Page 104 of Trapped

“What the hell are you talking about?” the colonel demanded.

“You wanted Jamal Al Feisal to give you the money from the opium trade, but another warlord was way ahead of you.”

Luntz goggled at him. “How do you know about that?”

“I remembered. That was the thing I didn’t tell you.” He giggled like a maniac about to crack in two. “That’s what you really wanted—wasn’t it? The money.”

“You couldn’t have remembered. That was part of the conditioning for the mission. Your memory was supposed to be wiped the moment you finished. That’s why we had to dig it out of you.”

Cash stared at him, then swore. “You screwed with our minds before we left for Afghanistan?”

“Yes,” Luntz hissed.

As he stood there—vulnerable and exposed—Cash scrambled to assimilate this new information. Sophia had suggested a perfectly reasonable explanation for what had happened to him. She’d thought he couldn’t deal with what had really happened. But there had been no way for her to know what Luntz had actually done to him and the other men.

“I didn’t finish the mission,” he croaked, giving a reason for why his memory had suddenly come back.

“Who else did you tell about this?”

Cash stared at him. The man had already implicated himself in something illegal. But Cash wanted enough on tape so that the Defense Department would have the information they’d hired Decorah Security to obtain.

He was planning what he was going to say next when a sound stopped him dead. From inside one of the Land Rovers, he heard musical notes. An Afghan dance tune, like they might play at a village celebration.

“No,” he shouted, clapping his hands over his ears.

Dr. Montgomery stepped through the back door, holding a metal box. He closed the car door behind him and thrust the box toward Cash. It must have some kind of recording device inside, because when the doctor turned a dial, the music grew louder, faster.

“No,” Cash screamed, going down on his knees.

Luntz turned to the other man. “You said it would disable him. But it’s hard to believe it works. How could music do that?”

“Part of the treatment.” Montgomery laughed. “A nice little method for controlling him. I implanted the trigger when I gave him the false memories of the assignment in Thailand. Whenever he heard the music, he’d go incoherent.”

“But he remembers Afghanistan.”

Luntz came forward and took the gun from Cash’s hand, tucking it into his own belt. Cash looked up at him with watery eyes. He tried to crawl away, tried to get away from the tune.

But Luntz stepped in front of him, blocking his escape. “Too bad I didn’t have that music box when he came to my house. This charade would all be over by now. We’d have the money. The treasure. All of it. We could already have gotten rid of you.”

Still down on his knees, Cash fought for coherence. “You killed those men,” he shouted. “The other men on the patrol with me. You killed them.”

Luntz waved his hand. “Collateral damage. That wasn’t how I planned it. You were supposed to come back, then forget about what had happened—and Dr. Montgomery would give you false memories. I had no way of knowing another warlord was going after Al Feisal.” He came down beside Cash. “I’d like to kill you now. But not until you tell me where you hid the damn loot.”

Cash struggled to make his mind work—with the jangly tune threatening to blot out coherent thought.

“We’ll get the information out of you, then we’ll put you out of your misery. Where is the money and the treasure?” Luntz demanded.

“Screw you.”

Montgomery brought the music box closer to Cash’s head, and he screamed in pain.

The doctor’s leering face loomed over his. “Are you trying to pull something on us?”

Fighting for control of his tongue, Cash managed to get out one syllable, “No.”

And then above them, the treetops exploded in a series of concussions that blotted out the sound of the music.

The men in blue uniforms were instantly on the alert, raising their guns, pointing toward the threat in the trees. But they didn’t know that the concussions were no more than fireworks.

---