Freedom (31 page)

Other men were trying to cut the pajamas off his daughter as she struggled. The rope was cinched firmly around Fossen’s jaw, and Big Man was in Fossen’s face again, laughing through his mask, his night vision goggles looking buglike in the darkness.

Then a welcome sound came from somewhere out in the night—the angry shouts of hundreds of people approaching through the fields—the rattle of weapons and equipment as they approached underlined their angry shouts. Big Man made several hand motions and his men spread out, concealing themselves behind vehicles, trees, and walls. They all focused on the darkness with their night vision goggles, whispering. . . .

The massive crowd was approaching from somewhere out in the darkened fields. Fossen stood on his tiptoes, the noose cinched tightly around his neck. He didn’t dare turn to look.

Big Man motioned abruptly, and his band of raiders fled into the night—disappearing in the opposite direction from the advancing mob. They didn’t fire a shot, apparently hoping they could slip away unseen. Leaving their victims behind.

Fossen could hold his precarious balance no more. He fell to the side and was greatly relieved when the rope, no longer being held by anyone, simply unwound as he collapsed to the ground.

He tried to get a glimpse of the approaching mob, which was almost upon them now. But suddenly there was complete silence. Fossen rolled over to look for his wife and daughter and could see a shadowy form dressed head-to-toe in black kneeling over them, swiftly cutting their bonds. Their rescuer handed a knife to one of the students, then moved over to Fossen, drawing yet another knife.

Fossen could now see the man clearly. He wore some sort of formfitting black body armor with a hood and what appeared to be advanced night vision goggles over his face. Weapons and equipment were secured in pouches integrated into the suit.

The man turned Fossen over and tore the duct tape off his mouth with a sting. “Are you hurt?”

“No. Thank god you got here in time.” Fossen could see his wife and daughter hugging each other, crying. The students and farmhands were also embracing in relief.

The man cut Fossen’s bonds then pulled off his own hood and night vision gear.

“Jon!” Fossen smiled and grabbed his arm. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

“We can’t stay here, Hank. Townspeople are on the way, but the death squad might return.”

Fossen looked around for the large crowd he’d heard moments before but saw no one. “I thought they were here already.”

“They will be soon.”

“But I just
heard
them.”

Jon pointed at a device affixed to his forearm. “Hypersonic sound projector. I created the impression of an approaching mob.” He looked up. “We should get to cover.”

“Jesus Christ! It’s only you?”

Suddenly they heard automatic weapon fire crackling in the distant fields. The students and farmhands ran for cover along with Fossen’s wife and daughter.

Jon put his night vision goggles back on and nodded to himself. “Cover your eyes, folks . . .”

“What . . . why?”

In answer the fields erupted in mind-blasting bursts of light and skin-crawling eruptions of sound that seemed to be tearing apart reality.

Fossen turned away and covered his ears. “My god, what is that?”

“Sensory assault. You might feel some nausea. Battle armor is synchronized to cancel out the effects.” Jon helped Fossen get to his feet.

The gunfire had stopped.

“Then we’re safe?”

Jon nodded toward the darkness. “We’ve got friends close at hand, now. I see call-outs approaching.”

“Hank!”

Fossen turned to see his old friend, Sheriff Dave Westfield, at the front of a dozen armed townspeople from Greeley, all of whom wore HUD glasses. They were running up from the darkness behind them. “God, am I glad to see you guys.”

They lowered their weapons as they arrived. “Well, don’t thank us. Thank Jon. He’s the one who detected these bastards and sent out the alarm.”

Fossen looked at his wife and daughter, then back to Jon. “I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”

“That dinner was plenty.”

“Look . . .”

The crowd turned to see a group of darknet fighters coming out of the night from the direction the paramilitaries fled. The fighters were led by a darknet soldier in full composite body armor and enclosed helmet. He had an electronic pistol in one hand, and was guiding a dazed-looking prisoner with the other. Fossen knew at a glance that the prisoner was the Big Man who had tried to hang him.

The townspeople cheered and clapped as the party came in from the darkness. Jon pulled off his night vision glasses again.

The heaviliy armored soldier passed his prisoner into the custody of the sheriff. Then he just stood nodding to himself as he beheld Jon. He twisted his helmet to remove it, revealing a vaguely familiar face and a shaved head. He smiled and laughed hard as he grabbed Jon into a backslapping hug. “I can’t believe it! Jon Ross!”

“It’s been a long time, Pete. I’m glad you’re still alive.”

They exchanged world-weary looks. “Likewise.”

“How’s your quest going?”

“It’s hard to tell.”

He turned and shouted, “Price!”

A voice in the darkness answered. “Yes, Sergeant.”

“Make sure this prisoner gets brain-scanned. Let’s find out who sent him.”

As Fossen, the sheriff, and the others looked on, Jon and the bald-headed soldier walked off. “There’s a lot we need to talk about, Jon. . . .”

I
t had been twenty-one years since Stanislav Ibanescu had worn the uniform of the Securitate, but he had never stopped making a living as a soldier. The world over, war was a growth business, and he knew he’d never go unemployed like his brothers. And earlier in the evening he had thought that no one back home would have believed that he was invading America. It had all been a dream come true.

But that was three hours ago and a long drive down dark roads into unknown captivity. Who these people were who held him was anyone’s guess—but they sure didn’t seem like a ragtag group of terrorists.

He considered the night’s events. The op had gone off without a hitch, and they were about to kill the target subject and leave. But a counterstrike team had assaulted them out of nowhere. The look-outs hadn’t reported a thing. In fact, Ibanescu hadn’t seen more than half a dozen of his men since they’d been captured.

