Deep Ice (26 page)
Sarah asked for a white wine and Hayes and Henry ordered coffee.
When the waitress had gone, Sarah looked at Grimes.
“Did you
really
kill someone?” she repeated. “You seem so. . . so calm. How did it feel?”
Grimes’s facial expression didn’t change. He held up his hand as though gripping a pistol. He flexed his index finger.
“It felt like this.”
She stared at the SEAL. She knew he was a warrior, but the coldness with which he made the gesture had her wondering if there was any difference between him and a mob hitman.
Sarah was no stranger to the military. Her father had flown bombers over Italy during World War II, and her older brother piloted an atomic submarine for the Navy. But she had only heard stories about this type of soldier. She’d never known anyone from America’s “special teams”, as her father had so often referred to them.
The general seemed to know what was going through Sarah’s mind. “It’s folly to seek civility in war, Miss French,” he offered. “Your question is understandable but, I have to say, improper.
Commander Grimes acted professionally, for the sake of millions of people. Please don’t forget why we are here. This is war.”
Grimes looked at the general. “Do I get a raise then, sir?”
“I’m sorry,” said Sarah.
Grimes looked at her sympathetical y. “Not a prob, Sarah. You
should
have reacted the way you did. A normal thing. You remind me of what it is to be human.”
Hayes was visibly startled. He’d wondered many times if he’d ever see evidence of the man’s soul. That Grimes could do what he did appalled him too, but Hayes knew that anti-terrorism meant developing a dark heart. Now he could see that men like Grimes were motivated more by duty than by honour. Obviously Grimes had no illusions about his work, or about the fact that it sparked his sense of mortality. Hayes understood then, more deeply than before, that men like Kai Grimes might have a great deal to teach the rest of us about right and wrong.
His train of thought shifted to Rudolfo Suarez. Perhaps the worst kind of terrorist. A wolf hiding among lambs, sworn to a purpose – absolutely, angrily, and alone. Viewing humanity as a resource to be til ed. But why Suarez? What had a multi-millionaire to gain from the ransom of the world’s coastlines? And how did this link to the famous manifesto he’d forced the world to read?
“What about Suarez?” said Henry. “What happens when he finds out what’s happened to his men?”
“Did you tip him off at that cantina you spoke about?” asked Hayes.
Sarah shook her head. “He doesn’t suspect a thing.
I’m sure of it.”
“Me too,” said Henry. “The fact that Sarah looks something like a famous TV actress seemed to get him off our scent. But I thought the dog would blow it. I’m convinced Shep recognized him too.”
Hayes peeked briefly under the table. “Anything to add, Shep?”
Henry smiled wanly. “Now that you know who it is I saw on the ice, planting the bombs, do you need me –
us
– any more?”
“You forget, Henry,” said Grimes, “you two still are the only people in the world who can finger him.”
The general nodded. “I’m sorry, but he’s right. At least for the moment, until we find Suarez, we need you at hand. And we have to get him fast.”
“You only need one of us,” said Henry, looking at Sarah. “I don’t want her in any danger. Let her go back to Washington.”
“Wait a goddam minute, Henry,” said Sarah angrily.
“I’ll speak for myself, thank you very much!”
“Oops,” snickered Grimes, covering his eyes. “A woman scorned.”
“Sarah, what’s the point of you getting killed?” said Henry.
“Another set of eyes to watch your back,” she replied hotly. “Two witnesses – spotters – whatever you want to call us. Or how about
duty
? Or is that just a man thing?”
“Yow,” said Grimes. “Hit the dirt, guys. She’s firing Scuds.”
Hayes forced a chuckle. “All right, folks. No point in arguing about this. The President wants all of his people on the job. You’re drafted. At least
you
are, Gibbs – she already works for us. And that damned mutt of yours is an agent too, until I say otherwise.”
“Or
he
does,” muttered Gibbs cynically.
“But don’t feel too bad about this,” continued Hayes.
“The good news is we know who he is. We know he’s nearby. And the Chilean Army is out there looking for him as well. You two may only have to view a line-up.”
