Burning Nation

by Trent Reedy

  I’d been close to death many times since August. But before, I’d always had a chance, been on a chase or in a shoot-out or something. Now none of my friends knew where I was. Even if they did, I was probably too well guarded for them to stage a rescue. Death was a certainty. Major Alsovar would kill me. This asshole who had killed First Sergeant Herbokowitz, Bagley, and Schmidty had beaten me.

  For a moment, that thought made me want to try again to break loose from my restraints. But then I relaxed. If I was going to die, I didn’t want to go to God full of anger and rage. I didn’t want to bring the war with me when I saw Mom again in Heaven. If God would let me into Heaven. I’d killed so many people.

  Maybe my torture and death was some kind of payback. Oh, God, please forgive me. I’m so sorry. Please help me to stay silent through this. Don’t let me tell them anything that could hurt my friends. Please help Sparrow, wherever she is. Be with us both. Amen.

  * * *

  Hours later, the door opened, and there was a flurry of activity. My chair was moved and, I thought, bolted to the floor. The zip ties were removed from my wrists, but my arms were handcuffed to the chair at my sides. The door opened and closed many times. Whatever they were doing, they were taking their time.

  A mechanical buzz started up. Then another. A moment later I felt a wave of heat.

  A soldier removed the bag from my head, walked out of the room, and slammed the door. I blinked my eyes against the fierce bright light shining on me from the other end of the room. Squinting, I saw two large space heaters on the floor. They both must have been running full blast, because this room was warming up quick.

  A tough jolt knocked my whole body. It felt like it came from inside me.

  “Could you feel that, Wright?” Major Alsovar’s voice droned through a speaker somewhere. The sharp spasm rocked me again. I looked down at the chains that held my arms to the chair. An electric wire ran down the length of each chain, connected to some kind of shock emitter on my wrists. “Yeah, I think you felt that.”

  So they were going to cook me alive in here and torture me with electric shock. I smiled, turning my face away from the sunlamps. I’d been zapped by electric fences in cattle pastures that had way more charge than that shock. Such a tiny jolt would never get me to talk.

  Alsovar came into the room a moment later with two men. One was a soldier with what I thought was a captain’s insignia. It was hard to tell in the blinding light. The other wore a white lab coat. A doctor?

  The doctor went behind me as the other two watched. I could hear him rattling around with something back there. Then I felt a cold cloth rubbing the pit opposite my elbow. He was going to inject me with something. I shook my arm around to stop him. Alsovar nodded at the captain, who walked over and held my arm in place against the side of the chair. The doctor duct-taped my upper arm to the chair so I couldn’t move it. Then the needle went in, and he started an IV.

  “Hold his head back at a forty-degree angle,” the doctor said quietly.

  The captain leaned over me, putting his arm around my head and forcing me to tilt it back. “If you stop struggling, this won’t be as bad,” he whispered in my ear.

  The doctor stepped in front of me with a clear plastic tube, wrapping it around his finger several times. Then he unwound the tube and dipped the end into something that looked like a ketchup packet, only when he brought it out, the end of the tube was covered in a clear gel.

  “What the hell is that for?” I shouted. “Get off me!” I tried to shake my head to stop them as the doctor brought the tube closer.

  “This will be much more comfortable if you don’t move,” the doctor said. To the captain he added, “Keep him still.” The doctor pushed the tube into my nose. I felt it working its way toward the back of my throat like a giant booger. If I moved, it would probably tear something. “Give him the water,” said the doctor. The captain held a water bottle with a straw to my mouth. “You must drink this,” the doctor said to me. “It is important that you swallow to help the tube go in.”

  I didn’t want it in me at all, but this guy wasn’t about to pull it back out. I gagged as the tube went down. I swallowed the water again and again as the doctor kept pushing the thing up my nose. Finally, he stopped, but only after he’d shoved at least a foot of tube into me. A piece of tape held it in place on my nose.

  “What’s this for?” I asked, just to see if I could still talk.

  Nobody answered me. They left me alone in the sweltering heat and blinding bright light.

