Ballistic(101)

Once off the elevator, he was pushed forward a few yards and then spun around, his hands were unfastened, and then his body was pressed up against cold metal bars. A fence, perhaps? His arms were simultaneously outstretched and cuffed wide away from his body, two men on each appendage. The insides of his legs were kicked until he spread them, and his ankles were shackled in irons, with his legs spread wide open.

His back and arms and legs and butt pressed up against cold metal.

A pair of long, cold sheers entered his boxer shorts. He tried to recoil from the sharp metal, but he could not get away. His underwear was cut from his body. He was totally naked now, chained spreadeagle against cold metal.

He began to shake in the cold.

Only then was his hood pulled off his head. Steam obstructed his view for a moment as it poured from his hair and beard; thick beads dripped from his eyelashes onto his cheeks and tickled as they trickled down through his facial hair to his chin.

The room was a square, stone basement, twenty by twenty, with a low ceiling and a cement floor. A bare overhead bulb in the center illuminated the middle of the room and the majority of the walls, but left the corners completely black. He smelled the mold in the room, but that was not all.

He also smelled the unmistakable scent of death. This was a kill house, a torture chamber. There was dried blood on the walls, and the cement floor was stained with black rivulets of blood that led towards the drain in the center of the room.

Across from Court was the wooden door of the freight elevator. Next to that was a narrow stairwell with no door.

Four men stood around—two dressed in the uniform of the federal police. They’d removed their masks and goggles and helmets, but their submachine guns hung from their chest rigs.

The other two men wore leather aprons. They were Mexicans; they were not cops; they looked serious and sinister. One of them was short and fat; his head was bald and covered in sweat that shone in the light above him. He was hard at work on some sort of wheeled table not more than six feet ahead and to the left of Gentry. The other was a young man, perhaps twenty, dressed the same as the older.

These would be Gentry’s torturers; he was certain of it.

There were no Black Suits in the room, which Court initially took as a good sign, but he had to search hard for that silver lining. A few feet in front of the iron fence or grate onto which his naked body was now chained, a car battery sat on a dolly, and wires wound their way up to a metal contraption on the rolling table. More coiled wires ran from this machine and ended at large roach clips that were fastened to Gentry’s grate.

Court had been around. He knew an electroconvulsive torture device when he saw one. And right now, he was bare-assed naked and attached to one.

“Welcome to hell,” the fat man said in Spanish. “I will be your tour guide as we visit the horrific, agonizing, and slow end to your life.”

Gentry said nothing.

“They call me el Carnicerito.” The Little Butcher. The short, fat, bald-headed man said this though he was still distracted by his work; he arranged devices on the rolling table while he talked. Saws, hand drills, a stainless steel mallet that gleamed in the light of the bare bulb. Knives, forceps, kerrisons rongeurs, and other surgical tools covered the horizontal surfaces of the table. Without looking up from his equipment, he continued, “I work for Don Daniel. I produce pain, and I extract information from those reluctant to give it. I am extremely good at what I do.”

“Your mother must be proud.” Court affected the macho comment, but he wasn’t feeling it. He pulled and kicked against his restraints, and he could tell that he would not be getting himself off of this contraption.

In short, he was fucking toast.

El Carnicerito just smiled. “This is my protégé.” He waved a fat hand towards the young man in the apron. Then he returned to his work at the table. He turned a dial on the machine slightly, and Court felt electricity tingle his spine. The fat man looked at a dial on the face of the black device. Apparently, it was just a test, because he inflicted no pain. He turned the dial back down and looked up at his victim.

“The electricity is just one measure I have at my disposal. Within the next few hours you will endure indescribable suffering.”

El Carnicerito stepped forward, close to Court’s body, and reached up with a rubber glove, began picking glass out of the cuts in the American’s chest inflicted by the federale coming through the window. Court winced with pain but tried to keep his face as impassive as possible; he did not want to encourage this sadist by showing how much it hurt.

The man smiled; Court could plainly see that an idea had entered the butcher’s head. He turned quickly and stepped over to the protégé, and he delivered a quiet command. His subordinate nodded and hurriedly left the room via the stairwell.