“Remember he’s our prime lead to finding the Rebel. We need him alive and talking.”
“He’ll live — unless he’s got a bum ticker.” Rowdy said, “He’s a speed freak. If he gets off
on meth there’s nothing wrong with his heart. That shit’s a rocket ride.”
Griff said, “You should know, bro.”
“Look who’s talking.”
The object of their attention sat tied to a straight-backed wooden chair. Jack had decided to use a wooden one instead of a roller-mounted office chair for the simple reason that wood doesn’t conduct electricity.
He was not unaware of the ironies present in the reversal of fortune that had seen him transformed in less than an hour from the subject of torture to the inflictor. This turnabout troubled him not at all, considering that it was Pettibone who’d delivered him to the tender mercies of the MRT. There was no way around the hard fact that Pettibone had to be made to talk, to spill his guts about the plot against Sky Mount. Hundreds of innocent lives and perhaps the fate of a great nation depended on it.
Pettibone had walked unaware into the lion’s den less than fifteen minutes earlier. He’d arrived at the Mountain Lake substation to pick up Jack for delivery to Reb Weld. He parked the pickup truck with the steel-plated front behind the back of the building where it couldn’t be seen from the road. He went through the garage door into the substation, his knowledge of the site suggesting that this was a familiar routine with him. Jack wondered how many others Hardin and his crew had handed over to Pettibone for a one-way ride.
Pettibone stepped through the door only to discover the muzzle of Jack’s pistol being pressed against his skull. He froze except for his eyes, which looked like they were going to pop out of the sockets. His thick- lensed glasses magnified his already bulging orbs as they took in the dead bodies of Fisk and Stallings.
Jack said, “That’s right, Mountain Lake is under new management.”
A quick search relieved the captive of a gun, switchblade knife, several sets of keys, a wallet, a packet wrapped in tin foil, and some pocket litter. The wallet yielded a state driver’s license issued to one Arthur Conley Pettibone. Jack couldn’t tell if the license or the bearer’s name or both were phony but it didn’t matter now that he had possession of the man himself. The tin foil packet contained several grams of a grainy white powdery substance. Rowdy put some on his forefinger and tasted it. “Crystal meth,” he said. “Pretty good shit, too.”
Jack folded up the packet and pocketed it. Rowdy said, “Hey! — ” Jack said, “I need you with a clear head and a steady hand for the next couple of hours.” Rowdy started to do a slow burn. “You’re taking a lot on yourself, dude.”
Griff clapped him on the shoulder. “Forget it, man. Jack’s right. You don’t know what that shit’s cut with or what it might do to you. Besides, you don’t want him thinking that you’re one of those shooters who gets his nerve from a noseful of crank.”
Rowdy decided to let it go. “I better not catch you tweaking any, Jack.”
“No worry about that.”
Griff said, “You know, Jack, I think I’m starting to believe your story after all.”
Jack didn’t know how much the bikers believed of what he’d told them, which was nothing but the truth: that he was a counterterrorist agent on a mission to stop a plot spearheaded by Reb Weld. They did believe he could help them get Weld, and that was enough for now. That and the fact that he wasn’t a cop. Griff and Rowdy hated cops, as they declared at some length and with feeling. Jack actually had been a cop, a member of the LAPD SWAT team, but he saw no reason for burdening the bikers with unnecessary details that might derail the start of a potentially productive alliance.
That’s how it is in the field, you work with what’s at hand. Griff and Rowdy were choirboys compared to some of the warlords and cutthroats that Jack Bauer had been forced to make use of in the devious and treacherous half world of the long war against global terrorism.
Jack said, “Talk fast, Pettibone. Who is Winnetou? Where’s Reb Weld? What’s the plot against the Round Table?”
Pettibone had recovered from his initial fright. His jawline and chin took on a belligerent set. He said, “I ain’t gonna say a goddamned thing and that’s the last you’re gonna get out of me.”
“At least you have the sense not to deny anything. Stay sensible and save yourself a lot of grief.”
