Vengeance: A Derek Stillwater Novel (Derek Stillwater Thrillers Book 8) Read online

  “Hey!”

  Someone grabbed his free arm and levered it behind his back, putting pressure on the good shoulder. Rather than fight, Derek relaxed, went along with it. If he knew how many people there were, if he had some sense of the building’s layout, maybe he could be more proactive. But now, his arm in a sling, wounded, Hammond incapacitated, the number of people holding him captive, the smart thing was to hang on and gather intelligence.

  He hoped.

  Derek knew from experience that there would come a moment, sometimes a very short, unpredictable moment, in which an opportunity for escape opened up.

  It was possible that moment had just occurred. It was possible that, with only the three men in a confined space, unaware of his capabilities, the door open, that he might have taken out one of the men, taken his gun and fought his way to freedom.

  Now he would have to wait for another, hopefully better moment.

  Derek was experienced enough to know that a better moment might not come. A moment, some moment, probably would. But it might not be better.

  Many captives had died waiting for the perfect moment to escape.

  They pushed him down a hallway, the floor feeling like concrete beneath his feet. The building was a little bigger than he had thought, possibly an apartment building or some sort of commercial space.

  They led him through another doorway, he thought. The acoustics seemed to change.

  Multiple hands gripped him and forced him to lie down on what felt like boards. His head was lower than his feet. His left arm was yanked around and tied down. His legs were strapped to the boards.

  “Hey! What’s going on? If you have questions, just ask them!”

  His right arm was still free, immobilized in a sling. He wondered if another escape opportunity, another precious moment before they tied him down, had just passed.

  Harsh male voices spoke in Arabic. Then his right arm was pulled from the sling. He moaned through gritted teeth as pain exploded in his shoulder.

  Roughly someone pinned his arm and immobilized it with rope around his wrist. He struggled to sit up, awareness shooting through his brain. Hands shoved him back down and a strap was placed over his chest, preventing him from moving.

  Close to his face, Sheikh Nazif said, “What is your name?”

  “I told you. My name is Bill Black.”

  “What country are you from?”

  “The United States.”

  “What intelligence agency do you work for?”

  “I don’t work for any intelligence agency.”

  Something heavy fell over his face. Oh shit. He knew what was coming.

  Water poured onto his face. Derek had experienced waterboarding in a SERE course, but knowing what to expect didn’t make it any more pleasant. At first all he felt was moisture, then, because his head was lower than his feet, water started to fill his nose.

  Thrashing his head, he managed to dislodge the wet cloth, but the bag over his head was now soaking wet. Derek inhaled at the wrong time and he started to cough, choking.

  Hands pressed his head down so he couldn’t move.

  Nazif said, “What intelligence agency do you work for?”

  Still coughing, he sputtered, “U.S. State Department. I answer … ” He coughed again, but managed to clear his throat and lungs and breathe again. “I answer directly to the Secretary of State.”

  The voices went back and forth in Arabic.

  Trying to clear the water from his nose and mouth, he gagged. A hand pressed down on his forehead. “What intelligence agency do you work for?”

  “I don’t work for an intelligence agency. I told you—”

  The weight came down on his face again, more water. He tried to hold his breath, but when he tried, someone pressed down on his chest. Gasping, he involuntarily breathed in. Water trickled through the cloth and the bag over his head and into his nose and mouth. Trying to blow it out, he struggled against his captors. No matter how much knowledge and training you had, the sensation of drowning, the sensation of your nose and sinuses filling with water, brought on an instinctual feeling of panic.

  Waterboarding was not the simulation of drowning. It was slow drowning.

  Hands held his head steady. Heart racing, Derek struggled to control his breathing, to stay calm.

  The wet cloth was removed. Water still dribbled into his nose from the mask he wore. But he was able to turn his head.

  “Why did you come to Syria?”

  “To look for evidence of sarin gas.”

  More Arabic.

  “Your president’s so-called ‘red line.’ Did you find any sarin gas, Bill Black?”

