Time Sensitive Target

Part 15 - Intel

It would have been impossible for anyone anyone else to detect it, but Ant was seething with a rage that encapsulated his entire being. It was all he could to keep his touch gentle and light on Paige's shoulder, when he wanted to launch himself towards building B and tear al-Raheem from the American's with their shady side shit, beating him until his skull caved in.

He could actually picture it. Most people couldn't imagine what a person looked like with their skull in fragments, collapsed inwards like a deflated balloon. Ant had seen it, and worse, many times over. He itched with desire to feel bones shatter against his fist, to hear the sickening crack as they splintered apart. It was a messy business: beating people to a pulp. You needed precise blows in the right location again and again and again to shatter the correct points in the skull. The nose always went first, then the eyes immediately swelled and bled profusely and then that crack came and the face split in the middle like an eggshell. Normally the victim died from the trauma to the head, but it was possible, just possible, if the blows were controlled enough, to keep them alive and conscious throughout. They'd begin to choke on the blood that would funnel down their trachea, gargling it up like a blocked sink.

Alarmingly, Ant realised he yearned for the sound. He wanted to make al-Raheem pay. He wanted to expose the American's scheme. He wanted to stop the mental anguish that must be eating away at Paige. He knew he couldn't do the latter, and that awareness frustrated him beyond measure. There was no quick fix for the mind, that was something he knew all too well.

                                         *

"Who else knows about this?" Jase slapped al-Raheem's cheek to bring him back to alertness.

Bazish's head lolled over to one side limply, sweat and blood snaking down sallow skin. He let out a strange sound; a strangled heaving that almost made Jase consider if he'd gone too far before his prisoner widened his mouth with parted lips, displaying bloodied cracked teeth. He spluttered out a laugh.

"What the fuck are you laughing at?" Jase grabbed the roots of his hair and pulled hard enough to silence the attempt and replace it with a groan.

Bazish smiled manically, saliva pooling at the sides of his mouth like a rabid dog.

"There is someone else," he croaked, the heaving chortle echoing through the room.

"Who?" Jase still held Bazish's head straight by his hair.

"Oh I think-" he laughed again, sucking in oxygen with a high pitched wheeze as he did. "You will like this," he chortled weakly as Jase gripped his hair tighter. "Yes my friend," he took heaving breaths as his eyelids threatened to close. "You will like it."

"Who?" Jase repeated, pulling the bucket of water forward.

Al-Raheem merely repeated the same strangled laugh, traces of the words 'you'll like this friend' occasionally becoming audible. Jase forced his head down into the bucket impatiently, water splashing over the sides on to his already glistening boots. After the appropriate time he lifted the head, Bazish spluttering and gasping but still smiling broadly.

"Who?" Jase's tone was flat and bored. He didn't wait for an answer before he pushed the head under the water again, ignoring the pressure against his palm. Again the head rose, bile and water choked out over his boots and into the bucket, and al-Raheem continued smiling.

"You know," he attempted to speak but his voice was strangled. "Will be bad for you, to do it to her. But she knows," he paused to hurl down his chest, and spat into the bucket. "She knows everything," he threw his head back and howled with strained choking laughter.

Jase sat back. She couldn't know. Al-Raheem had only to gain from saying she did. They would have to take it seriously, he knew that. They'd have to interrogate her. If the CIA thought there was even a remote possibility the information they were seeking to protect had been disclosed to her, Paige would be dead faster than al-Raheem could currently string a sentence together, or perhaps that was too generous. Jase dropped the little weight he was bearing of his prisoner, and al-Raheem slunk to the floor like a sack of potatoes. She couldn't know. Jase had carried more than his fair share of burdensome secrets before, but like any intelligent leader he understood when he was in over his head. Plus, he reasoned with himself, making this call alone could be catastrophic to his conscience if it went the wrong way. 

                                                                                         *

"What do you think?" Sonny furrowed his brow and exhaled with a whistle. He rested his chin in his hands, fingers entwined creating a calloused cage across his mouth. Sonny was privately pleased Jase had disclosed al-Raheem's supposed intel to him before reporting back to Lorres. As soon as that information was passed on to the CIA, the girl's life was out of their hands.

"I..." Jase began winding the wheel of one of numerous thought strains churning through his mind at that moment, then stopped, exasperated. "I got no fuckin' clue."

"That bastard's a liar. We saw that gal on camera. We saw how fucked up she was, she was as close to goddamn death as you can get by the time we reached her. Ain't no way she knows shit," Sonny spat with expert precision near his boot. The more riled he was, the more Southern he became.

"We have to talk to her, but we can't tell anyone about this," Jase drummed his fingers against the overturned metal trough they sat on.

"Not a chance in hell those fellas are letting us talk to her alone," Sonny shook his head, quiet for a brief moment in contemplation. "We could bring in their One and Two, let them know somethin's up, see if they'll give us access to her."

"How do we know they're not going to use it against us? Sonny," Jase leaned in, a surge of anxiety suddenly rising in his throat. The gravity of what he was even daring to think was suddenly bearing down on his shoulders like solid concrete. "Sonny I think I know what al-Raheem had," he daren't breathe for a moment. There were many occasions during their service that caused them to be exposed to information way above their clearance level, but they always understood what was expected of them. If you came to know something you weren't meant to, you kept your mouth stapled shut. Sonny sat straight and assessed his friend for a moment, quickly deducing this was more than just classified intel. 

"I-"

"Don't even say what you're about to say out loud," Sonny stood then, suddenly disinterested in the entire conversation and the potential ramifications of it. "We'll talk to the girl, carefully at first and then we grill that son of a bitch some more. If it's a dead end, it's a dead end and that's all there is to it."