The bag was taken off his head, and John looked around the house in which he now sat. It was plain that this was a base of some sort. He winced as he turned his head to the right and the wound on the left side of his head throbbed. He saw other men from his unit—five of them in total—and then suddenly remembered why they were there.
They'd been taken hostage by a small terrorist cell. Everything was going as normal that day, before the ambush in which they'd all been knocked out and taken away. Now they'd been bound and gagged. Carlton, the youngest of them, was shaking uncontrollably. He was in shock. They probably all were, but John hadn't noticed yet.
The room smelled of harsh chemicals. The lights were somewhat dim, barely brighter than firelight, but then lighting for a camera set up switched on. Oh, God, thought John in terror. We've seen their faces. We're going to die.
The men with the rifles spoke into the camera in a language John didn't understand. He didn't need to understand to realize that this was their ransom call. If the army didn't do what they wanted, they were going to be killed, probably brutally. The lights and the camera switched off again, and then, just for sadistic pleasure, the leader of the captors hit each of them in the face. Not enough to knock them out, but enough to hurt badly.
They all had different ways of dealing with the stress. Rydale was defiant even on his knees—a strong soldier, quiet but determined. Minx just sort of stared into the ether, shock rendering his green eyes vacant. Stevenson's eyes were darting all around them, looking for escape like a trapped animal. Carlton was crying softly now, and John knew he was scared he'd never see his child. John was in a state of frozen panic.
An eternity passed before the lights were switched on again. The man spoke in that language again, and John saw the pistol in his hand. Their demands hadn't been met. One of the soldiers was going to die. The panic in each of them reached a fever pitch as, one by one, the man paced back and forth. He held the pistol to each of their heads and pulled the trigger—Russian roulette. No one knew which of them would die.
It was Stevenson. The violence of sound associated with a gunshot at close range, the smell of the powder, the sight of the muzzle flash, and the warmth of the blood which was now splattered all over John who'd been immediately next to the poor soldier all seemed hyper-strong in John's adrenaline-fuelled state. John's panic was starting to break through and he found himself shaking and suddenly becoming extremely religious.
This treatment continued until only Minx and John were left alive. John knew that he was probably about to die. The military had a no-negotiation policy with terrorists. If, in the calm of base or home, you had asked John, he would have said that it was better this way. Better that he died than the scum get what they want. But here, he just begged God to let him live.
And then the lights switched on again. This was it. One of them would die. He selfishly wanted Minx to get the bullet, and hated himself with a passion for it. They watched the man load the gun that would take one of their lives. He put the barrel within inches of Minx's head and pulled the trigger. There was no gunshot. A choked sound of terror rattled in John's throat. This was it. He was going to die all because the government hadn't thought he was important. The cold of the muzzle grazed his temple.
Bang.
John was still alive. It was the sound of a gunshot from a friendly rifle as the British Army swarmed in and took charge, gunning down the terrorists and freeing the two surviving men. John couldn't stand on his own because of the shock. He had to be assisted, just as the bodies of his friends had to be assisted. He was brought back to base where he spent a week in recovery, but managed to pull himself together in time to save lives he would not have been able to save had he been in the field. That didn't stop the experience from haunting his nightmares. Nothing would.