Deadly Journey (11 page)

I flinched, screwed my eyes shut, and
gritted my teeth.

Chapter 19

Physically Broken

Giving them an
answer to the secret location where we took confiscated evidence wasn’t an
option, but then neither was a bullet in my head.

‘Lower him,’ one of them ordered.

The leg rest was welcome as was the respite
from having to answer the question, giving me time to think. My backside hit a
chair, but with my arms still at full stretch, my head slung forward.

‘Answer me, or I swear I’ll decorate the
room with your brains.’ Each syllable had brought with it a dig from the gun
barrel on my skull.

I convinced myself that under Perez’s
orders, he wouldn’t shoot and answered the question with the contempt it
deserved.

‘Fuck you.’

Searing pain from a crack to my temple
threw my head to one side. The blow brought on flashes of strobe-light stars.
Then the barrel dug at my skull, followed by... click. At the sound, my body
jolted in spasm and my bladder lost control, warmth trickling down my legs.

They bound me to the chair again and then
lowered my arms.

No more questions followed, just a barrage
of abuse, this time interspersed with the occasional pistol whip.

The abuse stopped and they started to talk
between themselves in whispers. Because they still spoke in English, I figured
they intended me to overhear.

‘Why don’t we do it our way, a toe at a
time, then the fingers?’

‘Orders. Perez doesn’t want us to do
anything the CIA wouldn’t do.’

‘Why? That’s stupid. Wait, that’s okay,
then, we can just say he tried to escape and shoot the mother if he doesn’t
answer.’

‘Maybe he needs more time to think about
cooperating?’

I held back, wanting to scream as they
hauled at the chain over the beam to raise me back into my previous upright
position and kicked away the chair. Footsteps pounded on the floorboards, and
then the door slammed, leaving me to my agony and to consider my options.

That I should simply tell them all they
needed to know started to make sense. It would at least put an end to the pain.
Even if Leandra was on their side, she was right. For the sake of my family
–
they were the ones who depended on my survival and escape. I
owed it to them to do whatever it required for us to be reunited. The DEA would
survive any disloyalty. But then I had to ask myself, could I live with that
betrayal? Would I be able to look my colleagues in the face if I succumbed to
my interrogators and gave them what they wanted? Worse, I wondered if the news
ever reported my cowardice, calling into question my patriotism as an American,
what would my kids think of me as a dad?

There followed an endless stream of
arguments for and against compliance, followed by the dreaded ifs, buts and
maybes that had followed my journey to where I was now trapped. The question of
who had placed the hit that had started my life crumbling, kept circling, and
all the time to the drip, drip, freakin’ drip of the tap water.

Reasoning ceased. I had no idea how long it
had been since the guards had left. I didn’t even know what day it was. It
became more of a concern whether my body would hold out. My fingers no longer
had any feeling. I screeched at the top of my voice. A bout of cramp left my
right calf taut and in agonizing pain. Then the toes of both feet cramped.
Still whimpering and asking God for mercy, I heard voices mumbling and the door
opened.

Through the clatter of heavy boots on the
floorboards, laboured footsteps scraped in my direction and stopped close to
me. Two fingers and a thumb gripped my wrist. The fingers fidgeted as if
looking for a pulse. Whoever it was wheezed and then coughed in a splutter.
Then the unmistakable doctor’s voice boomed.

‘He’ll live. Better get him down, though.’

This time there was no chair. My legs
wouldn’t support my body and I crumpled in a heap on the floor. Both arms were
stiff, and without strength. Every sinew ached to the extreme. Distress
shrouded my brain in a vice-like grip, creating a pulsating headache.

My interrogators bundled me to my feet. One
of them dragged off the sack blindfold. The doctor passed them the chair and I
collapsed onto the seat. They quickly bound me to the chair. My head slumped
forward and someone slapped my face.

‘No sleep. We have work to do.’

The questions started again. Weasel went
first.

‘What type of vehicle do they use to
transport the confiscated drugs to the evidence depot?’

I heard the question, but all I wanted to
do was sleep. I glanced down at my right hand. Most of the palm had swollen and
blistered from grabbing the chain fastening me to the beam above. Only gripping
my hand in a clench seemed to reduce the throbbing. A slap reminded me that
they were waiting for an answer.

‘How the shit should I know? Maybe a
stagecoach and four horses.’

A blow to the side of my head landed with
such force that the chair, with me in it, tipped over. They hauled me back
upright and Weasel snarled an inch from my nose.

‘You escorted the shipment you stole from
us. I read it in the newspaper. So I’ll repeat...’ He held up his pistol as if
to strike.

‘Okay, okay, trucks.’

‘What type, colour and liveries?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe pink with Walt Disney
written on the side.’

The head butt was as unexpected as the explosion
of pain, manifested as a coloured spectrum, spreading in all directions in my
vision.

