August 16th
7:15 a.m.
Black Rock Dam, Great Smoky Mountains, North Carolina
From Luke's window, nothing seemed out of the ordinary as their sleek black helicopter flew low over the dam. They came in over Black Rock Lake, which was long, undulating, and picturesque, bordered on all sides by dense green wilderness and steep hillsides. A narrow roadway crossed the top of the dam. They flew past it, and the dam itself fell away, fifty stories down to the power house and the floodgates. The floodgates appeared to be operating normally, a small trickle of water flowing out from beneath them. About a quarter mile of electricity transformers, a spider web of steel towers and high tension wires, stretched away from the dam. They seemed to be intact.
"Not much to see," he said into his headset.
To his left sat big Ed Newsam, staring out the window on the opposite side. Ed's broken hip was mended, and it looked like he had been hitting the weight room. His python-like arms were more swollen than Luke remembered, his chest and shoulders were even broader, his legs even more like oak trees. He wore jeans, work boots, and a simple blue T-shirt.
In the row behind them sat Mark Swann. He was long and lean, his blue-jeaned legs jutting out in the aisle, his checkerboard Chuck Taylor sneakers crossed at the ankles in front of Luke. His sandy hair was longer than before, tied in a ponytail now, and he had swapped out his aviator-type glasses for the round John Lennon style at some point in the past two months. He wore a black T-shirt with the logo from the punk rock band The Ramones. The NSA offices must be quite the fashion show.
"The water went out the floodgates just like it's supposed to do," the chopper pilot said. He was a middle-aged man wearing a black nylon jacket with the capital letters FEMA in white on the back. "There was no damage to the dam or the dam facilities, and there were no casualties among dam personnel. The only thing that happened here was the access road got washed away. About three miles south is where the real action starts."
They had flown on a Secret Service jet from DC to a small municipal airport at the edge of the National Park. They had arrived just before sunrise, and this chopper was waiting for them. They didn't talk much on the flight down. The mood was somber, given the circumstances, and Trudy Wellington, as the intel officer, would normally have done most of the talking. Susan had offered Luke a different intel person, but Luke declined. They were coming down to brace a prisoner anyway. He could give them all the intel they needed.
Luke sensed they were all feeling the loss of Trudy, and a certain amount of shock at her situation. He also sensed, or thought he did, that both of these guys had moved on in their lives. New assignments, new training, new team members and co-workers, new challenges to look forward to. A lot could change in two months.
The Special Response Team was gone. Luke could have chosen to save it in some form-after the coup attempt and Ebola attacks he could write his own ticket and take them all with him-but instead he chose not to. Now the SRT was old news, and so was Luke Stone. He had retired, and that was one thing. But he had also disappeared, and he hadn't made much effort to keep in touch. Team cohesion was a big part of intelligence and special operations work. With no contact, there was no cohesion.
Which meant that right now, there was no team.
The chopper banked and headed south. Almost immediately, the devastation became clear. The entire area below the dam was flooded. Large trees were ripped out everywhere and tossed around like matchsticks. In a few minutes, they reached the site of the former Black Rock Resort. Parts of the upper floor of the main building were still intact, rising up out of the floodwaters. Cars were stacked up against the wrecked hotel, along with more trees, a few of which reached out of the water with arms to the sky, like religious converts imploring God for a miracle.
The effect of the cars and the trees and the various piles of flotsam was to build a mini-dam, behind which a wide lake had formed. About a dozen Zodiacs were parked on the lake, with teams of divers in full scuba gear either preparing to drop in, or climbing out, depending on the boat.
"They find any survivors here?" Luke said.
The pilot shook his head. "Not a one. At least that was the word as of this morning. They found about a hundred bodies in the resort cafeteria, though. They're bringing them up one by one. I don't think they've started the room to room search yet. They might even let the waters subside before they do that. Moving through corridors underwater is dangerous work, and probably unnecessary. Ain't nobody alive down there."
