“Okay, buckley, wake up.” She tapped the screen “You can quit watching any cameras he’s driven past already. Watch the cameras I’ve got in the parking lot out here. When he parks, tell me… uh… wait, no don’t tell me. Just make the screen turn blue.” If I tell it to tell me anything, I swear to god it’ll pipe up at exactly the wrong time and I’ll end up trashing another PDA. And I need it to record the interrogation.
“You’re afraid I’ll say the wrong thing at the wrong time and get us both killed, aren’t you?” it accused.
“No, I’d just prefer not to have any unnecessary noises at this stage in the mission.”
“Yes, you are. You don’t have to lie to spare my feelings.”
“Shut up, buckley.”
“Right.”
She waited in silence as the dot approached on the road. The screen flashed blue and she punched the options to set it to record when activated, flipping it closed before standing and stretching briefly, coming to rest in a loose ready stance against the wall behind the door, about a foot from the hinges. The PDA would need to be less than thirty percent of the distance from the subject to the damper to record effectively.
The wait seemed longer than it really was. Adrenaline had already caused her sense of time dilation to kick in. She could feel her heart beating in her chest and already she felt that mission sensation of being just that extra bit more alive. The colors in the room were richer and more intense than they’d been a few minutes before. Mingled with the pet and air freshener odors of the apartment she could smell the tea the mistress had been drinking in the kitchen. She could hear the slight hollow tone to her own breathing as the sound damper tried to compensate for the noise.
It wasn’t long at all before she heard the key in the old-fashioned lock. She forced herself to stay loose and perfectly still, balanced on the edge of the moment, as the handle turned and the door began to swing inward.
He walked in with less situational awareness than a two-year-old, who would have at least been interested in his surroundings. As he shut the door behind him with one hand, he turned expectantly towards the kitchen. Cally doubted he even saw her out of the corner of his eye as she padded up behind him, simultaneously grabbing his hair and kicking the back of his knee sharply, as she pulled backward.
As his knees buckled, bringing his head below her own, her other arm snaked around his throat, the bone pushing into his windpipe, the hand in his hair sliding smoothly to hold the back of his head, giving him nowhere to go for air.
Unfortunately, his drive for survival finally kicked in and he began thrashing frantically, trying to break her grip.
The easiest way to respond would have been to drop down and finish the neck break. Taking a capable person, and Petane marginally qualified for that category, alive was always harder than a simple kill.
She didn’t know whether it was conscious design or instinct that made him try to kick out towards an end table full of fragile-looking knick-knacks, but leaving signs of a scuffle in the apartment would be bad, very bad. As would accidentally strangling the guy. And dammit, I’ve lost count!
She backed around and dragged him to the middle of the floor where his thrashing couldn’t reach anything, and watched the second hand on the wall clock for what she hoped was the amount of time left, lowering him to the floor a few seconds after his struggles stilled.
Lousy instincts — he didn’t even hesitate on the threshold. She sighed with relief as she found a pulse. Having to do CPR on the prick would have been annoying.
She worked quickly to secure his hands and feet with plastic ties before grabbing the chair and pantyhose. There was a strong risk that securing him to the chair would bring him around before she was finished. As it did today, of course. She had barely gotten his wrists secured and the plastic removed — too likely to leave marks — when he came around and started yelling and thrashing again and tipped himself over.
She ignored him and secured each leg to the appropriate chair leg before setting the thing upright again. He was still yelling, of course. What a moron. “Look, you idiot,” she explained. “Hear that hollow sound? It’s a damper. Nobody can hear you outside the room, you’re just scratching up your throat.”
She would have liked to light a cigarette and have a smoke while he wound down, but leaving stale smoke lying around a scene just wouldn’t work at all. So she just tilted her head to the side and watched him, waiting. He ran out of steam sooner rather than later, thank God.
“You’re probably wondering why I called this meeting.” She smirked, and then sighed. “Look, Petane, we are doing a comprehensive review of the information you’ve provided, checking it for the record, including what you say now, measured against how you’ve reported it in the past. The sooner you spill it, the sooner you can get back there and give your girlfriend some stimulants to wake her up and get on with your night.” She shrugged, “Look, mine not to reason why, mine just to get these fucking interrogations out of the way so I can get back to real work.”
“Geez, you guys have totally compromised me, you know that? Or as good as. Why the hell did you take the risk of meeting me here? Why not just ask for a meet at the dead drop and give me time to set it up righ… oh. Counter Intel.” His shoulders slumped. “Are you Fleet Strike, or Army?” His voice had the dead, hopeless tone of a man who really didn’t expect to live until morning.
“Very astute of you.” She grinned ferally. “But you can still be useful, Colonel. We just need to catalog how much damage you’ve done and then tell you what we want you to tell them. You should be a happy man. If we can make you useful enough, you may just get to live.”
“Wait… I… I wanna see some ID,” he said.
“Oh, so you ask for ID. So you knew who you were dealing with when you decided to become a fucking traitor.” She practically spat the words at him.
He blanched.
“So, Colonel, why did you turn.” It wasn’t a question, but a demand. “I want to hear you say it, you worthless son of a bitch.”
“I couldn’t help it! They were gonna kill me!” Any vestiges of calm the man had had collapsed. “I got into this fix protecting you guys! You said you were gonna take care of me and then you were nowhere when they came for me. What the hell was I supposed to do?”
“I suppose it never crossed your mind to die like a soldier,” she said coldly.
“Yeah, you try it sometime.” His voice was bitter and low.
“So, from the beginning.” She sat down on the couch and gestured casually with one arm. “Let’s just start with you ‘getting into this fix’ as you put it. Start there. Don’t leave anything out. We know most of it. So, needless to say, you really, really don’t want to leave anything out. I’m not a very nice person when I’m pissed off.” She flipped open the PDA and tapped the record button. She was well inside the record zone.