As he worked his way silently and carefully through the dark dwelling, he discovered at least five more listening devices were on the main floor of the home. It would not be practical to deactivate all of them. The basement was clear now, so that was where he’d have his chat with the scientist.
As Beeman had done hours earlier, Kenehan peered between the curtains to check the car and van that remained parked on Beeman’s street.
Beeman was startled awake by a hand clamping roughly over his mouth.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a blur in the darkness; then something like a sledgehammer slammed into his solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him completely. Bile rose in his throat, and he retched. He tried to curl up into a fetal position, but strong hands pressed him flat and rolled him onto his belly. He swallowed his own vomit.
Everything occurred with remarkable speed. In his shock, he could not process what was happening. He tried to reach for his knife, but his arms were locked behind him. A knee drove into the small of his back, pinning him to the bed. In seconds, something that felt like piano wire had bound his wrists. The hand that covered his mouth came away, as strips of heavy tape took its place.
The hands quickly stretched more tape over his eyes and forced him into a sitting position. He was nearly nude, having slept in his underwear. A picture of Dove and Kitten, writhing in the trunk of Antonio’s car, flashed in his mind. He wondered how many men were in the room.
My turn now.
He heard a soft click. Something sharp bit into the side of his throat. Iron fingers dug into the nerves at the back of his neck, sending daggers of pain into his skull.
He felt lips brush his cheek. A deathly whisper purred in his ear.
“Sound is death.”
Beeman tried to nod, but pain paralyzed his muscles. Dizziness and nausea rocked him. He was pulled to his feet and guided blindly to his basement with a knife at his throat.
Chapter 41
Gripping Beeman by the throat, Kenehan pushed him against a concrete wall. He tore the tape from Beeman’s mouth and pressed the tip of his knife into the older man’s carotid artery, just below his left ear, hard enough to cause pain but not puncture the artery.
“Where are the women?”
Not the Koreans after all, Beeman thought.
“What women?”
Kenehan moved the knife move down to the scientist’s testicles and jabbed him there, hard enough to draw blood.
“Don’t test me, Dr. Beeman.”
“Of course not,” Beeman rasped. “You would fail.” With that, Beeman tried to headbutt Kenehan, who deftly dodged the maneuver. Kenehan released his grip on Beeman’s arm and allowed focused rage to race down from his brain to meet coiled, twisting power racing up from his thighs and hips, which rotated rapidly, like a spring released. Catching the momentum, his shoulder, elbow and finally his fist funneled devastating force into Beeman’s ribcage.
For good measure, he repeated the move, hammering the same spot.
Beeman grunted and dropped to his knees, gasping for breath, a trickle of blood running down his thighs. Then he fell onto his side and vomited.
Fuck, that felt good.
Too good.
Beeman was no good to him dead—at least for now.
Kenehan coiled his fingers once more around Beeman’s esophagus, lifting the man to a standing position and pinioning him against the wall. His other hand remained knotted into a tight fist. An image flashed briefly though his mind. He saw the photo of Christie Jensen that had enchanted him so.
The girl had her mother’s eyes.
Kenehan drove a third blow into the same spot, even more forceful than the first two. He heard at least a couple of ribs crack.
Beeman fought to breathe.
Kenehan fought the urge to pummel the man slowly to death.
“Care to try again?”
Beeman was covered in perspiration, shaking hard. “Yes,” he gasped.
“Well?”
“I don’t know. They were taken from us.”
Based upon what he had seen at the cabin, Kenehan believed him. He’d anticipated this. The problem now was how to frame the next question. To display too much ignorance would cost him a psychological edge. It was the first tenet of battlefield interrogation. Beeman had to believe that Kenehan knew more than he really did, and that he would detect and punish lies. Ruthlessly.
“I know that. That wasn’t my question.”
“Kim has them. He didn’t tell me where.”
Kim. Maybe Sand was right about the North Koreans.
“What are you going to do?”
