Then he activated the sat phone and called the CIA contact in Germany. “Checkerboard, Checkerboard, this is Player Two.”
Contact was instantaneous. Ryan Winters had been waiting for this call. “Player Two, this is Checkerboard. Send your traffic and stand by for new information.”
“No time to wait, Checkerboard. Mission failed. Repeat, mission failed. Player One has gone berserk. Swanson tortured Nicky Marks to death and turned on me when I tried to stop him. Gunfight. I am hit and trying to egress. He is following me.”
Winters was stunned. He was supposed to pass along the urgent instructions for Swanson to break off the mission because his partner might be unstable, and return to base on the double. This radio call from Gibson flipped everything. “Player Two, Checkerboard. Are you all right?”
“Bleeding from a shoulder wound. I’m in cover for now. I need orders.” There was a moment of static, but before Winters could say anything, Gibson was talking again, louder and in a rush. “Gotta go! Gotta go! Aw, Jeez. He’s coming.…”
Well, that should keep them busy for a while, Gibson thought as he turned off the sat phone and trashed it, too. Two of the men lugged Marks’s body out the door and tossed it into the bed of a pickup truck, then covered it with canvas, tying the corners. The Toyota pulled away from the house and headed away from civilization.
Kyle Swanson saw shadows that firmed into shapes as he awoke, bound to a chair. “What?” he croaked, his throat aching and parched.
“Ah. Back from nappytime, are we?” The jovial voice of Luke Gibson registered. “You’re okay, Kyle. Just a little bump on the head. Here’s some more water.”
A firm hand gripped his jaw and a plastic bottle bumped his lips. He drank, swallowed, drank again, stopped. “What happened? Grenade? I don’t remember anything after Marks went down.”
“That’s because I knocked you out. You never saw it coming.”
“What the fuck, Gibson? Why am I tied up?”
Gibson put the bottle on a table and rocked back in a chair of his own. “You’re tied up because otherwise you would do something stupid, like try to kill me before I explain the situation. You’re a dangerous man, Kyle, so I can’t take that chance.”
Swanson tested the bonds. Duct tape was strapped around his chest, his hips, and probably his legs, because he couldn’t move his feet. His hands were loose in front of him, but handcuffed, and his watch was gone. He reached for the bottle, looking at Gibson, who made no move to stop him. He drank. A packet of aspirin was on the table, so he opened it and took two tablets, chasing them with another sip. “You contact Checkerboard yet?”
“Sure. Brought them up to date.”
“I thought I heard somebody talking. Marks?”
“Dead and gone.”
Kyle looked around the room. No body. He saw lots of blood in the open bathroom door. “What… the… hell… is… going… on?”
Gibson spread his hands as if to calm him. “Don’t sweat it about Marks. He was a rotten bastard anyway. As for you, I didn’t bring you here to hurt you, Kyle. To kill you, yes, eventually, but not for torture. In fact, I want you in top shape.”
Swanson’s head still hurt, but he was thinking more clearly as he sat back in the chair, seeming to relax a bit while taking a physical inventory. He raised his hands to his head and his fingers found a square bandage compress that had been taped over a small cut that still oozed liquid. He clenched his hands, his toes, and did isometrics to be sure everything still worked. He was tied in a peculiar way, but otherwise it seemed he was fine. “I never trusted you, Gibson. Not from the start.”
Gibson laughed as if he was truly amused and slapped the table a couple of times. “Yet here we are! I win!”
“You win? Win what?” Swanson flicked his eyes to a young man sitting in a shadowed corner. Slight, with an expressionless face that carried only a fuzz of beard. Age no more than fifteen. A Kalashnikov was propped next to him.
Gibson got to his feet and began to pace. He was in full flow, and Swanson didn’t interrupt. Let him talk and give away some nuggets of intelligence. Swanson kept his own mind busy on other things, looking for possible weapons, possible advantages. He stretched against the tautness of his bonds. There was little give to it, and he knew the fibers of duct tape were incredibly strong. He couldn’t bust his way free. A slow anger boiled inside, but he fought it back in order to remain calm. Somehow, someway, there had to be an exit.
“I was telling you about my father, remember? Well, he was a CIA guy, too, as was his father before him. I come from a long, long line of spooks, Kyle, dating back to the days of the British Raj. I was actually bred and trained from childhood for this kind of work. Just like some dads spend their afternoon training their sons to be professional athletes, mine taught me tradecraft.”
Swanson gave a small laugh. “Whoopie for you. Must have been a lot of fun.” Then he paused. “You’re crazy, Luke. You know that, right?”
“That depends on your definitions. Crazy enough to dream big dreams and then go out and make them come true. Crazy enough to be the best at everything I do.”
Swanson checked the kitchen. It was small, with a counter and some cabinets that seemed about to fall from the wall. He saw a small stove, which meant that the place was actually used for preparing meals. That meant a knife or two, perhaps some glasses or plates and other stuff. He inhaled and caught a whiff of stale food, and assumed it had been cooked, which meant that fire was available, probably with propane gas. He turned his attention back to the babbling Gibson. “What’s the plan here, Luke? Why didn’t you shoot me out there? You had plenty of chances?”
“Didn’t you hear me? Listen up. I’ve always been the best at everything. The CIA, through my family connections, first recruited me back in high school. If they could take a kid — the right kid, of course, not just anybody — and mold him through his formative years, they could create a professional of exceptional talent and possibilities.”
Swanson couldn’t let that curveball pass without a swing. “Kids lie about their age all the time to get into the service. Discovering a sixteen-year-old soldier isn’t a rare occurrence. They get trained fast, and a high-school dropout might become a combat medic or learn to speak Russian in six months. You aren’t so special.”
Gibson didn’t take the taunt. “By the time the recruiters hit the college campuses for juniors and seniors, they may find some with unique skills, all of them very bright, but some ten valuable years of learning have been wasted. By the time I was a junior, I was already running missions and helping my dad.”
Swanson nodded his chin toward the young fighter crouched in the corner, who apparently didn’t understand a word of English. He seemed bored. “You and I both have seen guns on boys in Africa who should have been in about the third grade. And how about your little punch boy over there, Luke? Doesn’t the fact that he’s probably illiterate kind of blow your élitist theory out of the water?”
“Children can be useful tools, that it true. Even a mosquito can bite. I created a group of boys called the Lions of the Caliphate. They cannot think and plan or see beyond tomorrow, and then they die as cannon fodder. Anyway, I don’t have to prove myself to you, Swanson. I’ve already beaten you several times.”
Water? The word made him look at the bottle on the table. This place had water and food supplies. A scan of the walls showed old nails and random screws sticking out. Propane plus nails equal bomb? Possible. A couple of lightbulbs showed that there was electricity. A broom and who knows what other housekeeping supplies would be around. In the right hands, this place had a lot of possibilities. Although he was bound like a chicken, he was beginning to feel better.