Her eyes flashed open as violent and simultaneous tremors of pleasure and pain shook her body. She gazed up at him with sadness as the realization struck her, he saw — which only drove him to his own pleasure harder.
Panic and the will to survive overwhelmed her, and she tried to fight him. She grabbed and clawed at his fingers as he began to come, but she quickly succumbed and closed her eyes as his orgasm exploded inside her.
When it was over he tumbled down onto the blanket beside her corpse, barely able to breathe. It had been the most intense orgasm of his life.
He’d been foolish to think he’d finally found someone he wanted to care for. He was a natural born killer, not a knight in shining armor.
His eyes narrowed as he gazed up through the darkness at the jungle canopy. It was time to get back to civilization and see what was on that flash drive.
CHAPTER 15
Troy hated this part of it. He always had, ever since that night six years ago when he’d watched Shane Maddux interrogate a confirmed al-Qaeda agent.
That had been his first brush with the use of torture to gain information. He hadn’t taken part in the session in any way, other than being a witness. But it had made a lasting impression. He’d suffered nightmares for weeks afterward, despite knowing what the man had done.
That session had taken place in the middle of a ten-thousand-acre ranch fifteen miles outside the tiny town of Ennis, Montana, which was set in the wide, beautiful Madison River Valley southwest of Bozeman. Maddux had whipped the man’s back and legs into bloody pulps over the course of the early-morning hours.
But there was no other option if you wanted quick answers out of horrible people like that man — and the prick strung up before Troy now. You had to use the prospect and use of imminent and excruciating pain, and ultimately, death, as your tools of the trade. After almost a decade inside RC7, Troy was absolutely convinced of that. Even terrorists with no discernible heart or soul at some point reacted obediently to intense pain that was skillfully applied by a trained expert over an extended period of time.
Protecting the United States in the loneliest, darkest shadows where the worst of all evil hatched was a dirty, dirty business. But if you wanted to be successful and you wanted to protect a vulnerable and freedom-loving population from horrific episodes like 9/11 or the Holiday Mall Attacks, that was where you operated. And you had to fight fire with fire while you were in there.
The short, squat man with scraggly gray whiskers who was standing before Troy had personally arranged and executed bloody restaurant bombings in Madrid and Manila that had killed and wounded more than three hundred innocent civilians — including seventeen children and two pregnant women. There was no doubt whatsoever that this was the man behind the bombings, either. His identity was certain, and his crimes were not in question. He was a murderer and a coward, and he deserved what he was getting tonight.
“What are you doing in my country?” Troy demanded as he moved in front of the blindfolded man, who was naked from the waist up. Troy grimaced as the stench of body odor invaded his nostrils once again. “Come on, Hamid, out with it.”
Official U.S. intel assets had been tracking Hamid for months, hoping he would head to the United States, where he could be taken quietly without incident. They’d gotten their wish yesterday when he’d boarded a flight from Athens to New York, and they’d picked him up moments after he’d eased behind the steering wheel of his rental car at JFK. Then they’d brought him to Troy because legally they couldn’t do what Troy could. They could detain him, but they couldn’t use all necessary force without risking a congressional inquiry and criminal prosecution. So they let Troy do the dirty work.
“Tell me now, Hamid, and I’ll go easier on you. Otherwise… well, I think you know what’s going to happen.”
“Fuck you.”
“I can do anything I want to you,” Troy explained calmly, ignoring the defiant response. “And I do mean anything. I’m not like the people you’ve had contact with before. I have no constraints on me, like the people who arrested you at JFK. Do you understand that?”
“Fuck you again! Harder!”
Hamid’s hands were cuffed together above his head and then strung with a stout rope to a steel beam that spanned the top of the cell. The rope was pulled so taut that the balls of Hamid’s feet barely grazed the cell’s cement floor as he swung. He’d been secured like this for hours, and his growing discomfort was obvious. He was sweating profusely in the hot room, moaning loudly every few seconds, and constantly shifting his weight as much as possible to try and relieve the intense pressure grinding at his shoulders.
“Come on,” Troy coaxed in a faux-friendly tone, “talk to me. I don’t want to hurt you, my friend.”
“You’ll get nothing out of me,” Hamid gasped. “And you’re not my friend.”
“Well, I guess you got me on that one.” It was time for progress — which meant a more direct approach to this session. “You murdered those people in Spain and the Philippines. Women and children who had their arms and legs ripped off and were in agony until they bled out. I think you and your associates are planning something like that for my people here in the United States now. I think you’ve got lots to tell me, Hamid. So get to it.”
“I tell you nothing, you fucking pig. You know you have to let me go when I don’t—”
Troy laid the braided whip down hard on Hamid’s bare, sweaty back, and the short, fat man yelped loudly and then whined in horrible pain as he struggled wildly though vainly at the cuffs securing his wrists together above his head. But he wasn’t going anywhere — and the cell was soundproof. Bill Jensen had made certain of that long ago. No one in the rest of the mansion could hear anything of this.
“Tell me,” Troy demanded, conjuring up an image in his mind of one of the kids who’d died in Madrid. “Now!”
She was eleven, a beautiful dark-haired Spanish girl who had both arms blown off when the bomb exploded but lived for ten tortuous minutes afterward, asking over and over in a fading whisper if her mom and little brother were all right — which they weren’t. Troy had seen pictures of the girl and spoken to a first responder who’d stayed with her until she’d finally and thankfully closed her eyes for the last time. Remembering those pictures and the emotional words of that responder helped him justify tonight.
“Now!” he shouted again, laying the whip on even more brutally this time.
Hamid screamed in what Troy knew was almost unimaginable pain. The whip braids were laced with an acid that seeped quickly through the wounds and into the bloodstream and made the subject feel as if his skin was on fire. But Hamid wouldn’t pass out. He would remain conscious, because the acid also contained a stimulant that entered the bloodstream directly from the braids as well, and kept the subject as awake and alert as if he were ingesting crack cocaine.
“Tell me what I want to know, Hamid, or I’ll—”
Too late Troy recognized what was coming. He dodged most of the liquid missile, but some of Hamid’s saliva still caught him in the face.
Troy wiped the thick drops away with the back of his hand. A little of the spit had landed on his lips, and now he could actually taste the other man, not just see and smell him. He spat out the invasive saliva just in case there was something deadly inside it, but not at Hamid, as most would have. His cruelty had its limits. There had to be some measure of civility inside this insanity.