I groaned. ‘Ungf... arghh... Brown with no
livery.’ Damn me, I had given them the correct details of the truck. ‘No, wait,
black with “D.E.A.” written on the doors.’

A hand pulled at my hair from behind,
lifting my head, and my eyes met an apparently displeased Weasel, shaking his
head. A grin twitched on his lips.

‘Kurt, dear Kurt, we know they don’t use
their own vehicles, they use contractors. What paperwork do you need to provide
at the depot for the provenance of the drugs taken there?’

Sleep beckoned and my eyes closed. I
couldn’t even remember what paperwork we used.

‘Look at me when I’m talking.’

A slap to either cheek and I cracked open
an eye.

‘What?’

He repeated the question.

‘I don’t know.’

A tirade of abuse and propaganda followed,
the questions put on a back burner. The words were just a sea of floating
sound, but some of them stuck. Useless, nothing, unwanted, unloved, disowned,
forgotten, discarded, and so on. Every time I seemed to drift toward peace,
they brought me back with a slap on the face.

The door opened with a blast of daylight.
All I could see through scrunched eyes was a black silhouette of a man,
standing akimbo in the doorway.

‘Dayshift’s arrived, what have you mugs
got?’ It was the voice of Stony Face. He lumbered over to the desk, picked up
the notebook and threw it down. ‘Is that it, his name, age and a freakin’ brown
truck?’

Weasel shrugged. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Get him on the gurney. He must be tired,’
Stony face ordered.

Even through the haze of a fatigued mind,
his consideration didn’t fool me. Catching the doctor napping over at the desk,
Stony Face shook him by the shoulders. The doctor opened his eyes, coughing and
wheezing as if it were his last breath.

‘Wake up and check him out. We don’t want
Perez to think we’re not looking out for his welfare,’ Stony Face said, in
apparent disparagement of Perez’s train of thought.

Now that I was unbound from my seat, Weasel
and his cohort each took an end of me and launched my body with a swing onto
the gurney. I didn’t have an ounce of strength left, or the will to resist.
Weasel held my head while his partner fastened a strap over my forehead, before
moving on to strap my arms and legs. All I could hope was that the doctor would
call time on any further interrogation and let me sleep.

The doctor’s face peered over me. Pulling
at my bottom eyelids each in turn, he shone a light in each eye. Then he held
my wrist and, glancing at his watch, he took my pulse again. Finally, he lifted
my T-shirt and using his stethoscope, listened to my heartbeat.

Stony Face said, ‘Well?’

The doctor peered over my face, scrunched
his top lip to his nose and spluttered. ‘Your call. It’s borderline, really.’

‘Can you give him something to keep him
lucid?’ Stony said.

‘Sure, give it five minutes to work. I’ll
give him an injection.’

Contemplating what he meant by “borderline”,
I didn’t even feel the needle when it entered. After a few minutes, what I did
notice was a surge of alertness. Stony peered at me, biting at his bottom lip.
Our gazes locked. If I feared Weasel, under these circumstances, Stony Face
somehow terrified me more.

Chapter 20

Death or Dishonour

The monitor
screen overhead displayed static, flashed, and turned a hypnotic blue. Stony
Face fidgeted about and I wondered what he was doing. It didn’t take long to
find out. With the strap holding firm on my forehead, I couldn’t turn my head
to see him. All I heard was a chair being placed at the side of me, then he
began to talk in soft tones. A scanned photo of the picture taken from my
wallet of my wife and kids appeared on the screen. As pleased as I was to see
them, I was glad it was just an image and that they wouldn’t have to witness
what might transpire.

‘Listen, Kurt, I really don’t want to
distress you, or hurt you. We have a situation here. Ninety-five percent of
what we ask you, we already know. Now, we could just as easily have someone enrol
as a cleaner at DEA headquarters and find out the other five percent. This is
all about saving time and effort. Seeing as how you’re here, hold onto the
thought that your answers could speed up you returning to your family.’

I couldn’t resist asking a question that
was rolling through my mind, but I had to grind it out from weakness. ‘Wouldn’t
it have been easier... to do that... employ a stooge, rather than kidnapping
me?’

‘Okay, fair enough. We want you to answer
questions, so you deserve an answer. Let’s make this a two-way street. I’m not
privy to how Perez found out someone had put a hit on you. That said, when he
heard that the hit was the guy who was responsible for him taking a
considerable loss of merchandise, he thought it would be beneficial to buy out
the hit. After that, he just needed to have you sent to him, for you to give an
account of yourself. All that said, think carefully. You might consider Perez
the enemy, but he’s saved your life.’

There was no doubting he might have saved
my life, but I wasn’t buying that he intended me staying alive. Especially once
I had answered all their questions.

