The Thai hesitated a moment, then shrugged his chunky shoulders.
'Attached as I am to my money, I nevertheless consider my portion of the expenses already spent, and suppose it makes little difference when I physically part company with it,' he said. 'Let's not bicker over what can't be changed, and instead move on to important matters of planning. We've been so focused on Sandakan and what comes after, that none of us are talking about the data-storage vaults in the United States. They are essential to our success and at least as highly guarded as—'
The door to the rice barn opened, surprising them. They fixed their attention upon Xiang as one of his pirates leaned through from the other side, addressed him in a low whisper, then withdrew into the barn, leaving the door ajar.
Xiang turned back around, looking straight at the Thai.
'The American's opened his eyes,' he said.
The room went silent.
Luan smiled slightly and cast an eager glance around the table.
'Excuse me, brothers,' he said, heaving his bulk off the chair. 'I have to go to work.'
He followed Xiang into the barn, pushing the door heavily shut behind him.
Chapter Twelve
Blackburn came to with a start, disoriented, bathed in sweat, clusters of black motes floating across his vision. His eyes were battered and swollen, his body throbbing with pain in a dozen places. Where was he? Why couldn't he move his arms?
He realized he was in a chair.. slumped forward in a hard, straight-backed chair… and jerked to an upright position. Too quickly. Dizziness washed over him and his stomach contracted. He fought to push back the nausea, the taste of vomit rising in his throat. For several seconds it was touch-and-go, but then the sickness began to recede.
He squeezed his pulsing eyes shut and sucked in breath after labored breath.
Okay. All right. Let's try it again. But slower
He rolled his head to relax the aching tendons of his neck, lifted it an inch or two — slow, slow — and opened his eyes again.
Better.
Blinking, he looked himself over.
His shirt was bloody and torn. Had he been shot? No, no, he didn't think so. There had been a bad tumble in the hotel stairway. Then that iron claw, or whatever it was, sinking into his arm. He'd been trying to get it out, and then somebody or something had hit him. And afterward…?
What had happened afterward?
Max gulped down another mouthful of air. Come on, come on, what happened? He got little besides brief, elusive flashes, and wondered if he'd sustained a concussion from the blow to his head, or maybe the fall down the stairs. There had been long periods of oblivion alternating with moments when he half awakened and took in confused snatches of reality.
At one point he'd been in a truck… the delivery truck outside the hotel. That was where he'd first been handcuffed, in the vehicle's rear compartment. There had been a body back there next to him. A dead man, probably the original driver. He had been stripped of his clothing, and a mixture of blood and some other, viscous fluid was oozing from his ear. Max remembered lying there beside the naked corpse on sheets wet with gore… and that was all. He didn't know how long he'd been kept in the truck or where he'd been taken afterward. Just had a vague sense of time slipping away. Then being lifted, carried a short distance, and dropped flat on his back.
More time passed. He'd been in a close space, registered monotonous rolling, pitching movements. It had been like that for a while. Then a strong, freshening wind gusted over him. There had been a salt breeze. An abrupt realization that he was on a boat, they were transporting him somewhere on a boat…
He'd slipped back into unconsciousness, awakened once somewhere else. Another truck? Another boat? It was no good, that part was almost entirely a blank. He could recall nothing about it except for having been moved yet again to what he supposed was his present location, a barn of some sort. It was wide and dim and stewingly hot with a thatch roof and steps rising to a loft. Both his wrists had been cuffed to the arms of the chair. The restraints were standard police-issue metal bracelets.
His watchdogs were anything but cops, though. He'd recognized a few from the bunch that had pursued him at the hotel, including the big one, the one he'd first seen waiting in the truck, and who had come at him through the service door….
Blackburn felt his head clearing. With each interval of consciousness more of what had happened came back to him, his scattered bits and pieces of memory weaving into a coherent thread and drawing him toward a full recognition of his predicament.
Here in the barn he'd been asked questions, mostly by the one who seemed to be in charge — Luan, that was his name. Asked questions and beaten hard when he refused to answer. But that hadn't been the worst of it. Not by far. He had been through brutal ordeals before, and believed he could have withstood their interrogation for quite some time.
Oh, shit. These goddamned bastards came to the same conclusion, didn't they?
The hairs at the back of his neck prickling, he remembered the needle. How could he have forgotten it even for a second?
Maybe, though, that was why his mind had switched itself off for a while. To provide a cessation from what was otherwise unavoidable. To spare him from thinking about the needle.
The first time had been the roughest. They'd held him down, torn off his shirt sleeve, and jabbed the needle into the bend of his arm. Because he'd been struggling, the one with the syringe had botched several attempts at piercing a blood vessel. But eventually he'd succeeded, pressing the needle flat against his skin, inserting it down the length of the vein, drawing a little blood to make sure he'd gotten a good hit. And then depressing the plunger.
Blackburn had made a small sound, a kind of moan, and slid back in the chair, his head nodding, his eyes rolling back under their lids. Wildcat tingles had rushed up his arm in what seemed to be a direct line to his brain, dien widened out into ripples of numbing warmth that spread through his flesh and bones and viscera until he went slack. And the horror, the really overpowering horror of it, was that a part of him had welcomed the nullity it brought. He'd trained his mind and body to endure the severest punishments, but to have his pain drawn out of him in a great merciful whoosh like heaven taking a deep breath….
Baifen, Luan called it.
Chinese slang for heroin.
She was a seductive bitch, and that was what they were counting on.
His memories rushing back on him now, Max glanced at the inside of his left arm and saw the black and blue where he'd been injected… how many times? Five, maybe six. There were blisters under his elbow where the spike had slipped and some of the drug was inadvertently pumped between his skin and muscle. The first couple of times they'd shot him up, a ferocious rash had spread from his elbows to his shoulders and neck, but his system had adjusted, and the redness and terrible itch were slowly fading.
Blackburn was still taking stock when he heard movement to his right. He looked up and saw one of his guards — he'd counted four of them in the dimness — step over to a door on the opposite wall, open it, then lean out to speak with somebody on the other side… the big guy from the delivery truck, who was also apparently his superior. When he came striding into the barn a moment later, Luan was right behind him.
Here we go again, Max thought, steeling himself.
He watched in silence as Luan moved to a table about six feet away, where his captors kept the heroin and works, as well as a water pitcher and small gas burner for cooking the drug. He saw orange flame spurt from the burner, saw Luan drop a chunk of the heroin into a spoon, then saw him mix it with some water and then hold the
