him filled his veins.
“Okay, Nick, just relax, let it happen,” Tommy said.
Nick tried to fight it.
“It’s very sophisticated stuff. Phenobarbital-B, an advanced compound, state of the art for CIA interrogations. Go ahead, fight it. The more you fight, the more you talk.”
Nick felt nothing. Then he felt everything. Lights were going on, then going off. He felt his will shredding. He felt it going away. In his weakness and terror, he yearned only to please.
“Now Nick,” came the voice from very far away, “Nick, Nick, Nick. Tell us a story. Got the tape going, Pony?”
“It’s on.”
“Nick, how’d you first hear of RamDyne?”
Nick tried to find a way to resist, but the point of it seemed quite ridiculous. Why not give them what they wanted? Everybody did.
“I – I – ”
“That’s right. Go on.”
“I was on surveillance with the Secret Service prior to Flashlight’s visit. Um. One of their agents mentioned that RamDyne exported the big surveillance rigs to Central American governments and I’d been looking for some way…”
And with that he was gone. He talked and talked and talked. He couldn’t shut up. It just came out of him. It was like a purging. All the information he’d stored, all his doubts about Bob Lee Swagger’s guilt, all his fears, his terror, worst of all, of his own inadequacy, it all came out of him. He talked for days, for years. In the end, he wore them out. He beat them by talking.
It was dawn. The crickets had shut up, even, he outtalked the crickets. Outside, the sun was rising, turning the day pale and green. Outside, Nick could see, everything was green. It was a wild driven craze of green, a dangerous green. They were near a river or a swamp; there were trees everywhere. The road was a dirt track. He was tired. He was so tired. Now all he wanted to do was rest.
But they had him up.
“I just want to sleep,” he said.
“Nah. You want to go to the bathroom, right?” said Tommy.
“Nah, I wanna sleep.”
“Shit. Walk him around, okay.”
“You got it all, Payne-O?”
“Hey, can you think of anything I left out? This guy would sing the birdies out of the sky now.”
“Ah, let me see. Let me check the list.”
“It’s all checked off. It’s all on the list.”
“Okay, you know the drill. Tommy, he’s your buddy. You handle it. Pony, you stay with him. We’ll leave you here. You wait till he pisses. Meanwhile, I gotta get the tape back ASAP.”
“You got it, Payne-O.”
Still crushed by the drug, Nick could at least put it together. He had no will and he had no pride.
“What are you gonna do to me?” he asked.
“What do you think, fuck?” said Payne. “You crossed the line. You been a-messin’ where you shouldn’t a been a-messin’, and now the boots are gonna walk all over you. Someone’s still got to do the hard thing, you little shit. You didn’t have to find out about it. It was your choice. But now you’re the hard thing, kid.”
“National Security at Risk. Lancer Committee requests no further action be taken. Refer to Annex B,” Nick quoted, but the irony was lost on them.
The two of them got into the surveillance van and drove away. Nick watched as the van disappeared down the dirt road, leaving a skirt of dust in the empty air.
Nick looked around. It was quite a beautiful place, actually. Completely deserted, but a kind of river basin, where the swamp momentarily yielded to a broad yellow-green meadow. A few hundred yards away the trees were dense and the land looked soupy. Here, in the fragrant morning, the land was solid. His car was parked over there, and another one.
Nick turned. Tommy and the other guy were eyeing him balefully. He twisted on his cuffs; they would not give. He could run, but to where? There was no place to run to.
“This is all wrong,” he said. “I haven’t done anything.”
“It ain’t about doing things wrong. It’s about knowing too much. It’s how these things work, man. It’s how they always work,” said Tommy. “You want a Coke or a cup of coffee? We have a thermos, Nicky.”
“No.”
“Nicky, I hate to tell you, you ain’t no superman. You’re gonna have to piss sooner or later. It’s the nature of the beast.”
“What’s with the pissing?” he asked.
“You got too high a concentration of pheno-B in you. You piss, it gets down to levels where it can’t be spotted. See, that’s why we got to wait. Sorry about it. Enjoy the morning. Just relax. It ain’t gonna be nothing.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Nicky, I seen a lot of guys check out. And my time will come soon enough. So let’s just get through it as quickly and easily as possible. Don’t cry or beg or nothing.”
“Fuck you, I’m not going to cry or beg.”
“Usually, they do,” said Pony. “Usually they do.”
Nick waited until his bladder betrayed him. It had to, finally. He fought it. But then Tommy said, “Hey, why put yourself through that? It ain’t gonna matter much, really. I mean, is it?”
So finally he said it. “Have to go. Undo my hands.”
“No can do, pard. You know that. Pony, undo his pants for him. Don’t touch him. Let it be natural.”
God, he hated them! It was the little touches of solicitousness, the softly remorseless way in which they did their job.
Pony, young and muscular and vaguely Latino, undid his pants. He was able to urinate himself dry, a last, long dying are of life in the bright morning light in the blazing green of the swamp.
“Okay,” he finally said. “Fuck you. Get it fucking over with.”
They zipped and buttoned him up and led him down to the river. It lapped against the mud. A dragonfly flashed in the sun, big and prehistoric, like something liberated from a million or so years in amber. Nick was pushed to his knees.
He felt a belt being strapped around his waist. Then his left arm suddenly wore a new manacle, something attached to the belt. Jesus, they had
Something was thrust into his hand; his fingers recognized the familiar contours of his Colt Agent. He tried to pull the trigger but it wouldn’t budge; they had something wedged under it. He felt a binding of tape being wound about his knuckles, locking the small pistol in his grip.
“Hold his head back, Pony,” Tommy said. Pony grabbed Nick by his hair, and pulled his head back. It fucking hurt.
“You motherfucking pricks,” he screamed. “God, don’t do this to me, don’t do this to me. Tommy, Christ, please, I was your buddy.”
“No, Nicky. You was just a fed, man. I can’t cut you no slack. I got my job to do, man.”
Nick heard a click behind him, and the first set of cuffs came away, freeing his right arm; but immediately it was ridden into submission by the full force and thrust of Tommy Montoya at his right.
“Okay, Nicky, don’t fight me. Over in a second.”
“Please don’t do this,” Nick begged.
“Okay, Nicky, up we go.”
The man forced Nick’s arm upward in an arc, curving the hand toward Nick’s temple. His own hand was his enemy. Nick fought with all the strength he had, but the two men stood over him in postures that put the complete physics of leverage on their side. He saw his hand rise toward his head, guided by both muscular arms of his
