Sword of Shiva - Страница 7

He stared directly into Sonam’s eyes. “Do you understand?”

Sonam’s head began to nod almost of its own accord, but he caught himself and held his muscles rigid. He would not answer, even with a gesture.

The little man stepped forward, stopping within easy reach of the chair.

Sonam remembered his plan to spit in the face of his torturer. The man was certainly close enough now, but Sonam’s mouth had gone dry. He could not summon a single drop of saliva.

He flinched as the man grasped his right hand. He tried to jerk his hand away, but his forearms were strapped to the arms of the chair at wrist and elbow.

The steel jaws of the pliers were cold as they closed around his finger, midway between the second and third knuckles. There was a brief twinge of discomfort as the serrated teeth of tool pinched his skin, but the little man adjusted the alignment of the pliers, and the sensation vanished.

Sonam saw it when it happened, the minute shift in posture as the little man tensed the muscles of his upper body and rammed the handles of the pliers together.

The pain ripped through Sonam, piercing him as deeply and profoundly as the Chinese rifle bullet had done. The bone in his finger splintered and gave way with an obscenely liquid crack that he heard and felt with equal clarity. His vision narrowed, and then collapsed upon itself until all he could see was a searing pinprick of blood-colored light.

His mouth was flooded with the bitter taste of adrenaline, and still the steel jaws continued to move toward each other — crunching through shards of bone, crushing muscle, tendon, and flesh into a formless mass of pulverized meat.

The heavy square jaws met, the section of finger between them smashed into a ribbon of bloody gel. But the pliers were not finished yet. They twisted and pulled, opening and closing repeatedly, like a crocodile trying to get a better grip on the prey trapped between its teeth. The metal jaws worked their way upward and downward from their starting place, searching for undamaged bits of the mangled finger, finding the broken ends of shattered bones, grinding everything to ragged mush.

Sonam’s finger — the thing that had once been his finger — became the very center of the universe. It eclipsed everything. There was nothing else. No life. No world. No thought. Only the ravenous metal jaws, and the pain.

It took him at least a minute to realize that he was screaming. High-pitched keening wails that sounded more animal than human. It took him a minute or two more to force himself to stop. At last, he managed to bring it under control, and he sagged against the straps of the chair, sobbing.

Distantly, through the pounding roar of his pain, he heard the voice of the little man.

“I prefer to begin with a small demonstration,” the voice said. “Something effective enough to gain your attention, but small enough for you to recover from if you choose to cooperate.”

There was still no malice in the man’s speech. No suggestion of threat, and no flavor of sadism. This was not the voice of a man who caused pain for his own pleasure. It was the voice of unconditional confidence, and flawless willpower. And Sonam knew that the little man would not give up the task until his objective had been met. He would not beat his victim into unconsciousness, and he would not make stupid mistakes. He would work methodically and meticulously, and he absolutely would not stop until he had the information he had come for. It would happen now, while there was still enough of Sonam’s body left intact to call itself human, or it would happen hours from now, when there was very little remaining but pain and shredded flesh.

“We will begin again,” the little man said. “I will ask you questions, and you will answer them. Do you understand?”

Sonam nodded.

“Good,” the little man said. “The site of my next demonstration will be your left testicle. If you lie to me, or if you refuse to answer my questions again, I crush your testicle just as thoroughly as I have crushed your finger. Do you understand?”

Sonam nodded again. “I…” His voice was a guttural croak. “I will… tell you… what you want to know…”

“Yes,” the little man said quietly. “I know you will.”

CHAPTER 4

USS TOWERS (DDG-103)

UNITED STATES NAVAL STATION; YOKOSUKA, JAPAN

FRIDAY; 21 NOVEMBER

1321 hours (1:21 PM)

TIME ZONE +9 ‘INDIA’

A heavy layer of clouds hung over Yokosuka harbor. The temperature hovered in the mid-fifties, but the wind blowing in from Tokyo Bay seemed much colder. True winter was still several weeks away, and the bite in the air was just a foreshadowing of things to come.

