River of Ruin

The Twenty Devils Mine Cocle Province, Panama

A blast of icy water exploding against his groin wrenched Mercer from a drugged sleep. The cold and shock following six hours of unconsciousness in a dank cell was like a hit from a runaway truck. Mercer rolled across the floor to get away from the jet of water but whoever directed the fire hose kept the pressure on, tumbling him against a concrete wall like a street cleaner moving a piece of flotsam.

A voice called an order and the streaming water stopped as abruptly as it had started.

Mercer forced open his eyes, blinking into powerful handheld halide lights that burned his vision like lasers after so many hours of darkness. He turned away and the blaze of red behind his lids faded as the lights were dimmed. He heard another command and boots moving away. Tentatively he levered open an eye again. His eyesight came back from beyond the blistering afterspots on his damaged retinas. The room was lit by a single-bulb fixture clamped to the ceiling. The halide lamps had been used to further disorient him. He wiped water from his face, allowing a little to trickle into his mouth.

Since his capture, he’d been given nothing to eat or drink. A hood had been placed over his head on the helicopter after he’d been given a hypodermic of sedative, the Chinese denying him a sense of place as well. They’d left him dressed in nothing but a pair of boxer shorts.

His lower belly throbbing from the pulsing blow to his testicles, Mercer shuffled to his feet, watching for a reaction from the single guard left at the cell’s open door. The impassive Chinese soldier was in uniform and cradled a type- 87 bullpup assault rifle, the type Lauren told him meant he was part of an elite fighting force.

There was no furniture in the cell so Mercer leaned against the wall, crossing his ankles and arms in an attempt at a relaxed pose. A vortex of thoughts churned in his mind as more of the drug wore off, but it was important that he give no outward sign of his growing anxiety. He slicked back his hair with the palms of his hands and idly picked at a fingernail. His antics made no impression on the stone-faced guard.

Before he considered his own circumstances, his mind turned to Lauren and the others. He could only assume his sacrifice had guaranteed their escape. The Gazelle hadn’t circled back to the auto carrier and he hadn’t seen any other choppers in the area before he’d passed out. The Chinese couldn’t know how many people were with him, nor their identities. He had to keep that secret, he knew, but wondered how long he could maintain his silence. Mercer had no delusions about what was to come.

He didn’t know where he’d been taken—someplace west of the canal, but that told him nothing. If he didn’t know, it was unlikely Bruneseau or Lauren knew either. Meaning?

Meaning I am in some very deep shit because the cavalry won’t be coming.

He was on his own and about to face an interrogation at the hands of a Chinese organization who seemed more than willing to kill those who got in their way. Thoughts of clichéd water-torture scenes from old movies filled his imagination. Mercer had no idea how long he’d be able to hold out. The reasonably high tolerance for pain he’d developed because of the dangerous nature of his work would do him no good if they used drugs on him. He’d read enough spy novels to know there was no defense against some of the exotic cocktails developed to extract information.

He tried to think if he had any advantages in this situation. Because they didn’t know if the authorities were closing in, the Chinese would probably want information quickly. He didn’t know if that helped, but it was something. He then tried to think what Liu Yousheng would want to know so he could then purge it from his mind. Liu didn’t yet know he had captured the man who’d foiled him in Paris, nor did he know the Foreign Legion was on to him. Mercer felt divulging his own identity wouldn’t matter but he had to protect Lauren and the others.

Why the hell had Rene gone into the camp? Mercer wondered, then forced the thought out of his head. He had to clear it completely—erase the past few days in order to convince Liu that he knew of nothing beyond Gary Barber’s mysterious death.

For ten minutes Mercer made a show of ignoring the soldier, using the time to let his mind calm down and his body to recover from the fire-hose onslaught. Then came a commotion beyond the open door and a moment later another Chinese, this one dressed in an expensive business suit, entered the cell. Mercer gave him a passing glance, noting his slender build and rather tired eyes, before returning his attention to a particularly bothersome hangnail. He finally bit at the sliver of skin and spat it on the floor. A drop of blood welled from the tiny wound.

“Wouldn’t have a Band-Aid, would you?” Mercer asked, finally paying attention to the executive. He’d already assumed he was in the presence of Liu Yousheng.

