Chapter 193: Talk about Talking

I had no idea what the local cops would make of the mess we had left at the downtown park. It was however unavoidable. I would never have started the shooting that close to downtown, not if I felt that I had a choice. It seemed as though the chinks didn't have a problem with it at all.

There was no way any of my crew would fire on a cop, but the chink crew would have had a firefight with the devil himself. They just had no regard for life at all. Since the chink we kidnapped was evidently high up in the gang, it looked as though our search for a lead to the Chinese Tong was coming to an end.

"Maxine, we need to talk," The obvious leader of the Swamp Thing contingency demanded.

"Okay, what should we talk about?" I asked.

"The prisoner, he isn't just a member of a criminal enterprise, he also holds information that would be valuable to a lots of agencies. He knows who is leaking information that keeps these clowns out of jail. Not to mention the names of the people helping them with their business." he said.

"And this means the Admiral wants to trade him for something of value to him no doubt," I suggested.

"Yes," he said simply.

"I'm sorry, he belongs to me first. You get what is left." I said it looking him hard in the eyes.

"We can't live with that," he said.

"You are going to have to," I stated flatly.

"We need a compromise here," he said. "When you interrogate these men, they are inches from death at the end of it. We have professionals with medical training and supervision. We can do what you do in a couple of days, and give you the information you need."

"In two days the Harvard Chink will have moved again. Five or six hours is all the time I have. The information is useless after that." I said.

"Well I hate to say it, but if you don't play it my way, we will take him," the intel officer said.

"If you take him, you are going to have to kill me. Then you are going to have to kill Earl because he will have filmed it. Lucas too, since he will know. That makes three friendlies, but then you guys have been known to lose track of your friendlies." I said to make it plain that the Admiral could not afford any more bad press, especially not for operating in the USA.

"Okay then, no physical torture or we roll to the the local cops," he said.

"Not your best plan, since it would get us all jailed." I said. "But I will give standard interrogation a try. I have enough groundwork laid, so that he might be moved."

"Alright, at least you will saved me a few bucks on my power bill," I said it even though it was not something I was happy about. We got the one they called Woo into my living room with the

blue plastic tarp covering the floor. I thought I might have a chance to talk sense to him, since hadn't been one of the shooters.

I threw the pictures of all three people I had tortured onto the table. I didn't say a word, I just move to the kitchen portion of the room to reheat coffee. I allowed him to get a good look at the images which even I found disturbing.

His eyes danced in terror, when I returned to sit down across from him. I began with, "Is it Mr. Woo, or is there a better way to address you?" I asked the man we had nicknamed Fang, since he would't speak to anyone.

"Mr. Woo, I get that you are a bad ass Chinese thug. One who would kill me with no remorse, yeah I get all that. I get that you would die rather than betray your family and the Tong. What I don't know is what you would do if it were one or the other. I doubt that you even know that." While speaking I had made myself comfortable in the seat across from Fang. "So here is the deal Mr. Woo, You can tell me where to find the bosses tonight, and they will be dead by morning. Not in jail, but dead. It is the only way that your family and my friends will be safe, I have no choice but to kill them all. Neither do you, if your family is to survive. I had a conversation on a phone, which I'm sure has been hacked by your technological men. In that conversation I told the DEA that the information, for the drug raid at the downtown park, came from you. I also thanked them for being sure that you lived. So now I just kill you and the tong kills all your family in China as a warning, Simple and elegant wouldn't you say?"

It was the only thing I could come up with on such short notice. It did sound believable to me, I let him stew a bit, while he looked at the photos. "Would you want more information?" he asked.

"Not me, when the guys who are trying to kill me are dead, I am through with it. You will be in the hands of Swamp Thing. I have no way to control what they do." I admitted.

"You do tell the truth about that, so I think you do about the other as well. I will tell you. When I tell you about Ling Po, we are through." he said.

"Understand this, I need to kill them all to free myself and my friends from the threat. In doing so, I will also free your family. It is the only way." I had to admit that it put him in a bad place, but long ago he chose the road on which he tread.

"Ling Po had the plan for years. He knew that one day the operation would be compromised. There are fall back levels. Level one is where we all went first. We just moved everything from the warehouse to an old deserted factory building. Ling ordered shipments stopped for one week. So far no one has bothered the airport operation, so he will start the shipments again."