Tiger by the Tail (7 page)

“I’m getting old but not that old,” the former SEAL said. “No keys.”

“Where’s Creata?” Vanner asked Greznya.

“Off-watch.”

“I think we’re going to need her expertise.” Creata, also known as Mouse, was one of the smallest Keldara women. Out of all of Vanner’s intel girls, she was the best at figuring out any sort of lock or device, mechanical or otherwise. She was also a very efficient killer when necessary. Mike had found that out during the Albanian op, when he’d found her standing over a thug she had sliced in half with the laser drill she had been using. Creata had blown his head off, then gone back to popping the safe door without missing a beat.

“I will get her.” Greznya disappeared below deck.

Mike radioed Yosif. “Inara Leader, this is Kildar, what’s your sitrep, over?”

“Inara Leader to Kildar, perimeter is secure. We have captured eighteen tangos, with forty-four KIA. Three wounded, none killed on our side. Team Jayne is sweeping the rest of the island for anyone hiding, over.”

“Roger that, good work. Police all weapons and collect anything recoverable, then set charges for complete demo and standby for further orders.”

“Roger, Mal.”

By the time Mike had finished his conversation, Creata was kneeling in front of the box, with a miniature borescope in hand. She threaded the end into one of the holes and nodded.

“The box is secured with two disk tumbler locks. They are most likely Abloys, or, considering where we are, possibly Solexes.”

“What’re those?” Adams asked.

Creata straightened up, took the position of “parade rest,” cleared her throat and looked into the distance.

“A disc tumbler lock or Abloy Disklock is a lock composed of slotted rotating detainer discs,” Creata stated, didactically. “Instead of pins that are manipulated by a key, these contain a series of small metal disks in a row. Each disk is cut in a distinct pattern so that part of it, anywhere from ninety to as much as two hundred seventy degrees, is missing. When the proper key, which is cut on two different axes, is inserted and turned, it rotates the disks like the tumblers of a safe, lining them up correctly and opening the lock. Because there are no springs, the lock cannot be bumped. It also cannot be picked by normal means, as there is no way to access and manipulate the disks without a special tool.”

“Which you have, I trust?” Mike asked, trying not to grin. Nielson had been cracking down on the military etiquette lately and all the Keldara were going around like brand new jarhead nuggets. Mike figured it kept the colonel happy and didn’t seem to be interfering in operations.

Creata cocked her head as she regarded the Kildar.

“It would not do much good at home, now would it?”

Mike grinned. “Absolutely not.”

“I have not had opportunity to work live on one of these yet. I’ve had the class but that is different. What I do know is that they take a
long
time. Best to bring it downstairs, where I can work undisturbed.”

“Vil, Danes, you heard the lady. Move it out,” Mike said. “When you’re done, start going over your AARs with the master chief.”

“And what will you be doing in the meantime?” Adams asked.

Mike’s lips peeled back in a wolfish grin. “I’m going to go have a chat with those pirates to find out what they know about what they stole. Vanner, I’ll need translation capability.”

The intel chief hefted his Toughbook laptop. “I figured you would.”

* * *

On the rear deck, Mike studied the three prisoners. Each had been secured to chairs, their hands and feet zip-tied to the metal arms and legs. Some kind soul had even treated their wounds.

“Let’s see . . .” He pointed at the woman. “Prostitute, I’m guessing.” He switched to the halting Chinese Vanner had prepped for him. “Speak English?”

Shaking her head, the woman let loose a stream of rapid-fire Cantonese; at least, Vanner assured him that’s what she was speaking. His laptop recorded her words and parsed them into cohesive, if a little disjointed, English that Vanner fed to him.

“Working near Pemangkat . . . hired to work on island for a few days . . . attacked by base . . . wait a minute, base was attacked by gunmen. He—” She nodded at the man in the purple doo-rag, who scowled and looked away, “—made me go with him,” Vanner reported.

“Why were you piloting the boat?” Mike asked.

“He say he shoot me if I do not.”

“Okay.” Mike drew his pistol and pointed it at her face. “What do you think I’ll do to you if you don’t tell me what I want to know?” He sighed, lowered the pistol and looked at Vanner as there didn’t seem to be a translation. “Hello?”

