Sergeant Macintosh, giving him a ‘two minutes with you’ signal.
Macintosh stood and stepped in front of Wolff, leaning down to breathe close to his face. “And a good day to yer, Mr. Wolff,” he said, rolling his R’s and thickening his Scottish brogue. “I’m so pleased we have this time together. Unlike my gentle friend, I don’t want any answers,” he said, reaching out and grabbing hold of the prisoner’s hair, jerking his head closer. “All I want is screams, Mr. Wolff. ‘Tis music to me ears.”
Wolff didn’t respond.
Macintosh tightened his grip on Wolff’s hair and twisted his head upward at a steep angle while placing his knee against Wolff’s chest, pulling the head against the pressure of his knee.
“I said I don’t want answers, or questions, either, Mr. Wolff. I want screams, you see. And we’ll get there, I can assure you.”
Wolff tilted his head slightly, trying to make sense of the ambient sounds that surrounded his location. Macintosh continued in a softer tone.
“Now that Hispanic lad, he’s in charge. Don’t know why, since I always get the better results, but still, we all get paid to do our job, ain’t that right, Mr. Wolff. He wants answers, I want screams. Funny thing is, Mr. Wolff, you can make the choice, if you know what I mean. Of course, I’m only guessing that you would prefer his way to mine, but still, when all’s done I’d like to have a go at my way,” he said, pulling even tighter on the blindfolded man’s hair.
Wolff grunted in response to the physical assault, but remained silent. Carlos nodded at Macintosh, who knocked Wolff back against his chair, then stepped away.
All was silent for several moments as Carlos once again scraped the stool on the deck and resumed his seat across the small table from Wolff. “You tough man, Senor Wolff. I am tougher. This is last chance, asshole. Talk or die.”
“Go to hell,” Wolff replied. Finally Pug motioned to Carlos and mimed injecting a syringe. Carlos nodded and stepped behind Wolff, retrieved a prepared syringe from the counter top, and jabbed it into Wolff’s neck.
By early afternoon, with some satellite phone help from Washington, Pug had entered restricted files on Wolff’s computer and performed a cursory review of data without much success in deciphering any of it. Late that afternoon, he downloaded the video of the interrogation onto his laptop computer, hooked up his sat com telephone, and connected with his DHS contact, transmitting his written report and the full video, plus the contents of Wolff’s laptop by secure encrypted satellite link to General Austin. Thirty minutes later, Pug, Carlos, and Cameron sat on deck as Rainbow Blue made for the next contact with the Australian submarine.
Just before dark, the rendezvous with HMAS Rankin was accomplished, and Wolff, still drugged and unconscious, was transferred for delivery to Australian authorities who had already made arrangements for his transfer to the Americans who would fly him out of Australia.
With Rainbow Blue secured against the hull of the submarine, Carlos scrambled aboard and Pug tossed his bag to the waiting Aussie seaman. The two SAS troopers also boarded Rankin. Pug then turned toward Cameron and reached to shake his hand. “Captain Rossiter, it’s been a pleasure. Maybe we’ll meet again some time. I figure I owe you a good dinner for this South Pacific cruise.”
“My pleasure, General. I just might pop over and take you up on that meal.”
“You’re on. Have a good trip home. It should be quiet out here for the next few days without us. I doubt it will be quiet where I’m going. And it won’t be comfortable for Wolff, either.”
“I like it quiet, Pug,” Cameron said, loosening the lines, “and I’ve got a few days left on my original plans. Won’t be surprised, however, to get another message from the colonel to report in. Vacation’s over, I’m afraid.”
Pug accepted a hand up from the chief of the boat, stepped back onto the steel deck grating of HMAS Rankin, and watched for a few moments as Rainbow Blue drifted away from the sub. He gave a quick salute toward Cameron and then slipped through the hatch and down the ladder.
Nine hours later, at dawn, a helicopter once again appeared on the horizon, and both Carlos and Pug were hoisted up and transported to USS Abraham Lincoln, now two hundred miles further west. They caught the COD again the following morning, headed for Jakarta, where they transferred to commercial aircraft, and returned to Washington D.C.
Chapter 11
Rumsey Valley
Yolo County California
March
Following the convocation of legislators in Las Vegas, Dan and Nicole Rawlings had spent another three days in the neon city, attending several shows and just enjoying time away from the pressures of Dan’s legislative duties in Sacramento. Although the trip had been to discuss the prospect of other states joining with California in forming a new nation, it had also served as a brief extension to the abbreviated honeymoon Dan and Nicole had taken to Mazatlan after their marriage in January.
Their wedding had certainly not been every girls’ dream. A New Year’s Day decision, a quick trip to Reno, a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in Mexico, and then they came home as Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Rawlings, with Dan returning to his state capitol office the following Tuesday, spending the next two months behind closed doors in California Assembly and Senate workshops on constitutional development.
Nicole’s retirement from the FBI, confirmed shortly before Christmas, had been a blow to the young woman, changing the course of her life even more dramatically than her decision to marry Dan Rawlings. They had moved into Dan’s condo in Davis, about twenty miles west of Sacramento. As he had promised, they contracted to build a new home slightly northwest of Davis, up Rumsey Canyon, where Dan’s family had settled shortly after the Civil War. It was to be the fourth Rumsey / Rawlings home in one hundred and forty-five years. Jack and Ellen Rumsey had been the last to build, in 1946.
On a bright Sunday morning, the last day of March, Dan suggested they drive up Highway 16 toward the new home site to view the work that had been accomplished in their absence. Fifteen miles from Woodland, just west of the tiny village of Esparto, Dan took a slight detour off the main road. Nicole knew immediately where he was going: the Esparto Cemetery to visit Jack Rumsey’s final resting ground.
Jack Rumsey had been the patriarch of the family through most of the second half of the twentieth century. He had died at age 89 of a heart attack the previous August. His death had occurred one day before the insertion of federal troops into Sacramento and the brief gun fight between the 82 ^nd Airborne Division and the California State Reserve that the press had dubbed The Battle of Capital Mall. Dan had commented several times that he was grateful that Jack had been spared the necessity of seeing his beloved California party to an armed conflict between California and military forces of the United States of America. Even Dan found it hard to believe.
As they pulled into the small, well-maintained cemetery, Dan parked on a side road and they exited the vehicle, slowly walking toward the Rumsey and Rawlings’ family plot. Dan’s older brother, Tom, who had died during birth, lay in a row with Ellen and Jack Rumsey and several earlier generations of Dan’s family. Now, with a new home, the prospect of a new state, and even the possible advent of a new nation, Dan found himself wondering if Jack Rumsey would lay buried on “foreign” soil.
“The roses are starting to bloom,” Nicole said, pointing toward the row of bushes that surrounded the family plot. Dan looked in their direction, taking Nicole’s hand and strolling past several headstones. Jack and Ellen’s ornate marker had an asymmetrical appearance, with Jack’s engraving fresh and bold, compared to Ellen’s inscription, which had tarnished a bit in the decade since her death. It gave the marble edifice a visual, compelling, and heartfelt story without the need for explanation. In most respects, it was a traditional family plot, with headstones reflecting that some members had spent merely hours on their earthly sojourn, others nearly a century.
“My mother told me that her mother, Grandma Ellen, planted those roses almost fifty years ago. Mom’s been caring for them ever since she was a teenager, when Grandma would bring her here to tell her about our early pioneer family.”
