Don Pendleton - Firestorm

“Please continue,” he said.

“We’re here to investigate Garrison Industries,” she continued. “It’s part of a larger study.”

Bly leaned forward. His hand reached toward her face, this time slowly, deliberately as though to brush a stray lock of hair from her vision. Reflexively, she began to jerk back. Before she completed the move, his palm hammered against the damaged cheek. She yelped in pain and surprise.

She spit a gob of blood and saliva to the floor. She turned to face him, staring at him through the veil formed by her mussed hair. She found his face emotionless, unreadable, like the rattlesnakes she’d seen as a child growing up in New Mexico.

“Will you—will you please stop hitting me?” she asked.

“Ms. Serrano,” he said, “we both know you’re with the CIA. Let’s please cut the shit. In case you haven’t figured this out yet, I have no compunctions against inflicting pain if things don’t go my way. It doesn’t have to be like this. But it certainly will, if you don’t cooperate.”

He leaned forward and she tensed again, braced herself for another blow. Instead, he took a handful of photos from his jacket pocket. One by one, as though dealing cards, he set each on her thighs until she had five of them on her legs, a row of three on top, a row of two on the bottom.

She looked at the first, gasped and looked away. Nausea overtook her and she found herself gulping for air to quell the urge to vomit. Even with her eyes averted, the image stayed with her, seared in her mind. A crumpled skeleton, flesh burned black, marbled with streaks of red, clung to blackened bones. Except for a few wisps, the hair had been burned away, along with the facial features.

“You came here with a group,” Bly said, his voice steady. “There were six of you, I believe. Well, now there’s only one. You can see what happened to the others.” Then he told her about the weapon and how she could escape the fate of the rest of her team.

She started to feel light-headed, and her mind wanted to race away from her. “I don’t know—”

“What I’m talking about? Really? Let me explain it, then. You and your comrades have slowly infiltrated my company. It took a couple of years, but you did it, and I find myself suitably impressed. But once I realized that you were here, well, I couldn’t allow that. I had to deal with you. I would have assassinated you, clean and simple, of course. However, at about the same time as my security people identified you, a laptop went missing.”

Serrano shifted in her chair. “Please, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“My chief financial officer, Rick Perkins, lost his laptop. Actually, it was stolen and replaced with another. Unfortunately for me, that laptop carried all sorts of information about what we’ve been doing here. I believe either you know who took it, or you took it yourself. I want it back.”

He leaned forward until his face was just inches from hers. “Otherwise, you may very well end up like these other people. Your friends. You do recognize them, don’t you?”

“No,” she said. She tried to wrap her mind around the idea that these charred corpses were other members of her CIA operation. The notion made her feel sick.

“You seem upset,” Bly said.

“Well,” she said, “look at them. They were burned to death. Their skin looks like crepe paper. They must have suffered horribly.”

“They did,” Bly said, grinning.

“What? You actually saw this happen? Why didn’t you stop it?”

His head flew back and he laughed hard. “Stop it?” His voice sounded incredulous. “Why would I do that?”

She stared at him for a long moment, and saw that his delight wasn’t a put on. An icy sensation raced up her spine, and she suppressed a shudder. The bastard really was enjoying his little horror show. Rage and grief roiled inside her. A cold dread filled her spine as she realized that her team was gone. No one knew she was missing, except for her handler.

“Where’s the laptop?” he repeated.

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

He sighed and slipped his hand under his jacket. He brought out a Glock handgun and pressed the muzzle to her head. “You have one last chance,” he said. “Guess I won’t use Firestorm on you.”

Tell him, her mind screamed. Tell him whatever he wants to know! She licked her lips and shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Goodbye,” he said.

A scream welled up in her throat as she waited for the inevitable. He pushed the muzzle harder against her temple and pulled the trigger. The gun emitted a sharp metallic click when the hammer struck an empty chamber.

Empty. The gun was empty.

Damn him.

Her lips parted and she released a rush of trapped air from her lungs. Tension drained from her body. Her mind struggled to understand that she still lived.

The mirthless smile returned, and he appraised her for several seconds with what seemed to be a clinical detachment. Without averting his gaze, he slipped the pistol back into its holster.

“Next time,” he said. “I’ll kill you. Maybe.”

He spun on a heel and moments later he was gone.

“We got her,” said the voice on the phone.

“Okay,” Mike Stephens said. “What’s that mean for me?”

“Watch your bank balance. We’ll make this all worth your while.”

“How much?”

“Quarter million. Just like we discussed.”

Stephens leaned back into the chair, propped his feet up on the coffee table. “I’ve been thinking about it,” he said. “What I did, it was dangerous, you know.”

“Don’t—”

“Seriously, I’m thinking you owe me more. Like one million.”

“Take your money and shut up.”

“Bullshit,” Stephens said. “We both know this would’ve cost you a hell of a lot more if you’d hired someone else.”

“Leave it alone.”

“The hell I will,” Stephens said. He was on his feet now, stalking through the apartment, his cheeks scarlet with rage. “You wanted her. I gave her to you. Now I want some real money. What’s the problem?”

“Take your cash and shut up,” the other man said. “Now’s a hell of a time for you to try to change the terms.”

“Change the terms? Yeah, I’ll change the terms. I can make a couple of phone calls and let people know what you’re up to. That’d put a little crimp in your plans.”

“If you were smart, you’d shut the hell up, take your money and disappear into your haze of booze and hookers. Or else.”

A cold sensation traveled down Stephens’s spine. Don’t back down now, he told himself. Don’t let this piece of Euro-trash push you around. You push back hard enough and he’ll give you what you want.

“Or else? What does that mean?”

“It means Maria Serrano is on her way out. And you keep popping off, something might happen to that little whore you’re keeping at your apartment.”

Stephens felt his pulse quicken, but when he spoke his voice was flat and cold. “Don’t go there,” he said.

The other man laughed.

“Spare me,” he said. “If you’re smart, you’ll just shut up and walk away. Take your lady on a trip or something. Disappear. ’Cause maybe you can take me. Maybe. But you can’t take the people backing me.”

“You mean, Bly?”

“For starters. But he’s got friends. Ones who’d be only too happy to burn you down, if it meant fewer headaches for them. You can’t handle all that heat. By the way, what’s your girl’s name?”

“Go to hell!” Stephen shouted.

“I can make her disappear. You’ll never see the body. You’ll never see that baby she’s carrying. And I’ll have a good time doing it. It will be just like the war.”