Extraordinary Retribution (24 page)

“He really cares about you,” Lopez said.

“Yeah. He’s got a daughter complex. Always wants to protect us young girls in the Agency.”

“Well, I’m glad for that.
Someone
on our side.”

Houston turned away from her computer and stared at Lopez. Her face was lined, tense, today’s trauma still breaking through. “We’re totally isolated.
Radioactive
. Moral support, even material support, is nice. But I don’t know if it’s going to be enough on this one, Francisco.”

Lopez nodded and walked to the window, staring out at the storm. The rain was angry, beating wildly against the glass, the blurred forms of swaying trees lit like dancers at a rave to a strobe light. The events of the last few months raced through his mind, ending violently today in the Alabama woods.

The bastards
. How dare they ruin so many lives, break so many laws, and seek in the end only to protect their own hides? He burned to do more than merely survive. These monsters had to be stopped, and the world had to know what crimes had been committed. Fred Simon was right: the cancer had to be cut out. In an instant, a firm resolution seemed to settle deep within him.

He spun around and faced Houston, a cold tone in his voice. “I’m sick of running. Let’s take the fight to them.”

Her left eyebrow arched. “What are you thinking?”

Lopez strode over purposefully to the laptop and gestured at the screen. “The names. We know who was involved now.”

“We only have the agent’s names, remember, Francisco? The other names are codes. From the agents, only Jason Miller was listed as still living. He could be dead by now.”

“Then Miller! The records list an address. We go there first.”

“Good plan, I agree. Only we’ll have to get to upstate New York through a national dragnet with our names on it.”

Lopez tugged at his beard, the skin in the ripped patches painful. Unlike his brother’s masculine jaw, he had never developed a mature face, a
man’s face
. Without the beard, he looked ten years younger. That was why he had grown it in the first place more than a decade ago. To gain authority and respect. He shook his head. It was simple vanity.

Wait a minute! Without the beard!
“You said he was a chameleon, this killer,” Lopez mused, his tone leading.

Houston stood up and stretched like a yoga instructor, her curved form seductive in the dim light. “So it seems. Surgery, contact lenses to alter eye color, perhaps even skin color alteration. Paranoid.”

“Well, I’m feeling pretty paranoid right now, after all this.”

“Ah,” she said, smiling. “So, time to play them at the same game?”

“Time to change
our
colors.”

40

T
hey woke up together in the same bed.

The breaking light of dawn streamed over her ivory skin, and Lopez listened to the soft rise and fall of her breath. He was surprised to find her hand in his, to feel the warmth of her body pressed close to his own; it rose as an ache inside him. He knew his body longed for greater intimacy than he allowed, and it was a form of torture to be so close to her and yet refrain.

He turned his head to see her more clearly and was momentarily shocked by her appearance. The long locks of gold were gone, shorn the evening before, decorating the bathroom tiles like curled necklaces. Instead, she had a short mop of black hair, the smell of the dye still lingering in the room. The remodeling of her features with this simple change was stunning. The addition of sunglasses and a wardrobe switch literally made her look like a different woman.

He realized that his appearance had drastically altered as well. Without the beard, he had lost a decade, his youthful face dominating any impression of his features. He had cut his longish hair nearly military style, the combination making him seem better suited for a recruitment poster than a confessional. They had thrown out his priestly garments—modern-style black pants, shirts, and the collars. He now would sport unremarkable clothes from second-hand stores. Side by side in the mirror last night, they appeared to be anything except the CIA agent and priest the country was now looking for.

“Well, we slept together after all.” Her voice lilted.

Lopez snapped out of his daydream and focused on her across from him on the bed. Houston was smiling softly, her sapphire eyes staring into his own. He felt her hand tighten on his.

“Well, it’s a good thing we wore protection,” she said, gesturing to their fully clothed forms. “You never know what you priests might have caught.”

For a moment, her banter was like a warm light, but a tension ran back into his body as thoughts rushed forward. “So now what, Sara?”

Houston leaned up and scratched her fingers energetically through her short hair. “God, this feels weird.” She hopped out of bed and began packing. Lopez noticed that her collection of firearms had tripled since yesterday: she had picked their captors clean on the way out. “What now? We use Fred’s accounts at several banks, load up on cash. Then we buy a car from someone around here—smartphone will map us some ‘for-sales.’ Then some local gun stores and express our Second Amendment rights to arm ourselves to the teeth. Find ourselves some loose dealers to get us all the good stuff, including police scanners and the like. Next, map out the most convoluted way to get back northeast, monitor every police band known to man, coordinate with Fred if possible, and find Jason Miller.”

