Every Thought Captive
AN: According to one of my sources, JP-4 was the type of fuel used in Hueys (UH-1H Iroquois helicopters) during the Vietnam War.
Disclaimer: I do not own The A Team movie or television series or any of the delightful characters found on The A Team.
Chapter 14 Descent Into Fear
From the bored expression on the lab assistant's face, Murdock figured he knew very little about what went on in a remote viewing session.
Prob'ly don' care 's long 's he's got a steady income 'n' chance o' promotion someday.
He had to thank the man for being gentle in cleaning and bandaging the two chest wounds and his wrists and ankles.
Jackson wouldn'ta cared. All he wants's a trick pony for the brass.
At least that was all he thought Jackson wanted.
Or is Jackson 'fraid o' what I know 'n' how I can use it 'gainst 'im? Been a while since I tried t' read what someone was thinkin' but I guess I better keep tryin' t' read Jackson.
The last thing the lab assistant did before rolling the gurney out of the door was to slip him into a pair of black trousers reminiscent of those he wore in the POW camp and stick a pair of black rubber sandals on his feet.
Murdock fought the memories of the last time he wore such an outfit.
Happy Valley. The prison camp. Oh God, please, not the prison camp.
As they neared the door to the laboratory, the pilot sensed Jackson waiting somewhere inside. His kind of malice made the atmosphere of the Extended Remote Viewing room weigh thick with evil intention.
The assistant loosed him from the gurney and directed him toward what Murdock recognized from his past training as a remote viewing chair.
He could not resist a hateful glare toward the monitoring room. The General who had ignored his loud protests scrutinized Murdock as he took his seat. If he had the opportunity, he would give the smug Colonel Jackson a beating he would not soon forget. It would probably land him in an asylum for mentally insane violent criminals . . .
. . . but it'd be worth ev'ry blow I got in.
He heard Jackson's response in his own mind: We'll see about that, Captain Murdock.
Murdock had momentarily forgotten that Jackson was better than he at this psychic stuff.
Gotta be more careful 'round him.
He heard the Colonel give the lab technician the orders to hook him up to the machines which would monitor his vital signs during the session.
Referrin' t' me as a number 'n' not a name, not a person. Some bit o' humor Jackson has, givin' me the number 47. Last two digits o' my birth year.
The feeling of the electrodes on his scalp made him grimace. In his mind, electrodes were associated with electroshock therapy. Always would be. The rest of the monitoring equipment didn't affect him near as much as the EEG patches.
In the camp, those wires meant an excruciatingly painful jolt in some part of the body followed by either prickly tingling, tremors or numbing.
The CIA had utilized the same interrogation method in the days of the Phoenix program. Those in charge of questioning suspected sympathizers jokingly called it "the Bell telephone hour" because of the hand-cranked electric generator that delivered the electrical charge to the victim.
Murdock winced. If they only knew how that type of torture felt, he wondered if they would have so willingly and sometimes gleefully used it as often as they did.
It wasn't much different at the VA hospital, except they always first gave a mild sedative. They always attached the electrodes to the scalp and never to his . . .
. . . no! If I think that, Jackson'll use it 'gainst me.
He was too busy suppressing the image of the electroshock torture he endured in the camp that he didn't notice the assistant slide headphones over his ears. The drum and guitar strummed introduction opened up to Barry McGuire singing his popular anti-war protest song.
The eastern world,
It is explodin'.
Violence flarin',
Bullets loadin'.
You're old enough to kill,
But not for votin'.
You don't believe in war,
But what's that gun you're totin'?
And even the Jordan River's
Got bodies floatin',
But ya tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend,
Ah, you don't believe
We're on the eve of destruction . . .
Oh, he remembered that one alright. He first heard it in late 1965 just before he trained to be a chopper pilot and was sent overseas.
'N' Jackson picked it on purpose t' force me t' think 'bout Nam. I'm not s'posed t' know what my target is 'fore I do the session. He's showin' me who's boss.
He closed his eyes and hoped his clenched teeth were not noticeable from the monitoring booth. The lyrics hurt. They squeezed the part of his mind that remembered things when he slept that he blocked from his thoughts when he was awake, or at least most of the time when he was awake.
Ugly memories had a way of sneaking up on you and knifing you when you least expected it.
Gracie Slick was singing about white rabbits now. His recurring dream about an ensnared screaming white rabbit in the jungle bit into his soul. Sometimes he dreamed he was the trapped animal.
When he opened his eyes he noted that the Colonel had taken the opportunity to dim the lights. Darkened rooms were even worse than the songs he remembered from Nam that Jackson was piping through the headphones.
A room filled with shadows reminded him of the interrogation hut where he was sometimes left for hours in the ropes. Other times he was staked out spreadeagled and naked on the dirt floor, a guard at each of the four corners of the room. You never knew which one was going to rush forward and bring the rubber fan belt whip down upon your broken and bruised skin. They counted on that. After a half hour or more, they became like flitting shadows that caused a moment of pain, then scurried back out of sight.
And then Jackson asked if he was ready in that soft voice of his. It was meant to con the General into believing all of this was just a training session. Cold, impersonal, impartial.
But Murdock knew what the Colonel was up to. He knew.
Nothin' I can do but go 'long for the ride.
He swallowed and nodded, placing his right arm on the table as directed. He knew the procedure. Pen in hand, he began the slow and rhythmic breathing that would relax him into the brain wave pattern essential for remote viewing.
Las' time I used this, I was separated from the guys in a warehouse that was 'bout t' be torn down 'round us. Got all o' us outta there safe by 'seeing' where they were 'n' where we needed t' go. But Jackson don' need t' know I've been usin' what I learned.
And now the Colonel was transferring the coordinates to him and telling him to write them down. He immediately recognized them.