Silhouetted against the murky Japanese sky, the profile of the American destroyer was unusually angular. The ship’s phototropic camouflage had darkened to the color of slate, closely mimicking the gray monochrome of the waves that lapped against the vessel’s long steel hull.

Commander Katherine Silva stood on the fantail, and tried to imagine what the ship would look like two weeks from now, when the red carpets had been laid and the patriotic decorations had been hung. The lifelines would be draped with red, white and blue bunting. The American flag that now rustled fitfully at the end of the flag staff would be replaced by the oversized ‘holiday colors’ that were reserved for Sundays and special occasions.

The decorations and the holiday flag would be visual symbols of a ritual steeped in centuries of nautical tradition. USS Towers would undergo a change of command ceremony — the transfer of authority from one commanding officer to another.

That ceremony, just fourteen days in the future, would be the culmination of everything Silva had worked for. After the customary Navy pomp and flourishes, she would step to the podium and assume command of this vessel. With a brief exchange of protocol and hand salutes, her title would change from Commander to Captain. She would become commanding officer of one of the most advanced warships ever crafted by man.

And at that same moment, Captain Bowie would relinquish command of the ship. When their salutes were lowered, one era would come to an end and another would begin. Bowie would say final goodbyes to the men and women who had served under his command.

Some of the crew were new to the Towers, having received orders to the ship recently, like Silva herself. But others had been with Bowie on the last deployment, when the destroyer had gone head-to-head with a rogue nuclear missile sub under the Russian ice pack. A few had been with Bowie on the deployment before that, when the Towers had fought a running battle with a wolf pack of attack submarines, from one end of the Persian Gulf to the other.

They had fought for Captain Bowie, and bled for him. Some of the crew had even died for him. In return, Bowie had brought them victory. More importantly, he had given them the opportunity to save the lives of literally millions of their countrymen. He had made every member of the crew, from the most junior seaman to the most senior officer, feel like warriors. And now he was leaving.

Silva had seen it on the faces of the crew members over the last few days, as it gradually became real to them that their captain was leaving. The ship would have a new captain, of course. Silva would be captain. But their captain would be gone, and Katherine Silva would be trying to fill the shoes of the man who had made them heroes.

A raindrop struck the side of Silva’s face, and ran down her cheek like a tear. It was immediately joined by a hundred other drops, and then a thousand, as the bleak Japanese sky began pelting the harbor with rain.

Silva ran toward the nearest watertight door leading into the skin of the ship. She ducked into the aft passageway and took one last glance at the sky before the door slammed shut behind her. The gray clouds were growing darker and more menacing.

She hoped to God that it wasn’t an omen.

CHAPTER 5

MINISTRY OF NATIONAL DEFENSE COMPOUND

AUGUST 1 BUILDING

BEIJING, CHINA

FRIDAY; 21 NOVEMBER

7:53 PM

TIME ZONE +8 ‘HOTEL’

There was a quiet tap on the door. Vice Premier Lu Shi didn’t look up from the stack of documents on his desk.

He had not been reading the documents. In fact, his eyes hadn’t really been focused on them at all. His mind was back in the hospital room in Lhasa, eyes locked on the pitiful wreck that had once been his son … seeing Lu Jianguo’s mangled body obscenely violated by the tubes and wires of those damnable machines.

The tap on the door was repeated, slightly louder this time. Lu Shi forced his mind back to the present. He blinked several times, trying to reorient himself to his chair, his desk, his office. “Enter.”

The door opened, and his personal assistant, Miao Yin, stepped into the room. She was a beautiful young woman in her mid twenties, her exquisite elfin features framed artfully by the straight-banged pageboy hairstyle that was so popular among female government workers. Her large dark eyes met Lu Shi’s gaze, and she nodded, her head tilting with the slightest suggestion of a bow. “Please forgive the intrusion, Comrade Vice Premier. Minister Shen requests a moment of your time. He does not have an appointment, but he assures me that he urgently needs to speak to you.”

Lu Shi stared blankly at his secretary. Unlike most senior government officials in China, he was not sleeping with any of his female underlings, but that didn’t keep him from appreciating Miao Yin’s loveliness. Ordinarily, the mere sight of her would be enough to lighten his mood.