(No "action" in this one, FYI)
Giles ducked into a doorway and scanned the hall frantically. He needed to catch his breath. And he wanted time to think.
This place was crazy. He had to get out...
Every move he made was easily blocked. He had the idea he was being herded, somewhere, but so far all he'd been able to do was keep running. He had to get on the offensive. He needed time...
It had been a setup. The director -
Well, Giles didn't know that for sure. Nothing was clear.
That was an exaggeration. He forced himself to calm down, and checked the hall again. What did he know for sure?
The Norwegian had disappeared. Attached to their consulate, with a tourism/export cover job. Three weeks ago, without a trace, and no one taking responsibility.
Then one of Giles' men had vanished. And another.
The director called him in, and waved a cassette tape that had been mailed to the Post. Cheap tape, no prints...
A guy's voice, hoarse and raspy. Begging. Then, laughing. It was a sixty-minute tape, blank on the other side. Near the end of the recording, the man's voice fails. His breathing doesn't slow down. Little catches in the way he exhales - still laughing.
Giles couldn't bring himself to listen to it a second time.
The director had watched him react - and the old bastard even asked if he was all right. Though Giles knew he should have analyzed the tape himself, he just... couldn't. That's why they had audio geeks, anyway. But their report wasn't too helpful. Voice prints on file ruled out Giles' agents - and confirmed it was the Norwegian. Twenty-five, a soccer player... being held, somewhere. Forced to laugh.
Tortured. Intense tickling.
Even thinking about it made Giles nauseated. He'd never told anyone - well, except the shrinks. A couple of questions on the psych appraisals, when he was new, had nailed him. He hedged, and finally thought what the hell. Told the truth. The shrinks scribbled on their forms, and told him not to worry, everybody had minor phobic reactions...
So it was in his file. The director had access -
No, that had to be paranoid speculation again.
His mind was running away with him. Understandable, in this place. A maze full of torture chamb-
Giles closed his eyes, and steadied himself. It was not what he wanted to do. What if there was something waiting, right there, when he opened his eyes again? Such as -
He slowed his breathing. Ice, I am the ice man, cold and sharp. You got this.
When he was calm, he opened his eyes. Nothing in the hallway. See? Okay. The director sent him in. Highly unusual. Giles wasn't a recovery gofer. He supervised gofers... But this had to be dealt with. Quick and clean.
Tracking his agents, he started checking out the places they'd mentioned in their case notes.
The suburban house was a ruse. Giles found nothing -
In the dark backyard, a cold metal ring landed under his right ear. Pressing hard. There was a click. Garden-variety Nine. The size was too large - but not for a silencer, probably Herkqar, the old model...
He was marched to the next house over. Around back, to a door - the basement. The door creaked as it opened. He couldn't see who opened it.
The odors hit him. Cum. Sweat. Shit. At the threshold, he stumbled - purposely. Cut left, heard the gun go off. Bullet hitting somewhere to his left - he'd ducked enough to get out of its path.
But he already had his right hand around the hot muzzle, and was twisting it. Another thud, and a bullet hit the ceiling.
There was nobody... holding the gun.
Yet he couldn't take it away. Fighting with - who? Anybody?
He managed to eject the clip and kick it hard, then run like hell.
Too easy. That made him even more cautious. Either the perp was a stone novice... or he'd been allowed to get away. Both possibilities bothered him, for different reasons.
He called in the troops - and they came in force. But there was nobody home. At least two men had been tortured there.
Feathers. Oils. Frightening restraint systems and appliances.
And a page from a notebook, with an address on it.
It was, of course, the handwriting of one of his men. DNA tests confirmed they'd been the victims. Giles had expected that.
They'd been moved.
After keeping a lid on the local cops, Giles prepared an update for the director. Wary, and suspicious...
But the director didn't act as if anything was up. That reinforced Giles' paranoia.
He started researching the next address - left intentionally, he figured. So he'd deliver himself there.
Adams was competent backup... but he was snagged anyway. within the first ten minutes.
They hadn't even finished casing the old sewage-treatment plant.
When the troops arrived, they found semen from at least four different men - including Adams. That was just infuriating.
