The woman scoffed. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“Wrong answer,” Rhodes replied, knocking the woman off her stool with a lightning-fast jab to the face.
The blow was meant to stun more than injure, and before the dominatrix had even hit the floor, Rhodes was on top of her and had her Flex-Cuffed.
“Make sure she stays quiet,” Harvath said as he kicked over a rubber ball-gag that had spilled from the tray.
Rhodes secured it around the woman’s mouth, picked her up, and led her toward the door.
As they reached it, Harvath added, “Find out if she has a CCTV system in here. If so, I want to know where the DVR is.”
Rhodes nodded as she exited. Harvath and Schroeder were now alone.
Walking to the overturned tray, Harvath set it upright and tucked his pistol into his waistband at the small of his back. He then began emptying out the contents of his coat pockets and methodically arranging them on the tray. The contents included a knife, a pair of pliers, two road flares, and a hickory-handled Ball Pein hammer. To these, he added the woman’s medical shears.
The young man tried to appear calm. “Those won’t be necessary.”
Harvath ignored him.
“I said those won’t be necessary.”
Taking off his coat, Harvath tossed it into the corner and rolled up his sleeves.
The young man’s calm was beginning to crack. “I’m serious, you don’t need those.”
Harvath checked the young man’s restraints and then drew the stool and tray table alongside him and sat down.
“Can you not hear me?” Schroeder pleaded as Harvath gave his tools a final once-over. “You don’t need those!”
“Really?” Harvath responded, still focused on his instruments. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because I don’t want to be tortured.”
Glancing slowly around the room, Harvath looked back at him and said, “I thought you liked it.”
The irony wasn’t lost on Schroeder. “Something tells me you and I aren’t going to have a safe word.”
“No, we’re not.”
“Then I can do us both a favor. There’s nothing in my head you need to torture me for. Whatever you want, I’ll give it to you. Just please don’t hurt me.”
Harvath was so used to dealing with ideologically hardened jihadists that he’d almost forgotten what it was like to interrogate a man who was only out for himself. Could he trust him? That was yet to be seen.
“What’s your name?”
“Kurt Schroeder,” the young man replied.
“Do you know who I am?”
“Yes. Scot Harvath.”
“Who do you work for?”
“I work for a company called Advance Technology Solutions.”
“Who specifically?”
“The chief executive officer, Craig Middleton.”
Harvath was studying his face, looking for any sign that he was being lied to. Thus far, everything indicated that the young man was telling the truth. Even so, Harvath wanted to make sure he remained incentivized. And with someone whose whole identity was defined via a keyboard, there was one very direct route for doing so.
Picking up the Ball Pein hammer, he spoke very slowly. “There are twenty-seven bones in the human hand. On the first lie, I’ll break all of the bones of your right hand. On the second lie, I’ll break all the bones in your left. If you lie to me again, I’ll either cut off your fingers or I’ll go for your eyes.”
Schroeder was terrified and his voice shook with fear. “But I’m not lying. I’m telling you the truth.”
“Tell me why the Carlton Group was targeted.”
“Because of the attack you’re planning.”
“What attack?”
“I don’t know,” Schroeder insisted. “I wasn’t given the details.”
“You just took it on face value that we were behind a terrorist attack on the United States?”
“That’s what I was told. I was only following orders.”
“Nothing. I really didn’t do—” he began, but his protestation was cut short as the Ball Pein hammer came crashing down on his right hand.
Schroeder screamed in excruciating pain and his body went rigid. He tried to pull his hand away, but the shackles held it in place.
“Keep lying to me,” Harvath said into his ear, “and I’ll keep swinging until every bone in that hand is broken, and then I’ll move on to the other.”
He waited for a full two minutes for Schroeder to stop crying. It took slapping him to get him to stop blubbering and focus.
Harvath asked him again, “What’s your role?”
This time, Schroeder answered with the truth. “M-M-M-Middleton had me compile d-d-d-dossiers on all the targets,” he sputtered.
“Which were given to the kill teams.”
“Yes. B-b-but, I was only doing my job. We-we-we track people. We f-f-f-find people. It’s wh-wh-wh-what we do.”
Harvath wanted to crush the man’s skull like an overripe melon. “What you
“A-a-all of them.”
“You knew their backgrounds, their service histories, all of it; yet you believed every one of them was guilty of treason?”
“I-I-I—” he stammered.
Harvath interrupted him by raising the hammer. “If you tell me once more that you were only following orders, I’m going to fucking knock all of your teeth out. You killed people I care about. You
Schroeder drew his lips in and closed his mouth.
“Smart boy,” said Harvath, dropping the hammer onto the tray. “Who’s Caroline Romero?”
Schroeder was afraid to open his mouth, but he knew he had to answer the question. “She-she-she—” he began.
Harvath had no idea the man had a stammer. At this rate, the interrogation could take weeks. The last thing he wanted to do was show him any mercy whatsoever, but it couldn’t hurt to pull him back a little bit from the edge. “Kurt, I want you to take a deep breath,” he said, and waited for the man to do so. “Now take another.”
When Schroeder did, Harvath continued. “You lied to me and that’s why your hand is now broken. Are you going to lie to me again?”
Schroeder shook his head.
“Good. Take one more deep breath, relax, and tell me who Caroline Romero is.”
“She used t-t-to work at ATS. She’s dead.”
“You mean she was killed.”
“She ran into traffic and got hit by a-a-a car.”
“While being chased by ATS goons.”
Schroeder nodded.
“Do you know why she was being chased?”
“She stole data from ATS to help the Carlton Group with their attack.”
