Chapter 25 The Puppet Master

Chapter 25

The Puppet Master

I shoved Mrs. Barbour into the guard’s arms. “Get her out of here.”

He vanished, leaving me staring down at a man cuffed and tied who already knew more about me than I knew about him. But that was about to change.

The man rolled onto his back and laughed. Nothing about the move made any sense. With both his feet and hands tied behind him, the closest thing to comfort he could experience in that condition would be lying facedown, but the masochist in him must’ve enjoyed the pain.

I don’t know how many stairs and strides it took to get to the CIC, but I didn’t remember a single one of them.

“The guy in the brig isn’t Barbour. We grabbed the wrong guy.”

Skipper spun to face me. “What?”

“We’ve got the wrong guy. Mrs. Barbour said that’s not her husband. Show me the shot.”

Almost before I finished the demand, six headshots of Sidney Barbour appeared on the monitor. I studied the shots, scrutinizing every detail of the man’s face.

“That’s him,” I said. “There’s no way we grabbed the wrong guy. Print out the first one in color.”

She pulled the printout from the tray and stuck it in my hand.

I continued my study of Barbour’s face. “That’s him. Wake up the team. Get them down to the brig ASAP.”

“You got it,” she said. “You’re going to fingerprint him, right?”

“Absolutely.”

I sprinted through the corridor and down the ladders, but I stopped myself just short of the heavy steel door separating the brig from the rest of the ship. Waiting for the team to arrive gave us the psychological advantage of superior numbers, and I needed all the advantage I could get.

Instead of filing down the ladder individually, the team arrived in mass.

I held up Sidney Barbour’s picture. “When I brought Mrs. Barbour down here to show her off to our prisoner, she said he wasn’t her husband, and the man we snatched tonight laughed.”

Shawn piped up. “We ID’d the guy at the scene. That dude is our guy. We didn’t screw that up.”

“I know,” I said. “Somebody’s playing a game we don’t understand yet, but they’re going to learn we can play any game as long as we know the rules. We’re going in there together as a show of force. We’ll run his prints and get at least five good shots for facial recognition. I expect him to be uncooperative, so we may get to have a little fun with him. Don’t be gentle.”

The smile on Shawn’s face told me Sidney Barbour wasn’t going to enjoy the next few minutes of his life.

“Let’s move.”

I passed the biometric scan and keycode test, sending the heavy bolt receding into the door. We filed into the bay like the hardened warriors we were, but nothing I’d seen on any battlefield anywhere on Earth prepared me for what was happening inside Barbour’s cell.

“Get that door open!” Mongo yelled, and I shoved my thumb into the reader.

The instant it took for the electronic lock to read and verify my print felt like hours as Barbour pounded his face against the deck where it met the bulkhead. Blood flew from his face with every strike, and the back of his shirt was covered with crimson stains.

When the door finally clicked open, Mongo and Shawn flooded into the cell and yanked Barbour to his knees. The man’s face looked like sausage. His nose was badly broken, and blood flowed from his brows, cheeks, and chin. No bare-knuckle boxer had ever lost a fight as badly as the one Sidney Barbour had endured of his own creation.

I pulled my phone from my pocket and brought up the fingerprint scanner app Dr. Mankiller created. “Break his wrists if you have to, but I’m getting his prints.”

Mongo held Barbour in place while Shawn muscled his wrists into compliance, but their efforts were in vain. As I stared at his fingertips, his bizarre behavior of rolling himself onto his back when I left the cell suddenly made sense. While I was in the CIC, Barbour had ground his fingertips against the concrete cell deck until only ground beef remained where his fingerprints had once been. Whoever the man was, he was determined to defeat our efforts to ID him.

He was good, but we were better.

I said, “Somebody get me a four-by-four and some gloves from the med kit.”

Gator hustled from the cell and returned in seconds with exactly what I requested. I slipped the gloves onto my hands and opened the sealed package containing the four-by-four gauze pads. “Hold his head still.”

Mongo and Shawn made short work of controlling the man’s skull while I took a sample of blood and tissue from his face.

I folded the gauze and slid it back into its package. Placing the sample in Gator’s waiting hand, I said, “Get that to Dr. Shadrack and tell him to run the DNA.”

Barbour spat, sending blood, spittle, and mucus into my face.

Instead of wiping it away, I moved within inches of his demolished nose. “You’re out of your league. No matter how hard you fight, I will win, and you will give me what I want.”

He inhaled to spit again, but Shawn shoved the muzzle of his Glock into Barbour’s mouth until he gagged and convulsed at the assault. “Spitting on people ain’t nice. Spitting on my boss is a capital offense, and you just met the executioner.”

Barbour jerked and tried to retreat from the muzzle scraping his tonsils, but between Mongo and Shawn, escape for our guest wasn’t in the cards.

I turned from the scene and said, “Get him trussed up someplace he can’t hurt himself anymore. I don’t want him to steal all of our fun.”

We reconvened outside the brig’s main hatch, and I said, “Somebody explain what’s going on. I’ve never seen anything like whatever that is.”