#
Remo unlocked the door to the van and held it open for his boss. He could tell that Rudy’s mood had changed since they’d left the hotel. Usually Rudy walked with a free style, as if he owned the world. Now he seemed nervous. Remo chalked it up to the approaching deadline. Rudy was about to contact the UN Security Council via the internet and make specific demands about the distribution of the ransom. Remo concluded that Rudy was focused on the plan. That made sense, though Remo had never seen Rudy behave quite this way before, and he felt compelled to break his rule of obedient silence. This was, after all, seeing to his boss’s well -being. Armed with that idea, he mustered the nerve to ask a question.
“Something bothering you, boss?”
Suarez didn’t answer at first. He settled into the front passenger seat and buckled the safety belt.
“Swing around the square before we go to the Hacienda. I want to look around,” he said.
“Yes, boss,” said Remo, putting the van in “drive”.
He pulled out of the tiny parking lot and into the street, wondering if Rudy had even heard his question. He dared not repeat it.
As they passed the Carrera Hotel, they were surprised to see emergency vehicles parked in front.
“Go around the block again, Remo. I don’t recall any problem at the hotel. Do you?”
“Maybe a fire, Rudy,” answered Remo. “It’s an old hotel.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Remo! Do you see fire trucks? And what the hell are those military vehicles for?”
Remo stared at a group of Chilean soldiers standing beside two armoured personnel carriers. Next to them was an ambulance, its lights flashing and back doors open, ready to receive casualties.
Rudy pulled a cel phone from his jacket pocket and dialled the hotel. As soon as he got through he asked for room 555.
“No, no messages,” he said after a moment, and hung up.
“Trevor won’t be there,” said Remo. “He told me he was going to leave when they’d finished the beers.”
“I know that,” said Suarez grimly. “I was there, remember?”
“Do you think there’s trouble?”
“The switchboard said the people in that room have checked out.” Suarez seemed to be speaking as much to himself as to Remo. “I was going to have them ring the room, but. . . Well, when we get to Mountain View we should be hearing from them.”
“Around the block again, boss?” asked Remo.
“No. Just head for the Hacienda.”
The switchboard at the hotel had sounded normal, but it struck Suarez as odd that someone would ask if there was a message for guests who’d already checked out. Try as he would, though, he couldn’t imagine a scenario that could jeopardize him, his men, or his plans.
Remo turned the van onto the main highway that led out of Santiago, and in minutes they were moving towards the Andes.
#
Back at the hotel, the switchboard operator casually mentioned to her supervisor that there had been a call for room 555.
To her surprise, the supervisor burst forth with questions.
“You got a call for 555? Are you sure? How long ago? Did they say who was calling?” He signaled to a military officer standing near the desk.
A flurry of activity followed, but to no purpose. If someone had thought to explain the situation to the operator beforehand she might have been able to get some information from the caller. When they finally broke it to her that all this fuss was about the terrorists who were ransoming the world, she collapsed in tears. Her family lived in the lowlands north of Valparaiso. When the tidal waves came, her village would be gone. She didn’t look forward to telling her father she’d missed the chance to help capture the terrorists.
At the end of the information chain, Grimes and Hayes heard about the call half an hour later from a Chilean attaché who’d found them in the hotel bar.
The general was livid. “It took you a half-hour to get this to us?” he bellowed. “What the hell will you people do if you ever have to fight a war?”
The attaché hovered at the table, embarrassed and confused.
“I don’t recall you telling anyone where we’d be, General,” said Grimes softly.
Hayes looked up at the attaché and apologized.
The man smiled. “Thank you, sir. Everyone is upset.”
Hayes nodded and raised his coffee cup. “Well, here’s to one slippery-assed piece of shit named Rudolfo Suarez. May he rot in Hel.”
“
Si
, General,” said the attaché.
“Hear, hear,” said everyone at the table.
Henry Scott Gibbs of the Antarctic sat helplessly, fixed in place. Like Sarah, he was happy to be in the company of these people, but overwhelmed by the strangeness of the situation. An alert had turned into a fruitless exercise, and for the moment they seemed no closer to saving the world.
Shep lifted his head next to Henry’s lap. His wet nose and panting mouth appeared from under the tablecloth, which draped his eyes like a mask. Sarah looked down at him and giggled.
Grimes noticed where she was looking and grinned.
“Eyes front, you two. Both hands on the table. We’re on alert.”
