LITMIR.BIZ

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our orders, Pedro?” Argo grumbled. “Get him on his feet.”

      “Stupid orders, if you ask me.”

      “Do you want to tell him that?” Argo asked. “Every man here is expendable. Even you and me. Now get him up.”

      Pedro reached down and hauled him to his feet, then gestured down the corridor. “Move.”

      He shuffled forward, heard voices in the distance. After he’d gone twenty yards he realized that what he was hearing was a chorus of moaning.

      He continued on toward the noise, each step twice as painful as the one before it. The corridor took a hard left, and when it straightened out he was standing in a large circular dungeon—a dungeon of horrors.

      In his wildest dreams he hadn’t expected anything like this. His eyes followed the iron cage around as it wrapped the outer wall—a cage eight feet wide and ten feet high. At least two dozen men stared back at him. Men just like him, naked and broken, starved beyond recognition. Some were huddled in corners. Others, those who could still stand, were clinging to the bars of the cage, their eyes ghostlike and too big for their bony faces.

      Did he look like that?

      It was obvious that food and water had been as scarce in here as they had been in the pit. No, maybe he had fared better. He’d been able to eat the rats and bugs that fell between the grates that had imprisoned him in the hole.

      His eyes shifted to a slab of concrete ten feet square and two feet thick in the middle of the room. On it stood a small wooden table, a toilet, sink and a cot—the mattress covered with a sheet.

      He stared at the simple, bare-bones amenities. To a man who had been living in hell for over a year they looked like the Ritz. It reminded him of the stripped-down apartment in Dublin where he’d lived for a short time with Paddy, with one big difference—the room at the rundown Dunroy Hotel had walls, even though they were paper-thin and he’d been able to hear old man Murphy beat his wife late at night and, on his days off, screw the neighborhood whore.

      He didn’t see the leg shackle and chain cemented into the center of the floor until Pedro prodded him up on the slab and manacled one of his ankles.

      Since he’d been imprisoned his senses had been heightened. His sight was as crystal-clear as an owl’s in the dark of night, and his nose was as razor-sharp as a hound dog on the scent of a rabbit.

      He immediately picked up the aroma of food though it was faint—the air was fetid with human waste—and turned slowly to search out the source. On the table was a covered tray, and beneath it was something edible.

      He forced the food and the gnawing hunger in his belly from his mind and focused on the clothes folded on the foot of the bed—a pair of green fatigues, a black T-shirt and white boxers.

      “Wash up, and use the soap.” Argo motioned to the bar at the sink. “You smell like the butt of a dead carcass. Then eat and get some rest.”

      Wash up.

      Eat.

      He glanced at the sink, envisioned the water flowing out of the tap. Fresh water, not some contaminated swill the color of piss.

      He didn’t understand why he was being given these things after all this time. Instead of questioning the gift, he should be kissing his enemy’s feet. But as he looked around the room at the naked starving men, the idea of accepting his good fortune in front of these poor bastards ripped his heart out.

      “Why me?” he asked.

      “Guess you drew the long straw, pretty boy.”

      “What about them?” he asked, his eyes drifting to the dying menagerie in the cage.

      Argo grinned. “Today they all wish they were you. By tomorrow they will want to cut your heart out and eat it. And that’s no lie. Before we can get the dead out those boys are licking their chops.”

      The guard’s words prompted him to turn his attention back on the cage. He scanned the individual faces, his eyes drawn to one man who was leaning against the back wall. When he saw the scar that traveled from his right hipbone to his knee, he whispered, “Roth Erwin.”

      “Recognize someone?” Argo’s grin spread. “That one’s about ready for the bone pile. He no longer fights for food. But like the others, he will hate you by morning. And when he dies, he will haunt you from his cold grave. They all will.”

      After the two guards left, he stood there like a monkey at center stage of a circus. He was so damn dirty and hungry, and still he didn’t move. He glanced at the covered food tray on the table. The urge was there, the need, but he couldn’t do it.

      He walked to the sink and turned on the faucet. It was a pretty sight, the water spilling from the tap. He tucked his head under and let the water flow into his mouth and over his dry lips, then scrubbed his hands until they stung.

      He found a clean washcloth and towel on the floor next to the sink and he went to work shedding the layers of dirt from his face, working his way down his body. And all the while the smell of the food continued to torture his belly.

      It was a slow process, removing the crusty layers of dirt, but he kept at it until he began to feel human again. But he wasn’t clean when he finished—it would take days to scrub the imbedded filth from his body, maybe weeks.

      How long was he going to be here?

      Still avoiding the food, he dressed in the issued clothes. Finally he pulled out the chair at the table and sat down. With a room full of eyes glued to him, he lifted the cover off the tray and stared at two fat slices of meat, potatoes swimming in butter, a chunk of bread and a clean cup that he could take to the sink anytime he felt like it.

      He glanced at the silverware, but he didn’t pick up the fork. He should be celebrating right now—water, a bed, food.

      He should eat it quickly before it was taken away from him like some cruel joke.

      In the past year he’d been flogged, tortured and starved, but none of it compared to the mental anguish ripping him apart at that moment.

      How could he do it?

      How could he betray these dying men by eating the enemy’s food while they watched?

      Because you want to live, the voice inside his head whispered. You can’t help them if you don’t help yourself first.

      The truth staring him in the face from all sides, Sully Paxton did what he was trained to do—survive. He picked up the fork, speared a piece of meat, then closed his eyes and opened his mouth.

      Adolf Merrick, commander of the Onyxx Agency, tossed two sleeping pills into his mouth and chased them down with a glass of water. He’d started taking the pills a few weeks ago after he’d broken it off with Sarah Finny.

      Guilt was a bitch. For two years he’d convinced himself, and Sarah, that he wanted a new life, but what he wanted was his old life back. Since that wasn’t possible, the alternative was to walk away from Sarah and live with his memories and pray it was enough.

      The pills knocked him out so he could sleep, but the downside was they prevented him from dreaming. Dreaming was what had kept him sane for twenty years. It’s where he lived with Johanna, where he kept her memory alive and the loneliness at bay.

      He’d told Sarah he couldn’t see her any longer. He blamed it on obstacles at work. What he should have told her was that even with Johanna gone, he couldn’t forget their life together—didn’t want to—and that the Agency was the only thing that made him feel remotely alive.

      Merrick climbed into bed and closed his eyes. He needed to find an apartment of his own. He’d been living out of a suitcase in a hotel on the Potomac in Arlington for three weeks—ever since a fire had destroyed his apartment in Washington. A fire that had blown up the entire building.

      Gas leak my ass.

      Like a well-aimed

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