GWOT III - Going Under

GWOT III - Going Under


At one point in my life, I'd had some exposure to various attempts to treat what is sometimes called Post Traumatic Disorder or its evil bastard child, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.


As a child, the treatments, such as they were, were thoroughly mixed.  It's awkward, for example not at random, to be treated for childhood sexual abuse by being taught how to suc... never mind.


Certainly I had no use for drugs, prescription or over the counter or illegal.  A friend had slipped me shrooms without my knowledge or consent at one point, thinking they would help.  Three weeks later, they were homeless - someone had mysteriously emptied their bank accounts, notified their landlord of their dealings, tipped off the police who had found not only their drugs but a lot more drugs during the raid.  I commiserated with them but had neither support nor sympathy.


The shroom trip had forced me to look at my own life sideways, as I thrashed on the floor of my bathroom spewing from all orifices.  I'm told that is not a normal trip.  I guess I'm just special.


As I laid on my side in the punishment cell, moving just often enough to avoid being shot again with pepper balls, I reflected that the most ferocious punishment in Homeland's arse-nal (pun intended) was forcing me to have endless amounts of time to think.


I could recall in meticulous detail every time I had been traumatized.  Recently, such as watching the VP of HR's head get blown off.  I hadn't known there was something specially devastating about observing someone you'd fucked lose their head in kinetic fashion.


Also in childhood.  And as a menial employee, except that I could fight back, if only by changing jobs.


I was having trouble with the more recent traumas, i.e. all of the ones in this building.  Oh, I remembered being face slapped with a handgun, if only because it was so unexpected.  I knew somehow all the details of being tortured with electricity.  Anally.  I'd been spared the worst of the cut rate dentistry, if only in the service of preserving my ability to talk, but a couple sessions with electrical probes and loose fillings were ... memorable.  My hand told its own tale, and the cell extraction team had rebroken it just as it was starting to knit.


I'd fought back.  Here, in this building.  I'd gotten loose of my restraints and I'd used that selfsame handgun - unloaded - to beat my interrogator literally to death.


In theory it's supposed to be this awful thing to kill someone.


It had felt good.


A moment of control in a world of shitty helplessness.


Oh, I knew before I did it, while I was doing it, and after I had done it, that I would be in an absolute world of shit.  Homeland would pull out the stops, and my best hope was that they would accidentally kill me in an excess of zeal.


Now I was in the shit and it was the same shit as before.


Not much of a deterrent for my future behavior.


If they had the common sense God gave a gopher, they would sidewalk me at once.  Bullet to the brainpan.  A flash of white light, and no more.


If the firearm had only been loaded.  


If only.


So I would just have to keep misbehaving until sidewalking was the only solution.


This entire cell - the overhead grid, the concrete walls, the plywood ramp to cushion the fall from the overhead hatch, the lack of a door - was clearly for keeping a dangerous person on ice.


They were going to have to decide what to do with me.


###


"I concede that we underestimated this prisoner.  This makes it even more essential that we break him and get his secrets."


"We finally got his Master File.  He was in the Agitator's Index."


The FBI was as dead as J. Edgar Hoover, but her files persisted.  It had taken time to pull them from archive.  There weren't very many people who could work with that archive any more.  Some had disappeared, some had died or been killed, and some of those who had died, had died under interrogation.


"Well?"


"Severe complex PTSD."


"So?"


"Pre War," was the growl.  "Childhood onset, in fact," and the 'You idiot!' was silent.


"Oh."


Americans were resilient.  But California had been hit hard.  Losing San Francisco.  The removals, first of anyone who looked Chinese, and then of the refugees, and then Homeward Bound for anyone with foreign ties.  And the necessary Homeland operations to keep the liberal, restive state controlled.


People who had recently suffered intensely were ... malleable.  Could be molded, could be shattered.


A person with a lifetime of PTSD lived in a forest of broken mirrors dripping blood.  Sometimes they would shatter.  More often they would rebuild themselves in unpredictable and dangerous ways.


Childhood PTSD was even less predictable.  It was the breeding ground for special operations troops, and also for serial killers.


"What we should have done is recruit him.  He would have been perfect for a task force command."


Obviously too late now.


"The unknowable question is whether he actually knows anything useful.  Resistance activity at Site if anything has increased.  So either he was not leading it, or they had really robust succession."


"Break him."


A sigh.


"He's likely not breakable.  Or at least he won't stay broken.  We've already tried sleep deprivation, severe torture to the point of multiple cardiac arrests, life altering injuries and all the psychological tricks.  Cutting him up for steaks and chops can only be done once, and I don't think it will work."


They had all seen the remains of surgical interrogation.  Can't torture body parts that have been removed.  The Chinese had called it the death of a thousand cuts.


"OK.  Put him back together.  THEN break him.  So ordered."


###


I was required to crawl to the top of the plywood ramp.  I was covered not merely by several Special Troops with pepperball guns, but a tactical team with low caliber rifles.  Not just ARs, but .22 long rifles suitable for small game and for inflicting painful non lethal wounds.


"If you resist you will be hurt, not killed."


I believed them.