  “Idaho, Ida … ho,” I whispered what I could remember of our new national anthem. “Land where … fffreedom lovers go. We … we will …” What was the next line? Why couldn’t I remember it? I should have remembered.

  A shock woke me. I’d figured out the game. The electricity wasn’t to torture me. They wanted to keep me awake.

  The doctor and the captain came in a couple times. Like days apart. Not days. Could it be days? There weren’t any days anymore. No days. No nights. They changed my IV bag. Once, the doctor gagged from the smell that surrounded me. I laughed at that. Smell had gone away for me after a while. They must have been feeding me through the IV or the tube in my nose, because I hadn’t had any food the whole time.

  “Hello, Danny, I trust you’re feeling rested.” Major Alsovar stood in front of me. “Ugh.” He waved his hand in front of his face. “You smell absolutely horrible.”

  “Go to hell,” I said.

  “But Danny, we’re already there! In a hell that you have created for yourself, first by shooting up those people in Boise—”

  “An accident! Didn’t mean to. I only shot once.”

  “And then by participating in a rebellion against your own country. Where were you and your fellow insurgents hiding? What is your base of operations?”

  So bright in here. I couldn’t even look this asshole in the eye. “Won’t tell you nothing.”

  “Yes, you will.”

  “If I tell, you’ll kill them!”

  “Danny, I’m going to have them dim the lights in here for a while. It’s tough on my eyes. I can’t imagine what it’s been like for you.” He called out, “Captain, kill the floodlights.”

  The sun across the room went out. I felt like I’d gone blind again. I blinked, but couldn’t shake the blue-green afterimage.

  “Your vision might clear eventually, Danny,” said the major. “Where is your insurgent base of operations? Where can I find your accomplices?”

  “Don’t know. They moved when you captured me, you dumb shit.”

  “They probably did move. But I want their old base, then. And where do you think they would have gone after they left your old base?”

  “I tell you, I might as well kill them.”

  “No, Danny. If you tell me how to find them, you’ll be saving them.”

  “Bullshit!”

  “Danny, Idaho is out of time. The president has been making the military hold back in Idaho because she didn’t want any more casualties than were absolutely necessary. And I don’t know, but maybe she really did hope negotiations with that criminal Montaine would work out. Liberals always have to at least appear as if they’re working for peace, right? I think the main reason she ordered us to go easy on Idaho is because she’s still trying to negotiate with Oklahoma, trying to convince them to obey the law and reject nullification of the Federal ID Card Act. She wants to keep your little rebellion local.”

  “I don’t care about ID cards,” I said. “Tired of damned ID cards.”

  “You know, there you and I are in total agreement. I think the federal ID card is a terrible idea. But the difference between you and me is that I choose to follow the law and honor the duty I’m sworn to obey.”

  “Diff’rence is I’ll … kick your ass, you unchain me.”

  “When diplomacy fails with Oklahoma, the president will have nothing left to lose. Danny, whatever you think of me, you know that I have military experience. Trust me. Nothing can hold back
the attack that is coming. When it is over, whatever is left in the ruins of what was once Idaho will be back under the control of the United States, where it belongs.”

  “So we’re all dead anyway? What’s it matter? Why should I help you?”

  “Because if you give me names of insurgents, even the names of people who maybe aren’t quite insurgents but have helped you, if you make it easy for me to find them, then I can quickly and carefully arrest them. If they are in my custody, they will live. If they are out there, Danny, then even if they aren’t insurgents, they will probably be killed when the attack comes.”

  “I ain’t gonna let you bring in my friends to torture them like you done me!”

  “Then they’ll all die. Anyway, I am only making it difficult for you, Danny, because you killed my friends, and because I need information from you. If you tell me what I need to know, this would all end. Believe me, it takes a lot of effort to keep up this level of discomfort for you. A hundred and twenty degrees. All that light. Someone watching around the clock to make sure you stay awake. Tell me the names of the insurgents. Tell me where to find them. You don’t have to say it to my face. Just say it out loud. We’re recording everything you say and do in this room.” He walked over to the door, but stopped with his hand on the knob. “Oh, and Danny, this …” He waved his hand around the room at the heaters. The spotlight. My chains. “This isn’t the torture. The torture hasn’t even started yet.”

