Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves (31 page)

Calderon caught Schofield looking at Hartigan. ‘It is a torture position known as
strappado,
or “reverse hanging”. It has been used for hundreds of years, by the Medici family in Florence and the Nazis in their concentration camps, and also the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. It is still used today in Turkey—I know this for a fact as I instructed their torturers in its correct use. Strappado causes excruciating pain and if left for too long in this position, the subject will suffer first, permanent ligament damage, and second, dislocation of the shoulders, and eventually full loss of use of the arms.’

Calderon smiled. ‘I personally just like the look of it. The subject is at my complete mercy, with his hands pinned behind his back and his chest thrust outward so that his heart—his life force—is totally exposed.’

Schofield turned to face the other two prisoners and when he recognised them, his jaw dropped.

They were both suspended from a second forklift, one from each prong, also in the strappado position. Unlike Hartigan, however, their heads were unbowed, allowing Schofield to identify them easily.

Mother and Baba.

Like Schofield, their cold-weather outer garments had been removed—Baba hung from his swept-back wrists with his massive chest bare to the cold; it was hairy, muscled and huge. Beside him, Mother had been stripped to her trousers and grey sports bra.

Both bore bloody lips and noses, evidence of beatings already received. Schofield also noticed that a huge Army of Thieves man—it was Big Jesus—was standing nearby with a new acquisition slung across his back: Baba’s massive Kord machine gun.

At the loud cheer from the crowd of thugs, Mother snapped round and saw Schofield being wheeled out on the bedframe.

‘Scarecrow!’ she called.

Schofield couldn’t reply through his duct-taped mouth, but he locked eyes with her.

Mother yelled, ‘Stay strong, boss! We got ’em just where we want ’em!’

Schofield’s bedframe was erected vertically alongside Ironbark’s. As he jolted to a halt, Schofield saw Ironbark look up at him—the totally exhausted gaze of a man who had been tortured to within an inch of his life. It seemed to take all of his energy just to raise his head. The smell of his burnt skin was sickening.

Calderon stood before Schofield and jerked his chin at Ironbark. ‘Specialist Barker here is a fair bit further along on his journey of pain than you are. But fear not, Captain, you will catch up with him soon.’

Calderon then turned to the Army of Thieves trooper manning the electrical transformer connected to Ironbark’s bedframe. He was a Sudanese fellow with studded skin and bloodshot yellow eyes; and on his back, Schofield saw, still in its holster, he wore Schofield’s Maghook.

‘Corporal Mobutu,’ Calderon said, ‘I need the electrical cable to use on Captain Schofield. Splash Mr Barker and kill him, please.’

The Sudanese torturer grabbed a nearby bucket of water and hurled its contents over Ironbark’s limp body.

Calderon explained to Schofield, ‘The trouble with electrocuting a human being, Captain, is that human skin, when dry, is actually quite resistant to electricity. The result is burning—you can ramp up the voltage as much as you want, but you only end up scorching the skin more. And the smell, God, it really is quite offensive. But if you
wet
the subject’s skin, the skin’s resistance drops and it becomes
one hundred times
more receptive to electricity. One moment, please. This is all for nothing if I don’t broadcast it.’

Calderon grabbed a microphone from nearby. It was connected to a communications console on the wall. Calderon pressed the ‘
TALK
’ button and when he spoke again, his voice was magnified through every one of the many loudspeakers in the gasworks; indeed, through every loudspeaker on Dragon Island.

‘
Zack Weinberg. Emma Dawson. I know you can hear me.
’ Calderon’s voice blared. ‘
Please listen to this. It is the sound of one of your comrades-in-arms dying.
’

Calderon turned to his Sudanese assistant. ‘Mobutu, 10,000 volts, please.’

The Sudanese flicked a dial on the transformer and immediately the steel springs on Ironbark’s bedframe flashed with blue lightning.

Ironbark’s entire body shook violently as electricity coursed through him, his terrible shuddering sending droplets of water flying outwards. His teeth clenched around the wooden bit in his mouth. He grunted and strained in absolute agony, the tendons of his neck bulging, before abruptly his groans became high-pitched screams.

Calderon held the microphone close to Ironbark’s mouth the whole time, broadcasting his horrific screams across the island.