Were they U.S. Army? Socom units? They were supposed to have free rein in this area. That’s what they’d been told by their contact, but it must have been a setup. Now he knew half his men were either dead or wounded, and the other half had been divided up and trundled off to god knew where. Now the tables had turned, and men who looked like science-fiction convention warriors in plastic armor and full headgear with mother-of-pearl faceplates were marching him down a white hallway glowing with light. Ibanescu was strapped to a backboard—even his head had been completely immobilized, and he knew what was coming next was torture. They were going to waterboard him, like he’d heard the Americans did. He was just hoping that this was a professional crew—one reachable by logic. One not doing this for kicks. He could then clear up this mistake. Because that was what it must be. Perhaps they were a local unit—one that hadn’t been informed. One thing was sure: this was going to cost extra. In any event, it couldn’t be worse than what he’d received at the hands of the Chechens.

The two armored soldiers brought Ibanescu into a strange chamber filled with what looked to be medical scanning equipment—like some sort of MRI or CAT scan equipment—cold and efficient. And even though he didn’t see anything around that could be used to torture him, he didn’t imagine it was far away.

Mercifully, he didn’t see any place where they could waterboard him without getting some expensive equipment wet.

The guards lifted the backboard holding their prisoner up onto a platform beneath the scanning equipment, and then lashed the board to the scanner bed.

He was suddenly sliding with the whir of electric motors, moving deeper into the scanning machine. Were they perhaps checking him for injuries? That seemed odd.

The backboard jerked to a stop, and Ibanescu soon heard the telltale sound of MRI magnets hammering, chirping, and pinging for one or two minutes. He’d gone through this before in Switzerland after a head injury while skiing.

As the scanning continued, a soothing female voice came to his ears, speaking English. Inbanescu knew some English, and he was able to decipher it.

It was an oddly synthetic-sounding voice. He decided to pretend he didn’t understand and just kept staring up at the interior of the scanning machine.

They were bluffing. He felt certain.

“Is English your primary language?”
A pause.
“No. It isn’t. Let’s find your primary language.”

This was strange. It definitely sounded like an artificial voice. Like something he might hear from a credit card or airline customer service line. Very strange. He wondered if this was some sort of automated interrogation system.
Leave it to the Americans.

The soothing female voice spoke in a dozen different languages, waiting five or six seconds between each. Ibanescu didn’t understand any of them, although he thought he could detect French and German. Also Czech. Eventually she came to Rumanian. . . .

He was damned if he was going to answer. He just lay there like a statue.

Her voice responded differently this time.
“Yes. You are Rumanian, aren’t you?”

He frowned.
How the hell . . . ?

The rest of her words came to him in slightly stilted, synthetic-voiced Rumanian.
“This machine is a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner. It monitors the blood activity in your brain to identify patterns of deception, recognition, and emotion—such as fear or anger. You will be unable to evade my inquiries. So please relax and enjoy your interrogation.”

Ibanescu just frowned at the machine around him.

Were they serious? He wasn’t about to tell them anything. He just lay there silently.

Suddenly a map of the globe was projected onto the ceiling of the scanning chamber. It looked a lot like a Web mapping program, with the globe spinning slowly in space. The map zoomed in on Rumania as the globe stopped spinning.

Asking again wasn’t going to help. It did feel comforting to see the map of his homeland, however. It was a detailed, physical map, showing the mountains and lakes. He could see a dot on the map for his hometown of Piteşti, northwest of Bucureşti.

Before he knew it, the view of the map centered on Piteşti.

Holy shit.
Was this system tracking his eyes? Did it sense that he was focusing on Piteşti? What an idiot he was to fall for that! The map was zooming in now to a full-screen satellite view of Piteşti. He shut his eyes.

“You are from Piteşti, aren’t you?”
There was a pause during which Ibanescu clenched his eyes tightly.
“Yes, you are. This is where you were born, isn’t it? Do you still have family there?”
A pause.
“Yes. You do.”

He was starting to lose his mind. How was this hellish machine discovering these things? It was obviously reading his neural activity or something. This was a nightmare.

Ibanescu realized that closing his eyes wasn’t going to help. He opened them again and just stared at the detailed aerial view of his hometown. This was insane. He was being processed by a machine that was sucking the information through his ears.

“Does your name begin with B? C? D? E? . . .”
And on it went.

He just stared in numb disbelief as the machine finally came to “I” and then halted. It asked again.
“I?”
A pause.
“Good. Now the second letter. Is it A? B?” Another pause. “B? Good. Now the third letter . . .”

And so it continued with relentless precision until it had teased Ibanescu’s name from his mind. It finally said in a stilted, machine mispronunciation,
“Mr. Ibanescu, what is your legal first name?”

A series of names scrolled slowly across the ceiling in front of him, but he no longer tried to close his eyes. What was the point? He knew it would simply speak the letters into his ears—which was even more excruciating.

Sure enough, as the list scrolled down through the S’s and centered on “Stanislav,” the scroll slowed. Then stopped. “Stanislav” was highlighted in bold.
“Stanislav Ibanescu. Is this your legal name?”

He knew there would be a pause, followed by the inevitable,
“Yes. This is your legal name. Are you Stanislav Ibanescu of Trivale bloc 25A?”

Now he did close his eyes. This machine had in a matter of ten minutes completely identified him. It now knew who his family was, his history, everything. What a nightmare technology was. Then he thought,
If we had had this technology in the Securitate, we would never have fallen from power
. Whoever was doing this was someone he wanted to be part of. These people were
winners
.