Kilo-29 (Damned of the 2/19th, Book 15)

Part 34

Site Kilo-29
Personnel Living Quarters
Winter, 1993
Day Three-Early Evening
Status: Defensive Status
Facility Status: Alert One-Bravo

The entire interrogation took a little over four hours.

I started with basic questions. How old she was, where she was born, her parents names, how long she served in the Air Force, stuff like that. During the time I was able to tell when she was lying or not. There was probably some kind of subconscious cue that I was picking up on, something that my subconscious recognized that my conscious mind did not. I used it ruthlessly, not allowing her to get away with the smallest lie.

Her first lie I simply tied her left foot to the chair. Her second lie, her right foot. Third lie, her right hand. Her fourth lie, her left hand. When she lied for the fifth time, she was obviously expecting me to start in on the pain.

Instead, I looped the tubing around her throat and tied it off to the back of the chair. I tied it tight enough that the flesh bulged out on top and bottom of the tube, but not enough to restrict her breathing.

I'd been taught that it made it so the subject could feel their pulse in their throat, that it was a constant reminder that they were in someone else's control. The subject wouldn't get used to it, and when they swallowed it gagged them for a moment.

She almost seemed to wilt.

She told me the truth when I asked who she worked for and what section. It turned out she worked for the Central Intelligence Agency's Office of Scientific Intelligence, and was part of something called Project Pilot Light.

She tried to hold back, but I kept reminding her that I was in charge. Most of it slaps with an open hand or a strike with the tubing. I didn't bother going for her nipples, my trainers had taught me that hurting a woman's nipples had three problems. First was their design, the pain would cut out quickly or stop altogether pretty quickly. The second was that it could easily become sadism. The Third was that it added a level of sexuality you wanted to avoid. By the time you had moved to nipples, the interrogation should be at the level of 'direct stimulation' already. The breasts were to be considered merely expanses of flesh, not breasts. Avoid hints of sexuality, that ran the risk of turning the power over to the female subject.

With a female subject, you want to do as little physical harm as possible. You wanted her to feel exposed, helpless, completely in your power. By stripping away social and cultural protections, by letting her know that she had no control over the situation in any way, you could accomplish much more you could with just direct stimulation. If you had to apply direct stimulation, you wanted to perform it on someone else, a third party, so that the other party was punished in her place. A loved one was best, but anyone would suffice. The fact that her actions were causing someone else torment would break a woman quicker than direct stimulation applied to her.

The problem with Agent Killain, is that she was also trained as a man would be trained. She'd gone through anti-interrogation classes, she'd been in situations where she didn't have any power over the situation and had to do what she was told, which was a pretty powerful resistance right there. Add to the fact that I didn't have a third party for leverage, and she should have been able to resist my interrogation pretty easily if I stuck to the normal methods used on women.

So I mixed the two. Rendering her powerless, rendering her vulnerable and helpless, but also applying direct stimulation to her when she lied to me. I didn't move the level of stimulation up very quickly. I didn't go to punching her, breaking bones, dunking, twisting joints, waterboarding, chair dropping, electric shock, or anything else. I stuck with the surgical tubing, leaving welts across her skin. I didn't slap her once she was in place in the chair, sticking to the tubing, unless I wanted to reinforce just how helpless she was. Toward the end I merely put a carpet tack in the surgical tubing I used to hit her, letting her know that for every lie she told me it would be worse when I finally did strike her with the tubing.

It worked.

God help me, it worked.

She told me everything.

Project Pilot Light centered around seizing control of the largest, best equipped, and most well maintained sites from the old Continuity of Government Project. Any sites that had ongoing 'projects' with them were to be examined and possibly re-purposed or have the old project restarted under a different name.

Kilo-29 fell under what was known as 'Project Bed Check', was the largest site involved in that project, and had been running since 1957 through three completed tests until the site had been lost during the Iran-Contra Affair paperwork shuffle. Now they were going to use it for the latest one that Agent Killain was supposed to assist in setting up.

This time it involved making use of the large number of homeless and mentally ill street people. They would be gathered up, exposed to chemical weaponry and radiation through contaminated food and clothing, and injected with several common diseases that were expected to make a comeback. Typhoid, TB, and a swine variant of Influenza. Those 'subjects' addicted to street drugs were divided into three categories. The first would receive not only regular injections, but a supply of drugs to be carried by the subject. The second would be given regular injections, which would stop as soon as they entered the facility. The third would be forced to go cold turkey, but would be allowed the knowledge of the first two groups.

