“I cannot.” Huai answered.
“Then kill me.” Lauren’s eyes blazed, not knowing she echoed Mercer’s exact words when he was first faced with torture. “If that’s what it takes to prevent that sadist from raping and torturing me then do it. Kill me now!”
“Sun no rape.”
“Bull! It’s a proven method of torture. He’ll do it.”
“Sun, ah ...” Huai pointed at his crotch. “No longer a man.”
“But he’s man enough to stick needles in my body that will destroy my mind. Is that how you people fight? Is that your way?”
“Not my way. Sun’s way.”
“You’re the same. If you let him do it you’re just as bad as he is.”
That concept made Huai pause again. Lauren was sure she was on the right track. The NCO had the look of a man who fought his nation’s enemies on battlefields, not in horror chambers. If only she could get through to him, weaken him.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “You’re not the same. You’re a soldier. He’s a monster. It’s not your fault that your country uses men like Sun. You only follow orders. Just like me.”
“Yes. Orders.”
“And when you get home and tell your wife about what he did here, you can tell her that you were ordered to let a woman get tortured to death. She will see the honor in that. She will think you are a hero.”
Was there indecision in his eyes? Lauren was almost certain it was there. Her ploy was working. Huai looked outside then back at Lauren. He was about to make a move when another soldier stepped into the shed. Younger than the sergeant, he also wore a uniform without insignia. The newcomer barked an order and the NCO saluted. He gave Lauren one last look, and left.
“What is your name?” The young officer spoke clearer English and had no compulsion about studying Lauren’s nude form.
“Vanik, Lauren J. Captain. United States Army. 05894328.”
“Who are you working with?”
“Vanik, Lauren J. Captain. United States Army. 05894328.”
Unfazed by her response, the officer asked several more questions that Lauren answered by giving her name, rank, and serial number. “Enough,” he said at last. “You will answer our questions in due time. A specialist will be here shortly. I recommend that you tell me everything now.”
“Screw yourself,” she hissed.
The officer turned smartly and relocked the cell after stepping out. Lauren was left with her fear and her disappointment. She’d been close with the sergeant. So close. Had the officer not arrived maybe he would have let her go. Now the opportunity was gone. Mr. Sun would arrive soon and it would be over for her.
She’d always considered herself a brave person, having faced down countless dangers and physical hardships, but she held no illusions about resisting the kind of torture in store for her. The army classes she’d taken in psychological warfare told her that there really was no way to hold out forever against physical abuse. And what the acupuncturist did went far beyond the mere physical. Mercer had escaped before being subjected to a second round with Mr. Sun. Lauren doubted she’d get such a chance. For her there’d be no escape once Sun got to work on her.
She spent the next ten minutes, until her cell was opened again, fighting her imagination. Each time she saw what was coming, her heart would race and she’d hyperventilate. The heat was only partially responsible for the sweat coating her skin.
When the cell door swung open, she looked back to see a cadaverous Chinese man wearing dark gray trousers and a long shirt of the same color. What hair remained on his large cranium was as fine as spider silk. In his skeletal hand he clutched a rolled-up piece of black cloth. Lauren noticed immediately that Mercer’s TAG Heuer watch dangled from Sun’s emaciated wrist.
With him was a Panamanian dressed in fatigues. Lauren guessed his age at fifty, for his face was lined, but his hair was a thick lustrous black and his body was still trim. Above his mustache, his nose was large and bony and his eyes were lifeless black spots. She recognized him immediately.
He was Hugo Ruiz. A major under Manuel Noriega in the G-2, Panama’s murderous secret police. Ruiz had once been a deputy warden at La Modelo Prison, responsible for running tours of the facility so well-heeled sadists could watch the degradation heaped on the inmates. His specialty was organizing the gang-rape indoctrination of new prisoners and selling cocaine and peasant women to inmates who performed for his guests. Ruiz had also trained under Nivaldo Madrinan, Noriega’s chief torturer, perfecting dark skills that few could believe humans capable of.
For a while the CIA believed Ruiz had been executed during a purge before Noriega’s ouster, but in 1992 he’d been spotted in Cuba, where he’d once been part of a smuggling operation to ship the dregs of the island’s population to Miami. The latest reports had him selling his interrogation skills to Colombian FARC rebels. That he was back in Panama now meant he had secured a place within President Quintero’s regime.
“Ah, Señor Ruiz,” Mr. Sun said to his companion in English, “I didn’t realize we’d be making friends with a woman today.” He sounded delighted.
Lauren remained motionless, resisting the urge to flinch when Sun unfurled his cloth and adjusted the hundreds of needles it contained.
Ruiz studied her closely. “And a buena one at that. I look forward to seeing your techniques in practice. Your instruction over the past days using cadavers wasn’t very satisfying.”
“But necessary,” Sun said as he examined Lauren’s skin, awed by its suppleness. “So soft,” he whispered intimately. His breath was a fetid caress. Bits of skin fell on Lauren like scaly ash.
Lauren’s flesh crawled and she had to bite her tongue to keep from screaming.
“Young lady, you have caused a number of problems for us in the past week. My job is to see how many of those problems go away with your death. Before we are through, you will tell me exactly who you are working with, how much you have seen and what steps you and your superiors have taken to stop us.
“Now I realize that you aren’t aware of Gemini’s location, nor could you know that it will be detonated in the canal tomorrow, but you must know many other things. Like what is in the Hatcherly warehouse and how the Twenty Devils Mine is, a, ah—what is the word?—a fraud. Do you know these things?”
Sun took up the first of his needles and lectured to Ruiz, “Watch closely at the angle the needles enter the body. It is not as important establishing the first of the connective links within the nervous system, but later the technique helps you better generate and control the pain.”
Just before he slid the first needle into Lauren’s throat the cell door opened and the officer who she’d seen earlier spoke with Sun in Chinese. They talked for a moment before Sun returned the needle to the cloth.
“I am sorry, Señor Ruiz,” he said and wiped his palms on his pants. “Mr. Liu wants to see me before he returns to the city. I will be about fifteen minutes.”
Lauren recognized the gleam in Ruiz’s expression when he looked down at her. “I understand, Señor Sun. Perhaps I will get started without you.”
“As you wish.” Sun bowed before following the young officer into the sunshine.
No sooner had the door closed than Ruiz punched Lauren in the side of the head. “Buenas noches, puta.”
Lauren’s head lolled and her mouth went slack. Ruiz struck her again to make sure she was out, then grabbed one of the acupuncture needles. He forced it into her thigh. She didn’t move when he worked the needle a little farther into her flesh.
Satisfied that she would remain unconscious, Ruiz studied her for a moment, distressed that his body did not react the way he had hoped it would when he’d first seen her lying naked on the table. He knew what he had to do. A lifetime spent forcing sodomy on his victims had left him incapable of even raping in the normal fashion. To get at what he wanted he needed to roll her over.