No address was left waiting for them this time. Giles started tracking the... contents of the torture chambers. He pulled all of his men back in, and had them start canvassing.
In an empty pack of cigarettes, there was a folded-up matchbook.
Again, it was too obvious.
When he brought the director up to date, Giles was more suspicious than ever. He'd never liked the fat slob. He submitted a confidential request to the undersecretary, and staked out the bar.
Jimenez called over the radio - boss, get over here, take a look who just drove in...
By the time Giles worked his way around to the parking lot, Jimenez was gone. His shoes had been left in the middle of the driveway.
A car was racing off. It was a good ways off. Silver. Thunderbird.
Giles and his men couldn't catch it.
But he followed a hunch, and watched the director's house. Around three in the morning, a car pulled in the garage.
A Thunderbird, all right. Silver.
Giles requested a meeting with the undersecretary to expedite his request. By accident, he found out that the director had been out of the office the day before. A meeting in Boston. He was still there. But it was easy to catch a shuttle down, and creep back up before morning...
It was shaky, but Giles felt like he had the director by the nuts. He was going to come out on top. No torture for him, either.
Then an envelope was left in the lobby of their building. It contained a handful of pubic hair... which was from Jimenez.
No DNA in the envelope glue. No prints.
This was not sitting well with Giles. Immediately he went from being triumphant to feeling... hunted.
He and Ignowicz hung out at the bar, pounding shots, keeping their eyes open. Giles checked out the restroom - no drop ceiling, no loose wall panels -
But there. In the last stall. Scratched high on the door...
COPE M/T AUS
He went out to get Ignowicz and call for the scene investigators. But all he found - in the parking lot, again - were the man's boots... and underwear.
Something must have lured him outside. And he knew better, so it must have seemed to be worth the risk.
Back in the office, Giles found only one match for the graffiti. "Cope M/T" was a proprietary operating system for automated manufacturing devices. Robotics. They didn't have a presence in Australia, but Giles hadn't expected there to be one. AUS was the airport code for Austin.
While he was working on an updated status report, the undersecretary's aide called him. He trucked upstairs only to learn his request to pull the director's records was on hold, pending more conclusive cause for suspicion.
When he got back to his office, he stared at the report update he'd been about to print out. Slowly, he highlighted the text about his discovery in the men's john. After a few seconds, he hit the Delete key.
And he dummied up when he talked to the director over the phone.
It was only the second or third time he'd ever withheld information from a report. But he still thought he had good reason to distrust his boss...
So he booked a ticket to Austin.
On the plane, he felt pretty good about himself. He was getting closer. They couldn't outfox a fox.
The Cope headquarters was huge. Casual surveillance would take weeks. But the number of buildings also meant they couldn't all be monitored tightly.
Giles shrugged and headed for the legal department. The receptionist called a lawyer, who called in human resources, the director of security, the shipping manager...
Nothing. He returned with a few pounds of printouts.
The director seemed to be hiding something. Giles was sure of it.
None of the Cope data panned out - until he started expanding his search. Several machines had been sent to Roanoke. M/T 2000's, whatever they were.
He had Abramson and Chang take a separate car down. The machines had been reshipped, which he could have predicted. He watched the destination.
Against his training, Chang had snuck off to take a leak.
Abramson called Giles when five minutes had passed. Understandably panicked...
By the time Giles sped over to their side of the stakeout, their car was gone.
He found their shoes the next night, in a dumpster two blocks away.
The address they'd been staking out, where the Cope machines had first been shipped? It was abandoned.
Nine cells. Fresh urine.
The amount of garbage - food wrappers, empty water bottles - was staggering. Even assuming a high level of exertion, the conservative guess was that the trash represented about eighty days of captivity. Divided among how many men?
Giles wasn't sure. He went back to get yelled at, very dejected. His team was gutted. They were all locked down somewhere, getting tortured.
To his amazement, he had become a suspect. The director ordered him to see the house shrinks. He told 'em whatever he had to... just so long as they didn't issue an arrest warrant. Locked in a cell, right now - well. He'd had a couple nightmares. He had to outrun whatever had grabbed his guys.