“That cut will soon be the least of your worries,” Liu replied. “Do you know where you are and who I am?”

Mercer looked around the cell, as if seeing its utilitarianism for the first time. “Well, this hotel doesn’t look familiar, but you do. I’ve seen your commercials for dog food on TV. Aren’t you Pup E. Chow?”

“I expected more than insults from you, Dr. Mercer,” Liu said. “You are Philip Mercer, aren’t you?”

“Sorry. My name’s Al Abama, from California. I was taking one of those adventure cruises from Europe aboard a car carrier with my sister, Carol Ina. She lives in Wisconsin.” Mercer smiled. “Check the passenger manifest if you don’t believe me.”

Liu shook his head, as if disappointed in his prisoner. “Your acquisition of the Lepinay journal started out as a minor distraction in Paris. But suddenly you’ve become a rather significant obstacle. I’m curious how you accomplished this feat.”

“No idea what you’re talking about.”

“Interestingly,” Liu continued as if Mercer hadn’t spoken, “the two bodies we recovered at the lake don’t appear to be American. One had a tattoo we traced to a German motorcycle gang called Das Gremium on his shoulder. I had assumed you were working with the CIA. Maybe I was wrong. Care to comment?”

“Not particularly,” Mercer said, and then his voice hardened. “Let’s cut the bull. I know who you are. You know me. All I wanted was to discover what happened to my friend Gary. I know now that you had nothing to do with his death. It was a freakish accident. I have no quarrel with you, and if you let me go I’ll be on the next plane back to the States and you can do whatever you want down here. I have no connection to the CIA, the FBI or even the ASPCA. I can’t hurt you. There’s no need for you to hurt me.”

Liu almost seemed to consider Mercer’s plea. “It is possible that you are telling me the truth.” Menace filled his every word. “But even if it were, it wouldn’t matter. Your meddling has cost me too much already. More importantly, you have forced me to act in ways I rather wish to avoid. I prefer bank transfers and balance sheets, not bullets. It is because of you there has been so much bloodshed. I am working a business deal and you’re acting like an American cowboy, shooting first and asking questions later. Had you understood that my actions here will prevent countless deaths later, you wouldn’t have involved yourself the way you have.”

“Tell me what you’re doing,” Mercer invited. “Maybe we can come to an understanding.”

“That time is past.”

“Then kill me now!” Mercer’s startling shout rocked Liu back. “Quit these stupid games and put a bullet in my head. I’ve got nothing you want so end it right here.”

“Again”—Liu smiled, pleased at what he thought was the first crack in Mercer’s studied calm—“I don’t think that’s true either. I think you have a great deal to tell me.” He called out for more guards.

Mercer allowed the soldiers to overwhelm him, reserving his strength for when the interrogation started. A moment later he was cuffed to a stretcher and carried down a cinder-block corridor to another cell. This one was as cool as the previous one, making Mercer guess they were underground. The stretcher was placed on a metal table and additional restraints were put in place to keep him completely immobile. The guards cleared out.

Liu moved to the head of the table. “We won’t see each other again, Dr. Mercer, so I will do you the honor of wishing you a peaceable journey.”

From his supine position, Mercer couldn’t see the other man who stepped into the room but got a real bad feeling just from the distaste that showed on Liu’s face.

“You have my list of questions, Mr. Sun. Get them answered.” Liu stepped from the room, purposefully staying as far from Sun as he could.

A skeletal head suddenly loomed into Mercer’s view. Had Mercer been able, he would have recoiled. The face was cadaverous, sunken and shriveled like a mummy. Flakes of skin spilled off like thick dandruff. The man’s breath enveloped Mercer in a stench like rotted meat. Mr. Sun’s teeth were nearly black. Sun traced a finger along Mercer’s cheek, marveling at the elasticity of his skin. The finger felt like a claw from a dead bird. Mercer noted angrily that the man was wearing his TAG Heuer watch.

“I haven’t been friends with an American in a long time.” Sun spoke decent English in a voice filled with wonder, like a child’s. It made Mercer’s flesh crawl. “There was one we found smuggling weapons into Tibet about six years ago, but he could only be my friend for a little while so I don’t count him. My last real American friend was an air force pilot who came to me during the end of your war in Vietnam. We were friends until 1983.”

