Burning Angels

He heard a door being wrenched open and he was booted inside some kind of building. It went suddenly dark again. A terrifying sense of total blackness. Then he heard the familiar whir of a lift motor and felt the floor beneath him drop away. He was in an elevator, going deep.

Finally, the movement stopped. Jaeger was dragged out and propelled through a series of sharp right-angled turns — some kind of twisting corridor, he figured. Then a door opened, unleashing a tsunami of deafening sound. It was as if a TV had been left on tuned to nothing, blasting out electronic interference — so-called white noise — at top volume.

He was gripped beneath the armpits and dragged backwards into the white-noise room. His hands were cut free and his clothes were torn away from him with such force that the buttons flew off. He was left in nothing but his boxers; even his shoes were gone.

He was manoeuvred into a position facing the wall, his hands against the cold brickwork but balanced only on the tips of his fingers. His captors kicked his legs further and further backwards until he was suspended at what felt like a sixty-degree angle on fingertips and toes.

Footsteps stomped away. Utter silence, apart from his own pained and laboured breathing.

Was there anyone but him here any more?

Did he have company?

There was no way of telling.

Years back, Jaeger had been put through simulated resistance-to-interrogation training, as part of the selection process when joining the SAS. It was designed to test your resolve under pressure, and to train you how to cope with captivity. It had been thirty-six hours of hell, but he’d always known it was only an exercise.

This, by contrast, was very real and terrifying.

His shoulder muscles started to burn, his fingers cramping, as all the while the deafening white noise pounded into his skull. He wanted to cry out with the pain, but his mouth was still taped shut. All he could do was scream and yell inside his own head.

Eventually it was the finger cramps that got too much for him. The pain seared through his hands, the muscles tensing so hard it felt as if his fingers would be ripped from their very sockets. For an instant he relaxed, pressing his palms against the wall. It was blissful relief to allow them to take his full weight. But the next moment he doubled over as a jabbing bolt of pain shot up his spine.

Jaeger screamed, but it came out as a muffled yelp. He was far from alone in here, and someone had just applied an electrode — a cattle prod? — to the small of his back.

With brute savagery he was kicked back into his former position. Not a word had been said, but there was no misunderstanding the situation: if he tried to move or relax, they’d jab him with the electrode.

It wasn’t long before his arms and legs began to shake uncontrollably. At the very moment when he felt he couldn’t go on, his feet were booted out from under him, and he collapsed to the floor like a dead man. There was absolutely no let-up. Hands grabbed him like a lump of meat, forcing him into the sitting position he’d adopted in the truck, but this time with his arms folded in front of him.

His captors were faceless, voiceless tormentors. But their message was crystal clear: movement equals pain.

All that assailed Jaeger now was the screaming blast of white noise. Time became meaningless. When he lost consciousness and keeled over, they wrestled him into a new stress position, and on and on and on.

Eventually something seemed to change.

Without a hint of warning, Jaeger felt himself dragged to his feet. His hands were whipped behind his back, wrists taped together, and he was propelled towards the door. He was dragged along the corridors again, swinging left-right-left-right around the sharp series of turns.

He heard another door open and he was thrust into a room. A sharp edge was rammed into the back of his knees. It was a bare wooden chair, and it forced him to sit. He hunched there in silence.

Wherever he was now, there was an extra chill to the atmosphere, plus a faint smell of airlessness and damp. In one way this was the most terrifying moment yet. Jaeger had understood the white-noise room; its purpose and its rules. His captors had been trying to exhaust him, to break him down and force him to crack.

But this? This unknown. This total lack of noise or any sense of a human presence other than his own — it was utterly chilling.

Jaeger felt a spike of fear. Real, visceral fear. He had no idea where he had been brought to, but he sensed there was nothing good about this place. Plus he had little sense who might have captured him, or what they intended to do with him now.

All of a sudden, light flooded in, blinding him. The bag had been ripped off, and at the same instant a powerful beam switched on. It seemed to be shining directly into his face.

Gradually his eyes started to adjust and he began to figure out detail.