Agent 21: Reloaded: Book 2 (18 page)

15

WATERBOARD

ZAK HAD UNDERGONE
torture before, but only as a training exercise. He remembered Michael’s words the day after.
Trust me, you’ll talk. The only question is how long you’ll last
… He gritted his teeth. Black Wolf weren’t going to beat him that easily. Or so he thought, at first.

Zak didn’t know if the first wave was the worst, because it was his introduction to the true horror of the next few hours; or the easiest, because he didn’t know what to expect. The force of the water as it crashed over the side of the
Mercantile
was like being slammed into a brick wall. Zak felt his whole body bruising on impact. For a brief, irrational moment he was grateful to the two men who had tied him up. They’d done their work well. If they hadn’t, the momentum of the wave would have cast him aside like a feather in a tornado; but the ropes held him firmly to the railings. They strained and burned, but
Zak didn’t mind that as long as he wasn’t cast into the ocean.

But the pain of the impact and the burning of the ropes was nothing compared to the rest of it.

The wave didn’t just crash and disappear. It seemed to surround Zak entirely, as though he’d been thrown into a swimming pool and left to drown. Salt water gushed through the pillowcase, up his nose and into his mouth. He started to choke, but when he breathed in, all he inhaled was more water. His lungs started to burn and his body went into panic.

He needed oxygen.

He needed to breathe.

The wave subsided, but even that didn’t bring any relief. The salt water had soaked the pillowcase. Now the hood clung to the front of his face. He tried to breathe in, but the wet material stuck fast to his nose and mouth. It stung the cuts on his cheek too, but that was the least of his worries. His body started to shake from lack of oxygen. Desperately he poked his tongue out against the hood in an attempt to get the wet cloth off his face.

It didn’t do any good.

He felt faint.

Dizzy.

He
had
to breathe. If he fell unconscious now, he knew he’d never wake up again. He mustered all his
energy and violently shook his head, trying to force the hood away from his face. After several goes, he managed it. He gulped for the air his body so desperately needed and felt it surging into his lungs. But already he could sense the ship dipping in the ocean. He knew another wave was going to hit any second.

Zak shook his head, even though nobody was there to see him. And the storm certainly wasn’t going to pay any attention to him. He’d barely taken a second breath when another wave hit.

It was harder than the first. More brutal on impact and longer-lasting. The oxygen starvation was even more agonizing. Zak knew that if Acosta or any of his men were there beside him, he would be begging them to make it stop.

He would be telling them everything.

Anything.

The ship crashed downwards. Zak felt like he was sinking. He panicked that the lashings around his body had come loose. He was surrounded by water. Blind and disorientated, he couldn’t even tell which way was up.
He was in the sea
… But then the cloth separated from his face and he was able to breathe again.

A brief moment of respite until another wave hit.

Zak hadn’t been on deck for more than five minutes. Already nature had thrown everything it had
at him – twice. Already he had felt like he had been on the edge of death – twice.

Let’s see how brave he is by morning
…

How much longer till sunrise? How much longer would this storm last? How many more waves would he have to suffer? How many more times would he have to be on the brink of drowning?

Zak didn’t know the answer to any of these questions. All he knew was that the next few hours would be among the most difficult of his life.

That he would need every ounce of courage he possessed to make it till morning with his body – and his mind – intact.

It was wet, too, at 63 Acacia Drive. The snow had given way to rain – a freezing, driving rain that could chill you to the bone. A man looked out at it from the rear window of a white Transit van.

The van bore no unusual markings. A bit of rust on the driver’s side panel. A sticker on the back that said
NO TOOLS ARE KEPT IN THIS VAN OVERNIGHT
. The tiny rear windows had a reflective mirror film to stop anybody looking in, and a good thing too. If any nosy parker had peeked through those windows and seen the face staring out, they’d probably have died of fright.

