Barry Eisler - Inside out

A dream. Calm down, it was just one of the dreams.

He grimaced. God, if he could only take a pill. Anything to dull the sound of those screams, to obscure the terrorized faces behind them.

He realized he was gripping the Glock. Must have snatched it up without realizing as he woke. A protective reflex, useless now. Against the dreams, the gun wasn't even a talisman.

He could still hear it. A naked man, strapped to a table, eyes bulging in panic, past words, past screaming, just making… that sound. He was awake now, but he knew it would be hours before the echoes would fade from his brain.

He got up, turned on a light, and started pacing. He kept the Glock in one hand and compulsively touched surfaces with the other-dresser, walls, a lamp shade-pressing, patting, poking, anything to remind himself he was awake, he wasn't in the dream anymore.

People didn't know. They didn't know that sound, the sound a man made when you took him past the point he could endure. Every man made the sound, and it was always the same. It started with bluster. Then there would be begging. Then bawling and babbling. Childlike sobbing, shrieks for mercy. And finally, when everything had been tried, every remaining human effort and desperate stratagem and fervent hope, and all of it had failed, there would be nothing but that sound, that wordless, keening wail, the melody of a soul being snuffed, a psyche cracking open, the birth cries of an animal devolving from a man. And no matter how many times you heard it, it never pierced you less. The hair on the back of your neck would stand up no less, your scrotum would retract no less, your nausea afterward would subside no sooner. Once you heard the sound, you could live to a hundred and you would never, ever get it out of your ears.

And God help you if you were the one who did what produced it.

And all that bullshit about how it was for a good reason. As though a reason would have made any difference, as though a reason could do anything to make you forget even one single moment of it. It was worse than the stink of blood and the slime of viscera. You could acclimate to killing. Torture was different.

He slowed his pacing, breathing deliberately, in and out, through his nose. He could feel his heart rate beginning to slow. Okay. Okay. He was okay.

If he could only sleep.

He remembered one guy, one of the Caspers, they called him Bugs, for Bugs Bunny, because he had these big, protruding ears. They'd run a routine on Bugs: sleep deprivation, hypothermia, stress positions, beatings. They buried him alive in a box. The box is what broke him. Afterward, just seeing his captors approaching his cage, he would scuttle into a corner and fetal up and start making the sound. It was some Pavlovian thing. No one thought he was acting. No actor could make that sound.

And the Pavlovian thing worked in reverse, too. Just seeing Bugs scuttle off and hear him start making the sound… it was like someone pressing the nausea button in Larison's brain. He'd come to hate Bugs for the way he felt about himself. As though Larison's own agony had been Bugs's fault. And Jesus, what he'd done to the guy as a result. Jesus.

He'd tried to rationalize it all by telling himself it was to save lives, prevent attacks. But they never got anything useful. And so much of what they were being tasked with wasn't even about attacks. It was about whether there'd been a link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. He remembered the first time they'd issued him a list of Saddam-AQ questions. He'd done it. It wasn't as though he'd been in the habit of thinking much then, it was easier to just do what he was told. But afterward he wondered what the hell he'd just done. He'd just endured the sound again, and for what… to provide someone political cover? That was his job now? That's what he was being used for?

And if they would use him for that, what else would they use him for? And what would they do when they were done using him?

Despite his fearful secret, somehow he'd always believed the military would do right by him. He'd given the army everything, endured horrible things, the kind of things you could never utter, not even to other men who had done them, too. Things that made him wonder whether there was a God, that made him fear some inevitable reckoning he sensed but couldn't name. He needed to believe the military would reciprocate, that in return for his sacrifice they would support and protect him.

Then Abu Ghraib happened. He saw the way the brass and the politicians closed ranks to blame the enlisted personnel. He remembered reading an article by a guy named Jonathan Turley, about how the rank and file always got scapegoated, about the abdication of command responsibility. He started to think about what he was doing, and about what the politicians would do if it leaked. Graner, England… how was he any different? He'd be the perfect fall guy, especially for the Caspers.

He didn't want to accept it. He wanted to believe what he was doing was different, that he was different, and that anyway it would never leak, it was too closely held. But he knew that was all bullshit. Nothing was more important in combat than avoiding denial and engaging reality, and the habit of combat helped open his eyes to political reality, too. Eventually it would all come out. They'd need a fall guy then. The fall guy would be him.

Once he realized it, he could see it clearly. They'd talk about his temper, which ironically was why they'd had him working the Caspers in the first place. They'd call him a steroid freak. They'd dig for other dirt. If they discovered his secret, they'd crucify him with it. Rogue. Sadist. Nutcase. Homo. They'd say he volunteered for this detail so he could be alone with detainees, so he could work out his twisted fantasies on naked, helpless men. And then, to prevent him from talking, to prevent him from revealing what he knew about the Caspers and taking everyone else down with him, one morning he'd be found hanging in his cell.

Yeah, that's the way it would happen. If he let them.

So he found a way to not let them. A way to protect himself, bring down the hypocrites who were going to set him up, and create a new life for himself-and for Nico-all at the same time.

His heart rate had returned to normal. He turned off the light and lay back down on the mattress. He kept the Glock in his hand.

All he had to do now was stick to the plan. After that, Costa Rica. Costa Rica was where the dreams would stop.

He just had to get there.

Projection At some point during the flight, Ben nodded off. He was still recovering from three near-sleepless nights in the Manila city jail and a lot of time zone shifts after, and he was glad for the chance to get a little shut-eye.

When he woke, Paula was looking at him the way he'd been at her earlier. "What?" he said, scrunching up his face and blinking. "Was I drooling?"

She cocked an eyebrow and gave him a bored look. "Not that I noticed."

He saw she was holding an iPhone, like his. "You like it?" he asked, gesturing with his head.

"Love it. Does just about everything but shoot bullets."

He laughed. "iBullets. Maybe one day."

He looked out the window. The sun was low in the sky. He checked his watch. Damn, he'd been asleep for almost an hour. They didn't have far to go.

"So how'd you get into this line of work?" he asked, sitting up and cracking his neck.

"What, you mean a nice girl like me?"

"I don't think you're nice."

"Oh, but I am."

"All right, a nice girl like you, then."

She looked at him for a long moment. He couldn't tell what she was thinking, and he thought maybe she wasn't going to answer. But then she said, "Nine-eleven happened during my senior year of college. I was planning to go to grad school for an M.A. in psychology-psychology was my undergraduate major-but I decided to do something to make a difference, instead."