Page 190 of The Fourth Option
“Bring Agent Stanton inside,” Bates said to the two men towering over the FBI man.
“Bates, don’t do this,” Stanton said as they hauled him to his feet.
“It’s already done, Jarrett.” He turned to the two men with J.J. “Stay on guard out here and make sure she doesn’t go anywhere.”
“Sí,” the taller of the two replied.
“Jarrett,” Bates said as the FBI agent was dragged past him into the cabin. “I am glad you are here. We have much to discuss.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
STANTON’S EYES OPENEDwide in horror as he glimpsed Walker’s naked body suspended from a chain in the room’s center. The blood from a cut under his jaw had bled down his chest, stomach, genitals, and legs, finally running out of steam halfway down his thighs.
Stanton noted the thin olive-skinned man holding a long knife and standing next to an old turn-of-the-century telephone that had wires attached to the former SEAL he had been hunting.
The Tucker Telephone, he thought, remembering his legal classes in school and at Quantico on the torture device used at Tucker State Prison Farm in the 1960s.
His eyes then went to the girl on the cabin’s floor, blood drying around her nose and mouth.
The FBI special agent was grabbed by the neck and manhandled into place next to Belle. Bates tossed the two gangbangers plastic flex cuffs, which they used to restrain Stanton against the support column. They wrestled him into submission and applied a second set of cuffs to his feet.
“Bates, have you lost your goddamned mind?”
“Special Agent Stanton, you are about to become a hero. Posthumously, of course.”
“Whatever you are thinking, don’t do this.”
“And what is ‘this’? What do you think I’m doing?”
“Runing a criminal enterprise.”
“You give me too much credit, Stanton. I work for one. I don’t run it.”
“And your friends here? Vargas’s guys?”
“Well, well, well, look at the big brain on you, Jarrett. What else have you figured out?”
“It’s all in files on the DA’s desk and with the task force.”
Bates’s laugh filled the cabin.
“Don’t bullshit me, Jarrett. If that were the case, SWAT would havetaken me down already. As you correctly ascertained, there is someone higher up the food chain who will make sure the correct story is told.”
“What about the DA?”
“What about her?”
“She knows what I know.”
“I doubt that, Jarrett. Not that it matters. When these boys are finished with you, J.J., Walker, and little Belle here, they intend to pay Icy a visit. Cuchillo needs someone he can control in that chair.”
“You just going to kill your way through everyone who knows about your arrangement?”
“That’s how most of the world works, Jarrett. Don’t be naive. Walker knows it. He was doing a pretty good job of going through my men. Really put a dent in the business, which is why he’s hanging from a rafter with wires attached to his nuts.”
“Who’s your friend?” Stanton asked, looking at the man with the blade.
“Not that it matters to you, but I just call him the Afghan. He does some work for me from time to time. Turns out the CIA trained him and then abandoned him. He’s pissed. Cuchillo, through me, pays well. It’s certainly better than welfare. Tonight, his job was to extract information from Walker, specifically to find out who else might be a threat to us, but all those people are now on-site.”