“I’m laughing at his puppy, you filthy thing,” she snarled.
“Is that what you call it?”
Hayes coughed and blew coffee all over the table.
#
By midafternoon Suarez and Remo were well on their way towards the mountains. Remo had opened the window of the van and hung his arm in the breeze. He was still wondering what was bothering the boss, who had said nothing for the last fifteen minutes but just sat there staring blankly into space, lost in thought.
When Suarez was on the move, Remo was on the clock. A bodyguard, first and foremost, guards a man’s body. The mind, it is presumed, takes care of itself. So, when the question of what was eating at his boss began to eat at him, Remo had to find a diversion. He reached into his shirt for cigarettes.
“Mind the breeze?” he asked the boss as he snapped his Zippo into flame.
“Hadn’t noticed.”
“Radio?” said Remo, reaching for the dash.
“Something upbeat,” replied Suarez distractedly. But he hardly heard his own words. Deep in the recesses of his mind, he was deeply troubled. Something had happened to Trevor, he was growing slowly convinced, despite his earlier confidence that all was well. But he couldn’t imagine what.
Remo puffed on his cigarette as they moved on through poor but orderly neighbourhoods full of apartment buildings and adobe houses with tiled roofs. Soon parched natural scenery began to replace urban sprawl. After another half-hour they were seeing open farmland and savannah as the van moved to higher ground.
Suarez remained quiet. He had learned long ago to trust no one but himself. He listened to the wisdom of the wild condor, his shadow spirit – the ancient entity that secretly whispered knowledge to him, an entity that was aloof, aloft and serene. Suarez believed he could launch his inner self and see with the eyes of the bird. Now, from a great height, the condor spirit called an alarm to him, and pointed its wing towards Santiago.
“Something is not right, Remo,” he said, breaking his silence.
“My driving getting to you again?” answered Remo with a nervous smile.
Suarez looked at him and smiled. “No, not that. I think something is wrong in Santiago. The condor cries.”
Remo didn’t bat an eyelid. He’d heard the odd turn of phrase many times. It was his boss’s lofty way of saying he smelled a rat. And he had a nose for rats. Remo and Trevor had had to take care of many rats in the service of the Sun God.
“Trevor?” said Remo.
“Yes. Something bad has happened to them all.”
“But everything is going like clockwork. You’re thinking about the military trucks at the hotel? I. . .”
“Remo,” said Suarez through clenched teeth.
The bodyguard’s lower lip disappeared under his broad red moustache as he shut his mouth. “Sorry, boss.”
Suarez once more ignored his companion. His eyes returned to the snowy Andean peaks looming before them. He struggled to detach himself from fear and focus on his power. His thumb began to rotate a large ring he had been given by his grandfather on turning sixteen. The same year his grandfather had died. Remo had seen the boss perform that nervous little action hundreds of times. It meant the boss had “left the building”.
At last Suarez spoke again.
“Trevor is alive, but someone else is dead.”
He sighed deeply, folded his arms in front of his belly, and fell silent behind closed eyes.
Remo shivered, and closed the window. He thought of the last moments with Trevor in room 555. Trevor had wanted to see a girl before returning to the Hacienda. He had promised Suarez he’d be around for the big show.
Rudy had said simply, “You
will
be, Trevor. See you tomorrow.”
If Trevor failed to arrive at the Hacienda, the boss’s “visions” would once more be batting a thousand.
Remo looked at his watch. He reckoned that within three hours they’d be at the sky dome Suarez had built for one of his companies, TransAm Optical. To the outside world the Hacienda, as the boss called it, was merely the HQ of an optical engineering firm – and it was that as well – but to Suarez it was also a fortress in the sky. There they had assembled the bombs that had gone into the ice. There the Deep Ice plan had been designed, built and launched.
Only Trevor and Remo knew it all – the details that could destroy the Prince of the Sun God.
Nine
Trevor Hodges imagined he was in a cell or some other small dark room. But he couldn’t see for the bandages that covered his eyes. And he couldn’t move for the casts that enclosed his arm and leg. He hurt everywhere when he tried to move at all.
He thought he heard the call of a bird, but perhaps it was just the ringing in his ears. He thought of Rudy, and wondered if his boss would be proud that Trevor hadn’t talked to the butcher who had tortured him in the hotel. And, when he
had
finally broken from the pain, he’d claimed Rudy had gone to La Paz or Arica to be with family.
