But this time he couldn’t stop his throat from opening. The water slid down his esophagus and into his lungs. Icy cold. He lost it and tried to scream. Mindless, panicking, he writhed and bucked on the board.
“You’re shitting yourself,” a voice said in his ear. “Theodore? You’re disgusting. Listen. We won’t let you die. And, no, we won’t shoot you. Beg all you want. We know how this works. Your CIA showed us.”
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck me? You’re the one who’s fucked, Teddy. We can go all night if we have to. Just grunt, and this is over. Why wait? You know you’re going to tell us. Even the SERE guys tell you that. Why not get it over with?”
Choking, writhing, blood tiding behind his eyes, Teddy Oberg slid back into the dark. Not knowing if he was coming back. And not caring.
He didn’t know where he was. Or who. Or what was going on. Some strange noise was filling his head. A roaring, like under a ship. Was he diving, under a ship? What was the mission? What was the mission. Blackness. No air. Water, down his throat. He twisted and fought. Where was his regulator? Couldn’t move his hands. Drop the weight belt. Drop the weight belt. Drop the…
“We’re gonna take a little break now,” someone was saying. Yanked the blindfold off, and slapped his face, hard.
Teddy coughed and choked, vomiting water and snot and stomach acid. His ribs flamed. The light glared. He blinked at a brown concrete wall, a rack of mops.
“Then we’ll do it all over again. We have all night. There’s no hurry.”
He racked in a breath. Snorted what felt like thickened blood through his nose. He blinked at the crazy patterns chasing over the concrete. The room kept rotating. He was getting shadowed images again. Concussion? Or brain damage? It was hard to think, but he forced himself to, whipping his mind like a reluctant donkey. He couldn’t feel his hands, which were still locked behind him. All the muscles in his painfully arched back had cramped hard as rocks. He sucked breath, head swimming. It would’ve been okay to die. He was ready. He’d dared them to shoot him. Practically begged.
But these guys weren’t going to kill him. Just drown him, over and over.
“We can keep this up all night, Teddy,” Kuo said, face leaning in. “All you need is to give us the mission. Come on. Throw me a bone here. I’m on your side, dude.” Beads of sweat were running down his temples. Why was he sweating? I’m the one getting fucking tortured, Teddy thought. Higher-up must be turning the screws on the interrogator, too.
Someone was talking in the corner, arguing, it sounded like, although even at best the lingo sounded harsh and staccato. Smoke drifted toward the ceiling, but he couldn’t smell it. Actually, he couldn’t smell anything. Kuo seemed to be arguing for something, the others against. Teddy stared at the overhead, panting, building up the oxygen in his tissues.
The trouble was, the interrogator was right.
Sooner or later, he was going to give it up. Nobody could hold out forever. Not if your torturers knew what they were doing. Take you to the edge and hold you there, and sooner or later, everybody talks. Everybody.
Not Teddy Oberg, some dying, flaring remnant back in his brain screamed.
Yeah. Him too.
He could give them the EMP. That was only the cover, after all. After that, they’d let him alone.
‘No,” he mumbled, as they started to put the towel over his face again. “No. No. No.”
“Going to cooperate, Teddy? Tell us everything?”
He nodded, but Kuo leaned in close. “I don’t believe you. Lam here says to do it anyway.”
“No. No.” He tried to roll away. He couldn’t help it; he was weeping.
“You’re going to cooperate?”
“Yeah. Yeah.”
“You’re fucked, right? You know that now?”
“Yeah.”
Kuo exchanged glances with someone behind him. “Let’s see. What is your commanding officer’s name?”
“Harch. Bill Harch. Lieutenant. United States Navy.”
“His commander?”
“Laughland. Richard T. Laughland.”
“And his?” Kuo was busy making notes on his iPad.
“Uh, I guess that would be Group One: Captain… Culver. Yeah. Culver.”
They kept going, right up to the president. Kuo made notes. “All right, good. Now we are making progress.” He said something to the big guy, Lam, who chuckled. “But, you know, we can resume, if you prefer.”
“Please don’t,” Teddy said. Weeping openly now. A part of his head was separate, watching, without judgment yet. He couldn’t take this anymore, that was all. Yeah, he was ringing the fucking bell at last. After all these years.
“And your mission? What were you doing on Chinese soil?”
The bulb above them flickered.
Teddy lay with his mouth open. He stared at the bulb.
It flared, terrifically bright, then burned out with a pop.
In the hallway, from the dark, voices boiled, shouting. Something shook the walls, and dust sifted down.
“That,” Teddy said.
From the dark, a gabble. One voice, Kuo’s. “What was that? What just happened?”
He lay staring up as someone lit matches in the hallway. They’d forgotten him. If he could only get his hands free… but they were locked under him in the fucking sharp metal… his legs were strapped down too. He writhed, moaning. Crunched his eyelids. He wasn’t the hard-ass anymore. Now he was the bitch. The pussy. He’d do anything they told him. Suck their dicks. Turn over and let them fuck him in the ass.
Then he remembered.
There was one thing he wasn’t going to tell them.
But he had to tell them everything.
No. He couldn’t tell them that.
But he would. Right now, he knew, he would.
Lying there, alone for just a few seconds in the dark, he doubled his tongue back and tried to swallow it. But it was too swollen. He couldn’t get a grip on it. He bit down, hard, and blood filled his mouth.
A red glow behind his eyelids. A flashlight flicked around the room, then found him.
“Oh, Teddy, Teddy,” Kuo said. Rapid Chinese, and hands grabbed him. Fingers in his mouth. He retched blood.
The bulb flickered. Everyone looked up. It flickered again, then lit, reduced in power, but lit.
“Sergeant Lam is going to be in charge now.” Kuo hesitated, then reached out and patted Obie’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.” He said something else in Chinese, then left. Teddy blinked at the ceiling, too groggy and exhausted to respond.
But he couldn’t miss the big hand grabbing his face. Turning it back and forth, the fingers digging into his eyes. “Hello, Oberg,” Lam said, slowly, holding his gaze. So, he could speak English too. He was grinning, as if contemplating a steak dinner, something he was really going to enjoy.
Lam nodded to the guys behind Teddy. Metal clanked. A series of clanks, as if something was being wound up. He leaned close. “You left something in the dunes. It didn’t hurt us, though. Just blew out a few circuits.
“But you never told us about it.”
Teddy didn’t answer. Real fear stirred in his gut now. The kind he hadn’t felt for a long time.
Lam reached behind him, and metal clinked again. In a lazy voice he murmured, “You are helpless, my friend. There is no way out. Do you realize that now?”
“Hey,” Teddy muttered. “Look, I’m cooperating. I’m your guy now.”