And the director was up to his neck in it, somehow. Giles had serious doubts about the undersecretary...
Suspended, off the case, he slipped the team shadowing him and rented a car. He watched the director's house. And just after nine, up went the garage door.
Trailing the director's car, Giles felt good again. He was going to nail that fucker, and keep on turning the screws.
They went into Maryland. Off the Beltway, past the strip malls. An old supermarket.
He watched the Thunderbird pull behind it...
Since he was officially on administrative leave, his options were severely limited. Calling for backup was out of the question.
Parking well away, he crept up to the building. Up onto the roof...
The rumble of the ventilation system covered any sounds from within. The hatches were padlocked.
He couldn't budge any of the vents. That was so unusual, it confirmed his expectations. He didn't see any way to sneak in, without some tools. Giles crept down, and eased back over the edge of the roof -
Something tugged at him.
Tight around his wrist. Right hand. Lassoed, maybe.
He tugged - and the rope gave him enough slack to overcompensate. He fell -
Grabbing the rope with his free hand, out of instinct. He grunted in pain, twisting...
Dangling. A good thirty feet above the ground.
The rope, of course, started to move. Reeling him in.
Giles didn't want to take that kind of a fall, but the alternative looked worse. He swung to the side, and toward the wall. Not much he could do -
Except drag the rope across the metal edge. He kicked back and forth... Closer to the drainpipe than he'd thought. Studying it, he swung himself well over the pipe - and touched the brackets holding it to the wall.
Gotcha, he thought. Nice try. I'm the ice man...
He dragged the rope through another oscillation, and grabbed it in his right hand. With his left, he reached for the pipe bracket.
Giles pulled on the rope - hard - and it unraveled. He just managed to get three fingers over the bracket.
He slammed into the pipe, and recoiled. His hip complained... but he held on.
Giles all but slid down to the ground, and ran off. Bruised, no doubt. And one of his fingers was cut, but it wasn't bad.
He took a big roundabout path to the rental car.
When he slid inside, something poked him in the butt. Checking his back pocket, so very carefully...
Giles pulled out a feather. Black, with brown in it. Maybe eight inches long.
How did they manage that? Sticking it well into his pocket...?
Back to Austin.
He didn't tell anyone where he was going.
Sneaking into Cope was too easy. He saw that, after the fact. This building - this big, deserted building! - had a doorway near the loading docks that didn't close tight. Or so he thought.
He was inside, and the chase was on. And the exits were covered.
Giles had even yelled for help. Waved like a madman in front of a security camera. Help. Arrest me. Before I... disappear.
But there were other plans for him. He suspected they were big plans.
Down a hallway, fighting panic, he looked at another series of video cameras that weren't going to get him out of this nightmare.
It looked suspiciously like a hallway that would lead to an exit. He wasn't sure why he th-
There it was. Exterior door. A whimper slipped out of his throat.
He threw it open, knowing it was an exit. What he most wanted, right then. The night air welcomed him -
Cloth hit him. His face. It wrapped around his head.
As he clawed at it, Giles wasn't the least bit surprised when the hands clamped on. Depressingly strong hands, pulling him outside...
No - inside. Something slammed - it wasn't the door. Some kind of box. He pounded frantically, but his fists bounced off dense padding.
As the box landed, he heard an engine start up. And he sagged, then, because the obvious hit home. He was being taken somewhere.
A hidden place. Even better, more secure, than Cope?
From the bottom of the box, there was a new noise. Soft hiss. Musty smell. Nitrous, he guessed.
He punched the walls again. Either they had a secret way off the grounds... or they could just prop him up behind the wheel. Cope truck, maybe an unguarded exit. Key-card gate. Nobody would even see.
And he'd made sure nobody knew he was in Austin. Paranoid. Hell, the director didn't have to be involved in this. What a joke. There was no hard proof. All part of the setup, to get him... where they could slam the trap shut.
His knees sagged. Oh, yeah. Laughing gas. Real subtle. Get ready to laugh, ice man.
Giles whimpered again, just from imagining it.
08apr2002