Harlan Coben - Don’t Let Go

I start to convulse.

He does it again. My muscles won’t work anymore.

He reaches into the backseat and pulls out something else. I can’t see what it is. A tire iron, maybe. A baseball bat. I don’t know. I’ll never know.

He hits me in the head with it once, then again, and then there is nothing.

I swim my way to consciousness in the strangest way.

Do you know the dreams where you can’t do the smallest of physical tasks? You try to run from danger, but it’s like every step is a trudge through wet snow at hip height. I was feeling something like that now. I wanted to move, to run, to escape, but I was frozen in place, like my whole body was encased in heavy lead.

When I blink my eyes open, I’m lying on my back. I see pipes and exposed beams. A ceiling. In an old basement. I try to stay cool, calm, not make any sudden moves.

I try to turn my head to take in my surroundings.

But I can’t.

I can’t move my head at all. Not half an inch. It feels like there is a vise locking my skull in place. I struggle and try harder. No go. No give at all. I try to sit up. But I’m strapped to some kind of table. My arms are belted against my sides. My legs are wrapped up tight.

I can’t move at all. I’m completely helpless.

Reeves’s whispery voice says, “You need to tell me where the tape is, Nap.”

Conversation won’t work here. I know that right away. So without saying a word, I scream for help. I scream as loud as I can. I keep screaming until he jams a gag into my mouth.

“Pointless,” he says.

Reeves is performing some kind of task — he’s humming as he does it — but I can’t move my head to see. I hear the sound of a faucet being turned on, of someone filling a bucket or something. Then the faucet goes off.

“Do you know why Navy SEALs stopped using waterboarding as part of their training?” Reeves asks. When I don’t answer — can’t answer with the gag in my mouth — he says, “Because the trainee would crack so fast it was bad for morale. CIA recruits lasted an average of fourteen seconds before they begged their instructor to stop.”

Andy Reeves stands over me. I look up at his smiling face, and I can see he’s enjoying this.

“We would play an entire psychology game with the detainee too — a blindfold, having him escorted in by armed guards. Sometimes we would offer him hope and crush it. Sometimes we would let him know that there was no escape. You play it different ways depending on the subject. But I don’t have time for those theatrics tonight, Nap. I feel bad about Diana, I really do, but that wasn’t my fault. So we move on. You’re already strapped to the table. You already know this is going to be very bad.”

He moves toward my feet. My eyes try to follow, but he’s out of sight now. I try not to panic. I hear something cranking, and now I realize that the table I’m on is starting to tilt. I hope maybe I’ll slip right off the table, even onto my head, but I’m strapped so tightly, gravity doesn’t shift me even a little.

“Inclining your head and raising your feet,” he explains, “keeps the throat open and makes filling the nostrils with water easier. You are imagining this is going to be awful. It is going to be much worse.”

He moves back into view and pulls the gag from my mouth.

“Are you going to tell me where the tape is?”

“I’ll show you,” I say.

“No, that won’t do.”

“You can’t get to it on your own.”

“That’s a lie. I’ve heard all this before, Detective Dumas. You’ll make up a story now. You’ll probably make up new stories the first time or two I take you through this process. That’s why critics call torture unreliable. You’re desperate. You’ll say anything for a reprieve. But that won’t work with me. I know all the tricks. Eventually you will crack. Eventually you will tell me the truth.”

Maybe, but I know one thing for certain: Once he has the tape, he’ll kill me. The same as he killed the others. So no matter what, I can’t give in.

As if he can read my mind, he says, “You’ll tell me, even if it means your death. A soldier who interrogated prisoners in the Philippine-American War once described what you’re about to experience this way: ‘His suffering must be that of a man who is drowning but cannot drown.’”

Andy Reeves shows me the towel. “Ready?” Then he places it against my entire face, blinding me.

The towel is just lying on my face, not even being held down tightly, but I already feel as though I’m suffocating a little. I try to move my head again, but it still won’t budge. My chest starts to hitch.

Calm down, I tell myself.

I try to do that. I try to slow my breathing and prepare. I know that I’ll need to hold my breath at some point.

Seconds pass. Nothing happens.

My breathing doesn’t become more regular. It stays jangled and uneven. I strain to hear something, anything, but Andy Reeves isn’t speaking or moving or doing anything.

More time passes. How long? Thirty seconds, forty seconds?

Maybe this is all a bluff, I start to think. Maybe this is just a psychological game, a way to stress...

That’s when I hear the splash. A second later, no more, water starts to seep through the towel.

When I feel the wet hit my mouth, I lock my lips and close my eyes and hold my breath.

More water comes in, first a trickle, then heavier.

I feel it start going up my nostrils. I tighten up, keeping my mouth closed.

More water cascades in. I try to move my head, try to tilt my head up or find some way of escaping the onslaught. But I can’t move. The water completely fills my nose. I’m starting to panic. I can’t hold my breath much longer, and I need to get the water out of my nose and away from my mouth. Only one way. Blow it out. But the towel is there. Still, I try to exhale now, to push the water out, and for a second, maybe two, that works. I try to keep exhaling, try to empty my lungs so as to keep the water at bay. But there is too much water flowing down, and now the big problem:

A man can exhale for only so long.

And when you’re spent, when the exhale is over — and this is the awful part — you eventually have to inhale.

That is where I’m at now.

When my exhale comes to an end, water starts pouring back in, filling up my nostrils and mouth. I can’t help myself. I’m running out of air, and that agony overcomes all else. Holding my exhale is killing me, and yet I know what awaits. I have to inhale, have to breathe in, but there is no air. Only water. Lots of water. The inhale opens the floodgate. The water flows freely down my nose, into my mouth. No way to stop it. My inhalation drags water through my mouth and down my windpipe.

No air.

My body goes into spasm. I start to buck, try to kick out, try to flail my head, but I’m strapped down. There is no escape from the water. There is no relief or letup at all. It just keeps getting worse.

You don’t just want it to stop. You don’t just need it to stop.

It has to stop.

It’s like I’m being held underwater, but it’s worse. I can’t move. I’m locked in concrete. I’m drowning, Leo. Drowning and suffocating. All rational thought is gone. I can feel a little part of my sanity start to give way, a permanent rip in my psyche, something from which I know I’ll never recover.

Every cell in my body is begging for oxygen, for just one breath. But there is none. I’m gasping and taking in more water. I want to stop, but my gag reflex is unconsciously forcing me to exhale and inhale. The water floods my throat and trachea.

Please, God, let me breathe...