The Nemesis Program

Chapter Fifty

After forty minutes in the air, the military Puma came whirring down to rest on a helipad within the razor-wire perimeter of the air force base. The soldiers had been laughing and joking among themselves for most of the way and paying little attention to their three captives. Ben was more and more certain that they’d be released after little more than a routine questioning, made to fork out for an emergency visa and maybe a fine or two, and given some dire warnings about ever flying without permission within Indonesian airspace again.

That was something Ben could certainly promise them, now that Ruth’s plane was lying at the bottom of Lake Toba. He still had no idea what he was going to say to her. Under the circumstances, ‘I’ll pay you back’ would sound pretty lame.

On landing, the soldiers ushered the three of them from the helicopter and marched them in relaxed fashion across the hot asphalt to one of the many generic military buildings that circled the compound. After being made to wait in a stifling ante-room they were hustled into an office to be greeted from behind a desk by an unsmiling NCO. The officer was holding the John Freeman passport his men had found inside Ben’s bag, and studied it with a look of extreme dubiousness before launching into a barking, staccato barrage of questions at them in broken English: where had they come from? Which of them was the pilot? Who did the aircraft belong to? Why had they travelled to this country? Lastly, with a glimmer of deep suspicion in his eye, he wanted to know what such a large sum of cash was doing in their possession.

As patiently as he could, Ben explained that they were wealthy tourists and had been en route to Kuala Lumpur before their aircraft had got into difficulties: sadly, their Malaysian visas and most of their passports had been lost in the lake along with the rest of their things. The NCO listened to the story with an enigmatic half-smile and then informed them that his senior officer would attend to them shortly. Until then, they could wait in comfort inside a special hospitality lounge within the base.

To Ben’s extreme disquiet, the hospitality lounge turned out to be a narrow, dingy corridor containing a row of steel cell doors. ‘This isn’t necessary,’ he protested. ‘We’ve done nothing wrong.’ But he knew it was pointless to resist as the soldiers separated them and led Roberta and the sullen Daniel to their respective cells. Roberta shot Ben a reassuring smile; then her door was clanged shut and Ben was being ushered inside his.

Time passed. Ben paced restlessly up and down the length of the cell. The dank, airless, windowless room measured exactly six paces by five across, with a filthy toilet in one corner, a sink with a rusty tap that spurted brownish water and a metal bunk attached to the wall. The temperature was easily over forty degrees. The cockroaches liked it best. Now and then, one would scuttle out from behind the toilet and race across the floor.

What the hell was taking so long? He hated being separated from Roberta. After an hour had gone by, his frustration had reached boiling point and he beat his fist on the door and yelled for a guard. Nobody came. Ben went on thumping against the door and shouting until he finally gave up and sat simmering on the edge of the bunk.

It wasn’t until half an hour later that his cell door clanged abruptly open. Not just one or two guards, but five fully-armed soldiers whose faces he recognised from earlier on burst into the cell with their assault rifles trained right at his head, safeties off and fingers on triggers.

Something had changed. The soldiers’ demeanour was completely different. Before, they’d been relaxed and nonchalant around their prisoners. Now, they were acting as though Ben was a serious threat and could take five men down unarmed with a flick of his finger if they took their eyes off him for so much as a second.

In reality, it would have taken more than a flick of a finger. But if it hadn’t been for Roberta’s involvement in this situation, he might have gone for it anyway.

Instead, he rose slowly from the bunk and stood very still as the soldiers circled him, rifle muzzles inches from his head. Those Pindads were an ungainly-looking mash-up of AR-15 and Kalashnikov designs and Ben wouldn’t have trusted his life to one in a fight. But they were useful enough at this range to blow his brains all over the cell wall.

The little NCO walked into the crowded cell. He was as jumpy looking as his troopers. Regarding Ben with an expression of fear and loathing, as if five military rifles weren’t enough, he pulled out a 9mm pistol and poked it at Ben’s face.

Ben looked down the barrel of the pistol. It was wavering slightly in the officer’s fist. ‘If this is about those overdue library books,’ he said, ‘I can explain.’