Then Ironbark’s screams cut off and he went completely limp, even though the transformer was still sending the charge flowing through the bedframe.

Schofield was thunderstruck by the savagery of it.

Ironbark was dead, but this wasn’t over yet.

The crowd started chanting, ‘Fire! Fire!’

Calderon nodded and Ironbark’s dead body was wheeled away and tipped—still attached to the bedframe—off the edge of the balcony, where it fell a short distance before landing on the conveyor belt. The slow-moving belt then carried it away. The corpse on the bedframe disappeared for about ten seconds as it passed under the broad ramp from the train platform, only to reappear again at the lip of the furnace on the far side.

Ironbark and the bedframe then tipped into the furnace where they were swallowed by the flames and the crowd of Thieves cheered with macabre, crazed delight.

In a dark corner of Dragon Island, Zack and Emma heard it all over a nearby loudspeaker.

They looked at each other in horror.

‘Oh my God . . .’ Emma whispered. ‘Oh my God . . .’

In the gasworks, Calderon stepped over to the figure of Jeff Hartigan, suspended strappado-style from the forklift.

He slapped Hartigan’s face and the executive stirred, groaning. He was alive.

Calderon turned theatrically to the crowd. ‘What do you say? Rat time?’

The crowd of Thieves roared with delight.

‘Mobutu,’ Calderon said. ‘Bring in the rats.’

Mobutu disappeared into a side room, returning a few moments later with a large wire-framed crate inside of which were six rats.

Schofield’s eyes went wide.

They were of various sizes, from small and scurrying to fat and huge. They all had black furry backs, long hairless tails and frightening buck teeth. They snapped at each other with considerable viciousness.

Calderon said, ‘You know, Captain, one can’t help but be impressed by vermin. Rats, cockroaches, they’re so
resilient
. They will outlast us, that’s for sure. These rats, for instance, have survived on this island far longer than their old Soviet masters did. Consider this a demonstration for your benefit.’

Calderon jerked his chin at Hartigan. ‘Put a box on him.’

Mobutu obliged. Climbing a stepladder, he placed a large wooden box over Hartigan’s bowed head. The box had solid wooden walls, save for a round hole cut into its base, which was designed to accommodate the victim’s neck. Once the box was in place over Hartigan’s head, Mobutu stuffed some rags around the edge of this hole, sealing the gap between the box and the skin of his neck. Hartigan now looked like the Man in the Iron Mask.

There was also a hinged panel on the top side of the box—and when Schofield saw Mobutu open this panel and pick up a particularly large rat by the tail with his spare hand and hold it above the opening, every ounce of blood in his veins turned to ice.

‘Oh, Lord, no . . .’ he breathed.

Calderon saw this. ‘I imagine a man as learned as you, Captain, is familiar with Orwell’s beautiful novel,
1984
. In it, a similar form of rat torture is used on the protagonist, Winston Smith. But there the rat torture is only employed as a threat to break Smith’s will; it is not actually
used
. Know this about me, Captain: I do not bother with threats. Mobutu, do it.’

Mobutu dropped the rat into the box, and then quickly added a second one, a smaller one, before he shut the upper panel.

As he did this, Calderon raised his microphone again: ‘Zack. Emma. You remember your campmate, Mr Jeffrey Hartigan. This is him, being eaten alive by rats.’

Until that instant, Jeff Hartigan’s body had been practically motionless as it hung suspended from the forklift’s prong. But then with alarming suddenness, Hartigan started screaming like a madman. His legs kicked frantically, lashing and thrashing, his arms strained at their bonds, but there was no escape.

Schofield couldn’t see what was happening inside the wooden box covering Hartigan’s head, but he could imagine it and it made him nauseous with horror.

The rats were eating Hartigan’s defenceless face.

Soon they would eat through his eyes and burrow into his brain, eating that too, and only then would death come. It was a cruel and painful way to die.

Hartigan’s screams filled the air, hideous shrieks of agony that were only barely muffled by the box. Through it all, Calderon held up the microphone to catch every cry.

After thirty seconds of this, mercifully, death came.

Hartigan’s body abruptly went still, although the box on his head continued to shake, jostled from within by the movement of the rats.

Again, the crowd cheered. Again, Calderon smiled.

