It had been a long time since he’d felt any pain.
Seven years in captivity and Mac still had no idea where he was.
The Taliban camp was sizeable, with at least fifty recruits being put through their paces on a daily basis by the dozen or so soldiers who ran the show. During the first few months of captivity, Mac had focused on learning their names, focusing on their identities as a way to fight through the pain. The medic they had within the camp had tended to the significant burns that dominated the left side of his body, but that was the only hospitality he’d experienced since his ordeal began.
As the months ticked by, Mac had become resigned to his fate. The notion of rescue soon dissipated completely and his idea of collecting valuable intel died.
There was no rescue.
No hope.
Within the first few weeks of his incarceration, he’d been whipped mercilessly in front of the new recruits, his back slashed until it looked like a beaten leather sofa. The blood loss had caused him to pass out, and when he awoke, he was face down in the cage that would become his home.
Every few months, he was hauled from his cell, a broken and frail shadow of the soldier he once was and used as an educational tool to the brain-washed men who had joined the cause.
They beat him, to not only show them who was in charge but also to bring their war against the western world to reality. The soldiers running the camp would never go to war. They would never be called upon to detonate a bomb in a busy city.
They were there to groom the next generation to do their bidding.
Therefore, Mac was the target for their pent-up hatred and they made sure he felt it to his very core.
They would urinate through the bars of his cage, splattering him and the floor of his cell with warm piss, laughing as they did. They provided him little food or sanitation, ordering a young recruit to clear out the excrement he unloaded in the corner only once a month.
When the soldiers got bored, they would take a hammer and spread his fingers across the ground. Then, as fast as they could, they would slam the hammer in the gaps between and when they finally missed, and they always did, they would crush his bone with a sickening thud.
He would howl in pain.
They would laugh maniacally.
Then another soldier would have their turn.
Mac had also been raped. On three occasions he’d been roughly pulled from the cell, beaten until he could barely move, and then sodomised by a soldier. Despite their strict insistence that they were serving their god, they were willing to defy him in order to assert their dominance.
To show Mac that they were his masters and he was nothing more than an animal in their eyes.
There had been times when he’d tried to end it all, mustering up the energy to slam his head as hard as he could against the harsh, stone wall of his cell until he split his skull open.
But he was always nursed back to health.
They would rather he be kept as a pet than bury him in the ground.
Through it all, he remembered Sam’s words. It had been eight years ago, but he could recall them as if they’d spoken yesterday.
‘I promise I will do everything to keep you alive.’
Sam had failed to keep his promise.
He had left him here, to be tortured. To be killed.
The anger had toiled away in Mac for years, and he hoped Sam had survived the blast so he could one day have the pleasure of putting a bullet in his skull.
Mac was no longer a soldier.
He was no longer a person.
As he reached out and slid a rotten piece of carrot into his mouth, he heard a large explosion from outside the base, the impact rocking the cell and causing a few stones to scatter across the floor. Panicked cries echoed in the distance, followed by the unmistakable barrage of gunfire. The senior soldiers rushed to the door, barking orders in their native tongues as they reached for their rifles. Two of them stayed back, a clear sense of panic between them as another explosion shook the room.
Mac pushed his wiry frame upward, lifting himself to his knees.
Gunfire echoed directly outside the room, followed by a spray of bullets thudding against the door. The final two captors stood, rifles aimed, although their hands shook.
The door slid open.
They fired wildly, not noticing the flashbang that had been rolled in and everything went white. Mac’s hearing dropped to a high-pitched squeal but as his eyes adjusted to the room again, he saw a burly general march in, flanked by two rifle wielding soldiers. The man in charge stepped over the dead body of one of the captors to the other, who, riddled with bullets, was praying to God.
The man ignored it, casually lifting the Glock in his hand and pulling the trigger. The captor’s skull exploded, much to Mac’s delight. That quickly turned to horror as a rifle was thrust into his face.
‘General, we have a captive here.’
The soldier called across the room, and the murderous General marched over, peering through the bars at the pathetic, beaten human before him.
‘State your name, son?’
Mac couldn’t believe it. It was years since he’d heard an English word that hadn’t been an insult in broken English, or had been treated like a person. A tear formed in his eye as he searched his brain rapidly, trying to recall an identity that had long since been swept away.
‘P-p-private Matthew McLaughlin, sir.’
The man smiled warmly.
‘My name is General Ervin Wallace. You are safe now, soldier.’
* * *
Mac sat at the laptop which lay open on the small desk that