Kodiak let out a long sigh. “What’s happing in there is a level of insanity they never put in any psychology books. That’s an animal, not a man. Whatever his end goal is, he’ll achieve it, and it looks like hiding his true identity is step one in getting there.”

“What could he possibly be hiding?” I asked. “He’s the CEO of an oil exploration company, for God’s sake. What would make that kind of personality do what he’s doing?”

Mongo said, “That’s no CEO in there, Chase. That’s a madman, and right now, he’s winning.”

“What do you mean he’s winning? He’s a bloody mess, and he’s tied to a chair.”

Mongo shook his head. “He’s winning because he’s controlling us. We’re spending a lot of time trying to figure out who he is. That makes him the puppet master for now.”

“Maybe you’re right. I say it’s time to cut those strings.”

I posted a guard on Barbour, with direct radio comms with me and the CIC, and headed to sick bay.

Dr. Shadrack was yawning and pawing at his eyes.

I said, “Sorry to drag you out of bed, Doc, but this one’s important.”

He poured a cup of coffee and turned to me. “Want some?”

“No, thanks. I just want to get the DNA analysis done ASAP.”

He took his first sip. “You could’ve done that without waking me up. I can stop blood from pouring out of your body, but I can’t run the DNA tests on that blood. That knowledge belongs to a pair of technicians who are worth a lot more than you’re paying them.”

I said, “Tell those two techs that I’ll double their salary if they get a DNA match before the sun comes up.”

“Nice offer,” he said, “but that can’t be done. If everything goes perfectly, it’ll take eight hours.”

I sucked air between my teeth. “Make it happen in six hours, and the offer stands.”

“I’ll tell them, but I wouldn’t expect it to happen.”

I said, “When you get them started, bring your bag of doctor tricks down to the brig. I’ve got a guest with a boo-boo on his face. He’ll probably need a Band-Aid.”

“Did you give him the boo-boo?”

“Nope. Believe it or not, it’s entirely self-inflicted.”

He took another sip. “I’m not buying it, but I’m on your team, so I’ll come down and take a look. Give me ten minutes. He can stay alive that long, right?”

“Probably.”

* * *

In the brig cell, Mongo and Shawn stood beside Barbour, who’d been tied to a restraining chair with a mesh spit bag secured over his head.

Dr. Shadrack walked in and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “My God! What happened to this guy?”

Shawn said, “Nothing yet, but it’s coming. We just need to know if he’s healthy enough for a little special kind of love.”

The doctor grimaced. “Love hurts.”

Shawn grinned. “It doesn’t hurt me a bit.”

Dr. Shadrack leaned down to Barbour. “Take off the bag. I can’t see how bad it is through the mesh.”

Mongo said, “That’s not a good idea. This one’s a spitter.”

Shawn pulled a five-pound hammer from his ruck and rested the head against Barbour’s knee. “If you spit on the doc, I get to play whack-a-mole with your knee. Please test me.”

Through the bloody hood over his eyes, Barbour glared at Shawn but didn’t say a word, so our SEAL bounced the hammer somewhat gently against the kneecap. The man flinched under the tapping, leaving me to believe he would howl when Shawn played a little rougher.

Mongo untied the bag, slipped it off of Barbour’s head, and grabbed a handful of his unruly hair. “Go ahead, Doc. If he misbehaves, we’ve got your back.”

Dr. Shadrack leaned in with his penlight in hand and examined Barbour’s eyes and facial wounds. He pocketed the light, pulled off his glasses, and asked, “Why did you do this to yourself?”

Barbour didn’t answer. Instead, he thrust his head forward, ripping a handful of hair from his head in Mongo’s grasp. Dr. Shadrack dodged the incoming headbutt and sent a crushing elbow strike to the man’s temple, sending stars circling his already battered head.

Mongo clamped his massive hand around our prisoner’s neck and shoved him back against his confinement chair, making breathing impossible.

As the man’s face turned blue, Doc leaned back in. “Have you ever heard of the Geneva Conventions?”

Barbour’s eyes struggled to look in the same direction, but he remained silent and stoic.

So, Dr. Shadrack gave him a pat on the shoulder. “Good. Neither have we.” He turned to me and shrugged. “Go ahead. Do what you need to do. If he’s still alive when you’re finished, I’ll take another look, but for now, I’m going back to bed. Have fun.”

Mongo bagged Barbour’s head again and wound a strand of 550 cord beneath his nose and tied it to the headrest. The headbutting was over.

Anya stepped in front of our man and gripped the handle of Shawn’s hammer. “Is not necessary for any of you to stay. Tell to me what you want to know, and I will bring to you information.”

Hearing the cold tone of the Russian’s bitter threat sent chills racing down my spine. Shawn released the hammer and stepped back. Anya was far more terrifying than any of us…including our SEAL.

I said, “I don’t care about his name, rank, or serial number. I want to know where he put Kenneth LePine. If he won’t tell you, we’ll feed what’s left of him to the sharks.”

For the first time since we threw Sidney Barbour into the helicopter in Hockley, TX, his eyes twitched. Perhaps it was leftover trauma from the doctor’s elbow shot, but to me, it looked a lot more like recognition.