Lopez chuckled. “Sounds simple. When do we get food in all this?”

Houston laughed. “What do you need food for when you’ve got bullets? They’re high in iron. Some in uranium.”

“Some grits on the way?” he offered.

“Sounds good.” Her expression turned serious. “But what
are
grits, exactly?”

They packed quickly and were out of the motel within thirty minutes, the air still cool near daybreak. They couldn’t keep the dead agents’ car for long, but they’d need it to find another one. Houston drove again, the speedometer spinning clockwise. Lopez noticed that it didn’t unnerve him anymore. The roads were poorly patched, and they rocked back and forth as they sped toward the Tennessee border. His stomach lurched.

Maybe better to wait for food.

The wraith steered the pickup truck roughly as it rattled down the mountain road in Tennessee. His back still hurt, and it was especially noticeable on such a rough route that pounded the vehicle mercilessly. After another fifteen miles, he would leave the mountains and cross onto the interstate. He needed to make up time. He needed to plan the next mission. His quarry had been given months to prepare, to flee, to investigate. How much did they know? What precautions had they taken? How much harder would it be to dig them out of their holes?

A large wooden case bounced up and down next to him, metallic clanks sounding. He reached over and repositioned the box. It was a minor arsenal, and he would equip himself better in the coming days. He panned the GPS system out from the state of Tennessee, revealing the entire eastern shore line up to Maine. A bright line indicating his route ran from his current location into the Catskill Mountains of New York State.

A man was waiting for him there. A man he would see and force to talk.
Jason Miller
. Miller would be broken, the key information that only he held taken from him. Then, Jason Miller would die.

After that, the last stage. The architects. The masters of war that hid behind their desks, pushing paper, and men’s lives, into the fire. When men play with fire too long, eventually they are burned.

Part 3

41

A
soft breeze danced through the pines in the Catskill Mountains, ruffling the green needles and whispering gently over the bubbling noises of a meandering creek. A small bird hopped across exposed rocks in the stream, its head sharply angling one way and then the next, its feathers beaded with moisture. The sunlight refracted through the drops and scattered as from a jewel. After skipping over several stones, the bird took flight over the moss-covered bank and climbed sharply. Gliding over the pine-tops, it oriented toward an opening in the trees ahead of it, attracted by a plume of black smoke rising from the clearing.

As it neared the hole in the forest, flames could be seen licking upward from an overturned vehicle next to a house. The metal was warped and scattered across a yard, and the house itself appeared damaged. The bird hesitated, then entered a circling pattern over the structure, gazing down for possible sources of food. Above the sounds of the wind, and the crackling of fire and popping of heated metal, another set of sounds jutted into the sky. Screams.

Inside the wrecked home, a naked man was strapped to a chair. His body was bloodied, a deep gash across his upper chest and right shoulder. Soot and dirt coated his skin. Urine and feces coated the seat. The room stank of waste, blood, and charred flesh.

Standing beside him was another man, uninjured, blond and lean, a bamboo branch in his hand. As he paced around the seated figure, he broke splinters from the stick. His gait was irregular, evincing signs of a recent injury barely healed. As he came around to the front of the chair, he glanced down at the immobilized, clamped hands of his prisoner, then jammed a sharp splinter underneath the man’s bloodied fingernails.

The man screamed, then cursed his tormenter.

“Go
fuck
yourself!” He spit blood and saliva as he slurred his words, his mouth bruised and swollen, showing signs of further brutality. Burn marks were on his face and in one of his eyes. From the burned eye, a constant stream of tears fell. “Go ahead, use all that shit,” he said, gesturing with his head toward a tray filled with knives, electric props, and other implements of pain. “It won’t do any good. You won’t get their location from me.”

“Why are you so loyal?” the blond man asked as he fingered a curved hook. “I don’t want to do this. Torture is why I’m here, why you will die today. I would rather kill you quickly. But I have to finish this. Others must pay the price.” He flipped the hook to the other hand, and the tortured man flinched. “You were the liaison, Miller. You have the records. You know where they are hiding. I’ve searched the known locations. They aren’t there.” He leaned the hook close to the man’s penis, touching its tip. “
Where
are they hiding, Miller?”