Happy Valley. 'Proximately where I ditched the bird. Where the VC captured us.
He couldn't refuse at this point to go there. His phantom body rose up from the chair and floated in separation from his physical body for a few brief seconds. Then he was in the ether, falling through the tunnel of bright light and snapshot images toward his destination.
Seconds passed after he wrote the numbers down. Suddenly, Murdock's features pinched with anxiety. The pilot scribbled a jagged horizontal zig-zag line across the paper.
"Flat with lotsa tiny peaks. Fluid. Movin' back 'n' forth." He wrote what he said on the right side of the paper after the letter 'A' and then the words 'fear' and 'danger.'
"What are you seeing, 47?"
"Grass," the pilot muttered. "Tall grass. 'Bove my head. Can' see nothin' but grass in front o' me. It's rustlin' b'hind me."
He wrote a 'B' under the 'A' and the words 'grass, tall, sharp' and 'knife.'
"What else?"
"Air's hot, sticky. A little breeze."
"Use your senses. Tell me what you hear and smell."
"I smell JP-4 . . . 'n' smoke . . . there's so much 'round me I can hardly see . . . "
Murdock coughed. Tears formed at the corners of his eyes. "Gettin' a li'l hard t' breathe."
"Do you see flames?"
"No . . . no flames."
"Any other sounds?"
"Voices. Someone's cryin'. Someone's groanin'. I hear 'em yell 'medic.'"
"Slowly rotate in your position. Do you see anything else?"
"The grass's been bent down 'head o' me. I see someone movin' 'way from me. Grass fills in b'hind 'em."
"Man or woman?"
"Man."
"Do you see him now?"
"No. He's gone. The grass's hidin' 'im from me. Havin' a real hard time breathin' now. Smoke's gettin' pretty thick."
"Rise up from there until you can look down. About fifty feet."
Seconds later Murdock took in several gulps of air. "I'm 'bove the grass now. Easier t' breathe."
"Now sketch what you see."
The assistant whisked away the top page to reveal a clean sheet. The pilot hesitated for a moment.
He sketched seven stick figures in a vertical row. On either side of the line of figures, he scribbled lines half the size of each stick figure curving away from the figures.
"What did you draw, 47?"
"I see a line o' men movin' through the grass. They're carryin' guns, rifles."
"Anything else?"
Murdock paused. At the bottom of the paper, he drew an oval with two long thin rectangles jutting out from near one end of it. He sketched two more stick figures beside the oval. He wrote the word 'blood.'
"They're leavin' two guys b'hind, layin' on the ground."
"I want you to focus on the two men lying on the ground. Can you see them?"
Murdock's breaths became more rapid. "They ain' movin'. One o' them's got blood all over 'is head. Other one's bleedin' from 'is chest. Lotta blood."
"Do you see anything else around them?"
The pilot's voice wavered. "It's a metal 'n' glass thing. Bigger 'n me. Smoke's comin' outta it. One o' its pieces is sheared off, layin' in the grass."
"I want you to examine it. Tell me what you see."
"Broken glass. Metal's olive green. Wait. There's three pieces to it layin' in different places."
He wrote the words 'fan,' 'rotate,' 'broken' and 'crash.'
"Go toward it and down closer so you can see it better."
"There's somethin' dark, somethin' evil, movin' t'ward me. It scares me."
"Ignore it. Move away from it and toward the object."
"I see a big open door in its side. There's a smaller door hangin' open."
"I want you to go to the door that's hanging open. Look inside."
"I . . . can't."
"Don't be afraid of it. Go to the door and look inside."
Murdock felt himself drift toward the door. He was a phantom on the scene with no arms or legs to propel him and yet he could move wherever he needed to be by thinking about it.
"Okay. I'm at the door."
"What do you see?"
The assistant exposed a new unmarked sheet of paper. Seconds later Murdock wrote the words 'glass,' 'dead,' and 'crash.' He drew a picture of two 'L' shapes side by side with a curved line like half of a bubble almost encircling them.
"Two chairs. Levers, buttons, lots o' broken glass. Blood. Smoke."
"What's your overall feeling of the target?"
Murdock felt a lump in his throat. "Death 'n' fear."
"Alright. You can come on back now."
Returning through the bright light tunnel, he felt sweat bead on his forehead, chest and arms. It seemed like every muscle in his body was twitching and he couldn't will them to be still.
As he emerged from the tunnel and rejoined his physical body, his heart thundered in his chest. A deep intense pain in the center of his forehead above his eyebrows made him take in a sharp breath. He tried to look toward the monitoring room but couldn't get his eyes to track. His whole body felt like something had sucked all of the energy from it.
Forgot what one o' these longer sessions does t' me. 'N' this's jus' the beginnin'.
Other after-effects would come. The worst would be the hallucinations, the sharply focused random pictures that would pop into his mind at any time for no reason. He would lose his ability to concentrate for longer periods of time.
Hope I'm not flyin' when all that happens. Hope no one's flyin' with me either.
"Mister Rollag, you can take 47 to the dowsing room to write up his summary of the remote viewing session. After he is finished, you may take him to room 14 to rest before his next session."
The assistant already had removed many of the patches and other monitoring devices from Murdock's body.
Next session? Ain' s'posed t' do more 'n one o' these a day. Takes too much outta ya.
As the lab assistant helped Murdock into a wheelchair, he overheard the Colonel add, "I assure you, General. We will have number 47 ready for the project by the end of the week."
He felt rather than saw Jackson's gaze on him as Rollag wheeled him from the room. The Colonel sent one last telepathic message to Murdock's mind.
I'll see you soon, Captain. Just remember. I pick the remote targets. You won't want to be where I send you if you don't cooperate fully.