The inmate took a step back. “Then what am I supposed to do?”
Jonathan shrugged. “Wait for your cell door to open again and go back home.”
“Scorpion, we gotta go,” Boxers said.
“I’m on it,” Jonathan replied. He held out his hand to Antoine. “Thank you,” he said. “And good luck to you.”
Antoine looked at the hand as if it were something poisonous.
“Trust me,” Jonathan said. “Within the next twelve hours, you’re going to get a big laugh out of this.”
“Digger!” Venice barked in his earbud.
Antoine cocked his head. “A laugh, huh?”
Jonathan smiled. “I promise.”
The inmate accepted his hand, and they shook. “You one crazy motherfucker.”
Jonathan ended the conversation with a quick flick of a nod, and then he disappeared out the door into the night. The lock slid home immediately.
Two steps into the fresh air, Jonathan and Boxers together grabbed Jimmy Henry by his arms, bent him low, and more carried than pushed him to the van that Boxers had staged on the far curb. It was exactly the same maneuver that the Secret Service would use if a protectee was under fire.
The back doors were open and waiting. When they closed to within a few yards, Boxers broke off to slide behind the steering wheel while Jonathan half tossed, half slid their precious cargo onto the steel deck of the stripped-down van. He hadn’t even stopped tumbling before the van was rolling. As they turned the first corner, Jonathan leaned out to close the back door.
“That was awesome, dude!” Jimmy laughed. “I mean, really fuckin’ awesome. I thought for sure we were-”
“Shut up,” Jonathan barked.
Jimmy was only a silhouette in the dark, but Jonathan saw him rear back. “Christ, dude, you don’t-”
Jonathan grabbed the ankle of Jimmy’s orange jumpsuit and pulled, sliding the kid flat onto his back. Before the inmate could react, Jonathan fired a savage punch to his testicles, and the response was instant. The kid retched and curled himself into a tight ball. He was still struggling to regain his breath when Jonathan started wrapping Jimmy’s eyes with duct tape.
“Dude, what the fuck-?”
Jonathan clamped his hand over the kid’s mouth hard enough to loosen a tooth and pressed his head into the floor of the van. “Shut up, punk,” he hissed. “Just shut up until I tell you to talk. And I swear to God, if you call me ‘dude’ one more time, I’m going to take a hammer to your nose.”
Jimmy was crying now, in agony from the blow to his groin, and clearly terrified. “I’ll do anything,” he whined. “Honest to God, I’m on your side, okay?”
“Don’t be so sure, kid,” Boxers called from the front.
“W-what are you going to do?”
Jonathan punched him in the balls again, harder this time. “What part of ‘shut up’ confuses you?” he growled.
The kid retched more, and when he vomited, Jonathan felt comfortable that he’d finally made his point. Jimmy wouldn’t risk another punch, so Jonathan wouldn’t have to fire another one. As sensitive as testicles are to pain, they’re actually fairly indestructible. Pound a guy in his nuts and you not only get his attention but you gain a huge psychological advantage. The younger the target, the more profound the advantage. It’s as if God had interrogators in mind when he designed the human body.
As for the vomiting, it was an unfortunate but predictable side effect-and the reason why Jonathan hadn’t taped his prisoner’s mouth. He didn’t need the kid choking to death before he gave them what they wanted.
They drove eight miles into the flat vastness of Virginia’s Northern Neck, past thousands of acres of farmland that was devoid of all but the occasional shade tree, the entire tableau dyed blue-black in the late-night darkness. Without the GPS preset on their navigation device, Jonathan doubted that Boxers would have seen the narrow driveway that marked their first turn.
They drove confidently in the darkened vehicle thanks to the night-vision goggles that Boxers and Jonathan had come to see as an extension to normal vision. As the van bounced along the rutted path, so did Jimmy on the metal floor. But beyond the occasional instinctive reaction to pain and fear, he kept his mouth shut.
