Abuse of Power - Michael Savage [82]
Swain pointed a Glock at him. “You see, old boy, killing you quickly would defeat the whole purpose of this exercise.”
Jack’s heart started to accelerate. The show was over. Ego and id were merging again. He had no idea what they were about to do to him, but he had the feeling the next screams he heard would be his own.
The thug came back carrying a bucket full of water, and Jack felt dread sluice through him.
“Look,” he said to Swain, his heart about ready to burst through his chest. “I don’t know what kind of information you’re hoping to extract from me, but I’ve got nothing. I only came here on a hunch.”
His wrists were burning, but he didn’t stop flexing, relaxing, flexing, relaxing. The rope was starting to loosen. Not much, but it was a start.
“That may be true,” Swain said, “but I have to be certain, Jack. Especially considering the company you’ve been keeping.”
“The girl? Just another hunch. I don’t even know her name.”
“Yet the moment I walked into this room, the first thing you did was ask about her. I could hear the concern in your voice.”
“She was screaming, for God’s sake! She’s a human being.”
“An attractive one,” he said. “Though not for much longer. We’re just resting her for act two. Your capacity for empathy is admirable, but you can understand why I have to find out if there’s more to it than that. And then, of course, there’s Operation Roadshow. That’s a very sensitive subject in my world.”
“What does the woman have to do with it?” Jack asked. Despite what was about to happen, he couldn’t help himself.
Swain was surprised as well. “You amaze me. Here you are about to feel more pain than I’d wish on any human being—well, almost any—yet you keep asking me questions. At what point do you stop being a reporter?”
“When I know the truth.”
Swain nodded. “All right, then. Here’s your truth.”
He gestured and the thug swung his arms, throwing the bucketful of water, drenching Jack’s hair, his jacket, his shirt, his pants. Then the thug pulled the baton free and flicked a switch in the base. It was an electroshock device. The click was the loudest, most terrible sound Jack had heard since the explosion in Iraq. It even beat the bomb back home because it was all about him.
He’d heard of the Chinese using these batons against practitioners of Falun Gong, jamming them into their prisoners’ mouths and letting loose as much as 250,000 volts of electricity. It was the torturer’s preferred method because it reportedly didn’t leave telltale marks.
He worked his wrists urgently, trying to loosen the damn rope. Ironically, the blood from the wounds that caused was helping to soften them. The wriggling was subtle, would look to the other men like anxiety, like panic—if they bothered to look. The room was poorly lit and their eyes were on his face, his pain. It helped that the chair was worn from repeated sessions like this one. Jack guessed that people had fallen over, taking the chair with them. The wood was slightly splintered, the armrests rough, providing an abrasive surface for his purposes. Whether it would be enough to cut through in time, or at all, was another matter.
“Here’s something that might interest you,” Swain said. “Something you learn by trial and error. You know why we tied you to the armrests?”
“To keep me from punching you in the balls?”
“That, yes,” Swain said. “We found that when we tied peoples’ hands behind the chair, they arched their backs and fell over. This way, they kind of crumple in on themselves.”
“Thanks for sharing…”
“You’re welcome.”
“… but you’re wasting your time,” he said to Swain, panic rising in his chest. His rapid breathing helped to cover the tactical back-and-forth, side-to-side motion of his wrists. “I swear to you, I don’t know any—”
The ape touched the tip of the baton to Jack’s abdomen, letting loose a wave of agony that swept through every bone, every muscle, every blood