Mad Dogs (16 page)

WHAMANG!!!

Waking up on the floor of the
checa
, Eric remembered: I disobeyed. Broke mission. Tried to be a good guy. Got suckered. Got here.

He found a wall. Stood. Saw the iron bed.

Eric put one foot on the bed and leapt, arms above his head. He grabbed…

GOT IT! Steel wire slices hands when it's grasped. Eric blood-slipped down the wire until his hands hit a green metal mobile—that popped free of the ceiling, and he crashed to the bricks like a bespectacled walrus.

Eric bent the book-sized sheet of thin metal until it snapped into two pieces. The biggest section had the wire melded to it, the smaller section looked like a putty knife.

Using his shit like putty, Eric adhered the small blade from the mobile to the underside of a floor brick. Smeared the rest of the cell with his bloody hands. He hid the true intent of those wounds to his hands with cosmetic slashes on his wrist.

Passed out.

Woke up head held underwater in the barrel by guards who shook the broken mobile in his gasping face before they dunked him again. For a bonus round, they beat him with their L-shaped police clubs. Next thing he knew, he was in the chair.

Major Aman wiped Eric's face with a warm towel. “Can I tell you a secret?”

To Eric's slurping lips he held a cup of warm coffee fortified with milk and sugar.

“You can't kill everybody.” Major Aman sighed. “You can try, but it's counter-productive. What the world needs now is not dead people. What we need are useful people. Who obey. Then everything works like paradise, right engineer?”

He waited until Eric finished the tin cup of sweet milked coffee, then into his other ear, whispered: “Suicide is choice and choice challenges obedience. You won't try suicide again unless you're obeying an order—
what is the second question
?”

“What do 'o do?” slurred Eric.

“And what does everybody do?”

“Obey orders.”

But I didn't!
thought Eric.
I disobeyed CIA orders 'n' look what happened!

“Next time,” promised Major Aman, “we get to move on.”

Not one shock
, thought Eric as guards dragged him back to the
checa
. They fed him. Clubbed him once out of politeness. Closed the door with a
bong
and a
click.

Every cell in his body begged for unconscious oblivion. Eric crawled until he found the right brick, the shit-stuck metal blade. He slithered to the door. Took him 232 breaths to remove the four screws holding the electronic lock's plate to the steel door.

Good thing they'd taped his glasses on. Good thing the lights kept strobing.

Eric peered into the metal jumble of the electronic lock. Spotted the two wires, but deep in the lock:
Darn
, no way could he use his metal strip to do the final job.

Hope we go to the bucket soon, thought Eric as he screwed the plate back over the lock. Or there won't be enough left of me to escape.

Next time, they took him straight to the chair.

Major Aman said: “There are three questions. First question?”

“Who are you?”

“Second question?”

“What do you do?”

“You are what you do. And see? You obey. What we have here is a chance to—”

CRACKETY-ZAP!

What's wrong? Can't feel that electricity! Can't—

The snake-necked lamp on Major Aman's desk went
crazy
. Blue sparks and smoke swirled as jolts of escaping electricity made the lamp hop and clatter like a robot gone mad. Major Aman jumped away from the desk. A guard charged from behind Eric and hit the gone-crazy lamp with his L-shaped police baton.

Inertia bounced the lamp off the desk, sparks sputtering. The guard swung the police baton like a golf club, smacked the brass lamp clattering across the floor. Unplugged, the lamp said nothing as the guard clubbed it again and again. Panting, sweat soaked, the guard marched past the naked man clamped in the chair and couldn't help but give the prisoner a grin of triumph.

“Sorry about that,” said Major Aman as he took his seat behind the desk. “The curse of an imprisoned country. So often our things, especially high tech… break. We have to constantly plan and prepare for such inconveniences.”

WHAMANG!

“Oh good, still works. Where were we? Ah, yes. The third question.

“Before that,” said Major Aman, “consider:
who you are
is one person. Everyone serves. Obedience is the heart of service. Some citizens don't realize that they should serve the glorious leader. That ignorance is common among potentially productive citizens. Scientists. Engineers. Inventors. Executives. Lawyers. Teachers. Writers. Our challenge is to wipe out ignorance without lowering productivity.”

Major Aman gestured to the room with a slaughtered snake neck lamp and a naked man clamped in a chair. “This is an experiment to answer that challenge.”

“Brainwash.”

“What good is a washed clean brain? We need a brain that embraces the logic of obedience without losing its creative potential. We can't risk Iraqi brains with mere experiments. But we have guest workers. We have you. You have the right kind of mind. You showed yourself to be changeable. You're all alone. You're just a rental.

“The third question,” said Major Aman, angling his arm to show the poise of his finger while Eric's eyes gravitated to him. “The third question is…”

Wait no wait no wait…

“The third question is:
How can you make this life of pain worth it?”

