Raymond Khoury
The End Game
The fifth book in the Sean Reilly and Tess Chaykin series, 2016
Prologue
Kyle Rossetti felt the needle puncture his skin and slide deep into his lower back.
Again.
The pain was beyond compare. An electrical spasm ripped through his legs, but the duct tape holding him pressed down against the metal table caused the jolt to rebound back into the bone, then out again toward the surface of his skin in a cycle of reverberating suffering.
Eventually, mercifully, the agony subsided.
“How attached are you to the notion of being able to run?”
The voice came from the man standing directly behind him. That he was a man was all Rossetti knew about his captor. Having not laid eyes on him at any point and with his head taped tight against the table, he had no sense of what the man looked like. The voice was neutral, calm, but filled with purpose. The man’s accent gave away nothing except that he was American, or had at least lived in America for most of his life.
“I can tell you permanent neurological injury is rare,” the man added. “At least, when the needle is inserted by a doctor. Which, sadly, I’m not. The numbness, the tingling and the pain-they could just be side effects of what I’m doing. Then again, they could be signs of irreversible, permanent damage. I couldn’t tell you, either way.”
Rossetti already understood the perverse logic behind this particularly twisted method of torture. The instinct of a victim is always to struggle, to do absolutely anything to avoid the source of pain. With a three-inch needle stuck in your spine, you’ll do pretty much anything you can to stay completely still, which means you won’t struggle and you won’t even consider trying to free yourself, even if that were possible. Assuming you could stay still and not react to the extreme pain searing through you.
The sweat that had pooled under Rossetti’s chest felt cold and clammy, as did the saliva that had seeped from his mouth. It was as if fear itself had oozed out through his pores.
“I’ll ask you again, and if you don’t give me a better answer, I’ll close my eyes and start to move the needle around in there. Then we’ll both be at the mercy of whatever power controls the random chaos of the universe.”
Rossetti took a deep breath.
He was tough, by any standard. He’d covered numerous wars, including five months embedded with the Eighty-second Airborne in Afghanistan. He’d narrowly avoided death way more times than he could remember-or was even aware of, for that matter. He’d been bullied by lawyers, corporate stooges and government agencies. He’d stood before a congressional hearing and steadfastly refused to divulge his sources, even when threatened with treason. On that particular occasion, he’d ended up spending over four months in prison until his sentence was revoked on appeal. Writing about the experience-how he’d barely managed to avoid the drugs, violence and degradation that seemed to be commonplace in the country’s correctional facilities, though exactly what they were supposed to be correcting, and how, seemed to have long been forgotten-had earned him a George Polk award, to add to his Pulitzer. He never thought of himself as particularly brave, though he had often been described as such by his colleagues and by those members of the public that still believed in freedom of the press and agreed with the notion of their government being held to account.
Right now, he needed all the bravery he could muster, although he already knew that it probably wouldn’t be enough.
When he’d been grabbed from outside his apartment at the edge of Harlem in the middle of the night and bundled into a van, it had been instantly clear to him that it had to be connected to the mysterious recent call he’d received. With a sinking heart and a lurching gut, he had realized that his source’s instructions not to talk to anyone about what he’d been told, nor attempt any form of research-whether verbal or digital-had been not only well intentioned, but also wise and very specifically designed to keep Rossetti alive. Not out of any sense of decency, but simply so he could share with the public whatever it was that his source wanted to get off his chest. And the same investigative impulse that had singled him out as the journalist most worthy of this scoop was the one that had landed him here. And, he realized, would most likely lead to his demise. People didn’t torture you that intensely if they weren’t already intending to finish you off afterwards.
The voice said, “I’ll ask you one last time. Who contacted you? What did they give you? Who did you share it with?”
He struggled to form the words. “No one. I swear. I told you everything I know. You think I wouldn’t, given… this?”
“That’s just not good enough, Kyle.”
The man standing behind him pushed on the needle.
A supernova of pain erupted inside Rossetti’s spine.
The journalist howled, his eyesight clouding up from the tears. He was on the edge of fainting. Besides being comprehensively the worst thing Rossetti had experienced in his thirty-eight years, the pain was also the most terrifying as it carried with it the potential for the kind of spinal trauma that could cause paralysis.
Paralysis of exactly what, though, was a lottery.
He felt the air move against his bare skin as the man shifted on his feet. “You might need to find yourself a new apartment. Those stairs, with a wheelchair-it’s not going to work.”
His torturer pushed the needle slightly deeper.
This time, the pain was beyond excruciating, and only started to subside when the needle was edged back, away from the nerve. As it did, Rossetti wasn’t sure he could feel his feet anymore.
He gasped with relief. “Please. Just say a name. Any name you want. I’ll confirm it’s him. Just… stop. Please.”
The man sighed, then pulled out the needle. It clanged as he dropped it against the metal table. He then snapped off his gloves and let them fall to the ground.
He stood motionless, his breathing slow and steady.
Rossetti felt like a trapdoor had just opened beneath him, but he had yet to fall through. He knew it was the feeling you get when something really bad is about to happen, something you have zero ability to stop. He knew he only had a small window left. He knew that what he said now would probably determine whether he lived or died.
“I don’t know who he is. Assuming it’s even a ‘he.’”
“Because of the voice box?”
“Yes. He said he’d tell me everything at the meeting. Then he didn’t show. That’s all I know-I swear.”
“But that’s not everything, is it?”
Rossetti’s mouth felt as parched as the valley in Afghanistan where he’d watched a soldier bleed to death, and despite the warm air in what seemed to be a windowless room, his body now felt icy cold.
“That’s all I know, I swear. Just what he said on the phone about janitors and the blind. But it’s meaningless, totally meaningless. I don’t know what it means.”
There was the sound of a syringe drawing liquid out of a vial. Then two small, dull splashes as a couple of drops hit the metal table. The man clearly didn’t want to risk injecting air into his victim’s bloodstream.
Rossetti’s mind raced with alarm, bouncing against conflicting thoughts, desperately grabbing at anything that carried a hint of comfort. He wondered if the man was going to try some kind of truth serum, but surely the man would have tried that first. He hadn’t seen the man’s face. Didn’t that mean they weren’t going to kill him? But why inject him then? He was already fully immobilized. Unless they were going to move him. But why move him unless they were going to take him home? Yes. That had to be it. They were going to take him home as if nothing had happened.
He’d forget the whole thing. Maybe leave the job altogether. Maybe it was time for a change. Maybe he and his wife could finally have the kids she’d been yearning for since they got married.