The occupant of the Transit had only one eye. He
was as thin as a skeleton and looked about as friendly as one too. It was for this reason that back home they called him Calaca – although only the bravest did so to his face. Calaca hated this rain and this cold. He wished he could be back in Mexico. Back in the heat. His late employer, Cesar Martinez Toledo, would never have sent him on a fool’s mission like this.
Him!
Adan Ramirez. Head of security for the cartel for fifteen years, carrying out a job that should have been given to a subordinate.

But Martinez was dead. And in his place was his son. Cruz Martinez. Just a kid. But a kid with more power and money than the leaders of most countries. A kid who, in the months since he had taken his late father’s place, had developed an unusual gift for cruelty – so much so that that even Calaca had grown afraid of him. And Calaca wasn’t afraid of
anybody
.

More than anything, though, Cruz Martinez was a kid with just one aim in life. To find the boy he blamed for the death of his father. The boy who had called himself Harry Gold but who Cruz and Calaca now knew was called Zak Darke. He had checked the DNA extracted from the finger he had removed two nights ago from Zak Darke’s so-called grave. Proof positive that the kid was still very much alive.

And now he had just one more job to do. To eliminate Darke’s cousin. Cruz had been quite determined
that she should die. He’d said it was because he didn’t want the girl identifying Calaca, but the one-eyed man had his own suspicions. Thanks to Darke, Cruz’s father was dead. Killing the boy’s cousin didn’t fully avenge that death, but it went some of the way …

But eliminating her was proving more difficult than he had imagined it would be. A good job, then, that he had decided to carry out this particular killing himself, rather than entrusting it to less skilled minions.

Calaca was a practised assassin. There were few better. Which was why he felt angry that he had failed simply to kill a little girl. She must have had help. He remembered the man calling himself Mr Bartholomew. Calaca didn’t know who he was, but he was sure to have something to do with it.

The headphones suddenly burst into life. A voice. It was the girl. Calaca smiled. The listening device he had secreted in her bedroom was doing its job well.

‘
Hello? Is that you
?’

Her voice was quiet. As though she was nervous anyone might hear her talking to someone now, in the small hours of the morning. Calaca listened carefully.

The girl giggled and Calaca wondered what the person she was talking to had said.

‘
You can’t come here. My mum and dad wouldn’t have it. Honestly – they’d, I dunno, my dad would chase you down the street with a gun or something
…’

Interference. A crackling sound in Calaca’s headphones. He scowled and adjusted a knob on the receiver that lay on the floor of the van. The interference disappeared. The girl was giggling again.

‘
All right
,’ she said. ‘
I’ll meet you. But not here. Saturday night. Hampstead Heath. You know the lake – I’ll be there at eight o’clock. Don’t be late, though. If I’m not back home by nine-thirty, I’ll be grounded for a week
…’

A slow smile crept over Calaca’s face. Hampstead Heath. Eight o’clock. By the lake. How convenient it was, he thought to himself, that his target should choose the time and place of her own execution. He could wait until Saturday for such an easy location.

The phone call continued, but Calaca had stopped paying attention. He had no need to listen to the girlish gabbling of a kid talking to her boyfriend. He had all the information he needed to terminate Ellie Lewis. And when he’d done that, he’d be on the first flight out of London. Back to Mexico City.

Back to where he belonged.

If Zak had the chance, he would have wept with fear and agony. He would have screamed out loud. He would have begged anyone listening to remove the hood, untie the ropes and take him back inside. He’d
have spilled any secret. Admitted anything. Told Antonio Acosta, Karlovic –
anyone
– about Agent 21 and about his mission.

But he didn’t have the chance.

The hood remained. So did the ropes. The ship continued to lurch and the waves to crash over his head. The wet material stuck to his face each time the water hit and it only seemed to separate from his skin when his lungs were screaming for oxygen. Then he would gasp, trying to get as much air into his body as possible before enduring the dreadful sensation of drowning once more.

Every inch of him felt bruised by the impact of the waves. Never again, he knew, would he think of water as being soft. Each time the waves hit, it was like he had slammed into a sheet of iron. After a while he couldn’t even feel the pain any more. Just an icy numbness.