“Working on it,” Vanner said just as the laptop spit out a string of Cantonese. “Oops.”

“What?” Mike snapped.

“I think it just said, ‘Your dog is a fruit.’ Hang on . . .” There was another stream of Cantonese and he nodded. “There. Got it. Gah. I hate Chinese. ‘Of the moment are considerations of future actions of a negative form.’ Seriously?”

The girl looked away from the .45’s muzzle, which must have seemed huge, and spoke even faster.

“I swear . . . that is all I know.”

“Don’t have a huge amount of street cred in Southeast Asia.” He holstered his sidearm and walked over to the shot caller. “Guess we’ll have to improvise.” A part of him regretted the necessity, another, darker part him did not.

“You have no idea who I am, do you?” he asked the pirate leader.

The guy spat a strange language back at him.

“What’s he saying?”

“Just a moment.” Vanner tapped keys. “Looks like he’s Malaysian. He’s said, ‘I don’t know what you are talking about . . . you Americans . . . This is illegal . . . You cannot do this to me . . . ’ Pretty much repeating variations of the same stuff.”

“Yeah, too bad no one here gives a shit about what I’m going to do to you in the next few minutes.” Mike walked over to a toolbox and took out a claw hammer, tucking it into the back of his shorts. Hauling a small, study metal table with him, he went back to the man and set the table down next to his chair. Flipping out his lock blade, Mike cut the pirate’s right hand free. He slammed it down on the table, then pressed the blade of the knife to the man’s wrist, holding it diagonally, so if the guy moved he would slash his veins open. “I know you can’t understand me, but I’m sure you can grasp the concept of holding your arm really still. Vanner, give me, ‘where did you get the green box?’”

The only answer he received was the man spitting in his face.

Mike tore off the man’s shirt with his free hand and wiped his cheek. Dropping the filthy shirt, he drew the hammer and smashed it down on the pirate’s pinky finger. The pirate screamed in agony and whipped his hand out from under the blade, scraping skin and opening a long slash as he cradled it to his chest.

“One down, nine to go,” Mike said. “Translate that.”

* * *

Breaking the rest of the fingers on the leader’s hand elicited no new information. It had, however, put him into shock by the time Mike started working on his palm. It did have the desired effect on their other male captive. He was now leaning over to get as far away as he could from his maimed leader and the crazy American working him over. For now, Mike was content to let the poor bastard sit there and think about what would happen to him when it was his turn.

The woman was more of a mystery. She sat with her head down, eyes closed. Mike had let her be for now; he knew she could hear what was going on.

He tossed the bloody hammer onto the small table. “This guy’s done for now. Get a medic out here to treat him and clean this up. Make sure he stays alive.”

“Hey, Kildar, check this out.” Vanner was sitting behind his laptop with the monitor facing away from the other two prisoners.

Mike walked over. “What you got?”

Vanner kept his voice low as he replied. “While you were busy, I put my tweaked voice stress lie-detector program through both of the conversations you just had. The meat there—” He waved at the slumped pirate. “—he’s telling the truth, he doesn’t know shit about shit. The girl, on the other hand, I’ve gotten several hits off her that tell me she’s hiding something.”

“No shit?”

“I’m not sure
what
it is, but there’s definitely more to her than she’s telling.”

“Two mysteries in one night? And here I thought our little training cruise was going to be fairly straightforward.” Mike straightened to regard the Chinese woman. “She looks like she might even clean up well. I’d rather not leave any marks on someone who may be sticking around, yet I want to know what she knows.” He tapped his cheek as he pondered, then snapped his fingers. “Water, water, everywhere; nor any drop to drink.”

Vanner looked at him quizzically. “It has been a while since I’ve read Coleridge, but I’m not sure how ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ fits this situation.”

“Don’t worry, you will.” Mike hadn’t taken his eyes off the woman. “And she definitely will by the time I’m done.”

* * *

Although waterboarding was only brought to most of the modern world’s attention in the past decade, it has been around for more than four hundred years.