On a command from the NCO, the soldiers jostled him roughly through the doorway and marched him down the corridor past the other cells. As he passed Roberta’s door he called her name and received a sharp jab in the back from a rifle barrel.

‘Ben?’ Her voice was muffled behind the steel door. But at least she was all right.

Ben gritted his teeth and let himself be marched on down the corridor. He’d get them out of this.

Though maybe not quite yet.

The bare-block room they took him to was empty apart from a single wooden chair planted in the middle of the concrete floor where the light filtered through the bars of a dirty window.

‘You people really know how to make a guy feel welcome,’ Ben said. The NCO sneered at him and snapped another command at the soldiers. They hauled Ben by the arms to the chair and forced him to sit. A rifle muzzle hovered close to his temple as his hands were yanked roughly behind the backrest of the chair. He felt the cold steel of cuffs around his wrist, and their bite into his flesh as they were tightly closed.

And then it began.

If he’d been caught smuggling drugs, if they’d suspected him of some heinous terrorist plot, if he’d been arrested for espionage, then the brutality would have been interspersed with a lot of questions. But there were none. This wasn’t an interrogation. They didn’t even ask his name.

It was the burliest, broadest of the soldiers who’d been allocated the muscle job. With a smile the guy handed his weapon to one of the others, shed his uniform jacket, stood by the chair with his feet braced apart and got to work. His arms were thick and heavily veined. Judging by the scars on his knuckles, he’d done this before.

Ben had been here before, too. The name the SAS gave to the bruising sessions it inflicted on fresh recruits was ‘RTI: Resistance To Interrogation’. The punishment they dished out didn’t feel like training — it felt genuine, and it was fully intended to push the subject past the limits of normal human endurance, probing to see where their breaking point was and to give them a taste of the unpleasant treatment they could expect if they were ever taken prisoner by a real enemy, in a real military conflict. Ben hadn’t enjoyed it much, but one thing he’d learned about himself: if you wanted to break him, you’d have to kill him. He’d worn out three interrogators before they’d finally released him to the military hospital to be patched up.

Ben’s guess had been right — the burly Indonesian had done this before. He enjoyed it, too. After the fifth hard punch to the face, Ben could taste blood in his mouth. He spat a bright red gout of it in the soldier’s face. ‘Is that all you’ve got to give? Old Winnie could hit harder than you.’

The soldier didn’t understand English, but he got the drift of Ben’s defiant tone and put his back into the next one. The punch caught Ben in the solar plexus and drove the wind out of him. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to goad the guy, he thought as he strained against his bonds, gasping for breath.

The beating went on a good while longer. Ben sensed the blows but not the pain. He’d become detached, letting his mind wander through a series of disconnected random thoughts and memories. He was only faintly aware that his tormentor was beginning to tire, delivering his punches with far less enthusiasm. By the time they undid Ben’s cuffs and dragged him from the chair, the burly soldier was puffing hard and shining with sweat, and had retreated into a corner of the room to nurse hands that looked like lumps of raw meat.

As they half-marched, half-carried him back to his cell, Ben’s only concern was Roberta. It didn’t matter what they did to him. He most likely had it coming anyway.

He tried to call her name again as they shoved him staggering past her cell door, but he was too winded to make a sound. They unlocked his door and threw him sprawling to the floor.

He lay curled up for a long time, his mind drifting, blood pooling where his face was pressed against the concrete. Slowly, slowly, his senses returned. With them came the pain, and with the pain came the rage. The boiling fury made him focus. He raised his head from the floor, blinked and tried to control his breathing to soften the agony that made his skull feel about to explode. With effort he managed to prop himself up on one elbow, then up onto his knees. He reached for the edge of the grimy sink, clasped it tightly and with a low groan pulled himself shakily, inch by inch, to his feet. He creaked open the tap, cupped his hands under the spurting brown water and splashed the brackish liquid over himself. When he’d washed the dried blood out of his eyes and could see again, he turned away from the sink. Dropped down to the floor and forced his aching, screaming body to pump out five press-ups. Then five more. Then five more. Focus. Survive. Fight. Win.

He was asleep when the cell door crashed open for the second time and the soldiers marched in to take him away again.