“Fuck you!”

A car could be heard pulling up outside the house. The blond man tossed the hook on the table, removed a gun from his belt, and moved stealthily to investigate. Miller closed his eyes, panting, and then called out madly.

“Help me! I’m back here! He’s killing me!” His cries fell flatly to silence.

A few seconds later, a car trunk slammed shut, and the blond man was back. The sounds of a heavy cart rumbling across the wooden floors of the cabin could be heard. Miller glanced up at his torturer, his eyes having acquired a yellowed hue. The blond man spoke.

“This isn’t working. We’ll have to try something different.”

A thin and sickly man stepped into the room. He pushed a rattling cart piled with multiple objects. Miller’s eyes gravitated to several drills and syringes, and paused over a box that looked like some sort of power supply. The emaciated form pulled a lab coat from a box on the side and slipped into it. He nodded at the blond man, who stepped back and slightly out of Miller’s range of sight.

“I’ll need your services after all,” said the wraith.

“Excellent. It’s good to be paid in full,” said the new arrival. He stepped closer to Miller and bent his head to the prisoner. “Mr. Miller, I believe? I’m Doctor Driesman,” began the thin man.

“Fuck you, too.”

The doctor nodded. “I can see why pain has failed. His defiance is heavily fueled by an innate hostility. Gives him strength.” The doctor grabbed what looked like a helmet from the cart, along with a heavily weighted stand. In a series of quick and sure movements, he affixed the helmet to the stand, wheeled it behind Miller, lowered the metal cap over Miller’s head, and latched the cap securely to his head. Miller sought to avoid the device, but he was restrained too well, and the doctor too practiced in his movements.

“This place is not sterile,” said the doctor absentmindedly. He brought the cart alongside the chair and adjusted a floor lamp to shine on Miller’s head.

“An infection won’t matter,” said the wraith. “He will be dead soon.”

“Yes, I assumed.” He released two plates from the cranial cap, leaving behind straps of metal that encircled Miller’s skull but that exposed large regions of his head. He began to press firmly through the hair to the bone underneath, probing.

“What the hell are you doing to me?” said Miller, trying to shake his body away from the man and his fingers.

The doctor spoke flatly as he examined the skull. “Please stop struggling. The only sensory neurons are in the scalp, not below. The pain will be minimal if you cooperate.”

“What pain?”

“From the holes I’ll drill in your skull.”

Miller began a spasmodic thrashing. Even with his subject so tightly restrained, the doctor had to step slightly to the side to avoid being inadvertently jostled. He pulled out several metallic clamps and affixed them to Miller’s arms, legs, and neck. Once he had tightened the screws on the plates, Miller was completely immobilized.

“There, now you’re in nice and tight.”

“You sick fucks!” Miller spat out.

“Please, I’m a specialist, hired at a premium for extractions.” The doctor began to remove items from the cart: scissors, a razor, a drill.

“Do you think you’ll scare me with this? He’s going to kill me anyway. I can take the pain. I’m not talking, so fuck you.”

“The intention is not to inflict pain, Mr. Miller,” said the doctor, as he began to snip away at the hair poking through the openings in the cap. “My client clearly has examined that route to no avail. But, in the end, you
will
talk. There is no doubt about that.”

“Like hell I will.”

The doctor sighed as he snipped down close to the skin. “It’s the same every time. Everyone believes that they have free will.” He replaced the scissors on the table and removed a large razor and shaving cream. “The brain is a machine, Mr. Miller. We often have trouble grasping the true significance of this because we arrogantly ascribe cosmic significance to our thoughts, our sense of self.” Applying the cream, he began to shave the skull. “But our thoughts come from cells surrounded by vessels, bathed in nutrients. They are networks of electrochemical signals. They follow the laws of biochemistry and physics. I give you a pharmacological compound—LSD, say—and suddenly your sense of the world and yourself is very, very different. The universe hasn’t changed, only the functioning of the machine called your brain. Like the heart, the stomach, the eye, the liver—an
organic
machine. It’s all really quite amazing, actually. We know a lot about how these organs work. We have learned a lot about the brain.”