Free Operation Thunderhead by Kevin Dockery Page B

prisoner.
    Before dark, Dramesi was given another meal: rice with some dry chopped peanuts scattered on it. There wasn’t another move that night, and the guards settled in to sleep. There were three of them—two men and now a woman—all armed and all sleeping on top of the bed. With Dramesi’s crippled act making it look like he could hardly move, the guards left him untied. But they did move the table out from under the opening in the wall and secured the doors.
    That night, Dramesi took a chance and stood up in full view of his sleeping guard detail. There was no reaction from any of them as they lay sleeping, each person cradling a weapon in his or her arms. The door was locked and there was no way for the prisoner to open it without making a lot of noise.
    There wasn’t going to be a way out, not from this hut. Three guards made it impossible for Dramesi to overcome all of them quietly, even if he got his hands on a weapon. Waiting and watching for an opportunity was the best plan for the moment, so Dramesi went over to the corner the guards had set him in and went back to sleep.
    More rice and peanuts made up a morning meal served by a young woman who was apparently there to watch him while his guards were away. She gave him water when asked, and did not abuse him.
    It was a different situation when the guards came back that evening to continue their journey. Picking Dramesi up on his stretcher, they were moving him to a truck when the villagers closed in. The group attacked the seemingly helpless American with fists and sticks, with the most vicious and dangerous attacks coming from the old women and small children. It didn’t matter who was swinging a stick or throwing a rock—at least not to the person on the receiving end.
    Rolling off the stretcher to try and protect his face and head, Dramesi fell to the ground. Two of the guards rushed forward and picked him up, pulling him along with his arms across their shoulders. Now the guards were also being struck with sticks and stones.
    Threatening the crowd with their weapons, the guards made their way to the truck. Dramesi was put in the back along with some of his guards. They quickly left the village behind as they drove off into the darkness once again.

[CHAPTER 8]
    INTERROGATION
    With the occupants of the vehicle safely in place, the truck left the village and riled mob behind. As far as Dramesi could tell, the vehicle was still moving in a generally eastward direction, which made it easier to ride along rather than make an escape attempt on the road. The guards were relatively relaxed since they thought that their prisoner was barely able to move around on his own—an opinion that Dramesi was careful to maintain by crawling whenever possible.
    The truck stopped well before dawn. In the darkness, Dramesi was pulled from the vehicle and manhandled into a holding cell. The facility appeared to be a prison of some kind. The room he was thrust into was small, the local equivalent of a jail cell, and appeared to have been built fairly hastily from a standard hut.
    There was a board in one corner to act as a bed, but there were no other amenities. It was just a place to hold prisoners until they were moved to a more secure facility. The small room was only about five feet wide and seven long. The main walls of the building were of wood, the outside wall of the cell being one of these. About three feet up from the dirt floor was a window opening with four iron bars set into the sill. A wood shutter closed off the window, blocking the view of the outside area.
    A weak point of the structure was the inside wall of the cell; it was made of bamboo secured with the common twisted bamboo twine. Tough but flexible, the twine was used as a construction material throughout of the tropics of Southeast Asia. In addition to the twine, metal wire was also used to secure the bamboo wall together and down to the floor. The bamboo was ill-fitting with gaps