Ward nodded. “Thank you for explaining all that.”
“What is it, son?” Bill asked. A nostalgic look had crept into Ward’s face.
“I was just thinking about Mr. Carlson. He was a great man. I miss him.”
“We all do. And you’re right, John, Roger was a great man.”
CHAPTER 17
“Tell me, damn it!” Troy gritted his teeth. This prick was proving far more difficult to break than he’d anticipated. “You know something. Tell me.”
“Fuck you,” Hamid gasped. “You’ll never get anything out of me.”
Hamid was hanging upside down, suspended by his ankles, with his wrists now cuffed behind his back. The top of his head was only inches above a fifty-five-gallon drum filled with freezing water. Several strands of the terrorist’s gray hair grazed the water’s surface as he dangled above the drum. Troy ripped the blindfold from Hamid’s eyes so he could see what was coming.
“Tell me,” Troy demanded when he was certain Hamid fully grasped the imminently dire nature of his predicament. “Now!”
“I tell you nothing.”
But Hamid’s tone was not nearly as determined as it had been seconds ago. And terror suddenly filled his expression. For the first time, death was in play. Shane Maddux had taught him well, Troy realized. The crack in the armor had finally appeared. Now it was just a matter of time. But seconds always mattered. Maddux had taught him that, too. They’d been very close at one time, and despite all that had happened and Jack’s hatred of Maddux, Troy still respected the hell out of the man. Maddux had many personal faults. There could be no doubt. But there was no man more committed to the safety and security of a nation.
“Tell me!”
“No!”
Troy pressed a button on the remote he held in his left hand, lowering Hamid until his head was into the ice-cold water up to his eyebrows and he began thrashing around to stay clear of it.
As Hamid flailed about, Troy hustled to a cage that was sitting on the table between the whip and the cattle prod, reached inside to one corner, and, despite his intense trepidation, grabbed the five-foot-long snake behind the head before it could strike. Then, as the bright orange serpent wrapped its sinewy body tightly around his forearm, he headed back to where the terrorist hung.
Troy pressed another button on the remote to lift Hamid. As soon as Hamid was clear of the water’s surface, Troy held the reptile out so its head and flickering tongue were inches from the terrorist’s face. It was a harmless corn snake, but Hamid had no idea, and he began screaming like a newborn baby. Still, he wouldn’t give away his secrets.
Troy lowered Hamid back into the water, this time below his shoulders so he couldn’t lift himself up enough to breathe. Troy counted to twenty before he raised Hamid’s head out of the water, then pressed the snake’s head to the terrorist’s mouth. The snake bit down hard on Hamid’s upper lip, and the short, squat man screamed even as he coughed, snorted water out of his nose, and fought desperately to breathe.
“I tell you, I tell you!” he shouted desperately. “I tell you everything.”
Troy pulled the snake from Hamid’s lip and lowered the terrorist back into the barrel of water one more time just for good measure. To make certain he spilled everything there was to spill with no further delay.
He nodded to himself as Hamid’s mouth broke the surface with another push of the button. The prick was already spilling his guts, already in mid-sentence babbling details about the plot and where it would take place.
Oh, yes, Shane Maddux had taught him very well.
Shannon raced through the darkness and the field of wispy, knee-high grass. She had no idea where she was. The ride in the van earlier tonight had seemed to last forever from beneath her blindfold, and the horizon was dark in every direction. The farmhouse was two hundred yards behind her and getting farther away fast — as fast as she could sprint. But she had no idea where she was going. She knew only that she was putting as much distance between herself and the house as fast as she could.
She’d flexed her wrists as tightly as she could earlier, while the man was binding her to the chair with the rope. That had enabled her to free herself when he’d finally left her alone. When she’d relaxed her wrists, there had been a tiny bit of play in the bonds, and that had been enough. She’d quickly freed herself and then found her way out of the dark house through a small basement window at the top of the cement wall.
Dogs began barking wildly back in the direction of the farmhouse as she stopped for an instant and leaned over with her hands on her knees to try and get her breath.
Fear rushed through her body like it never had when she realized that the dogs were coming for her. They were the hunters — and she was their prey.
She headed for the edge of the woods, but the dogs were too fast. She could hear them panting as they closed in, and she screamed an instant before the lead hound sprang into the air and knocked her down into the wispy grass. She’d been so close.
They wouldn’t make the same mistake this time — if they decided to let her live.
CHAPTER 18
“You did a nice job with John Ward.” Shane Maddux sat on the other side of the small table, in the chair Ward had been sitting in a short time ago. “He was impressed. I could tell. He’ll make sure everyone inside knows that Red Cell Seven is absolutely immune from prosecution.” Maddux pointed at the envelope lying on the tabletop in front of Bill. “That we still have possession of the last original Order. He’ll calm the rumors down.”
Bill had known Maddux for many years, but what Maddux could do with that small physique still impressed Bill. How Maddux was like a ghost sometimes, slipping in and out of the shadows to carry out whatever was required. And he was always successful — except for that day in Los Angeles when he’d attempted to assassinate Dorn. As far as Bill knew, it was the only instance in which Maddux had failed to achieve a major objective.
The little man was a legend in the spook world. He might not look like much, but at kill time he was an animal. There was no one more ferocious, Bill was convinced — which made living here with him nerve-racking. Maddux wasn’t above committing a sport kill every once in a while. It was the little man’s lone indulgence and perversion. Even more unnerving for Bill, they’d had their differences over the years. So Maddux might not consider murdering Bill a sport kill. He might believe it was a line-of-duty thing.
“Ward had better not mention my name, Shane. He’d better not mention that he’s seen me. You never know where Dorn’s people are.”
“John won’t say a word about seeing you,” Maddux replied confidently. “But he’ll tell the others that RC7 is absolutely safe, that there is no threat of congressional inquiries or presidential witch hunts. He’ll say he’s seen the Order. We’re good to go at this point. Confidence within the ranks has been restored. You handled that situation well, Bill, as you always do.”
“Thanks.”
The man had no loyalty to anyone or anything except the United States of America. He’d kill his mother for the country, and the rumor was he had. Of course, the rumor was also that his mother hadn’t loved him very much, either. Bill grimaced. With a face as ugly as Maddux’s, maybe that was understandable.