I turned and painfully raised my arms behind myself for application of hinged cuffs.  The cell extraction team lifted me from under my shoulders.  Set me down, standing, on the grid.


I was prodded forward to a room.  Standard cell extraction tactics removed my cuffs.  The room was locked from outside and I was alone inside it.


A shower cubicle.  A steel push button dispenser that jetted out a little soap with each press.  A metal snake shower head that could not form a loop.  Two really big, really fluffy towels beyond my power to tear into strips and make into a rope.  A loofa too big to get into my mouth and cram down my throat.


Controls for cold and hot water.


A wooden bench, bolted to the wall and floor.


A voice from above.  


"You have one hour to clean up.  You will be reminded at 30 minutes and 10 minutes."


Shit.


They'd pulled out the big guns.


Homeland was being kind.


I shuddered despite the unexpected warmth of the room.


Ain't nothing for free, boy, mocked the voice in my mind.

GWOT III - Kindnesses

GWOT III - Kindnesses

Well, I took the shower.

I needed one. I was covered in bruises, let alone the rebroken left hand whose agony I had almost gotten used to. Also my own sweat, blood and piss. Also pepper ball powder, which itched and stung.

Amazingly enough, the disembodied voice in the ceiling of the large room was as good as its word. I got a 30 minute warning and a 10 minute warning.

The hot water did wonders for my bruises. The cold water did even more. I got my butthole clean for the first time since our friends at Homeland had violated it.

The soap was a standard antiseptic soap, probably from a catalog.

Fluffy towels were fluffy.

I knew I was just cleaning myself up for more torture. At a certain point, why the hell not?

About ten minutes after the ten minute warning, the door behind me opened and a cell extraction team in full gear crowded the room.

I was of course as naked as I had been when shoved in.

They were terrified of me.

Their team leader said in a contralto voice - I dare anyone to determine gender of a person in full cell extraction equipment - for me to put my palms against the far wall. And spread my legs.

Instead I turned and put my palms towards them.

Two recoiled and their partners pushed them forward.

"I know this is a shower room and all, but do I look like the meek and easily rapable sort?" I asked.

At a motion from the team leader, the team stopped their shuffle. Some had shuffled forward, some backward, all trying not to be caught at it. Brownian motion, not wanting to touch me first.

"We need to complete your search. That's non negotiable," she said flatly.

I therefore turned in profile and lifted a leg. Then the other leg. Then picked myself up and moved myself from left and right. Then turned around and bent over, one leg then the other, lifting my cheeks.

I knew the protocol, from my Detroit airport trip.

"Eighty percent," she said. "Now squat and bear down hard."

I did. Rather to my relief, so to speak, nothing came out.

"We're done. Turn around to be handcuffed."

Having nothing to gain from fighting an entire cell extraction team, I did so.

They handcuffed me behind my back with chain handcuffs, the normal law enforcement type, not the hinged ones Homeland had used on me until now. While my wrists were sore, the cuffs were firm but not tight.

They were being nice to me for some reason.

I'd almost rather that they had beaten me down and shoved fingers up my bum.

Almost.

With two men holding on to each arm, I was walked down otherwise empty corridors to an interrogation room.

Not a torture room. Just the standard large circular table bolted to the floor with a metal ring.

One of the cell extraction team members wore a literal SAFETY vest. This struck me as hysterically funny but I did not choose to laugh.

Leg irons. Belly chain, loose but not too loose, through the handcuffs then to the metal ring. An additional length of what I could only call bungee cord, covered in what appeared to be a Kevlar strap.

The SAFETY team member did not touch any of it, but checked all of it after it had been applied. Carefully, piece by piece. Finally nodded.

Properly secured, as I had not been for some weeks, they sat me down and withdrew.

Only a few minutes later, a friendly looking middle-aged man in Homeland dress uniform - with the funky campaign hat - came in and seated himself opposite. At the same table, which my first interrogator had never done.

First impressions are important. So I didn't spit in his face.

"[X]," he said, using my real first name, which I despise.

He caught that.

"What should I call you, then?"

"Echo 18," I sighed. "It's why I'm here, after all."

"You're here because we fucked up."

Say what?

"It may interest you to know that Resistance activity at the Site you protect has gone up markedly since your arrest. So either you weren't the leader after all, or you had a really good continuity plan."

"Let me guess, traffic analysis."

I knew Homeland had the Site thoroughly wired up from an ELINT - electronic intelligence - perspective. What I didn't know was how much HUMINT - human intelligence - they had.

"Among other things," he smoothly evaded. "I want to clear the air. Show you some photos. I know arrest is a traumatic event."

Especially the way Homeland does it.

He tossed two cheap color printouts of crime scene photos on the table. Corpses. The senior security supervisor, Arturo, clearly dead of a single GSW to the back of the head. He'd probably been ordered to take the Homeland team to the SLE, followed orders, and been shot casually on arrival at H4.

The other, a body without a head, of the VP of Human Resources. In the moment I had before he scooped the photos up, I saw that her right hand was badly bruised. Inconclusive either way.

"We knew there was Resistance activity at Site and we wanted to cut out the rot. We... missed."

