Crooked River(103)
“In the great sweep of history, those lives hardly matter. That’s what you were told—correct? Warfare is about winning and losing. Morality should never be a factor in warfare.”
“Of course it shouldn’t,” she said. “The goal is to kill.”
“Which brings me to this weapon of yours,” said Pendergast. “It is, in its own way, admirable in its simplicity. Its capacity to leave the infrastructure intact…if a bit sticky.”
“What’s the difference between a land mine blowing an enemy’s leg off, or forcing them to chop it off themselves?”
“Both are equally appalling.”
“That’s right, and it’s gross hypocrisy to pretend to be horrified by this drug, when war itself is all about killing, burning, and maiming. You think this is somehow less humane than napalming a village, burning everyone alive?”
“Napalm is certainly as cruel, if not more so.” Pendergast’s voice was calm, almost hypnotic.
“So why not cooperate? I’m only here because this drug is going to end warfare as we know it.”
“That’s what Alfred Nobel said when he invented dynamite. But you overlook one thing.”
“Which is?”
“You can choose not to participate in the cruelty of war.”
“You mean, be a pacifist? Now, there’s a lame philosophy if ever there was one.”
“An individual doesn’t have to be a pacifist to oppose the stupidities of war. You, for example. You have the choice to opt out. You don’t have to be here, in this room, observing this depraved act of cruelty.”
She shook her head. “You’re not making any headway with me, Pendergast, so save your breath.”
A muffled sound came from Gladstone, a moan as she tried to speak with the gag on. And then another. She was starting to twist in her bonds, snorting, moaning, shaking her head. He could see her eyes had changed. They were wider, deeper, and they carried an odd, chilling look.
“In that case,” Pendergast told Alves-Vettoretto in a low tone, “you’ll find the next half an hour most instructive.”
The general returned. “Ah, just in time!” He sat down as if in a movie theater, leaned forward, and pressed the intercom button. “Doctor, please remove her gag.”
63
PAMELA GLADSTONE SAT in the gleaming white laboratory, bound to the wheelchair. Her lips tingled faintly from the tape the doctor had just pulled away. He’d done it carefully, to cause as little discomfort as possible. Odd how such a demon of a man could nevertheless act with a doctor’s habitual gentleness.
Somehow the gag had been the worst, worse even than the binding of her arms and legs. She opened her mouth wide, gulping in air, then willing herself to stop hyperventilating. The desperate need to cry out abated. The racing of her heart slowed…but only slightly.
Over the last several hours, Gladstone had felt herself veering between mounting terror and a detached disbelief. Everything had happened so fast—the sudden flight, that awful chase through the swamp, the spotlights and stutter of machine guns, Wallace’s horrible death, the helicopter ride…and now this.
She had always prided herself on her courage and independence. Back there she’d put on as brave a show as possible. But this injection…She hoped desperately it was some ruse to force them to talk. Despite the terror of the last few hours, one thought had kept her going: that somehow Pendergast would save them. She had sensed from the beginning that he was a man of rare competence. But now Pendergast had been taken away and only the doctor and his orderlies remained, watching her and waiting…waiting. And her wheelchair had been placed in the middle of the room…where the tiled floor sloped slightly down to a large, gleaming industrial drain.
A sudden wave of terror flooded through her. “Pendergast!” she cried, struggling with her bonds. “Pendergast!”
Silence for a moment. Then, the amplified voice of the general, coming over a speaker high in the wall: “Bring in the parang. Then follow standard procedures.”
She was hyperventilating again, and this time she had a more difficult time overcoming it.
She could do this. She’d overcome worse. It was absurd to think that she could be forced to amputate her own leg. She thought back to the time when her kayak had capsized off Sitka Sound. Or five years ago, skiing off-piste on the glaciers of La Grave, when one of their party had fallen in a crevasse and dislocated a shoulder, and she had roped up and gone in to bring her out. It was all about keeping her cool; keeping control.
Everything depended on keeping control.
A steel door in one side of the lab opened, and an orderly wheeled in a gurney. An object lay upon it, covered with a hospital sheet. She watched as the orderly placed the gurney five feet from her, locked its wheels, whisked off the sheet, and walked back toward the door. A large knife lay on the gurney: a sort of machete but heavier and longer, with a blade that took an odd bend about a quarter of the way down its length. The edge was sharpened to a silvery gleam, but the body and spine of the blade were a mottled grayish-black. Its shape reminded her of a giant slug. The end was encased in a derringer-shaped handle of wood, well worn…
She looked away, toward the doctor and two orderlies.
The doctor nodded at one, who came over behind her and began undoing the leather straps that bound her. She suddenly had a thought: as soon as she was free, she could seize the blade and use it to escape. As the orderly unbuckled her ankles, legs, and elbows, she began to plot out each movement in her mind. But then the other orderly came over and pinned her arms even as she was being freed, holding her immobile. She struggled, but he held her fast in what felt like a long-practiced maneuver.