Beeman hesitated. “What … what do you mean?”
Kenehan drove his knee into Beeman’s groin once more, holding him against the wall so he wouldn’t collapse. Then he leaned forward and whispered intimately into Beeman’s ear, just above the cut he’d made a moment ago with his Microtech. “Listen to me, doctor. I shave with this knife. You have two balls, ten fingers, two eyes, two ears, ten toes and lots of other things I would like to amputate. I have a portable torch in my pocket to cauterize the stumps. I can have you begging for death in less than five minutes. Keep fucking with me, because I guarantee I’ll really enjoy what happens if you do.”
“Who are you?” Beeman choked.
Kenehan pressed the tip of his Microtech into Beeman’s crotch once more. “Last chance,” he growled. “Then I cut off everything, slice out your tongue, sever your Achilles tendons and hamstrings and leave you here on the floor. If you live, you’ll be lame, blind, mute, disfigured and fucked for life. I learned how to do this in the mountains of Afghanistan. God, just talking about it is turning me on.” On a flash of instinct, he took a terrible chance. “It doesn’t matter. Antonio got away. We know where he is. We’ll get what we need from him.” Then, to bolster the bluff, he added, “His gunshot wound was only superficial, but it slowed him down. He’s holed up in the Rabbit Ears Motel in Steamboat. Get down on your knees.”
Beeman stiffened with surprise. Kenehan knew he’d scored a great hit.
“I’m going to give them the virus.”
Just what the Old Man thought. “Obviously,” Kenehan said, as though Beeman were trifling with him. He pushed Beeman to his knees. “I know that much. When and where?”
“I don’t know yet. We had a place arranged, but—”
“You’ve seen the cars outside your house, haven’t you?” Kenehan pressed.
“Yes.”
“The people watching you are government agents,” Kenehan replied, softening his voice. “I’m not with them. We only want the women.”
“We?”
“You’re in deep trouble, way over your head, my friend. If you cooperate, we can help you out of this mess.” Kenehan slid a small switch on his comm unit. “Grayhound, Tomahawk. Do you copy?” There was no response. The unit wasn’t working, likely because they were deep in Beeman’s basement. Or the unit had malfunctioned. Everything breaks, but only at the worst possible time.
“You’re with the FBI?”
“You’re not listening, Einstein,” Kenehan said. “You took the wrong girls. I’m with a group of private contractors. We do quiet jobs for powerful people, and we never fail. What you do with your—” What was the code name Jennifer had found? “—Black Sunrise, is not important to us, not in the least. But we will kill as many people as we have to—starting with you—to get those girls back.”
Blinded by the tape over his eyes, Beeman spoke into the darkness. “Wait. My home is under surveillance. How could you get in here without being seen?”
“What matters is that I did, baby doll, and I can get you out the same way. We’ll help you if you help us.”
“And if I refuse, you’ll kill me now? Then you’d never find Kim and the women. Antonio doesn’t have any idea where he is. I know how to contact him.”
Find Kim? So, not Kim the ruler, but someone on domestic soil, possibly nearby. A North Korean operator. Sand’s t
heory seemed to be correct. Whoever he was, Kim had the women, so he had to find him, and fast, or the girls would be the first of many casualties if their theory was right.
Despite his bluff about Pessoa, Beeman was Kenehan’s only key.
Beeman writhed some more, but Kenehan could tell this was not a normal man. He had an amazing tolerance for pain. He’d seen this before, in Kuwait, Afghanistan, Syria and North Africa, predominantly in religious zealots, other times in highly trained operators taken prisoner and shipped to Guantanamo. They learned to live inside the pain, to love it in a way, to endure it.
But they all broke—eventually—unless they died first.