  “No. We got in the middle of your firefight first.”

  “What is your partner’s name?”

  “Steve Smith.”

  Hands gripped his head. The cloth came back down. Water filled his nose and mouth. In his chest, his heart raced. Derek experienced panic attacks. This felt like one. His body was reacting to the environment. He was losing control. A bitter metallic taste filled his mouth. He attempted to thrash his way free, but the hands gripped him, elbows pressed down on his chest and legs, holding

  him in place.

  “What is your partner’s name?”

  “Steve Smith.”

  “What intelligence agency does he work for?”

  “He’s like me. The State Department.” A lie, but if he told them John was with the CIA they would be more likely to kill him.

  “What was your mission?”

  “I told you—”

  The cloth went back on. More water.

  It went on and on. Unlike the SERE courses, where your health and reactions were closely monitored for undue stress, this didn’t end. They kept asking questions. Except for the question about John he stuck to the truth. Some of the questions went all over the place:

  “What is the U.S.’s intentions in Syria?”

  “I don’t know. I just gather information.”

  “So you are a spy.”

  “I’m an expert in biological and chemical weapons.”

  “What is your training?”

  “I have a doctorate in biochemistry and microbiology. I was trained by the U.S. Army.”

  “So you are not with the State Department. You are with the

  U.S. military.”

  “No. I retired from the Army.”

  “What is your rank?”

  More water. More pressure. He lost his sense of time. He lost a sense of what all the questions were. His heart raced out of control, he couldn’t seem to catch his breath, he coughed, he gagged,

  he choked …

  And he passed out.

  More than once. And they would wake him with slaps to the face, jabs to his shoulder or with ammonia under his nose. They would take a break for a few minutes, then start up again.

  He told them everything he knew, hoping they would stop.

  But they didn’t.

  Derek thought: They like it. They like doing this to me.

  And by the end he was swearing at them and begging them to stop.

  He felt Sheikh Nazif’s hot breath on his cheek, near his ear. He smelled of garlic and nicotine. “Can you make sarin gas for us?”

  It felt as if his heart stopped in his chest. “No,” he croaked out. “No.”

  The cloth went back on.

  An hour later, or two hours, or maybe it was only minutes, he said, “Yes, if you’ll stop, yes.”

  The cloth came off and they untied him. Sheikh Nazif stood in front of him, muscular arms crossed over his big chest. “We will talk some more tomorrow.”

  Derek, trembling from exhaustion, said nothing, sitting on two boards. He could see the room now. And the window over his shoulder covered with venetian blinds. And he knew it was dark outside. From the other side of the window he heard traffic sounds. Not much, but one or two cars went by.

  So he knew they were on the main floor. Whatever building they were in, they were on the main
floor.

  “You will help us build chemical weapons,” Nazif said.

  Derek didn’t say anything.

  The Egyptian leaned toward him. “You like waterboard, yes? Wish to do more?”

  “No,” Derek croaked out. He’d blow up their fucking building with himself in it pretending to make them sarin gas, but he wasn’t going to be making poison gas for al-Qaeda.

  “My brother, Abdul Nazif, he has been at your Guantanamo Bay for years. They waterboard him, yes. Now I waterboard you. It is, how you say it, what goes around comes around. Yes?”

  Derek still did not reply.

  Nazif reached out and gripped Derek’s injured shoulder. He winced, gasping. “Yes?”

  Derek looked the Egyptian in the eye. “Oh yes,” he said. “What goes around comes around.”

  5

  The mask went back on his head and he was prodded back to the room where John awaited him, unconscious. They tore the mask off and slammed the door shut behind him.

  Derek collapsed onto the mattress and lay there staring at the bare light bulb that was the sole illumination. He pushed away the emotions dredged up from the torture and concentrated on what he knew.

  There were forty-three steps between this room and the other room—he had counted them on the way back. All on the same floor, which he believed to be the ground floor. There were some traffic sounds from outside the building. It was night. There were more people in the building, although not a lot more. But he heard sounds from within the building, including what he thought was a TV.