Ed Newsam, who had been sprawled out in his normal laid-back style, shifted in his seat and sat up just a touch. "How do you know that, man? Could be air pockets under that water. Could be people down there hanging on for a rescue."
"They've got underwater listening equipment on those boats," the pilot said. "If anybody's alive under that water, they didn't make a peep all day yesterday or last night."
"Even so, if I'm in charge, I've got my best divers going room to room right now. We already know the people in the cafeteria are dead. And the divers signed on for danger. The civilians didn't."
The pilot shrugged. "Well, son, they're working as fast as they can."
The chopper moved further south. The flood had cut a swath through the valley, ripping a path across the forest. It looked like a giant had blundered his way through here. There was water everywhere. Wherever the original riverbed had been was lost under all the water.
They passed over the town of Sargent, still four feet deep in water. The devastation here was not as complete. There were a lot of empty lots where Luke assumed houses must have stood, but other houses, buildings, and fast food signs stuck up out of the water like fingers. The chopper flew over a cinderblock building with a stack of cars and SUVs piled up against it. HONEST ABE'S PRE-OWNED CARS, said a sign sticking halfway out of the water. One of its support beams had caved in.
"How many dead here?" Luke said.
"Five hundred," the pilot said. "Give or take some spare change. Still a hundred or more missing. It was early morning, and there wasn't much warning. A lot of people got swept away in their homes. You're asleep in bed and the old Cold War air raid signal goes off, what do you do? Some folks apparently went downstairs to their basements. That's nowhere to be when a flood comes."
"No one expected the dam to break?" Swann said. It was the first thing he had said since they boarded the chopper.
The pilot was busy with his controls. "Why would they? The dam didn't break. That dam was built to last a thousand years."
"Okay," Luke said. "I've seen enough. Let's go talk to the prisoner."
*
8:30 a.m.
Chattahoochee National Forest, Georgia
The camp appeared out of the deep forest like some weird mirage.
"Pretty, it ain't," Ed Newsam said.
It sat in a perfect clear cut, one mile by one mile, a brown and gray square amidst all the dark green. As the chopper came closer, Luke could make out dozens of barracks, row upon row of them, and a large, square reservoir of water in the center of the camp. Outbuildings surrounded the reservoir, and a steel catwalk traversed it.
The chopper began to drop down, and Luke could see the helipad approaching. It was in an area in the far west corner of the camp, with a few large administration buildings, a swimming pool, and a couple of parking lots. He could now clearly make out concrete yards, an access road, streets inside the encampment, and a wall topped with barbed wire and guard towers around the perimeter. The place was an open wound in the midst of the surrounding forest.
"What is this place?" Luke said into his headset.
The chopper pilot was busy working his controls, but not too busy to talk. "I've heard it called Camp Enduring Freedom," he said. "People around here tend to call it Camp Nowhere. It's one of ours. Federal Emergency Management Agency. You won't find it on any maps. I'd guess it doesn't officially have a name."
"Does it exist?" Luke said.
The chopper was low now, the grim gray buildings of the camp rising up all around them. Luke noticed glass reinforced by steel wires on the closest buildings.
The pilot shook his head. "Does what exist? This is uninhabited wilderness. There's nothing out here as far as I know."
A signalman in a yellow vest and holding bright orange wands stood to the side of the helipad and guided the chopper in. The pilot set the bird down perfectly in the middle of the pad. He killed the engine and the rotors immediately began to slow. There was a whine as they powered down.
"When you see that Chinaman," the pilot said, "give him a couple of knocks for me."
"We don't do that kind of thing," Luke said.
The pilot turned around and smiled. "Sure you don't. Son, I fly people in and out of places like this all the time. I know who does what just by looking, believe me. One glance at you guys and I know they've decided to turn up the heat a few notches."