The goal was to find out if order could be maintained without military personnel if the pool was drawn from people who had been damaged severely.

Agent Killain and her team were supposed to prepare the site, which had been listed as 'decommissioned' in CIA records. However, when they got here, they came under attack within the first 48 hours. The site had locked down, and they'd been unable to escape.

Colonel Bishop had figured out that she wasn't Air Force, that her team wasn't military, and eventually discovered what was going on.

She'd executed him outside, in the snow, after he managed to open one of the secondary egress points.

I'd changed the subject at that point, on the edge of switching from interrogating her to torturing her to punish her.

It was very tempting.

Instead I began questioning her about the site. It turned out that Kilo-29 had originally been designed to shelter thousands of people, almost four times the normal amount if they went to hot-bunking. There were pens for animals, where you could have hundreds cattle at a time in pens that didn't allow movement. Caverns dedicated to chicken farms. Hydroponics areas based off of NASA research, as well as massive caverns kept at freezing temperatures that stored prepacked food, caverns that held storage areas full of grains and other stock. I'd already seen sections where there was fertilizer and farm equipment, but Agent Killain had told me that there was enough farm equipment and supplies to scrape away the contaminated soil and then replant literally square miles of reclaimed farmland.

Event Storage was designed for any type of cataclysmic event. From meteor strike to nuclear war. Anything that wiped out 80%+ of the human race and damaged the surviving landscape. It was to enable the survivors to stay safe and hidden for up to 20 years, then allow them to exit the facility and begin to rebuild.

That part didn't surprise me.

What did surprise me was that everything I'd seen, it was a 'support site' in the Event Recovery Program, that despite hopes, it turned out that Kilo-29 was not the primary control facility. Apparently the primary Event Control facility was lost at one point, and nobody had ever recovered anything more than hints about it.

The Deep Storage lockers were pretty much the Event Recovery part, only more focused around vehicles, weapons, and building equipment. Deep Storage lockers were part of all Kilo and November Sites. Kilo-29 was one of the largest Deep Storage facilities Agent Killain or the people who briefed her had ever found any record of.

The whole site was designed in the mindset that if it was the only site that survived, those inside would be able to rebuild America faster than any enemy's, domestic or foreign, would be able to build their own societies.

Site Kilo-29 consisted of 9 primary military levels, 5 primary civilian levels, 4 Deep Storage Locker levels, 6 Even Locker levels, and 4 sub-levels. It went over 2000 feet down into the mountain.

Part of me wanted to call her a liar. That nothing could be that goddamn big.

But when she told me that there were huge sections beneath the facility that were natural caves that had not been used, had been blocked off by concrete and steel, I knew she was telling the truth.

When I was a kid, I'd toured Carlsbad Caverns, as well as several mines that were carved from solid rock by people working with no more than pickaxes. Add in modern jackhammers, explosives, and construction methods, changing the caverns beneath the mountain into a massive complex didn't seem that far-fetched.

Her team had been unable to access the NBC weaponry lockers, and as far as she knew, they were intact and secure, which was one good bit of news.

There were two pieces of information that let me know how serious things were.

The first, was this was what was labelled as a "War Fighter" facility. She didn't know what it meant, but I did. The "War Fighter" section was a part her and her team were not able to access. From what she was able to tell, it had its own dedicated computer systems that were not even hooked into the site.

The second was that this site had a "Recovery Section" important to her supervisors.

Kincaid had been right, from what little he guessed. There were CIA, FBI, NSA vaults containing un-redacted records. Additionally, there were vaults for the IRS, as well as the rest of the Big-13. Plus bank records from 1982, mortgage records, business records, all kinds of data to 'rebuild civilization' and allow the government to maintain control.

I had a mental image of some guy trying to grow crops in a nuclear blasted wasteland when some suit from Bank of America rolls up and demands he pay back his student loans from before the bombs fell.

She knew Toothpick intimately, but neither of the other two. Toothpick was a "Case Handler", which pretty much meant he was a dirty tricks asshole, by the name of Kevin Fellman (I figured it was just the name he was using or had been assigned most recently). Apparently he'd been with the Company since the mid-70's and was considered one of the guys to go to for difficult missions. She didn't know much about him, except for the fact that he'd apparently specialized in wet-work.

That explained a lot to me. He probably considered himself a badass.

Finally I pulled a chair up and sat down, facing her. She had welts across her legs, across her shoulders, and across her breasts. There was one blood one across her thighs, from where I'd pushed a half-dozen carpet tacks into the hose and smacked her once when she'd tried to lie to me.

