Locked On Part 48

Moving with speed and a distressing efficiency the four young men cut Clark's bindings and ordered him to his feet in Russian.

Clark stood on shaky legs.

Two more men appeared in the doorway. They carried Varjag pistols in their right hands; they held them low but menacing. Their clothes were civilian, but their thick dark jackets and utility pants made them look, to a trained eye like Clark's, as if they were part of some sort of special unit of military, police, or intelligence officers.

"Come with us," one of them said, and they walked him through a large house, right past the French detectives, and into a van.

On the surface, Clark realized, perhaps he should have been glad. But it just didn't smell to him like a rescue operation.

No, this had an "Out of the frying pan, into the fire" feel.

They blindfolded him and drove for an hour. No one spoke to Clark, nor did the men in the van speak to one another.

When they stopped he was led out of the vehicle, still under his own power. The air was freezing cold, and he felt thick snowflakes on his beard and lips.

Into another building, this with the smell and feel of a warehouse, and he was placed on a chair. Once again, his hands and legs were tied. The blindfold came off and he squinted into a bright light for a moment, before finally opening his eyes.

Three men stood before him, just in the shadows outside the light above. Two wore blue jeans and track-suit tops, their heads shaved and their wide flat Slavic faces cold and unfeeling.

The third man wore pressed slacks and a black ski jacket that looked to Clark like it might have cost several hundred dollars.

A table nearby, just out of the direct light, contained a pile of tools, stainless-steel surgical instruments, tape, wire, and other items John could not make out.

Dread filled the American and tightness entered his stomach.

This wasn't going to be like playing punching bag for a group of French detectives. No, this looked like it was about to get ugly.

Clark also heard noises farther away in the warehouse. Armed guards, it sounded like, from the occasional shuffling of feet and the rattling of rifles on slings.

The man in the ski jacket stepped forward, under the light. He spoke excellent English. "My father says you are looking for me."

"Valentin." John said it in surprise. From the little he knew about the young man, he did not take him for someone that would make a house call to what, by all indications, seemed to be a torture facility. "I said that I wanted to talk to you." Clark looked at the table and the square-jawed men. "This is not exactly what I had in mind."

The thirty-five-year-old Russian just shrugged. "You and I are both here under duress, Mr. Clark. If I had a choice in the matter I would be anywhere else, but you are causing problems for my government and they have selected me to meet with you to resolve the problem. The Kremlin has given me free rein to deal with you."

"Sounds like a job for your father."

Valentin smiled mirthlessly. "This is not his job, nor his problem. I need to know everything about your current employer. I need to know who you spoke with in Moscow. We found the telephone that you called, but it had been dumped in a landfill, so we learned nothing."

Clark breathed a hidden sigh of relief.

Valentin continued, "The information I need can be extracted from you in many ways. Many humane ways. But time is short, so if you resist we will have to seek other avenues. Less humane avenues, shall we say?"

Clark sized the young man up instantly. Kovalenko was uncomfortable in this role. He'd likely been in his element creating a political scandal for the incoming U.S. President by leaking info from Laska, but standing here with tough guys in a frozen Moscow warehouse, getting ready to cut a prisoner to get him to talk . . . This was not his realm.

Clark could not reveal the existence of The Campus to the Russians. He could have held out indefinitely with the French, at least until he died from beating, but Russians had other means. They allegedly possessed a drug, known as SP-117, that was a cut above other truth serums.

Clark knew nothing about the drug other than what he had read in open source. Russia as a threat had been off the exCIA operative's radar for a while.

But why was the drug not here? Why were there only torture devices and tough-looking guys present? Where was the medical facility, the doctors, the FSB psychologists who would normally do this sort of thing.

Clark understood.

John looked at Valentin. "I get it. You are working for Paul Laska. I have a feeling he has something on you, personal or professional I do not know, that is making you do this."

Valentin shook his head no, but he asked, "Why do you suggest this?"

"Because this is not your world. That you are here in person tells me you could not get FSB support. You are SVR, foreign intelligence. FSB has the interrogators here in Moscow that could do this, but where is the FSB? Why have you brought me into a f.u.c.king warehouse? You don't have a government facility for this sort of work? No, Valentin, your own a.s.s is on the line, so you are breaking rules. You've scrounged up a couple of exSpetsnaz guys here, am I right? But they don't know how to do a proper interrogation. They will bash my f.u.c.king skull in before I talk."

Valentin was not accustomed to being outsmarted; Clark could see this in his eyes. "You have been at this since before I was born, old man. You are a dinosaur like my father. But unlike my father, you still retain a little spark in you. I am sorry to say that I will be the one to extinguish that spark. Right now."

Clark said nothing. The kid did not have state backing for what he was about to do, but he was no less motivated to do it.

Not good.

