Third Strike (33 page)
“What ‘desperate times’?” Terry demanded.
“Whether you want to believe it or not, Ms. O’Loughlin, we are at war. The enemies of our country plot against us constantly,” Collingwood said. “We must, ah, use every means at our disposal to combat that threat.”
“And that includes torturing innocent women?” Terry threw at him, the anger almost, but not quite, subjugating her fear. She rose, shoulders stiff. “I must have missed the day they taught
that
class at law school.”
that
class at law school.”
“Sacrifices have to be made,” Collingwood said blankly. “Collateral damage.”
Collateral damage. Is that how Vondie thought of me? She was going to pump me full of drugs, knowing what they’d do to an unborn child. Was that just collateral damage, or was she simply having a good time?
“Is that all Dr. Lee was to you?” she asked. “And his wife? And Charlie, her parents, Sean? Me?” She stepped forwards, looked him straight in the eye. “What about me, Mr. Collingwood? Am I just collateral damage, too?”
He stared back and I saw his shoulders drop a fraction. For a second, I thought she might actually have got through to him.
“Yes,” he said. He bent his elbow to bring the Glock up, pointing straight at her. “Move back a little farther, if you don’t mind, Ms. O’Loughlin. I really would hate to have to kill you unless it was entirely necessary.”
“Yes, I’d hate that, too,” said a voice from the doorway, and Sean slid into view fast and smooth. Like Collingwood, he too had a Glock, but he was holding it at shoulder height, right hand supported by left, finger inside the guard and already taking up the first stage of the trigger, which acted as the safety. The gun was a hairsbreadth from firing, but Sean’s voice was steady, relaxed, showing no strain.
His eyes darted sideways, just once, but I knew he’d taken in the whole thing in that single rapid survey. Knew he’d seen what they’d done to me, could fill in most of the rest.
But not all of it, Sean.
For the first time since he’d entered the room, Collingwood’s face showed a hint of unease. He glanced at Terry, not letting the muzzle of his own gun deviate. He gave a kind of sad smile and looked back at Sean.
“You pull that trigger, son, chances are I’ll fire anyhow.”
Sean shook his head and smiled politely. “Two through the mouth will take out your brain stem,” he said. “The only thing you’ll do is die. Quickly.”
“You Special Forces boys are all the same—all show,” Collingwood said. “Had a sniper in Afghanistan who swore the same thing to me. Tried it on a rebel who was holding a ten-year-old girl hostage. Bastard still blew her brains out as he dropped.”
“Perhaps your sniper wasn’t as good as he thought he was.”
Sean was good enough, I knew. He always had been. And if they’d matched off hand-to-hand, he was good enough to break Collingwood’s neck before the older guy had a chance to spit.
“Perhaps he wasn’t,” Collingwood said. “Either way, somehow I don’t think you’ll risk it, son. Not today. So, I’ll give you three seconds to put that gun down before I shoot the lady lawyer here. One.”
Sean’s Glock stayed up and on target. So did Collingwood’s. It was Terry who’d begun to tremble. Sean didn’t waver.
What kind of a father will he make?
“Two.”
Sean shifted slightly. Collingwood wouldn’t have been human if he hadn’t let his gaze slide sideways to check the movement. As if they’d planned it, Terry O’Loughlin leapt forwards, her right foot swinging, and kicked him in the balls like she was hoping for nothing better than to see them reappear as lumps in his throat.
Collingwood’s reactions were nowhere near as good as Sean’s had been under the same circumstances. The government man didn’t even get to twitch before the blow landed. He certainly didn’t get the chance to take a shot of his own before Sean was on him, twisting the gun out of his nerveless fingers.
Collingwood folded up slowly, mouth working without producing sound other than a slow exhalation, like the last gasp of a deflating rubber dingy. Sean watched him go down and turned away.
“I have to hand it to you, Terry,” he said as he came past her, “you’ve got one hell of a set of legs on you.”