Kenehan knelt and grabbed Beeman’s ankle, pinning him in a scissor leg lock to keep him still. He ran the blade slowly back and forth between Beeman’s toes, sawing gently but firmly at the webbed flesh there, where there were many sensitive nerve endings. Beeman struggled mightily but did not cry out. He was strong for his age and size, but Kenehan was stronger. He dug a second furrow between two more toes, and then a third. Then he pried Beeman’s legs apart, sliced off his underwear and slowly made a long cut just behind Beeman’s scrotum, not deep enough to require sutures. The invasive nature of pain at that spot was enough to unhinge just about any man.
Beeman’s breathing grew frantic, and he began to grunt.
“Listen to me, you crafty little fucker. Balls are optional now that you’re my bitch.” Intimate vulgarity was a potent way to signal there were no barriers, no rules. Just total horror, domination and humiliation. “You think you’re special because you embrace pain and death. That’s only because you don’t know them well enough. Tonight, you’ll find out how fickle pain and death are. No one can befriend them, tame them or endure them. Not you, not anybody. This will be a crash course, with a pass-fail test at the end. We’re not in a hurry.”
This was false, but Kenehan had to exhibit the single most powerful traits of any interrogator who uses torture: patience and a passion for sadism. The victim had to believe that the torment was both unbearable and endless. It would only get worse, and there was only one way out. Beeman would know that, of course, but the knowledge and any edge it gave the man would evaporate in the searing heat of physical agony that marched across and through every part of his body.
Kenehan dug more furrows between the toes of Beeman’s other foot. The technique was effective because it produced extreme pain and a disproportionate sense of panic in the subject, but the cuts were minor and would stop hurting within a day or so. He’d walk with an odd gait for a brief time, but then he’d be completely normal. The cuts on his perineal and scrotal regions were the same.
Neosporin would ease the pain and stave off infection. In hindsight, Beeman would wonder why he’d fallen apart under such minimal injury. The pain of the cuts would blend with the images of amputations Kenehan threatened.
Beeman writhed and finally began to whine.
Kenehan tore the tape from his eyes. Beeman would be blinking rapidly, trying to see Kenehan clearly, but the basement was much too dark, though Kenehan’s compact night vision goggles made it bright as day. “I’m going to start cutting away parts of your body. You’re going to love it, tough guy. So am I! You know, I’m really very much better than you are at this business of torture and control, and now you’re on the receiving end, which makes all the difference, sugar plum.” He pulled on Beeman’s right eyelid and poked it with the point of his blade.
“Alright! Alright! What do you—”
Kenehan touched the tip of the blade to the skin inside the lid. “When. And. Where?”
“I don’t know, really. But I have a phone number.”
“You on board with me now, bud?”
“Yes! Yes! I am … Yes. I’ll do whatever you want.”
Bullshit, Kenehan thought. But it was a start.
“When we’re out of here, you’ll arrange a meeting place.”
“And then what? They’ll kill me when they find out about you.”
“You play ball, we’ll protect you. But only if you make yourself valuable. We get what we want, and you go free, possibly with all your God-given parts still attached. You go with Kim—or somewhere else—we don’t give a fuck. We just want the women.”
“You’ll kill Kim.”
“Only if we have to, to get the women.” And you too, if I have a say in things.
“You’ll let us leave the country once you have the women?” The smell of fear and bile was disgusting. Sweat covered Beeman’s trembling body. Kenehan knew that the man was on the verge of going into shock; he’d have to ease up he’d have an unconscious prisoner on his hands, which didn’t fit his plan at all.
“I found you without even trying. You can escape from the government, but you can never escape from my people; not even in North Korea.” He felt Beeman’s body tense, which could mean that Kenehan had scored another hit psychologically. “If the women are harmed, you are a dead man, along with Kim and his team. From now on, you are the girls’ guardian fucking angel. Got it?”
Beeman nodded, his cheek on the slick, slimy floor. “I just want to live.”
The vicious man cut the tie wraps from Beeman’s wrists and clicked on a small red light. Beeman blinked, not surprised at what he saw. The long hair. The knife. The hollow eyes looking down at him told him the man had killed before and would do so again. Beeman was fascinated.