"Who are you working for, Mr. Clark?"

"f.u.c.k you, sonny."

Kovalenko's face seemed to grow slightly pale. He looked to Clark as though he was not feeling well.

"Very well. You force my hand. Shall we begin?" He said a few unintelligible words to his two men, and they stepped over to the instruments on the table. While the thought of doctors in white lab coats was disconcerting to Clark in an interrogation environment, the concept of big men in track suits applying surgical instruments to his body was something beyond horrifying.

Kovalenko said, "Mr. Clark. I have degrees in economics and political science. I have studied at Oxford. I have a wife and a beautiful little girl. What is about to happen has nothing to do with me, with my world. Quite frankly, just the thought of what I am about to do to you makes me want to retch." He paused, then smiled a little. "I wish I had my father here for this. He would know exactly how to ratchet up the pain. But I will try my own methods. I will not begin with something benign, I can see that the men of Fabrice Bertrand-Morel Investigations have already failed with that tactic. No . . . tonight we will begin by devastating your body. After this you will be out of your mind with pain and distress, but you will see how incredibly prepared I am to inflict the ultimate damage upon you, and you will not want to see where I go with phase two of my interrogation."

What the f.u.c.k? thought Clark. This kid did not play by the rules. The men stepped behind Clark, they had blades in their hands. One grabbed the American by his head, the other took hold of his right hand.

Valentin Kovalenko knelt over John, looked him closely in the eyes, and said, "I have read your dossier multiple times. I know you are right-handed, and I know that gun hand of yours has served you well, ever since your nation's silly little war in Vietnam. Tell me who you contacted in Moscow, tell me who you work for, or I will have my a.s.sociate here cut off your right hand. It is as simple as that."

Clark grimaced as the man on his right touched the skin on his wrist with a large cleaver. John's heart pounded against his rib cage.

Clark said, "I know you are just trying to clean up this mess that Laska made, Valentin. Just help me bring down Laska, and you won't need to worry about him."

"Last chance for your hand," the Russian said, and John saw that the young man's own heart was pounding. The pale white skin on his face was covered with a fresh sheen of sweat.

"We are both professionals. You do not want to do this."

"You do not want to make me."

Clark began taking short, rapid breaths of air. It was inevitable, what was about to happen. He needed to control his heart's reaction to it.

Valentin saw Clark resigned to his fate. A vein throbbed in the center of the Russian's forehead. Kovalenko turned away.

The cleaver rose off Clark's wrist. Hung in the air a foot above it.

"This is disgusting," Kovalenko said. "Please, Mr. Clark. Do not make me watch this."

Clark had no humorous retort to this. Every nerve in his body was on edge, every muscle tightened for the impending swing of the cleaver against his wrist.

Kovalenko looked back toward the American. "Really? You really will allow your body to be disfigured, your f.u.c.king hand to be severed, just to keep the information you have secret? Are you that f.u.c.king committed to some foolish cause? Are you that beholden to your masters? What sort of automaton are you? What kind of robot allows himself to be chopped to bits for some foolish sense of valor?"

Clark squinted his eyes shut. He'd readied himself as much as possible for the inevitable.

After thirty seconds, Clark opened his eyes back up. Valentin stared at him in disbelief. "They do not make men like you anymore, Mr. Clark."

Still, Clark said nothing.

Kovalenko sighed. "No. I cannot do it. I don't have the stomach to see his hand chopped off and lying on the floor."

Clark was surprised; he began to relax, just a little. But Valentin turned back to him, looking up to the man with the big sharp tool. "Put that down."

The man next to Clark heaved his chest. A little disappointed, maybe? He put down the cleaver.

Kovalenko now said, "Pick up the hammer. Break every bone in his hand. One at a time."

The Spetsnaz man quickly grabbed a stainless-steel surgical hammer that rested on the table next to the cutting instruments. With no warning whatsoever he slammed the hammer onto John's outstretched hand, shattering his index finger. He pounded a second and then a third time, while Clark shouted in agony.

Kovalenko turned away, jabbed his fingers into his ears, and walked to the far wall of the warehouse.

The fourth finger cracked just above the knuckle, and the pinky shattered in three places.

A final, vicious pounding of the back of Clark's hand threatened to send him into shock.

Clark gritted his teeth; his eyes were shut and tears dripped out from the sides. His face was a dark shade of crimson. He took short bursts of air, fast replenishments of oxygen, to keep from going into shock.

John Clark continued to cry out, slamming his head back hard against the stomach of the man behind him. He yelled, "You motherf.u.c.ker!"

A minute later, Kovalenko was back over him. Clark could barely see the young man through the tears and sweat in his eyes and the poor focus of his dilated pupils.

Valentin winced as he glanced at the shattered hand. It was already swelling, black and blue, and two of the fingers were twisted perversely.