The technique goes back to the sixteenth century and the Spanish Inquisition. The Catholic inquisitors used a variety of it, known as the
toca
, or
tortua del agua
, as an interrogation and punishment device. It popped up around the world in the intervening centuries; the Dutch used it during the Amboyna Massacre in 1623. Variations were also used as punishment in American prisons, notably in Sing Sing and in the South, during the nineteenth century. It was used by the American military during the Spanish-American War; the “water cure,” as it was called then, was privately espoused by President Theodore Roosevelt, although he spoke against it in public. Both the Japanese and German armies used it in World War II. The U.S. generals banned its use in Vietnam, although the Vietnamese used it on each other with impunity. Variants of the technique also appeared in Chile, Northern Ireland, and South Africa. Elite branches of the U.S. military still use a mild form of the technique during their SERE training to prepare soldiers for what they might encounter in enemy captivity.

Wherever and whenever it was used, the common agreement was that waterboarding was an efficient and quick way to break someone. CIA officers who submitted themselves to the procedure ended up capitulating in an average of fourteen seconds. Even Navy pilots and SEALs were exposed to waterboarding during SERE training. Adams was somewhat famous in the NAVSPEC community for having broken his restraints and nearly choking one of his “interrogators,” a tabbed SEAL instructor, to death. They had to break his fingers to get him to let go of the guy’s throat. Interrogators preferred it because of the rapid results it achieved, and because it didn’t leave any marks on a victim—on the outside, at least.

Mike was planning to use it now for those exact same reasons. He had modified a reclining deck chair and table into a platform that now held the quivering woman, her arms and legs tied down again. Vil and Danes each held one of the chair’s arms, so they could adjust its angle as the Kildar required. He had a medic standing by, and had requested that a pulse oxymeter be attached to monitor the level of oxygen in her blood. This would ensure that she didn’t pass out or even die from the technique. Just in case she suffered a heart attack from the stress about to be put on her body, he’d also had the defibrillator from the ship’s medical stores brought up and prepped. Mike didn’t expect it to go that far, but he wasn’t taking any chances either.

The pirate captain had been moved below deck, his wounds being tended. The second man, however, still had a ringside seat to what was about to happen.

Mike looked at his two men. “Vil, Danes, you ready?”

Both Keldara nodded.

Mike leaned over the woman, who stared at him with fear-filled eyes, and read aloud the message he’d worked out with Vanner.

“I know that you are hiding something. Tell me what it is, and this will stop at once. If you do not tell me what I wish to know, it will continue until you answer my questions. Do you understand?”

She babbled in terrified Cantonese, which Vanner translated.

“She wants to know why you’re doing this to her. She’s just a whore, and she doesn’t know anything about the green box. She seems to be telling the truth about the box, but she’s lying about something else.”

“Here’s the truth, honey,” Mike said, bending over to look her in the eyes. “First truth: You’re hiding something. Little black box says so and the little black box don’t lie. Second truth: I want to know what that is. Because it affects my operation and I’m an intensely curious person. Third truth: I may do good things but I am not a good guy. I am a very very bad man. So I am going to enjoy this. You are not. Fourth truth: You can tell me what I want to know which is well, everything in some sort of coherent order, or I can pass my free time finding it out. I’ll enjoy finding it out. It’s a great hobby with fun for the whole gang. But the moment that you tell me what I want to know I will, with great reluctance, stop hurting you.” He waited for the translation then cocked his head to the side. “Last chance. Want to tell me what I want to know?”

She looked him in the eye then shook her head defiantly.

“All right, I gave her a chance. Hook her up.”

The Keldara medic cut open her shirt and attached leads to her chest from an automatic emergency defibrillator, then rigger-taped an O
₂
sensor to her middle finger.

When the medic was done, Mike readied the canteen of ocean water. The salt water would irritate the lining of her nose and throat, increasing her discomfort even more.

“Let’s give her a drink and see what happens. Vil, Danes, raise her feet until I say stop.”

The two Keldara began lifting the end of the chair until it was at a fifteen-degree angle to the deck with her head at the bottom, while Adams clamped a cloth over her face and nose. Gripping her chin, Mike positioned the canteen and waited until she exhaled, then began pouring a steady stream of water over her nose and mouth.