  Across from him John stirred. His eyes opened, then closed. Gingerly, his shoulder and arm aching, Derek scooted over next to his partner. “Hey, Steve,” he said. “You awake?”

  John’s eyes fluttered open and he stared blankly at Derek, then closed again. Derek rested his good hand on the man’s forehead, checking for any signs of a temperature, which might suggest an infection. He felt cool to the touch. Derek checked his pulse and noted it was steady and strong.

  Sitting next to Hammond’s mattress for a while, trying to calm down, he studied the room. As cells went, it wasn’t bad. Unfortunately, there weren’t a lot of options for weapons, either. They had left a bucket for him to use to relieve himself, several cushions, two mattresses, a small table with a couple bottles of water and a plate of food.

  They had left a bedpan for John. An IV bag of saline hung from a hook in the ceiling, a clear plastic line connecting to a needle in his arm. About half the bag remained.

  Under the circumstances, it was practically the fucking Hyatt Regency.

  Except for the waterboarding.

  The table, which was lightweight, was a potential weapon, but not a good one. Not against men armed with AK47s.

  “S’up?” Hammond muttered.

  Derek saw that Hammond’s eyes were open. “Well, Steve, you’re wounded. The head wound seems minor, but the abdominal wound’s a problem.” During their mission brief, they had agreed on cover names if everything went to hell. Well, here they were, Steve and Bill.

  “Doesn’t … feel … too bad.”

  “The doc gave you something in your IV. But it won’t last.”

  His eyes closed again and Derek thought maybe he’d drifted off. But the blue eyes opened again and focused. “You look … shit.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Sit … rep?”

  Situation report? “It sucks. We are currently being held captive by a group I believe to be some branch of al-Qaeda. I explained to them that we both work for the State Department, that we’re just here to make an evaluation.”

  Hammond’s eyes flickered in recognition. He sighed and seemed to shrink back onto the cot. “Fuck,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “What do … want?”

  “The only thing I know so far is they’d like me to make sarin gas for them.”

  The silence went on so long that he thought Hammond had slipped back to sleep. Then: “Fuck.”

  “Covers it pretty well.”

  “Plan?”

  “The walls have ears.”

  “They … speak … English?”

  “Da.”

  Hammond’s smile was faint. “You speak Russian?”

  “Krio and Russian.”

  “ … fuck is … Krio?”

  In Russian, Derek said, “The language of my childhood, buddy. Get some sleep. I think we’re going to need it.”

  Hammond did. Derek ate a little more food, then rolled onto the mattress and tried to sleep. Sleep was a soldier’s best friend and he had stupidly allowed Secretary Mandalevo to talk him into becoming a soldier again in the name of international security. And here he was, a POW.

  But sleep wouldn’t come. Whenever he started to drift off, he felt his nose and mouth fill with water and his gag reflex kicked in. He would jerk awake coughing, realize he was not drowning, and try to relax. It wasn’t long before his brain started playing tricks on him, convincing himself that if he fell asleep he would have that drowning sensation again, that the best way to avoid it was to

  just not sleep.

  Eventually, though, exhaustion won over and he dozed.

  The door crashed open. He sat upright. Even Hammond stirred, though he didn’t sit up. Black Scarf and Red Scarf appeared in the doorway with someone else, just a kid. Derek guessed his age at twelve, maybe thirteen. Slender with a round face, black hair cut close to his scalp, and wide almond eyes. The kid carried an AK like Red Scarf and Black Scarf.

  They gestured for Derek to get on his feet. When he wasn’t quick enough, Red Scarf caught him by the collar and dragged him to his feet. Derek began to move with the direction of the drag, starting a fast process that would lead to Red Scarf’s death and the AK47 in his own hands, but Black Scarf took a step backward and raised the gun so it was aimed directly at Derek’s chest.

  Raising his hands as best he could, Derek said, “Take it easy. I’m coming. Okay? I’m coming.”

