“You smell that, Colonel?”
“Smell what?”
“That stuff that smells like piss.” Jimenez sniffed. “You know what that is?”
“I don’t know.” Fargo took a long whiff. “What?”
“It’s piss!” Castelleti smirked, red in the face.
Both men threw their cards on the table and broke into uncontrollable laughter, shaking their heads.
Fargo swallowed.
“Go on down, Colonel.” Jimenez hooked a thumb over his shoulder, stopping to catch his breath. “Maybe you could help the sarge on this one. This new guy’s givin’ us zip so far.”
Fargo had no stomach for interrogation, but the last thing he wanted was for a couple of snot-nosed subordinates to see him sweat.
“All right,” he blustered. “I’ll do that. It’s important that I see him.”
Fargo grabbed the wooden banister to steady himself as he made his way down the dark concrete steps to the musty basement. The smell of urine did indeed waft up to assault his nose. The movies he’d seen, no matter how graphic, were tame compared to the real thing. Graphic images had the power to alarm for a moment, but the mind became inured after a short time. The sounds of screaming, pleading, or even whimpering-which Fargo felt was the worst-added shock value, but even they made one numb after a time. But when sight and sound were combined with the smell of actual human misery, the sensations burned into a special place at the back of his skull where they would stay forever.
Fargo paused at the two-way mirror set in the wall of what had been a root cellar in the back corner of the basement. The farmhouse was surrounded by acres of vacant land so there was no need to soundproof the room. Bundy claimed the ability for one subject to hear another’s woes, if they happened to have two clients, had a tenderizing effect.
The Echoes’ latest subject was Steve Luttrell, number thirty-seven on Congressman Drake’s list. Luttrell was a professional staffer for a powerful left-leaning lobbying firm in downtown D.C. He was in his late forties with a full head of snow-white hair that had once been red. He loved Mexican food to a fault and it showed in the prominent gut that folded over onto his lap. He was completely nude. Plastic flex cuffs secured pink shoulders, hands, knees to a gray metal chair in the center of the basement room. His back was to the door so as rob him of even the slightest notion of escape. Bright light glared in his face, causing him to squint through tearful red eyes. Strings of snot ran down the soapy white skin of his hairless chest.
Bundy sat in another chair five feet away, inside the circle of light, staring at the man with cold pig eyes.
Luttrell blinked against the assaultive light. “Why are you doing this?”
“You tell me,” Bundy said, his voice a coarse whisper.
Luttrell threw his head back, howling at the ceiling. “I can’t tell you anything if you don’t ask me any questions!”
“What should I ask you, Steve?” Bundy said.
“I… don’t… know,” he sobbed.
“Why weren’t you at your congressional hearings, Steve?”
“What?” He blinked. “I… I… what does that matter?”
“Are you a spy, Steve? A mole?”
Luttrell’s chest heaved. “Noooo! Why does everyone suddenly think I’m a spy?”
“Okay. Let’s talk about your wife,” Bundy said. His voice sounded like the hiss of a snake. Pure evil. “Do you think you make her happy, Steve?” He leaned in close. “Because from where I’m sitting I don’t think you could possibly make her as happy as I could.”
A malignant smile spread over Bundy’s face.
“You know, Steve,” he said. “When we’re in training, they teach us the three Ds-debility, dependence, and dread… But you know what, Steve?” Bundy sighed, leaning forward in his chair. “I came up with a little something that works so much faster in my experience. I call them the three Ts. Can you guess what they are?”
“No… no… idea…” Luttrell’s words came in breathless stops and starts.
Bundy reached behind his back to take out a pair of pruning shears. “Toenails, teeth, and testicles, Steve,” he said. “Isn’t that just brilliant? I think it’s brilliant.”
Luttrell began to blubber like a baby. “I… you… what…”
Fargo’s cell phone began to ring. Luttrell’s head snapped up, craning to see what was making the familiar noise outside the room.
Bundy’s smile vanished.
“Help me!” the naked man cried. He rocked in his chair until it tipped over, crashing against the concrete. “Somebody out there please help me!”
Bundy left the man lying on the damp concrete floor screaming until his voice grew hoarse.
“What the hell do you want… sir?” Spit flew from Bundy’s lips as he slammed the door behind him. The scorpion tattoo flicked and danced as the veins in his thick neck throbbed purple.
“I need to talk to you.” Fargo struggled to maintain even the illusion of control.
“You just set me back half a day there.” Bundy glared as if about to strike. “This guy has got to believe the world is a vacant planet-no one else here but me and him. Hopelessness-that’s what we’re after. You just gave that son of a bitch a fresh dose of hope with your prancy little antelope cell phone tune.”
“Would you shut up and listen to me for a minute?” Fargo tried to check the whine in his voice, but the words still came out more plea than order. He swallowed hard. “My source has found out there’s a full-scale search being mounted for someone missing over the Chinese border into Afghanistan. This has Jericho Quinn written all over it. I need you to get your men together.”
Bundy breathed in quickly through his nose at the mention of Quinn’s name. “I wonder what he’s doing over there…” He rubbed his bald head with the flat of his hand, thinking. “You know, LT, this guy sounds like the only one among all the names on our list who would be a challenge to interrogate.”
“We need to get on this right away,” Fargo said, mistaking Bundy’s calm for mutual understanding. “If he’s still alive, I want us there to snatch him.”
“You’re an all-powerful lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army.” Bundy smirked. It was difficult to tell if he was being condescending or suggesting a plan. “You got some pull, right?”
“Damn right I do,” Fargo heard himself say, though it sounded idiotic even to him.
“Quinn will have to come home to roost sometime. Let’s bump up the locate we put out. We’ll list him HVT.”
Fargo felt hopeful for the first time in weeks. Listing Quinn as a high-value target would put the might of the entire military behind the search. “I could put him on the capture-or-kill list.”
“Don’t you want to talk to him, sir?” Bundy’s black eyes churned, like something at the bottom of a polluted lake. “ I want to talk to him-spend a little time getting inside his head. My advice-just list him HVT. Add a warning annex that no one is to have any communication with him whatsoever, per your directive. ‘Gag immediately on arrest’-national security and all…”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Afghanistan
The hollow chirp of a teakettle dragged Quinn out of a dead sleep layer by painful layer. His body glowed with the painful warmth of someone who’d suffered from extreme cold. A mound of heavy quilts pressed him against a hard hair mattress that smelled of alcohol, dried yogurt, and sweat. The pungent odor of smoke from a yak-dung fire mixed with a greasy smell of spiced meat that pressed against his empty stomach like a fist.
His mouth felt full of chalk. His head pounded from what he knew was severe dehydration. The clatter of metal pots and pans felt like kettledrums played against his ear.
Quinn knew he carried vital information, but he couldn’t get his mind around it. He remembered the labyrinth
