American Terrorist Trilogy

by Jeffrey Poston

  Carl woke up in a tiny, dimly lit, concrete cell smaller than his walk-in closet at home. It was maybe five feet square. The first thing he felt was a savage pain in his shoulder joints, and for a moment he thought the doctor was still shocking him. Then he realized he was kneeling, hanging over to his left. His hands were cuffed behind his back, and the cuffs attached him to the concrete wall by some manner he couldn’t see. The result was that his arms were wrenched painfully back and upward, while his upper body leaned forward. His butt couldn’t quite rest on his heels, nor the floor, and almost his entire body weight was supported by his hyper-extended shoulder joints.

  He tried to get upright on his knees and screamed from the pain of the effort. The tops of his feet felt like someone had used coarse sandpaper to grate all the skin off. For a moment, he sat gasping from the effort of trying to ease the pain in his shoulders, and that’s when he noticed the stink of urine, vomit, and feces. He saw that he was actually squatting in it—his own waste—and so his stomach heaved, adding more waste to the floor.

  Then he remembered the electro-shock torture, and the memory brought back a very real echo of the pain in his spine and his groin. His body still hurt all over. As he looked around the room, he realized he could see out of both eyes. The throbbing pain that lingered in his right eye felt more like a mild headache compared to his other aches and pains.

  Before he could get himself upright on his knees, the steel door opened, and two men dressed in black stood framed in the darkness beyond the doorway. Carl’s prison cell was suddenly lit by an extremely bright halogen spotlight in the ceiling; he could feel its heat on his skin and saw his dark shadow on the floor. But the hallway beyond the door was dark and he couldn’t make out any of the men’s features until one stepped into the tiny cell.

  The man held what looked like a narrow fire hose with a chrome nozzle. He yanked back on a square lever and hit Carl point blank in the face with a hard stream of cold water. Carl screamed and when he did, he took a mouthful of water. The water slammed down his throat and up his nose, and he choked and gasped as the hard stream of water scoured the rest of his body.

  He tried to clamp his legs together to protect his privates, but the man had expert aim. The water hit him so hard he felt like he’d been kicked in the groin. He threw up again, which earned him another blast in the face. He took the torrent of water in his eyes, nose, and mouth, and even on his throat, leaving him with the feeling he’d been punched in his Adam’s apple.

  The man aimed the flow of water around Carl’s feet, effectively clearing the floor around him. After he shut off the water and stepped back, the second man stepped forward. He held a one-gallon tank that looked like something you’d spray roaches with. Carl found this mental analogy disgusting. He was the roach.

  The guard pressed a button on the nozzle and sprayed an antiseptic liquid over Carl’s body for a few seconds. The liquid stung, especially on his feet and in his eyes, but he found the pain insignificant compared to the torture. It was merely a nuisance pain, a troublesome mosquito, depositing an itchy stinger that couldn’t be scratched.

  Both men retreated into the hallway, put down their appliances, and came back in. One grabbed Carl in a choke hold while the other detached whatever was holding him to the wall. When the restraint came loose, Carl simply collapsed, and the two men dragged him out of the cell and down the hall. With his wrists still cuffed behind his back, the two men hauled him by his armpits. Now he knew why the tops of his feet hurt. The hallway floor was rough and grainy concrete. As the men pulled him down the hall, the tops of his feet dragged across the floor, further agitating the raw, burning wounds.

  They put him on the table again and strapped his legs down. Then they uncuffed him and strapped his arms and torso down. He didn’t fight them. He couldn’t fight them. His body was too weak and too sore. All he could do was plead with them to listen to him, that there had been some kind of mistake, that he wasn’t the man they thought he was. His pleas fell on deaf ears, though. These were hard men, probably soldiers, and they were emotionless. He could tell they’d done this many times, and his pain and agony meant nothing to them.