  He went out, and the steel door slammed behind him. The sun burst into light in front of me again.

  “Wake up!” A hand cracked across my cheek. “Wake up, Danny!” I put my head up and opened my eyes. The white brick room spun around me. Had I fallen asleep? The major stood almost at the position of attention. “No more sleep games, Danny. No more bright light and heat. You stink. I think it’s time we gave you a bath.”

  I didn’t know how much sleep Alsovar had given me, but whatever I got allowed me to fully wake up for the first time in a long time. I was still a little dizzy and out of it, but at least I knew where I was and I wasn’t hallucinating anymore. Unless this was all a hallucination.

  The captain, whose name tape read PETERSON, carried in a decline bench that looked a lot like the one we used for lifting weights in school, but this one had nasty restraints for my arms, ankles, and head. The doctor pulled out my IV and then removed the tape for the tube in my nose. “I’m going to remove this tube. You need to take a deep breath and hold it.”

  I did as he said, and my eyes watered as he pulled the tube out of my nose in one smooth motion. Snot and a little blood came out of my nostrils and ran down my lips, but I couldn’t do anything about it. The captain and the doctor unlocked the handcuffs, and I tried to attack them, but after sitting in the same position for so long, my limbs felt welded in place. They grabbed my shoulders, and Peterson yanked my left arm up behind my back to control me.

  Major Alsovar nodded. “Strip him.”

  “Sir?” Peterson asked.

  “Take his damned clothes off, Captain.”

  The captain shifted his weight. “That isn’t necessary for the procedure —”

  “Do it!”

  “I’ll hold him,” said Peterson. “Doctor, you strip him.”

  I relaxed my legs and dropped in the captain’s grip. The pain bit my shoulder and elbow as my arm was wrenched up, but when Peterson tried to lift me, I jumped, pushing with my legs with everything I had. At the same time I jerked my head back, nailing Peterson in the face.

  He lost his grip. I sprinted the seven feet to Alsovar before he could reach for his sidearm and took him down hard, my shoulder slamming into his crotch. “I’ll kill you!” I had him on his back and jabbed my fist straight up, catching him under his chin. He screamed as he bit his tongue or lip. I cranked back my fist and brought it down on his nose with a good crunch so it broke. Blood splattered everywhere. I wound my fist back to punch him again, trying to hit him again and again until he died.

  But the other two men grabbed my arms and dragged me onto the bench. “Let me go! Come on and fight me!” I shouted. A strap latched down on my head. My wrists were buckled in next. Then my pants and underwear were taken off and each ankle was locked up. After that the doctor cut off my shirt.

  Alsovar loomed over me, his blood dripping on my face. “You’ll pay for that, you little shit.”

  “Little?” I said. “I’ve been tortured for days, and I still kicked your ass. That what they teach you at officer candidate school —”

  “I graduated from West Point!”

  “Teach you at West Point to be a giant pussy? Come on, let me up. Let’s settle this like men.”

  The doctor leaned over to examine Alsovar’s crooked nose, but the major pushed his hand away. “Sir, that’s broken,” said the doctor. “We need to set it.”

  Alsovar glared at me. “When I come back, I’m going to make you suffer.”

  * * *

  A punch to my ribs woke me up. Alsovar stared down at me, his nose already swollen. “You will tell me the names of your fellow insurgents. You will tell me the location of your old base. You will tell me the probable location of their new base.”

  I spat at him, but he moved away in time. “I’ll tell you shit. So do whatever you’re gonna do.”

  Major Alsovar smiled and held a white cloth in my field of view. “What I’m going to do, Danny, is put this over your face. Then I’m going to pour water over it.”

  That was it? Was it supposed to bother me that my face got wet? Was his plan to use really cold water or something? It would take a lot more than that to break me.

