discarded there. Tombstone squeezed his eyes shut, trying to turn away, but that first stark, blood-smeared image remained burned in his eyes and his mind as though branded there. Control over his empty stomach failed and he sank to his knees, retching, trying to rid himself of the sight and unable to do so.
Finally, reluctantly, his heaving stomach quieted.
While the public image of hero had been troubling him, Matthew Magruder was no coward. On the contrary, he was an aviator in the U.S. Navy. The ability to pilot an F-14, to land on an aircraft carrier in conditions ranging from calm seas to stormy pitch-darkness, to face enemy aircraft in one-on-one aerial duels reminiscent of the knightly jousts of another age… this set him apart from other men in training, in discipline, in sheer nerve.
But always before when Tombstone had faced death, it had been in the cockpit of an aircraft. There, death was a constant possibility… but as a flash, an instant of terror followed by painless nothingness. He stared down at the torn and tortured bodies sprawled on the concrete and for the first time felt the reality of another kind of death, not the clean death of aerial knights, but a filthy, lonely, agony-wracked ending that would go on and on and on.
'Your shipmates,' Hsiao said. Tombstone turned. He'd not even heard the door open behind him. 'Bentley. Paterowski. And Rodriguez. It took them most of last night to die. Toward the end they were actually begging Phreng to be allowed to tell what they knew. After that, they begged for death.'
Tombstone could not take his eyes from the bodies. What had Hsiao said earlier? I can tear it word by word from your broken body, the way a fisherman guts a fish.
The comparison was gruesomely realistic.
Hsiao stepped aside, allowing Phreng and one of the Burmese to enter.
'Take him.'
They half led, half dragged Tombstone from the room, leading him through the maze of stacked packing crates and boxes which filled most of the warehouse floor proper. At the place where the meat hooks were suspended from the ceiling, centered in the glare from the tripod-mounting lights was a table, ominously bare except for lengths of clothesline secured to each leg.
The wood of the tabletop was splotched with brown stains, and Tombstone wondered if that was where the three sailors had died. He shook his head, trying to clear his mind. Horror held his thoughts in a vise.
There were two chairs nearby, and he felt a moment's icy shock. One of the seats was occupied by Bayerly, his wrists handcuffed behind the chair's back, his ankles tied to the front legs. Hsiao had said that Bayerly was a prisoner, but Tombstone hadn't been able to tell whether that had been truth or an attempted bluff. Like Tombstone, Bayerly was nude, and his body showed the savage red burns and welts of an interrogation session with Hsiao's cattle prod. His face looked terrible, puffed and marred with livid bruises where he'd been beaten, and there were streaks of blood around his swollen lips. He was sagging to one side in the chair, held upright only by his manacles, and looking as though he'd been undergoing interrogation for the past hour or two while Tombstone had been unconscious.
Roughly, Tombstone was seated on the other chair, handcuffed and tied.
'This time we will try a different approach,' Hsiao said. He gave a signal, and there was a sound of scuffling in the darkness. Then two of the Burmese entered, holding a struggling, naked woman between them.
'Pamela!' Matt called, her name wrenched from him by the shock of seeing her… here.
'Matt!' she screamed. Her blond hair, in wild disarray, swirled about her shoulders as she tried to look at him. 'Matt! Who are they? What do they want! Matt!'
'Put her on the table,' Hsiao ordered with a curt gesture. 'On her back.'
Her captors dragged Pamela to the table and forced her down. As they tied her hands and feet, Hsiao turned to face Tombstone and Bayerly again.
'Both of you have had a taste of our hospitality at first hand. Now we will let you watch that hospitality demonstrated with another.'
'You son of a bitch! Let her go!' Tombstone wanted to beg, to plead…
knowing at the same time he could do nothing. 'She doesn't know anything.'
'I quite agree. But the point, you see, is not to extract information from her… but from you.' He walked over to the table, reached down, and took a handful of golden hair. 'You remember what we did to Bentley and the others?' he asked. 'How long, do you think, before we reduce this lovely creature to the same condition? How long can we keep her conscious… aware?
How long will you be able to watch us work on her?'
Pamela twisted her head to the side, trying to bite Hsiao's hand. He snatched his hand back and chuckled.
'Her fate is entirely up to you, gentlemen. Tell us what we want to know and we will release her. Either of you can save her, at any time.'
Tombstone lunged forward in the chair, feeling the steel of the handcuffs bite the raw patches circling his wrists. 'You bastard! You can't get away with it…!'
'I already have, Commander.' Hsiao held out one hand and snapped his fingers. Phreng reached across the girl on the table and handed him the cattle prod.
Pamela's scream an instant later rang off the warehouse walls, going on and on and burning itself into Tombstone's ears and mind as completely as the sight of the three bodies in his cell. 'Stop it! Stop it!'
Hsiao lifted the prod. 'Shall we start with the procedures for landing a friendly aircraft on Jefferson's flight deck?'
Tombstone shook his head, helplessly torn between horror and rage. Blood pounded in his temples. He couldn't let them do this to Pamela… but to tell them what they wanted to know…
'For God's sake stop it!' Bayerly yelled suddenly, as though the words had been torn from him. His voice cracked, little more than a harsh croak.
'Ask me! Ask me! I'll tell you! Whatever you want!'
Hsiao looked up, his expression one of mild surprise. 'Indeed?' He seemed to be considering Bayerly's offer.
Tombstone turned his head and stared at the other aviator. Bayerly was sagging against the chair, his chest heaving as he gulped hungrily at the air, his eyes bulging with a desperate, consuming terror. His face was as pale as death, glistening under the lamps with a thin sheen of sweat.
'Bayerly, you son of a bitch!'
Hsiao gave an order, and one of the Burmese began untying Bayerly's feet.
'Come,' Hsiao said as he helped the prisoner rise unsteadily to his feet. 'We will go someplace where we can talk in comfort.'
'What… what about them…?'
'Both will remain safe… so long as you cooperate.' Supporting Bayerly with a hand under the American's elbow, Hsiao turned to the civilians and snapped something at them in That.
Phreng replied, the words singsong and incomprehensible. His hand restlessly stroked Pamela's thigh. Hsiao barked a command. There was resentment in the That's face… then a curt nod, and he began untying the girl's ankles.
Moments later they were freeing him as well. It looked to Tombstone as though the worst of the horror might be past. But at what cost? Somehow, the information Hsiao wanted was aimed at the Jefferson. What was Hsiao up to…
terrorism? Holding a U.S. carrier for ransom? Whatever his plan, it might mean the death of hundreds, possibly thousands of his shipmates.
As two Burmese guards led him back to his cell, he knew it was up to him to warn Jefferson.
The problem was how? There was no way Hsiao and his henchmen were going to let them walk away free, not now.
And Bayerly was spilling his guts. Tombstone felt the desperation rising within his chest and wanted to scream, the torture as bad in a small way as the hour he'd spent that morning hanging from Hsiao's meat hook.
Try as he might, he could see no way out of this mess for any of them.
