CARRIER 2: VIPER STRIKE By Keith Douglass

head forward, and a glob of spittle mixed with blood struck Hsiao’s

face. “Fuck … you …!”

Hsiao darkened. Throughout the past, hellish hour the Chinese

interrogator had never lost his temper, but now he whipped the prod up,

jamming the tip into Magruder’s groin. Tombstone’s body twitched and

spasmed as fire seared along every nerve, every muscle. His mouth

gaped, screaming, but there was no sound. He hung suspended in a deadly

dance of snapping, convulsive agony. Hsiao continued pressing the

prod’s button over and over, again … again … again …

Then the current ceased, and Tombstone sagged from the hook, sinking

into the black comfort of oblivion.

CHAPTER 17

1315 hours, 19 January

The Warehouse, Bangkok

Pain. It had become a part of him, a part of his very existence.

Tombstone opened his eyes and his surroundings swam blearily into focus.

He was in a small and empty room, probably a supply closet of some kind,

with a light fixture hanging out of reach from a high ceiling and a

single wooden floor which looked as solid as the concrete block walls

around them.

Tombstone was lying on a cot, wrapped in rough army blankets with his

feet propped up on several pillows. The handcuffs were gone. His

captors, evidently, were taking care to see to it that he didn’t die of

shock between sessions.

Memories of the ordeal flooded back, and he squeezed his eyes shut.

Chief among his emotions was shame. He could remember the taste of his

own fear while hanging on that hook, remember losing control of his

bladder and bowels, remember screaming until his throat went raw.

Finally, at the end, he’d not been able to scream … only jerk and

twist under the terrible fire of Hsiao’s cattle prod until blackness had

taken him.

Struggling against weakness and the nausea clawing at his stomach,

Tombstone managed to kick free of the blanket and swing his bare legs

over the side of the cot.

Vertigo nearly claimed him, but after a few minutes of deep breathing,

the dizziness receded, leaving him light-headed … but conscious. His

injuries, while painful, were not serious. There were angry-looking raw

patches encircling his wrist and ankles where his bonds had chewed away

at his skin, and inch-long burns everywhere that the cattle prod had

arced and sparked instead of making a solid connection. Every muscle in

his body felt stiff and sore, as though he’d been methodically worked

over with a ball bat, and each movement threatened to overturn the

delicate balance of pain and emptiness in the pit of his stomach.

The real injuries, he feared, were in his mind. There were tremors in

his knees and hands still, and a fear-born, cramping hollow in the pit

of his stomach where the terror threatened to rise again at any moment.

Something which might be a bundle of wet rags in the far corner of the

room caught his eye. Shakily, he stood up and took a tentative step

toward them.

The overhead light illuminated raw horror, three bodies dumped against

the concrete wall as though casually discarded there. Tombstone

squeezed his eyes shut, trying to turn away, but that first stark,

blood-smeared image remained burned in his eyes and his mind as though

branded there. Control over his empty stomach failed and he sank to his

knees, retching, trying to rid himself of the sight and unable to do so.

Finally, reluctantly, his heaving stomach quieted.

While the public image of hero had been troubling him, Matthew Magruder

was no coward. On the contrary, he was an aviator in the U.S. Navy. The

ability to pilot an F-14, to land on an aircraft carrier in conditions

ranging from calm seas to stormy pitch-darkness, to face enemy aircraft

in one-on-one aerial duels reminiscent of the knightly jousts of another

age … this set him apart from other men in training, in discipline, in

sheer nerve.

But always before when Tombstone had faced death, it had been in the

cockpit of an aircraft. There, death was a constant possibility … but

as a flash, an instant of terror followed by painless nothingness. He

stared down at the torn and tortured bodies sprawled on the concrete and

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