With two fingers, Tilbury picked up the man’s pistol by its barrel and slipped it into a plastic bag he’d taken from his pocket.
Hayes saw the bag and gave a watery smile.
“Where’d you get the bag, Lieutenant? Are you always ready for evidence-gathering?”
“It’s from my lunch, sir,” said the lieutenant with a sheepish grin.
The general grinned more broadly.
“That’ll do fine,” said Grimes, without cracking a smile. “Good work.”
The SEAL’s cold response froze the general’s smile.
Behind him, one of Tilbury’s men stood by the open door. “Close that, soldier,” snapped Hayes. “We don’t want hotel guests wandering in here.”
Grimes had Hodges sitting up in a chair. He’d watched the man’s responses careful y as he’d methodical y wrapped a large room-service napkin around the smashed leg. He knew shock would set in soon. Already Hodges was beginning to shake as numbness was replaced by pain. Grimes knew that any information from Hodges would have to come soon or it wouldn’t come at all.
“Do you hear me?” he asked politely. “I hurt you bad, didn’t I?”
The man’s eyes met the SEAL’s as Grimes twisted his broken thumb a bit.
“Listening to me?” said Grimes.
Hodges grimaced in pain, nodded and looked down at the wet red pool growing in the middle of the napkin on his leg. He coughed spasmodically.
“I’ll get you to a doctor soon,” continued Grimes, “but first I have to know where Suarez has gone, and you have to tell me that.”
Hodges looked back at Grimes. His eyes began to fill with red rage.
“Before you decline to tell me,” said Grimes in the same courteous tone, “and I know you do want to decline to tell me, I should let you know that I will kill you very painful y if you do. Very painful y.”
Grimes moved Hodges’s thumb a fraction of an inch to the right, and Hodges made a sound he’d never made before in his life.
Grimes stood up. “You’re not saying anything?”
He shot Hodges in the right arm, slightly above the elbow.
“You sure?” shouted Grimes above the man’s gasping screams.
The general, about to protest, decided instead to leave the room. In the hallway he pulled out his cel phone and tried to dial the number of the Enterprise, but his fingers were shaking too much. He heard Hodges scream at least twice more before he got connected to Halsey.
“What’s that noise behind you, General? Is that some guy screaming?”
“Just Grimes doing research, Brad.”
He told Halsey the few details he had.
“Shit!” snarled Halsey’s voice from the phone. “We have to be careful not to tip off Suarez before we nab him. He might be able to detonate the remaining nukes from anywhere. He’s probably spent years setting all this up.”
“At least now we can be pretty certain it’s him,” said Hayes mildly.
Henry knew it was over when the ambulance arrived. As three gurneys were wheeled into the lobby and loaded onto the elevator, he nodded significantly to Sarah, but said nothing. Then they settled to watch the action like any other spectator in the hotel that day.
“This is interesting,” she said.
He didn’t answer. He just sat there holding Shep’s leash. All he could imagine was the worst. Which three bodies would be coming down in those elevators?
By now the lobby was full of people, all of them speculating as to the nature of the emergency. The most they knew was that no one was being allowed on the fifth floor.
Soon a squad of armoured Chilean soldiers entered the hotel, followed by advance members of the media.
“ ‘Interesting’,” said Henry, turning to catch Sarah’s eye. “Just like every other piece of history, I guess.
Somebody’s bad luck is somebody else’s morning news.”
Time passed. Still no stretchers returned to the lobby.
A half-hour went by.
Eventually the crowd began to thin, but there was still a sizeable bunch of curious onlookers when final y Grimes and Hayes appeared in the lobby. Hayes came smartly across and murmured for the two of them to follow Grimes and himself to the bar.
Once away from the buzzing mob in the lobby, Henry stopped in his tracks. “What’s going on?”
Grimes reached for Henry’s arm to pul him along, but quickly withdrew his hand when Shep let out a growl. “Reel in that hound of yours. We’ve got talking to do and we can’t do it here.”
Henry patted Shep’s side. “Easy, there. You’re bitchin’ at the wrong dude. Besides, you don’t like seal meat, remember?”
Following Hayes, they entered the bar and chose a table in a far corner. Shep seemed pleased to lie down. He shimmied his body awkwardly under the table, forcing them to tuck their feet under their chairs.
“Jesus M. Joseph,” said Hayes. “You and this fucking dog, Gibbs, pardon my French, Miss… er, French. I swear to God I…”
“Glad you like him, General. You gonna tell us what’s going on or are we here to talk about our pets?”
“You’re in a swell mood, aren’t you, hero?” said Grimes.
Hayes told them tersely about the three men in room 555. He spared them the more painful details of Grimes’s interrogation of the man they’d discovered from his wall et was called Trevor Hodges.
“Commander Grimes is surprisingly good at encouraging terrorists to divulge information,” he said in conclusion. “I was… very impressed.”
“But you don’t have Suarez,” said Henry.
“Nope,” said Grimes. “But you’ve seen him here, we understand. Right?”
“We’ve seen him,” said Henry, pointing to himself and Sarah. “You know, he doesn’t really look too much like his picture — the one you have.”
“What?” said Hayes, rearing back from the table.
“What are you telling us, Gibbs?”
“Henry’s right,” said Sarah. “I talked to him. His face is tanned. He has a well kept short beard, and he wears sunglasses. That picture must have been from when he was in Germany, years ago. He looked thinner, more — I don’t know — ruddy.”
“ ‘Ruddy’?” said Grimes. “What the hell is that?”
“Used,” said Sarah.
“Weathered,” corrected Henry. “From sun — sun, wind and cold.”
“Are you saying our people, if they see him, won’t be able to identify him from that picture?” asked Hayes.
“I’m — we’re — telling you what he looks like,” said Henry.
Grimes looked around for a waiter. “I need a fucking drink.”
“No, you don’t,” said the general. “We all need to stay as sober as possible, Kai.”
“I’m thirsty, sir,” said Grimes. “Torture and murder dry a body out, you know.”
“You killed someone?” said Sarah, looking appalled.
“Just a little bit.”
They were silent for a moment. Then Hayes told Henry and Sarah that only one of the three men had been killed in the short gunfight. The name Trevor Hodges matched that of one of Suarez’s employees — a goon. Though he didn’t detail how it had been handled, the general mentioned that the interrogation of Hodges had been fruitless. So far.
“Are you sure he doesn’t know where Suarez is going?” asked Henry, looking at Grimes.
“Oh, yes, he definitely doesn’t know where Rudy went,” said the SEAL, still trying for the waitress’s attention.
She finally saw his hand in the air and came over.
“Pepsi?” said Grimes.
“Si, señor. ”