There was still tension between Defense and Homeland. Site worked for Defense. Certainly Homeland could waltz in and take the place over, but maybe Defense had made them give it back?

Too late for the three of us, though.

"We thought we had good intel. Turns out, we didn't. That's where you come in. Both our interviews with you, and stripping your phone down to individual pixels, show no evidence of Resistance activity. And no, your Chinese contact is not Egg Foo Young."

Can't blame a torture victim for trying.

"But you are still hiding things. You've said so. You don't seem to feel that Homeland should know what Site does to support the War, at least not in any detail."

"Show me authorization from OIG and I will speak freely. But not until then. And if you have OIG authorizations, you don't need my guesses."

OIG. Office of the Inspector General. The people who kept the Site's secrets, along with so many others.

I only knew a handful of the lesser secrets. Those were worth killing over. Not worth dying over.

The secret worth dying over was the fate of several hundred detainees my phone and I claimed had been sent Homeward Bound.

Not something OIG knew. And a thread that once Homeland found out about it, they would yank on - here and Utah and Colorado and any place their writ could reach.

So I wasn't bringing it up until they did. And then I would play dumb, or murderously dumb.

That was the cover story, that I had killed them all. All quite proper, according to Homeland's version of ethics.

But a search of the Nevada desert would not find the bodies, because they were very much alive. Until Homeland found them to correct the oversight.

He shook his head.

"I don't believe you killed them all."

How much, if anything, had I said aloud without realizing it?

"I've read your psychological profiles. Torture is very revealing, you know. You kill with skill, you murder only reluctantly, and mass murder is as beyond you as trust in your fellow man."

Oof.

"I am in no hurry. And neither are you. So let's fence, talk of inconsquential things, get to know each other."

The door opened and two trays were delivered.

One was chicken and pasta served on china. The other was two pieces of toast with a singed piece of meat stuck in between. You may guess who got which.

And you'd be wrong. He took the prison meal and shoved over to me the pasta.

There was even a metal fork.

We both eyeballed the distances. No, I concluded sadly and he concluded with barely concealed relief.

I started eating. He took a bite and dropped it. On the tray, not the floor.

"Is this what they've been feeding you?"

"Only the once, I usually didn't get lunch."

"You eat both. I'll get something from commissary later."

So I perforce ate and he watched me eat, apparently learning something other than that I had trouble chewing with the left side of my mouth.

He brought me three plastic tumblers of water, refilling them from his water bottle.

Didn't seem to be drugged.

Then the afternoon fencing began.

He asked about my childhood. My schooling. My work history.

I gave him the vague safe social answers, not the searingly honest ones.

I asked about his education, expecting him to lose his shit.

"I'm sorry, it says somewhere in the manual that I'm not to confide in a detainee," he said frankly. But I was neither beaten nor otherwise punished.

I began to be very afraid.

Weaponized kindness as a strategy. If I bought into it, it would merely make the breaking that much faster and worse.

He finally shrugged and had me returned to my cell.

Same augmented team, same SAFETY vest. But they took their time and did not push me or make me stumble.

My cell was ... different.

I could not help but notice the seven additional cameras.

But there was a thin foam mattress, a fitted sheet, a flat sheet, a pillow and a pillowcase. A threadbare quilt that still had "Target Essentials" logos on it.

The previously bare shelf had two golf pencils, three sheets of binder filler paper, a pocket Bible of the type provided to inmates and military recruits, a flimsy plastic drinking cup I could not make into a weapon, and a tourist postcard. Of the pre-War Golden Gate Bridge, with intact San Francisco skyline in background.

Cute. I knew the towers still stood, although the cables had been cut and the deck lost, and the skyline had a roughly circular chunk bitten out of it.

Nukes do that.

This all matched up with what my first interrogator had said would be the fruits of cooperation. Then set me up for another date with Biko's chair.

I had nothing to write.

But I hadn't read in some weeks, and the Bible pulled at me.

I flipped to a random verse.

"Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, 'children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.' Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life." -
Philippians 2:14-16a

I was no child of God. Not before, and certainly not now.

But this generation of my species was certainly warped and crooked.

My words could not be of life. My words could only carry death.

I flipped again.

"May your unfailing love be with us, Lord, even as we put our hope in you." - Psalm 33:22

Negative. That is a no go at this station.

I turned instead deliberately to Ecclesiastes.

"For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief." - Ecclesiastes 1:18"

What I knew could bring great grief. Not only to those who would be murdered, but to everyone who cared about them.

At least no one cared about me. That was a comfort in a time that comforts are few.

I firmly put the Bible down. It would be there after my next interrogation, or it wouldn't.

The bed taunted me. But it promised not only sleep but nightmares.

So I gathered to myself the fragments of my broken routine and did stretching and yoga until dinner was served.

Standard prison fare, which I ate all of.

Then I turned to Exodus and did my best to tell the tale of the escape from Egypt.

This occupied a couple hours.

I forced myself to lie down, with the quilt atop me and the pillow over rather than under my head.

I needed sleep but would settle for rest.

I feared sleep as I feared the dawn and feared the future.

What they can give, only to take away again.

Weaponized kindness.