  After they left the room, the doctor came in, still dressed in his white smock. Or maybe he was wearing a different white smock. Carl pleaded with him too, but the man was equally emotionless. He grabbed Carl’s jaw and pressed his fingers and thumb into the soft flesh and nerve bundles under the jawbone. When Carl opened his mouth to scream, the doctor forced the soft plastic disk into his mouth again. The skin at the corners of his mouth split from dryness. Then the antiseptic residue caused the split skin to burn. It stung and itched, just like other parts of his body, but now the individual occurrences of pain were starting to compound into something more than a nuisance. And he couldn’t massage the bruises or wounds. He couldn’t lick his lips for a temporary respite. All he could do was suffer through the discomfort.

  Carl refocused on the doctor as the man grabbed what looked like a green plant-watering jug and began pouring water into his open mouth. The doctor kept pouring even after his mouth was full, and water was running down his cheeks and neck. He put the jug down on the floor and stood over Carl, watching.

  Carl breathed slowly through his nose, and his eyes went wide as the doctor calmly pinched his nostrils. He tried to plead again, releasing tiny bubbles of air with the effort. Then the doctor punched him in the belly and stepped back. Water from Carl’s mouth sprayed upward and when his reflex made him try to suck in air, some of the water went into his lungs. And then he started drowning.

  The need to cough and breathe at the same time was excruciating, but he couldn’t fight the reflex. He simply lay there choking, watching the doctor watch him. Finally, he managed to swallow the water that remained in his mouth, even as he kept choking. After a few more seconds he was able to regain some composure. The doctor stepped forward and used the metal piece to remove the disk from his mouth.

  “Please! You don’t have to do this. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

  The doctor tapped his ear piece and said, “He’s ready for you.” He paused. “Yeah, for real this time.”

  Familiar boot steps entered the room a minute later and Mr. Gravelly Voice stood over Carl.

  “I understand this is going to take some time, Mr. Reyes. Opponents of harsh interrogation techniques argue that a suspect will say anything under duress just to stop the pain. You see, right now you still have hope. You’re still thinking you can manufacture some believable story that will stall us. Something we will have to actually go out into the world to verify.”

  Klipser nodded at the doctor. “But we’re willing to go through this time-consuming process with you for as long as it takes. Or—” he shrugged. “You can just tell me what I want to know.” The man paused. “Where is she?”

  “Okay, okay.” Carl paused for a moment still breathing heavily. “Okay, I killed her.”

  Klipser smiled. “I can see in your eyes that you’re lying.” He nodded at the doctor again, and the man levered the plug back into his mouth. This time he produced a thick plastic tube that fit precisely through the hole in the disk and stuffed it down Carl’s throat. He fought and struggled and screamed, and then he gagged as the tube blocked his air passage. He couldn’t breathe. He felt it actually moving down into his throat.

  The doctor reached for his water jug again and began pouring water into a funnel on the upper end of the tube. The water flowed straight into Carl’s lungs, except this time he couldn’t cough it up. He felt his chest muscles constricting, tightening, fluttering, and his heart was thumping wildly as he panicked. He was suffocating for real this time and he knew it. He was dying.

  After a moment the doctor pulled the tube from his throat, but Carl had no energy to breathe. His eyesight dimmed to a distant tunnel and then he died.

  Almost.

  Klipser jabbed him hard just under the sternum, and a fountain of water exploded from his mouth. The doctor
quickly rotated the bed so that Carl faced the floor, and the rest of the water drained from his lungs. Then, he began a painful hacking cough as his body strained to get air. He retched again and again.

  That was when he noticed the drain hole in a depression in the floor. It had no cover plate that could get clogged with debris from the torture victims. The bastards thought of everything.

  They had the torture thing down to an exact science and probably had the goddamn table designed or modified specifically for the purpose for which it was now being used. The engineer in Carl recognized that they had bearings at the head and foot of the table so the table could rotate along its long axis. He figured the device had a spring-loaded locking pin that was easy to pull out with one hand, so the doctor could effortlessly rotate the table with the other hand.

  The doctor hauled the bed face up, and Klipser looked down at him again. “We can do this all day.”

