The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,172

docks, and it bit into his wrists, his ankles. Small insects hovered around the fretwork of small cuts and abrasions that covered his exposed flesh. His T-shirt and underpants - that was all he had been left with - were encrusted with dirt from the tunnels.

A large-boned man with eyes that looked small beneath his steel-framed glasses approached him.

"Where ... others?" Janson's mouth was cottony.

"Members of your death squad? Dead. Only you safe."

"You're Viet Cong?"

"That is not correct term. We represent Central Committee of the National Liberation Front."

"National Liberation Front," Janson repeated, his cracked lips forming words only with difficulty.

"Why you not wear dog tags?"

Janson shrugged, prompting an immediate whack with a bamboo stick across the back of his neck. "Must've got lost."

Two guards stood to either side of the scowling interrogator. They each carried AK-47s and a link-belt of rounds around their waists; a Makarev 9.5mm pistol hung just below the ammo belt. One of them had clipped to his belt a U.S. Navy SEALs combat knife, the six-inch blade gleaming. Janson recognized the scars on its Tenite handle; it was his.

"You lie!" the interrogator said. His eyes darted toward the man standing behind Janson - Janson could not see him, but he could smell him, could feel his body heat even through the heat of the moist jungle air - and a crushing blow struck Janson's side. The barrel of a rifle, he guessed. A bolt of agony shot through his side.

He had to concentrate - not on his interrogator but on something else. Through the bamboo struts of the hut, he could see large flat leaves dripping with water. He was a leaf; whatever fell upon him would drip off like beads of water.

"We hear about your special soldiers who do not wear tags."

"Special? I wish." Janson shook his head. "No. I lost it. Snagged on a thornbush while I was bellying through your trails."

The interrogator looked annoyed. He moved his chair closer to Janson and leaned forward. He tapped Janson on his left forearm, and then his right. "You can choose," he said. "Which one?"

"Which one what?" Janson asked dazedly.

"Not to decide," the rawboned man said somberly, "is to decide." He glanced up at the man behind Janson and said something in Vietnamese. "We break your right arm," he told Janson, explaining almost tenderly.

The blow arrived with sledgehammer force: a barrel unscrewed from a machine gun deployed as a weapon itself. His wrist and elbow were supported by the bamboo of his chair; the bone of his forearm extended between those two points. It gave way like a dry branch. The bone had split from the blow: he knew it from a soft crunching noise that he felt rather than heard - and from the horrendous pain that surged up his arm, taking his breath away.

He wriggled his fingers, to see whether they would still obey him; they did. Bone but not nerve had been severed. Yet his arm was largely useless now.

The noise of metal sliding against metal alerted him to what was to happen next: a two-inch-thick bar was inserted through the heavy irons around his ankles. Next, the unseen torturer tied a rope around the bar, looped it over Janson's shoulders, and pulled his head down between his knees, even while his arms remained bound to the arms of the chair. The torque on his shoulder was a growing agony, vying with the pulsating pain of his broken forearm.

He waited for the next question. But minutes elapsed, and there was only silence. The gloom turned into darkness. Breathing became even more difficult, as his diaphragm strained against his folded body, and his shoulders felt as if they were in a vise that narrowed and narrowed without end. Janson passed out, and regained consciousness, but it was consciousness only of pain. It was light outside - had morning come? Afternoon? Yet he was alone. He was only half-conscious when his bonds were loosened and bamboo gruel was poured into his mouth. His underpants had been cut off him now, and a rusty metal bucket was placed on the ground beneath the stool. Then the loop was tightened again, the loop that bound his shoulders to the ankle irons, that forced his head between his knees, that threatened to tear his arms from his shoulders. He repeated a mantra to himself: Clear like water, cool like ice. As his shoulders burned, he thought about the summer weeks he had spent ice fishing in Alaska as