The Breach - Ghost Country - Deep Sky

flood of tears brimming in her eyes. He did that every few minutes to break up the pattern, keep her from getting used to any one strain of agony. This round would go on for another hour and a half, and then they’d crank the table flat again and let her rest an hour, as the drug lost its edge. The resting hour had nothing to do with kindness; it was simply the whiskered man’s understanding of how far he could push her and still keep her alive. The drug must be one of a dozen shock-inhibiting agents Peter knew of.
    It was time to break.
    He no longer cared what consequences would befall the world as a result. His world had shrunk until it no longer contained even himself. There was only Paige.
    He could end her pain right now; in twenty words he could tell them where the Whisper’s key was hidden on the plane. An inch-long strip of something like clear cellophane, the key was the easiest thing in the world to hide, and among all the components of a 747, even a team of Boeing engineers could spend months searching for it, if they didn’t know where to look. Peter could give these people its location, and once they’d found it and verified that it was valid, they’d put a bullet in Paige’s temple, and his own.
    Chirping laughter broke from the group encircling the campfire. That the arrogant fuckers had built a fire at all had made it abundantly clear to him, three days earlier, that this place would not be found in time. For the first twelve hours he’d clung to the hope that Ellen had survived. He and the others in the equipment room had forced her to hide in a mainframe cabinet; she’d protested, unwilling to be spared the others’ fate, and had given in only as the ATVs had stopped outside the plane. If she’d lived, she could have waited until the attackers left and then called for help.
    But the hostiles, after executing everyone but Paige and him, had fired magazine after magazine into the equipment room, shredding every piece of machinery. He’d watched four shots pierce the compartment where Ellen lay hidden. There was close to zero chance she’d survived.
    By the end of the first day, when Paige had already endured eight cycles of the torture, Peter’s resolve had withered to a thread, and all that had kept it from breaking had been the angry insistence in his daughter’s eyes, promising to hate him if he gave in.
    All these impossible hours later, her strength was still intact.
    But his was dead and gone.
    It was time.
    In the pines at the edge of the campsite, Travis set two of the spare M16s on the ground. Another he kept slung on his shoulder, and the last he held in his hands.
    Fifty feet away, String Mustache was still about his business. From this angle Travis could see the face of the other captive, an older man tied to a tree near the young woman. Travis wondered if a look of greater anguish had ever existed in the world.
    Ten feet from String Mustache, four of the other men were gathered around a fire, carefully tended to burn clean without visible smoke. It was more or less a bed of embers that they continually fed sticks to. One of the men was cooking a lump of meat over it. These four seemed intent on keeping their attention off of the torture, their conversation—Travis couldn’t pin down the language—serving as their own white noise to mask the woman’s muffled screams.
    The remaining two hostiles were seated facing the torture table as if it were a matinee screen.
    Travis crouched, tensed to move. It would happen any time now. He’d made the trip from the overlook in twenty minutes, hoping like hell with every step that he hadn’t misjudged the speed of the water drip, or the resistance force of the rifle’s trigger.
    Now it didn’t matter. He was ready.
    He thought he’d take the four at the campfire first. He might get them in one burst, depending on how much they separated when they turned away. After that he’d switch from full-auto to single shot—his thumb already rested on the selector—and be more precise with the other three, who were closer to the captives. By that time his rush would put him inside the camp, firing almost point-blank.
    Breathing steady. Hands dry. Any second now.
    And then the older man tied to the tree said, “Stop.”

CHAPTER SEVEN
    String Mustache switched off the thing in his hand, though he kept it inside the woman’s arm. With the buzzing stopped, the only sound in the clearing was her soft crying, and the occasional pop of