WHAMANG!

That session became one excrutiating searing shock as he heard Major Aman reveal how
who we are
means service is inevitable. How the heart of service was obedience. How that perfect formula builds usefulness. Usefulness means an end of pain and aloneness. Usefulness was the answer to the third question of how you make this life worth it. The first question meant
who one was
created the question of
what had to be done
, and that brought usefulness to make this thing called life
worth it
.

When he woke up on the floor of the
chekca
, Eric cried.

But not enough, he sobbed. I need a bucket of tears!

Two chair sessions later—or maybe four—guards dragged him to the barrel.

Waking up choking
almost foiled him, but the third time guards dunked his head under the water, he remembered. Swallowed. Drank as he thrashed. Drank all he could.
There's a hole in my bucket
,
don't let any water run out.
They dunked him until they were all too worn out to do the routine beating, so
fuck it
, they just dragged it back to the swirling colors/blasting lights
checa
and dumped it on the floor.

Bong
! went the slammed-shut door.

Click
! went the electronic lock.

Now or never.
Eric crawled on his water-swollen belly. Found the brick shit-stuck with his secret screwdriver. Found the door. Unscrewed the lock plate.

Standing. I'm me. I'm a man. I'm standing. Naked. Wearing glasses.

Wish I had galoshes. Hell, even sneakers—they'd be
perfect
for
next
!

You got what you got. You are who you are. You have to do—NO!

What the heck, it's only one more time.

With the best aim of his life, Eric peed a bucket into the electronic lock.

WHAMANG!
He discovered he'd been knocked back to the wall.

Smoke coming out of the electronic lock! Shorted it out! I took the shock, DID IT!

Like a giddy drunk, Eric toddled to the smoking door. Hooked his finger in the wet lock hole.
Gone, I'm gone
. He pulled with all his strength.

On the other side of the
checa
's door, out there in that
imprisoned country
where
often things, especially high tech, break
, where life meant having to
plan and prepare for… inconveniences
, out there in the empty hall, guards had slipped an L-shaped police baton through the cell door's steel loop handle like a Medieval bar to back up the unreliable 20
th
Century electronic lock.

Eric pulled. And pulled. Pulled. Collapsed sobbing into swirling color and light.

The guards and Major Aman were not pleased. Or discouraged.

Everyone worked harder.

Until Eric remembered the guard's ludicrous smile of triumph.

Laying on his back in the
checa
, naked, glasses taped on, Eric's right hand flopped and hit his face. He cupped his mouth to stop from shouting his new secret:

Sometimes triumph is beating a lamp to death.

Obey orders. That's what Aman/Saadam/Iraq wanted him to do.

Obey orders. That's what the CIA wanted him to do.

Questions of who to obey only brought him pain. Good Guy orders vs. Bad Guy orders: the equation null sets if all forces are equal. Obeying everyone equals obeying no one. No pain then.
Who I am
is the engineer,
what I do
is obey all orders.

The
checa
swirled. Bent walls and reckless colors calmed themselves into straight lines with proper angles and sane patterns. He faced the sloping iron shelf. Every time he'd tried to lay on that bed, he rolled off.

Eric stretched out on the iron slab. His left hand gripped the edge to let him lay on a sloped iron bed in defiance of mere realities like gravity.

Making it work, making it add up—with a ludicrous grin—to his own triumph.

Three days later, Major Aman yelled: “You're worthless! You obey anybody!”

Eric stood across the room from that chair. Stood naked, on one leg, his finger poked in his nose, his beard and hair smelling burnt.

“Supposed to belong to just us! I'll get trouble for screwing up your experiment!”

Bare naked Eric stood there on one leg, his finger poked in his nose like a random guard had told him to do. Major Aman
hadn't
asked the naked man if his real name was Hans Wolfe or if he worked for the CIA. After his epiphany in the
checa
, Eric would have
of course
told Major Aman those answers to obey their questions. But the torturer never asked. Even with his finger up his nose, Eric knew that smelled of victory.

“Stand on both legs,” ordered Major Aman on their last day. “Take your finger—put your hands down. You are going off the list of my problems. No more
checa
. Bathe. Eat, sleep, get yourself to look good for the TV cameras. Soon, Saddam will send you guest workers home, public relations gesture. Get on the plane to Germany. When you get there, what you do doesn't matter to us, because clearly, you are crazy.”

Eric obeyed and obeying proved his thesis: the pain stopped. A CIA recovery team scooped him off the curb while he was waiting for the DON'T WALK sign to change at the Bonn airport. The recovery team gave Eric to the Castle.

Where he obeyed every order. Where we developed a flow that let him lead an OK life. After Hailey walked into the ward, Eric began again to think for himself, speak his thoughts, have desires. But he never violated his triumph of absolute slavery.

