Viper Strike

CHAPTER 17

Pain. It had become a part of him, a part of his very existence.

Tombstone opened his eyes and his surroundings swam blearily into focus. He was in a small and empty room, probably a supply closet of some kind, with a light fixture hanging out of reach from a high ceiling and a single wooden floor which looked as solid as the concrete block walls around them.

Tombstone was lying on a cot, wrapped in rough army blankets with his feet propped up on several pillows. The handcuffs were gone. His captors, evidently, were taking care to see to it that he didn't die of shock between sessions.

Memories of the ordeal flooded back, and he squeezed his eyes shut.

Chief among his emotions was shame. He could remember the taste of his own fear while hanging on that hook, remember losing control of his bladder and bowels, remember screaming until his throat went raw.

Finally, at the end, he'd not been able to scream… only jerk and twist under the terrible fire of Hsiao's cattle prod until blackness had taken him.

Struggling against weakness and the nausea clawing at his stomach, Tombstone managed to kick free of the blanket and swing his bare legs over the side of the cot.

Vertigo nearly claimed him, but after a few minutes of deep breathing, the dizziness receded, leaving him light-headed… but conscious. His injuries, while painful, were not serious. There were angry-looking raw patches encircling his wrist and ankles where his bonds had chewed away at his skin, and inch-long burns everywhere that the cattle prod had arced and sparked instead of making a solid connection. Every muscle in his body felt stiff and sore, as though he'd been methodically worked over with a ball bat, and each movement threatened to overturn the delicate balance of pain and emptiness in the pit of his stomach.

The real injuries, he feared, were in his mind. There were tremors in his knees and hands still, and a fear-born, cramping hollow in the pit of his stomach where the terror threatened to rise again at any moment.

Something which might be a bundle of wet rags in the far corner of the room caught his eye. Shakily, he stood up and took a tentative step toward them.

The overhead light illuminated raw horror, three bodies dumped against the concrete wall as though casually discarded there. Tombstone squeezed his eyes shut, trying to turn away, but that first stark, blood-smeared image remained burned in his eyes and his mind as though branded there. Control over his empty stomach failed and he sank to his knees, retching, trying to rid himself of the sight and unable to do so.

Finally, reluctantly, his heaving stomach quieted.

While the public image of hero had been troubling him, Matthew Magruder was no coward. On the contrary, he was an aviator in the U.S. Navy. The ability to pilot an F-14, to land on an aircraft carrier in conditions ranging from calm seas to stormy pitch-darkness, to face enemy aircraft in one-on-one aerial duels reminiscent of the knightly jousts of another age… this set him apart from other men in training, in discipline, in sheer nerve.

But always before when Tombstone had faced death, it had been in the cockpit of an aircraft. There, death was a constant possibility… but as a flash, an instant of terror followed by painless nothingness. He stared down at the torn and tortured bodies sprawled on the concrete and for the first time felt the reality of another kind of death, not the clean death of aerial knights, but a filthy, lonely, agony-wracked ending that would go on and on and on.

"Your shipmates," Hsiao said. Tombstone turned. He'd not even heard the door open behind him. "Bentley. Paterowski. And Rodriguez. It took them most of last night to die. Toward the end they were actually begging Phreng to be allowed to tell what they knew. After that, they begged for death."

Tombstone could not take his eyes from the bodies. What had Hsiao said earlier? I can tear it word by word from your broken body, the way a fisherman guts a fish.

The comparison was gruesomely realistic.

Hsiao stepped aside, allowing Phreng and one of the Burmese to enter.

"Take him."

They half led, half dragged Tombstone from the room, leading him through the maze of stacked packing crates and boxes which filled most of the warehouse floor proper. At the place where the meat hooks were suspended from the ceiling, centered in the glare from the tripod-mounting lights was a table, ominously bare except for lengths of clothesline secured to each leg.

The wood of the tabletop was splotched with brown stains, and Tombstone wondered if that was where the three sailors had died. He shook his head, trying to clear his mind. Horror held his thoughts in a vise.

There were two chairs nearby, and he felt a moment's icy shock. One of the seats was occupied by Bayerly, his wrists handcuffed behind the chair's back, his ankles tied to the front legs. Hsiao had said that Bayerly was a prisoner, but Tombstone hadn't been able to tell whether that had been truth or an attempted bluff. Like Tombstone, Bayerly was nude, and his body showed the savage red burns and welts of an interrogation session with Hsiao's cattle prod. His face looked terrible, puffed and marred with livid bruises where he'd been beaten, and there were streaks of blood around his swollen lips. He was sagging to one side in the chair, held upright only by his manacles, and looking as though he'd been undergoing interrogation for the past hour or two while Tombstone had been unconscious.

Roughly, Tombstone was seated on the other chair, handcuffed and tied.

"This time we will try a different approach," Hsiao said. He gave a signal, and there was a sound of scuffling in the darkness. Then two of the Burmese entered, holding a struggling, naked woman between them.

"Pamela!" Matt called, her name wrenched from him by the shock of seeing her… here.

