by Barry Eisler
Most people find it hard to do two things at once, like complete a sentence and avoid a palm heel to the nose. Which was why I nailed him that way in mid-thought. It wasn’t the world’s hardest shot, but as a simple setup, it didn’t need to be. It just needed to disrupt his focus and rock him back onto his heels. Which it did.
I stepped past him, my right hand catching his throat in an eagle claw grip and my right leg sweeping both his legs from under him. But for the throat grab and substitution of concrete for a mat, it was pretty much the classic osoto-gari, or big outer leg reap, I had performed hundreds of thousands of times in my years at the Kodokan. Basic, but still one of my favorite throws.
For a split second, Mr. Helper was suspended horizontally. Then he was accelerating downward, assisted substantially by the downward force I was exerting on his neck. The back of his skull blasted into the sidewalk with a resounding crack, like the sound a thick book makes when someone slams it closed.
Palming the folding knife I had clipped to my front pocket, I checked my perimeter. Still clear. I took a step toward his two friends, who were rooted in place. “Do you still want to help me?” I asked, my voice calm.
“No, man,” one of them answered, his hands raised palms out in supplication. They started backing away. “It’s cool, man.”
I checked the papers the next day, and there was nothing about a killing in La Goutte. So Mr. Helper must have had a hard head. The only downside of the whole thing, from my perspective, was that prudence required I steer clear of the area for a while.
There were other places, though, and I continued to visit them at night. Still, the nocturnal prowling helped only so much. Situational awareness for countering potential street crime is one thing. The fever pitch alertness required to survive professionals who are patiently, dispassionately, specifically, maneuvering to take your life is something else. If you’re addicted to the latter, and maybe I was, the former is no more than an occasional dose of methadone in the face of a long-term heroin habit.
As my relationship with Delilah deepened, and as I gradually eased myself away from the mindset you need to survive in the life, it was as though the part of myself that was so adept in dangerous environments, the part that had kept me alive in the jungle in Vietnam and then in countless urban jungles afterward, didn’t like what was going on. That killer inside me, that iceman who could always do what needed to be done, felt he was being marginalized, disenfranchised. But what could I do? I didn’t know how to propitiate him, or even if I could. All I knew was that he was deadly, as deadly as anyone I’ve ever known, and capable of almost anything if he felt his survival required it. I could feel him looking for a reason, a rationale, an excuse to come surging back and shove me out of the way.
Someone who needed him, say. Someone in danger. Someone like Dox.
4
DOX CAME TO SUDDENLY. One moment he was out, gone, and then it was as though someone had pressed his reboot button. He blinked and swallowed, and for a moment he thought maybe it had been a nightmare. He had that kind of dream from time to time, where the bullets would just plop out of his rifle, or his knives would all get stuck in their sheaths, and when it happened he knew he needed to train, because hard training was the only way to sleep well again. But this time, as he came around, the images in his mind only grew sharper, and he knew it had really happened. He’d gotten grabbed.
Christ, he was sore all over. Must have gotten bounced around some while he was out. He tried to move and couldn’t, then realized why. His wrists and ankles were secured, and his hands were stretched back above his head. Actually, below his head was more like it, because as he recovered his senses he saw that he was strapped to a declined board, with his feet about a foot higher than his head. Well, that wasn’t a good sign.
Where the hell was he? A small room, maybe ten by ten. Wood walls. Fluorescent lights. Nothing else to go on. He felt like he was rising and falling and thought it was because he was woozy, but then he recognized the rhythm for what it was. He was on a boat, and the movement he felt was of swells underneath him.
Who had taken him? Whoever they were, they were good. They hadn’t wasted a second once the blond guy engaged him. The flankers were ready and knew exactly when to move in. Coordination like that showed not just skill, but the kind of unit confidence and cohesion you get only after a lot of training together. These weren’t freelancers. They’d worked together as a team before.
He wondered if that asshole Jim Hilger had something to do with it. He’d sensed as much in the instant before he blacked out, and he’d learned to trust his instincts on these things. First answer, best answer, that was usually his experience. And now that he was awake and thinking, he saw there was some logic behind that initial, unconscious conclusion. The coordination and skill, for one thing, that felt like Hilger. After all, the man had been Special Forces and then CIA before going off the reservation. And there was a motive that could explain things, too. He and Rain had killed two very bad men in Hilger’s network, one an arms dealer, the other a terrorist trying to buy nuclear matériel, forcing Hilger to go to ground in the process, and it was possible the man was the type to hold a grudge. Yeah, this was probably about Rain, too, otherwise why didn’t they just kill him outright in front of the Bintang? Why run all the extra risks of a snatch? Well, whatever, he’d find out who did it and what they wanted soon enough.
He was furious at himself for being stupid enough to get nailed like this. He’d waited too long, that was his first mistake. He hadn’t checked his perimeter until the blond guy asked for his help, when he should have checked it from within the store, or, failing that, then as soon as he’d stepped outside. Dumb, just fucking dumb. If he’d seen those guys standing around in their helmets, he would have gone to code red with an extra two seconds to spare, before they’d even gotten a chance to move on him, and that would have made all the difference.
