“You do,” Remington accused.
“My superior—”
“Is off nursing a sore stomach,” Remington interrupted. “If he’d had any real weight to throw in this operation, I’d have already felt it.”
Winters leaned back a little in the hard wooden seat, as if realizing only then that he was within striking range of the Ranger captain.
“You’re making a mistake.”
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’re in for a world of hurt,” Remington stated flatly. “Because I don’t see it that way.”
Winters tried another tack. “We’re on the same side.”
“And whose side would that be?”
“The side of the United States government. The good guys.”
Remington paused as if he were thinking the answer over. “Uhuh. I’m stuck here in this city, dying by inches with an enemy army camped outside my doorstep, and you’re withholding information that I need.”
“I don’t know anything that will help you with your operation here.”
“Tell me about Icarus.”
Winters hesitated. “I can’t.”
Corporal Dean Hardin stood at Winters’s side. Staring at Remington, Hardin lifted an eyebrow. Remington blinked slowly. With an economy of motion, Hardin shifted his weight and threw a hard left fist straight into Winters’s jaw.
The blow caught the CIA agent unexpectedly and spilled him from the wooden chair. He groaned and coughed, choking on blood from his busted lips and nose. Hardin stepped forward and kicked him in the stomach with his combat boot. When Winters tried to cover up in a fetal position, Hardin simply stepped behind him and kicked him in the kidney.
A cry of pain ripped from the CIA agent’s bleeding lips.
Remington grew conscious of the attention Hardin’s brutality was receiving from the two privates seated at the security camera network. Despite the horror that the city had been through after the latest attack, they still appeared somewhat uncomfortable with violence on a more personal level.
The captain looked at the privates and demanded, “Are you going to be spectators or security personnel? Or maybe you want to spend the next few days waiting on the Syrians to attack again while pulling KP?”
Threatened with the kitchen shifts, the privates turned their attention back to the security network.
The corporal against the back wall shifted slightly.
Remington pinned the man with his gaze. “You got a problem, mister?”
“Sir, no, sir.” The corporal tapped the front pocket of his BDU. “I was just thinking about lighting up.” He glanced down at the groaning CIA agent on the floor. “Looks like maybe I have time, sir.”
Remington studied the man, recognizing him after a moment. “Corporal Barnett, isn’t it?”
Barnett nodded but didn’t make eye contact, staring past Remington’s shoulder as every enlisted man was trained to do when dealing with officers in a potentially confrontational encounter. Eye contact was there only if a soldier was in a personal situation; otherwise an officer could read challenge into a too-level stare. “Yes, sir.”
“Smoke ’em if you got ’em, Corporal,” Remington said.
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
Remington watched as Barnett reached into his BDU pocket, extracted a crumpled cigarette pack, and shook out a cigarette. He lit up in cupped hands while Winters continued to breathe in short, painful gasps. Barnett didn’t seem to care about the discomfort the CIA agent was in.
The captain tried to remember if Goose had any solid connections with Barnett. Remington was certain Goose knew the man, but Goose had a way of knowing every man in the 75th.
Once he had the cigarette going, Barnett put the lighter away and resumed his position against the wall behind the prisoner. He glanced at the CIA man on the floor, but no emotion touched his eyes or his face.
“Corporal Hardin,” Remington said, “get that man back in that chair.”
“Yes, sir.” Roughly, Hardin squatted down, took a two-handed grip on the agent’s jacket, and yanked the man to his feet. Winters tried to take his weight on his own legs, but Hardin shoved him backward into the chair. Blood ran down his face and dripped onto his shirt. His eyes looked glazed, but there was a healthy dose of panic in them now.
“We’ll try this again.” Remington stepped back in front of the man, taking up his personal space again.
Winters looked up at him like a whipped puppy and tried to slide back in the chair.
“Tell me about Icarus,” Remington ordered.
“What do you want to know?” Winters asked.
Quick as a striking snake, Hardin backhanded the CIA man in the face. The blow was calculated and measured, hard enough to turn Winters’s face and cause enough pain to bring tears, but not hard enough to knock him from the chair.
Over the years, Remington had come to appreciate the different degrees of cruelty Dean Hardin could exhibit on command. Hardin’s whole world centered on himself, but he knew he couldn’t make it through life alone, so he allied himself with the strongest men around that he could tolerate or who’d give him freedom enough to take care of himself. Remington wouldn’t have been Dean Hardin for anything, and wouldn’t have risked being personal friends with the man, but the Ranger captain was plenty willing to utilize the other man’s capacity for violence.
“Sir,” Hardin said, speaking to Winters. “‘What do you want to know—sir?’ The man’s an officer. Respect that.”
Straightening cautiously, raising his shoulder to block another such blow, Winters asked, “What do you want to know? Sir.”
“Outstanding.” Hardin grinned coldly and patted Winters on the cheek like a cherished pet that had learned a new trick.
Remington recognized the fear in the CIA man’s eyes and knew the emotion came out of self-preservation, one of the most powerful tools in an interrogator’s arsenal. Fear bent and broke men more than physical hardship ever did. Remington believed people were born into the world with fear, and everything they learned from the time they drew their first breath only strengthened that fear.
The world doesn’t care if