29

Cold. Wet. Dark.

Words about me as I stood on the beach listening to the waves in the black night.

Cold. Wet. Dark.

Words about spies.

Cold. As in Cold War. As in ruthless. As in the world of invisible battles preceding the public's blasting by bombs and bullets. As in, “cold as a grave.”

Wet. As in, “wet work.”
Wet
as in
blood.
What the spy services of the crumbled Soviet Union called neutralizations, assassinations, murder.

Dark. As in “covert.” As in “black.” As in “black budget/work/world.”

Walking toward me across the packed sand came Hailey. The full moon made her smile glisten and her eyes bright. We stared at the rippling night as waves swept up to wet our feet and whirl salt spray on our faces. A jillion white dots twinkled overhead.

“How many of those stars do you think are already dead?” she said. “And us just standing here waiting for the light to catch up to being gone.”

I said nothing.

“Do you know why it's always out there?” she asked. “The ocean?”

I gave her no answer.

After a dozen crashing waves, she said: “If it wasn't out there, we'd drown here.”

Waves lapped at the ground beneath our feet.

She said: “I dare you to smile.”

“I'm too cold.”

“Go back to the SUV.” She angled her head to where our stolen ride sat parked on the beach lit by a full moon. “Zane's got first sentry, hiding with the gun back in that pile of boulders. Russell will relieve him in two hours. As eager as Russell is to get the gun in his hands, he won't oversleep. Come back with me. Pretend you like sleeping huddled in a car parked on the beach.”

We listened to the waves.

She said: “What are you worried about? We already jumped into the big wrong.”

“I just want…” Words stopped.

“Come on. Tell the girl in the moonlight what she wants to hear.”

“I want it to work. Even though what we've done is crazy. We're crazy.”

“And all in it together,” she said.

I thrust words at her like daggers: “Of our own
free will
?”

“Whatever,” she parried. “That's not your problem.”

“Sure it is.”

“Whatever,” she repeated. “What's your real problem now?”

“What if I've totally fucked up? This whole thing. Busting out. Jumping over to this damn beach on Long Island to wait out any leaving-New-York ambushes. If the meds you scored don't smooth us out, we've only got three days left before we fall apart. We're three days on the road and we're nowhere. What if I'm totally wrong?”

“Is Dr. F still dead?” said Hailey. “Or was that our mass hallucinogenic hysteria?”

“Oh, he's dead. I went to his memorial
shiva
.”

“Quite a party, huh?” She found no smile on my face. “Did he die or was he hit?”

My silence confirmed murder.

“And instead of us taking the fall like it was framed, we busted out. We might still go down, but we aren't just surrendering. And most of that is thanks to you.”

“But what if I fuck up? I don't care about me, but the rest of you…”

“The world is your responsibility, right?” she said. “Maybe. But only with what you can do. What you can't…”

“You pay for,” I said.

“Everybody pays.”

Waves lapped.

“We all know that,” she said. “We all signed on.”

“Maybe you should all think about signing off.”

Waves washed to the shore.

She said: “You know how Russell took a birth control pill by mistake?”

“Yeah.”

“Well he won't throw the other two away.”

“That's—”

“Crazy?” she said.

We both laughed.

“Russell figures one of them sacrificed itself for him—even if it was born to be a pill. Maybe it was what broke him through. Makes sense that something absurd like that worked after years of appropriate but useless treatment. Whatever, Russell won't just throw out the other two pills and say forget it. Forget them. That would be wrong.”

“What's he gonna do?”

We turned to look at each other in the moonlight.

“Russell won't walk away from two strange pills because their buddy might have helped him,” said Hailey. “Even if it didn't, even if it hurt, loyalty is a must for Russell. So what makes you think he would ever leave our thing?”

“He's no quitter.”

“None of us are.”

Waves lapped.

“So don't worry about what you've done wrong. We're all in this together.”

We stood there for a long time. My bones felt like ice.

“Were you thinking about her?” asked Hailey.

“
Nah
,” I said, truth with a hollow heart. “Got that
‘thinking about her'
down to three times a day. Once when I wake up. Then again when I let go as I fall asleep and
whoa
: here come those memories.”

“When's the third time?”

“Once a day. When it's light and I realize I'm still alive. It's like… one tear.”

We walked toward the Jeep.

I said: “What if you aren't really going to die?”

“Oh, sure. Like that's true.”

“No,” I said. “Suppose all your
I'm dying right now
thing is crazy?”

“OK,” she said. “Suppose. Then what?”

“Then you got what's left.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Terrific.”

Sand crunched under our shoes.

“Was what you told me about Russell and the white pills true? Or did you just need to make a point?”

Hailey said: “What do you think?”