Had it been worth it?
he wondered as he searched the dark, pain-soaked recesses of his memory. Yes. It had been best to lie. If the world didn’t kill him, then Rudy surely would if Trevor gave the game away. And Rudy wouldn’t kill him humanely, like the courts of the free world. Rudy would make sure of that.
With that thought for comfort, Trevor drifted back into drugged unconsciousness. His mind reached into the past, to the tunnels in Colombia. In his dream he dug and burrowed like a mole buried in a collapsed tunnel, hacking at the mud that surrounded him with a jungle knife.
Some time later he awoke to pain again. Someone had stuck him with a needle.
Was he in a hospital?
“You look confused, Trevor,” said the hated voice.
#
Grimes stood beside the hospital bed and nodded to the nurse. She left the room without saying a word.
“Together again, Trevor.”
“Who the fuck are you, anyway?”
“That’s not really important,” said Grimes. “I’ll tell you this, though. I’m your judge and jury – the guy who can give you a future or take it away. It’s real y up to you.”
“Where am I?” asked Hodges, after taking a moment to mull over the SEAL’s words.
“Under this rock I’m sitting on.”
Hodges bit his lip. He couldn’t help cringing at the sound of Grimes’s voice. The pain he’d endured and the ease at which the man had applied it were engraved in his mind. He thought of Rudy and the operation in the ice.
“What do you want?” he asked final y.
“We want you to tell us where Rudolfo Suarez is holed up, Trevor. Simple as that. You lied to me last time. Tell me the truth and you live.”
“I’m just a business associate. What the hell makes you think I know where he is?”
“I know everything, Trevor. The bombs. The ice. All of it.”
“Sure you do, you prick.”
“Trevor,” said Grimes, “I haven’t got time to argue.
The guy Rudolfo Suarez shot on the Ross Ice Shelf survived. He’s identified all of you. So there’s no use lying to me. And we know you’re one of Rudolfo’s chief bodyguards. If this were some simple felony you could keep silent and get away with it. But it’s not as simple as that. Everyone in the world wants you dead for the shit you pul ed, Trevor, and so do I. You and your boss have no right to hold millions of people ransom.”
“Kiss my arse!”
Grimes knew that, despite the defiance, he was breaking through the Brit’s wall s. He walked to the window and stared down at the hospital parking lot, allowing the man to digest his words.
After he judged enough time had passed, he added: “One more chance, Trevor. If you volunteer to help you might actually see daylight again. If I have to pul out the info, you die. Either way, I get what I want.”
Hodges remained silent.
Grimes rang for the nurse. Moments later she entered the room with a tray. On it was a hypodermic.
“He’s ready now,” said the SEAL.
The nurse efficiently administered the hypo into the IV line that led to Trevor’s arm. Then she departed again.
“What did you just give me?” said Hodges. “What. . .?”
Grimes waited patiently for the drug to take effect. A moment later General Hayes entered the room. Grimes put a finger to his lips.
“Who’s that?” asked Hodges, turning his head as if to try to see through his bandages.
“Feeling a little. . . sleepy, Trevor?” said Grimes.
Hayes sat down in a wooden chair at the foot of the hospital bed. He’d been told by the nurse that the prisoner had been given the serum. It had been delivered to the hospital from the pharmacy aboard the
Enterprise
, and Hayes had managed to reassure the nurse that, while the drug was a secret concoction, it wouldn’t harm the patient.
Soon Hodges’s head was nodding. Grimes took that as a cue to begin his questioning. He reached out and gave the man’s head a push. Hodges gurgled a bit as his head swivelled uselessly on a limp neck.
Grimes lit a cigarette as he considered his interrogation.
He started by asking a few redundant questions – the Brit’s full name, his birthplace, his mother’s name. . .
“Trevor Albert Hodges, the second. Born in Brooklyn, New York, 1969. Moved to Brighton, UK, in ’82. My mom’s name was Mary. . .”
“Good, Trevor,” said Grimes pleasantly. “Have you ever killed anyone?”
“Uh huh,” said Hodges. “Sure.”
“Who did you kill, Trevor?” asked the SEAL, using a calm and even tone of voice.