And he shouldn’t have gone for the knife immediately when he saw something was off—that was reflex, to reach for a weapon, but there it was the wrong reflex. He should have moved first, moved off the X, the killing spot, made them react, chase after him, whatever. He would have had plenty of time to get to the knife, and hold on to it, after that. Wasn’t that one of the things John was always telling him? Move. Never give them a stationary target. Sometimes he felt like Rain was lecturing him and bristled at it, but he had to admit the man knew what he was talking about.
He wondered how they had traced him. Well, there were a lot of ways they might have learned he was in Ubud, if they had enough resources. From there, they probably deployed a watcher at every grocery store in town, knowing he would have to show eventually. When he did, someone used a radio or a mobile phone to alert the others, and they converged on the Bintang while he was inside. When was the last time he’d been there? Four days earlier…no, five. So they’d probably been in town close to a week. Had he seen anyone who set off his radar? No, but there were always tourists passing through Ubud, and besides, if these guys were in helmets and on motorcycles, they would have been damn near impossible to spot.
At least one of them must have been driving a van. They’d injected him with fentanyl or Rohypnol, something like that, that was the sting in his neck. Shove him into the van after knocking him out, and they’re off before anyone could intervene or even be sure what was happening. Change vehicles somewhere close by, then head for the coast where they’d moored the boat. Which pretty much brought things up to date.
He took a deep breath. All right, he’d fucked up. Hard to argue about it at this point. But there was no use beating up on himself—he had a feeling someone else would be taking care of that, and more, soon enough. Being demoralized would only make it harder for him to keep his shit wired tight.
And he could keep it tight, he knew that. It wasn’t how far you fell, it was how high you bounced—his dad had once told him that and he’d never forgotten it. If he could survive sniper school, he could survive anything.
He could certainly survive this, whatever it was. He just had to remember who he was and what he was made of. He had to hold that close and not let them separate him from it.
He waited a long time, silently telling himself jokes he liked. That one he’d told Rain about the bear was great. The guy didn’t like to laugh much, which made it all the more satisfying to get to him. When Dox got out of this, he’d be sure to tell Rain the one about kabunga. That would be apt, under the circumstances.
He reminded himself from time to time that the waiting was part of it, part of how they hoped to wear him down, with uncertainty about everything, who had taken him, what this was about, where he was, what might happen next, when it might happen. He’d been trained to resist interrogation, and knowing what to expect was half the battle. He was pleasantly surprised, even bolstered, to realize the training was really helping.
After what he estimated was three hours, the door to the room opened. The blond dude, who he recognized from the parking lot, came in first, followed by a scary-looking bald guy, and then a smaller specimen who looked way too young to be mixed up in any of this. The bald guy and the young one he assumed had been wearing the helmets in front of the Bintang. He heard another set of footsteps, and sure enough, there he was—Hilger, just as Dox had suspected. Okay, check off the who box. Why and where were still open.
The four of them stood around him, observing him silently. About fifteen seconds passed.
Dox yawned. “If this is nothing pressing,” he said, “I’d like to ask you boys to give me another twenty minutes or so to continue my nap. I’m sure you didn’t mean to, but you’ve interrupted me.”
He chuckled, enjoying fucking with them while he could. He might not be able to keep it up, but half of what they planned to do to him involved the infliction of dread, and damned if he would accommodate them by actually feeling it.
Not unless he absolutely had to.
5
HILGER SLID a wooden chair over and sat facing Dox. He observed the big man for a moment, as silently and dispassionately as a scientist studying a microbe. He wanted Dox to understand that he viewed him not as a man, but merely as a subject, the focus of a series of impending if/then sequences that meant nothing to Hilger other than his desire for a certain result.
“I’m going to make this as easy for you as I can,” Hilger said, his voice low, his tone reasonable. “There’s no need for you to suffer, or even to be uncomfortable. The information I want isn’t going to compromise anyone. It’s not going to put anyone in danger. It’s just going to enable me to contact someone. That’s all.”
Dox smiled. “The ladies in my little black book wouldn’t be interested in you, amigo, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you. They seem to prefer their men handsome and virile.”
Hilger sighed. He’d seen men in Dox’s position before, many of them. What they all had in common was fear. What differed, what was interesting, was the way they tried to cope with it.
Some men, faced with torture, would bluster. Some men begged. Both types were really two sides of the same coin: their focus was the interrogator, and because of this they tended to crack easily. As soon as they saw that their bluster and begging were useless, that they couldn’t make a human connection that would stop the pain and torment, their psyches folded and information began to spill out.
There was another type that would go silent even before the interrogation began, who wouldn’t utter a word even later, even while screaming. These men were more self-contained, and therefore more difficult to crack. They didn’t expect anything from their interrogator. They conceived of him not so much as a human agent, but as more of a natural force, like foul weather or a disease. Not as something that could be reasoned with or negotiated with or otherwise influenced, but rather as something that could only be ridden out.
