Brad Taylor - The Polaris Protocol

“You understand the reason I have you like this, correct?”

Booth shook his head violently side to side.

“I want to know who those men were who chased us. What they represent. I don’t expect you to tell me the truth right away, but you will. Everyone does when I start peeling the soles of the feet. It’s very, very painful.”

The sicario pointed to a bottle of bleach on the counter. “I prefer the bathtub because it’s much easier to clean. The bleach flushes all traces of blood down the drain, but I’m told it burns like fire on open wounds.”

A low moan escaped Booth’s throat, barely penetrating the rag stuffed in his mouth. The sicario jerked it out and said, “Well?”

“I have no idea! Please, dear God, I don’t know. Why would I? I’m from America! Maybe they’re friends of Carlos! You killed him. Not me.”

“If that’s true, then there was no reason to bring you here. I should have left you dead like the other man on the roof.”

After shooting their way clear of the team following them, the sicario had dragged Booth down a rickety flight of metal stairs to a balcony and pushed him through into a shabby apartment. The family inside never even saw the pistol in his hand. They took one look at his visage and disappeared into another room.

They reached the street unmolested. The sicario jabbed Booth in the kidney with the barrel of his weapon, pushing him back into the crowded market. Burrowing through the mass of people, they left the street vendors behind and entered a warehouse district. The sicario saw two men carrying a pallet toward a dingy, beat-up van and waited until they’d finished loading. When one moved to the driver’s door, he approached and did nothing more than show his pistol. The men fled, running down the street toward the market. He’d thrown Booth in the back, spending a minute tying his hands with loose cord. Satisfied Booth couldn’t interfere, he’d driven to a run-down hotel five miles away.

While he weaved through the traffic the gunfight had spun relentlessly in his head, rattling around like a loose marble in a can. Initially, when the shooting started, he’d thought it was a setup by the Koreans, but they’d allowed him to leave without incident, instead sending men to the gunfire in the market. They’d also seemed genuinely pleased at the car he’d brought, along with the loot.

That meant it was someone from Sinaloa or Los Zetas, but the man and woman on the roof were gringos, and the woman could shoot. The people chasing him had skill. They had reminded him of his Special Forces unit in Guatemala, one calmly firing while another moved under protection. He’d never seen such a thing with the brutish killers employed by Sinaloa and instinctively knew there was no way it was a cartel. It was something else.

Which left the fat gringo taped to the bathtub.

The sicario said, “You gave me the answer I expected. All that remains is to see how much I peel before you tell me the truth.”

He pulled a folding straight razor from his pocket and opened it, watching for a reaction. His captive saw the blade and began trembling as if he were having a seizure, causing the chain on his hands to rattle against the pipe. He fixated on the blade; then his eyes rolled back in his head and his body grew still.

The sicario sat back and tapped the razor against his palm, considering. While he had no compunction about mutilating the man, such work was tiring and messy, and should be done only with a purpose in mind. He knew the power torture held and had used it many times to elicit confessions. In this case, he needed real information, and the time and trouble of the work had to be measured against what he would gain. The gringo clearly had never been in any bit of danger in his entire soft life. The sight of the blade alone caused him to pass out, like a woman seeing blood.

But that may mean nothing.

He stuffed the rag back into Booth’s mouth, then filled a glass with water and splashed it into his face. When Booth awoke, he rolled left and right as if he was confused, then saw the sicario standing over him. He began to shriek through the gag. The sicario raised his finger to his lips, and Booth went silent. The sicario removed the rag.

“You ready to tell me what I want to know?”

Booth began crying, weeping so hard his lungs starting hitching, the tears mixing with his sweat and the phlegm rolling from his nose. He choked out, “All I came here to do was to give up the POLARIS protocol. I don’t know anything about what’s going on between your cartels. I don’t know who those people shooting at us were. I met Carlos in Colorado. He was supposed to pay me money if I gave him the protocol, but you killed him. You can have it. You take it. Just let me go.”

The sicario gazed down at the blubbering mass of humanity and decided he was telling the truth. He’d heard what Carlos had discussed with the three men from the airport. He knew Carlos was trying to sell what this man was bringing. Whatever it was, it had nothing to do with drugs, which raised doubt in his mind that the man and woman who chased them were working with Booth.

Why would the US government set up some elaborate sting in Mexico for something that had none of the trappings of the drug trade? No guns, no precursor chemicals, no transfer of aircraft or boats, and certainly no actual drugs. Just some weird protocol that was worth money to foreigners. It was too complex a trap even for the Americans, and this man was clearly way out of his league. He didn’t even pretend to know a script to recite.

It didn’t answer the question about the team who had chased them, but ultimately that didn’t matter. Time was all that counted now. The quicker he began his run to America, the better. He had captured Booth for the cash he represented, but in so doing he had somehow drawn the focus of another group. Leaving behind all of this as soon as he could gave him his surest chance of survival, even without any money. It was too bad for Booth, but at least the sicario would now make it painless. If anything, Booth should have felt thankful that he didn’t experience the flaying of his feet before he died.

The sicario peeled the tape from the bathtub, leaving Booth’s ankles trapped on the towel rod, then unlocked his hands from the sink pipe, cinching the handcuffs behind Booth’s back once he was done. Booth did nothing to resist, simply staring at the sicario with wide eyes. He rotated the body around and hoisted him into the tub, grunting with the exertion of getting Booth’s pudgy carcass over the edge.

He dropped Booth on his back in the tub, his head against the far side and his legs bent at the knees, his feet hanging over the edge and touching the tile of the bathroom floor. The sicario moved his head until it was resting near the drain, then raised the straight razor. Booth began grunting through the gag, twisting his head side to side.

The sicario hesitated, then pulled the rag from his mouth, a string of drool trailing from the cloth to his lip.

“You have something you wish to tell me?”

“Yes! Yes! Please don’t do this. I came because Carlos asked. I understand he was your enemy, but that doesn’t make me the same. Please. You kill me and you lose the POLARIS protocol. My laptop is encrypted. I am the only one who can work it.”

The sicario gazed at his beast for slaughter, considering, then grabbed the hair of the head and twisted until the neck was exposed. Booth began shrieking, “You wanted money from the BMW, but you didn’t get it. Sell the protocol! Sell it! You kill me and you’re killing more money than you would ever have!”

The sicario paused again. The sacrificial lamb was only trying to save his miserable life, but what he said was true. He’d lost all money for the journey north with the interrupted transfer of the BMW and other trinkets he’d taken from the Zetas house. The only things he had were the two bundles of bills from the office, and that would last about a month, provided he lived frugally. He’d heard Carlos talking about a great deal of cash for the purchase of the protocol. Maybe a day or two to investigate would be worth it, even with the mysterious team on the loose.