Chapter 11
ADAM
Nothing made sense. Everything was jumbled like a puzzle box had been flipped upside-down and the pieces scattered across the floor.
My brain fought like hell to sort it all out, but all I seemed to have were edge pieces.
Every time I found a middle piece, the pegs were square when I needed round or round when I needed square.
I shook my head, trying to toss the pieces around so I could finally see what was going on. Something rustled in the corner off to the side. The puzzle was slowly piecing itself together, but it was like looking at a Monet up close. Plus, there were still big, black chunks missing.
The scent of food and bodily fluids overwhelmed me. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been given food. If I had anything in my system to puke up, I might’ve gagged if Brock’s big dick hadn’t killed that years ago.
Thinking about Brock and all we had been and were to one another would only mudsuck me yet again.
I needed to gather intel, not think about all the shit I was missing out on and the things I might never get to experience again.
There were so many fucking things I’d fucked up. So many fucking things I’d denied.
I shook my head again, this time to dislodge the images Brock’s name always put there. Images that filled my whole being with hope and despair simultaneously.
I licked my lips. Sandpaper rubbing against sandpaper was a better description. I’d been given water. I scoffed humorously. A lot of fucking water, but it only came in the form of waterboarding. I’d lost count of the number of times they’d beaten, waterboarded, or electrocuted me.
They were only giving me enough food and water to keep me alive. Weak, but alive.
Sounds came to me slowly, coming and going, fading in and out. People talking and moving around filtered in through the bars of the door to the stone prison cell they’d locked me in.
Is that Urdu?
I wasn’t fluent by any means, but I knew enough to tell they were coming for me again.
How long have I been in this room?
At least when I was in the box, I could clock the days and nights, but there was no crack or crevice here that allowed sunlight to filter in. All there was here was agony and despair.
As my senses returned fully, the pain hit me like a freight train. My shoulders would be a mess when this was all over. I’d been chained to the wall behind me in a stress position for God only knew how long.
I’m glad I had my next of kin switched to Rocket. Granny and Gramps don’t need this worry. It will be bad enough when they get the visit from Rocket, but they know and love him. It will be easier.
When we’d been filling out our paperwork for BUD/S, I’d noticed Brock slow to a stop.
FALL 2001
“What’s up?” I asked, glancing at him.
Rocket shrugged. “Nothing.”
He threw the pen down on top of the papers and walked to the bathroom.
I knew he was lying. I sneaked a peak at his paperwork, and it was filled out completely, with the exception of the next of kin shit.
I sighed. I didn’t know the details, but I knew Rocket never received calls or mail like the rest of us in Basic did.
I hadn’t questioned it or him. Let’s be honest, I was so fucking tired then, I barely knew my own name, but now it was making sense.
I quickly filled in my information on his form as next of kin and medical proxy.
I looked up as the bathroom door opened.
I stood and handed him my paperwork. “Put your info down for NOK and Proxy. If something happens to me, you can make the decisions and go see my grandparents. I don’t want a CACO showing up at their house, giving them the bad news. I’d rather you do it.”
Brock started at me, then glanced at where he’d left his paperwork and the folder it came in. He’d left the folder open and the pen tossed on it. The paperwork was tucked back in the folder, and the pen lying on top of it. I walked to the kitchen to give him a minute.
“Wanna beer?” I asked from the fridge, glancing at him over my shoulder.
Rocket was still standing where I handed him my papers. I watched him swallow…hard. Then he went over to the couch, sat down, and opened my folder.
I never did get an answer about the beer, but I’d brought him one anyway.
We’d both been injured several times. SEALs were regular patients in Germany.
Command and the team had never batted an eye that we were each other’s proxy.
This surprised me until I learned several of the single guys were each other’s proxy.
With this situation, I was really glad it was Rocket. My grandparents were in their seventies. They didn’t need the worry of me being captured and held prisoner. I knew Rocket would wait until he had a definitive answer before he made the trip to see Letty and Easton DuBois.
Even in the midst of this mess, on the verge of being tortured yet again, I couldn’t help but remember the look on Brock’s face the day we’d graduated boot camp and my grandparents had welcomed him into our small family of three.
Granny had hugged him just as hard as she had me.
Gramps had shaken his hand and clapped him on the back, then insisted he join us for dinner that night.
Since we were staying in Great Lakes, we’d had the weekend off, so we’d gotten a room in the same hotel with my grandparents.
After boot camp, we’d felt like kings because it was just the two of us and the beds were like sleeping on a cloud.
Dear God, don’t put them through me dying this way. Don’t make Rocket have to make that trip.
I really didn’t want to die. As a SEAL, we all knew it was a likely event, even when we were home during training rotations.
Getting shot and killed was expected when we were outside the wire.
I just didn’t want them to have to question whether I was alive or dead. Or have to see a mutilated corpse.
Footsteps, muffled, distant ones, came toward me. Something about them sent a chill through my body. A body I’d only just noticed wasn’t the least bit chilly even though I was naked as a jaybird.
A man’s voice accompanied the footsteps. He spoke Urdu at first, but switched to Arabic as he approached.
The voice quieted as the person paused. I didn’t know whether to pray for a visit or to be left alone.
A lock tumbled and a chain rattled, then footsteps echoed in the stone room after the sound of a metal door slammed shut.
I tried looking up to see who was approaching me, but my head felt so fucking heavy.
I hoped like hell it was the guy who brought the food.
Unfortunately, the way I was positioned and chained to the wall kept me from turning or raising my head high enough to see the door.
