Red Lightning (28 page)

I didn't know where I was, I didn't know what had happened to Evangeline, I didn't know where my family was, I didn't know what the soldiers taking over was all about. I didn't know anything at all except that I needed something to hang on to or I was going to start bawling like a baby, so I concentrated on hoping that the guy I had kicked in the head was hurting ten times worse than I was.

When I got tired of that, I thought of ways to kill the pilots of those planes. Slowly. I was very imaginative, it would have made you sick to see into my head during that time.

I don't know how long it was. The light in the ceiling was very bright and it never varied, and there were no windows.

At some point a guy opened the door and frowned at me for a moment. There was an armed guard outside the door. The guy came in and shined a light in my eyes, pinched and prodded me in a few places, touched the top of my head with a rubber-gloved hand. I yelped, and saw that his hand came away slightly bloody, which scared me.

"He's all right," the guy said, and they left. Medical care, I guess, as required by the Geneva Convention, as if anybody even knew where to find that anymore, much less abide by it.

Somebody came by a few minutes later, opened the door a crack, and tossed in a plastic bottle. I got up, moving slowly. Picked it up. Snapped off the lid. There were about a dozen aspirin inside. I swallowed them all and lay down.

I must have slept.

I googled it later, under "interrogation" and "brainwashing." Fear and isolation and disorientation are all useful in the early stages.

But that was later. Then, I felt exactly what they wanted me to feel. Scared, isolated, disoriented. I probably would have even if I'd known it was part of their technique.

I was left alone for a long time. It might have been only a day, but it felt a lot longer. The light never varied. I could drink out of the sink by cupping my hands. At what seemed like irregular intervals the door would open and someone would set a piece of fruit or a sandwich wrapped in paper on the floor. The sandwiches were tuna fish or bologna or egg salad. The wrapping paper was printed with the words "Red Thunder Hotel" in the tasteful red script we use in the restaurant to wrap the hamburgers. But the food didn't come from the hotel. Mr. Redmond would never have let that shit into his kitchen, much less out of it.

Were they making a point with the paper? I didn't think it was a coincidence. I had a lot of time to think about it, and I'm sure that's what they wanted me to do. They were telling me they were in control of my family's business, and therefore, my family. I began thinking of more interesting things to do to these people if I ever got the drop on them in some dark alley.

Never going to happen, I knew that even then, but it's amazing how much it can buck up your spirits. Their screams for mercy resonated in my head and covered up the throbbing.

I was asleep when they came for me. (See Interrogator's Manual Chapter Two: Grogginess is Good.) Two large guys in black uniforms and body armor barged into my cell. They handcuffed me and tied my legs together. I guess I can't blame them, considering what we'd done when they kidnapped us. But instead of taking me out of the room, one of them held a rag to my face and I smelled a chemical. I went out pretty quick.

I woke up in a room right out of a cop movie. It was dark, with a bright light over me. In front of me was a long table with four chairs behind it. There was a large mirror set into the window to my right. I was bound to a chair with tape, arms and legs, and I was wearing just a pair of boxer shorts. There wasn't much else to see, except two wires, a red one and a blue one, coming out the left leg of my shorts and trailing across the floor to a device sitting on the table. I could feel some sort of clips attached to my scrotum. There was a dial on the top of the device, which was plugged into an ordinary wall outlet by a long, orange cord.

They left me that way for maybe an hour, to think it over.

So this is the part where I chew through the tape on my wrists, use my toenails to unscrew the chair bolted to the floor, hurl it through the one-way mirror, and wait for the bad guys to come on, a sharp shard of glass in my bleeding hand. I dispatch all five or six of the people who arrive using my superior Martian combat skills, strip the uniform from one of them, which just happens to fit my tall skinny frame, fight my way out of wherever it is I am, get back to civilization and rally all my oppressed Martian comrades and we repulse the evil invaders.

I thought about it, believe me, but I never got past the chewing through the duct tape part. It turns out duct tape is strong enough to loosen teeth, and it tastes awful.

The rest of the time I spent trying not to think about how I really, really had to go to the bathroom.
Now
.

There were three of them when they finally came. All were dressed in black uniforms. The insignia on them didn't quite fit, like old patches had been torn off and new ones sewn on. They were two men and one woman, all wearing opaque-lensed stereos with that clunkiness that spoke of military issue. There wasn't anything remarkable about any of them. The woman had short black hair. All three were white, racially. None of them ever smiled.

Somebody brought in coffee and served it to them, and they didn't say thank you. I hoped their moms would be ashamed of them, but I didn't say anything. Then they just sat there for a while, looking at me – or their faces pointed at me, anyway, though I never saw their eyes.

Finally, the guy in the middle spoke.

"Where is Jubal Broussard?" he asked.

I thought that over, knowing there was a sharp, witty remark I could make that would put this bastard in his place, but I couldn't think of it.

Then I had it.

"Huh?" I said.

"Where is Jubal Broussard?"

"Jubal... he lives on the Falkland Islands."

"That's where he lives. Where is he now?"

"How should I know?"

"We think you do."

"Then you got a problem, because I don't know. I didn't even know he had left."

"No, Ray, it's you who have a problem, because we know that you know where he is, and you are going to tell us."

I knew there must be a way to convince him that he was wrong, so I opened my mouth to tell him so.

"
Fuck you
!" I explained.

His hand moved to the big dial that was connected to the wires that were connected to my balls, and I peed my pants.

He didn't shock me, it was just nerves and the need to go. And I don't think he ever intended to shock me. It was the humiliation he was after. It worked.

"Where is Jubal Broussard?" he said again.

And that's how it went for a long time.

They seemed endlessly patient, and so totally, impassively sure of themselves that I eventually began to wonder if it was
me
who had gone insane. Did I know where Jubal was? Did somebody tell me and I forgot? Who the hell was Jubal, anyway?

