Chapter 24
IN THE DARK OF HIS IMPROVISED CELL, Proctor finished his meal, slid it through the narrow grate below the door, then returned to his favored position against the rear wall.
He had now sharpened the talon-shaped blade to a maximal edge.
He no longer practiced pacing or running from wall to wall; he knew the room’s dimensions as well as or better than a blind person knew his own home.
There was something else occupying his time now—but before he returned to it, he knew it was important to both rest and digest.
He decided to take a one-hour break.
He was certain he was being held by a cannibal: one who could barely wait to sink his teeth into Proctor’s flesh—his bare arms first, it would seem, starting with the right—and who believed his repast was ready.
This last meal Proctor had eaten was smaller than the others, low in protein and prepared in a slapdash fashion.
That alone started an emergency siren sounding in his head: the next time the gas came, the man planned to kill him…
Proctor did not know exactly when, but it would be soon.
Although the gas was odorless, he was now aware of the noises that would herald its approach: the scrape of the retracting ceiling panel, and the low hiss of the gas cock being opened.
That would be the signal for him to slip the talon between his fingers, take a deep, deep breath—and hold it long enough for his captor to believe he’d passed out and enter the room, guard at least partially down.
He’d be eager by now, very eager, and might well drop some of the earlier precautions.
There was one problem with this plan. His captor might be insane, but he was no fool. Proctor wasn’t sure if the man guessed he knew about the gassing—the chances were probably fifty-fifty—but he would certainly have some idea of human lung capacity.
The average person, Proctor knew, could hold his or her breath between thirty and ninety seconds.
Factors like fitness, cigarette smoking, age, even genetics could affect this to some degree.
Even if the man guessed Proctor knew about the gas—or assumed he was holding his breath—he’d reason that three minutes, three and a half at most, was the longest his captive could hold out.
This was why Proctor had returned, in earnest, to the breathing exercises he’d first been drilled in almost fifteen years before.
In 1981, after joining the navy, he soon became part of the special boat detachment UDT-11, redesignated two years later as SEAL Team Five.
The harsh and rigorous training he’d endured—much of it in and under water—remained with him even today.
CO2 tolerance exercises, hypoxic workouts, apnea training—all the grueling methods used by SEALs to maximize breath-holding skills and lung capacity were so deeply ingrained in him, they were almost part of his nervous system.
Completing the underwater knot test, enduring “Dark Angel” ambush challenges: all these were part of building mental and physical toughness at a school where passing out from hypoxia became a common occurrence.
After several years of distinguished service, much of it in combat, Proctor was taken aside by an enigmatic senior officer named Howard Longstreet.
A major shift in detachments and designations was taking place due to the formation of Special Operations Command, Longstreet told him, and as a result Proctor and his exemplary service had come to his attention.
He asked Proctor if he’d like to step out from under the umbrella of SOCOM and join the Ghost Company: a shadowy, all-volunteer descendant of the whispered “Blue Light” detachment and the Vietnam-era MACV-SOG Hatchet Force, combining not only different military branches but various intelligence services as well.
The “Company,” as it was known to its members, was based out of what during World War II had been the Amphibious Scout and Raider School in Fort Pierce, Florida, and never numbered more than its name implied: one company, made up of three platoons tasked with classified and dangerous missions, frequently “wet work,” often in unsanctioned theaters of engagement.
Proctor had spent half a dozen years in the Company, working under Longstreet’s right-hand man, Michael Decker, and more immediately under another senior operative, Aloysius Pendergast. But then—for reasons never fully explained, most likely the need to maintain deniability—the Ghost Company was disbanded, then deprecated.
What few whispers of it that were drifting around military camps and bases began to dissipate.
Longstreet had offered the survivors their pick of assignments—but Proctor knew any other position, line or staff, would be anticlimactic.
So he’d left the service five years before…
and, for better or worse, remained a pilgrim ever since.
His unique skills, honed and perfected over a decade, were suited for one job in particular—a job that no longer existed.
“Fidelitas usque ad mortem,” he murmured to himself. Loyalty unto death.
Now Proctor shook these memories away. His musings, he calculated, had taken up the better part of an hour. It was time to get on with his training.
Even though most SEAL workouts took place in the water, there were numerous “dryland training” exercises he could practice in his cell.
If the cannibal was watching him with NVGs from above, he wouldn’t even notice many of them.
Pursed-lip breathing; rib stretches; static apnea workouts; diaphragmatic breathing—these techniques, and others, would increase Proctor’s tolerance for oxygen deprivation, as well as his lung capacity.
Thanks to his years in the Company and with the SEALs, Proctor could already hold his breath much longer than most men—now he was working, under pressure, to push himself to the limit.
Although he of course had no watch, he could use his fingers or toes as a chronometer, tapping out the minutes one second at a time. The longest any SEAL trainee in his team had held their breath, he recalled, was seven minutes.
Proctor would try for eight.
He had to be careful, of course. Too much of any exercise, done too quickly, would be counterproductive. But Proctor had vast experience in how to toughen himself in the shortest period of time.
And at the moment, he had the strongest possible motive to do so.
He sat back in the dark, preparing to begin his next training session.