He, Swann, and Ed exited the chopper, heads ducked low. A man was already waiting on the pad to greet them. He wore a gray business suit and a blue tie. His hair was blown about by the slowing blades of the helicopter. The fabric of his suit rippled from it. His black shoes were polished to a bright sheen. He looked as if he had just stepped off a commuter train in Manhattan. He was about as out of place as a man could possibly be.
As Luke came closer, the man's face took form. He appeared ageless-not old, not young, some indeterminate place in between. He extended a hand. Luke shook it.
"Agent Stone? I'm Pete Winn. They told me the President sent you. Thanks for coming down to see us."
"Thanks, Pete. Please call me Luke."
Luke, Ed, and Swann followed Pete Winn away from the chopper and toward a corrugated aluminum hut at the far side of the pad. Even the chopper pad was surrounded by barbed wire fencing. The only way in or out of the helipad was through that building. The doors to the building were operated by a seeing-eye device. They opened automatically as the men approached.
"What is this place?" Luke said.
"This?" Winn said. "You mean the camp?"
"Yes."
"Ah, well, I'll give you the thirty-second elevator pitch. It's basically a detention camp. We've got just over two hundred and fifty detainees at the moment, including more than seventy children. Mostly, they're illegal aliens from Mexico and Central America whose lives would be at risk from the drug cartels or criminal gangs if they were sent back home. They haven't been granted asylum, so they stay here with their families until such time as the Immigration and Naturalization Service can decide what to do with them. Their immigration status is officially undetermined. Meanwhile, since this place is invisible, the gangs have no idea where they are."
They passed through the building quickly. It was basically a hangout for flight controllers, helipad signalers, and pilots. There were a few desks and chairs, some radio and video monitoring equipment, a radar screen, a coffee maker, and an old box of stale donuts on a table.
"So they sit here endlessly?" Swann said.
"Well, endlessly is a long time," Winn said. "The family that's spent the most time with us has been here seven years."
Winn must have seen the looks on their faces.
"It's not as bad as it sounds. Really. All the children go to school five days a week. The school is right here on the grounds. There are enrichment activities, including two first-run movies each weekend, shown in both English and Spanish. There's soccer and basketball, and the adults are able to take language classes and job skills training, including training with master carpenters we bring in here."
"Sounds great," Swann said. "You guys mind if I spend my vacation here?"
"You might be surprised," Winn said. "People like it here. It's a lot better than going home and getting murdered."
A black SUV waited for them outside the hut. As the car drove through the camp, they passed another fence topped with looping razor wire. A handful of men sat on benches on the other side of the fence. Four or five of them were white men. A couple of them were black. They all wore bright yellow jumpsuits. They stared through the fence at the passing car.
"Those guys don't look like Mexicans," Ed Newsam said.
Pete Winn's face began to change. Earlier it had been friendly, maybe even a touch nervous to meet Luke and his team. Now it seemed almost dismissive.
"No, they don't," he said. "We've got some home-growns in here, too."
"Are they hiding out from the cartels?" Swann said.
Winn stared straight ahead. "Gentlemen, I'm sure there are aspects of your work that you aren't at liberty to discuss. The same holds true for me."
After a few minutes they had traveled to the far side of the camp from the helipad and administration buildings. The car stopped. There was no one around-no prisoners, no workers, no one at all. A small cabin sat by itself on a desultory dirt lot.
The men stepped out. The lot was barren, hard-packed earth. Any sense of camp activity, or even life itself, was far away from here.
Pete Winn handed Luke a key ring. There was only one key on it. Winn's face was hard now. His eyes were steely and cold. His demeanor had completed its drastic change from the uncertain functionary who had greeted them on the helicopter pad, to whatever it was now.
"The existence of this cabin is classified. Officially, it doesn't exist, nor does this prisoner. Your visit here does not exist. The Chinese government has made no inquiries, official or backdoor, into the whereabouts of a man named Li Quiangguo. My understanding is the Chinese have acted like they have nothing to hide or to be concerned about, and have even offered assistance in finding the source of the hack into the dam operating system."
He gestured with his head toward the cabin.