The realization that this Mr. Sun considered the victims of his torture as friends made Mercer swallow reflexively. Whatever psychological problems allowed Sun to torture another human had become something worse, he realized. Sun liked what he did, needed it, for all Mercer knew. Despite the cell’s low temperature, sweat began to run from his pores.

“My last American friend kept a secret from me at the end,” Sun continued, his black eyes losing focus as he recalled the airman he had mutilated long ago. “He let a fingernail grow without any of his guards noticing. One night he sharpened it on the wall of his cell and used it to cut through the tissue under his tongue. We found him the next morning. He had swallowed his tongue to suffocate himself.” He returned from the memory. “Toward the end, our conversations were not that good, but I still think of our earlier times together. I never figured out how he could keep speaking for so long. For years he kept it up. Remarkable.”

Mercer realized by “speaking” Sun meant screaming. The conversations were between Sun’s instruments of torture and the pain they invoked.

“Anyway,” the interrogator continued, “I have you now. We can’t be friends for very long, I’m afraid. Mr. Liu is pressed for time. Still, I think our talks will be interesting.” Sun unrolled a black cloth next to Mercer’s head. It contained a collection of fine acupuncture needles. Hundreds of them.

On the auto carrier, when Mercer had given himself up, he’d known something like this would be in store. He’d willingly traded the promise of torture for a little more time alive. Seeing Sun for the first time, and his needles, he wondered if letting those soldiers kill him wouldn’t have been smarter.

“There are many ways to get someone to talk,” Sun said conversationally. “The threat of death is usually enough for most people. Because of your situation, you know your death is inevitable so that won’t work. Mutilation is another way. People fear permanent injury as much as they fear dying. Again, permanent for you is only a day or two. Not much of a threat, eh?”

“Works for me,” Mercer rasped, his throat so dry it felt like he’d swallowed the contents of an hourglass. “What do you want to know?”

When Sun smiled, a shower of skin flakes fell from around his mouth. “I think you make a joke with me. Our conversation hasn’t even started yet. In your situation, my job is to make you believe that death is better than what I will do to you. To reach that goal you must first answer my questions. Answering me is the only way I will give you death. Do you understand?”

Sun didn’t wait for a reply. Using a technique forged long before recorded history he began inserting needles into Mercer’s body, first breaking skin with a quick flick of his fingers then twisting them deeper. Mercer had braced himself for pain but felt nothing but a minor discomfort as each needle was drilled a short way into his body. He felt no ill effects as Sun inserted forty needles into various parts of his body. Most were on his neck, chest, and stomach, while others had been stuck between his fingers and at each ankle.

“There.” Sun stepped back to admire his handiwork. “The meridian paths are open. Your body hasn’t been this connected to itself since it was just a few cells suspended in your mother’s womb. The needles allow impulses to flow so freely that your brain is actually working harder to maintain a steady flow of your life force, your chi, between all the newly opened locus points. It’s like a power plant that suddenly has to supply dozens of additional homes. Do you feel a little more tired?”

“Screw you.” That pathetic rejoinder was the best Mercer could come up with. Sun had rewired his nervous system and brought him to a plateau of hypersensitivity that left him more vulnerable than anything he’d ever felt before. He could feel his body in ways he’d never experienced. He could sense the tingle of his hair growing and the pulse of blood through the tiniest capillaries. His fear, too, felt amplified.

Sun bent so his foul breath caressed Mercer’s face. “There are special houses in China where highly skilled women use this technique to bring men to unobtainable levels of ecstasy. In the state you are in right now I can insert another two needles and you would not believe the pleasure.” Sun’s voice dropped to a reverent whisper. “There’s an old story of a vengeful concubine driving an emperor insane by forcing him to an orgasm that lasted for eight straight days.”

He straightened. “That is not to be your fate.” With a deft move he slid a needle into a spot on Mercer’s shoulder and suddenly a lightning bolt seemed to explode in Mercer’s mouth as if all his teeth had shattered. The sensation was so far beyond pain that it had no name. It stripped away a layer of rationality like a sheet of paper from a notebook.

Sun withdrew the needle and the agony stopped instantly, leaving Mercer’s mouth numb and swimming in saliva. “I should have warned you that the pathways are not as direct as you might suspect. Feel what happens to your heart when I place a needle here.” Sun twisted a thinner needle behind Mercer’s ear.

