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Next he focused on his skin. Heavy fabric that breathed slightly, a bit of give. Likely a cotton-polyester blend. A standard prison jumpsuit then, probably orange for the highest-security designation. Softness against the tops of his feet. Without moving he altered his feet’s pressure against the floor to gauge the give. Soft-soled disposable slippers.
He leaned his calves inconspicuously outward to little yield: an ankle bar with high-security cuffs on each end. The bar was unforgiving, a one-piece rod, probably stainless steel. From what he could tell, the cuffs were also bolted to the floor. No, not the floor. A metal footrest?
Weight tugged at his forearms. He used the same nonmovement to test the range of motion for his arms. Matching bar and cuffs at the wrists with the cuffs secured to the arms of his seat, which meant a restraint chair fastened into a cradle.
He was hunched over slightly, a stitch in his left side. As the vehicle rocked, he bobbed a bit more than necessary, clinking against a hard stop that indicated a security chain linking his wrist bar to his ankle bar.
Crunching down a bit more, he felt metal bite into his Adam’s apple paired with rising pressure on his limbs, as if he were clenched in a massive claw. They’d added a choke chain that connected the stainless-steel rods, threaded between his legs, up his back, and noosed around his throat. He noted additional bands of pressure against his torso and legs, restraining straps cinched into place.
He was a lucky recipient of the high-value-target treatment.
That gave him a bit more to work with.
They would have subjected him to a full-body scan while he was unconscious to check for any secret items like a sewing needle burrowed beneath the calluses of his hand or hidden contraband technology like a bazooka masquerading as a suppository.
They’d have run advance-team scouts to check transport routes and identify shelter points along the way—police and fire stations, government buildings with enclosed garages, military bases.
They’d have arranged multiple three-vehicle convoys, each with a driver, a team commander, two gunners, and two handlers armed with less-lethal.
They’d have ensured that no one in the other transport vehicles knew which convoy contained him and that each convoy had a different route and a distinct encoded comms channel.
They’d have put him in neither a lower-security nondescript windowless industrial panel van nor an overly conspicuous Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected light tactical vehicle but in an uparmored SUV that could veer off and blend into traffic once they cleared the area of operation.
They’d have placed air assets over each convoy, probably a fully equipped and armed Black Hawk, a Specter AC-130 gunship on station with a flight of F-16s heated up on the runway of the nearest air force base—the one in El Segundo. Maybe even a quick-reaction force of Boeing Little Bird attack variant AH-6s in case things got sporty.
He was the belle of a multimillion-dollar ball.
It would have been nice to be the recipient of so much attention if he were someone who liked attention.
His body hurt in innumerable places, and his head throbbed from the opioid injection. He took a silent internal inventory. Lots of bruises and aches, perhaps a cracked rib from the fall onto the Red Cross van, but nothing that would require surgery or a fracture reduction. The pain was present and undeniable, but he didn’t let it all the way in. He couldn’t afford to devote resources to physical suffering right now.
They had total control over his person.
They had total control over his bodily functions.
They had total control over his future.
He realized he had to start unstitching what had happened to him now, because God knew there’d be more to come.
Deep breath. Pushing it all the way out, making room for oxygen as Jack had taught him and as he’d taught Joey. He reached for meditation, found it, lost it, found it again. He lingered there in the relative calm, mustering his courage.
Then he irised himself open ever so slightly to thoughts of the capture. Unfortunately, that was all the opening needed for images to claw their way in. A cold-water hit to his nervous system, a kaleidoscope of horrors like—
her palm against his cheek
flowers thrashing against his thigh
windshield spiderwebbing
IV pole starting to topple
It was like fighting a war with the wind, each sensation stabbing into him anew, blurring past and present, and suddenly he was—
gripping a Makarov pistol, standing behind a round man slumped forward, face in his bowl of soup, the back of his head missing
down on one knee, slender adolescent neck bowed, drooling blood onto the asphalt as the Mystery Man stares down, eyes hidden behind Ray-Bans
asleep on the mattress on the floor between bunk beds, the other boys sliding out with the morning sun, their feet pounding him awake
