Grayman Book One: Acts of War

by Michael Rizzo

3

  January 9th.

  Matt Burke:

  This is a bad idea all around.

  I keep thinking that, all the while the “hostiles” do their thing, kicking me around the little concrete cell, pouring fresh ice-water over the towel they’ve wrapped my head in so I can’t breathe. I think the bastards like doing it.

  Me, I didn’t like doing it the first time: Eight years ago. SERE training. Survive, Evade, Resist, Escape. The part they seem to put the most pure evil into is Level C: the “resist” phase, reserved for combat pilots and special operators at highest risk of capture: The instructors play the enemy, capture you, and take professional glee in torturing you, to get you ready for the possibility of the real thing. And they do their best to make it real. (Amusing fact: What they learn from SERE gets used to evolve real Enhanced Interrogation techniques.)

  Just for us, this version is full-Wab: head-scarves and shouting about Allah and divine retribution and how bad hell is going to be when they send me and all my “infidel crusader” kind there, softening me up for the hostage video by beating on me and soaking me and jabbing me with stun batons. And then they get frustrated because I’m not looking impressed.

  But what I really am is distracted.

  At least they made certain concessions for Michael. Usually, they would jump you during a game, or at random or in your bunk in the middle of the night like a Rad kidnap gang, and drag you to this little party. Lucky for them, Datascan ran a sim before they tried that on their precious Captain Ram, and figured Michael wouldn’t respond kindly to a bunch of beef jumping him in his bed without a proper explanation. Final simulation score: four gouged eyeballs, two crushed windpipes, a broken neck, a dislocated knee and a lethal skull fracture.

  The SEALs scoffed it off and argued that the sim wasn’t realistic, but it impressed the brass enough to engage safeties by telling Michael up front that this was just a game and to play along. So he did. And they took him with the usual show: kicking in the door of his “suite” at three a.m., trying to be as loud and rough and scary as possible. Manhandling him in his skivvies, throwing a hood over his head, zip-cuffing him and dragging him off to a simulated cell to abuse him. All the while he just plays stoic like a doll and lets them do their thing.

  And sitting here in my own simulated cell enduring my own simulated abuse, I’m remembering how he went along with the Wabs that took him in Wiesbaden, and what happened next.

  I’m sure that’s the point: they want to put him through it yet again, only this time out of the relative safety of a sim, to see how he maintains. They don’t trust him yet.

  But why they had to drag the rest of the team into it, I don’t know. I’m sure we’ve all played our own versions of this, given the work we do. SERE is a rite of passage for special operators everywhere. And given fragments of the history of the players on our little team, I’m also reasonably confident that some of them have done this for real as well. (Just like Michael). Maybe it’s meant to be a bonding thing. Team building. Imagine the applications in the corporate management junior-executive retreat market…

  More freezing water comes slapping down over me, creating a vacuum that sucks the soaked towel almost down my throat just as the sudden icy shock makes me gasp for air. But I know how to breathe like this, know how to keep from panicking. So I get kicked again and called names in another language.

  I figure it’s been the better part of two days, judging from my level of hunger and dehydration (they do the dowsing with salt water just to make sure I won’t try to drink any of it), and I’m starting to get loopy (not to mention the body-wide numb burning ache of being tied in a “crab” for hours, enough to make you nuts all by itself).

  And I guess I start to nod because they rip the hood off and go for the bright lights and the shouting again. SEALs. Any snappy comeback I could manage would be wasted on these guys—they endure worse than this for fun.

  I think I hear gunshots echoing in concrete corridors through steel doors—someone must be getting enthusiastic with the drama. My abusers don’t seem to take much notice. It’s about then I realize the room is spinning and—despite being tied bent-over my own crossed legs—I’m toppling over. It takes both of them in the cell with me to keep me upright.

  So I barely see the cell-door swing lazily open. I guess I really only notice because it gets my two “guards” to look. And I see another one, sort of just standing in the doorway, his head lolled over funny-sideways, arms just hanging at his sides. My two guards drop me and try to jump to, and I see the guy in the doorway growing another pair of arms under his first two except these two new arms have guns in their hands.

  There are more bangs then, only much much louder. Both guns go off twice each, quick, then I see the guard in the doorway drop like a limp sack, only leaving the guns attached to another body that was behind him.

  He’s naked. Almost. Wearing those boxer-brief things. He steps over the limp meat in the doorway and pumps two more “bullets” (training stunners, packing a charge enough to paralyze but not sparing you the hurting like hell) into my guards.

  “You ready to get out of here?” Michael asks me, offering his hand. He sounds like he’s just bored at a party. Only he’s got that icy snarl-grin again and his eyes look—I swear—black on black.

  Oh. Shit. What the hell did you do?