"Wild fire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Demille Nelson)CHAPTER FIVE Harry Muller was led, blindfolded and barefoot, down two flights of stairs into what must have been the basement of the lodge. It was cold and damp, and he could hear sounds of mechanical and electrical motors. He heard a door open, then he was prodded forward. The door slammed shut, and he heard a metal bolt sliding. He stood there, then said, “Hey. You. You there?” Silence. He listened awhile, then pulled the blindfold off and looked around. He was alone. Harry stood in a small room walled with concrete blocks painted the same gray enamel as the concrete floor. The low ceiling was covered with corrugated metal. As his eyes adjusted to the glaring light of an overhead fluorescent fixture, he saw that the room held only a steel bed, which was bolted to the floor. On the bed was a thin mattress, on which were his camouflage shirt and pants, which he put on. He checked his pockets, but they hadn’t given him anything back. In a corner of the room were a toilet and a sink. The toilet had no seat and no water tank. Just like in a prison cell. The sink had no mirror over it, not even the plastic or steel mirrors they used in jail. He went to the steel door that had no handle and no window, and pushed on it, but it didn’t budge. He searched the room, looking for anything that he could use as a weapon, but it was completely bare, except for the bed and a rusty radiator that wasn’t putting out much heat. He noticed now a small swivel eyeball camera mounted in the corner of the ceiling, with a recessed speaker beside it. He stuck up his middle finger and shouted, “Fuck you!” No one replied. He looked around for something that he could use to smash the camera and the speaker, but there wasn’t a single loose item in the room except for himself. He took a running start, jumped, and smacked the camera with his hand. The camera continued sweeping the room, then a shrill, high-decibel sound pierced the room, and Harry covered his ears and backed away from the speaker. The painful noise continued, and Harry shouted, “Okay! Okay!” The sound stopped and a voice said, “Sit.” “Fuck you.” He had lost track of time, but he figured it must be about ten or eleven in the morning. His stomach growled, but he didn’t feel particularly hungry. Only thirsty. And he had to pee. He walked to the toilet and the camera followed him. He urinated, then went to the sink and turned on the single tap. A trickle of cold water ran into the basin. He washed up, then used his hands to drink from the faucet. There was no towel, and he wiped his hands on the sides of his pants. He went back to the bed and sat. He thought about his conversation with Bain Madox. He said to himself, And what was this meeting that he was invited to? None of this made too much sense unless… unless this was all a setup. He stood. “That’s it!” He thought about the whole assignment, from his ten minutes in Tom Walsh’s office, to the Tech guy, to cutting through the fence, to the guards, to this prison cell in a private house-this whole thing was a test… one of those SERE courses-Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape. Well, he definitely didn’t pass the evasion part, which was why he was in the cell. He went over in his mind the interrogation from the guy named Madox-the resistance part- He thought about the cattle prod. And later, there’d be the escape thing, then the evasion thing again and survival in the woods… He replayed everything in his mind, slanting it toward his new belief that this was some crazy FBI or CIA thing. It They had their eye on him for something big, and this was the big test. They did this kind of thing to see what you could take. The Custer Hill Club was like the CIA Farm in Virginia, right? He said to himself, He lay back on the thin mattress and smiled to himself. He yawned and drifted into a restless sleep. The glare of the overhead light and the cold made him dream that he was outside again, walking through the woods. He was taking pictures of birds, then he was arguing with some men, then he was talking pleasantly to Mr. Madox, who gave him back his gun and said, “You’re going to need this.” The men suddenly raised their rifles, and dogs were running toward him. He pulled the trigger on his Glock, but it didn’t fire. Harry sat up quickly and wiped the cold sweat from his face. He fell back on the bed and stared up at the metal ceiling. Something was bothering him. It was Madox. Something about that guy seemed too… real. Because if this was all real, then his life was in danger. The door opened, and a voice said, “Come with us.” |
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