Chapter Four
"You are not eating, querida," Jorge observed as Larissa pushed the grilled chicken and steamed vegetables around her plate.
Fallon sighed. "What does it matter, Jorge? I'll be dead soon." She stood as if to leave and he came around the table in a flash to grab her by the arms. "Just kill me and get it over with."
He pushed her up against the wall, grabbing a handful of her auburn hair and held it to his face. "Why is it that you are in such a hurry to die, I wonder?"
"What is your plan, Jorge? What do you intend to do with me?" she asked, although at the same time she was frightened to know the answer.
He nuzzled her neck as he roughly covered her breast with a possessive hand. "I intend to use you one more time before I have to let you go."
"No," she asserted. "You will never have me again. I did what I had to do, but it was not something I wanted or enjoyed. I wasn't lying when I said I faked it. I never loved you, Jorge."
His eyes filled with rage as he circled her throat with his left hand, choking her. He balled up his right fist and pulled back his elbow to deliver a merciless blow. Fallon closed her eyes and waited for the inevitable pain and the darkness that would follow.
She slowly opened her eyes when the blow never landed and she realized Jorge's arm was being restrained. "Roberto," she breathed in quiet relief. He was alive!
"Yes, cara," he said, smiling. "But not the Roberto you know." He let loose Jorge's arm. "Release her," he demanded.
Jorge grunted his disapproval and removed his hand from Fallon's throat. She stared at Roberto in disbelief. What a fool she had been. Roberto had played her all along. He was the head of this "family" and Jorge had been a deception.
"Why, Roberto?"
"I needed leverage to gain what I craved the most," he explained.
"You talk in circles," she replied, irritated. "Just tell me what you're after."
"Be patient, Fallon Dumas," he answered, accentuating her last name as if it had special meaning.
************
Donovan kept a steady pace through the lush foliage of the dense forest and he reached the compound without further trouble. He took the time to survey the buildings and count the many guards that stood watch outside. The building Fallon was being held in was heavily guarded. He studied their patterns and timings, hoping to find a time when he could slip by without being spotted.
Patience paid off, hours later when the guard at the rear of the building fell asleep, leaning against the wall. He removed his goggles and headed toward the dimly lit area of the building. Creeping silently toward the guard, he entered the building undetected. He spotted a guard outside an interior room and moved stealthily behind the man. He roughly clamped a hand over the man's mouth and wound his other arm around his neck, squeezing tightly until the man lost consciousness.
Opening the door slowly, he entered the room and found the female agent bound and gagged, lying on a small cot that was set up against the far wall of the room. The only other exit from the room was a window mounted high up on the wall. A table lamp lit the room, and he moved quickly to her side and removed her gag.
"Get out...it's a trap," she whispered harshly. Sky-blue eyes fixed on to deep brown eyes and pleaded for forgiveness. "It was all a set up."
"Let's go," he said, cutting her bonds. Trap or not, he wasn't about to leave without her.
"I do not think so, Mr. Donovan."
Donovan froze at the sound of the unfamiliar voice, although his eyes never left Fallon's, not even when the barrel of a gun was placed against his temple. Her eyes registered fear even as she fought to control it. He realized then, that she had been the bait on the end of the hook that just sank itself deep into his flesh.
"Get up, cerdo," Roberto commanded, nudging Donovan roughly with the gun. "Although I am saddened by the loss of my men, I knew the fact that they did not return meant that I would soon have exactly what I wanted."
He stood slowly, holding his gun by the butt with his fingertips and felt it jerked from his hand by someone behind him. He stood motionless, watching the man from the video, Jorge, sit beside Fallon on the cot, holding her roughly by the arms. He read the anguish in her eyes although her face was masked by detachment. His arms were pulled behind him roughly and bound together by a thick rope; at the same time, another searched him and removed all the items in his pockets.
"Now the fun begins," Roberto said, laughing maniacally. He pushed Donovan forcibly in front of him, shoving him out of the room and down the small corridor to another room.
Donovan glanced around the nearly empty room. It had a high vaulted ceiling with open wood beams. In the middle of the room, from the main support beam, hung a harness device fixed with a pulley system. Underneath it, raised on a four-foot platform, sat a large bluish metal tub filled to the rim with water. Beside it, a garden hose sat docile, curled next to four car batteries connected together and hooked to a set of conductor cables. Oh yeah...I'm in for some real fun.