Mercer’s state made him more than aware of his heart. He could feel each beat, each opening and closing of the valves, and the tremendous wash of blood in his aorta. With a little concentration he felt he could almost control it. Sun showed him he could not.

As the tiny needle hit a specific nerve in the soft area behind his right ear Mercer’s heart simply stopped. There was no beat, no surge, nothing. He was dead. Yet he could think and see and feel himself dying further. But there was no surge of panic. He couldn’t pump the adrenaline that controlled such a reaction. Terror filled his eyes, widening them to impossible proportions, imploring his indifferent torturer to give him his life back. Sun left the needle in for two seconds that felt longer than eternity. When it was pulled free and the nerve pathway it had blocked reopened, Mercer’s heart jump started itself and beat on as if nothing had happened.

“Now you know what I can do to you,” Sun said. “I will give you this one chance to answer Mr. Liu’s questions.”

“Ask,” Mercer said, unable to believe the defeat in his voice.

Sun placed a micro-recorder on the table next to Mercer’s head. “It was you who saw the gold shipment at the Hatcherly warehouse.”

“Yes.”

“Who was with you in the warehouse?”

“A CIA operative named Felix Leiter.” Mercer lied in his defeated monotone. His acting was Oscar quality. “That’s all I knew him as.”

“Was it a CIA team who helped you escape at the fence?”

“No. They were mercenaries flown in from Bogota.”

For fifteen minutes, Mercer spun a tale of CIA intrigue, adding details like code names and the location of fictitious safe houses. He told Sun the story that Liu Yousheng would want to hear, about how the United States was fumbling blindly, not understanding what was happening. He made it sound as though his contact would most likely back off now that Mercer was captured because this operation wasn’t officially sanctioned by Langley.

Sun had conducted hundreds of interrogations and knew how to probe a story from a dozen directions looking for inconsistencies. His questions came rapid-fire and continued for an hour in which Mercer piled lie on top of lie in a web that was as complex as it was delicate. Through it all, Sun couldn’t trip up his victim. Not once did Mercer slip. Each answer served only to back up an earlier fact. The code names didn’t change, addresses remained the same, and timelines, which are the hardest to keep straight, remained linear and plausible.

Mercer judged Sun perfectly. Despite the ruined skin and lifeless eyes he sensed a change in Sun’s emotion during the second hour of questioning that signaled the torturer was satisfied he’d extracted the truth from his victim. The session was coming to an end, which meant so would Mercer’s life. He’d bought himself a little more time but knew that continuing the charade would buy him no more. It was time to fight, and pray he could survive what Sun would do to him.

“You mentioned how the mercenaries came to Panama,” Sun asked for the eighth time.

“They flew in from Medellin on a charter plane.” The mistake was intentional, a tiny gaff that the interrogator recognized instantly.

The deranged acupuncturist looked at Mercer sharply, a deadly look that made it easier for Mercer to let fear flood across his face. “You said the mercenaries came from Bogota. Now you say Medellin.”

“I can’t remember,” Mercer stammered, making his guilt even more apparent.

Because of how he’d been strapped to the table, Mercer couldn’t see that Sun was poised over his left hand with one of his needles. For a fraction of a second, Mercer felt the needle twisting into his flesh and then it felt like a blowtorch had been applied to his scalp. He could almost hear his hair burning away and smell it turning to ash. The pain raced across his scalp like a spreading pool of burning fuel. He convulsed against his straps at the unholy agony, clamping his jaw to keep from screaming, to keep the flames from pouring down his throat.

But there was no fire. It was an electrical stimulus that created the pain, a figment of his own body chemistry. No matter how he tried to rationalize that idea, the pain burned through, crystalline and savage.

Sun lowered his face over Mercer’s. “Speak to me,” he soothed. “Let me hear you speak.”

A whimper escaped past Mercer’s lips.

“Yes, like that,” Sun coaxed, almost sexually.

Turning his head as much as the restraints allowed, Mercer screamed into Sun’s ear as loud as he could, a shriek that would have damaged the hearing of a younger person. Sun stepped back and slid the needle from Mercer’s hand. No anger, no annoyance, no sign that the scream bothered him.

