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