The Assassin's Daydream || Mitch Rapp

Chapter 43

MARTYR'S SQUARE aka GOONS TOWN

Hurley had no idea where he was other than the fact that he was in a basement. He'd felt the stairs as they'd dragged him from the trunk of a car and into the building.

It was the second car he'd been in that morning. In the midst of his pummeling by the police he blurted out the only name that he thought might help. "Levon Petrosian! I am a friend of Petrosian!"

The clubbing and kicking stopped almost immediately, and then one of the men asked him what he'd said. The man ordered him cuffed and placed in the backseat of one of the cars.

He marked the time in the back of the car, counting the seconds and trying to make sense of the noises beyond the glass windows.

Twenty-seven seconds later the car doors opened. He felt something jabbed into his ribs.

"Don't move or I will kill you."

"Go to hell, asshole."

The object was jabbed even harder into his side.

"You shouldn't talk to a policeman like that."

"Policeman," Hurley said with open disdain. "If you're cops, what am I being arrested for?"

"For striking a police officer. One of my men has a broken nose."

"You mean the one who was going to crack me over the back of the head with his stick? I have a great idea. Don't bullshit me, and I won't bullshit you."

"Striking a police officer is a very serious matter."

"Yeah ... so is kidnapping, so why don't you just pull over and let me go and I'll make sure no one puts a price on your head."

"Are you threatening us?"

"Just telling you the truth. I make it a habit not to kill cops ... that is, unless they are corrupt."

Hurley doubled over as the man next to him delivered a stinging blow with whatever it was that he was holding. Hurley recovered and said, "I can't wait to tell Petrosian about this ... the first thing I'm going to do" - Hurley turned to his right as if he could actually see the man next to him - "is take that stick of yours and shove it up your ass". He received another blow on his cheek and that was when they decided to pull over and put him in the trunk. Not long after that, maybe ten minutes, they stopped, pulled him out of the trunk and dragged him into this dank basement that smelled like an outhouse.

They put a disgusting burlap bag over his head. He had to take shallow breathing and focus on not throwing up because that would just make it worse for him in this awful place.

Hurley silently hoped that Richard and Rupert had been able to get away.

The mind, Hurley knew, could only take so much before it simply opened up and let the secrets spill out. They said everyone eventually broke, but Hurley didn't think of himself as everyone. He was a mean, nasty man who might have lost a step, but he was still very much in control of his mind.

Hurley sat there for at least an hour before His best guess was three or four men. They spread out around him. Someone approached him from behind and Hurley resisted the impulse to flinch. The man grabbed the burlap bag and yanked it from his head. Hurley blinked several times and took a look around the room. An industrial lamp hung from the ceiling, a brown extension cord snaking its way to the door. Hurley looked at the three men he could see. Two were familiar.

"Gentlemen, there must be some misunderstanding here," Hurley announced in an easy tone. "I thought hostilities in Beirut were over."

The two men in front of Hurley shared a brief smile. The older one said, "Mr. Sherman, I have been looking forward to this for some time."