“Mm,” she said, breathless, her voice almost remote. “I played soccer in college.”
“Yeah, and I’ll bet you were a striker.” He bent in front of me, fingers under my chin to tip my head back, checking the size of my pupils. “What did they give you, Charlie?” he asked, and if he seemed cold and detached, I knew that was the only way he could deal with this.
“They stuck me with something to put me out after they cattle-prodded me,” I said. My throat felt raw like I’d been screaming. I nodded towards the smashed contents of the trolley. “Vondie was after payback as much as info, I think, but she didn’t get a chance to add anything else to the mix.”
He brushed my chin with gentle fingers, brought my focus back. “Good,” he said softly, and smiled at me.
I nearly told him right then. Nearly let it burst out of me, but the words just lodged in my throat.
“What?” Sean said quickly, but behind us Collingwood got enough of his breath back to begin to groan.
“It’ll keep,” I said, dredging up a smile of my own from reserves I didn’t know I had.
It’ll keep until I know for certain.
We heard footsteps outside the door. Sean turned, braced, shielding my body with his own, but it was my father who came in. On the outside, he looked as together as always, even his tie was perfectly knotted. But inside was a different story. He saw Collingwood stirring limply on the floor, then caught sight of Vondie’s body and froze. It was the sight of him, more than of Sean, that snapped me back to reality.
I struggled for my feet, had to claw my way up the wall to make it. “How the hell did you both get in?”
“Terry,” Sean said shortly, but his eyes were on my father. “Turns out there
was
a back way, after all.”
was
a back way, after all.”
Terry had found my clothes. They must have been stashed somewhere close but I hadn’t seen them. She handed them over, flushed, looking miserable. I needed help to get into them again. My father had seen me naked more times than either of us could count, but he still kept his back turned while Terry and I struggled.
Going to need practice dressing someone else—someone helpless—aren’t you, Fox?
I shut it out, yanked on my shirt with enough force to split a seam at the back of the arm, then let Terry nudge my fat fingers aside to button it.
“Did you get hold of Parker?” I asked Sean.
“We tried—believe me,” he said with feeling. “It went to voice mail every time. I’ve left him half a dozen messages.”
“Voice mail?”
“Yeah. I’m hoping that means he’s in flight.” He had moved up alongside my father and there was something strangely similar about the way both of them stood and gazed down at Collingwood while he got himself back together.
“Where’s Elizabeth?” my father demanded, in a quiet arctic tone I didn’t quite recognize, even from him.
Collingwood looked up, eyed the pair of them. “My guys’ll have taken her somewhere nice and, ah,
safe,
” he said. “How long she stays that way depends on you. You let me go and maybe she might come out of this in one piece.”
safe,
” he said. “How long she stays that way depends on you. You let me go and maybe she might come out of this in one piece.”
Sean stepped forwards and hit him in the face, a casual downward left that nevertheless had all his weight and muscle behind it, delivered so fast it seemed no more than a trick of the light. One moment the government man was half-sitting, propped on an elbow. The next, his head jerked back and bounced off the wall behind him. He rode it as best he could, brought a hand up and tested the inside of his lip.
He smiled for the first time, a full-blown grin.
“Is that the best you’ve got, Meyer?” he said, spitting out a bubble of blood. He reached up and tugged at his hair, and a section of it covering his crown came loose and dropped into his lap. Underneath the toupee, the top of his head was completely bald. The ugly scar tissue shone in reddened blotches like a crude patchwork quilt.
“I was an intel man working with the Afghanis,” he said. “Got ambushed by a group still loyal to the Taliban. They had me three days—
three days
—and I didn’t tell them a thing, Meyer. Think you’ve got three days to work on me now?”
three days
—and I didn’t tell them a thing, Meyer. Think you’ve got three days to work on me now?”
“I don’t need three days.”
My father’s voice was utterly calm. Even the underlying tension that normally characterized his speech, gave it its distinctive clip, was gone. His face was a mask. I recognized the sight and sound of him, but not the man beneath.
