Nelson Demille: Wild fire

“When?”

“When I leave this property.”

“I see.” Madox picked up Harry’s cell phone and turned it on. “I see you have a message.” He added, “In case you wondered why you have such good service here in the middle of nowhere, I have my own cell-phone relay tower.” He gestured toward the window. “Now you know what that tower is, and you can label your photograph. You can also indicate that it has a voice scrambler so that no one can listen to my calls.” He asked Harry, “Isn’t it nice to be rich?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“What’s your voice-mail code?”

Harry gave it to him, and Madox dialed voice mail, punched in the code, and put the phone on speaker.

Lori said, “Hi, honey. Got your message. I was sleeping. I’m going shopping today with your sister and Anne. Call me later. I’ll have my cell with me. Okay? Let me know if you have to stay over. I love you, and I miss you.” She added, “Be careful of those right-wing loonies. They like their guns. Take care.”

Madox commented, “She sounds very nice. Except for that part about the right-wing loonies and the guns.” He observed, “She apparently thinks you may be staying here overnight. She may be right.” He turned off the power to the cell phone, and said to Harry, “I guess you know these things send off a signal that can be tracked.”

“Yeah, that’s my job.”

“That’s right. Amazing technology. I can call my children anytime, anyplace. Of course, they never answer, but they call back after five messages, or when they need something.”

Harry forced a smile.

“So,” said Mr. Madox, “you seem to be who and what you say you are. To be quite honest, Mr. Muller, I thought you might be an agent of a foreign power.”

“What?”

“I’m not being paranoid. The people who are members of this club have enemies around the world. The right kind of enemies. We are all patriots, Mr. Muller, and we’ve caused some problems for the enemies of America around the globe.”

“That’s good.”

“I thought you’d agree. And these same people are your enemies. So, to use an old Arabic expression, ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’”

“Right.”

“Sometimes, however, the enemy of my enemy is also my enemy. Not because he wants to be, but because we have a difference of opinion about how to deal with our common enemy. But that’s a discussion for another time.”

“Yeah, I’ll call you next week.”

Bain Madox stood, looked at his watch, and said, “I’ll tell you what. Since you and your agency seem so interested in this club and its members, I’m going to do something that I’ve never done before. I’m going to allow you, an outsider, to sit in on the Executive Board meeting, which will take place this afternoon after a welcome lunch for our arriving club members. Would you like to join us?”

“I… No, not really. I think I should get-”

“I thought you were here to get information? What’s your rush?”

“No rush, but I-”

“I’ll even let you take pictures.”

“Thanks, but-”

“I think your presence at this meeting can do both of us some good. You’ll learn something, and I’ll get to see your reaction to what we’re discussing. Sometimes, we get into this bunker mentality, you know, where outside reality is excluded, and only our reality is heard. That’s not healthy.”

Harry didn’t reply, and Bain Madox warmed to his idea. “I want you to feel free to comment, to tell us if we’re sounding like a bunch of crazy old fools-right-wing loonies.” He grinned. “We need your honest opinion about our next project. Project Green.”

“What’s Project Green?”

Mr. Madox glanced at the security guards, then went over to Harry and whispered in his ear, “Nuclear Armageddon.”

Harry Muller was led, blindfolded and barefoot, down two flights of stairs into what must have been the basement of the lodge. It was cold and damp, and he could hear sounds of mechanical and electrical motors.

He heard a door open, then he was prodded forward. The door slammed shut, and he heard a metal bolt sliding.

He stood there, then said, “Hey. You. You there?”

Silence.

He listened awhile, then pulled the blindfold off and looked around. He was alone.

Harry stood in a small room walled with concrete blocks painted the same gray enamel as the concrete floor. The low ceiling was covered with corrugated metal.

As his eyes adjusted to the glaring light of an overhead fluorescent fixture, he saw that the room held only a steel bed, which was bolted to the floor. On the bed was a thin mattress, on which were his camouflage shirt and pants, which he put on. He checked his pockets, but they hadn’t given him anything back.

In a corner of the room were a toilet and a sink. The toilet had no seat and no water tank. Just like in a prison cell. The sink had no mirror over it, not even the plastic or steel mirrors they used in jail.

He went to the steel door that had no handle and no window, and pushed on it, but it didn’t budge.

He searched the room, looking for anything that he could use as a weapon, but it was completely bare, except for the bed and a rusty radiator that wasn’t putting out much heat.

He noticed now a small swivel eyeball camera mounted in the corner of the ceiling, with a recessed speaker beside it. He stuck up his middle finger and shouted, “Fuck you!”

No one replied.

He looked around for something that he could use to smash the camera and the speaker, but there wasn’t a single loose item in the room except for himself. He took a running start, jumped, and smacked the camera with his hand. The camera continued sweeping the room, then a shrill, high-decibel sound pierced the room, and Harry covered his ears and backed away from the speaker. The painful noise continued, and Harry shouted, “Okay! Okay!”

The sound stopped and a voice said, “Sit.”

“Fuck you.” Bastards. Wait until I get out of here.

He had lost track of time, but he figured it must be about ten or eleven in the morning. His stomach growled, but he didn’t feel particularly hungry. Only thirsty. And he had to pee.

He walked to the toilet and the camera followed him. He urinated, then went to the sink and turned on the single tap. A trickle of cold water ran into the basin. He washed up, then used his hands to drink from the faucet.

There was no towel, and he wiped his hands on the sides of his pants. He went back to the bed and sat. He thought about his conversation with Bain Madox.

Nuclear Armageddon.

He said to himself, What the hell is that asshole talking about?

And what was this meeting that he was invited to? None of this made too much sense unless… unless this was all a setup.

He stood. “That’s it!” This is one of those stupid training camps. “Holy shit!”

He thought about the whole assignment, from his ten minutes in Tom Walsh’s office, to the Tech guy, to cutting through the fence, to the guards, to this prison cell in a private house-this whole thing was a test… one of those SERE courses-Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape.

Well, he definitely didn’t pass the evasion part, which was why he was in the cell. He went over in his mind the interrogation from the guy named Madox-the resistance part- Oh shit! Did I blow that? What the hell did I say? I told him to go fuck himself and stuck to my cover… then I did the IRA rap, which was smart… right?

He thought about the cattle prod. Would they do that? Yeah… maybe.

And later, there’d be the escape thing, then the evasion thing again and survival in the woods… Yeah! That’s where this is going.