"Matt!" she screamed. Her blond hair, in wild disarray, swirled about her shoulders as she tried to look at him. "Matt! Who are they? What do they want! Matt!"

"Put her on the table," Hsiao ordered with a curt gesture. "On her back."

Her captors dragged Pamela to the table and forced her down. As they tied her hands and feet, Hsiao turned to face Tombstone and Bayerly again.

"Both of you have had a taste of our hospitality at first hand. Now we will let you watch that hospitality demonstrated with another."

"You son of a bitch! Let her go!" Tombstone wanted to beg, to plead…

knowing at the same time he could do nothing. "She doesn't know anything."

"I quite agree. But the point, you see, is not to extract information from her… but from you." He walked over to the table, reached down, and took a handful of golden hair. "You remember what we did to Bentley and the others?" he asked. "How long, do you think, before we reduce this lovely creature to the same condition? How long can we keep her conscious… aware?

How long will you be able to watch us work on her?"

Pamela twisted her head to the side, trying to bite Hsiao's hand. He snatched his hand back and chuckled.

"Her fate is entirely up to you, gentlemen. Tell us what we want to know and we will release her. Either of you can save her, at any time."

Tombstone lunged forward in the chair, feeling the steel of the handcuffs bite the raw patches circling his wrists. "You bastard! You can't get away with it…!"

"I already have, Commander." Hsiao held out one hand and snapped his fingers. Phreng reached across the girl on the table and handed him the cattle prod.

Pamela's scream an instant later rang off the warehouse walls, going on and on and burning itself into Tombstone's ears and mind as completely as the sight of the three bodies in his cell. "Stop it! Stop it!"

Hsiao lifted the prod. "Shall we start with the procedures for landing a friendly aircraft on Jefferson's flight deck?"

Tombstone shook his head, helplessly torn between horror and rage. Blood pounded in his temples. He couldn't let them do this to Pamela… but to tell them what they wanted to know…

"For God's sake stop it!" Bayerly yelled suddenly, as though the words had been torn from him. His voice cracked, little more than a harsh croak.

"Ask me! Ask me! I'll tell you! Whatever you want!"

Hsiao looked up, his expression one of mild surprise. "Indeed?" He seemed to be considering Bayerly's offer.

Tombstone turned his head and stared at the other aviator. Bayerly was sagging against the chair, his chest heaving as he gulped hungrily at the air, his eyes bulging with a desperate, consuming terror. His face was as pale as death, glistening under the lamps with a thin sheen of sweat.

"Bayerly, you son of a bitch!"

Hsiao gave an order, and one of the Burmese began untying Bayerly's feet.

"Come," Hsiao said as he helped the prisoner rise unsteadily to his feet. "We will go someplace where we can talk in comfort."

"What… what about them…?"

"Both will remain safe… so long as you cooperate." Supporting Bayerly with a hand under the American's elbow, Hsiao turned to the civilians and snapped something at them in That.

Phreng replied, the words singsong and incomprehensible. His hand restlessly stroked Pamela's thigh. Hsiao barked a command. There was resentment in the That's face… then a curt nod, and he began untying the girl's ankles.

Moments later they were freeing him as well. It looked to Tombstone as though the worst of the horror might be past. But at what cost? Somehow, the information Hsiao wanted was aimed at the Jefferson. What was Hsiao up to…

terrorism? Holding a U.S. carrier for ransom? Whatever his plan, it might mean the death of hundreds, possibly thousands of his shipmates.

As two Burmese guards led him back to his cell, he knew it was up to him to warn Jefferson.

The problem was how? There was no way Hsiao and his henchmen were going to let them walk away free, not now.

And Bayerly was spilling his guts. Tombstone felt the desperation rising within his chest and wanted to scream, the torture as bad in a small way as the hour he'd spent that morning hanging from Hsiao's meat hook.

Try as he might, he could see no way out of this mess for any of them.

The Karen party had walked for hour upon hour, stopping rarely, always moving south. Batman lost track of how far they must have come; each forest-shrouded ridge was much like the one before… or the one ahead. His legs, especially his knees and thighs, shrieked agony at him throughout the morning. By mid-afternoon he felt a kind of bludgeoned numbness all over, and he had to concentrate with a single-minded fanaticism simply on placing one foot ahead of the next.

There were increasing signs of settlement, however. More than once, the Karens filed out of the jungle and across a road, usually a deep-rutted jeep trail, though occasionally it was pothole-cratered blacktop, a sure sign of civilization. They skirted several villages, and once crossed a large open space with the watery gleam of a rice field off to the left, reflecting the brooding gray of overcast sky and mountains.

The final climb left Batman breathless, and it was so steep that Malibu had to get off his stretcher and hobble along supported by two of the camo-clad natives. By the time the slope leveled off at last, the overcast had begun to break up, allowing intermittent shafts of light to illuminate the green-clad face of the mountain rising above them. The Karens halted at a point where jungle gave way to open ground and a dirt road winding along the face of the mountain.

Htai walked up to Batman. "It is time we parted," he said. "We have brought you as far as we can."

"Now wait a minute," Batman said. "What you're just going to drop us off in the middle of nowhere?"