I'd left her face unmarked.

She was sobbing, her head down and tears falling on her red-striped breasts.

Bomber was sitting on the counter, sharpening his knife. Nancy was sitting on the floor, thumbing through another medical field manual. Taggart was leaning against the wall that separated the dining room/kitchen from the dark frontroom. Heather was sitting on the floor next to me, nursing the baby. All of them were trying to look like they weren't paying attention to what I was doing, but I could tell they knew what I was doing.

They just didn't care.

Agent Killain finally looked up at me, no longer weeping.

"You'll never get away with this, Ant. The CIA won't let anyone get away with doing to one of their agents what you've done to me." She told me. She tried to sound defiant and menacing, but instead it just came across as petulant.

I just shrugged.

"I'm going to take personal pleasure in it when they use your wife and kids to teach you a lesson before they come for you." She told me.

I just shrugged again.

"This isn't something you can sweep under the rug." Her face was angry, and her voice was gaining strength. "I'll make sure that you pay for this."

"You realize, don't you, Agent Killain, that you aren't going to be in a position to make sure of anything?" I asked her, standing up. I smiled at her and she flinched. "You seem to be under the impression that I'm going to let you live."

All the fight went out of her. "Please. Please don't kill me." She whimpered.

I laughed at her, kneeling down in front of her. "So quick to beg for your life, right after telling me you're looking forward to your buddies butchering my wife and kids while they plead." I reached out and undid the tubing holding her ankles to the chair.

"Fuck you, Ant." She went to kick at me but I drove my fist into her thigh. She cried out at the muscle cramp and I stood up and moved behind her.

"What are you doing?" She was trying to be brave, but I'd torn it out of her.

"Untying you." I undid the tubing on her throat and her wrists. "Stand up, get dressed."

"Why?" She asked, trying to look defiant as she stood up and crossed her arms over her breasts.

I snapped her across the ass with the tubing, slapping right at the juncture of her upper thighs and her buttocks. She screamed and I did it again.

"Get dressed, Agent Killain." I told her. She scrambled to get dressed, and I just stood there, watching her, while I rolled up the tubing and put it back in my pockets.

"What, what are you going to do?" She asked.

"Move over by the door." I told her. She moved over to the door and waited. I moved up next to her, staying slightly behind her, but far enough away to be able to react in case she tried to whirl around and go for me, or any other dirty trick I knew of.

"I'm going to take you to your little friends, and the four of us are going to figure out what to do next." I told her.

It wasn't exactly the truth.

"You think they'll let you live?" She asked me, sneering. "Agent Fellman seems to think you can't be trusted." She glared at me. "I think you sure as shit proved that."

I chuckled. "Except Agent Fellman doesn't know shit about nuclear reactors, and I do." She turned to look back at me, and I stepped back, still smiling. "My team and I fired up one of the portable reactors, but I overrode the programming and set the system to pull the cooling rods if I don't punch in the twenty-four digit code." it was a lie, my programming skills stopped at BASIC and some machine language, but all she'd know from my files is that I taught computer classes back in 2/19th and had been investigated by MI all the damn time. "I didn't set up a meltdown, Agent Killain." Her face went pale again. "I set it up to detonate. Flood the whole mountain with radiation, fire, and radioactive steam." A total lie, but it didn't matter.

"Why would you do that? What about the other soldiers?" She whispered.

"I don't like to lose." I told her. "I told the Major, and he approves."

"What have you done?" She asked.

"Exactly what I was trained to do." I smiled again. "Mutually assured destruction, remember?"

"You're mad."

"Keep that in mind before you try to do anything stupid." I warned her. I touched the hilt of my knife. "If we come back here, we're going to have a discussion with Ms. Pointy Thing, and I'll finish it up by killing you after I get done amusing myself. It won't be an interrogation, Agent Killain, it'll be revenge for that Private your friends killed, pre-emptive revenge for my family, and in revenge for Colonel Bishop."

I could see she wanted to plead with me, but instead she just hunched her shoulders.

I just knocked on the door as an answer, smiling. Shave and a haircut with three knocks at the end instead of two. After the third try to door opened up to reveal the Private that had locked me in the room.

"Let's go, Agent Killain." I said, stepping by her and out of the room. She hung back, staring at the other soldier and at me, then moved into the hallway.

"Where are you taking her, Sergeant?" The Private asked me as we walked toward the door.

"Agent Killain has cooperated, and I've agreed to allow her to mediate between myself and her fellow federal agents." I told him.