"The walls of the cabin are soundproof. The key opens an equipment cabinet in the back room. If you feel you need equipment to facilitate your interrogation, you may find what you're looking for in that cabinet."
Luke nodded, but didn't say anything. He didn't like the assumption these people all seemed to make that he had been called in here to torture the prisoner.
Had he tortured people before? He supposed he had, depending on the definition of that word. But no one had ever called him into a situation with the idea that he was going to torture a suspect. If they did, they'd be pretty foolish-there were people far more versed at it than Luke. When he had done it in the past, it was on the fly and he was improvising, almost always because a subject had critical information and Luke needed that information now.
Pete Winn went on, but now his manner was more relaxed, and his words were mundane.
"If you need anything, lunch, beer, dinner, or you want the car to return you to the helipad, just pick up the telephone in the cabin and dial zero. We'll send you what you need. We can put you up on the base for the night if you like, and provide any kind of toiletries or personal items. Soap, shampoo, shavers-we have all that stuff. We can also get you a change of clothes, within reason."
"Thank you," Luke said.
"I'm going to leave you to it," Winn said. "Good luck."
When the man was gone, Luke stopped to talk with his men outside the cabin. Green mountains towered around them outside the camp fence. The camp seemed to be built inside a bowl.
"Swann, how many years were you in China?"
"Six."
"In what part?"
"All around. I lived in Beijing mostly, but I spent a lot of time in Shanghai and Chongqing, also a little bit in the south, in Guangzhou and Hong Kong."
"Okay, I want you to watch this guy closely, get any indications from him that you can. Anything at all. Where you think he might be from. How old he might be. His level of education. His level of computer know-how. Is he even from China at all? Susan Hopkins's people told me the guy is perfectly fluent in English. What are the chances he was born here in the States, or in Canada, or Hong Kong? Or anywhere at all, really. There are Chinese people everywhere."
Swann shook his head. "If the guy's an operative, I'm not going to know that stuff. He'll be too good at hiding his origins."
"Guess," Luke said. "It's not a math problem. There are no right or wrong answers. I just want to get your sense."
Swann nodded. "Got it."
Now Luke looked at him closely. "How squeamish are you?"
He had never worried about Swann's personality before, but it occurred to him now that Swann could be something of a weak link in there.
"Squeamish? Squeamish, like how?"
"Ed and I may need to get serious in there."
"Well, give me a heads-up and I'll go for a little walk around these beautiful grounds."
"If you do, make sure you wave to the snipers," Ed Newsam said.
About a hundred yards away was a three-story guard tower. Luke and Swann glanced at it. A man with a rifle stood in the tower, apparently targeting them. From this distance, it looked like he had the rifle pointed right at them, and he was sighting down the scope.
"Can he hit us from there?" Swann said.
"With his eyes closed," Luke said.
"He's just practicing though," Ed said. "Relieving a little boredom."
They went inside.
*
The man wore a bright yellow jumpsuit. He sat on a metal folding chair in the middle of an empty room. He was large, with broad shoulders, thick arms and legs, and a prominent stomach.
He wore a black hood over his head. His wrists were cuffed behind his back. His legs were cuffed together at the ankles. He was slumped forward, as if sleeping. With the hood over his head, it was impossible to tell.
Luke pulled the hood from the man's head. The man jerked in seeming surprise, and sat up. His jet black hair was mussed-it stood up in tufts in a few places, was flattened down in others. Even with the hood removed, he still wore airplane blinders-the kind people put over their faces to sleep on long flights.
He yawned as if waking from an afternoon nap.
"Li Quiangguo," Luke said. "Ni hui shuo yingyu ma?"
In Mandarin Chinese, his words translated to Do you speak English?
The man smiled broadly. "Call me Johnny," he said. "Please. It's what I use here in the West. And let's speak English. It makes it easier for everybody, especially me."
