The Nothing Men, page 11
part #1 of The Nothing Men Series
“Mr. Sullivan,” he said, grasping Ben’s chin in the V between his thumb and index finger. “I’m Agent Whitmore. I’m with the Department of Reconstruction & Recovery.”
Ben’s eyes widened with terror.
“I’m going to ask you some questions,” he said. “Believe me when I say that it’s in your best interest to answer me truthfully and completely. Don’t leave anything out, no matter how minor a detail you think it is. Do you understand?”
Ben nodded again. Whitmore knew the man understood, as surely as he’d understood anything in his life. He was going to tell them everything, truthfully and completely, just as Whitmore had requested. No detail would be left out. That was the power of the water cannon.
“Good. See, I just need to make sure you’re not here to pull a fast one on us. Smart guy like you, doesn’t fit the part, the kind of guy who could just really lead us down the primrose path.”
Ben shook his head forcefully.
“Is anyone else from the Haven still alive?”
“I don’t know,” Ben said. “I don’t think so.”
“Are there other Havens?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I never heard any discussion about any other Havens.”
“When was the attack scheduled?”
“They didn’t tell me,” Ben said. “I was eavesdropping on the meeting where I heard the attack being discussed, but I think they heard me, and I ran off.”
Whitmore glanced over at someone, just out of sight, and nodded his head.
The laser-like beam of water crashed into his face, and it felt like a gallon was forced down his throat before he could get his mouth closed. Sullivan held his breath tight, holding it, holding it, until his head started to swim from the effects of the oxygen deprivation, and just before passed out, the water stopped. He heaved once, and then turned his head just in time to vomit sour water all over the cold concrete floor. The stench of puke hung in the chill air.
“Mr. Sullivan, perhaps I wasn’t clear. I want to know what you know.”
“I swear, I don’t know anything!” he pleaded, his voice growing desperate.
“What do you know about the Haven?” Whitmore asked.
“I was there,” Ben said, his nose running, his head lolling to one side. “I worked in the fields, farming, that kind of thing. I didn’t really get to know anyone. They just wanted to have a place where they weren’t treated like shit.”
“How long were you there?”
“About six weeks.”
“How did you end up there?”
“I helped a woman who was in trouble,” Ben said. “When I was on a HARD team. Her brother was in the group. He invited me to join them.”
“Who was the woman?”
“I don’t know,” Ben said,
Whitmore paused, his face blank.
“How did they find you?”
“At the camp. I guess they followed me.”
“Of course, the camps. Breeding grounds for trouble. And you just went along with them?”
“I was having a hard time,” he said. “I was out of food and money. I had nowhere to go. I didn’t know what they were up to.”
“I see,” Whitmore said.
There was a pause in the discussion, two boxers retreating to their corners. Still no emotion from Whitmore. He wasn’t sure if he believed all, some, or none of Ben’s story.
“Have you ever heard of Mongoose?”
Ben shook his head, his brow furrowed in confusion.
“Emerald?”
Another pause, followed by: “No.”
“Tranquility?”
“No,” he said.
“Roadrunner?”
“No.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yes. I’m sure.”
Whitmore nodded again, and the prisoner braced himself for the liquid assault, his body locking up like he was about to take a punch from Mike Tyson in his prime. As he twisted and writhed around the table, straining against the rope restraints until he felt them cut into his wrists and ankles, screaming and hacking, Whitmore shut his eyes tight and waited for it to pass. He reminded himself why he was doing this. He reminded himself what he had lost.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I swear to God, I’m sure!”
“Very good.”
Whitmore turned and walked out. A Volunteer undid the restraints and threw him a ratty orange jumpsuit before following Whitmore, leaving Ben alone in the dark, dank room. He pulled it on quickly, desperate to beat back the chill that was seeping into his bones, down into his core.
Ben was flat on his back, one arm tucked behind his head, when he became aware of the fact that his arm had fallen asleep. The word Tranquility kept cycling through his mind like that familiar piece of luggage that passes by on the conveyor belt a dozen times before you spot your own. They had asked him about it. Why had he lied about that? It was his biggest bargaining chip. And yet he covered it up, like protecting an injured part of the body from further harm.
He’d been back in his cell for hours, and the place had been as silent as a tomb. No other visitors, no one to check on his well-being. They could just leave him here until he rotted away, and no one would say boo. He had no lawyer, no family members, no one would even know he was gone. He was an un-person, a nothing man. Oh, sure, there were some pro-Redeye groups out there, those that had clung to the idea of equal rights for all after the Panic had died down. They filed amicus briefs in various lawsuits alleging all manner violations of the constitutional rights of the Reds, but it was more window dressing than anything else. Nothing changed, and nothing was likely to change in the near future.
How had things turned to shit so quickly?
He couldn’t believe how badly he’d played his hand, how poorly he had misjudged his captors. All these months, his life had felt like it was happening to someone else, as if he hadn’t been hated and reviled by the world around him. Surely they didn’t see him that way. He was an upstanding member of the community, a husband, a father, and it would just be a matter of time before they saw him that way again. And what better way to do that than to let them know that he was one of them, that he was on their side!