  I watched the cloth come down over my face, and I lay there for a long time as my breath heated up the air in my little enclosed world. He must have been trying to freak me out, to let me stew in my fear. It wouldn’t work. “You going to actually —”

  Water hit my face. Some went up my nose. I coughed. I tried to breathe, but the cloth just got sucked to my face, and it was like slurping a drink of water. Only no water came into my mouth. Nothing did. No air. I couldn’t breathe. I tried to kick my legs. Turn my head. I spat at the cloth, and that gained me a little space. A tiny sip of air. More water in my nose. I sputtered. Chest burning. Every muscle tight, trying to get free.

  The water stream stopped and I gasped. The wet cloth got sucked to my face again when I inhaled.

  Alsovar laughed softly. His voice sounded deep, quiet, and crisp next to my ear. “See how this works, tough guy? I can keep this up all day. Can you? I can assign my men to keep this up for weeks. Months.”

  “I won’t talk,” I said.

  “Good,” said Alsovar.

  The water stream splashed my airway closed again. He must have turned up the pressure this time, because I got nothing but a trickle up my nose. I closed my mouth and did my best to hold my breath, but the water up my nose made me gag and cough. After a cough, my first instinct was to breathe, but that was impossible. I yanked at the restraints as hard as I could. Did anything to move. The water continued. Chest burned. Throat closed up. Face puffed. Dizzy. Oh God!

  Water stopped. Gasped for air. Choked and coughed on water.

  Water again. No! No air!

  A bug. No, a black speck. Trailed by white light. A bunch of them swirled around under the wet cloth as my heart throbbed in my ears. Coughed and sucked for breath, getting barely enough. Then the water hit again. Chest burned. Arms and legs tingled.

  * * *

  So dizzy. I hacked hard against the water in my throat. Tried to suck air. Almost there, Danny. This is the end. Mom, I’ll see you soon.

  “How’s that feeling, Danny?” Alsovar asked. The cloth was lifted off my mouth. I hocked water as hard as I could and breathed. I frantically sucked air. So wonderful to breathe.

  “Go ahead and kill me,” I said. “I’m not afraid of drowning. I’m ready to die. I won’t tell you anything.”

  “Oh, be patient, Danny. I’ll kill you. I promise. But you see, I have a lot of e
xperience with this enhanced interrogation technique, this waterboarding, as they call it. We used to use it all the time in what they called the ‘war on terror.’ Even when the practice was officially banned … Well, sometimes in war, my men and I were far from command, and we needed information quickly. It only takes two or three guys to interrogate a prisoner like this, and afterward, we’d all agree that it never happened. We’d have our information that would help save the lives of our soldiers. The world would have one less insurgent scumbag. And command would never have to know or worry about it. Everybody wins. Well, except the insurgent scumbag.

  “You see, I know your fear of drowning isn’t what will make you talk. I have the doctor here to make sure you don’t die. He’ll restart your heart if it stops. Instead, I’m going to put you into the gray space, that state of mind somewhere between active consciousness and death. I’m going to speak directly to your subconscious, where you have no secrets. In this way, I’ll learn everything I need to know from you. I’ll understand you better than you do. And you will have no conscious memory of speaking to me. I’ll find out the identities and location of all your insurgent friends. Then, you are right, Danny. I am going to kill them all.”

  The cloth went down over my mouth and the water poured on and I held my breath as long as I could. I could tell him something. If I told him only the location of the barn cabin. That wouldn’t help him. And it would buy me time. A little more time to breathe. When my mouth finally burst open to breathe … No air. Couldn’t turn head. Couldn’t move—

  * * *

  Pressing on my chest. The doctor above me. I coughed water hard, and something else, snot or blood, came with it. Alsovar stood at the edge of my vision. The doctor turned to the major. “He’s back. If his heart fails again, I don’t know if I’ll be able to restart it.”

  “He’s going to tell me what I want to know! This little maggot is at the heart of the insurgency, and I will break him.”

  “Yes, sir, but he can’t tell you anything if he’s dead,” said Peterson. “Maybe if we gave him a break. We’ve tried the stick. Maybe if we offered —”