Джеймс Паттерсон - Private Rogue

“Do you know who I am?” he asked. His voice trembled with the effort of his false bravado.

He wasn’t as smart as I had hoped. Pentagon personnel should know not to ask that question, and he really shouldn’t be doing anything to reinforce a price value in the minds of kidnappers. Fortunately for him, we weren’t kidnappers. We were the embodiment of justice, and this was his reckoning.

We had taken a gamble that the Pentagon mole hadn’t been told about what had happened in Afghanistan when Mo-bot called the number she’d found in the satellite phone’s registry. Her suspicions about it had been correct.

Floyd had claimed to be one of the Russian paramilitaries and did a pretty passable accent. Speaking in broken English, he kept the mole on the line with bogus intelligence reports and requests for clarification. That bought just enough time for Mo-bot to bypass Pentagon countersurveillance measures and pinpoint his location. The lazy, arrogant fool hadn’t even stepped out of his office to take the call. Rick Sullivan was Program Manager of the Advanced Field Technologies Group for DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. That put him at the nexus of a great deal of high-level military intelligence on development and field deployment.

“This place will be swarming with cops within minutes,” Rick informed us.

He was overcompensating, and beneath the bravado was a vast reservoir of fear. We would feed it.

I picked up a pair of pliers, saying nothing as I moved slowly through the ash and charred wreckage toward him. He was bound to a chair and fought against the restraints as I came near.

“Don’t you touch me! Don’t you come near me!”

The thin veneer of bravado cracked and flaked. It was time to burn it away entirely.

“I’m going to break a finger for each lie you tell,” I said. “I’ll start with the pinkie on your left hand and work across.”

“No!” Rick yelled. “No! Help!”

“Help?” Floyd sneered mockingly. “Help!” He closed on Rick with a snarl. “No one can hear you.”

He fought hard but his hand was bound too tightly. I placed the jaws of the pliers around his left pinkie finger. I squeezed it until I saw him grimace.

“Ahh! Ahhhhhh!”

He stopped struggling and settled into a grudging docility.

“Please, just tell me what you want.”

“Who do you work for?” I asked.

“The Department of Defense,” he replied hurriedly, glancing at his finger nervously.

“I’m not going to break it, because that isn’t a lie. But there’s another truth, which is the answer I’m looking for. Who else do you work for?”

I squeezed again and he winced.

“They’ll kill me.”

“They are not your most pressing problem,” I replied. “You’re in a new world now. One where you live minute by minute. Worry about what we’re going to do.”

I squeezed harder and he cried out. The desk jockey had never experienced anything like this.

“Please...”

“A name,” I snapped.

“Victor Andreyev,” he replied. “He’s SVR. I report to him.”

The SVR — Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki — was Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, headquartered in the Yasenevo district on the outskirts of Moscow. A building I knew well, having infiltrated it the last time I’d been in the city.

“Good,” I said. “We know about Victor, so we know that’s the truth.”

Rick seemed surprised we already knew, but not as surprised as I was to hear confirmation he was an SVR operative. I’d suspected it because of the resources being thrown at this operation, but it brought back painful memories of the last time I’d been up against that institution. I’d lost a very good man.

“A team was sent to capture a pilot in Afghanistan,” I said. “Tell me why.”

“They were going to try to abduct him here, in the US, but it was too risky. A missing Special Forces operative would spark a full court press from law enforcement and the DOD, so I persuaded them we could set a trap somewhere lawless and out of the way. I made sure he was assigned to pilot the Afghan mission.”

“And the pilot’s wife and children,” I added, “why have they been targeted?”

“They’re just leverage,” Rick admitted. “An insurance policy. To make sure he gives them what they want.”

Floyd moved quickly — far too quickly for me to stop him. He swung at Rick, and his big gloved fist connected with the man’s jaw. There was a painful crack. Rick howled.

“My jaw!” he said, although it sounded like, “Muh daw!”

I turned to Floyd and shook my head, even though part of me thought it might not hurt Rick to know there was someone in the room who really wanted to make him suffer.

“Where are they now?” I asked.

“Don’t know,” Rick replied.

I repositioned the pliers and squeezed.

“Ahhhhh!” he cried. “I swear I don’t know! They wouldn’t give me that kind of information. It’s not something I need to know.”

His words were distorted and pained, but I could still make them out.

“What do they want the pilot for?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he cried.

I squeezed. Torture went against my personal beliefs, and breaking his finger was a line I wasn’t prepared to cross, but I could get close.

“Ahhhhh! Please! I don’t know what they want. I heard them talking about a bull. That’s all I know.”

Floyd stepped forward again and swung a one-two jab and cross that knocked Rick unconscious.

“What just happened?” I asked.

He removed his mask, and I did likewise.

“I think I know,” he said. “I think I know what they want.”

Floyd and I dragged Rick outside to the Airbus H125 helicopter that stood in a clearing just behind the bar. Justine was waiting beside the aircraft. She didn’t like wet work, but knew it was a necessary part of the job. In this particular case, when a mother and children’s lives were at stake, I could tell she was prepared to overlook some excesses. There was no sympathy in her eyes as we dragged Rick into the aircraft.

“Where to now?” Justine asked.

“I need to go to the Catskills,” Floyd said, and Justine and I exchanged surprised glances. “I think I might know what they’re after. It has something to do with a mission I carried out in Belarus.”

“What?” I asked.

He pursed his lips and shook his head. “I can’t talk about it.”

I sighed. I respected his commitment to the oath of secrecy he’d taken, but his family’s lives were at stake. There was little I could do, though, short of taking him into the bar for interrogation.

“We need to make a stop first,” I said. “Drop off the trash.” I nodded at Rick.

I produced my phone and made a call that was answered within three rings.

“Hello?” a voice said.

“Secretary Carver, please,” I replied.

“And you are?”

“Jack Morgan.”

“Hold, please,” the voice said, and the line fell silent.

“Jack Morgan,” Eli Carver said a few moments later. “What earns me the privilege of two calls in a week?”

“I found your mole, Mr. Secretary,” I said.

I couldn’t see him, but I knew I now had the Secretary of State’s full attention.

“A DARPA program manager called Rick Ferguson,” I revealed.

“I know that guy,” Carver replied with a touch of irritation in his voice. “You got proof?”

“A taped confession. It won’t hold up in court, but it will give him nowhere to go when your people get to work,” I said. We’d had a Dictaphone recording the whole time.

“You going to bring him in?”

“No, Mr. Secretary,” I replied. “Where there is one mole, there might be others.”