But he knew instantly that it had been a terrible miscalculation on his part. It felt wrong, so wrong, like a musical note struck in discord, and it played out in just that manner. After telling Lieutenant Porter that he had information about the Haven, angry soldiers had whisked him out of his cell and brought to this God-forsaken hellhole. How long had he been here? It seemed like hours or even days. But it probably hadn’t been that long, he realized. The horror and the misery of the water cannon had made time stretch like putty.
The interrogation ran through his mind again like an old movie. They had actually asked him about Tranquility. A buzz of energy had coursed through Ben as Whitmore enunciated the word, as though he had touched a live wire. He didn’t know why he had said no. It was unexplainable, a sudden protective instinct for that simple word washing over him, the way a mother might hide a child from an abusive father home from a three-day bender. He hadn’t intended to protect Ellie, he hadn’t intended to protect anyone. All of a sudden, he was keenly aware of how much he wanted to keep her name out of this. The depth of this conviction surprised him a little; after all, he didn’t really know Ellie all that well. He hadn’t even seen her since that fateful day. And yet here he was, lying for her.
The left side of his brain was making all kinds of rational arguments, that he could just tell Whitmore what Thompson had told him in the woods, and that should be enough to buy him some goodwill. But as he lay there, he became aware that it was going to take more than just the hose to get him to give it up. A lot more. Clearly, Calvin Thompson’s final words had been those of someone still in control of his faculties. Tranquility was a thing, a real thing, a precious thing. Precious to the Haven, precious to Mr. Whitmore, and, by extension, precious to Ben.
With no frame of reference, time began to dissolve around him like the memory of dream that was fading. At some point, they’d deliver his meal and that would orient him like a temporal compass, and for that brief moment he would know his place in the world, even if that place in the world was limited to dinnertime in this cell. He felt alone, adrift, and his eyelids began to grow heavy in the stifling humidity.
The sound of the cell door disengaging startling him awake from a deep sleep. He sat up and gave his head a hard shake to clear the cobwebs. Porter and Harris were waiting for him at the precipice, their rifles slung over their shoulders.
“Let’s go,” said Harris. Acne had done a number on his face, leaving it as pockmarked as the surface of the moon.
“Where?” asked Ben.
“No talking,” said Porter, looking as hard and mean as ever. “Cuff him.”
She trained her M4 rifle on Ben while the kid slapped on the cuffs and the leg irons. He held her gaze the whole time, part of him furious, part of him amused by the Hannibal Lecter treatment he was getting. They already hated him, so it was probably to his advantage that they feared him a little too. It was a mean thing to think, but he hoped that returning her gaze with his flaming red eyes reminded her of the terrible things that she’d seen during the Panic, that it unsettled her, that maybe she wouldn’t sleep well tonight, and she could curse his name while dry swallowing a sleeping pill.
They led him through the bowels of the facility to a sally port, which had once been used to load and unload prisoners from transport vans that delivered them to other correctional facilities or to their court dates in other jurisdictions. It was still dark out, probably coming up on dawn. It was cool but not cold, just a hint of humidity hanging in the air. Instantly, he scanned the area for an escape route, and he chuckled softly to himself; every prisoner who came through here had undoubtedly done the same thing.
The driver of the van idling at the curb smoked a cigarette silently. When he saw his passengers arrive, he pitched the smoke through the window. The half-smoked cigarette tumbled end over end, showering the inky pre-dawn darkness with a cascade of sparks.
Ben’s escorts loaded him into the rear of the van. Harris took the seat next to him, Porter on the bench directly across. The driver’s compartment was separated by a thick metal screen, and he filed that bit of information away for later, in the event he developed the balls to make an escape attempt. The more he thought about it, the more he thought about Tranquility, the more important it seemed to be.
“Roll out,” Porter said, turning her head toward the driver.
They pulled away from the curb, destination unknown.
14
Sunrise was still an hour away, but the night had made its final turn for the break of dawn. They rode in silence down Route 288, one of the few crossings of the James River that was still intact. Traffic was light. Twenty minutes later, the driver took the exit for Route 60, a major artery running through Chesterfield County, a suburban community just south of the city of Richmond. The area had seen heavy fighting during the Panic; the Virginia National Guard had worked tirelessly to keep Route 60 open as a supply line running east-west through the heart of Virginia. It had been an important front in the struggle to protect Washington, D.C. from the Redeyes.
They had arrived at what had once been the State Police headquarters, now converted into a regional command post for the Department. The van passed through two sets set of black gates, waved through each by a heavily armed Volunteer, before pulling up to the rear entrance of the steel and glass complex.
As Ben alighted from the van, the pointed shove of a rifle in his back caused him to lose his balance and stumble to his knees. The other soldiers laughed at him, and his face flush with embarrassment.
“A little weak in the knees? Human flesh levels running low?” said one of the Volunteers.
“Hey, we got your favorite for dinner!” barked another. “Dead dog. I scraped it up off the Turnpike myself.”
