“Okay… I’ll go get the boat. You get him on his feet and into shallow water where he’ll be easier to handle. Hold his head under if he drags his ass. Piranha only take little bites, but watch out for the crocs and snakes. We’ll meet up, put him into the boat, and off we go upriver toward that airstrip.” He added, “I’ll call Worley from the boat. We should be in Bogotá, Panama, or Gitmo in time for cocktails.”
Taylor didn’t reply, and she walked back to Mercer.
* * *
Taylor pulled Mercer’s knife from her pocket and cut a strip of cloth from his pant leg to use as a gag.
He said to her, “When my men get their hands on you, they’ll make you dance naked every night before they each tell you what they want—a blow job, anal sex, or vaginal sex.”
“Your men are not very nice, Captain.”
“You’ll pray for death, or maybe you’d enjoy it.”
“What happened to Captain Mercer?”
“He died in Afghanistan.”
She shoved his wet handkerchief in his mouth, then tied the gag tightly around his head. “Let’s get up.” She tried to help him up but he resisted, so she rolled him on his side and threw a roundhouse punch into his groin.
Mercer screamed in pain through his gag, but the sound didn’t travel very far.
“Okay? Do we stand, or do we get another one?”
Mercer was more cooperative on the next try, and Taylor got him on his feet.
She took the end of the rope binding his hands and passed it between his legs, then led him toward the river and into the shallows, then upstream toward the fishing platform. She could see Brodie, who was more than halfway to the platform, alternating between wading in the water and swimming where it was deeper.
She glanced at the shoreline near the platform, scanning for Mercer’s men, and she noticed that Mercer was doing the same thing. Eventually someone would come to look for him. This was going to be close.
* * *
Brodie reached the platform and quickly checked the fuel level of the boat they’d taken from Kavak. Half-full, same as the one they’d taken from the mudflat. He stood in the waist-high water, pulled his knife, and cut the starter cord, then went under the platform to the other boat and saw that Taylor had tied the bow line to a supporting stilt. He cut the line and dragged the boat off the river bottom and out into the current, where he scrambled aboard.
The boat drifted downstream. He didn’t want to start the motor, so he paddled with an oar, canoe-style, like he’d done as a kid upstate, keeping the boat close to the riverbank but away from the shallow bottom.
He saw Taylor ahead, making her way toward him with Mercer in tow. The prisoner seemed to be compliant, but not moving at his best speed, so Taylor was yanking on the rope to adjust his balls and his attitude.
Brodie glanced back at the fishing platform, expecting to see the boys with the toys, just like earlier this morning, but there was no one there. Must be a good lunch.
Brodie suspected that Mercer’s men were not used to showing initiative and that they were smoking and joking at lunch, faithfully following their last orders, which were to wait for Señor Kyle. Hopefully, they’d still be waiting when dinner was served. If not… he and Taylor had a problem. The next five or ten minutes were critical.
He and Taylor were about twenty feet apart, and Mercer, who Brodie noticed was gagged, didn’t seem to want a canoe ride, so he stopped and played donkey. Taylor swung around and apparently kicked his legs from under him, and he fell face first into the water. With his arms tied behind his back, he wasn’t getting up so easily, especially with Taylor holding his head.
She wasn’t actually waterboarding him, but maybe she should let him up for air before he drowned. But she held him there, and Brodie could see Mercer’s legs and heavy boots thrashing.
Brodie knew that Taylor could be tough on the job, taking no shit from the guys they’d arrested at Fort Campbell. But he was certain that Taylor was giving Kyle Mercer a little extra attention because of the attention he’d given her. Yet she didn’t want to terminate Kyle Mercer with extreme prejudice, as her CIA former boyfriend would say. She had a soft spot, so maybe she should let the