Siege of Silence Read online

  “Mike, thanks for everything. Sleep easy. We’ll be back with them real soon.”

  Komlosy slaps him on the shoulder. “Good luck, Al, You’ve done a great job getting it all set up . . . just a great job.”

  Simmons glances between me and Komlosy, then turns away saying, “I’ll see you in the plane, Silas.”

  Komlosy holds out his hand. I grip it and say, “Mike, thanks for giving me the chance. I won’t let you down.”

  He smiles. “It’s kinda odd being thanked for giving a guy a damned good chance to get killed.” His smile fades. “I just wish I could share the danger with you. I’m gonna feel damned helpless just sitting behind a desk.”

  His emotion is tangible, and it’s communicated to me. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. I feel a surge of affection for him. Lightly I say, “Remember that ol’ cat Milton? Used to be a runnin’ back fo’ the Packers ‘fore he took up on that poetry. He once wrote, ‘They also serve who only stand and wait’, or somethin’ like that.”

  He smiles and suddenly we’re embracing in a bear hug. His fingers dig fiercely into my shoulders. Close to my ear he says quietly, “Silas, know this. If ever I’m in a hole like those hostages there’s no one in the world I’d rather have come to get me but you.”

  I slap him on the back and turn to the plane. I must be getting goddam soft. I can’t say anything because I’m scared my goddam voice will quiver!

  Al and I are the only passengers. We sit in companionable silence while the Trader climbs to cruising altitude. He’s probably thinking about the mission. I’m not. My head is full of the recent conversation with Komlosy. I sure can bullshit sometimes. Such bullshit that I damned near believe it myself. Why do I always have to project the big black tough guy image? The lone old bull elephant wandering majestically through the goddam jungle. Majesty- shit! May’s words come back through twenty years carried on the end of a branding iron to singe themselves on my brain.

  “Silas, I don’t understand it much either. I know you love me an’ I sure love you. But Silas, I need you and you don’t need me. It’s taken me two years to face up to that. You don’t need me or anyone else. I don’t want to be a dependent woman all my life. If we have children they’ll look up to you and need you. But that need won’t ever come back. I’ve got to find a man who needs me . . . just as much as I need him.”

  I can see her face as she spoke those words. Earnest, sad, intelligent and beautiful. I took it on the chin like a big tough bull should and pushed along through the jungle. It took five years ‘til I woke up one night and realized that I’d rather have May than a super-tough image. Five goddam years! I traced her to a suburb of Fort Lauderdale. She had married an engineer just six months after our divorce came through. I had to know, so I took some furlough, flew over there and hired a car. I located her house and cruised by it a few times. It was a nice home. Single storey, brick built, with a big, well-kept garden. The husband had to be at work so I parked at the corner and told myself I ought to go over and visit. Hell, why not? Just kinda say hello and ask how she’d been. Nothin’ wrong with that. I sat there for an age tellin’ myself there was nothin’ wrong with that, but unable to get out of the car. Then she came round the back of the house pushing a pram. She walked down the drive and crossed the street right in front of me. She didn’t notice me. Her whole attention was on the occupant of the pram. She was heart-stoppingly beautiful- and transparently happy.

  So I went and crawled back under my tough bull image and let all those thoughts wither away until my mind was like an elm tree in winter.

  Friendship. What the shit do I know about that? Guys as tough as me don’t have friends. That emotional junk is for softies. So what about Luther? Sure he was a friend and knew it, but tough old Major Silas Slocum never gave a damn thing away. When that half-assed pilot rocketed Luther I collected a body bag and stuffed in all the little bloody bits and pieces I could find. The old bull never showed a sign. I heard the whispered comment by one of my men as we choppered back. “Sheeit! Slocum could have bin in a restaurant stuffing leftovers into a doggy bag!”

  But my men weren’t there when the tough old bull was in his bunk that night and couldn’t understand the tears that wet his face and the pain that cut through his heart. And the many nights that followed and the final resolution that, for a guy like me, having a friend was an emotional liability I didn’t need.

  “Silas, you’re looking glum. Somethin’ bothering you?”

