Wormhole (The Rho Agenda #3)(51)
At the edge of her awareness, Jennifer felt a new surge of drugs enter her bloodstream, and although she shifted her attention to try to wall off its effects, a warm wave of foam swept her up, swirling her away from the answer that bobbed just beyond her grasp.
The cuffs bit into Mark’s wrists and ankles like a gnawing dog, stretching his naked body tight on the board, tilted down at a twenty-seven-degree angle. Water ran off the board in streams, yet clung tightly to the shammy-like cloth sack that covered his head. The air that struggled through the wet sack with each breath pressed the cloth tightly against his nose and mouth, the restricted air flow so damp that it felt as if he breathed in liquid water.
Inside the hood Mark smiled and relaxed, letting his heart rate fall from its normal forty-three beats per minute to thirty-five as he moved into midlevel meditation. He didn’t know where Heather and Jennifer were being held, but he knew his role. His captors expected him to be the leader of the group, the tough guy. Mark didn’t intend to disappoint them. The best thing he could do right now was to give the bad guys a target to focus on, something so interesting it might draw part of their attention away from the girls.
A hand struck him across the face, a stinging, openhanded slap that rolled his head to the side, bringing the copper taste of blood to his tongue. A deep voice snarled close to his left ear.
“How long do you think you’re gonna hold out, kid? I’ve got all the time in the world.”
Mark felt a fresh gush of ice-cold water pour down onto his face and chest, temporarily shutting off all airflow through the sack. Then the voice next to his ear was back.
“You might as well face it. Sooner or later you’re going to tell me everything I want to know. The quicker that happens, the easier it’ll go for you. So what’s it gonna be?”
Inside the hood, Mark’s smile returned. He lay in green grass beside a gurgling mountain stream. Surrounding the sunlit meadow, snowcapped peaks rose up to carve a cloudless blue sky. He smelled the sweet scent of flowers, heard the buzz of a hummingbird, felt the gentle breeze press damp grass against his face.
Tied to the dripping board in the frigid cell, Mark felt his heart rate fall another five beats per minute.
“You watching this?”
Harlan Redding’s voice held an edge Channing Grail had never heard before. Shifting his view from the image on the video monitor to the readout of Mark Smythe’s vitals, he felt a sudden chill.
The kid hadn’t eaten in three days. He’d been chained to a high ring in the center of the frigid concrete cell, a position that gave him two choices, remain standing or dangle by his manacled wrists. A single drain in the floor below him served as his toilet. By now, sleep deprivation alone would have driven most men into a hallucinatory dream state somewhere between waking and sleep. But not Mark Smythe. He had remained standing as if it took no more effort than lying in a feather bed.
The decision to proceed to waterboarding had received reluctant approval from the higher-ups, but based upon the results of the last four hours, Channing was beginning to think they might as well not have bothered.
“Jesus.”
“Resting like a baby.”
“Never seen anything like it.”
“Not an ounce of fat on that body either. From the look of him, I’d say he could win the Olympic decathlon.” Harlan nodded at the computer display. “Based on those readings, his mental control’s completely off the charts.”
“Gregory trained him.”
“Yes. But it’s more than that.” Harlan pointed a thick finger at the video monitor. “Down in that cell, we have one hell of a specimen.”
“Yeah,” Channing replied. “Too bad he doesn’t work for us.”
Tall Bear watched as the thirteen tribal chiefs emerged from the largest sweat lodge on the Santa Clara Reservation, sweat dripping from their bodies onto the hard-packed dirt just outside the mud lodge. They passed him without a word, slight nods in his direction the only acknowledgment of what had just happened inside.
Very few outsiders understood native ceremonies, especially the yuppies that paid self-professed shamans to conduct purification ceremonies. The US government showed even less interest and understanding of their importance. That combination of ambivalence and naiveté made a native sweat lodge an excellent place to discuss matters of a sensitive nature.
Tall Bear wasn’t sure how he’d assumed his role as the unofficial leader of the Native People’s Alliance. It had started with the rebellious act of helping Jack and Janet escape their federal pursuers. Then, like a desert arroyo suddenly filled with a distant storm’s roiling floodwater, anger at the unbridled power of the central government had filled his soul. The abuse of that power, illustrated so clearly in the way the government had framed Jack and his team, had burst the dam holding back Tall Bear’s rage at the injustice dealt his own people. Not just the Navajo people.
Many tribes had suffered genocide. Oddly, that didn’t bother Tall Bear as much as the systematic theft of his people’s dignity. The great American government, with its spirit of free enterprise, had imposed communism on the Native Peoples, and like the system the Bolsheviks had imposed on the Soviet Union, it had yielded the same harvest. The once-proud native people learned to accept government handouts, then to rely upon them. The subsequent loss of pride, self-reliance, and initiative led inevitably to the current plague of alcoholism, obesity, and hopelessness infecting modern tribal societies.