“When?”
“Whenever,” said the SEAL.
Hodges was silent for a moment. Just when Grimes was beginning to suspect the drug wasn’t working, he began talking again.
“Not counting war shit like Nam?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I killed eight men and two women in Bolivia with a bomb. I killed a man in Texas with a baseball bat and a guy in Zurich.”
“How did you kill the guy in Zurich?”
“With a push.” said Hodges. “Off a roof.”
“Remember his name?”
“No. Don’t think I ever knew it.”
“Anyone else?”
“A chopper full of oil men. Them was with a bomb as well.”
“How many?”
“Ten or twelve. . .”
“A chopper off Tierra Del Fuego? Patagonia?” Grimes gave the general a meaningful look.
“Yep. Out at sea.”
“Interesting. Anyone else? Have you killed anyone else, Trevor?”
“Uh, yeah. A Moche mountain guide. Paco.”
“How did you kill Paco?”
“Pushed him from a van into a canyon.” Hodges smiled. “He didn’t half scream.”
“Did Rudolfo tell you to?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you shoot that guy on the ice shelf?”
“That asshole on the ice – wanted a radio? No. It was Rudy shot him.” Hodges was still smiling in fond reminiscence.
“Where is Rudy now?”
“At the Hacienda.” The smile slowly faded from his face.
“Where is this Hacienda, Trevor?”
“In the mountains. East of Santiago. I don’t remember the town.”
Hayes was stunned as he listened to Grimes extract the truth from Hodges. He could see the SEAL was fond of mental as well as physical combat. Grimes’s body leaned forward and his head was cocked to one side, like a predator sizing up its still living meal. In a way this all repulsed Hayes. Not that he would do anything to prevent it, and nor did he disagree with the strategic necessity of the interrogation. His revulsion was centred on the fact that Grimes was not just good at what he did: he enjoyed it.
“Watching you in action, Grimes, I sometimes feel like I’m watching a master criminal,” said Hayes. “This is too easy.”
Grimes stiffened. “Is that not a good thing?”
“You’re good at what you do, Kai. That’s all I’m saying.”
The captive’s head was up and he was listening, obviously not too far gone to know there was a new and unknown voice in the room. “Who’re you?” he asked, directing his bandaged face towards the general.
“Hi, Trevor,” said Hayes. “You can call me Tony, like the rest of my friends.”
“What do you do?”
“Kill people like you, Trevor. I go around hunting sneaky little pukes like you and your boss. That’s my job, Trevor. That’s what I do.”
Hodges sniggered. “You sound like a fucking general.”
Unflapped by the man’s serendipitous insight, Hayes smiled. “Then call me General Tony. I’d like that, Trevor.
Now tell me: how do we get to this Hacienda?”
“Follow the yellow brick road,” said Hodges with a huge grin.
Grimes stared at the man’s open mouth and noticed a few of Hodges’s back teeth were missing. He would have been happy to remove the rest of them for less information than the man was volunteering.
“Tell General Tony about the Hacienda, Trevor,” said Grimes. “How many people are in there with Rudy?”
“That would be telling,” said Hodges, still grinning like a fool.
Grimes was beginning to lose patience. He reached out and grabbed a piece of Hodges’s inner thigh between his thumb and forefinger and squeezed hard. The man nearly lifted off the bed, squealing with pain.
“This stuff is no free ride, Trevor. Do you hear me?”
Hodges assumed the expression of a small child who’d just been spanked. He nodded almost contritely. “I hear you.”
“Tell us now, Trevor, how to get to the Hacienda,” said Hayes. “Will you do that? Or does he have to hurt you again?”
“That shit you’re on ain’t novocaine, you know,” added Grimes.
Hodges nodded again. Hayes remarked encouragingly that he’d made a mental note to remember the persuasive thigh pinch.
“You liked that, huh?” said Grimes, not taking his eyes off his captive.
“Impressive,” said Hayes.
“Got a million of ’em,” said the SEAL.
Under the influence of the drug, Hodges had been by now reduced to a completely childlike state. Under the threat of more pain he was surprisingly forthcoming about his boss. But Suarez had been careful to keep many key details of his master plan to himself.
Ultimately Grimes received little practical information about Suarez’s financial or tactical plans.
