Mission Critical
He entered the room with a toolbox taken from the garage, nonchalantly opened it, and began putting various tools on the nightstand next to the bed where the North Korean was shackled. A hammer, a saw, a hand drill, a vise grip. They were all rusty. He took his time doing this, never once speaking or glancing over to the woman while he “prepared.”
Finally, he turned her way and stood over her. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, and then after a few seconds he started laughing. “Who am I kidding? I totally want to hurt you.”
Janice Won blinked.
He turned serious in a heartbeat. “But I’m not supposed to. Rules. I’m sure you’ve got some of those where you come from, right? How many bugs you can eat on holidays so you get some protein, how many prisoners you can do your biological testing on. Everybody’s got a boss, and every boss has rules. You and me? We’re no different.”
He sat on the bed next to her, then leaned forward. “Except for the fact my boss tells me I have to get you to talk, and my boss made me promise to never tell her what I did to make you talk. So, I guess we can say that what happens in this room, stays in this room, Janice. Are you picking up what I’m putting down?”
He saw a little tremble, a quickening of her heartbeat evident in the veins of her throat.
Zack picked up the saw. Smiled. “My coworkers usually don’t let me anywhere near an interrogation. I had a couple of . . . unfortunate experiences. But it’s your lucky day, honey, because we’ve got the place all to ourselves.”
He rolled up the sleeves of his denim shirt. “What do you say we get to know one another.”
* * *
• • •
Zoya and Court sat out on the front porch with Travers and Jason. Brewer paced the darkness twenty yards away talking into her phone, although no one knew who she was talking to.
A woman’s scream came from the house, followed by the authoritative shouts of a former Navy SEAL and CIA paramilitary, followed by a long moment of silence. This was repeated over and over, but no one outside commented on it at all.
Finally Zoya reached over and put her hand on Court’s back gingerly. “How are you feeling?”
“Better than her. Not much, maybe, but some.”
She looked down at his hand. The ice was off it, for now, but he’d get another icing in a few minutes. She said, “You know you can’t operate with one hand, don’t you? Whatever happens next, you’ll need to stay out of it.”
There was no way that was happening, Court knew, but now wasn’t the time to argue. He just said, “What about you? At some point, someone has to stop your father. I think you need to stay out of it. Don’t you?”
Zoya looked off into space. “Suzanne says no one knows what this mole told my father. And we don’t know what contacts he has in UK intel. But we know he doesn’t know details of Poison Apple. That means it will probably have to be one of the three of us who takes him down.”
Court looked to Travers, sitting next to him. “Hey, Chris. Earmuffs.”
Travers rolled his eyes. “Dude. Full scope poly.”
Court said, “Please?”
Travers put his hands over his ears with a sigh and walked off into the dark, out of earshot.
Jason just sat there. Court eyed him a few seconds. Then said, “Really, kid? You think you’re cleared for any of this?”
“No, sir,” he replied, and he walked off into the night, as well.
“Sorry,” Zoya said. “I shouldn’t have said Poison Apple.”
Court shrugged. “Hell, the only reason we know about it is because the enemy told us; we didn’t get it from our own side.”
“The enemy,” Zoya repeated. Then said, “My father.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why? You are right.”
More screaming came from the house.
Court said, “Yes, it will have to be one of us most likely that kills him. But it should not be you.”
The argument died there, and Court had the feeling he’d won. They talked for a few minutes more before Zack came out, covered in sweat. He was animated, amped up, his eyes searching. “Where’s Brewer? Get me Brewer!”
Suzanne Brewer came walking out of the dark, disconnecting her call in the process. “What did you get?”
Zack said, “Eight liters of pneumonic plague, weaponized in four aerosol delivery canisters, each the size of a commercial fire extinguisher. The target is Castle Enrick, but she does not know the time of the attack. She said total casualties of a successful attack like this were upwards of five thousand dead, most all of them IC members and their families.”
Brewer closed her eyes. “Oh my God. Means of attack?”
“Would you believe a motherfucking crop duster?”
Brewer smiled a little now and opened her eyes. “Not anymore, it’s not. We’ll put twenty helos and fast movers around that castle and blast anything bigger than a duck out of the fucking sky.”
Brewer had spent years in CIA working on threats to Agency personnel and facilities; she was more in her element now than she was running sub rosa assets, by far.
Zack said, “Zakharov and his mob bozos have a staging area up in the Highlands. She doesn’t know where, although she was there a few weeks back. Within about three to four hours of the castle. I think we’ve just got to go look for it. There is a bright yellow crop duster, away from any airfield. She said there was an old church and a graveyard.”
Brewer bit her lip. “Might take some time, but I’ll get people on that now.”
Zoya turned to Zack. “You got all that out of her in thirty minutes? I didn’t get a damn thing.”
“Lady, ‘Psycho Cop’ was the role I was born to play.”
Brewer walked off, and Court asked, “What’s the prisoner’s condition?”
Zack said, “I was ready to get nasty, but I put my hand on her knee as I was moving around. She acted like I was made of lava.”
Court had noticed the same thing. “She apparently doesn’t like to be touched. At all.”
Zack shrugged. “There’s not a scratch on that woman’s body, but she’s not gonna be okay. All the scars I gave her are on the inside. They ain’t never going to heal, but I may have just saved five thousand assholes by fucking her up for life.” He shrugged again. “And I can live with that.”
* * *
• • •
Jason gave Janice Won a shot of an anesthetic that would have her out cold until a CIA team could arrive from Edinburgh to collect her, and soon after a U.S. Army helicopter landed out of the darkness, picked all the Americans and Zoya up from the safe house, and flew them north to the Highlands.