice knew exactly where the thing was that he had to pick up so told Joyce to stay unless she had to use the can. She didn’t so just turned on the radio and laid her head back.
Half way to the front door he hit his automatic lock mechanism As he got to the door he was slammed into the door with a lot of impact. Two second later he was hit in almost the same spot and he thought it must have been a bull who attacked him.
On the way down Ice turned and about the same time as hitting the ground he saw the medium blue Chevrolet slowly going down the road with the driver looking. Ten seconds later he saw an awful explosion and looked up and saw the Chevolet turned into little bitty pieces. Just before passing out he thought he saw Talon’s Hummer racing up the driveway. Ice was out as Talon threw him in the
back seat. Joyce was getting into the back of the Hummer and helped drag Ice into the space so that Talon could slam the door.
“Put direct pressure on those two holes. And down as hard as you can, it won’t hurt Ice, and we’ll be able to get him to the emergency room.”
Talon pushed down the accelerator down hard and the tires spun as he did a big huey digging up part of Ice’s lawn. When he hit the road he just pushed it all the way down and drove to the hospital as fast as he could get the Hummer going.
Chapter Twenty-One
He woke up feeling very groggy and only knew that he had some memory of something hitting him hard then it was repeated as he felt he was smashed in the shoulder from behind. He kind of remembered about Talon and his Hummer but didn’t bother trying to connect the dots.
He woke up the next morning when a nurse woke him up to take blood, but fell asleep again, with the anesthetic still in his system. A couple hours later he woke up and could see Joyce on the bed and Talon sitting in a big chair looking like he was asleep.
“Well morning, sleepy head,” Joyce said with a smile and happy that he had finally woke up.
“What the hell happened?” he asked. “I remember getting hit from behind and something about Talon and that damn Hummer.”
“What’s the matter with my Hummer?” Talon said as he sat up looking at Ice, looking concerned.
“Ice, you were shot with a high powered slug. Well, actually twice. The shooter had a tight group but it was several inches from your head and got you in the back, the second shot we think damaged your arm.”
Ice looked down and saw that his left shoulder and arm were in a cast. He couldn’t move the arm, or bend it at the wrist. They’d put the cast around his elbow and let it dry with the arm bent.
“Who shot me?” he asked confused. He did remember something about a set up to catch one of the agents.