Pines

to dry.
    His clothes were sopping wet.
    He took off the hoodie, the T-shirt, the jeans, even his briefs. Spent ten minutes sitting naked in the alcove, twisting water out of the clothes until they were only damp.
    He draped the hoodie over his chest, the long-sleeved T over his legs, and folded the jeans into a pillow. Lying against the back wall of the cave, he turned over onto his side and shut his eyes.
    Never in his life had he been so cold.
    At first, he feared it would keep him from sleep, his body shivering so violently in a failing effort to warm itself that he had to grasp the sleeves of the hoodie so he didn’t shake it off.
    But as cold as he was, he was even more exhausted.
    Within five minutes, sleep won out.

CHAPTER 13
    Ethan’s right ankle is shackled and chained to an eyebolt in the floor.
    He sits at a ramshackle desk that holds three objects...
    A blank sheet of A4 paper.
    A black ballpoint pen.
    And an hourglass whose black grains of sand are cascading from one bulb into another.
    Aashif has advised Ethan that when the sand runs out, he will return, and if at that time what Ethan has written on the paper doesn’t delight him, Ethan will die by lingchi.
    But Ethan knows that even if he had specific, high-clearance knowledge of a major upcoming offensive, wrote down dates, locations, targets, details of the anticipated ground strike and air support, it wouldn’t be enough.
    Nothing will ever be enough, because no matter what he writes, he will die and die horribly.
    All he knows of Aashif is his voice and those brown, evil eyes in which he senses not a desire to learn information but to inflict pain.
    The guise of interrogation is merely foreplay.
    Something to get Aashif hard and wet.
    He is a sadist. Probably al-Qaida.
    Somehow, Ethan didn’t allow that full realization to set in as he hung by his wrists in the torture room, but sitting here alone at the desk in the quiet, it hits him full force.
    No matter what he writes, in a little under an hour, his life will become infinitely worse.
    There is a single window in the room, but it has been boarded over with two-by-sixes.
    Through tiny cracks between the panels of wood, brilliant strings of Iraqi sunlight tear through.
    The heat is scalding, sweat streaming out of every pore.
    The hyperrealness of the moment becomes unbearable, Ethan overwhelmed with sensory input.
    —A dog barking outside.
    —The distant laughter of children.
    —Miles away, the eerie, cicada-like clicking of a gunfight.
    —A fly buzzing at his left ear.
    —The scent of Masgouf roasting nearby.
    —Somewhere in the bowels of this compound, a man screaming.
    No one knows I’m here. At least no one who can help me.
    His thoughts veer toward Theresa—pregnant back home—but the onslaught of emotion and homesickness is more than he can bear in light of what lies ahead. The temptation to replay their last conversation—a VoIP call at the MWR—is powerful, but it would break him.
    Cannot go there. Not yet. In my final moments maybe.
    Ethan lifts the pen.
    Just need something to occupy my mind. Cannot sit here and dwell on what’s coming.
    Because that’s what he wants.
    That’s all this is about.
    * * *
    Shot out of dreams of the war.
    For a full minute, he had no idea where he was, simultaneously shivering and burning with fever.
    Ethan sat up, reaching out in the darkness around him, and as his fingers grazed the rocky walls of the alcove, hisinternal GPS updated and the horror that had become his life came rushing back.
    He’d thrown his clothes off in his sleep, and they lay scattered on the stone beside him, cold and damp. He spread them out so they’d have a better chance at drying, and then scooted forward until he perched on the edge of the alcove.
    The rain had stopped.
    The night sky hemorrhaging starlight.
    He’d never had the slightest interest in astronomy, but he found himself searching for familiar constellations, wondering if the stars he saw shone from their proper stations.
    Is this the night sky I’ve always seen?
    Fifty feet below him, the river sang.
    He stared downslope toward the water, and when he saw it, his blood froze.
    Ethan’s first inclination was to scramble back into the recess, but he fought against the urge, fearing any sudden movement would draw attention.
    Son of a bitch, they followed me.
    Crossed the river after all.
    They were down in those giant pines by the river and so well hidden in shadow that he couldn’t gauge their