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32
Rims and Mud-Eyes took David’s gun. Rims stomped his com button to pieces on the sidewalk. While Rims covered with a gun, Mud-Eyes cuffed David’s hands behind him. David closed his eyes in pain, as the cold steel closed on his wrists, and at the violation of his dignity. The two pushed David into the back of an MP car and jumped in on either side of him. A shaven-head driver sped them with lights and sirens along the highway toward the Atlantic Hotel. City lights glowered in the fog along the Potomac.
The car roared on squealing tires into the bowels of the parking garage. They shoved him into a service elevator car that smelled of army blankets and machine grease, then rode to the 35th floor of Tower 3.
Colonel Bronf was a cold, ruthless inquisitor. “Captain, let me make something clear to you. There are two reasons why I don’t totally step on you right now for refusing to talk. One, we lose whatever information you have about the conspiracy against us.”
David laughed. “You see the legitimate United States government as a conspiracy against you?”
“Spare me your senseless humor. Two, because we are collecting bargaining chips here. Delegates are primo, of course. Bunch of little shits like you might serve as pawns if we need to do a prisoner exchange.”
“Unbelievable,” David said. “Listen, you guys can still quit this before it—” A huge hand slapped him across the temple from behind, and he blanked out. He was dimly conscious of being led and manhandled down a series of corridors, into a big room with a wooden floor, smelling of old socks.
Rims and Mud-Eyes were gone. A pair of young shaven-heads with fanatical eyes and inhuman strength were in charge. They handcuffed him to a steel railing that ran the length of the wall under a row of windows overlooking Washington. A plastic bottle of water and a box filled with cheez-drip cracker snacks were left nearby. They seemed to want to be kind. A young man asked very earnestly: “Are you liberals ready to repent and change your ways?”
Liberals? David felt puzzled. What?
“Any time you want to repent and join us, you can do that,” another said. “They might even let you be an officer with us.”
After the two boys left, David turned to the other man chained about twenty feet away. “Colonel Bellamy!”
. “Oh, Gordon! They got you too. They got you after all. But you’re alive.”
“I tried, Sir.” He told Bellamy all that had happened. “You were right, Sir.”
Bellamy nodded. “I wish I’d been wrong. Oh yes, there are big names in this. It’s a small group, but they have billions of dollars, and influence everywhere. Some of the top people in industry, government, you name it.”
David felt sick at heart. He thought of Tory, and hoped she was okay.
“They’ve got Mattoon in a room here on the same floor,” Bellamy said. “By now I think he is ready to renounce CON2 and reverse his position, but not for reasons these dickheads want. Ironic, isn’t it? After all we went through to convince him? Now it’s too late.”
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