“They need your expertise,” the man said.
“I think so,” Beeman replied.
“Then you’ll be safe. Your friends have bigger fish to fry. They’ll want to get you and your technology out of the country. They won’t want the women getting in the way. Your job is to make sure they don’t start thinking it’s more expedient to kill them. If they do, you’re completely fucked. This can still be a win for both of us.”
Beeman thought quickly. This was the missing piece he had been hoping for. The man was wrong about one thing though. Once he was in the hands of the Koreans, he would need insurance to keep him alive. Fortunately, he already had it in place. He had the power to bring North Korea—and possibly the world—to oblivion even if they killed him tomorrow, simply by letting the device he had planted count down to the preordained date and time, a few short weeks from now. This would release the virus on American soil, and millions would die. The US, knowing North Korea had been pursuing the virus, would do what she did best and retaliate. She might launch a massive retaliatory nuclear strike. The regime of Kim Jong-un would be finished forever.
“I will do as you ask,” Beeman said. “Please don’t hurt me anymore.”
The man helped Beeman to his feet. Beeman knew the man could sense he was lying. It didn’t matter. There was a lot to do, and time was running out.
Chapter 42
While Beeman had been throwing up on his basement floor, Christie Jensen was more than a thousand miles away doing the same thing.
She was seasick.
She leaned over the rail at the edge of the deck, staring down into the black water below, and heaved. Nothing came out. There was nothing left in her stomach. She wiped her brow with the gauze-bandaged back of her forearm. She looked for the horizon through the ocean haze. It was better to keep her eyes focused on things at a distance. Dawn was coming, and she could finally make out the line where sea met sky. The storm had passed. The boat was rolling less now.
She heard a man behind her.
“Feeling any better?”
She turned to face him. His Asian skin looked very dark in the dim light from the wheelhouse. The corners of his mouth curved upward slightly. He held a cup in his hands.
“I’ve brought you some tea.” He handed her the cup. It was warm. She took a sip, welcoming the flavor. It was mint. A little bitter. Maybe it would settle her stomach. “And I have a patch for sea sickness. Here, stick it behind your ear.”
“What is it?”
“Scopolamine. Anti-nausea medicine.”
“Thank you,” she said, peeling o
ff the back of the patch and sticking it behind her ear. “I’m still feeling a little shaky. What’s your name?”
“Call me Tom.”
Christie managed a smile. “What’s going to happen, Tom?”
The man looked past her to the sea. “We’re just off the California coast. Los Angeles is that way. The weather is clearing,” he said. “We’ll be heading to port soon.”
Christie’s heart soared. “Will we be allowed—”
The man cut her off with a shake of his head. “We will be picking up some people who want to talk to you.”
“What about?” Christie asked.
The man shrugged. “Your experience.”
“What about it? I want to go home.”
“Sorry. They need information about your ordeal.”
“I’ll tell you anything you want. Then will you take us home?”
“You’re safe now.”
“Why won’t you people tell me who you are?”
“Don’t worry. You’ll be home soon.”
The man’s expression never changed, as if painted onto his face. It was creepy, like talking to a robot. He touched her hand and then turned and walked away, disappearing through a hatch.
This boat is just another cage, she thought, but it was an improvement over her last one. She was clothed and fed. She slept in a bed. Someone had tended to the deep cut on her arm—twelve stitches, topical anesthetic, bandages, Tylenol. Everyone was very polite, but they treated her and Jackie with an ominous clinical detachment. Who were these men? Why were they all Asian? She believed them to be Korean, but she wasn’t sure. She thought she might recognize the language, but so far, they’d only spoken English around her.
What did they want?
Why were they on a boat? It didn’t make sense. If they’d rescued Jackie and her, why hadn’t they taken them to a hospital or a police station? Were the men who had come to their aid some kind of undercover police? Could they be part of some kind of all-Oriental task force, like the army had formed in World War II?
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