“That’s pretty deep for a redhead.”
— U.S. MARSHAL MATT DILLON
“I’m a pretty deep redhead.”
— KITTY RUSSELL
The word spread early—they had Kowalski in custody, and The Blonde was dead.
Kowalski was flying in on an AH-64 Apache 2, due to arrive any moment.
The Blonde’s headless body was currently under the knife at a small medical facility south of San Diego, not far from the border. The guys in the lab coats didn’t want to hang around Mexico any longer than they had to. Cartels, and all. Things were bad. Decapitations were the order of the day. They didn’t want to get caught up in that shit.
Nobody was too worried about The Blonde anyway.
They wanted Kowalski.
He was the one with the intel.
They prepared the secret prison facility like parents preparing the house for their five-year-old’s birthday party—the first with friends from preschool. The landing pad was hosed down as well as the interrogation room. One staffer was surprised to find some blood and bone fragments still congealed in one corner of the room. He could have sworn he’d cleaned this place out good a few days ago.
Lights were checked, and in some cases, replaced. It was important to have the right amount of buzzing and flickering. Chairs were positioned just so. A new meat hook was hung suggestively from a metal eye towards the back of the room.
The government has secret prisons all over the country, tucked away in little corners. This secret facility was halfway between Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Neighbors—the closest ones living a mile away—thought it was a place where they pulped books. That was intended to explain the screaming. Machines are high-pitched and loud, they’d explain, if asked, which was never.
The Apache landed at 4:46 a.m. Kowalski was rushed down the ramp, still in his street clothes, except for the hood. He’d been checked for weapons, of course. Outwardly, he was clean.
They whipped off the hood to give him a hit of sunshine right before pushing his head down and running him through the musty steel hallway that led to the inner chambers of the facility.
They walked him around a lot to confuse him.
They stripped him naked, even removing the metal brace around his broken leg. They saved the vial of blood around his neck for last. It took them a while to realize what it was. Even better: it was early generation, from a month ago. Well worth studying.
A guard reached out, enclosed the vial in his meaty paw, then snapped it off Kowalski’s neck.
Now he needed
For now, though, two guards stayed with him. They could kill him later. They needed information.
It was time for final security checks. They force-fed him something to make him vomit.
He did.
They repeated the process, and then checked his mouth and ass.
They hosed him off, sat him in a metal chair.
They’d opted not to put him on the hook. It was better to build up to something like that.
“Hey,” Kowalski asked. “Is my brother-in-law around?” It was the first thing he’d said since being apprehended in Mexico.
They said nothing.
Others watched him wait, via fiber optic cameras.
Kowalski waited.
Sometime later the door opened. A guy Kowalski supposed was the interrogator stepped in. The guards stepped out.
The interrogator didn’t look like much. But those were the guys you really had to worry about.
He didn’t offer his name. He looked kind of bored.
“To be honest,” the interrogator said, “I just want to get to the part where I hang you on the hook back there and start cutting away little pieces of you. Starting with your anal cavity.”
“You guys are really fond of my ass.”
“Shall we begin?”
Kowalski said, “I’ll tell you everything.”
“Crap,” the interrogator said.
“And then,” Kowalski said, looking up at the ceiling, “all of you will die. One at a time.”
The interrogator perked up. “Oh yeah?”
“Every last one of you.”
Huge smile from the interrogator. “Sure, sweet cheeks. Listen, let’s get the story going. I’ll call bullshit and then we’ll have some fun.”
“I outthought you bastards every step of the way.” Kowalski stared at a corner of the ceiling.
The people watching him were impressed. He seemed to know exactly where the cameras were hidden.
“And yet,” the interrogator said, “you’re here.”
He stood up and reached inside a pouch on his pants. He took out a small, thin blade with a black handle. It had a cardboard cover over the blade, which the interrogator removed. Apparently, it had been sanitized for Kowalski’s protection.
“Here with me.”
“We went to L.A. first,” Kowalski said.
The interrogator sighed, then settled in to listen to the story.