The laughter erupted like they were watching a stand-up comedy festival. Tears welled up in his eyes, but he would be damned if he was going to let these assholes see him cry. He wiped his face quickly with his shackled arms just as two soldiers shoved him along inside the double doors.
They took him down a darkened corridor and up a narrow staircase to an observation area; it looked down on a large open room with dozens of workstations facing toward three large screens on a curved wall. Waiting for him was his new friend, Agent Whitmore. His suit looked as fresh and crisp as ever, the knot in his necktie still perfect. He was sipping coffee from an Oceanic Airlines mug. Ben’s stomach turned to liquid, and he could almost feel the sting of the water in his face again, in his nostrils, blasting his eyeballs so hard it felt like they would pop straight out of his head.
“Nice to see you again, Mr. Sullivan,” Whitmore said, as though he was greeting an old friend.
Ben stared at him dumbfounded. That he’d spent an hour torturing Ben seemed to have no lasting effect on the man.
“What am I doing here?” Ben asked.
Whitmore smiled broadly, a huge grin spreading across his face like someone plastering a pat of shiny butter across a piece of toast.
“We’ve been having a lot of problems with insurgent groups,” Whitmore said. He paused and took a long sip of his coffee. “It was meeting with you that gave me the idea for solving this problem once and for all. In a way, your country owes you an enormous debt.”
Ben felt a sudden emptiness chewing through his soul like a puppy left alone with a tennis shoe.
“Coffee?” Whitmore asked.
“No,” Ben muttered mindlessly, shaking his head as the screens flickered to life, depicting what appeared to be real-time satellite shots of the Eastern Seaboard. In the upper corner of the middle screen, the current time ticked away. The words Live Feed blinked slowly.
5:31:17 AM
The screens flickered again, this time zooming in on a more localized shot, this one in the mid-Atlantic region; another flicker, and it was obvious the satellite was centering on the Richmond area. Another zoom-in, this one tightening in on a large camp, Ben’s former home at the Richmond International Raceway.
They watched the screen quietly until the ringing of an unseen phone broke the silence. Whitmore removed a wireless phone from his pocket and answered it.
“Whitmore,” he said.
Ben eavesdropped as he stared at the screens.
“You have a green light,” Whitmore said after a moment. He terminated the call and slid the phone back into his jacket pocket.
Whitmore caught Ben staring at him and gave him a wink.
“You know, these camps really have become a hotbed for terrorist activity,” Whitmore said.
Ben hoped and prayed that his gut was wrong, that he really didn’t know what was coming, that Whitmore had some other endgame in mind, because there were few things he hated more than being right about something that he didn’t want to be right about. In college, he had suspected a girlfriend was cheating on him, and he hadn’t had any empirical evidence supporting such a suspicion, nary a thread, but when she had finally confessed to him what had happened while he was gone for the summer, he remembered how unsurprised he’d been. Devastated, sure, the emotional equivalent of her having fed him into a woodchipper. But surprised? Not for a second.
“The screen on the far right is a body camera view,” Whitmore said. “Mounted on the helmet of the team leader. This will give us a first-person view of the mission.”
On this screen, Ben looked into the camouflaged faces of a dozen Volunteers, all wearing body armor, armed to the teeth. They were in the cargo area of an armored personnel carrier. As the scene unfolded, his respiration deteriorated into shallow, ragged gasps.
“This middle screen, directly ahead of us, will give us a wide shot of the mission,” Whitmore continued. “This way we can get a bird’s-eye view of everything. That’ll be nice, don’t you think?”
This was an aerial view, from a considerable height, but one that gave a clear shot of the satellite’s intended target – a wide clearing, dotted with a number of manmade structures. In the corner of the screen, Ben could see an object rapidly approaching the camp. The personnel carrier.
“Here we go,” Whitmore said, clapping Ben on the shoulder.
Ben recoiled at the touch, disgusted by even the slightest suggestion that he and Whitmore were in on this together.
What did you do, Ben?
He could hear his father’s voice echoing in his head when he’d come home from work to learn from his mother that Ben had gotten in trouble yet again.
His eyes flickered from screen to screen, the pit in his stomach deepening as the Volunteers’ vehicle drew closer into the camp.
“I used to get a lot of ear infections as a kid,” Whitmore said. “Every week, back in the doctor’s office for another bottle of amoxicillin. The liquid just would never drain out of my ears. So just as soon as we got one infection knocked out, the bacteria would start breeding again, just a little bit stronger than the generation that had just been wiped out.”
Ben’s gaze was riveted on the monitors as Whitmore continued his stroll down memory lane.
“These camps have become dangerous,” Mr. Whitmore said. “Breeding grounds. Just like my poor little ears. What you have to do is get rid of the stagnant liquid. That’s why every kid under the age of ten’s got those little ear tubes. You’ve got to get rid of the liquid.”
Ben glanced over at Whitmore to show that he was still listening, that he was still engaged.
“You catch my drift?” Whitmore asked.
A brain-damaged donkey would catch your drift, you monster.
The armored carrier pulled up just outside the unmarked perimeter of the camp, and two dozen Volunteers in riot gear poured out, their rifles unslung and ready for business.