Htai gestured. "Follow that road. You will be able to find transportation there."

Batman looked up the road. More jeep trail than road, it looked as though it rarely saw traffic. If Htai was expecting the two of them to hitchhike back to civilization…!

He turned to argue with Htai, and stopped. The jungle was a green wall along the road, leaves and fronds stirring with the breeze. The Karens were gone, vanished.

"Htai!" Batman yelled. "Son of a bitch… Htai!"

Malibu leaned against his makeshift crutch and eyed the jungle. "Shit, buddy," he said. "I get the feeling they don't care for our company anymore!"

"Looks that way." The way the Karens had disappeared into the forest was eerie. What was it they were afraid of? "C'mon. We can't stay here all day."

Batman was tempted to walk down the road ― the going would have been a lot easier ― but Htai had pointed in the other direction. Batman didn't know what the Karen colonel's game was, but it would be better to do things his way, at least until this scenario played itself out. They followed the curve of the road along the mountain's flank for perhaps another hundred yards, as Batman's legs threatened to buckle with the unaccustomed strain and Malibu limped along with a grim and stoic silence which said something about his own pain and exhaustion.

The cave opened in front of the two Americans like an unfolding dream.

More grotto than cave, it was visible in the side of the mountain like a slash between house-sized limestone boulders. Inside, the afternoon light filtered through a hole in the cavern's roof illuminating the alabaster face of a gigantic, carved stone Buddha.

Other carvings emerged from the dim recesses of the cavern, but Batman was momentarily spellbound by the sight of that largest figure. He took a clumsy step forward. The scene was so remote, so otherworldly it might have been a dream. Already, the light was changing, the carvings receding once more into shadow as the magic of that single shaft of illumination faded.

"Yoot!" The voice carried the whip-crack of authority. "Yah klihun vahee!"

They turned slowly and saw the That Rangers behind them, M-16s leveled.

"Lieutenants Wayne and Blake, sir," Batman said automatically. If these people didn't speak English, the two of them could be in a lot of trouble.

"United States Navy."

One of the Rangers looked puzzled, and then his face creased in a broad smile. "Navy! You long way from ocean!"

The place, it turned out, was Chiang Dao Cave, normally a busy tourist site but deserted since the insurrection began. The only people in the area now were a detachment of That Rangers.

Batman looked past the man at the cavern, where the shadows were swallowing the stone Buddha. Nearby, the spires of a chedi, or temple, gleamed white against the sky. After days of mud, insects, and nagging uncertainty, the breeze-swept peace of the shrine, of civilization, seemed like a breath of heaven.

Within an hour, Batman and Malibu were in the back of a jeep, bouncing down the dirt road toward the town of Chiang Dao, where a government station had been established to assist the hill tribes living on the slopes of the surrounding mountains. An hour after that they were in a Royal That Army truck, jolting down Highway 107 toward Chiang Mai.

A telephone call from the government station had already been placed through to Sattahip and the Jefferson. By the time they reached the airport west of Thailand's second-largest city several hours after dark, a Navy helicopter was already there, waiting for them with rotors turning.

In another two hours they were back on the ship, and Batman had sworn that he was never dating another stewardess for as long as he lived.

It was dark outside as Hsiao completed work on the last set of operational orders. They were committed now, with Sheng li hanging on a single toss of the dice. Leaning forward at his desk, he used the intercom to summon Phreng.

"You sent for me, General?"

"Yes. Get the prisoners."

"Yes, sir." Phreng hesitated, then grinned. "Are we going to start working on them again?"

Hsiao heard the man's not very subtle emphasis on the plural "them." He knew Phreng had been looking forward to working on the girl, and the thought angered him. For Hsiao, torture was a tool, not a means for the gratification of twisted personalities.

He was not going to let Phreng enjoy that pleasure… not yet, at any rate. The Americans might yet have some value as hostages, and he didn't want them permanently damaged.

There was no need. Bayerly had given him all the information he needed.

"They are not to be hurt. Either of them."

Phreng's expression fell. "Yes, sir."

"Make arrangements for a truck… an army truck with a canvas top. We will take them out tonight."

"Yes, sir. Where are we taking them?"

"To U Feng." Hsiao tapped the end of his pen against the maps spread out on the table before him. "We will want to be clear of the city before the festivities begin."

"Festivities, sir?"

Hsiao allowed himself a shallow smile. "Tonight we begin the final phase of Sheng li."

"Tonight!"

"Yes. Now… have my driver bring the car around."

"Yes, sir. And your destination?"

"Lumpini," he said, reaching for the telephone on his desk. That was the name of a large park on Rama Four Road, less than two miles from Klong Toey.

He'd used it for meetings with fellow conspirators before. "I have some final arrangements to make."

Phreng made a wai and backed out of the office. Minutes later, Hsiao was speaking the innocuous code phrases which would inform Colonel Kriangsak where and when his master would speak with him.

The attack on the Jefferson had to be carried off swiftly, before the Americans were aware of their danger. It would not take long for the helicopters, already prepared for their mission, to reach the carrier from the air base at Sattahip.