‘Why... ohhh. Damn...’ Grimacing, I had to
take a moment to overcome an overpowering pain in my calf muscle. ‘Why do you
need to know all this stuff you’re asking?’

‘Intelligence gathering. We’re running a
business here. Nothing more. It’s no different from your intelligence
gathering. Information is power. No one will ever know you gave us the other
five percent.’

He took a deep breath, letting it out in a
long slow sigh before continuing.

‘I’ll give you an example of something we
know. When you take the confiscated goods back to your secret depot, you
chemically analyze each product. Every cocaine processor uses a slightly
different mix. From the result of the test and the brand stamps, you build up a
map of where it was likely produced. You can work out which country south of
the border produced the cocaine, from the samples sent to you when the various
army units shut down a production facility. And from that you can reasonably
deduce which cartel is responsible for the product.’

‘If my hands were free, I’d applaud.’

He tapped my arm as if applauding himself.

‘So there we are. I’m happy to answer your
question. No torture, no distress, just talking man-to-man. Do the same and
we’re out of here.’

It sounded tempting. I stared at my smiling
family on the screen. While he was in the mood for answering my questions, I
thought I would chance the big
question.

‘Who put the hit out on me?’

Laughter erupted around the room.

‘Did you hear that?’ Stony Face said. ‘He’s
not listening. He thinks it’s a one-way street. Time for your questions later
and I’ll answer you honestly, but now it’s your turn. Uninterrupted, I might
add.’

I closed my eyes to await his question. I
knew if I stalled with an answer, they’d take it as a definite lie.

‘Who tipped you off about the consignment?’

I groaned out an answer. ‘I told your
friend here. It was a lucky strike.’

‘Hmm, okay, have it your way. Don’t say I
didn’t offer you an easy way out.’

He obviously didn’t buy the response. His chair
legs scraped the floorboards as he stood and his figure passed me like a ghost
in my peripheral vision. Somehow, I knew his amiable little talk was going to
take a sinister turn. I shuddered at the thought of maybe losing a finger, or a
toe.

If Perez thought he had someone inside his
cartel giving away his secrets, I guessed they’d stop at nothing in finding out
who had informed on them. Especially with such a large consignment of cocaine
lost to them. It was bound to have hurt them, big time.

The magnitude of the bust must have left
many anxious dopamine receptors craving, north of the border, not to mention
the dollars that were lost down the supply chain. Some paranoid, drug-crazed
dealer would have sufficient motive to want to take me out for denying them
their precious stardust. I doubted Stony Face would give them up no matter what
information I gave him. These were criminals. Criminals don’t snitch without
serious motivation.

Water ran from the tap at the basin as if
he were washing his hands. Apprehension formed in the pit of my stomach. My
temples began to throb. I closed my eyes as if doing so would keep Mary and the
kids from seeing what he was going to do to me. But really, it was the terror
of not knowing his next move that sent wave after wave of cold tremors through
my body.

Whatever the doctor had injected me with
had started to wear off. It left my mind drifting, my body weak, the pain
throughout my body intense.

Fingers clasped my nose. Startled, I
jolted. My eyes popped open. The gurney dropped in a tilt, with my head
lowered. A jug of water was poised over my mouth. Droplets moistened my lips.
Someone held my jaw in a vice-like grip. Desperately I attempted to move my
head, my lips tightly closed, but the strap held fast. My heart pounded at the
exertion of trying to hold my breath. Foolishly, I thought I could trick them.
Opening my mouth, I kept my throat closed. Water filled my mouth. My lungs
desperately sought oxygen. Pains stabbed at my tightened chest. My head felt as
though it would explode. Trying to spit out the water proved futile as more
followed. My options diminished and my throat opened, gasping for air. All I
took in was a gulp of water.

My body thrashed, but the straps held fast.
I began to hallucinate. Dad’s voice screamed in my ear. ‘Stand tall.’ It was as
if I was underwater. On the surface a giant poster of my family smiled back,
the picture undulating on the ripples... witnessing my life slip away. The
image turned to my tormentors’ at school, but it was my kids in the circle. ‘Coward,
coward, da-ad’s a coward,’ they sang.

The gurney tilted again, raising my head.
The pressure on my nostrils released.

‘Let’s try again, shall we? Who told you
about our shipment?’

There was no answering straight away. Water
spewed for my mouth and snorted through my nose. Taking a breath of air, I
coughed and spluttered. The sound of the jug filling with water told me there
would be more if I didn’t answer.

‘Informant.’ More coughs followed and loud,
rasping, deep breaths. ‘It was a tip-off.’

‘Name?’

Unashamedly, I began to whimper. ‘P...
please, I don’t know. He used the code name Bison.’

‘How did he contact you?’

My vision fixed on the picture of my
family. Not sure where the stubbornness came from, but defiant, I clammed up.
There was just about time to mouth “sorry” to my family before the gurney
tilted and Stony pinched my nose. My mouth filled with water from the jug. I
held out as long as I could by holding my breath, until my willpower deserted
me.

