Dale Brown - Executive Intent

“You okay, Whack?” Patrick radioed.

“I tripped over some guy sleeping on the beach,” Whack said.

“Did he see you?”

“Yes. He looked like he was sleeping one off, and it’s real dark out, so maybe he’ll think it was the booze.”

Whack took his time making his way back along the shoreline, and was extra careful as he approached the lighthouse. A different surveillance car was in the same spot as the first. He hadn’t received any warnings from the motion detector, so no one had approached the house since he left it. He climbed back up the escarpment onto the patio and went inside.

Carefully and quietly, without using any lights, he signed off with McLanahan, undressed, cleaned the Tin Man armor and exoskeleton as best he could, and repacked it. The signals analyzer, disguised as a spare laptop AC adapter, was missing now, but hopefully the customs inspectors wouldn’t notice, or he could say it was lost or forgotten somewhere. Whack set all the Tin Man armor’s batteries in chargers in case he needed it again for an escape. He checked his path to make sure he hadn’t dragged in anything from the beach, took a sip of Scotch whiskey to settle himself down, and then went to bed about an hour before dawn. Mission successfully accomplished.

Whack was awakened by the sounds of low, hushed female voices outside in the kitchen. He looked at his watch-a little before seven A.M., right on time. The voices seemed to be getting nearer his door. The note from al-Jufri had said that if the lantern was still on, he wouldn’t be disturbed by his family preparing the house for the day, and he hadn’t extinguished it, so he wondered if it had blown out or was-

Suddenly the bedroom door splintered apart from its hinges and flew across the room. Whack had already thought about what he would do: He rolled away from the door onto the floor, lifted the bed up, and flipped it toward the door to screen his next move. But just before he was going to leap through the window, it exploded as a three-round burst of bullets fired upward into the ceiling…from the outside. Whoever it was, they had anticipated his attempt to jump out the window and were waiting for him.

“Stay where you are and raise your hands, Mr. Coulter,” a man with a thick accent-a Russian accent-said in English. Whack looked out the window and saw two men in black combat suits, helmet, web gear, and balaclavas, with AK-74 submachine guns aimed at him. The mattress and bed were pushed aside, and two more men similarly outfitted had weapons trained on him. They pulled him out of the bedroom into the living room, shoved him to the floor facedown, yanked his arms behind his back, secured his wrists with plastic handcuffs, then sat him up.

“What the hell is going on?” Whack yelled.

The toe of a boot came out of nowhere and landed on the left side of his head. Whack hit the floor hard, his vision completely blurred out, and he tasted blood and felt a loose tooth in his mouth.

“That will happen every time you speak out of order, Mr. Coulter,” the voice said. He was pulled upright by his neck. “Nod if you understand.” Whack nodded, slowly and carefully, fighting off nausea. “Very good. We were planning on meeting with you later today to ask some questions, but we received a curious report this morning from a local citizen about a sea creature that came out of the sea and tried to eat him. The police dismissed the citizen as a hallucinating drunk, but then I remembered something.”

Whack looked up and focused through the pain. The Russian, dressed in a white short-sleeved shirt, black tie, and light brown trousers, was holding his Tin Man helmet. “An American carrying unusual scuba-diving equipment came through customs yesterday afternoon. Could this be what the man saw?” He paused, then gave the helmet back to one of his men. “You may answer now, Mr. Coulter.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Whack murmured.

“So you are saying it was not you, Mr. Coulter?” the man asked. “You are saying you did not go out for a swim in your fancy diving gear last night?” Whack said nothing. “Mr. Coulter? You may answer now.”

“I wasn’t out swimming last night,” Whack murmured. “I’m hurt. I can’t see straight, and I feel dizzy. I think I need a doctor.”

“You were not?” the Russian asked. “Now I am confused. You are an engineer and builder of undersea robots, according to your Web site. You are scheduled to demonstrate a robot to the Yemeni Fish Company tomorrow afternoon. If you decided to go for a swim in your gear, I completely understand, and it makes perfect sense. All you need to do is tell me you went for a midnight swim, and this whole unfortunate matter can be cleared up immediately.”

“But I didn’t go for a swim,” Whack said. “I didn’t do anything. I need a doctor. Help me, please.”

“We will take you to a doctor right away, Mr. Coulter,” the Russian said, “but this matter must be cleared up first. A citizen reported seeing a man dressed in this outfit on a beach not far from here. It is, of course, not a crime to be out on the beach late at night. I believe the man saw you dressed in your fancy diving gear. All we want to do is straighten this matter out. There has been no crime committed. You can clear all this up by admitting that it was you that the man saw on the beach. Does this make sense to you, Mr. Coulter?”

“I swear to you, sir, I don’t know what you’re talking-”

Whack saw the boot coming this time, but he couldn’t move anywhere near fast enough to dodge it. Another tooth came loose, and he choked on a fresh mouthful of blood.

When he could see again, he was sitting upright, looking into the face of the English-speaking Russian with the nerdy-looking black tie. He shook his head. “You do not look so well, Mr. Coulter. I will summon a doctor for you right away, but first you must tell me that it was you that was on the beach early this morning. If you tell me this is so, you will be treated by a physician and released. If you do not, we may be at this for quite some time.”

Whack’s vision blurred. He didn’t try to clear it, but instead let his mind drift. His vision, and then his conscious mind, went dark. To Wayne Macomber, darkness meant solitude, escape, rest, superiority over an adversary, and safety, and so he allowed his subconscious mind to expand and embrace the darkness. The pain was still there, but it was now tolerable, as if he were falling asleep on rocky ground.

“Mr. Coulter, are you still with us?” he faintly heard the Russian ask him. Whack could feel an eyelid pulled open, but his consciousness remained dark. The Russian said something in Russian, sounded like a curse; then, in English: “I have seen this before, Mr. Coulter. It is a technique that only the best field intelligence operatives and special forces commandos have mastered. Some men are able to shut down their conscious minds to such an extent as to block out pain and fear and thus make the muscles almost impervious to physical torture. So which are you, Mr. Coulter-an intelligence operative, or special forces commando?” Whack chose not to answer.

“Of course,” the Russian went on, “if the mind is even partially conscious, eventually a combination of physical and chemical torture will break down even the most disciplined and well-trained mind-break it, or destroy it, in a most painful and twisted manner. Can you hear me, Mr. Coulter? If you can, you are minutes away from the worst pain any man has ever experienced. You can save yourself the agony, Mr. Coulter, by telling me who you really are, and what this equipment really does, and what you were really doing out there last night.”

Whack’s eyes were partially open and partially rolled back in his head, his blue tongue hung loosely out of his mouth between partially clenched bloodstained teeth, and his breathing looked as if it had stopped. Antonov stood up and shook his head. “A real old-style warhorse, this one,” he mused. He opened his cellular phone, dialed a number, waited, then spoke in Russian: “It is me, Gennadiy. We found him; he tried to run, but we got him. He can hear us, but he shut down his body to resist interrogation…no…just shut up for a minute…yes, I said he shut down his body to resist physical interrogation…no, I am not making up a story, it can be done, and this one has done it. I have done all I can here. He will have to be evacuated to headquarters in Sana’a or to the carrier Putin to continue chemical interrogation.”