“Bogota or Medellin?” The needle went back in along Mercer’s ribs and another went near his nipple on the opposite side of his chest.

It was as if the two points were joined through his torso by an electric current. To Mercer, his flesh felt like it was being cored out, drilled from his body by the pain.

His first slip had been intentional, but Mercer’s second mistake was an accident. “Bogota,” he gasped.

Had he stuck with the new lie and said Medellin, Sun would have been forced to pick apart the story piece by piece, possibly going easier on Mercer.

Instinctively Sun had seen through all the deceptions and knew that the truth was that Mercer had made up the whole story. “Very good,” he congratulated with genuine surprise.

“You almost had me. Now we get to start from the beginning, only this time I’ve already given you your one chance.”

Needles went in, connecting nerve points that evolution kept intentionally separate, opening pathways for agony never meant to be endured.

How long it went on, Mercer would never know. Lost in a raging flood of pain, time had never had less meaning. Like an artist, Mr. Sun played Mercer’s body against itself, generating agony upon agony with his slender needles, cleverly multiplying the anguish at times and backing it off at others but never leaving his subject free. Only occasionally would he ask a question, and even then he wouldn’t wait for an answer. He was lost in a command performance, conducting an orchestra of sensation to generate the maximum amount of pain.

Through it Mercer fought, retelling parts of his earlier story and then just maintaining his silence when it became too much to think straight. But he knew that was the object of Sun’s work, to empty him of everything except the pain so that he would beg to answer a question.

A needle between his fingers had made his eyeballs seem to collapse like they had been pierced and their fluids drained away. It was the worst yet. Sun added another needle that felt like a smoldering ember had settled in Mercer’s lungs. Each breath became a fiery torture. Mercer was losing himself to the pain. One more element, the barest touch, and he knew he’d never recover.

He had to find something to hold on to, an anchor to keep him rooted to the rational world that existed beyond the agonized shell of his body. Like a swimmer tossed in the surf, he had to find a rock to cling to that kept his head above the drowning pain. Images cascaded in his mind, thoughts of what meant most to him.

Accomplishments. They whirled past so fast he could grasp none. None of them meant anything now.

Women he’d known. He caught a blur of faces and snippets of conversation before they were all banished by the agony.

His nanny, Juma. She appeared in his imagination so anguished by what he was going through that he let her go.

His mother and father. He held their image in his mind for just a moment before they disappeared, each looking at him sadly, as if they had let him down once again by not giving him the haven he so desperately needed now.

Friends. Harry White back at Tiny’s Bar tricking an unsuspecting customer into buying him drinks by flipping a pair of double-headed coins. Even Harry faded into the agony.

God, what was there? his soul cried. What did it matter to stop Liu Yousheng? Who was he to protect Lauren and Bruneseau? What did they mean to him? Surely, not this.

Sun trailed his finger across Mercer’s cheek and it felt like two inches of flesh had been peeled back. He knew he was screaming, had been for many minutes, but couldn’t hear it any longer.

There was nothing that he could use to get beyond what Sun was doing to him. There would be no refuge, no trick he could play in his own mind to free himself from the torture. He was about to break. Knew it. Hated it.

Harry hadn’t used a pair of double-sided coins. There’d only been one, a two-headed quarter he’d picked up at a novelty shop.

Someplace beyond his chest, he felt a distant blooming of agony around one knee, like it had been smashed with a sledgehammer and the shards of bone ground against each other. Mercer felt the back of his teeth with his tongue. Somehow his mouth had closed. He’d stopped screaming.

And it hadn’t been a customer Harry had tricked. The son of a bitch had used the coin on me. I must have bought him four drinks before I figured it out.

“Talk to me!” Sun screamed.

Mercer ignored him, hardly noticing his hand being dipped in molten steel.

“Fool me once, shame on you,” Harry had cackled when he’d been found out. “Fool me twice, shame on me.” Then he added to the old adage. “Fool me four times in a row and I’m the biggest goddamned huckleberry to ever fall off the lettuce truck.”

“Answer me,” Sun screamed again. “Who was with you at the warehouse?”

Not lettuce truck. He’d said turnip truck. Biggest goddamned huckleberry to ever fall off the turnip truck.