He dimmed the lights in the room, then moved an easel with a map of the area around Santiago next to Hodges’s bed. After careful y adjusting a bedside lamp so that it illuminated the easel, he rang for the nurse again. When she returned he directed her to remove Hodges’s facial bandages, but only after he had hand- cuffed one of the Brit’s legs to the bedframe.
The bandages off, it was evident Hodges had sustained little significant facial damage, that the bandages had been serving primarily as a blindfold. He squinted at the map, then glanced at Grimes and Hayes before his eyes returned to the map, as if compelled by the sight.
“Show us where Rudy is staying, Trevor,” said Grimes. “Can you point to the place on the map?”
Trevor nodded and put his finger on the road that led from Santiago to the mountains. “He would have gone this way.”
Grimes sat in the shadows a good distance from the bed as he continued to ask questions. Soon they had determined that Suarez was travelling in a white Ford van, accompanied only by Remo Poteshkin, towards the Hacienda, a retreat Suarez had built five years ago in the foothills of the Andes, near the small town of San Felipe. Hodges was expected at the Hacienda, he volunteered, the day after Rudy and Remo arrived. He said that, if he was late, there would be trouble.
“You have a demanding boss, right, Trevor?” asked Grimes.
Hodges peered into the darkness, trying to see the face of the man who spoke to him. “Not so bad.”
“A real prince,” said Hayes.
Hodges missed the sarcasm. “Yes, he says he
is
a prince – the heir to the Sun God’s throne. A real Incan prince.”
Grimes said comically, “Never bagged me one of
them
. I guess I’ll need silver bullets in my pea shooter.”
Hayes didn’t share the SEAL’s laughter. “What about the other one, Kai? The one the MPs shot at the hotel.
You know, the other one who survived. Did you interrogate him too?”
“Dead,” said Grimes. “A half-hour ago. Did you expect him to live with three slugs in his guts?”
“Then all we have is this man to identify Suarez.”
“Not at all, sir,” answered Grimes cheerfully. “We still have our hero and his dog.”
Hodges stared into the darkness, towards Grimes and General Tony, listening intently to their discussion.
Somewhere in the chemically induced reality that shaped his awareness he began to connect the pieces of the story. He realized that, if he wanted to live, he would have to get free and warn his boss. Otherwise, assuming his tormentors didn’t kill him first, it would be only a matter of days before Suarez arranged for it to be done.
He began to groan and let his head bob around, hoping his captors would think he was still under the full influence of the drug. Whatever these people could do to him couldn’t hold a candle to the wrath of Suarez.
Noticing Hodges’s behaviour, Grimes looked at his watch and realized what was happening. The drug was wearing off and Hodges was starting to put all this together.
He pulled out a pistol and held it under the light so Hodges could see it. Then he lifted the table light and shone it in the man’s face.
Hodges screamed as the light burned his drug- sensitized eyes.
“Little pitchers, Trevor, get big fucking ideas, listening with big ears.”
He switched off the light and slugged Hodges on the jaw.
“What did you do that for?” asked Hayes, shocked by the sudden violence.
“Because I can,” said the SEAL.
“Kind of hitting a guy when he’s down, isn’t it?”
“Best way to keep ’em there, General,” said Grimes, rubbing his knuckles and smiling.
#
The next morning, September 30, the world had collectively lost a night’s sleep. In the offices of the Secretary General of the United Nations, it had been High Noon for a week. The people there were running on caffeine and other, more potent drugs. With every phone cal, all conversations stopped abruptly.
There was no longer any doubt of the veracity of the threat. The plotter of this terrorism, whoever he was, had obviously thought everything through – he had even anticipated hoax imitators, and had given specific and unpublished instructions for a certain phone number to be set up at the UN. When that phone rang, it would be the real thing.
At 0800 GMT it rang.
Although this was 3am at the UN, Gerald Jessup, the young staffer whose shift it was, scrambled immediately into action. According to plan, he let the phone ring twice and activated a tape recorder. The call was automatical y hooked up to Washington, and then, at President Kerry’s behest, to the leaders of the anti- terrorist effort. Moments after the phone rang, three agents alongside him – representing Interpol, the FBI and the CIA – had put on headsets plugged into a console.
