Ballistic(109)
“I . . . I’m not really. I just—”
“Look at me, boy!” Hanley’s voice, a low West Virginian drawl, boomed in the concrete dungeon.
“Yes, sir?”
“Take that stupid sock off of your face.”
Pfleger looked to Carlos, the Black Suit in the room, for help, then to the federales. Then to the Little Butcher, then to the young protégé with the leather apron. All the Mexicans just stood there, did nothing at all. Slowly, Jerry removed the mask. Stuck it in his pocket.
“Do I look like I’m with the Office of the Inspector General?” Hanley asked, again his voice boomed like artillery.
Jerry shook his head a very little bit. “No, sir.”
“Okay, then. Relax. I’m not with State, and I’m sure as shit not here for you.” Hanley turned back to Gentry. “I’m here for the big fish.”
Jerry breathed an audible sigh. Said, “So this is the guy you are looking for?”
Hanley nodded. Confirmed. “It’s him.”
“Awesome. And there is a reward, right?”
“Yep.”
“Awesome,” repeated Pfleger. “What did he do?”
Hanley looked close into the face of the prisoner once again. Studying it. “What did he do? What did you do, Violator?”
“I did what I was ordered to do. And you gave the orders.”
“Not when you went off the reservation.”
For the first time Court lifted his head, as if his anger gave him strength. “I never went off res. I followed Zack’s op orders to the letter. Always! And then you ordered the team to kill me!”
“Ancient history.”
“Then why are you here?”
Hanley smiled. Took a step back from Gentry and looked around the room.
Hanley looked over the torturer’s gear on the rolling cart. He spoke Spanish. “Nice. Primitive, but nice.”
“¿Primitivo? What do you mean? This is the best—”
“Nah, chubby, we were using shit like this in the late eighties.” That was Spanish, but he turned to Court and switched to his native tongue. “I lit up a bunch of Noriega’s enforcers with one of these bad boys at Howard Air Force Base during ‘Just Cause.’ ”
Hanley reached for the dial. Switched back to Spanish. “May I?”
The Little Butcher smiled just a bit. “Of course, but he is tough. I’ve blown two fuses on this gringo . . . this norteamericano, I mean.”
Hanley looked at Court, turned the dial. Sent a strong electric shock into the central nervous system of his ex-subordinate. Gentry’s body spasmed and jerked; every muscle flexed taught; the sinews in his jaw looked like guitar strings wound tight under his skin.
After he’d turned the dial back down, Hanley chuckled. “That never gets old.” He looked at the fat man. “It’s a little weak, isn’t it?”
“The battery is drained. This man has taken most of its power.”
“He is tough.”
Carlos, Spider’s second-in-command, stepped forward and spoke in English. “Now that you know we have the man you seek, we will take you back to Chapultepec Park. Once we have finished with the prisoner, we will dump his remains near the embassy as agreed.”
Hanley nodded. “He has some information you are trying to extract, or is all this just for shits and grins?”
Carlos just looked at the blond American. He did not understand. “Shit . . . a . . . greens?”
“The prisoner. You need him to tell you something?”
Carlos just nodded.
Hanley looked down to the bucket on the floor. The metal prod jutted out of it. “Oh . . . I see. It’s about to get intimate around here.” He continued looking around. At the surgical implements on the table, at a shelf full of containers, restraints, electrical tape, and other odds and ends. He looked back at the men in the room around him.
No one spoke.
Hanley continued. “I would like to stay for the interrogation.”
Carlos shook his head. “That will not be possible. We do not know how much time it will take.”
“Too bad,” said Hanley, then he turned back to Gentry. “Hey, asshole. Wake up. Do you have any idea how much pain you have caused me?”
Court’s head hung low again, but he managed a smile. “You aren’t the first to tell me that.”
“I was going places. I was on the way up.”
“Then what happened?”
“Then one day I get word that one of my door kickers fucked up. It was a fuckup that could have been extremely politically damaging for the United States. A deal was done, a deal between us and another nation, and an agreement was made. If we cleaned up our own mess, if we got rid of the offending party, then this foreign nation would let the matter slide.