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.