Mother and Baba both stared, open-mouthed, in disbelief.

Schofield did the same.

‘Jesus Christ in Heaven, save us,’ he breathed.

Calderon came up to him, still the picture of casual calm.

He looked straight at Schofield as he spoke into his microphone. ‘Zack? Emma? Are you still there? You can stop this, you know, simply by revealing yourselves. That’s all you have to do. Or else I can continue on sergeants Newman and Huguenot and Captain Schofield here.’

Calderon shrugged, addressed Schofield. ‘While we wait for them, Captain, let’s talk. Now, I understand from reading your file that you had a fractured relationship with your father. You defended your mother from his beatings and I wonder if this laid the foundations for your somewhat heroic adulthood. But even heroes suffer loss. Forgive me for opening an old wound, but I’m led to believe that your girlfriend, Ms Elizabeth Gant, was beheaded by a rather nasty fellow named Jonathan Killian. For a heroic type like you, being helpless to save the woman you loved must have been a most painful thing. As I understand it, you weren’t there when she was killed, were you?’

Schofield stared straight ahead, said nothing.

Calderon said, ‘To see or hear a loved one being subjected to torture is, in my experience,
the
most motivating thing for a human being. It is by far the best way to get information from a captive. Those masters of torture, the Japanese in World War II, used such methods regularly both during the war and before it during their infamous sack of Nanking.

‘Right now, you have nothing that I want, but Zack and Emma do. My torture of you is solely for the purpose of drawing them out.’

Calderon leaned close and whispered in Schofield’s ear: ‘I will take you within an inch of death and you
will
beg me to kill you, but I’m not going to do that right now. As I said, I want to break your mind before I kill you. Mobutu, put the bit between his teeth.’

The Sudanese stepped forward and with a leering gap-toothed grin, ripped off the duct tape and made to jam the wooden bit into Schofield’s mouth.

Schofield took the opportunity to call out: ‘Mother! When I’m gone, you keep fighting, you hear!’ but then Mobutu wedged the bit between his teeth and he could shout no more.

Mother’s and Schofield’s eyes met, matching gazes of helplessness.

Mother called across the space, ‘I will, Scarecrow! You bet I fucking will!’

Calderon said, ‘Captain, the device you are strapped to is known as a
parrilla
, a torture device used widely in Chile during the reign of the Pinochet regime. The word parrilla translates roughly as “barbecue”. It is a form of electric shock torture, with the current shot through the metal frame to which the victim is strapped. I have found that old military-barracks bedframes, with their steel springs and thin crossbars, distribute the electric current to maximum effect while also leaving a unique burn pattern on the back of the victim that never goes away. Mobutu, a taste for the captain: 2,000 volts please.’

Mobutu turned the dial on the transformer.

Schofield convulsed violently.

White light flooded his field of vision and excruciating—
excruciating
—pain shot through his entire body. He wanted to arch his back, stretch out the vertebrae, but he couldn’t, he was pinned down too tightly. His teeth clamped down on the bit and he grunted, trying to scream.

As he did this, Calderon held the microphone up close to Schofield’s mouth, broadcasting his pained grunts and stifled screams across the island.

‘Zack and Emma,’ Calderon commentated, ‘what you are hearing is the sound of the brave Captain Schofield being electrocuted.’

Then, through the blinding pain, Schofield smelt it.

The smell of skin burning. His own skin burning.

He screamed again.

Mother strained at her bonds. ‘You motherfucker!’ she yelled at Calderon. ‘I am gonna rip your fucking head off!’

Calderon nodded to Mobutu and the Sudanese flicked off the dial and Schofield slumped against the bedframe, spent, exhausted, sweating, gasping. His head fell forward as he tried to suck in oxygen.

Calderon smiled. ‘That was but a mere 2,000 volts against your dry skin, Captain. As you saw with your SEAL friend, Mr Barker, when the skin is wet, its conductivity increases one-hundredfold. Soon I will have Mobutu douse you in water and turn that dial to a much higher voltage. Then the current won’t burn your skin—it will flow directly through your heart and kill you.’

Calderon nodded at Mobutu and the Sudanese again grabbed the nearby bucket and hurled its remaining contents over Schofield’s body. Schofield hung there on the bedframe, dripping with water.