  Carl said, “She’s alive. I promise. I’ll give her back.” He started sobbing again. “Just let me go and I’ll give her back.”

  Klipser said, “I’d rather you tell me where she is before I release you.”

  He gave a head nod to the doctor who then found a prominent vein in Carl’s right arm and stuck a needle in it. Then he taped the catheter in place. He reached out of Carl’s sight and brought back a metal rack with several hooks on it. Clear bags with liquids of various hues hung from the hooks, and clear plastic tubing draped from the bottom of each bag. The doctor fiddled with the tubes and Carl got the impression he was connecting them all to the catheter he just stuck in his arm.

  At first he just felt a mild warmth spreading throughout his body. He’d heard that the heart was such a powerful biological pump that it could circulate blood to anywhere in the body in less than thirty seconds. Carl felt the warm tingle of the chemicals flowing through his body.

  Suddenly, the warmth turned into a painful icy feeling, and then a few seconds later his entire body erupted with a searing fire as if every vein and artery burned. The pain was everywhere at once. It filled his head, his chest and arms, his legs and feet, his back and neck, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it except scream.

  Chapter 11

  Time: Unknown; Day: Unknown

  Location: Unknown

  The next time Carl awoke in his cell, he felt different.

  The first time is always the hardest.

  He’d forgotten what famous person tossed that bit of wisdom out into the world a hundred years ago. Maybe it applied to a first kiss, or a first job interview, or a first sporting competition, but whoever thought up that little saying had never been tortured, Carl thought. The first time had been hard, but the second time had been far worse.

  It seemed as if Klipser and the doctor were pacing themselves. Maybe that strategy was, in itself, a psychological component of the torture. Maybe they figured if Carl concluded that each successive interrogation was going to be worse than the previous torture, then he’d cooperate sooner.

  The first time he woke up in his cell, he’d still had the feeling that this whole affair was a big misunderstanding—a case of mistaken identity—and that he could explain his way out if given the opportunity to prove who he was, or rather, who he was not. Now he knew there was no hope of rescue or salvation.

  After the first torture session, he had quickly realized that his eyesight was not gone. The result of that particular torture—electro-shock to the eyes—was temporary. He recalled his sheer panic in believing he had lost an eye. The discovery that he could still see had given him a small amount of hope, but now he had the distinct feeling that Klipser and the doctor had planned that outcome.

  The pain from the second torture session lingered. His body had been fried on the inside by whatever chemicals the doctor had injected him with, and he was still aching as his body absorbed or broke down the chemicals. His throat was raw from screaming. He felt a fatigue deep inside every muscle of his body.

  The government agents were convinced he was someone named Reyes, but they would not explain why they thought so. He knew instinctively that they would not stop torturing him until he told them what they wanted to know, but he had no information to give them.

  They just kept asking him about a girl, but they wouldn’t tell him who she was. Maybe if he knew her identity he could give them some kind of meaningful answer. Maybe it was someone he’d seen before. Maybe she was the daughter of one of his clients. Maybe she was the daughter of some politician who had attended one of the many charity events where he typically spent time volunteering.

  He groaned loudly as he tried to take his weight off his stressed shoulders. He was again chained to the wall with his wrists hiked way up behind his back. His knees were sore from extended contact with the concrete floor. The tops of his feet still throbbed.

  He examined the floor of his cell. It was clean this time, because he hadn’t taken any food or water since his capture. Still, he noticed the drain in the center of the tiny cell. Like the torture room, this drain had no grated cover. The floor of his cell was smooth, no doubt for easy cleaning, while the hallway that tore up the tops of his feet was rough concrete.

  He got his balance on his knees, but he was weak and wobbly. He started to lean forward, but screamed in pain as the strain on his shoulders ignited again. He tried to settle back with his butt on his heels, but his wrists were chained up too high. He tried to fight his way to his feet. He was halfway up when the two guards opened the door.

