Col. Dirk Fallows ran his thick calloused hand over his short white hair. The stiff bristles flexed back like the plastic teeth of a comb. "Well, boys, any ideas?"
Cyrus Phelps said, "I think we oughta soak some rawhide in water, see, then tie it real tight around his balls. Then when the sun comes out and dries the rawhide, see, it tightens and crushes his nuts. I read that in a book, I think."
Fallows shook his head. "It's the middle of the night, Phelps. We don't have time to wait for the damned sun to come out."
Phelps shrugged. Hell, he'd tried.
Fallows gazed at Steve Connors, sitting against that big pine tree with his knees huddled against his chest, trying not to look scared and failing miserably. Good, Fallows thought, he's got plenty to be scared about. Listening to a few more lunatic ideas ought to put him in just the right mood. "Anybody else?"
"I don't know, maybe." Dean Leyson stepped forward. He'd served with Fallows in 'Nam. "Remember the time on the Delta, you stripped that guy, some dumb-fuck farmer, and strapped his head to a jigsaw. Then you attached that plastic garbage bag to his butt and dick so that if he had to go to the bathroom, it would go in the bag. Only thing is, you rigged it so any weight in that bag would flip the switch and start the saw. Man, funniest thing I'd ever seen. Thought that gook was gonna explode. Too bad we had to leave early. What do you think happened to him, Colonel?"
Fallows grinned. "What do you think?"
"Yeah." Leyson grinned back. "Yeah."
Someone else, Driscol, said, "We don't got no saw, Leyson, and no electricity. Christ, Colonel, let's just start chopping bits of him off and he'll talk soon enough."
"Right to the point, eh, Driscol?" Fallows said.
"Hell, every minute we fart around here they're getting further away." Suddenly fearing he may have said too much, he quickly added, "Sir."
Fallows reached over, snared Tim around the shoulders, and pulled him forward. "What do you think, Tim? What should we do to make this man talk?"
Tim looked around. Dozens of hard, cruel eyes stared at him, waiting. And then the sad eyes of that man by the tree. "I don't know."
"Come on, Tim. This man knows where your father is. Now that we're sure he's alive, don't you want to know where he is?"
Tim shrugged. "No."
"I see you're still not cured. Still not convinced of where your loyalties belong."
"If what you've told me is correct," Tim said, "and my father has abandoned me, then why would I want to find him?"
"Vengeance, son. It's what makes the world go 'round."
"I see no profit in that. All it can get us is more dead men. For what?"
Fallows smiled. The son of a bitch was learning fast. Fallows didn't dare look at his men because he knew what they were thinking. That the kid was right. Where's the profit? Was what they were going after worth risking their lives? These men needed a carrot dangling before they'd get up in the morning. If someone dared take a vote right now for leader, Fallows suspected the kid might just be a candidate. Too much of his father in him, even at thirteen.
"You're absolutely right, Tim. Vengeance doesn't feed a hungry stomach. What was it Brecht said? 'First eat, and then tell right from wrong.' "
"No," Tim said. "It goes, 'First feed the face, and then tell right from wrong.' From The Threepenny Opera."
A couple of men chuckled and Fallows whipped around to look at them. The chuckling stopped. He glared at Tim with such intensity that the boy looked like he wanted to back away. But he didn't. He stared into Fallows's pale eyes without flinching. His father's son, all right. Fallows composed himself, forced a smile. "Well, it's nice to know Eric taught you something. Meantime, we need to find out why your father hooked up with this bozo, and what it has to do with that plane we saw. That's when we discover the profit." He turned to Steve Connors. "I need to know three things from you." He counted off on his fingers. "One, where's Ravensmith? Two, where's the plane? And three, what's your mission?"
Steve Connors peered over his knees at the men surrounding him. Especially at Fallows. Even in the dark, Fallows's eyes were so pale it almost looked like he had no pupils, just white slits like some movie alien.
Steve hugged his knees to keep warm. He knew he was dead meat. No way was this bunch going to let him walk. The only question he had now was how would he act. Would he spill everything and beg for mercy? Would he bawl like a baby, snot running down his nose, blabbering incoherently? Or would he have the guts to spit in their faces and take what they dished out without talking? It was the topic of many heated debates with other pilots, what they would do if they were shot down and captured. Some admitted they'd talk right away. Some said they wouldn't talk no matter what. Steve Connors had never been sure.
Fallows nodded at the two men next to Connors. They each reached down, grabbed an arm, and yanked him roughly to his feet, bouncing him against the tree. Steve smelled fresh pine sap. It reminded him of Paige's disinfected bathrooms. He smiled at the thought.
Fallows shot a hand forward and clamped his fingers on Steve's throat. "You killed one of my men just now, you stupid son of a bitch." Fallows looked around. "Hey, where's Jackson's body?"
"Still out there," Phelps said.
"Well get out there and bury it, damn it. We don't want every stray wolf and wild dog in the area coming around here tonight. Use your heads."
Phelps slapped Leyson on the arm and the two of them jogged off into the woods after Jackson's body.
Fallows returned his gaze to Steve. "Well, asshole?"
Steve felt his knees shaking. They really do shake when you're scared, he thought. So what are you going to do, Steve Connors, ace pilot?
Fallows's fingers dug around the jugular as if it were faulty wiring he was about to rip out. "I'm listening. Three questions, three answers."
"Ravensmith," Steve croaked.
Fallows smiled, released the grip.