  The words snap me out of my reverie.

  “Nossir, General! It’s just the light flashin’ off all those stars kinda dazzles mah eyes.”

  “Cut the crap, Silas. You were responsible for my getting them. You bring those hostages out and you’ll have one too. Ease up on me, okay?”

  “Okay, Al. The crap is cut. I’m glad you got ‘em; you sure as hell deserve them.”

  I don’t tell him about my thinking of retiring; nor about the ranch. I’m in no mood for more explanations. Fact is the whole idea is terrifying. Trouble with me is that if I take a decision I gotta go through with it. For sure, tough guys don’t go back on decisions. I remember buying that ranch. Heard about it from a soldier who came from the area. The old owner had died and the bank had taken it over. The bank manager was one of those types who walk across broken glass to prove how liberal they are. I went to see him in full uniform, complete with fruit salad. He was impressed to all hell and I got a good deal on the ranch. I had no exact idea when I’d leave the army but decided it would be before I was fifty. The ranch is in a mainly white area. I found one old black guy, out of work for a few years, to look after the place. He told me that the white community- the ranchers and the farmers- were cut up about my buying the place. Explained kind of apologetically that basically they were good people but farmers and the like were inherently conservative and a black rancher in their midst was hard to take. There wouldn’t be any trouble but I was likely to be socially ostracized.

  I had grinned and told him I didn’t give a flying fart. But since then I’ve changed my views. I bought a lot of books on ranching and subscribed to several magazines on the subject. It quickly came home to me that ranching involved a mite more than sitting on my homestead patio with straw in mouth and cold can of beer in hand watching my contented cows chewing the goddam cud. Like everything else, technology has come swinging in to baffle simple straightforward guys like myself. These days a rancher needs to be a mixture of biologist, veterinary surgeon, artificial inseminator, nutritionist and computer programmer. The cowpoke bit has been elbowed on to a back burner. I’m sure gonna need friendly help from people who’ve spent their lives at it. And there’s another thing. I might not have friends in the army to fit Komlosy’s parameters, but I enjoy sitting around in the mess of an evening chewing the fat with a few of the guys about the day’s events, and trading a little professional small talk. For sure I’m gonna want to do that in my new profession, but how? If those guys won’t even talk to me it’s gonna be a lonely existence. I take a little comfort from the thought that if I pull those hostages out unscathed I’m gonna be some kind of a hero. I don’t give a shit about that but it might soften the bigots up a bit. The thought brings my mind squarely back to the operation. From now on there’s gonna be no extraneous thoughts. Forget everything else, Slocum. Be a soldier now- only a soldier.

  PEABODY

  San Carlo

  Day 18

  I try to imagine describing it to someone. How to convey the bodily agony and the mental degradation. The terror to the mind so finely tuned to every flayed nerve ending. Fombona is a master of the putrid practice. Torture stretches our species’ depravity beyond any possible comparison. No other animal on earth contemplates it. The evil of sadism is confined to mankind and as it oozes through the veneer of culture like a foul fungus it mocks all pretensions of moral ascendancy over other creatures.

  I have read many descriptions by people who have endured torture, and their reactions. I realize now that
it is like reading the attempted description of an incomparable odour. Imagination is meaningless.

  It starts in the mind. Trepidation rising to panic hardly conveyed my feelings as I waited for him to return with his “equipment”. Sleep was impossible. I sat with my back to the hard wall and tried to prepare myself. Solzhenitsyn had once written on the subject. His thesis was relatively simple: first imagine that you’re dead already. There’s nothing anyone can do to a dead man. Assume that your life is over and finished and therefore expect nothing. You become an inanimate object impervious to the will of others. Simple.

  Solzhenitsyn, I have news for you. Your thesis gave me a crumb of comfort during the night of waiting, but a fraction of a second after Fombona began, your theory was dust beneath the convulsive ripple of agony. Maybe you could do it. Maybe your mind is so staggeringly great you could convince your body that the pain is illusory; that the nerve endings are deluding themselves. I am a mere mortal. I’ll know I’m dead when the pain stops. I’ll be convinced then.

