MIND CONTROL
CHAPTER TWENTY
Major Lewis peered through the two way mirror at his prisoner, smiling with satisfaction. Over the past three weeks, he had watched as the spirit of the man formerly known as David Michael Starsky was finally broken. All that was left behind was an empty shell of a man who could be bent and manipulated to their will. After the aborted escape attempt, he had ordered Starsky to be put back in total isolation, stripped naked and thrown into a darkened room, where he was kept for almost a week. But first, he had had the brunet beaten almost to death and then tortured relentlessly for hours.
It was a different man that was released from his darkened prison a week later. A man who had lost the will to fight back. A man who was willing to cooperate with his captors to avoid any more unnecessary punishment. The spark of defiance was gone from the sapphire eyes that now looked dull and flat in a battered face devoid of any expression.
Starsky never spoke unless he was spoken to and even then his answers were short, monosyllables. When he wasn't being forced to participate in a conditioning exercise, he would sit for hours staring blankly at the wall. Any emotions he may have had were repressed, shoved deep inside of the broken mind. He had become a man with no past and no future, simply surviving from day to day.
The Major was pleased with his progress. Starsky was still being drugged to help keep him docile and compliant. Maybe soon even that wouldn't be necessary. The commander's goal was to leave for Viet Nam in two months. Starsky's conditioning had to be finished by then. For the last few days, the Major had been evaluating Starsky's skill with various weapons. As Colby had promised, the brunet was an expert marksmen, one of the best the Major had ever seen. Skills learned and honed in the jungles of Viet Nam were evident in the swift, silent attacks on his targets.
The major felt no guilt or responsibility for his role in destroying another man's life. His directives were clear. The success of the mission was his only priority. The military was a harsh mistress demanding total faithfulness and devotion. He had given
his life to her service ever since he was eighteen. Since Starsky had been in the military too, in the Major's mind, the brunet had chosen his own fate. Turning away from the mirror, he strode down the hallway to his office.
His men had disposed of both Missy and Colby's bodies, burying them deep in the desert where they would never be found. His spies in Bay City had informed him that everyone there continued to believe that Detective David Michael Starsky was dead, a victim of a tragic suicide. Everyone that was except for his partner who continued to insist that Starsky would never kill himself. Detective Hutchinson, had survived his gunshot wounds and returned to active duty, only to be suspended indefinitely after an altercation with a superior officer. The Major wasn't overly concerned with the blond half of the duo continuing to question his partner's death. If necessary, the man could meet with another unfortunate accident if he became too much of a liability.
The Major had chosen not to reveal the truth about his partner's recovery to Starsky, instead he let the brunet believe that the big blond had died from his injuries. The Major had even arranged to have a fake newspaper made up announcing the decorated detectives alleged death. For the rebellious brunet, that had been the final breaking point, the point where he gave up and gave in. Now it was a simple matter of some last minute fine tuning on Starsky's conditioning before they left the United States for good.
The plan had come together even better than he had anticipated. It had taken more time than he would have liked to break David Starsky's spirit but he had always known that in the end, he would succeed. The military always succeeded. They had the money, the power and the resources available to make anything happen that they wanted to happen. Even when it came to completely wiping out someone's past and giving them a new identity. For all intents and purposes, the brunet was now known as John Reynolds, a Sergeant in the US Military, assigned to a top secret base located in Saigon.
A/M: My story Tortured Minds picks up where this story ends and tells how Hutch finally finds Starsky in Viet Nam. That story is posted on my web page, Bay City Library and on Fan Fiction net.