  They were watching him, he realized, on some kind of closed-circuit camera, and they showed up always right after he awoke. The guard with the hose hit Carl in the groin straight away, and he fell almost to the floor, screaming as his arms were yanked back by the chain. The guard was oblivious to his pain and kept hosing him down with the hard stream of water. He gagged and choked as water was forced up his nose and into his mouth again.

  The second guard sprayed him with disinfectant, and they dragged him down the hall and into his private torture chamber. Then they strapped him to the table, and the doctor went to work on him again.

  The next time he awoke in his cell, he entertained a small number of positive thoughts. He realized the doctor had actually fed him intravenously during the chemical torture. He figured they were also slipping antibiotics and vitamins into the chemical concoction they used to fry his insides. It certainly wouldn’t do to have a prisoner die of starvation in the middle of his interrogation, certainly not when they apparently needed him alive so badly.

  As he fought his way to his knees, he actually chuckled. At least he was getting enough water to drink. He probably swallowed half the water they poured down his throat on the table, even as he choked on the rest. By his count, Klipser and the doctor had suffocated him by water four separate times in between the chemical and electro-shock tortures, and he was pretty sure his heart and lungs had completely stopped functioning two of those times.

  They actually killed him twice. Both times he awoke to find the doctor resuscitating him with emergency medical equipment, and it was that specific fear that kept breaking him. It was one thing, he thought, to know you were going to get tortured almost to death, but it was quite another thing to know they were going to push you over the edge and really let you die. The true panic came from not knowing if they were going to bring you back the next time.

  Even though they watered him and fed him intravenously, he was still extremely hungry and his stomach growled fiercely as he noticed the brown food packet on the floor just inside the door. It was an MRE—Meal Ready-to-Eat—in military parlance. It was an individual, self-contained field ration pack that contained plenty of nutritious calories. He’d seen them, but he’d never eaten one. He’d had plenty of C-rations back in his military days thirty years ago, when pre-packaged military meals in cans tasted like shit. Then someone had invented the MRE, which was cheaper and easier to mass-produce, and reportedly a hell of a lot more tasty.

  The MRE packet was just out
side his reach. Maybe they had measured the lengths of his legs and put the package that length away plus one additional inch.

  Fucking jerks.

  It was at that moment he realized the guards had not come to get him, even though he’d been awake for over a minute. He gazed up at the tiny dark camera lens stuck in the concrete wall over the door opening.

  As he got to his feet he realized how depleted his body was. He legs quivered. His belly cramped painfully. So he just stood there waiting for the guards, eyeballing the dinner packet. After a few more minutes it was clear that his captors were trying another method of torture on him. The MRE was nothing more than psychological torture. He knew that, but he wanted it anyway. He needed it.

  Even if he could reach it, they probably would come and beat the crap out of him again before he got the packet open.

  They’re fucking with me, but what the hell.

  Trying for the food would keep his mind off the residual pain from torture that was still pulsing through his body. It would keep his mind off his next interrogation.

  He stretched out his foot, but the MRE was just beyond his reach. He couldn’t turn sideways either, to get a little extra distance. He stared at the packet, but will power alone did nothing to move it closer to him. Then he imagined himself using “the Force” to move the packet, but the Jedi mind trick didn’t work either.

  He stared at the packet, fantasized about its unknown contents. Maybe it held Mom’s scrumptious meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and gravy. Maybe there was a cheeseburger in there. Then his eyes watered and he found himself sobbing quietly, uncontrollably.

  Fuck!

  Forget the torture. Hell, he’d tell them anything they wanted to hear just for a bite of the contents in that packet.

  With his wrists hiked up behind his back, he tried a little gymnastics. He leaned his head down, and with great difficulty he got his cuffed wrists under his butt. Then he kicked his feet up and actually hung upside down by his wrists for a few seconds before he was painfully able to get first one foot through his arms, then the other. Finally, he stood facing the wall with his wrists now cuffed in front, and he easily stepped toward the door and reached the MRE packet with his right foot. He scooted it closer, then gripped it between his toes and raised it up high enough to grab it with a hand.