  The night passed with dreadful speed. Shortly after dawn I heard the squeak of the gates and the motor of the truck and Fombona’s voice shouting orders. Minutes accelerated into seconds. I could feel my heart and the coppery taste of fear on my tongue and gums. Then the key turning and Fombona at the door with a smile on his face and pleasure in his eyes.

  He supervised the installing of the “equipment” with the air of a house owner arranging the deployment of a new suite of furniture. “Over there,” he commanded as two guards struggled to get a heavy canvas-covered object through the door. Grunting with exertion they manoeuvred it near to the far wall. Fombona eyed it critically.

  “Bring it out a bit . . . a bit more. Careful, you fools! Don’t damage my beauty.”

  There followed a high, small-topped table, a canvas bag, several rolls of thick black cloth and two large buckets of water. He had the table positioned beside an electric socket and the bag, buckets and cloth put beside it. The guards were dismissed and the door closed. The key was not turned. An irrational moment as I contemplated trying to run for the door. Then the icy reality of my situation prevailed.

  Fombona was standing in the centre of the room watching me with his head slightly on one side. Anticipation radiated from him.

  “Okay, pig. Here’s how it is. You give me one name or in a few minutes you start to experience pain that you never knew existed.”

  I took a long, slow swallow and shook my head. Immediately I saw the relief in his smile.

  “Good! Then you will give me all the names. Every one of them. Believe me, pig.”

  I held up a hand and was relieved to see it was not shaking. Also that my voice was clear of any tremor.

  “Listen, filth, I know the outcome. If I talk I die immediately. Calderon told me. An injection- simulated heart attack. Not a mark on me. Your promises of relief if I talk will convince me of nothing.”

  He is not at all disconcerted.

  “So talk now, pig, and you won’t have to go through it. No pain- nothing. You can go back to join the other pigs.”

  “Lies! If I give you a name I’ll die anyway. Those cretins Bermudez and Castro won’t want it known that I’ve talked. They’ll want the operation to go ahead so they snuff out other dissidents. If I talk now I die anyway.”

  He chuckled. “You’re a clever pig. No matter, you will talk, and soon.” His voice becomes conversational. “A few weeks ago we caught a captain of the National Guard. I and my friend Umberto interrogated him. After two days I brought a handgun into the cell. I told him there was just one bullet in the chamber, then I handed him the gun. Umberto and I were two metres away in front of him. He knew he could kill either one of us. He also knew that the other one would continue the torture . . . so he put the gun to his own head and pulled the trigger.”

  My face must have showed something. The swine laughed and said, “Of course there was no bullet.” He laughed again. “He died after six days and all those days he begged for death . . . you will beg for that needle and believe me it won’t take six days . . . it won’t take two. Those names will be your passport out of hell. You will give them to me with joy in your voice.”

  He turned away rubbing his hands. “Let us prepare. I will introduce you to ‘El Abrazo’- the embracer.”

  Theatrically he pulled off the canvas cover. I stared at it with morbid fascination. It was like a great wooden barrel sliced lengthways and mounted on a stand. Its dark surface was broken by gleaming metal studs spaced about four inches apart. There were leather thongs hanging from the corners. He ran his hand over it affectionately.

  “This is not the natural colour of the wood. It’s been stained by the blood of hundreds. Men, women, even children. Vargas used to watch . . . sometimes take part. But he was not good. Too impatient. I am not impatient, Pig”

  He fetched the rolls of black doth and started draping them over the studs, musing. “What a pity I am not allowed to let your blood add to the stains . . . How I would like to see your blood. If I were allowed to mark you I would strap a funneled cage of hungry rats to your ass. They would gnaw their way up your rectum and into your bowels and eat you from the inside out. You will not bleed now, but I promise you it will not be comfortable riding ‘El Abrazo’. The two of you will become intimate.”

  I could feel my limbs going rigid with fear. Of course the mental torture had already begun. He was working trepidation up into terror. He walked to the door, opened it and beckoned. There was a brief, whispered conversation. Then he turned back grinning. From the canvas bag he lifted a black metal box trailing three wires. One ended in a plug. The other two, longer and thicker, were each attached to a silver-coloured crocodile clip.