He heard a loud, horrified gasp and turned his head to see Agent Dumas being held brutally by Espinosa. He groaned inwardly. Not only would he be tortured, but in front of a fellow agent. Sure, he'd been tortured before and lived through it, but it wasn't a pretty sight. He would endure, he reassured himself...but would she? Or would she interfere and endanger herself in the process?
Roberto shoved Donovan forward into the arms of his waiting men who led him up the steps of the platform and fastened him into the harness after removing his bonds long enough to remove his sweater, boots and socks. His hands had been retied behind his back and he hung by the shoulder harness as Roberto cheerfully pulled on the rope that worked the pulley to raise him above the metal tub.
Fallon watched with concealed horror as Donovan was raised above the tub and Roberto tied off the rope to hold him in place. He smiled evilly as he picked up the hose and nodded toward Miguel who stood waiting by the water valve. Roberto aimed the hose full blast at the agent's face. He sputtered and turned his head from side to side to catch his breath.
When Roberto felt he was sufficiently soaked, he dropped the hose and signaled to Miguel again, who climbed the platform and picked up the conductor cables.
"Let's see what kind of man you are, Mr. Donovan," Roberto mocked. "I want to hear you scream, cerdo."
Donovan heard Fallon plead "No!" when Miguel touched the cable into the water just as he was lowered enough for his feet to enter the water. His body was immediately seized with convulsions as the shock waves of electricity hit him, but he kept his composure enough to release only a continual but nonetheless soft moan.
Fallon let out her breath when Miguel removed the cable a mere five seconds later. It felt like the longest five seconds of her life.
"You do not cry out, Mr. Donovan," Roberto observed, annoyed. "I am very disappointed. Perhaps we should try again, hmm? A higher voltage, Miguel?"
Miguel grinned as he turned the knob of the control panel and touched the cable into the water again. He laughed gleefully as the agent's body convulsed uncontrollably.
His eyes closed in reflex and his face contorted with pain, and still he would not give his tormentor the satisfaction of more than the continual muted moans that escaped him as he fought against the agonizing spasms that wracked his body.
Fallon's stomach churned. She would have rather taken a hundred of the beatings she had endured than to watch the revolting scene before her. Hatred can turn men into demented animals, and Agent Donovan was paying for Roberto's dementia.
"Again!" Roberto commanded, over and over goaded by the fact Donovan would not scream out in pain.
Donovan hung limply, his body and mind tiring from the torment. He was vaguely aware of a woman's voice pleading to let him down. Dead soon, he thought.
"Coño!" Roberto screamed. "El bastardo will cry out!" He strode to the platform and turned the knob several notches. "Do it!" He screamed at Miguel who nodded and touched the cable to the water.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" Frank's torturous, earsplitting scream echoed through the empty room.
Fallon watched, terrified as the agent writhed in pain, his face contorted into a grotesque mask of agony as he screamed uncontrollably while the shockwaves tore his sanity to shreds. One second...two...It slowed to a feeling of hours. Fallon could stand it no longer. Three seconds...she wrenched out of Jorge's grasp and ran to the platform. Four seconds...she jumped onto the platform and flew at Miguel, knocking him over the edge, the cables along with him.
"Fallon!" Roberto yelled angrily.
"Cut him down, cut him down," she yelled, holding Donovan's body by the waist.
"How dare you interfere?" Jorge demanded, pulling her away from the barely conscious agent.
"Let...me...go!" she screamed, fighting against his grasp.
"It is done, Jorge. I heard what I wanted," Roberto said softly as he untied the rope that held Donovan suspended above the water.
Fallon kicked at Jorge's leg and he released her when she made contact with his shin. She managed to grab Donovan around the waist as he fell to the platform. She placed a hand under his chin and looked into dazed eyes, barely aware of his surroundings. "Donovan..." she cried as he was pulled out of her grasp onto the floor below. She scooped his sweater and boots into her arms when she fell on top of them.
Two men held him by the arms, and forced him to kneel before Roberto, who placed the barrel of his gun to Donovan's cheekbone. "You are a strong man, Mr. Donovan. I admire that," he admitted circling behind the agent. "But that changes nothing. I have plans for you." He raised his hand and brought the butt end of the gun down hard against the back of Donovan's skull.
His last thought, before a well of excruciating pain brought on the spiraling darkness that sent him into oblivion, was that he hoped Jake would make it out alive.