The man's English was the American version, certainly, but with no accent or regional flavor of any kind. Luke might have said he sounded like he was from the Midwest. But really, he didn't sound like he was from anywhere. He could have been beamed down from a spaceship.
"Why is it easier for you?" Luke said.
"It's easier on my ears. It means I don't have to listen to people like you butcher the beautiful Chinese language."
Now Luke smiled. "Tell me, Li. Why didn't you kill yourself when you had the chance?"
Li made a face of exaggerated surprise, even disgust. "Why would I do that? I like America. And I've been treated pretty well so far."
It was an interesting thing to say, considering that it came from a man who had been manacled to a metal chair overnight, with a black hood and airplane blinders on his head, in a detention center that didn't exist, and with no way to contact the outside world. He was not technically under arrest and he hadn't seen a lawyer. A lot of people might not agree that his arrangements constituted being treated well. Some might say he had been disappeared. Yes, he hadn't been tortured, but for most people, lack of torture was a pretty low threshold.
Li almost seemed to read Luke's mind. "I heard birds chirping outside this morning. That's how I knew it was a new day."
Luke reached with one hand and pulled off the man's airplane blinders. "Birds at sunrise. That's very nice. I'm glad to hear you've enjoyed your stay so far. Unfortunately, things are about to change."
"Ah." The man's eyes squinted in the sudden brightness. He scanned the room, took in Swann and Ed Newsam. The eyes settled on Ed.
Ed was leaned up against one wall. He seemed very relaxed, and at the same time, menacing. His body barely moved. There was so much potential energy stored inside of it, he was like a storm about to happen. His eyes never left the Chinese man's eyes.
"I see," Li said.
Luke nodded. "Yes. You do."
Li's face hardened. "I'm a tourist. This is all a case of mistaken identity."
"If you're a tourist," Ed said, "maybe you'd like to give us the names and contact information of your family, so we can let them know where you are. You know, and tell them that you're doing fine."
Li shook his head. "I would like to contact the Chinese embassy."
"Our superiors have already done that for you," Luke said. It wasn't true, as far he knew. He began to inch out on a limb, but a limb he felt would hold his weight.
"It was a backchannel conversation, as you might imagine, given the sensitivity of the situation," he said. "You may be disturbed to know that the Chinese government says you aren't real. There are no school records, no job records, no hometown or family background. They've seen a scan of your passport, and they've determined that it's a clever forgery."
Li stared straight ahead. He didn't respond.
Luke let the moment draw out. There was no reason to fill it with more talk. He had seen subjects break as soon as they realized their handlers had disavowed them. Break wasn't even the right word. Sometimes, when they suddenly found themselves without a country, they simply switched sides.
"Li, did you hear me? They're not going to protect you. You're not going to get away from this. You didn't take your pill when you could have, and now you're here. There is no way out. As far as your people are concerned, you don't exist, and you never existed. The facility you're in right now doesn't exist. You could end up stuffed inside a fifty-five-gallon drum at the bottom of the ocean, or in a shallow ditch in the wilderness, with crows picking out your eyes… No one will care. No one will even know."
The man still didn't say a word. He just stared straight ahead.
"Li, what do you know about the Black Rock Dam, and how the floodgates opened?"
"I don't know anything."
Luke waited a few beats, then went on. "Well, let me tell you what I know. At last count, more than a thousand people have died. Do you have any idea how upset that makes me? It makes me want to take revenge for their deaths. It makes me want to find a scapegoat, and make that person pay. You're a convenient scapegoat, aren't you, Li? A man that nobody cares about, nobody remembers, and no one will miss. I'll tell you something else. I know you've been trained to resist interrogation. That only makes me happier. It means I can take my time. We can stay here for days, or even weeks. We have people working on that dam problem. They'll figure out what happened. We don't need whatever pitiful information you might have. I don't even want it, to be honest. I just want to hurt you. The more you just sit there, the more I want to do it."
Now Luke squatted down on his haunches near Li's face. He was inches away, so close that his breath exhaled on Li's cheeks. "We're going to get to know each other pretty well in here, okay, Li? Eventually, I'm going to know everything about you."
