Deadly Journey (10 page)

Chapter 18

Question Time

As if it wasn’t
bad enough to have them re-shackle me, one of the guards fastened a cloth as a
blindfold around my head. At least it wasn’t as bad as that foul-smelling
burlap sack. It was a small mercy they had removed the explosive tracker from
my ankle. It gave me one thing less to worry about, wherever we were going. I
should have been used to the unexpected by then, but I wasn’t. Fear of where
they were taking me and to what end brought on a cold sweat. Hands gripped my
arms, guiding me out of the bedroom.

A door creaked open and Leandra’s voice
called out. ‘Where are you taking him? What’s happening?’

I hadn’t seen Stony Face inside my bedroom,
but his voice growled a reply. ‘Get back inside and mind your own business.’

‘When will he be back?’ Leandra retorted in
an insolent tone.

‘That’s up to him. Now close your door.’

‘Don’t push me, Pedro,’ she said as if
through gritted teeth. ‘Kurt, for your family, tell them whatever they ask.’
Those were her last words, uttered as though she were exerting energy in a
scuffle. I heard the door slam.

‘Carry him down to the truck or we’ll be
here all night,’ Stony Face said. Someone repeated his order in Spanish.

Goodness knows how many of them manhandled
me down the stairway and out to the truck. Though they were small in stature
compared to my six foot one, they carried me above their weight with ease. When
they dropped me to my feet, someone spun me around. They forced my head down
and backed me onto the truck seat. Doors slammed. The engine sparked to life
and the tyres spun on the gravel.

‘Where are we going?’

A dig in the ribs with an elbow or rifle
butt replied. After that, I kept my mouth shut.

From what Leandra had said, it looked as
though the journey would turn out to be the question and answer time that Perez
had talked about
–
but not of the sixty-four-thousand
dollar type. I doubted there would be a prize in it for me at the end of the
session.

We only drove for around ten minutes before
the truck stopped. It was far enough for them to have needed to remove the
tracker, but still within the grounds of the villa somewhere.

The door opened and a guard pushed me. As I
shuffled on my backside along the seat, hands took hold of me and guided me out
of the truck. The terrain was smooth underfoot for around twenty paces, and
then we hit a rough track. I thanked God I had stepped into my slippers in the
bedroom.

A hand kept forcing me to duck as if to
avoid an obstacle. They missed one and a branch swiped my face. The leaves
brushed my lips, leaving the bitter taste of foliage. We had to be on a trail
in the woods I had seen from the balcony next to the runway. That’s where
Leandra had said they had barracks. I couldn’t help but smile inside at the
drama of the blindfold and their playing soldiers, in a sort of half-hearted
bravado.

Brought to a halt, I heard a door open. The
smile inside soon turned to cold shudders at the realization this was probably
not going to be a game. I was ushered through an entrance, a door closed behind
me and someone took off the blindfold. The smell of dampness was overpowering,
in contrast to the sweet odour of vegetation on the walk to the barracks.

The room was small, around ten feet square.
To my left, I noticed a desk and two chairs. The walls were fabricated as a
wooden structure, with an open ceiling to a pointed roof. A single light
illuminated my surroundings, hung by a cord from a wooden beam running the
length of the room. There were no windows. Against the wall to my right, I
could see a gurney. A flat-screen television was fastened to the beam above
with the screen facing the head end of the gurney. It seemed an odd place for
someone to relax to watch a program. Wires led from the monitor to an open
laptop set on a wooden crate. Next to the crate was a washbasin.

Stony Face wasn’t one of the guards
remaining, so we had lost him somewhere along the line. The guy who had spoken
to me in English in the bedroom pulled out a chair and waved his hand.

‘Here we are, Kurt. Take a seat.’ There was
nothing pleasant in his manner of delivery, but I sat as ordered.

He walked around the desk and sat, opened
the top drawer and took out a notebook and pencil. I wanted to laugh. His chair
was higher than mine was, in what I presumed was an attempt to give him the
psychological high ground, but he was around five foot six, and our eyes met in
equal measure. All it would have taken was a powerful light in my eyes to
complete the picture. I wondered if they had missed that trick in their
interrogation handbook.

My interrogator had the features of a
weasel. His ears were almost right angles to his head. The light created
shadows, accentuating his high cheekbones above sunken cheeks.

He picked up the pencil and tapped it
repeatedly on the desk. ‘A few simple questions and then you can go back to the
villa and be safely tucked into bed.’

He sat back, placed the pencil down, and,
clasping his hands and resting them on his stomach, he began twiddling his
thumbs. His eyes locked on mine like a guided missile. I wasn’t sure if he was
waiting for a response, but I kept silent. He leaned forward and placed his
still-clasped hands on the desktop with his thumbs still twirling.

‘Name?’ He picked up the pencil and poised
it over the notebook page. The game had begun.

‘Kurt Rawlings.’

‘Age?’

‘Thirty-four.’

‘Wife’s name?’

I hesitated before deciding to reply. ‘Why?’

‘Oh, Kurt, Kurt, I thought I explained. A
few simple questions and you can go back to the villa. Let’s start again, shall
we? Wife’s name?’

‘You know my wife’s name. I refuse to
discuss my...’

Like a lizard’s tongue unfurling to strike
its prey, the back of his hand swiped my cheek and stung like hell.

‘Let me explain. These are simple
questions, and yes, we know the answers. Your wife’s name is Mary and your son
is Craig and your daughter Claire. You’d do well to remember that. We know many
of the answers. That’s the purpose of my opening questions. Lie to me, or fail
to answer, my friend, and you will suffer the consequences.’