Steve swallowed. The saliva seemed to take forever to slide down his sore throat. He looked at Tim. "Your father swore he'd free you, son. Told me to tell you to just hang on a little-"
Fallows's fist sank into Steve's stomach. "Cuff him," Fallows said.
Steve was still doubled over when he felt his hands being jerked behind him, wrapped around the tree trunk. Metal handcuffs were slapped onto his wrists. He sagged forward trying to catch his breath, the cuffs holding him upright. He'd been hit in the stomach before, but not like that.
"OK, hero, you've had your moment of glory. Now get ready to pay the price." Fallows slowly pulled his knife from its sheath. In the dark, the blade looked black, evil. He tapped it against the side of Steve's neck. "Where's Ravensmith?"
Steve was silent.
Fallows pressed the point into the neck and twisted, gouging out a small hunk of flesh. Steve winced, pulling away. Fallows slipped the blade under Steve's right ear. His voice was quiet, almost a whisper. "Where's Ravensmith?"
Steve's lips quivered, actually ached to speak, but he clamped them shut.
Fallows flicked his wrist and lopped off Steve's ear lobe. The lobe flew a few feet and struck one of Fallows's men in the chest.
"Hey," the man said, brushing the blot of blood on his shirt.
"Sorry, Randall," Fallows said. He laid the cool blade under Steve's other ear. "Ravensmith."
A rustling behind them? Phelps and Leyson jogging back into camp.
"He's gone," Phelps panted.
"What?"
"Jackson's gone," Leyson echoed. "Looked all over, but he's just gone."
"All of him?" Fallows asked.
"Clothes and everything."
Fallows frowned. "Probably got dragged away by some wild dogs. Tell the guards to keep an eye out for animals prowling near the camp."
"Right," Phelps said, hurrying off.
Fallows stepped closer to Steve, his face barely two inches from the other man's. "I don't have time to fuck with you anymore. You talk or you suffer. I mean suffer."
Steve's voice trembled. He wanted to say more, but all he could manage was, "No talk."
Fallows sighed. "I don't have time for this." Suddenly he thrust his thumb into Steve's left eye, digging deep with the nail, forcing it harder as the thumb slipped under the eyeball. He pried his thumb upward, crushing the pulp of the eye against the hard bone of the socket.
Steve Connors screamed, twisting and bucking against the cuffs as they scraped the skin from his wrists. His smashed eye burned and even though it was medically impossible for him to see with it he swore he saw flames, red flames leaping from the socket. Then with a great sob of agony he sagged into unconsciousness.
Fallows looked around at his men, pleased at the fear in their faces. He pointed his bloody thumb at Leyson. "Throw some water in his face and bring him around. He'll talk now."
Fallows awoke the next day feeling pretty happy. He glanced over at Tim, still cuffed in the sleeping bag next to his. The kid had gotten used to sleeping with his hands behind his back. Giving him a gun and a bullet to hold during the day was one thing, but night was something else.
Capt. Steve Copnors had finally talked. Fallows had never met a man who wouldn't under the right circumstances. Finding the right circumstances, that was the trick. With some it was pain, mutilation. With most men it was fear of losing their balls or penis. With women, it was facial disfigurement. Children were the toughest. When they wanted to be stubborn, they could withstand more pain than even the toughest men. Yeah, with kids you had to work on their minds. Confuse them.
The sun had lit the Long Beach Halo like a giant orange fuse. Beautiful day, Fallows thought, checking the clip in his Walther as he did every night before going to sleep and every morning when waking up. He'd thought about everything Connors had told him last night. About the Columbia. About Dr. Paige Lyons and her father's work. About where the cabin was. Where Ravensmith was heading.
He couldn't help but smile. It was such an easy plan. Grab the father or the papers, whichever they could find, kill Ravensmith, and force the survivors to fly him back to the mainland. With Tim. With the papers as ransom, the government wasn't about to do anything to him. He'd promised his men that they would all go back, but of course that wouldn't do. He'd have to get rid of them after they captured the craft. But that shouldn't be too hard. Send them out on a phony mission. Or kill them. Whatever.
Meantime, they had to get moving. Now that they knew exactly where Eric and the woman were heading, it wouldn't be long before they caught up.
The men were stirring, scratching, coughing, hacking, spitting. Morning sounds.
"Jesus!" Eli Palmer shouted across the camp. Palmer had been a cop with the LAPD for eight years and wasn't given to sudden exclamations.
"What's the matter, Eli?" someone growled in annoyance.
But Fallows recognized the tone of horror in Eli's voice and was scrambling to his feet with his Walther ready.
Palmer stumbled with uncharacteristic clumsiness toward Fallows. He was pointing backwards in the direction of the tree where they'd left Connors cuffed. Fallows hadn't killed him on the chance the pilot might have more to say this morning.
"Gone," Eli Palmer said, holding up his unbuttoned pants with one hand. "I went over there to take a dump. Son of a bitch is gone."
"Who?" Fallows asked.
"That pilot. Connors."
Fallows was incredulous. "He escaped?"
"No, sir, not exactly."
"What are you saying? Did he spring the cuffs? Did someone saw through them? What?"
Eli Palmer shook his head.
Fallows brushed him aside and marched through the camp. His men fell in behind him as they headed outside camp toward the tree.
When they reached the tree, everyone just stared for a minute. Even Fallows.
Steve Connors was gone. But the cuffs were lying on the ground, still locked. And next to the cuffs were Steve Connors's severed hands, the fingers clenched against great pain.
"Weren't no wild animal," Palmer said, shaking his head. "Them hands were cut off."