Freedom TM

could feel his hands lashed behind his back as he lay facedown on a hard, cold diamond-plate floor. He was still nude. Road vibration circulated through his bones.
    He turned over to see several sets of combat boots nearby and looked up into the masked faces of soldiers with M4A1s slung across their chests. They looked back down menacingly.
    The closest of them pointed a gloved hand in Sebeck’s face. “If I get any trouble from you, I’m going to make it painful. You hear me?”
    Another soldier on the opposite row of benches kicked Sebeck. “You hear him!”
    Sebeck had the wind knocked out of him for a moment. As he got air back into his lungs, he turned to the man. “I’m an American. I’m one of you. Why are you treating me like this?”
    “Shut the fuck up, you commie prick!”
    He landed another vicious kick to Sebeck’s ribs, sending him rolling.
    That’s when Sebeck noticed Laney Price nearby. Price was also nude, and he sat slumped with his back against the front wall of the vehicle. Price was staring into space with unseeing eyes. He rocked back and forth, muttered silently to himself. Sebeck was horrified to see Price’s body. He expected that it would be overweight and just as hairy as the young man’s face and arms, but instead what he saw along Price’s chest, stomach, and legs was a solid mass of burn scars. Sebeck was horrified.
    “Laney. Laney!”
    One of the soldiers leaned into view. “Tough little fucker, that one.”
    Another soldier chimed in. “Yeah, you’re not going to reach him. He knows how to deal with torture. Don’t you, boy? You’re an old hand.” He smacked Price’s head.
    Sebeck crawled closer to Price. “Laney.” Price’s eyes remained unseeing as his lips moved in a repeating rhythm. The scars all over his body looked old.
    “Curling iron would be my guess.”
    Sebeck turned to face the soldier who said it.
    Another soldier shook his head. “This fucker had some sick parents.”
    Sebeck felt his heart dropping. He remembered Riley’s words to him back at the Laguna reservation:
You never asked about Price’s suffering
. How could he never have realized? It nearly swallowed him with grief. He looked to Price. “Laney. Listen to me, Laney!”
    The vehicle suddenly slowed and lurched into a steep turn.
    The lead non-comm stood up and grabbed an overhead hand-rail. “Let’s finish this and get back in time for chow.” He wrapped a cloth around his nose and mouth, as did the other men.
    The vehicle came to a complete stop and the back wall lowered like a drawbridge. Before he could react Sebeck felt himself grabbed by the feet and dragged roughly across the diamond-plate floor. He felt the pain of a dozen small cuts, and then he was unceremoniously dumped onto the dusty ground. All he could smell was the stench of death—so thick that he tasted it as much as smelled it. He heard the squawking and shrieking of birds.
    Sebeck sat up and surveyed his surroundings. They’d been traveling in some sort of six-wheeled, armored personnel carrier and arrived at a series of tall wood chip piles—probably from brush clearing at the ranch. Nearby was what looked to be a well-worn woodchipper on a trailer, its chute aimed at the smallest pile of wood chips. Just beyond the blower, crows and buzzards fed noisily on carrion already splayed in a long streak of red-brown covered with chunks of gelatinous meat. They bickered over the scraps.
    The whole place reeked of dead flesh. As he glanced around he saw nothing for miles in any direction. It was just flat scrubland.
    Sebeck felt Price thrown against him, and as he sat there next to Price in the dust he leaned in once more to look Price in the eyes. He got up close. “Laney! Laney, it’s me, Pete! Talk to me. Please.”
    There was a flicker of recognition in Price’s eyes, then they focused on Sebeck.
    Sebeck looked around him as a squad of soldiers stared at two others pouring gasoline into the wood chipper’s fuel tank. Another was preparing a video camera with a ghoulish grin on his face.
    Sebeck turned back to Price. “Laney, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that it ended like this.”
    Price’s brow contorted. “It’s not your fault, Sergeant. Sometimes things end badly.”
    “I want to thank you for everything you’ve done for me. I know you didn’t have to be here—and now I’ve gone and failed everyone.”
    Price shook his head slightly. “Your quest wasn’t about
you
, Sergeant. It was about how