Pettibone was silent, not even bothering to shake his head. He refused to listen to reason and the clock was running out. Harsh measures were called for. A preliminary roughing up and slapping around failed to make him see the light. More extreme inflictions left him gasping and groaning with pain but unwilling to unburden himself of the relevant facts.
A nasty bit of business forced from him a choking half sob. “Reb’ll kill me if I talk!”
That irked Griff. “Listen up, dipshit. Reb’s on the run from me and my bro here. You’re scared of him? He’s scared of us. You’re gonna find out why.”
Now Pettibone found himself tied to a chair in the garage. His eyes looked like shelled oysters, his glasses had been taken from him earlier at the start of the session.
Fisk’s patrol car was parked in the substation parking lot. Rowdy started it up, drove it into the garage, and switched it off. He popped open the hood and got back behind the wheel.
Griff held a pair of battery jumper cables that he’d found in the garage and busied himself under the hood. The jumper cables had spring- hinged, rubber-handled copper pincers at each end. He attached a pair to the twin terminals on the car battery.
He crossed to Pettibone and stood facing him, holding the latter’s switchblade. He thumbed the handle stud and the blade came snicking out. It was a long, thin, sharp stiletto. Griff smiled evilly and moved closer to the man tied to the chair. Pettibone’s hands were tied with rope behind the back of the chair. He sat rigid, trembling, staring off into the distance.
Griff cut off Pettibone’s vest and T-shirt, leaving him bare from the waist up. Pettibone’s flesh, rank and unwashed, was the dead-white of creatures that spend their lives in dark caves away from the sun. He was skinny with a prominent collarbone and his rib cage showing so clearly that each separate rib could be counted.
Griff taunted, “What’d you think, I was gonna cut you?” He pressed the handle stud and the blade retracted. He pocketed the weapon. “Maybe later.”
He picked up a galvanized metal mop bucket that he’d filled with water and dashed its contents on Pettibone, soaking him above the waist. He grabbed up one of the jumper cables, squeezing the rubber-handled grip. The inside of its saw-toothed jaws were sharp and pointy, the better to clamp down on battery terminals.
Griff said, “We’re gonna give your tongue a jump start to set it a-wagging.” He fastened the clamp to Pettibone’s chest at the right nipple. Pettibone whinnied like a horse breaking a leg. Griff waited until the shrieks died down and said, “Hurts, huh? You wanna talk?”
Pettibone shook his head no. Griff fastened the other jumper cable to Pettibone’s chest over his left nipple. Pettibone howled, squirming against the ropes, drumming his booted feet on the garage floor.
Griff surveyed his handiwork with evident satisfaction. “Still won’t talk? No? What a dumbass.” He shook his head in disbelief. “You called the tune.”
He upended the metal mop bucket and placed it over Pettibone’s head. Rowdy sat in the driver’s seat of the patrol car, resting his elbow on the top of the door and sticking his head out of the window, grinning.
Griff said, “Start ’er up!”
Rowdy switched on the ignition and started the car. The engine noise was loud inside the garage. Live current from the vehicle’s nine-volt battery streamed through the jumper cables into Pettibone, the conductivity aided by the water that had doused him.
Pettibone looked like a white marble statue that had gone too long without a cleaning. His back was arched, his flesh rigid. Every muscle, tendon, and sinew stood out in bold relief. He spasmed like an epileptic throwing a fit, his head rattling against the inside of the metal bucket.
Rowdy gunned the motor, sending blue-gray clouds pouring from the exhaust pipe and out the open garage door. Griff studied the face of Jack Bauer, monitoring his reaction. Jack’s expression was blandly neutral. He wondered what Griff expected him to do, flinch? He returned the biker’s survey with a pleasant smile.
Thirty long seconds passed before Griff made a throat-cutting gesture, signaling Rowdy to switch off the engine. Silence fell like a concrete tomb lid.
Pettibone slumped, sagging against the ropes. He panted for breath between the muffled sobs that came from beneath the bucket. Griff waited a minute until the worst of it had passed before he knocked on the bucket and said, “Ready to start singing yet?”