There was a third type, also very tough, and, in Hilger’s experience, the rarest variety. These were the men who under duress defaulted to some core personality setting from which they derived strength and comfort. Dox, it seemed, was part of this last group. They didn’t disengage from the interrogator the way the stoics did, but their behavior wasn’t calculated to affect the interrogator like that of the beggars and blusterers, either. Its function instead was self-referential. What Dox was doing, although Hilger wasn’t sure if he was even conscious of it, was proving that if he could still crack jokes, he was still himself. If he was still himself, he was still in control, and things couldn’t be that bad.
Which was what made breaking men like Dox so hard. It wasn’t just a question of pain. Pain was a surface thing. To break a man like Dox, you had to break him down deep. Even with a jihadist, it was an unpleasant thing to have to do. With an American, a former serviceman like Dox, it could be grim.
“I know from your file you’ve been through SERE,” Hilger said. “Did they waterboard you?”
SERE was the military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape program. The purpose of the question was twofold: first, to bring forth memories that would trigger anxiety; second, to suggest that Hilger knew a great deal about Dox, that he was in complete control.
“You tell me,” Dox said, and Hilger thought, Touché.
“They did,” Hilger continued. “You held out for almost five minutes. Your instructors were impressed.”
Dox smiled. “They gave me a gold star.”
“It’s different when it’s not in the classroom. Worse.”
Dox glanced up at his bound feet. “You know, just because the latest chickenshit legislation says it’s okay to do this sort of thing doesn’t mean you should be doing it. Shame on y’all.”
Pancho laughed. “Why not? The legislation even promises to indemnify us, if we get in trouble.”
Dox looked at him. “Especially shame on you, son. You’re a disgrace to the Marines.”
Pancho startled for a moment, then glanced at the Semper Fi tattoo on his forearm, realizing where Dox had gotten his information.
Hilger could almost have smiled. Dox was playing the same “I know more than I’m letting on” game Hilger was.
“And where’s that accent from?” Dox said. “You from Mexico?”
Pancho’s eyes narrowed. “You have a problem with that?”
Dox turned his head and spat. “Well, it explains a few things.”
Pancho started to move forward. Demeere stepped in front of him and said, “Easy, easy.”
“Go ahead,” Dox said. “You might be able to take me, tied up as I am.” Then he added something in Spanish that made the blood drain from Pancho’s face and scalp. Pancho tried to move around Demeere, but the big man kept him back.
Hilger was impressed. Dox was using what he could to control what he could, and steadying himself in the process. Before he could manipulate the environment any further, Hilger said, “You’re right, it’s strange there was such a fuss over these…what did the president call them? ‘Alternative interrogation techniques,’ that’s right. Because mostly they’re ineffective, it’s true. You haul in a fishing trawl’s worth of field-level jihadists? You don’t know who they are, much less what they know? Hook up the alligator clips and crank the generator and they spew so much bullshit that even if there’s some real intel mixed in with it, you’ll never know, much less be able to make use of it.”
He paused as though in thought. “But when you know who you’ve captured? And you know he’s got the information you’re after? And you can immediately verify the quality of that information as soon as you extract it? Well, when you’ve got all that, alligator clips and a generator are pretty much a man’s best friend.”
“Listen to what you just said,” Dox said. “Really, listen. Alligator clips and a generator are a man’s best friend? You’ve been out in the field too long, amigo. All of you have. You’ve got to get yourself some help. You need it.”
Hilger was getting irritated despite himself. “What I need,” he said, “is information. Tell me how I contact Rain.”
Do
x chuckled. “Yeah, I thought you might be pissed about Hong Kong. How’s the back, by the way? That was a heavy chair.”
Hilger cautioned himself not to take the bait. He had to be smarter than that. If he reacted like Pancho, they’d all just wind up beating the shit out of the subject and get nothing of any value.
“The back is fine,” Hilger said. “Thanks for asking.”
“What do you want with Rain? You mad at him for killing that guy Al-Jib? Boy wanted to make an atomic bomb for Al-Qaeda. And you were going to give him the matériel. I’ll tell you the truth, it’s hard for me not to be sick just talking to you from this close.”
“What you don’t know about Al-Jib,” Hilger said, “would fill a book. And when AQ does get a bomb or a radiological device, you and your friend can thank yourselves for it. You fucked up an operation that would have stopped it.”
“That what you tell yourself when the Ambien’s not working and you’re lying awake at night?”
It was strange. Initially, seeing Dox helpless had eclipsed Hilger’s anger at the man’s previous interference, at the long recovery Hilger had endured after getting hit with that chair. But now that brief and improbable moment of sympathy was receding so quickly, it almost seemed not to have happened at all.
Hilger was beginning to accept that this wasn’t going to be an easy one. True, the information he wanted from Dox would entail only a minor betrayal, but the man’s honor and self-image required him to part with nothing without a fight. And, although his repeated requests now were likely to prove as futile as Dox’s resistance later, Hilger had his own reasons for trying one more time. It would make the memories of what happened next easier to deal with.
“I’d prefer a phone number,” he said, his tone still reasonable. “Or an e-mail address. Or the URL for a secure electronic bulletin board. Why don’t you give me one of those instead?”