Luke glanced at Swann. Swann stood in a corner by the steel-barred window. He hadn't said a word since they walked in here. He looked out at the concrete compound and the lush green hillsides surrounding it. Swann was an analyst, a data guy. Luke imagined he might never have thought about how data was sometimes extracted. Death threats were just the beginning.
"Li, the man's talking to you," Ed said.
Li managed a smile then. It was a sickly smile, and there was no humor in it at all. "Please," he said. "Call me Johnny."
* * *
An hour passed. Luke and Ed had taken turns talking to Li, but with no real effect. If anything, Li was becoming more confident. He had evidently decided that a few hard smacks from Ed were the most he was going to get.
Now Luke was watching Swann again.
"Okay, Swann," he said. "Now is a good time to take that walk around the camp."
A few minutes before, Luke had opened the cabinet with the key Pete Winn had given him. The cabinet was more of a utility closet than an actual cabinet. Inside was a fold-out table, a little bit like an ironing board, but wider, lower to the ground, and much more sturdy. It was about seven feet long and four feet wide.
When Luke and Ed set it up, the table had a noticeable incline. On the higher side, there were manacles for the subject's ankles. In the middle were leather straps for tying down the subject's wrists, and a large one in the center for the subject's waist. At the lower end was a metal ring for securing the subject's head to the table.
It was a platform for water torture.
When they brought the table out, Li became visibly agitated. He knew what it was right away. Of course he did. He was an intelligence agent, a field operative, and they had all seen it as part of their training. Americans, Chinese, whoever. Luke had watched a live demonstration of the technique once upon a time. A hardened CIA agent, a man who had come to the agency out of the Navy SEALs, who had been in-country in numerous hotspots, was the test subject.
How they convinced this man to volunteer was something Luke never found out. Maybe he got a bonus. It should have been a big one. The agent seemed relaxed before the demonstration. He was laughing and joking with his soon-to-be tormentors. Once the procedure started, he transformed instantly. He lasted twenty-four seconds before he used the safe word to make it stop. They timed it.
"You have to know that this is against the Geneva Conventions," Li said, his voice shaking just a little. "It's against…"
"Last I checked, we're not in Geneva," Luke said. "In fact, we aren't anywhere at all. As I mentioned earlier, this facility doesn't exist, and neither does anyone named Li Quiangguo."
Luke busied himself with the other implements he had taken out of the closet. They included two large watering cans, like the kind a nice older lady would use to water her gardens. There were also locks for the manacles and leather straps on the board. And finally there were a number of medium-sized heavy cloth towels and a roll of cellophane. If the towels didn't work, they could always move on to the cellophane. Luke happened to know that the CIA didn't bother with cloth towels.
"Man," Ed said. "I haven't done anything like this since Afghanistan. It's been at least five years."
"Then your experience is more recent than mine," Luke said. "So we'll let you do the honors. How'd it go when you did it?"
Ed shrugged. "Scary. We had a couple of them die on us. It's not like some of the other methods I've seen. You can electrocute people all day, as long as the current is right. It hurts but it doesn't kill them. People do die from this. They drown. They get brain damage. They have heart attacks. This is real."
"Listen," Li said. His entire body was trembling now. "Waterboarding is against all the laws of war. It is recognized as torture by every international body. You are committing a human rights violation."
"Man, you're all about rules and regulations all of a sudden," Ed said. "My way of thinking, someone deliberately floods out thousands of people, I'm not dealing with a human at that point. I'd say you forfeited your human rights."
"Guys," Swann said. "I don't feel right about this."
Luke glanced at him. "Swann, I told you it was a good time for you to leave. Take about twenty minutes. That should be plenty."
Swann's face turned red. "Luke, everything I've read says that this won't even give you decent intelligence. He'll just lie to make it stop."