I could hardly forget they knew my family’s
details. The veiled threat was, I hoped, just that. Making out that they knew
details was the same type of ruse I had used on many occasions when questioning
a suspect.

‘Now that you know the rules, we can start
with the serious questions. Who tipped you off about the shipment that you
stole from us?’

How he expected me to answer that defied
reason. If the code name he used was a known gang name, I would be handing our
informant a death sentence. The truth was, I didn’t know his real name. All the
dealings I had had with him had been over the telephone, with failed attempts
to trace the calls, other than they came from south of the border.

He pushed his chair back, stood and walked
behind me. The slap of his hand over my ear almost knocked me off the chair. ‘Answer.’

‘There was no informant. It was a lucky
find. These things happen,’ I lied.

My ear started ringing. He walked to my
side, signalling with the sway of his wrist to the other guard standing at the
door. They both walked over behind me and quickly bound me to the chair with a
rope. The next thing I knew, they had slipped a damned canvas sack over my
head. Now I knew for certain that this wasn’t a game.

My chair legs grated on the wooden
floorboards. They dragged me to a different position in the room and untied the
rope. I felt tugging at my leg shackles, followed by a click that I hoped
wasn’t one of them racking a round in the chamber of a gun. When I tried to
stretch my legs, a tug indicated that they had fastened a restraint from my leg
irons to the floorboards.

There were to be no more questions that
needed reply, just two voices screaming insults alternately at each ear. I
tried counting in my mind, but their volume, together with prodding fingers on
my shoulders and the occasional shove, overcame any attempt to block out the
voices.

‘You think the DEA cares about you?’

‘You’re just a name and rank.’

‘Crap on their shoes.’

‘Don’t think for one minute they’ll pay the
ransom.’

‘You’re already dead to them.’

‘Do you think your wife will care?’

‘No.’

‘Give her time and she’ll be screwing
someone else.’

‘She could be already.’

‘Probably is.’

‘Your kids will have a new dad and forget
you.’

‘You’re nothing.’

‘Nobody.’

‘History.’

‘Do you think your informant will care? No.’

‘Do you think your beloved State Department
will bend their rules on ransoms?’

‘No, because they are ungrateful for all
you have done for your country.’

‘The U.S. doesn’t care.’

‘You’re just a speck of dust, to be swept
aside.’

‘Nobody cares.’

And so it went on. Not sure how long it
lasted. It seemed like an eternity. Their voices began to grate, melding into a
crescendo of garble. Heavy eyelids fluttered and my chin dropped. Visions
flashed of me lying on the floor surrounded by a throng of my tormentors at
school.

‘Cry baby, cry baby,’ they chanted,
followed by, ‘coward, coward.’

A slap on the side of my head brought me
back to the here and now, to more abuse from Weasel. Then suddenly, he stopped.

Confusion ensued. To a scuffle of noises,
together with tugging at my shackles, my arms rose above my head until they
were at full stretch and my body followed until the heels of my feet were just
off the floor. Footsteps walked away from me. What little light had been
seeping through the bag over my head extinguished to darkness.

The door to the room opened and closed.

Straining my hearing, I listened for a sign
of breathing, anything to determine that I was alone. Heightened senses
detected nothing save for a drip from the washbasin tap. Drip, drip, freaking
drip.

My leg muscles tightened from the elevation
of my heels. My weight tugged at my armpits and tightened my chest, restricting
my breathing. My thoughts failed to distract my senses to dull the aches and
pains. Squat was right. I was on a journey to hell, but I knew I hadn’t quite
reached the destination they had in mind. Moving my weight first to the toes of
my left foot and then to my right gave only brief respite. It was the same if I
grasped the chain fastening my arms to the beam above. In the end, the laws of
physics and biology came together and denied me any comfort.

And still the drip, drip, freakin’ drip, like
a damned metronome that wouldn’t switch off.

My eyelids were heavy. Tiredness added to
the torture of pained limbs, stretched to the maximum of their endurance. My
thoughts turned to visions and hallucinations that centred around my torturers’
words.

‘Kurt?’

Leandra’s whispering voice haunted me
amongst the nightmares. A shake of the head did little to clear her voice from
my mind.

‘Kurt, it’s Leandra. I have to be quick.’

I tried to answer, but with a swollen
tongue, it came out as a groan.

The bag over my head lifted. Fingers held
my chin and the taste of plastic teased my lips open. Water spread inside my
mouth and I gulped down as much as possible. I could see nothing, but imagined
her warm smile.

‘Kurt, they’re drinking the last of their
cans of beer. I have to go. Stay strong. Please, tell them all they need to
know. I’ll try to steal a key for your tracker to help you escape.’

The blindfold dropped. I heard no
footsteps. For all I knew it could have been a dream, an apparition. I detected
a slight chill from a breeze and a faint click in the direction of the door.
Wiping my moist lips with my tongue, I dared hope it was anything other than an
illusion.

Someone did care. They were wrong. All I
had to do was tell them what they wanted and get out of there. I began to
wonder what the hell I was thinking about when the juxtaposition to her visit
hit like a thorn sinking into my flesh. The good cop, bad cop routine. Only in
her case
–
good woman. It was the oldest trick in the
book to get me to talk.

The door burst open on its hinges.

Voices screamed in my ears and re-commenced
their insults from where they had left off. This time the smell of alcohol
drifted through the bag covering my face. A surge of determination not to tell
them anything overcame the pain. Nevertheless, deep down I knew my resolve
along with my body would surrender. I just hoped my sanity would remain intact
so I could provide them with misinformation.

‘Just tell us the location of the depot
where they transport confiscated drugs!’

This time, there was no mistaking the sound
of someone racking a slide to place a round in the chamber of a gun. The barrel
dug into my temple.