He ducked into the thick jungle that kept threatening to swallow up the prison camp and served as a natural barrier against escape for all the prisoners. David Hudson lunged forward. He tripped ahead, anyway.

He had no choice now.

Nowhere else to go but into the terrifying jungle.

Death in the jungle.

He was breathless, crashing clumsily against trees and through thick, tangled jungle brush. He kept running, faster than he thought possible. Dizziness grabbed and clawed at him. Whirling bright, then rolling colors came. Shivering cold flashes. Diarrhea. Vomit that wouldn't stop flowing. He kept running, zigzagging forward. As the jungle foliage got thicker, the trail became darker-almost complete blackness less than three hundred yards from the Vietnamese camp.

He ran forward, anyway. A half mile, a mile-he had no idea of time or space now.

A cold, paralyzing thought struck him. They weren't even chasing him… They weren't even giving chase.

Hudson continued running-falling and picking himself up.

Then it was so dark that it seemed as if there were suddenly nothing left in the world. Hudson kept running all the same. Falling, picking himself up. Falling, picking up. Falling, falling, falling…

A song from the Doors played in his head: “Horse Latitudes”… Then nothing at all…

Hudson woke with a nightmarish jolt. A scream never quite made it out of his tight, dry larynx.

Long grass was stuck to one side of his face. Sticky, gummy tears had formed in his half-closed eyes. Fat black flies had attached themselves to his lips and nostrils. Hundreds of black flies were plastered all over his body.

Trying to right himself, he nearly laughed. It was exactly as he'd always believed this putrid affair called life to be: resolutely unfair, pointless in the end, and in the beginning, and in the middle, too. Anyone with any reason could see the absurd eternal pattern. David Hudson fell away into the unrelenting darkness once again. “Horse Latitudes” played again. Why that fucking song now?

Strangely for him, the incessant fighting, the mind-numbing combat, the suffering and death in Vietnam, had worked for a time against the bitter truth of his life. It had distracted him from his natural cynicism, the overwhelming pessimism. his natural self-destructiveness.

Just before his capture, he'd been secretly dreading going back to the States, trying mentally to fit himself into civilian life somehow, even into the droning subexistence of the peacetime army… He knew a lot of others who felt as he did. A lot of his men felt that way…

He woke again. Wildly confused. Unnaturally alert. He had to concentrate everything, every trace of energy he had now. He wrestled with himself to stay awake, to hold on to a thin, sane lifeline. Tormenting waves, disconnected images and thoughts, kept coming. Ghosts just beyond his full comprehension. Raging rivers of shadowy, half-formed images, words, hellish fantasy shapes. Almost a psychedelic experience. As if he'd been smoking the strongest Thai sticks. Shooting scag… There was no sense of real time or spatial relationships out here. He was on sensory deprivation overload. He had this shifting, disturbing sense of place.

He began to gag. His entire body squeezed and relaxed, squeezed and painfully released.

This was so horrible, too horrible, too much for anyone to take much longer. What did it feel like when you cracked wide open?… The severe gagging stopped as soon as he put it out of his mind.

David Hudson began to scream. He was swimming toward some kind of release. Eternity was rushing forward-leaping at him in the form of a sea of leeches; screeching, clawing monkeys; indistinct, shadowy jungle insects; and reptiles. He screamed for hours and hours. The hallucinations were so powerful and real, they became his only reality.

They were there! The prison guards! On him! Everywhere!

They'd finally come to take him back. Busy hands were scrabbling, poking, reaching all over his body… Hot hands were probing, poking him continually. Blood roared in the funnels of Hudson 's ears. The vicious leeches were crawling all over him, too. Sharp little leech strings. Strong hands were suddenly lifting him.

Then whispering, almost choral voices. There were no distinct, recognizable words.

“Leave me alone! Leave me alone!” David Hudson was pinioned down and helpless. “Please leave me alone!”

Something very large and black, a huge flapping bird grabbed on to his face. It smelled like burning rubber, but worse than that, it began to crawl all over his face.

“Get it off me! Get it off me! Please get it off me!”

Then a shaft of light-gleaming, beautiful light shone in his deep dark tunnel of terror.

A scream came that seemed very far away… It was his.

Impossible.

Army corpsmen were staring down.

Ours.

Our corpsmen!

“Breathe deeply, Captain Hudson. Just breathe now. Just breathe. Breathe. There, that's good. That's very good… That's excellent, Captain Hudson.

“It's pure oxygen, Captain. Oxygen! Breathe. Breathe. Breathe deeply.”

White cloth straps were holding him tightly, painfully so. Blue and red plastic tubes ran in and out of his nose. More tubes were connected to his arms and legs. Colored wires and rubber plugs were attached to his chest and from there to an icy blue machine.

“Captain Hudson. Captain Hudson, can you hear me? Can you understand me? You're in the Womack Hospital at Fort Bragg, Captain. You're going to be all right. Captain, can you understand me? You're in the Womack Hospital.”

“Oh, please help me.”

He was sobbing uncontrollably for the first time since he'd been a little boy. What was happening? Oh, please, what was this? What was real and what wasn't?

“Captain, you're in the Fort Bragg Center. You're in the JFK Special Warfare Center… Captain Hudson?… Captain?… Just breathe the oxygen! Captain, that's an order Breathe in… breathe out… that's very good. Very, very good. That's excellent, Captain.”

Lying on his back, staring silently up at vague forms and swimming shapes, David Hudson thought that maybe he knew this man.

Familiar voice? Familiar drooping walrus mustache. Did he know him? Was the man actually there? Hudson reached out to touch, but the cloth straps restrained him.

“Captain Hudson, you're in Fort Bragg. This was a stress and tolerance test. Do you remember now?

“Captain Hudson, this has been a drug-induced test. You haven't left this hospital room. You were flashing back to Vietnam.”

None of this happened?

No-there had been a Vietcong prison camp! Hallucinations?

There had been a Lizard Man!

Oh, please, make this all stop now.

“Captain Hudson, you revealed nothing about your mission. You passed your tolerance test. Flying colors, pal. You were really great. Congratulations.”

Mission?

Test?

Sure thing. Just a little pop quiz. Okay.

“You're beginning to understand illusion, Captain. You refused to be interrogated under drugs… You're learning to be illusion's master. You're learning the fine art of deception, Captain Hudson. The art of our deadliest enemies…”

“Horse Latitudes” was playing somewhere in the hospital… in the Special Forces Center. Deception.

“Breathe that good air, Captain Hudson. Just breathe in easily. Pure, pure oxygen. You passed, Captain. You're the best so far. You're the best we've tested.”

Stress and tolerance tests.

The Womack Hospital at Fort Bragg.

Deception.

He was learning to be illusion's master.

Deception.

You passed, Captain Hudson. Flying colors, pal.

Of course-I'm the best you have!

I've always been the best-at everything.

That's why I'm here, isn't it?

That's why I was chosen for this training.