"Maybe I should tell Major Darson." The Private said.

"Private," I glanced at his nametag. "Thurston, it doesn't matter what the Major says, he left what was going to happen next to me, and Agent Killain has cooperated fully with me. As part of that, she's going to mediate between me and the other agents so that we can all get out of here."

"No I'm not." Agent Killain said, obviously not wanting to go anywhere with me alone.

"Then we will return to your room and continue our discussion." I told her. "We'll resolve our discussion as I warned you we would." She went pale again. "Would you prefer not to mediate?"

"No. We can go." She said.

The Private looked a little confused and worried about the byplay, but shrugged and walked with us to the door.

"Just the two of you?" He asked.

"I don't want a firefight breaking out." I told him, stopping in front of the door. "That's why Agent Killain will be leading the way, to prevent them from acting aggressively first." I smiled at her. "I'm sure we can come to some kind of compromise with the feds."

He looked doubtful, but opened the door anyway. I tilted my head, and Agent Killain went first. I stopped on the other side and motioned for him to lower it.

Agent Killain stood silently until the door lowered.

"Do you really think they'll trade me for your safety?" Her tone was disbelieving.

"Hey, I can be pretty convincing." I smiled. She just snarled and started walking down the corridor, hissing in pain as her uniform rubbed on her skin.

"You better hope I never get a chance to return the favor, you asshole." She told me.

"Just shut up and head for the Military Operations Center." I told her. "If they aren't there, we'll use the PA to tell them we're waiting for them there."

She opened her mouth and I backhanded her across the back of the head. "Walk, bitch."

Her shoulders slumped, and she kept walking. She wasn't doing the semi-shambling walk that people who were completely broken did. She probably thought I was buying her act, but I knew she'd bounced back from what had happened and was trying to figure out a way to get the drop on me.

She probably figured she'd throw a monkey-wrench in any plans I had, that she'd convince the agents to shoot me dead, or maybe strap me to a chair so she could get a turn.

"So what are you going to do when we meet up with Agent Fellman? Are you just going to ask him to let you and the other go?" She sneered. "I don't think he's going to be interested in listening when I tell him what you did."

"We'll see when we get there. Now shut up." I slapped her across the back of the head again.

"Following the three second rule?" Bomber asked me. He was walking along next to me, dressed in BDU's without battle rattle. I looked at him and he pointed at Agent Killain and then put his finger over his lips in a shushing motion.

I nodded, and he grinned.

"I hate it when you do that shit." Nancy bitched from behind me. She was wearing Daisy-Dukes, sandals, and a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. I shrugged.

One of the things we were taught was that no plan survived past three seconds of contact with the enemy.

So I didn't have any plan beyond my initial encounter. I had an overall plan, what my mission objectives were, but as far as a detailed plan, I didn't bother.

I was more heavily armed than it looked. My trusty .45, five knives, and a CS grenade.

I knew better than to believe that I wouldn't need them.

"What do you think is going to happen, Ant? Do you think you'll just trade me for those worthless fucker's lives and we'll just you go?" She asked. "Maybe some of the Privates, but you, that Major, and those two idiots that were with you are all dead men."

"You know, you aren't exactly giving me a reason to keep you alive or to trust any of your word?" I told her. "Maybe I shouldn't try to bargain, maybe I should just kill you, then kill your three friends and claim you never arrived."

She stopped and turned around, staring at me in disbelief. "You.. you wouldn't..."

I backhanded her. Not hard enough to knock her off her feet, but hard enough to get her attention. "Keep walking, Agent." When I raised my hand again, she turned around and kept walking, moving faster.

The only sound were our breathing, footsteps, and somewhere the sound of sirens. The sirens were muffled, coming from a long away.

When we got the Military Operations Center the door was closed, the bar returned to the normal position. I'd been worried that the feds knew how to reset the bars, how to override them, and the site of the bar we'd left sticking straight out locked into the down position gave heavy evidence that they did.

"Throw the bar, Agent." I told her. She glared at me, but did it anyway, and we stood there till it locked into position, exposing the airlock. "After you, Agent."

When the door shut, we stood there for a long moment while she glared at me. Her body tensed, and I laughed.

"Seriously?" I just laughed at her. "You're going to try me where I'm at my best?" I raised my hand and she flinched. "I'll just bitch slap you, then take the boots to you."

The tension went out of her and she slumped. I lowered my hand.

"Throw the bar." I told her. She did so, and the door started to raise.