  Still grinning, he held the apparatus up for my inspection. With a strange clarity I noted the single switch and the dial with its graduated colours: vectors of yellow, blue, green and red.

  “Excellency, meet ‘El Rompecabezas’- the tickler.” He nodded with his chin to the barrel. “ ‘El Abrazo’ and ‘El Rompecabezas’ are partners. One lovingly embraces . . . the other tickles.” He put the box carefully on to the table and pointed. “The switch turns on the current. The dial is a rheostat. The yellow sector gives a moderate current. It increases through the blue and green. Red is usually fatal.” He smiled. “This time we will be in the yellow zone nudging up towards the blue. Next time we will go higher . . . much higher.”

  By this point I was mentally numb. I had one wrenchingly hopeful thought that this was all a slowly building bluff to terrorize me into talking; but it quickly faded. It was all part of the torture.

  He plugged in the box just as there was a tap on the door. A guard came in carrying a large tabby cat. I recognized it as belonging to Mrs Walsh. She had brought it with her from the States. Its legs were bound back and front by cloth. The guard handed it to Fombona and then stood by the door watching with interest. Fombona held it gently and tickled it behind the ear and crooned soft words. It visibly relaxed. In the small room I could actually hear it purr.

  “A little demonstration,” Fombona said, watching me closely.

  I had decided, with Jorge lying dead in my arms, that I would not utter a single word. I knew what was coming but he would not get the satisfaction of hearing me say a thing.

  With the cat in one hand and the two thick grey wires in the other, he moved to the barrel. Gently he laid the cat on the curved black surface and again tickled it behind the ear. It lay still while he carefully attached the crocodile clips. One to the tip of its ear and the other to its tail. He moved back to the box and set the dial at the beginning of the yellow zone. His fingers moved to the switch.

  “Watch, pig!”

  I wanted to close my eyes but could not. I heard the sharp dick of the switch. The cat jerked upwards, its hair straightened and it was like a hedgehog; emitting an unearthly shriek. It rolled down the side of the barrel as Fombona quickly turned the dial through into the red zone. It was so stiff it bounced as
it hit the floor and then lay still. Fombona shook his head.

  “Can’t have noises like that. The other hostages might get the wrong idea.”

  He pats the obscene box happily. “But ‘El Rompecabezas’ is functioning well, and impatient to make your acquaintance.”

  He looked at the guard and gestured. The guard walked round the barrel, unclipped the cat and picked it up by the tail. It swung grotesquely as he carried it out leaving an odour of singed hair.

  Fombona reached down into the bag and took out several rolls of bandages and put them on the table. Then he pulled out a white bundle and unrolled it. In my mental state I didn’t comprehend at first what it was. Then he slipped it on- a doctor’s coat. He smiled at me and again reached into the bag. This time it was a stethoscope which he hung around his neck with a broad grin.

  “Doctor Carlos Fombona at your service, Excellency. I was in fact a medical student for a year. Not a good one but I learned a few things. For a man of sixty-three you are in good health but sometimes ‘El Rompecabezas’ can upset the heart. You will be glad to know that I will keep monitoring yours.”

  He gestured at the barrel. I forced movement into my legs and edged away to a corner. I had a sudden inspiration. They would have to force me. I would fight like hell and they would have to mark me- bruise me. That would be evidence. Retribution would come to all of the bastards. I clenched my hands into fists and crouched, filled with rage and terror. Fombona shrugged and shouted an order.

  Four of them crowded into the cell. Fombona said harshly, “Whoever marks him will follow him on to ‘El Abrazo’.”

  They approached cautiously. One of them held a grey blanket loosely over one arm. They were very practised. I was not. One made a feint for my left wrist. I lashed out at him, striking only air and losing my balance. Then darkness as the blanket enveloped my head, and arms clasped me. I kicked out and connected and there was a grunt of pain and then hands were gripping my waist and ankles and I was helpless and the terror was rising.