He didn’t know how long it lasted. Time meant nothing in the darkness. Gradually, though, he became aware that the waves were perhaps slightly fewer and further between. They still left him breathless and gasping for air, but the moments of relief were longer than the moments of agony. Through the sodden material of his hood, he was aware of it growing lighter.

Morning was coming. The storm was abating.

It stopped suddenly, as though someone had flicked a switch to change the weather. The
Mercantile
no longer lurched and yawed. The roaring of the waves and the wind no longer screamed in his ears. Zak felt sunlight on him, then the hood dried out and grew hot. The skin on his arms and legs crackled with salt. It grew sore and started to burn. He found himself almost glad to be tied to the ship. If he hadn’t been, he felt sure he would have collapsed.

The sun became stronger and Zak started to sweat. His mouth was dry and he grew dizzy. All night he had been wishing – praying – for the water to stop. Now all he could think about was quenching his thirst. Getting out of the sun.

His head lolled.

He felt himself on the verge of consciousness as the hours passed …

The voices, when he heard them, made no sense. Were they talking a language Zak didn’t understand, or was he just too out of it to understand
anything
? They approached, and he felt them untying the ropes that bound his body, their conversation still nothing but a blur. As soon as he was unbound, he collapsed onto the deck, his battered muscles unable to keep him upright. He lay there, his head still hooded, and didn’t even have the energy to groan when he felt a boot in his guts.

‘Get up.’

Zak was so dizzy he couldn’t tell where the voice came from; and he was so weak that he knew he couldn’t obey.

‘
Get up!
’

Another sharp kick just below his ribs. He gasped for air but still didn’t move. He couldn’t. And so he felt himself being dragged by his legs across the metal deck, back inside the ship. He tried to keep track of where they were going, but he was too disorientated for that. All he knew was that they dragged him over the threshold of two doorways, each one painful to cross, until finally they came to a halt.

‘Take the hood off.’

Zak recognized Acosta’s voice. Rough hands removed the hood and he saw the
Mercantile
’s skipper standing above him, before closing his eyes again against the brightness he wasn’t used to.

‘Who are you working for?’

Zak couldn’t have answered even if he had wanted to. His throat was like granite. He had no energy. When the skipper kicked him, he didn’t bother with the ribs but booted him in the side of his face.

‘
Who are you
?’

Zak’s face stung. He could feel the wound Acosta had inflicted with his sharp ring opening up, and blood seeping over his cheek. But somehow, that
didn’t seem so bad. He forced his eyes open and looked up. The skipper was still standing above him, and despite the bleariness and the pain, Zak saw something in his face. Not panic, exactly, but concern. Doubt.
El capitán
, Zak realized, had thrown everything he had at his prisoner. He had fully expected Zak to be compliant by now. What had Karlovic said?
Push him too far and you’ll be begging for death anyway
…

Only Zak wasn’t begging for death. And whatever Acosta did now, it couldn’t be worse than what he’d just endured. Could it?

‘
WHO ARE YOU
?’ the skipper roared.

‘Jason Cole,’ he whispered.

He didn’t see the fury in
el capitán
’s face. But he felt it. The skipper kicked him in the face twice as hard as before.

Zak wasn’t even conscious for long enough to feel the pain. Darkness surrounded him as he passed out on the floor of the bridge.

16

MAYDAY

Saturday, 02.20 hrs West Africa time

ZAK’S NEXT MEMORIES
were only of waking, exhausted, and then falling semi-conscious again. And again. Hours and hours for his body to recover from the ordeal. And when he finally woke up, aware of his surroundings, everything was dark. He was lying on his back on a hard floor. Groggily, he reached out his right hand. His fingers brushed up against what felt like the base of a bed. Even then it took him another thirty seconds to realize he had been back in his tiny cell all this time. How long
had
he been there?

It took all his strength just to sit up. He sat motionless in the darkness for a full minute. His skin felt like it had been rubbed with sandpaper. His lungs and muscles ached. The cuts on his face throbbed and his throat was so parched with salt and
dehydration that it hurt. In short, he was a mess.