  To John he said, “Don’t wait up for me.”

  “Stay frosty,” Hammond said.

  Pushed out the door, Derek muttered, “Easy for you to say.”

  He had a glimpse of the hallway before a hood was pulled over his face. They prodded him down the hallway in the same direction they had taken him earlier. His mental snapshot of the hallway told him this wasn’t a large building, but large enough to contain a dozen doors on the main floor. Through a room directly across from where he and Hammond were being held he’d seen a window. It was dark outside, but the window was not covered with anything more than a cloth curtain.

  They pushed him into the room and a door closed behind him. The hood came off. Derek wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. He didn’t think it was the same room as before, although it could be.

  Sheikh Nazif sat in an armchair, chin resting on one palm. “Let’s talk about sarin gas.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  “You can make it. You told us that earlier.”

  “That doesn’t mean I’m going to.”

  Nazif waved to a few dozen boxes and barrels and jugs off to one side of the room. “We have all the ingredients you need, I believe. Isn’t the Internet a wonderful thing?”

  Derek, glancing at his three guards, edged over to the containers. One bore the chemical formula for sodium fluoride, another the symbol for dimethyl methylphosphonate. The names weren’t written in English, but Derek recognized the chemical symbols. From a quick look, he thought they indeed had everything they needed to cook up some sarin. He doubted he was the only person in the area who had the expertise to do it, either. Any chemist could do it, even probably some college chemistry students if they had the recipe.

  Doing it without getting yourself killed was trickier. Making enough of it to load into an artillery shell was more difficult still, but enough to put in a fertilizer sprayer? Sure, no problem.

  Derek shrugged. “You don’t need me for this.”

  “You will do it for us.”r />
  Cocking his head, Derek said, “If you just want some sarin, I’m sure you can find someone local. Otherwise, I’m sure you’re looking for the PR value of showing an American making you sarin gas. But sorry, I’m not cooperating.”

  Nazif gestured to the guards behind Derek. Turning, Derek saw the kid pull what looked like a handgun from a holster. He aimed it at Derek and pulled the trigger. Derek was on the move, but two darts with attached wires struck him in the chest. He had just enough time to think “Taser” before his body lit up with pain, his muscles contracted, and he collapsed to the floor, landing on his bad shoulder.

  Things grew fuzzy for a moment. The pain from the Taser disappeared, but his shoulder hurt worse than ever.

  Nazif said, “Meet my son, Abdul. Very good, Abdul.”

  For what felt like ten minutes, but was maybe only a couple minutes, he couldn’t move. Finally the paralysis faded. Panting, Derek started to his feet. Red Scarf stepped over and kicked his feet out from under him. This time Derek was able to land in a less painful position, rolling away from his injured shoulder.

  “What do you want?”

  “We want you to start manufacturing sarin. Simple as that.”

  Crouching on one hip, Derek said, “I think we’ve been over this already. The answer is no. I won’t do it on practical grounds and I won’t do it on political grounds.” And I really won’t do it on philosophical grounds. Derek had dedicated his entire professional career to preventing the use of biological and chemical weapons. He’d be damned if he would manufacture it for al-Qaeda.

  Nazif waved a hand at his son. The boy, AK slung over his shoulder, darted over and pressed the Taser directly to Derek’s chest and pulled the trigger. The pain was intense. It wasn’t like being hit by the darts. Derek knew this was called Drive Stun and was used for what law enforcement euphemistically called “pain compliance.”

  It didn’t make him go limp. It just hurt like hell. And while it was occurring he wasn’t able to do much of anything about it. As long as the kid held the trigger, Derek’s muscles spasmed, including his diaphragm, meaning he couldn’t breathe.

  As soon as the boy pulled away, the pain stopped.

  Derek kicked the kid’s legs out from under him, rolled, tore the Taser from his finger and slammed it against Red Scarf’s throat. The man went rigid with a scream. Jerking the AK from his hands, he turned toward Black Scarf.