Her eyes opened then, and when she stirred she saw the men. Justin saw the fear in her eyes, the panic, and she tried to claw herself away from him, but it was no good. One of the men leaned down and hit her. Justin heard the crack of fist against jaw and he saw her go slack. He still couldn’t move, not freely, but now he knew it didn’t make any difference. He was one and he was naked, and they were four and they had guns.
So all Justin could do was watch in horror and then resignation as one man raised his pistol and shot Reggie Bokkenheuser in the chest. As she toppled sideways, Justin realized he knew one of the men, recognized him, he’d been in Justin’s office. Hubbell Schrader. And it was Schrader who now looked at him, said something in that monotone they all had, all these guys. Justin didn’t hear everything that Schrader said. He just heard the words “FBI” and “enemy combatant,” and Justin started to go, “What the fuck? Enemy combatant?” but the words didn’t come out because he couldn’t speak when he got a look at Reggie, on her side, deadly still, and then Hubbell Schrader turned his gun on Justin, held it at point-blank range, and pulled the trigger.
All Justin could do was feel the darkness, the shadows that fell over him, then he rolled over, consciousness fading, and something happened that he’d wanted for a long time, for years, ever since Alicia had died, but not now, he thought, he didn’t want it now, not now, not now. But whatever he thought didn’t matter because it had finally happened: he slipped away into the blackness and felt and saw and heard nothing.
PART THREE
27
The air smelled stale.
The foul odor wafted up his nostrils, slid down his throat, and his stomach turned over. He began to gag. That’s when he understood that he was alive. In a cramped place, facedown on a floor, his face shoved down into some grungy carpet-like thing, unable to move much. But alive. His first response was surprise. Then confusion. And then Justin Westwood realized that he didn’t feel elated or even relieved. As his head slowly cleared, as his eyes began to focus, he realized that he felt resigned. Resigned that things hadn’t come to an end. Resigned to the throbbing in his temple and the empty feeling that had long ago replaced his soul. Resigned to the fact that life was going to go on. At least for a little while longer.
He struggled to turn over on his side, felt his face brush up against something. A new smell overwhelmed him. Leather. He coughed and the force from the movement made his eyes fly open. The smell of leather was coming from a shoe, just inches from his face. He heard the rustling of cloth. His vision was wavy, his senses jumbled, but it seemed like a pant leg moving. Then he heard a drone, a harsh, steady buzz. The light-it seemed to be streaming in from a window-was making him wince, but his eyes stayed open, and Justin thought, I’m on a plane.
It felt familiar. Looked familiar. His head twisted and he saw something, his brain couldn’t quite take it in, then it clicked: a large fuel tank, like the one he’d seen in the small plane that Hutchinson Cooke had died in. His head turned again and he saw the shoe move. A quick sudden movement. He anticipated the blow a moment before it happened but there was nothing he could do about it. The kick came and the pain in the side of his head was sudden and overwhelming. He had another brief wave of nausea, then there were no more smells, no more sensations, and his eyes were shut and there was only darkness again.
When Justin woke up again, the drone of the plane had disappeared. So had the stale air, replaced by the smell of dirt and humidity and sweat. His head ached, behind the eyes, from whatever drug had been used to put him out, and in his right temple, where he’d been kicked. His mouth felt dry and dusty, his tongue was coated with crust, his throat constricted. Things were quiet; he ascertained no movement around him. The sense of elation was still missing and the deep crush of resignation was overwhelming.
It was life as usual, Justin decided.
He slowly stood up, was overcome by dizziness, looked for someplace to sit back down and realized there was nothing to sit on. Only floor. He took a step toward the wall, leaned heavily against it, surveyed the room he was in. It was small, the size of a cell. The wall he was leaning against was made of stucco and he assumed the other three were the same. The front wall had a wooden door that he didn’t even bother trying. He knew it would be locked. The door had a small slat in it. The slat was shut now but Justin figured it could be opened from the outside. A way to peer in. When closed, no way to peer out. On the opposite wall, maybe eight or nine feet off the ground, was a small window. It let in just a sliver of air and sunlight, and as best as Justin could tell, there were bars across it. He looked down now. The floor was dirt. Nothing fancy about it, just hard-packed dirt.
He felt a dull pain in his chest, opened his shirt and looked down to see an ugly purplish bruise immediately below his heart. It’s where they’d shot him, using some kind of tranquilizing bullet or dart. Some sort of stun gun. He hoped it’s what they had used on Reggie. He told himself that it had to have been. It was too painful to think otherwise. He had to drive the picture of her-sprawled on the bed, turned on her side, her head thrown back, twisted in fear-out of his mind. He wondered if she were alive. If she were there or if they’d only taken him.
He turned suddenly, lurching at a noise that came in through the tiny window. A bird maybe. Or wind. Or a branch rustling against the roof. The movement made his chest hurt like hell but Justin ignored the pain. He decided that pain was the least of his worries. What bothered him the most was that he didn’t have a clue what the most of his worries was.
All he could do was wait.
He tried jumping up to look out the one window but his head and his chest felt like they’d explode, and it didn’t matter anyway because he couldn’t see a thing. The slit was too narrow and there was nothing to hold on to to keep him eye level with the opening for more than a moment. He could hear sounds wafting in. Nothing specific, but he took the noise to be other human voices. He wondered if there were other prisoners there. Probably not, he decided. More likely workers. Or people who had absolutely nothing to do with this and were oblivious to his circumstances. Briefly, he wondered where the hell he was, but he cut off that line of thinking when he realized it was pointless. He could be absolutely anywhere. At least anywhere warm. That was all he could ascertain: the breath of air that managed to find its way in through the sliver of a window was hot for November. So he took a guess: Florida. That was the best he could do.
He waited for what he figured to be an hour. Maybe even two. He was still not alert yet, although the fog caused by the tranquilizer was beginning to lift. But he waited, not letting the solitude bother him, until it had been long enough that he thought, Where are they? Why hasn’t anyone come? And then maybe another hour passed and still nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Justin was hungry now. And thirsty. He didn’t know how long it had been since he’d eaten. Hell, he didn’t have any idea what time it was. Or how long he’d been unconscious. He assumed it was the same day, the day he’d been taken, but he couldn’t even swear to that.
He’d tried to keep his brain clear. Knowing that, at some point, someone was going to come in and question him, he wanted to be as loose as possible. He didn’t know how far his interrogator might go, but he didn’t want to make it easy on him. He didn’t want any names or facts right at the front of his brain, nothing that would roll quickly out of his mouth.