Ahead, at the end of the long driveway, an open gate in a clapboard fence marked the way to a massive barn. The door had been propped open just as they’d arranged. The owner of this spread was a man named Horne, an old acquaintance of Jonathan’s, who knew better than to ask detailed questions but had made the appropriate assumptions about the nature of Jonathan’s business and didn’t mind cooperating one bit.
They drove into the barn and stopped. Jonathan waited quietly as he heard Boxers get out of the van, close the barn door, and then return to the van to open the double back doors.
“Listen to me, Jimmy,” Jonathan said. His tone was soft, almost soothing. “We’re going to move you now, and I want you to cooperate. Do you understand?”
Jimmy’s breathing rate doubled as panic set in. Blinded by the tape over his eyes and aching from his beating, the kid was terrified. That was the whole point.
Jonathan jerked his chin at Boxers, and the big man grabbed the cuffs of the kid’s pants and dragged him along the flatbed to the edge above the back bumper. When he let Jimmy’s legs drop, the kid naturally sat up, and Boxers dipped to get his shoulder low enough to lift him into a fireman’s carry. Another panic response made the kid squirm, but he caught himself right away and settled down.
“You’re doing good,” Jonathan encouraged. “The next part’s going to seem worse than it is, so don’t panic. Once my friend puts you down, just stand still. This will all make sense in a minute.”
In the dim light cast by a half dozen bare lightbulbs suspended from the twenty-foot ceiling, Boxers carried his charge to one of the twelve-by-twelve-inch hardwood columns that held the roof up. He rotated the kid off his shoulder into a standing position, and then held him tightly against the post by a massive hand pressed to the center of his chest.
“This is the scary part,” Jonathan soothed. “Just relax, and nothing will hurt.”
“Please don’t hurt me,” Jimmy begged. He couldn’t help himself.
Mr. Horne had driven an enormous nail into the center of the post, per Jonathan’s instructions, exactly six and a half feet off the floor. On it, he’d placed a thick leather dog’s collar, with a leash hanging from the built-in loop. Without saying a word, Boxers took the collar from the hook and looped it around the prisoner’s neck.
“We’re not going to choke you,” Jonathan said, getting ahead of the natural panic. “We’re not even going to cinch it tight. We just need you not to get away.”
The kid’s breathing rate doubled.
Boxers did just as Jonathan had promised, securing the collar with two fingers’ clearance around the skin of Jimmy’s neck. Then he secured the leash to the spike with enough slack to keep Jimmy from choking, but not so much that he might forget that he was helpless. They let him stand there for the better part of a minute, no one saying anything as Boxers returned to the van to retrieve his tools for the next stage.
Jonathan felt his own heart hammering as the big man leaned into the open doors and removed a heavy rubber truncheon. About the size and shape of a baseball bat, the weapon had enough flex that it wouldn’t break a bone, but enough heft that it would hurt like hell.
Boxers rolled his shoulders to loosen them up as he returned to his spot at the kid’s left and set his feet in a batter’s stance. He glanced to Jonathan for the final go-ahead, and when he saw his boss nod, he let loose with a homerun swing. The truncheon’s sweet spot connected squarely on Jimmy’s hip bone with a sound that reverberated through the barn like a muffled pistol shot.
Jimmy howled. It was a guttural, choking scream that was equal parts fear and agony. Blinded by the tape over his eyes, he couldn’t know what had caused the pain, and with his arms shackled and his neck secured, he couldn’t protect himself. “Please!” he shouted. “What do you want from me?”
Jonathan let ten seconds pass before he answered. He abhorred these kinds of interrogation techniques, but two children were missing, and he had neither the time nor the luxury to be subtle. By establishing a baseline for pain, he hoped that the one swat with the truncheon would suffice.
As he watched this nineteen-year-old sob for mercy, Jonathan felt sympathy for him. “Jimmy, I need you to listen to me,” Jonathan said softly. He made his voice sound gentle.