This time I must have passed out. My eyes
opened to the doctor, mumbling and checking my pulse. They’d removed the strap
from my forehead. A hand held my head tilted to one side and I could smell
vomit. The voice I heard had a metallic, reverberating sound.

‘We nearly lost him. But you can go
again... if you have to,’ said the doctor.

It was no longer about duty to anyone other
than myself. Patriotism and standing tall as a hero, with no witnesses to write
a commendation after my death, was no use to man nor ornament. It was a matter
of my own personal survival. My interrogators were right. I was no one in the
scheme of things and little to be remembered after my obituary.

‘Let’s get this over with. How did Bison
contact you?’

Though weak, I managed somehow to dig out
an answer. This time, I replied with a croak instead of a whimper. ‘By
telephone.... Always with voice encryption to alter his voice.’

‘Did you trace the calls?’

Stony’s face started to fade in and out,
replaced by the image of Eddie Carter, the leader of the gang that had bullied
me at school. He was throttling me and screaming for an answer. As I blinked my
eyes frantically, Stony Face stared at me, his face distorted, as if I was
viewing him inside a goldfish bowl.

‘The calls, did you trace them?’

‘What? Oh yeah. Only to the northeast of
Mexico. We couldn’t pinpoint the exact location. We assumed from the Cobras.’
The effort of talking had me gasping short breaths of air.

‘Why?’

‘Because... they didn’t ask for money. He
always hung up before we could do a full trace.’

‘He?’

‘He, she, I don’t know.’ My voice had a
ring of impertinence.

I wanted to drift to sleep, but he held up
the jug, which kept me going.

‘Please, I’m telling the truth.’ The tone
of voice came out like a child pleading.

‘You said “every time”. Have you had other
tip-offs?’

‘Yeah, just small stuff, but reliable.
That’s why we took him or her seriously.’

‘See, it’s that simple.’

A lump like a burr stuck in my throat.
Probably a side effect of vomiting. His words implied they had bought it this
time. Most of it was the truth, save for the code name and the Cobra
connection.

‘Now give me the address of your depot.’

‘Please, I need to rest.’

‘Plenty of time for that. First, a slide
show.’

The picture on the screen morphed to a shot
of Mary dropping off the kids at school. My buddy Rob walked beside them, his
hand inside his jacket on the holster side. Then it cut to a picture of Mary
carrying overnight baggage and the kids walking the pathway at her mother’s
house. Security guys in suits stood at her car, smoking and looking down at the
sidewalk. They were hardly paying attention. Damn if these weren’t recent
pictures. They were stalking my family. A surge of strength and indignity had
me raising my head and trying to snap the straps holding me to the gurney in
the futile gesture of a broken mind. Then, as quickly as the surge arose, I
fell into a limp, catatonic state, my eyes fixed to the monitor screen.

‘See, we know where your kids are. Now
let’s finish this. Give me the address.’

I was aware that I answered his question in
a monotone and all the others that followed, without emotion, or thoughts as to
the consequences. It was as if someone had sucked the very essence of my soul
from my body, leaving only a shell.

The memory of them removing me from the
gurney was lost to me. The next recall I had was me slumped against the wall of
the barracks cabin next to the desk. A guard passed his sidearm to his
colleague and, bending down, he hauled me over his shoulder. My arms hung limp,
but with my blistered right hand clenched.

It’s a strange feeling to be devoid of
thought. Some would say impossible, but with my spirit broken, I didn’t even
try to lift my head as he took me like a sack of garbage for a walk, before
hoisting me onto the tail end of their pickup truck.

Twilight turned into nighttime on the short
journey. I could see my surroundings when the truck stopped at the villa, but
strangely, it was as if someone had turned the volume off and I could hear
nothing. One of them carried me up to my bedroom like a baby in his arms and
threw me onto the bed. Managing to curl into the foetal position, with the
lights out, all I was aware of was they had removed my shackles and replaced
the tracker on my ankle, the L.E.D. flashing green. Flash, flash, freakin’
flash. There was no pain. In fact, I was numb to anything. No emotion...
nothing.

The door made no noise when it opened and
closed. No light flooded the room. All I heard was the haunting voice of
Leandra calling out my name. The bedside light suddenly lit the room. Leandra
climbed onto the bed and sat with her back to the headboard. She gently hitched
my head onto her lap and stroked my hair.

‘Oh, Kurt, what have they done?’

I didn’t have an answer. I was all answered
out. She took hold of my clenched fist.

‘You’re bleeding! There’s blood trickling
from inside your fist. Kurt, are you holding something?’

She tried to unfurl my fingers, but I resolved
to clench them even tighter. Her last words trailed off as I finally closed my
eyes, ready to surrender to sleep.