“Richard—”
“I know more about the human body, its strengths and weaknesses, than you will learn in a lifetime,” he said, cutting Sean off with a faint little half smile.
“And you think you can hurt me more than a tribe of Afghanis with bayonets and a fire pit?” Collingwood threw at him.
“Hurting you would be barbaric and pointless. The body’s memory for pain is generally poor,” my father said disdainfully. “No doubt you can recall the emotions attached to the pain you experienced when you were tortured, Mr. Collingwood, rather than the actual pain itself.” He let his gaze settle softly onto the government man. “I have no intention of causing you any more pain than is absolutely necessary.”
He walked across to the fallen trolley, ignoring Vondie’s body as though she’d never existed. He picked up one of the pairs of latex gloves and pulled them on with practiced ease, turning back to his “patient” with something approaching a smooth bedside manner.
“No pain, huh?” Collingwood said, almost with a snort. “You haven’t grasped this whole interrogation idea, have you, Doc?”
“It is a new experience for me, I admit,” my father murmured. “Of course, if you continue to refuse to release my wife, unharmed, I do intend to cause you irreversible physical damage.”
Beside me, Terry took in a gasp of air.
“You might prefer not to see this, Ms. O’Loughlin,” my father said politely, glancing in her direction. “Your colleague was injured just outside. He was unconscious and I placed him into the recovery position, but it might be as well to check on him, if you wouldn’t mind?”
Terry nodded, a little dazed, and stumbled out. Without her support, I had to lean heavily on the nearest wall for balance. It was just the aftereffects of the TASER hit and the drug they’d given me, I told myself, but I had to forcefully bring to mind what had been done to me in this room, on Collingwood’s orders. What they’d been prepared to do to me, regardless of the consequences. And what they might also have been doing, out of sight, to my mother.
My torso felt shaky, my gut churning. I had a vision of my internal organs already parting and shifting like a giant puzzle, repositioning themselves to accommodate the growth of a child.
It’s a lie! It has to be a lie.
My father turned to Sean. “I’m going to need his shirt off,” he said. “And a very sharp knife.”
Sean holstered the Glock and dragged Collingwood upright. The government man tried to resist, but Sean danced him face first into the block work and held him there with unforgiving fingers digging in to the pressure points at the back of his scrawny neck.
He bent close to Collingwood’s ear. “I’ll rip it off you if I have to. Your choice.”
Collingwood’s struggles continued and Sean roughly loosened the cheap tie, then grabbed the back of the collar and yanked. The buttons popped and scattered. I could only watch, the way Vondie must have watched while Buzz-cut and the pickup driver stripped the clothes off me.
Collingwood had a lot of body hair. It covered his chest and back like a thick black pelt, showing glimpses of skinny white flesh beneath. I could see his ribs flexing as his breathing quickened, but his nerve still held. There were more scars there, the crisscross of old lash marks where he’d been beaten till he bled. My father froze at the sight of them. Even Sean paused, sucked in a quiet breath.
“Think you can, ah,
match
that?” Collingwood asked over his shoulder, pride hot and strong. “You’re a
civilized
man. That was done to me by savages.”
match
that?” Collingwood asked over his shoulder, pride hot and strong. “You’re a
civilized
man. That was done to me by savages.”
“All men are savages under the skin, Mr. Collingwood,” my father said, icy in his control now. “Your agent, and her associate, terrorized my wife in her own home. They threatened to beat and rape her—on, I have no doubt, your orders. Did they also stand over Miranda Lee while she slipped into unconsciousness? That tends to take the shine off one’s sense of decency and fair play.”
Sean caught sight of the restraints hanging from the ceiling and, just for a second, a stillness came over him that I recognized as rage.
He rammed his elbow into Collingwood’s kidneys, hard enough to blind him, and swung him away from the wall. By the time the older man had got his breath back, Sean had cuffed his hands over his head and had stepped back, leaving him to sway there. Collingwood’s back was towards me and, cowardly, I was glad I couldn’t see his face.
