The Last Operation (The Remnants of War Series, Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

for a security company. Yea, the biggest security company of them all, The CIA, thought Daniels.
    They argued over details and payments. Daniels never figured out, never wanted to figure out really, whether it was the money, Loony or the Edge that made him accept the job.

 
     
     
    Chapter 5

     
    Hector Durand played the good host. Dressed in English riding britches and silk shirt, he looked like a lord of the manor, solicitous of his guest's comfort. The room he stood in was below ground, a basement carved out of rock. It was wide but Oscar Velez and James LeCount could only roam about half of it. That was the reach the manacles and chains around their ankles would allow. Just enough room to reach the open toilet in the corner and the cots they sat on. No windows existed to let in natural light. The bare cement floor tilted slightly to a small open drain as if the room needed periodic flushing. Even though it was dry, the place had the musty damp smell of a cave. Bright lights from the ceiling lit up the dark stains etched into the floor. The wall close to Hector Durand held two closets with their doors opened. They were shallow indentations, no more than two feet recessed into the wall and three feet wide. The doors were of heavy knotted oak with thick black iron latches on the outside.
    A man entered the room carrying a burlap sack. Something moved inside the sack. A wide scar ran from the left side of the man's nose, around a mouth hidden by a bushy mustache, and down to his throat. Every few minutes his face twitched, making the scar jump like a long white tapeworm. He put the burlap bag down by Hector Durand who ignored it. Two men with dull brutish eyes followed him. They half-carried half-dragged a thin young man between them. The new prisoner was average height but seemed lost between the two human mountains holding him up. They brought him before Hector Durand and one of the guards pulled up his lolling head by his hair. The man's nose was crushed and his mouth rendered to bloody pulp. Only one tooth was visible, knocked out of the gum and driven into the pierced cheek. He moaned softly as his eyes opened and closed.
    "You have been a little too enthusiastic Miguel," said Hector Durand. "I need him awake."
    The man with the scar, Miguel Aquilino, was enforcer and security chief for the Durand brothers. He smiled and took a hypodermic from a pouch on his belt. The sack at his feet moved slowly up and down, writhing with its own life. He injected the young man then wiped his face with a wet cloth. It was a slow move, deceptively gentle, but the eyes were pinpoints of ice in a face filled with inhumanity. The young man's eyes opened, the drug waking him, flooding his nerves with sensations of pain from the brutal beating he'd endured.
    "Please, please Senor Durand," the young man's words slurred as they passed from his ruined mouth, "I swear, I did not betray you."
    "Yes you have," said Hector Durand, his tone gentle and soft, like a father mildly reprimanding a much loved but wayward son. "You have indeed Antonio. Certain sources have told me you are an informant for the CIA. As if that could matter. But I forgive. You are weak. I will give you the strength you need."
    He stepped close to the young man until his face was inches away, the eyes in close contact like little peepholes into each other's soul. Hector Durand felt the young man's trembling and the dread in his soul. He reveled in the feelings that washed over him as he stepped back and nodded. Miguel grinned, a cruel mirthless parody of a smile, the grin of a true sadist. He reached down, picked up a corner of the burlap sack and turned it upside down. The contents slithered onto the concrete floor with a muted whispering noise.
    It was big, at least eight feet long and thick as a man's forearm. It coiled itself and raised the triangular head on the column of circular muscles that was its body. The muscles under the head expanded into the dreaded hood. Its