Mercer could never hope to beat back the pain being inflicted. No human could. What he’d found was a shelter where the waves of agony washed against a mental barrier. This shield could only be as strong as his emotional connection to it. Rather than break Mercer completely, Sun had rendered him down to that one thing that the pain would never transcend. Mercer would never have thought it was Harry. His parents, yes, his dedication to his own ideals, possibly, even the memory of some of the women he’d loved. But Harry?

Who was Harry to him? To get further past the pain, that question demanded an answer. Friend wasn’t enough and father figure sounded like a new-age cop-out. What was he, then? He is I, Mercer realized. Or who I want to be in forty-plus years. Not the booze or the cigarettes or the bad jokes. It’s the loyalty he inspires, the steadfast dedication of a favor asked being a favor granted. Harry was the kind of person that people would talk about for decades after he’s gone—a phenomenon rarely seen beyond family groups and sports legends. He touched those around him in unexpected ways, but always leaving them a little better for it. Lauren had learned that in just days. And Roddy was ready to get into a war because of Harry’s friendship to his dead father.

It was a revelation to finally understand that despite all of Harry’s faults, he’d been Mercer’s role model, the person he had unconsciously patterned at least part of himself after. Nearly a decade of Harry’s friendship and influence had made Mercer the man he was now. And then he realized that his old friend had been his lifeline all along—the anchor not just through this agony but through the years they’d known each other.

Sun sensed his work was no longer producing the desired results. He hadn’t expected an American to understand the ways to slip from the needles’ touch, yet he could see that Mercer was dodging the pain. Inflicting more would accomplish nothing. He pulled just one of the needles he’d inserted to open the locus points and the fragile system of artificial pathways he’d created collapsed.

In one instant, all the pain, even the memory of the pain, vanished. Mercer was left slightly breathless. He knew what he’d just endured and it took a moment for his mind to adjust to the fact that there would be no aftereffects. To his body, it was as if the past hours of torment hadn’t happened, even if he recalled that his ankles had just seconds before felt like they’d been melted to the bone.

The torturer dipped his eyes in respect as he plucked needles from Mercer’s skin and returned them to their carrying cloth. He shut off the tape recorder. “Well done. While you have beaten the needles, don’t consider it a victory. Mr. Liu has given me two days to get the information he wants. Tomorrow I will begin with the clamps and hammers.” Sun tied up his bundle of needles. “Getting beyond self-generated pain is one thing. Let’s see how you do when I actually roast your feet and crush your testicles in a vise. Feeling pain is one thing, watching your body being mutilated while feeling it is quite another, I assure you.”

Mercer remained silent as his eyes shot a smoldering defiance. Sun turned for the door and guards came in to take Mercer back to his cell, leaving him with only a bowl of water and another of rice as well as a slop bucket with a lid.

He lay on the floor for an hour, slowly recovering from the unworldly experience. He massaged out a few muscles that had cramped under the pain, but other than that he felt pretty good. The smell of food made his stomach constrict and he had such a thirst that the small amount of saliva in his mouth felt like paste. Still, he couldn’t trust the offerings left by the Chinese. He was certain that either the food or the water was drugged, both probably, so he poured them into the metallic chamber pot. He settled his back against the wall of his cell, examining each surface of the bare room under the glow of the low-watt lightbulb.

“Okay, Harry,” he whispered. “Your inspiration bought me a couple more hours. Any idea what I can do with them?”

Escape, dumbass. Mercer could almost hear the imagined response.

“Easy for you to say. I’m in a concrete room with a locked steel door. The hinges are on the outside. There’s a rusty ventilation grille above the door that’s about one foot wide and eight inches tall. Other than the light fixture hardwired through conduit, I’ve got nothing but a couple of empty bowls, one nearly overflowing chamber pot and a pair of boxer shorts. What would you suggest?”

Of course there was no answer.

The cell had probably been built as a storeroom. When he’d been dragged down the hall by the guards, Mercer had seen a hallway with ten identical doors. Some kind of secure underground warehouse was his guess. But it couldn’t have been better designed as an escape-proof prison either. With his meager possessions, Mercer knew there was no way he was getting out before his next conversation with Mr. Sun.

“Now if only I had a screwdriver... .”