CARRIER 2: VIPER STRIKE By Keith Douglass

Wrists, the chain linking them draped across a meat hook suspended from

the ceiling. His ankles had been tied, then secured to an iron pin

embedded in a steel bucket full of concrete. He could twist against his

bonds, but he could move very little.

This was a warehouse of some kind. Stacked crates and boxes created a

labyrinth of walls within a large, high-ceilinged storeroom. A clock

just visible on the nearest wall read ten o’clock.

He was two hours overdue at the ship, but that didn’t mean very much,

not here, not now. No one could possibly know where he was.

As Tombstone’s head slowly cleared, he was able to focus on the ring of

men surrounding him, just inside the circle of light from the

tripod-mounted lamps. He was still naked. That and his helplessness

contributed to a growing and overwhelming sense of vulnerability.

“So! If you are ready, Commander Magruder, we will begin. I fear I am

in something of a hurry, so our methods will be, of necessity, somewhat

brutal and direct.”

The speaker stepped into the circle of light. He looked Chinese.

Glasses and gray hair gave him the look of a mild-mannered professor,

but there was a hard glitter in those black eyes which chilled. He wore

civilian clothing, a flower-print sports shirt and slacks. In his hand

he carried a black tube, something like a policeman’s billy club, but

made of metal and plastic instead of wood.

Tombstone licked his lips. His tongue felt thick and swollen, and his

mouth and lips were dry. He had difficulty forcing words out. “Who …

who th’hell are you?”

“My name is Hsiao Kuoping, though that is not important now. What is

important is this.”

Hsiao’s hand snapped up, smacking the end of the club he held into the

American’s belly. There was a crackling sound, and liquid fire seared

between Tombstone’s navel and his groin. Muscles spasmed, and he jerked

and twisted against the handcuff chain and the rope on his ankles. His

knees tried to flex, to curl his body into a tight ball, but the

cement-filled bucket kept him stretched rigid against the hook overhead.

Tombstone’s scream was as completely involuntary as it was unexpected,

yanked from his throat in an explosion of raw pain.

Hsiao withdrew the rod, fingering it. Tombstone, blinking back the

tears and the red-tinged haze which threatened to cloud his vision,

could see the electrodes in the thing’s business end, the red button on

the other. A cattle prod.

“Pain, Commander,” Hsiao continued. “Pain is soon going to become the

single most important aspect of your existence.” With deliberate

slowness, Hsiao reached out again, sliding the end of the prod between

Tombstone’s knees. Tombstone gasped at the touch … but the current

was off, the head of the prod only slightly warm. His interrogator

dragged the rod up … up …

up between his thighs until the electrodes nestled beneath his scrotum.

The terror Tombstone felt at that moment was far worse than anything

he’d ever known in his life. He could look into Hsiao’s eyes two feet

below his own and know, without a shadow of a doubt, that the man’s

thumb was about to come down on that red button set in the prod’s

plastic base. Anticipation and the searing memory of the pain he’d just

experienced made Tombstone’s stomach twist, and he was afraid he was

about to be sick.

Hsiao smiled at him. “I promise you, Commander, that you will come to

know pain very, very well in the next few hours … unless you tell me

exactly what I wish to know.”

By the clock on the wall, less than an hour passed, but it was an hour

which crawled through an eternity, endless questions punctuated by

seemingly random applications of the electric cattle prod. There were

five men besides Hsiao, a scarred civilian named Phreng and four others

who Tombstone thought might be soldiers, though they did not wear

uniforms. Once, Hsiao referred to those four as his “Burmese

assistants,” which did not explain for Tombstone what they were doing in

Bangkok. After the first few minutes, Hsiao turned the merely physical

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