Embrace The Twilight. Maggie Shayne

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СКАЧАТЬ what happened when he hesitated or disobeyed.

      They pulled him out when he got close enough so they could grip his arms. He was struggling to see. The caves were lit by floodlights, powered by a generator he could hear running somewhere in the distance. Probably near the entrance.

      They slung him into a chair. One held a rifle on him, while the other shoved a newspaper into his hands. He glanced down at it. Jesus, it was in English.

      “You hold this up so the date is showing while we take a photo.”

      He lifted his gaze to meet the speaker’s dark brown eyes. “This says the Americans have left the country. Are you trying to give them a reason to come back and kill you all?”

      “You should shut up and do as you are told, Colonel Stone. We will trade you for our prisoners. This is your only hope of leaving here alive.”

      He shook his head slowly and decided to use this to his advantage. His wounds were infected. He needed to clean them. “They won’t even recognize me like this,” he said, running a hand over his unshaven face. “And if they do, they’ll be so angry at what you’ve done to me that they’ll just renew the bombing.”

      The two men blinked and stared at each other. “He could be right. Do you think we should clean him up first?” one asked in his native tongue.

      “I…let us ask Ahkmed.”

      The two of them turned and left him there, alone, in that section of the caves. Granted, there were no weapons in sight, and he couldn’t try to escape, since there was only one way out of this section, and they had taken it. But still…

      He got to up onto his one good foot and hopped over to the table, where a pitcher of water and a partially eaten loaf of bread were sitting, ignored. Picking up the pitcher, he sniffed it, found the water cleaner than any he’d had in days and drank deeply. He shoved a large piece of the bread into his mouth, chewed, then washed it down with more of the water.

      And then he noticed the knife. It was blunt edged, not meant to cut anything. But he took it all the same, along with the rest of the bread, and he hopped across the room to his box, tossing both deep into the shadows inside.

      He got back to his chair just as the men returned. One of them carried a large basin of water. The other had a stack of clothes in his hands, a razor and a bar of soap on top.

      “Ahkmed says you are to wash up and shave. Then put on these clothes.”

      The basin was set in front of him. “Make good use of the water, Colonel. You’ll get no more.”

      He nodded, glad they’d taken the bait. Without getting up, he peeled off his torn, bloody shirt. He took the bar of soap, which was the ugly brown-yellow hue of homemade stuff, hard as a rock and, he thought, probably strong enough to burn out his eyes. There was a washrag, too, and he made use of it. God, it felt good to wash some of the filth away.

      The men stood back, guns at the ready, watching him. He cleaned the burns and cuts on his chest and arms, even though the soap felt like battery acid when it touched them. Lye soap, it had to be. Jesus.

      “It is your face that needs cleaning, Stone. Get on with it.”

      Nodding, he cleansed all wounds he could reach on his back, fearing he’d missed more than he’d hit, and finally rinsed the cloth in the water and washed his face. Next, he leaned over the water basin, dipping his entire head into it and then scrubbing the soap over his wet hair, dipping it again to rinse. Finally he lifted the razor to his face, but paused when he glimpsed his reflection in the basin of water. The beard was coming in nicely. It would be excellent camouflage if he ever got out of here.

      He set the razor down again. “I would like to keep the beard, if I may.”

      They looked at each other, then at him. “You are an American. You’re not worthy to wear a beard. Take it off.”

      Sighing, he didn’t see the value in arguing the point. He shaved the beard with the dull razor, scraping his face raw in the process.

      “Now put on the clothes,” one of the men ordered.

      He braced his hands on the table to push himself up onto his feet, though he kept his weight on the good one. Then he balanced there as he managed to get his pants undone and off. The shorts went, too. He didn’t have a single qualm about baring himself, because it meant being relatively clean for the first time in a month. He snatched up the soapy washrag and washed his lower body before they had time to object.

      The water was filthy by now, and littered with whiskers floating in the soapscum. It was still valuable to him.

      “The clothes, Colonel Stone!”

      “Yeah, yeah.” He managed to pick up the basin of dirty water and set it on the floor near his chair, as if he were moving it to make room for the clothes.

      One of the men set the stack of clothes in the now-empty spot, in between splashes of water. Will cringed when he realized the clothes placed before him were the uniform of an American soldier. Regular Army, by the looks. Not green, but desert camo.

      He pulled on the pants. No shorts had been provided. “Where did you get this?”

      “Shut up and put it on.”

      Will shut up and put it on. But first he sat down in the chair, bent to quickly roll up the pant leg and lowered his wounded foot into the basin of water. There was enough of the lye soap floating in it to disinfect the open sores, and the water was ice-cold, so it couldn’t hurt the swelling. As he sat, surreptitiously soaking his foot under the table, he pulled on the tank-style undershirt and the long-sleeved sand-colored outer shirt. He buttoned it up slowly, stalling for time, looking at the chest for any sign of the uniform’s origins. All the patches and insignia had been torn away, leaving darker spots where they had been.

      “I guess I’m ready.” He pushed his hand through his wet hair, finger-combing it.

      The two nodded, brought the newspaper to him.

      He held it in his hands obediently as they took his photo with a Polaroid One-Step camera that seemed completely out of place here.

      Then they examined the resulting photo while it developed, finally nodding in approval. One left the room, presumably to show the photo to Ahkmed, The Brainless One, while the other stayed to watch him. So far neither had noticed his aching foot, soaking in the water under the table, or, if they had, they didn’t care.

      Will’s left foot throbbed constantly. It was an interesting mix of colors-purple, black and blue. A little green here and there around the edges of the purple. It was swollen to twice its size and shaped rather oddly.

      One of their methods of questioning him had been to place the foot in a vise and tighten it each time they repeated the question.

      It hadn’t worked. He didn’t take much credit for courage in the face of torture. Frankly, part of his motivation in keeping silent had been knowing he would be shot in the head the minute he gave them the information they wanted so badly. Part of it had been the knowledge that other men, some good friends of his among them, would die if he talked. But the rest had come from anger. They’d pissed him off. He would be damned before he helped their cause.

      “Ahkmed says the photo СКАЧАТЬ