Triangle Of Terror. Don Pendleton

Чтение книги онлайн.

      1

      The blinding light usually broke them before he came in to close the game. Of course, he thought, there was prep work before the hardball questions were fired off, something extra for Task Force Talon’s time and trouble having to hunt some of them down in the first place. Plus, getting it straight up front, their will would be little more than wet dung to be molded in his hands. For instance, the detainee—or, in the private parlance of interrogators, the chum or the contaminants—seemed to always come to him requiring warm up where it hurt most—on the mug. A shot or two to the nose, squelching beak to crimson mash potatoes while pinballing those firewheels through the brain, was a decent jump start to poke a chink in defiant armor. It let them know right off whatever they’d heard about the Geneva Convention was simply the whiny nonsense of Western journalists who couldn’t fathom the real world. Naturally, before the festivities started, they were stripped naked, strapped to the cold steel chair, humiliation hard at work right away to rob the chum of any pride. He let them stew for, say, anywhere from thirty-six to forty-eight hours like that, no food or water, no sleep.

      Alone, seething, shamed and frightened, pinned by the light.

      The problem was, the white light could break a man down to a gibbering idiot. No longer, then, did he leave them with eyelids forced open by clamps. He needed hard intel from lucid tongues, not raving lunatics fit only for a straitjacket. Consider the murdering rabble he had to deal with and break, though, he figured it was forgiveable if they lost one or two along the way, learning from their own mistakes how far to push it as they went.

      The rock music and the air conditioner mounted on the white wall were the newest additions, both of them personal touches. Piped in at jumbojet decibels, the guard monitoring the 8x10 cell—the Conversion Room it was called—had the discretion to decide how long to blast the detainee with screeching guitar riffs and primal drumbeats. He could grant the prisoner whatever period of blessed silence he chose before blaring back the same godawful song. With the transfer complete, the worst of the worst militants from Guantanamo Bay found themselves in a remote jungle hellhole. Smack on the Brazil-Paraguay-Argentina border, few human beings knew it existed and even fewer wanted to know.

      It was his show.

      Zipping up the bomber jacket, he pulled the door shut behind him, then slipped on the leather gloves. Even with the black sunglasses he squinted, taking a few moments to adjust to the white glare. Two steps across the polyethylene tarp, the plastic crinkling beneath rubber-soled combat boots, and he saw the detainee flinch at the sound. Good, he thought, no permanent ear damage. If possible, he liked to keep his style of interrogation more low key, direct, friendly even, unlike the shouting and barking his two comrades enjoyed.

      He took a moment to inspect the damage his starter and middle relief had inflicted earlier, stepping into the halo, shielding the battered face with his shadow. The swollen eyelids fluttered open as best they could, then cracked to slits, the detainee groaning, shivering so hard in the restraints around his arms and legs it made him wonder if the bolts would hold down the chair. They’d done quite the hit parade on the ribs, he saw, both sides a quilt work pattern, layered in black and purple. And the strained wheezing told him every breath the Iraqi drew was like taking a hot knife through the torso.

      He fired up a cigarette, inhaled a healthy lungful through it and blew the cloud in the prisoner’s face, meshing smoke with pluming breath. Though he had his closing mentally scripted he still wondered where to start. Whether Kharballah al-Tikriti was the bastard son of the Burrowed Bearded Rat—as rumor indicated—was of minor importance, as long as that knowledge remained a secret shared only by those closest to him.

      “I am Colonel James Braden, commander of Task Force Talon,” he began, the detainee gagging and wincing as he shrouded him with another wave of smoke. “I am what is called a closer, but from where you sit, Kharballah, I am the alpha and the omega, I am the only friend in the world you have at this moment. I stand between you and death.”

      He thought he spotted the residue of defiant life still in the eyes, maybe a spark of hatred. Sliding to the side, blowing smoke, he watched al-Tikriti shut his eyes, then the Iraqi cut loose a stream of profanity mixing Arabic with English. Braden was more amazed than angry. None of the others had made it this far, but al-Tikriti was still going strong.

      “That is the only answer you will get from me,” the СКАЧАТЬ