I kept waiting for the shock in my crotch, for them to bring out the hot screwdrivers and the splints to jab under the fingernails. I kept waiting for
anything
to change, and for a long time nothing did.

I want to say that I would have held out. I want to say that if I had known where Jubal was, I wouldn't have told them. But part of me is pretty sure that I probably would have told them. Sitting in your own cold urine, almost naked, strapped to a chair, not knowing where you are or where your family is, facing some implacable
power
that you know can wipe out your life like a mayfly... well, trained soldiers have cracked under pressure like that, as I found out later. What do you expect from an eighteen-year-old kid?

What kind of gumption I had expected from myself was a lot more than what I managed to show, and I knew it was something I would carry with shame for the rest of my life. No one else will ever know just how long it took them to make me cry, how long it took before I was begging. I'm not going to set it down here. I'll just say that, in time, I did cry, and I did beg. The best I can say for myself in the self-respect department is that I never got around to bargaining.

I'm not saying I didn't think about it: "Go ask my mother and father.
Please
! They're tougher than me." I never said that.

Maybe I would have, eventually. Sneer at me if you want to, but not until you've been through it yourself.

But finally the woman pressed a button I hadn't seen, and the door opened. In came the "doctor." It was the guy who had shined the light in my eyes, anyway, though I suspect that if he had a medical degree it was from the University of Dachau.

There were no formalities at all. He came around the table, and I saw he was holding an old-fashioned syringe, the kind with a metal frame and a long, wide needle that looked like it would hurt real bad. I struggled, I guess because that's just what you do when you think somebody is about to kill you, no matter how hopeless it is. And it did hurt, like the dickens. I watched as he depressed the plunger and about 10 cc's of some yellowish liquid went into my arm.

After that, I didn't worry anymore.

There isn't a lot I can say about what came next. My memories are vague. I would be in the chair, no longer strapped in because I didn't need to be. I had no more initiative than a garden slug, and about as much as strength. They'd ask me questions, and I'd answer them. It was sort of free association. I'd start off answering the question they asked, and then I'd wander off into dreamy stuff. I'd laugh. I'd cry. They listened to it all, and then they asked more questions. I don't remember what the questions were. Then I'd be in the cell, thinking about absolutely nothing. I don't recall my mind ever actually being blank before, but it was then. If they put food in front of me and told me to eat it, I'd eat it. If they didn't bring any food, I didn't get hungry. It was all the same to me.

Then I'd he back in the interrogation room again and then back in the cell. This cycle repeated more than once, but that's all I'm sure of.

Looking back, I really don't know why they bothered. It must have been clear to them even before they drugged me that I couldn't tell them what they wanted to know.

All I can figure is that it was part of a routine. The manual says you question him for X days. Then you do one of four things: you torture him physically, you kill him, you put him in jail and forget about him, or you let him go. The possibility of a trial with a judge and lawyers didn't even occur to me. These weren't trial sort of people.

Routine, rote, going through the motions. Brutality is the reflex of fascism. It's not a fallback position, it's where you start.

Then, for a while, nobody bothered me. I woke up two times in a row in the narrow bunk, and in between times of sleep they fed me twice. Call it one day. I didn't do much of anything. My head still felt like glue.

I woke up again, and for the first time in a while I was sure what my name was, how old I was, and that I lived on Mars. I didn't recall much else. I remember that, for a while, I knew I had a mother and a father, but I couldn't recall their names. I thought about it for hours. It made me angry, then sad. I cried about it, alone in that bright cell. I think I may have cried myself to sleep. All I know for sure is I woke up again and was served some slop for breakfast, and I felt a lot better. Not quite ready to appear on
Jeopardy!
, but at least with my important memories intact.

I spent another day in the lockup and saw no one except the guy who brought lunch and dinner. I slept again. I woke up when someone opened the door and tossed some clothes into the room. They weren't the clothes I'd been wearing under my suit, but they were mine.

I dressed, and was met by two guys in the black uniforms I'd become familiar with. They led me down a curving hall and for the first time I was able to study the insignia on their chests and shoulders. Most of it didn't mean anything to me, things like service ribbons or things indicating their ranks. There was nothing there with any writing on it. No
Homeland Security
, no
U.S. Army
, no
United Nations
or
Comeurope
. The most prominent patch was on the right shoulder and over the heart, and it was a white circle with a black lightning bolt flashing across it.

Who
were
these guys?

They took me back to the torture chamber. My main interrogator and the woman were sitting behind a table. I was taken to the single chair across from them and set down roughly in it. I just sat there, trying not to breathe hard, hanging on to what little dignity I could muster by not letting them know how terrified I was.

The woman shoved a paper toward me.

"Sign that," she said.

You want to know how beaten down I was? You want to know just how quickly and thoroughly they can crush the spirit out of you? I almost did. I had the pen in my hand and was about to scrawl something in the space marked
Sign Here
.

Then I put the pen down and read it. It was short, and said that I agreed never to discuss anything about the events of the last seven (7) days, including but not limited to the conditions of my treatment, the manner of my incarceration, and the subjects of the "voluntary statements" I made.

"Sign it," the man said.

"What if I don't?"

"The question doesn't arise," the woman said.

"There is nothing voluntary about it, and you know it."

"Who cares?" the man said. "I'll spell it out for you. You have no witnesses, and nobody would care if you did. What this is about, is you never mention that we asked you as to the whereabouts of Jubal Broussard. Not to anyone. As long as you live."

"What if I do? You throw me in jail?" I knew that wasn't it as soon as I said it. The cat would already be out of the bag: Somebody has misplaced the most important man on Earth.

"I told you this was stupid," the woman said, not to me.