Takedown

“And did he find any?”

“Yup, and that’s where I think the fifth location is.”

Though some of the dots still needed to be co

“That’s the problem. We can’t touch it.”

“What do you mean, we can’t touch it?”

“It’s recognized as the foreign soil of a sovereign nation. We’re not allowed in unless they invite us in.”

More bureaucratic bullshit, thought Harvath. All he wanted was an address. He’d let the hacks back in Washington mop up the fallout. “ Gary, if that’s where these terrorists are headed, trust me, whatever sovereign nation we’re talking about, they’re going to be begging us to come inside and help them.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. The Libyans can be incredibly stubborn when they want to.”

Eighty-Seven

LIBYA HOUSE

309 EAST 48TH STREET

Mike Jaffe bent down in front of his prisoner and whispered, “You are one heartless bastard, aren’t you?”

Mohammed bin Mohammed looked over at the bloody, slumped body of his nephew but said nothing.

Jaffe stood up and said, “That’s okay, though, because I’m a heartless bastard too. This is a battle of the wills, Mohammed-a clash of the Titans. But I’ve got to tell you, I don’t know if you’ve got what it takes to go the distance. Lately, you haven’t been looking so good.”

Mohammed tried to stifle it, but a chuckle escaped his lips.

Jaffe smiled at him. “The man’s got a sense of humor. How about that? Tell me, Mohammed. All those little boys you’ve buggered over the years, how do you think their senses of humor have fared? Do you think they’re pretty happy-go-lucky? Think they look back on having your flabby, sweaty body hovering over them, pumping away as a character-building experience?”

The smile vanished from Mohammed’s face.

“We found a lot of interesting souvenirs in that house of yours in Somalia,” said Jaffe, “and that got me to thinking. I’ve been going at this the wrong way, haven’t I? Like we say in Arabic, I want you to hold me close to your heart. But how do I get there?”

Walking over to the table near the door, Jaffe reached into a two-pocket olive-drab pouch and removed a small canister with a long piece of clear, flexible tubing attached to the nozzle. Holding it up so his prisoner could see it, he said, “You’ve seen one of these before, right? It’s pepper spray. It’s been around a long time, but it took a very clever man in New Jersey to realize that we’d been limiting ourselves in how we used it.”

Mohammed shifted nervously in his chair.

Unraveling the tubing, Jaffe continued, “Suppose you’re in your hotel room and somebody-a bad guy, let’s say-comes knocking on your door at three in the morning. We know he’s a bad guy, because what nice guy pounds on a door at that hour, right?

“Anyway, you’ve got your pepper spray in this hand, you unravel the hose with the other, slide it under the door, hit the button, and presto! All of a sudden the hallway is uninhabitable. Pretty neat, huh? But wait, there’s more.

“I know the guy who makes these things. He’s sold tons to our government. One night we’re sitting down having a beer and we’re talking about all the different tricks his stuff can do and suddenly it dawns on me. Pepper spray is biodegradable. If it enters your body, eventually it’ll be flushed out with no trace left behind.

“Now, if I’m close to your heart, I figure you’ll tell me what I want to know. The problem is, though, that we’re ru

Mohammed’s gaze dropped to his groin.

Eighty-Eight

I haven’t tried this yet,” said Jaffe as he stuck the tube into his mouth to moisten the tip, “but I gotta believe it’s going to hurt like hell.”

Removing a pair of EMT shears from his pocket, he threw them to Brad Harper and said, “Prep him. I want him as naked as the day Allah made him.”

Even if the two Libyan intelligence officers Rashid and Hassan were called back in to do the actual procedure, Harper knew prepping Mohammed for this made him a direct accessory to the man’s torture.

Up until this moment, neither he nor Jaffe had actually touched either of the prisoners. In all fairness, they’d danced dangerously close to the line of what was allowed, but they’d always stayed on the proper side of it. Now, though, Jaffe was telling him in no uncertain terms to jump right across it.

“Hello? Marine?” said Jaffe when Harper failed to act. “Anybody home?”

“Shouldn’t our two colleagues be handling this?” he asked.

“Who? Frick and Frack? They’re on their coffee break. Let’s not bug them. Besides, I think I’m going to add this to my repertoire, and I want to know firsthand how it works.”

“You’re talking about shoving that tube up his…” Harper paused, the image incredibly ghastly even for a marine.

Jaffe looked at him and said, “What’s wrong? Cat got your tongue? You can say it, son. I’m going to shove that tube right up his piss pipe. His urethra, Franklin, if you want to get clinical. Once it’s up as far as it’ll go, then I’m go

Looking at Mohammed, Jaffe then asked, “You ever catch gonorrhea from any of those little boys you buggered?” He wasn’t expecting a response, and when none came, he turned to Harper and said, “What are you waiting for?”

The marine’s mind was made up. “With all due respect sir, I’m not able to do what you asked.”

Jaffe’s eyebrows went up and he replied, “What I asked? Son, I didn’t ask you for anything. I gave you a direct order and I expect it to be carried out. Now prep this prisoner.”

“Negative, sir.”

Jaffe was quickly losing his temper. “You want to piss in the tall grass with the big dogs, but you don’t want any to land on you. I’m disappointed, son,” he said as he grabbed the shears back from Harper. “I thought you had more backbone.”

Walking over to Mohammed, Jaffe plunged the shears into his trouser leg, narrowly missing his thigh, and began cutting. As he did, he said, “The problem all along with this interrogation has been respect. I can see it in our friend’s eyes here. He doesn’t respect us. Do you, Mohammed? You’ve got nothing but contempt for us, because when it comes down to the real dirty stuff, the physical stuff, we let our Libyan pals do it for us.

“Well, if I don’t have your respect, I just don’t think I can take it.”

It was obvious from the look on Mohammed’s face that Jaffe had hit the nail right on the head. The al-Qaeda man wasn’t afraid. He felt nothing but contempt for his captors. But that was all about to change. Now that he was naked from the waist down, he could see the American was serious, very serious.

For a man who took so much pleasure from life via the organ between his legs, the torture Mohammed was about to face was hideously personal. In his most disturbing dreams he doubted he could have ever come up with something so repulsive.

When the American came back with the device, he writhed in his chair and struggled against his restraints-anything to stop the tube from entering his penis. His struggles, though, were entirely in vain. The American grabbed his organ in a death grip and inserted the tubing most violently. Once the tip was in, the man began feeding the rest of the tubing after it.

When Jaffe felt it was in deep enough, he looked at Mohammed and said, “You know the information I want.”