Luke couldn't remember a single time when Swann had questioned his actions before. He'd be curious to know if Swann was questioning his actions now. Either way, he just shook his head.
"Swann, you can't believe everything you read. I've seen this get actionable, accurate intelligence from people in a matter of minutes. And because Mr. Li is our guest here, we'll be able to quickly verify any claims he makes. We can also revisit those claims with him if they turn out to be inaccurate. The truth is they don't want people to do this because as Li so accurately points out, it qualifies as torture. But it works, and in the right circumstances, it works really, really well."
Luke gestured around the empty room. "And these are the right circumstances."
Swann was staring now. "Luke…"
Luke raised a hand. "Swann. Out. Please." He gestured at the door.
Swann shook his head. His face was very red now. He seemed on the verge of trembling himself. "Why did you even call me in for this?" he said. "I don't work for the FBI anymore, and neither do you."
Luke almost smiled. He didn't know how Swann really felt, but he couldn't have scripted this better than it was turning out. This was good cop, bad cop on steroids.
"By the end of this day, I'm going to need your skills," Luke said. "But not for this. Now get lost. Please. And notice how polite I've been so far. In a minute I'm going to lose my temper."
"I'm going to lodge a formal complaint," Swann said.
"Please do. You know who I work for. Your complaint will get as far as the office shredder. It will go right down the memory hole. But do it anyway, as an intellectual exercise."
"I plan to," Swann said. With that, he went out the door. He pulled it tight behind him, but did not slam it.
Luke exhaled. He looked at Ed. "Ed, can you please fill up these watering cans at the kitchen sink? We're going to need them in a minute."
Ed gave a devilish half-smile. "With pleasure."
As he picked up the watering cans, he stared at Li. He showed Li the crazy giant eyeball look that he sometimes used on people. It was a look that gave even Luke the willies. It made Ed seem psychotic. It made him look like a man who found sadism pleasurable. Luke wasn't sure where that look came from, or what it meant. He didn't really want to know.
"Brother," Ed said to Li. "Your day is about to get a lot longer."
As Ed busied himself in the cabin's tiny kitchen, Luke looked closely at Li. The man was quaking now. His entire body vibrated as if some low current of electricity was running through it. His eyes had become wide and scared.
"You've seen this before, haven't you?" Luke said.
Li nodded. "Yes."
"On prisoners?"
"Yes."
"It's bad," Luke said. "It's very bad. No one holds up against it."
"I know," Li said.
Luke glanced at the kitchen. Ed was taking his sweet time in there. "And Ed… you must know how he is. He enjoys this kind of thing."
Li didn't say anything to that. His face turned bright red, and then gradually morphed to dark red. It seemed like there was an explosion going on inside him, and he was trying to contain it. He squeezed his eyes shut. His teeth clenched, then started chattering. His whole body began to shudder.
"I'm cold," he said. "I can't do this."
Just then, something occurred to Luke.
"They've done it to you," he said. "Your own people." It wasn't a question. He knew it like he knew his own name. Li had been waterboarded before now, and in all likelihood, it was the Chinese government that had done it.
Suddenly Li's mouth opened in a scream. It was a silent scream, his jaws opened to their full extension. It somehow reminded Luke of a werewolf howling in agony during the bone-breaking transition from human to canine form. Except there was no sound. Almost nothing came out of Li, just a low gagging sort of noise deep in his throat.
His entire body was stiff now, every muscle tensed as if the electrical current had just gone up ten notches.
"You were a traitor," Luke said. "An enemy of the state. But you were rehabilitated in prison. Torture was part of the process. They made you into an agent, but not a valuable one. You're one of the expendables. That's why you were out here in the field, and that's why you had cyanide pills. If you got caught, you were supposed to kill yourself. There was almost no way you wouldn't get caught, right? But you didn't do it, Li. You didn't kill yourself, and now we're the only hope you've got."
"Please!" Li shouted. "Please don't do it!"
The man's body shook uncontrollably. More than that. A smell started to come from him, the thick humid smell of feces.