Sean reached into his own trouser pocket and pulled out a folding lock knife with a wicked four-inch blade, snapped it open and presented it, handle first, to my father.
My father’s face showed nothing other than concentration as he moved round so he could meet Collingwood’s eyes, holding the knife up so it was in plain sight as he examined the blade.
“Not quite the edge I’m accustomed to, but I’m sure it will suffice,” he said. He looked up. “As you so rightly pointed out, Mr. Collingwood, we don’t have three days. I want my wife, and you’re going to tell me where she is. If you don’t, I will insert the blade of this knife between various of your vertebrae, severing your spinal cord at that point. The longer you refuse to talk, the higher I will go. I have been a surgeon for more than thirty years and, however hard you’ve tried to ruin my reputation, the fact remains that I am highly skilled in these matters.”
My eyes snapped to Sean’s and I saw the shock there, but the respect, too. It sickened me. I took a step forwards, stumbled and would have fallen if Sean hadn’t grabbed me, propped me back upright against the nearest wall.
My God. We can’t let him do this.
I can.
I slumped, pressing an arm across my belly like I was shielding it from witnessing any of this. I imagined a minute fetus sucking cells out of my brain, building itself out of my DNA, somehow absorbing the imprint of everything I’d seen and done. I shut my eyes.
“Here,” Sean said. “You look like you could use these.”
I opened my eyes again, to see he was holding my bottle of Vicodin in his outstretched palm. You were not supposed to take it with alcohol, I remembered sharply, or if you were operating heavy machinery, or had liver disease. Or if you were pregnant.
And if Vondie
wasn’t
lying …
wasn’t
lying …
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m fine.”
My father had circled behind Collingwood, who tried to twist with him but the restraints brought him up short. He was starting to sweat.
My father stopped directly behind him and laid his gloved fingers very carefully on the man’s lower spine, right around his belt line. I saw the quiver of reaction, quickly stilled.
“Injuries to the lumbar or sacral region of the spinal canal usually result in decreased control of the legs, hips and anus,” my father said, matter-of-fact, as though he was delivering a lecture to a group of his medical students. “There is also the likelihood of bowel, bladder and sexual dysfunction.”
Collingwood let out a shaky laugh. “You can’t do this, Doc,” he said, and I wondered if it was us or himself he was trying to convince. “Meyer there, or your little girl, now, they’ve got the look. I’ve seen enough killers in my time to know. But you? You’re a doctor—sworn to
uphold
life, not to destroy it.”
uphold
life, not to destroy it.”
“Quite so,” my father agreed easily. “Just as I imagine that
you,
Mr. Collingwood, have sworn to serve and protect your country. It’s the interpretation of that oath that makes the difference, wouldn’t you say? If,” he added, without waiting for a reply, “by sacrificing your health, your mobility, I retrieve my wife, unhurt, then the end will have justified the means.”
you,
Mr. Collingwood, have sworn to serve and protect your country. It’s the interpretation of that oath that makes the difference, wouldn’t you say? If,” he added, without waiting for a reply, “by sacrificing your health, your mobility, I retrieve my wife, unhurt, then the end will have justified the means.”
They were the same words Collingwood himself had used to Terry, back in the lobby. He couldn’t possibly have known that, of course. Just fate running one of those odd parallels.
My father walked his fingers slowly a little farther up Collingwood’s back. The government man was thin enough that the ridges of his vertebrae stood out like the plates of a prehistoric stegosaurus, just as easily defined.
“Damage to the thoracic spine results in paraplegia,” my father went on. “You’re likely to retain control of your hands but not your abdominal muscles, so you will not only be confined to a wheelchair and catheterized, but you will have to be strapped in like a rag doll.”