"Cover that!" he shouted at one of his men. A towel was tossed over the damaged appendage.

Kovalenko shielded his ears from the worst of the cries of agony, but he shouted, as if angry at the man in the chair for forcing him to do this, "You are a fool, old man! Your sense of honor will bring you nothing but pain here! I have all the time I need for you!"

Even through his agony, John Clark could tell Valentin Kovalenko was on the verge of nausea.

"Talk, old fool! Talk!"

Clark did not talk. Not then, not in the next hour. Kovalenko was growing more and more frustrated by the minute. He'd ordered Clark's head held under a bucket of water, and he'd had his men pound the American's rib cage, breaking a bone and bruising him so badly he could barely breathe.

John did his best to disa.s.sociate himself from what was going on with his body. He thought of his family, his parents, long since dead. He thought of friends and colleagues. He thought of his new farm in Maryland, and he hoped that, even though he would never see it again, his grandkids would grow up loving the place.

Clark pa.s.sed out two hours after the torture began.

The light indicating an incoming call from the crisis center had been blinking now for more than ten minutes.

Safronov watched the news from Moscow on one of the main monitors, the other men at launch control, unwilling partic.i.p.ants, sat in rapt attention.

Georgi had hoped for a bigger spectacle. He knew launch site 109 contained the Dnepr loaded with the satellite and not one of the nukes, but he had targeted the central fuel storage containers at the Moscow Oil Refinery, which should have created a much larger explosion and fire. The payload had missed its target only by a quarter-kilometer, however, and Safronov felt he had gotten his point across.

After watching the news a few seconds more he finally lifted the headset off the control panel, put it on, and accepted the call. "Da."

"You are speaking with President Rychcov."

Safronov responded in a cheery voice. "Good morning. You may not remember me, but we met at the Bolshoi last year. How is the weather in Moscow?"

There was a long pause before the president's reply, delivered curtly but with a slight tone of anxiety. "Your attack was unnecessary. We understand you have the technical capabilities to do that which you threaten. We know you have the nuclear weapons."

"That was punishment for your attack on this facility. If you attack again . . . well, President, I have no more kinetic missiles. The other two Dneprs at my disposal are nuclear-tipped."

"There is nothing for you to prove. We only need to negotiate, you in a position of power, me . . . in a position of weakness."

Safronov shouted into his headset, "This is not a negotiation! I have demanded something! I have not entered into negotiations! When will I be allowed to speak with Commander Nabiyev?"

The president of Russia replied wearily. "I have allowed this. We will call you back a little later this morning and you will be able to speak with the prisoner. In the meantime, I have ordered all security forces back."

"Very good. We are prepared for another fight with your men, and I do not believe you are prepared to lose five million Muscovites."

This was not how Ed Kealty planned on spending the time left in his term, but at nine p.m. Washington, D.C., time, he and members of his cabinet met in the Oval Office.

CIA Director Scott Kilborn was there, along with Alden, the deputy director. Wes McMullen, Kealty's young chief of staff, was in attendance, as were the secretary of defense, the secretary of state, the director of national intelligence, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the national security adviser.

Kilborn gave a detailed briefing on the situation in Kazakhstan, including what the CIA knew about the attempted retaking of the Dnepr launch facilities by Russian Special Forces. Then the NSA briefed the President on the Baikonur launch and the fire at the oil refinery in Moscow.

While they were all together President Rychcov called, Kealty spoke with him through a translator for about ten minutes, while Wes McMullen listened in, taking notes. The call was amicable but Kealty explained he would need to talk some things over with his advisers before committing to Rychcov's requests.

When he hung up the phone, his polite demeanor evaporated. "f.u.c.king Rychcov is asking us to send SEAL Team 6 or Delta Force! Who the h.e.l.l does he think he is, requesting specific military units?"

Wes McMullen sat by his phone with his notepad in his lap. "Sir, I think he just knows who our tier-one anti-terror a.s.sets are. Nothing malicious in his request."

The President said, "He wants political cover in case this all ends badly. He wants to tell his people that he trusted America and Ed Kealty promised him a happy resolution, but that we screwed up."

The men in the room were Kealty's people, for now, anyway. But to a man and to a woman they realized that their president was looking for a way out of this. A couple of them recognized he'd always been this way.

Scott Kilborn said, "Mr. President. I respectfully disagree. He wants to prevent two twenty-kiloton bombs from taking out Moscow or Saint Petersburg. That could kill . . ." Kilborn looked to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. "What do your experts say?"

"Each weapon will kill in excess of one million in the initial blast and fallout. Another two millionplus within a week from burns and disruption of the infrastructure and electrical grid. G.o.d knows how many more down the road. Seven to ten million deaths are likely."

Kealty groaned; he leaned forward at his desk and put his head in his hands.

"Options?"