I took a deep breath and waited. I forced as much calm through my system as possible when really, all I wanted was to curl up in Rocket’s arms, in that big-ass bed of his, and shut out the rest of the fucking world. Being in this situation had really fucking put shit into perspective.
More footsteps and whispered words came from just out of eyesight—the anticipation for what was coming drug on. My teeth clenched as I waited.
Just get the fuck on with it. It will suck no matter what.
A pair of feet appeared below my face. The person squatted down, pulling my face up, forcing me to meet his eyes.
Oh! Goody! The head fuckstick in charge.
“Tell me what I want to know, SEAL,” he said in his heavily accented English.
I stared at him. We’d played this game so many fucking times.
“Senior Chief Adam DuBois. United States Navy. 3487439012. February twenty-first, 1983.”
He gripped my jaw. “Tell me why Navy SEALs were at that house?”
I grunted, unable to speak with the way he was holding onto my face. I nodded, and he released me. I worked my jaw. Apparently I took too long, because he backhanded me, snapping my neck to the right.
A lefty. When I get loose, I’ll make sure he never uses that fucking arm again.
Glaring at him, I said, “Senior Chief Adam DuBois. United States Navy. 3487439012. February twenty-first, 1983.”
He growled, nearly roaring his frustration and anger. “Prepare him. He will talk.”
Fuckstick stormed out of the room, slamming the door shut.
Bingo!
The door didn’t lock. It didn’t even latch. It bounced open a bit. This was my shot. I just had to overpower the two guys he’d left with me. I had to do it quietly. Dead silent.
I can’t do it. Even if I got away, I wouldn’t make it. I don’t have any gear, any weapons.
I’m a fucking Navy SEAL. I’m the tip of the fucking spear. I am the weapon. Suck it up, you pussy!
On any other day, I wouldn’t be questioning my ability to take out two tangoes. After being in this hellhole for so long, I wasn’t exactly in fighting shape. Hell, I didn’t know if I was even in standing or sitting shape at this point.
The cycle of torture was maddening. Physical torture wore a body out quickly, but the mind was a resilient thing, so rotating the methods dragged things out more. It was fucking working.
As soon as I got used to being shoved inside that metal dog crate, they’d move me to the room where they tortured me.
Sometimes, they just left me strung up like the hams Gramps cured every year.
I spent so many hours hanging from my wrists and hands I didn’t think they’d ever be the same. Same for my feet and ankles.
My joints had taken a beating as well. I was a mess, but if my brain was telling me I was done and I couldn’t go on, that meant I could. It meant I still had sixty percent left in the tank. I could and had done a hell of a lot of damage on sixty percent.
These fuckers don’t know what the fuck they’ve unleashed.
I waited patiently, but tension coiled up in my body like a viper poised to strike.
I just had to wait for them to release me, and considering they were rigging up the bench they’d used to electrocute me on, I knew it was coming.
I just had to hope these two, unlike the last ones, would release me before they tied me down.
If so, then I would take them out, and I would leave this place behind or fucking die trying.
The captors, who were preparing to torture me, released my legs, and then, for the first time since I’d tried to escape, they released my hands. A breathless, silent sigh of relief washed through me.
I was free.
The tension coiled inside me broke loose, and I took my shot.
Using my left leg, I swept the leg of the captor from under him. He flipped backward, and I grabbed the head of the guy on the right, staring into his eyes with my hand firmly over his neck as a thud and a groan came from my left, followed by another thud. Then silence.
Until the silence was shattered as I twisted the guy’s head, I held in my hands. The crack of his spine echoed through the room. I let his dead weight drop to the ground.
I turned on the first guy, and he was still there on the floor. I advanced on him, searching him for life and weapons. Of which he had neither. Blood pooled under him. He must have hit his head on my discharged shackles.
I searched the other body for weapons as well.
Zilch. Fuck.
Frustration made me twitchy. I stood, looking around. I needed a fucking knife.
Stripping the smaller of the two guys, I pulled his clothes and shoes on.
I’d run through the fires of hell buck-ass naked if I had to, but dressed as a captor would grease the wheels of my escape.
Once dressed, I pulled the bodies out of the line of sight from the door.
I hoped if anyone glanced in, they’d think I’d been taken back to the dog cage.
When I searched the table against the wall where the bench sat that they waterboarded and electrocuted me on, there was a pair of pliers and a hammer.
I grabbed them both. Something was better than nothing.
Breaking necks worked when there were just one or two, especially if I wanted it done quietly.
I made my way to the cell door, listening carefully. Sounds came from the left but not the right.
Right, it is.
As much as I wanted to slink around, I walked upright.
Watching and listening closely, I made my way along the corridor, making as little noise as possible.
My heart was beating like a fucking snare drum, though.
At the end of the passageway, I stopped.
It dead-ended in a tee with another passageway going left and right.
I gritted my teeth, taking a deep breath as I peeked around the corner to the left before doing the same to the right. Nothing. Two long corridors of stone walls. I closed my eyes, considering my options. Neither showed any signs of the outside. For all I knew, I was heading into a dead end.
Sneaking through hallways and buildings was much easier with a team behind you and ISR over you. Sucking in a breath, I took the right. As 3IC, Brock was my right hand. All I wanted was to get back to him.
I slinked down the hallway, staying close to the wall, peering into every room I passed. And then I hit pay dirt. The warrior in me did a happy dance. Brock would be in love. I rubbed my hands together in glee as smile split my face for the first time since before being captured.
I’d found their armory.