“Pretty pictures you’re painting, Doc,” Collingwood said. He was sweating badly now, and even he heard the desperate edge, the false bravado, in his tone. But he had guts, I’ll give him that. “I can’t say I approve, but you have, ah, a certain style.”
“How’s this for a ‘pretty picture,’ Mr. Collingwood?” my father snapped, his face tight and white across his bones. “Spending your days tied to a wheelchair, shitting into a bag, pissing into a tube, and never having another hard-on for the rest of your life.”
My mouth dropped open, I know it did. My father was cold and clinical and there were times when I would have sworn he had ice in his veins, but I’d never heard him stoop to crudeness. Never heard him really swear, or lose his temper, or make an off-color remark. That shocked me more than the violence of what he was proposing.
It must have taken Collingwood aback, too. He was silent as my father’s fingers walked higher still, to somewhere up above his shoulder blades. “Cervical injuries are the most debilitating,” my father went on, toneless again now, his outburst forgotten. “They normally result in what is known as full or partial tetraplegia—complete paralysis. C-7—here—is the last point at which you can still expect to live any kind of independent existence. You may have some control over your arms, but your hands and fingers will be compromised.”
“The Afghanis beat the soles of my feet, flayed the skin off my back, broke both my arms, my hands, and my left leg in three places,” Collingwood said, like he was clinging on to the conviction that whatever was about to happen now would not—could not—be worse. “They left me to die in the mountains.”
“Yes,” my father said distantly, “but you didn’t die. And you must have known that, should you survive, there was every chance of recovery.” He moved slower now, counting off each rise. “C-6 means you’ll entirely lose the use of your hands. C-5 and C-4—you might perhaps be able to move your shoulders and biceps, getting weaker, naturally. At C-3 you lose diaphragm function. You’ll need a ventilator to breathe.”
His fingers were almost at the back of Collingwood’s neck now, delicate, light.
“I don’t think you need to know about anything higher—the atlas and axis. You’d be dead. And I have no intention of letting you take the easy way out.” He leaned closer, so he could almost whisper in Collingwood’s ear. “Not like your people gave poor Jeremy Lee the easy way out. But that was after his spine had collapsed over a period of months, causing chronic pain as well as a gradual paralysis. Do you consider it ironic, Mr. Collingwood, that the same fate is going to befall you?”
He stepped back, seemed to shake himself, glanced at Sean’s expressionless face but carefully avoided mine. “The incision itself will be excruciating—albeit briefly,” he said. “You might want to hold his legs.”
“Wait a minute—” Collingwood sounded breathless, but that could just have been from the way he was hanging. He twisted again, struggling now. Sean anchored his legs while I stood as a helpless bystander, unable to stop the sudden runaway plunge of thoughts inside my head.
Hey, Mummy, what did you and Daddy and Grandpa do in the war?
“You don’t have a minute,” my father said. He steadied the tip of the knife against the skin covering Collingwood’s spine. “You have participated in the deaths of two people of whom I was extremely fond. You have ruined my career, ordered the torture of my daughter, and now you are holding my wife. Say good-bye to your legs, Mr. Collingwood.”
His hand slid forwards and the blade penetrated, sending a vivid viscous spill of scarlet across the pallid skin.
Collingwood shrieked. His body voided, but still the overwhelming stench in that room was sweat and blood and fear. Sean let go and staggered back as if, right up to that point, he’d believed my father was bluffing. A part of me had believed it, too.
Collingwood’s knees buckled, so he was hanging entirely from his arms. I saw his spine flex, saw the ripple of vertebrae as he collapsed, then realized that he was still moving his feet. Still capable of doing so.
My own legs refused to keep me upright and I slid, very slowly, to the base of the wall.
“The next cut,” my father said, unconcerned, mopping away some of the ooze with Collingwood’s own tattered shirt, “will be for real.”
“She’s in the lab!” Collingwood almost screamed it. “In the research lab. Second level. They haven’t touched her. They’re waiting for my orders. They haven’t touched her! Please! You have to believe me.”
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