Private Rogue

Chapter 76

Anticipation is key. Most interrogators don’t give themselves anywhere to go. They start with the stuff of nightmares and the victim quickly retreats into a cushioned part of their mind, which helps insulate them and allows them to become accustomed to the pain.

I shook Rick Ferguson awake and let him take in his surroundings. He was in the burned-out shell of the Mill Wheel Tavern on Route 26, just outside of a tiny village called Chester, New Jersey.

Sci had found the place by running a crime-report search for bars that had been destroyed by arson. After taking Rick a couple blocks in a stolen truck, we’d flown him to New Jersey in a chopper I’d chartered.

The bar had been burned down five months back. It stood beside a quiet rural route that had very little traffic, which I guessed might be why the owner torched it — not enough passing trade to stay afloat. At this time of night, a little before eleven, there was no one on the road. The charred wreckage helped conjure the sense Rick had woken up in hell. The walls were black with tar, melted plastic was dotted here and there in misshapen pools, there were holes in the walls and a holed roof that allowed snow and ice to take over large sections of the property. This was the kind of place where bad things happened, and I could see from the terrified look on Rick’s face, he was smart enough to have figured that out.

Floyd and I wore black ski masks and leather gloves. I had laid a range of shop tools on the charred remains of a table. I wandered over to them and made sure Rick got a good look.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked. His voice trembled with the effort of his false bravado.

He wasn’t as smart as I had hoped. Pentagon personnel should know not to ask that question, and he really shouldn’t be doing anything to reinforce a price value in the minds of kidnappers. Fortunately for him, we weren’t kidnappers. We were the embodiment of justice, and this was his reckoning.

We had taken a gamble that the Pentagon mole hadn’t been told about what had happened in Afghanistan when Mo-bot called the number she’d found in the satellite phone’s registry. Her suspicions about it had been correct.

Floyd had claimed to be one of the Russian paramilitaries and did a pretty passable accent. Speaking in broken English, he kept the mole on the line with bogus intelligence reports and requests for clarification. That bought just enough time for Mo-bot to bypass Pentagon countersurveillance measures and pinpoint his location. The lazy, arrogant fool hadn’t even stepped out of his office to take the call. Rick Sullivan was Program Manager of the Advanced Field Technologies Group for DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. That put him at the nexus of a great deal of high-level military intelligence on development and field deployment.

“This place will be swarming with cops within minutes,” Rick informed us.

He was overcompensating, and beneath the bravado was a vast reservoir of fear. We would feed it.

I picked up a pair of pliers, saying nothing as I moved slowly through the ash and charred wreckage toward him. He was bound to a chair and fought against the restraints as I came near.

“Don’t you touch me! Don’t you come near me!”

The thin veneer of bravado cracked and flaked. It was time to burn it away entirely.

“I’m going to break a finger for each lie you tell,” I said. “I’ll start with the pinkie on your left hand and work across.”

“No!” Rick yelled. “No! Help!”

“Help?” Floyd sneered mockingly. “Help!” He closed on Rick with a snarl. “No one can hear you.”

He fought hard but his hand was bound too tightly. I placed the jaws of the pliers around his left pinkie finger. I squeezed it until I saw him grimace.

“Ahh! Ahhhhhh!”

He stopped struggling and settled into a grudging docility.

“Please, just tell me what you want.”

“Who do you work for?” I asked.

“The Department of Defense,” he replied hurriedly, glancing at his finger nervously.

“I’m not going to break it, because that isn’t a lie. But there’s another truth, which is the answer I’m looking for. Who else do you work for?”

I squeezed again and he winced.

“They’ll kill me.”

“They are not your most pressing problem,” I replied. “You’re in a new world now. One where you live minute by minute. Worry about what we’re going to do.”

I squeezed harder and he cried out. The desk jockey had never experienced anything like this.

“Please...”

“A name,” I snapped.

“Victor Andreyev,” he replied. “He’s SVR. I report to him.”

The SVR — Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki — was Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, headquartered in the Yasenevo district on the outskirts of Moscow. A building I knew well, having infiltrated it the last time I’d been in the city.

“Good,” I said. “We know about Victor, so we know that’s the truth.”

Rick seemed surprised we already knew, but not as surprised as I was to hear confirmation he was an SVR operative. I’d suspected it because of the resources being thrown at this operation, but it brought back painful memories of the last time I’d been up against that institution. I’d lost a very good man.

“A team was sent to capture a pilot in Afghanistan,” I said. “Tell me why.”

“They were going to try to abduct him here, in the US, but it was too risky. A missing Special Forces operative would spark a full court press from law enforcement and the DOD, so I persuaded them we could set a trap somewhere lawless and out of the way. I made sure he was assigned to pilot the Afghan mission.”

“And the pilot’s wife and children,” I added, “why have they been targeted?”

“They’re just leverage,” Rick admitted. “An insurance policy. To make sure he gives them what they want.”

Floyd moved quickly — far too quickly for me to stop him. He swung at Rick, and his big gloved fist connected with the man’s jaw. There was a painful crack. Rick howled.

“My jaw!” he said, although it sounded like, “Muh daw!”

I turned to Floyd and shook my head, even though part of me thought it might not hurt Rick to know there was someone in the room who really wanted to make him suffer.

“Where are they now?” I asked.

“Don’t know,” Rick replied.

I repositioned the pliers and squeezed.

“Ahhhhh!” he cried. “I swear I don’t know! They wouldn’t give me that kind of information. It’s not something I need to know.”

His words were distorted and pained, but I could still make them out.

“What do they want the pilot for?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he cried.

I squeezed. Torture went against my personal beliefs, and breaking his finger was a line I wasn’t prepared to cross, but I could get close.

“Ahhhhh! Please! I don’t know what they want. I heard them talking about a bull. That’s all I know.”

Floyd stepped forward again and swung a one-two jab and cross that knocked Rick unconscious.

“What just happened?” I asked.

He removed his mask, and I did likewise.

“I think I know,” he said. “I think I know what they want.”