"Oh my God," he said. "Oh my God. Help me. Help me."
"What's going on here?" Ed said as he returned with the watering cans. He made a face as the smell hit his nose. "Oh, man."
Luke raised his eyebrows. He almost felt sympathy for this man. Then he thought of the more than a thousand dead, and the many thousands who had lost their homes. Nothing, no negative life experience, could justify doing that.
"Yeah, Li's a mess," he said. "He's a trauma case. Looks like this isn't his first time around with waterboarding."
Ed nodded. "Good. So he knows the drill already." He looked down at Li. "We're gonna do it anyway, you hear me, girly boy? We don't care about the smell, so if that's your game, it didn't work." Ed glanced at Luke. "I've seen this before. People try it because they think that the smell is so rank we won't want to go forward. Or maybe we'll take pity on them. Or whatever." He shook his head. "The smell is nasty, but I've never seen it work. We wouldn't be here if we were the sensitive type, Li. I've smelled men after they've been disemboweled. Believe me, it's worse than anything you can push out the regular way."
"Please," Li said again. He said it quietly now, almost a whisper. His body was shaking out of control. He hung his head and stared at the floor. "Please don't do it. I can't take it."
"Give me something," Luke said. "Give me something good, and then we'll see. Look at me, Li."
Li's head hung even lower. He shook it. "I cannot look at you now." His face made a grimace, a mask of humiliation. Then he started crying.
"Help me. Please help me."
"You better give me something," Luke said. "Or we're going to get started."
Luke stood ten feet away and watched him. Li was slumped over in the chair, his head low, his arms tight behind his broad back, his entire body trembling. There was no organization to it-every part seemed to be doing something different and unrelated to every other part. Luke noticed now that the crotch of Li's jumpsuit was wet. He had also pissed himself.
Luke took a deep breath. They'd have to get somebody in here to clean this guy up.
"Li?" he said.
Li was still facing the ground. His voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a well. "There is a warehouse. It's a small warehouse, with an office. An importer of Chinese goods. In the office, everything is explained."
"Whose office is it?" Luke said.
"Mine."
"It's a front?" Ed said.
Li tried to shrug. His body jittered and jived. His teeth chattered as he talked. "Mostly. It had to be somewhat functional, or else there is no cover story."
"Where is it?"
Li mumbled something.
"What?" Luke said. "I don't hear you. If you play with me, we're going to do this the hard way. You think Ed wants you off the hook? Think again."
"It's in Atlanta," Li said, clear and firm now, as if telling it was a relief. "The warehouse is in Atlanta. That's where I was based."
Luke smiled.
"Well, you can give us the address, and we can fly down to Atlanta. We'll be right back in a few hours." He put his hand on Li's shoulder. "God help you if we find out you're lying."
*
"Nice job, Swann," Luke said. "I couldn't have asked for better if I had written the script myself."
"Did I ever mention I was in the theater club in high school? I played Mack the Knife one year."
"You missed your calling," Luke said. "You could've gone to Hollywood based on what I saw in there."
They moved down the concrete walkway toward the waiting black SUV. Two men in FEMA jumpsuits had just exited the SUV and gone into the cabin. Luke glanced at the surroundings. All around them were fences and razor wire. Behind the closest guard tower, a steep green hillside rose up toward the northern mountains of Georgia.
Swann smiled. "I tried to put just the right note of moral indignation into it."
"You had me fooled," Ed said.
"Well, it was real. I didn't have to act. I'm really not for torturing people."
"Neither are we," Ed said. "At least, not all the time."
"Did you do it?" Swann said.
Luke smiled. "What do you think?"
Swann shook his head. "I was gone only ten minutes before you came out, so I'm guessing that you didn't."
Ed clapped him on the back. "Keep guessing, data analyst."
"Well, did you or didn't you?" Swann said. "Guys?"
Within minutes, the three of them were back on the helicopter, rising over the dense forest and headed south to Atlanta.
