La Légion Étrangere Fragment taken from: The Storyteller, Volume IV I woke up in the back of the car—lying down on the seat—flat on my back. I had a terrible headache; I could have sworn my nose was broken. I tried to move and realized my hands had been bound behind my back with tape again; my ankles were also taped and so was my mouth. “Stay put,” I heard Jean’s voice, coming from the front seat. “We are arriving at the camp; if you speak English you will be in trouble. Do as they tell you and don’t talk back or there will be more beatings, you hear me? I’ll bring you dinner tonight and tell you more about your mission….” Oh God, I don’t recall ever being beaten up this badly.

I believe you are still out there.

“Hey,” I heard Nikola alerting Jean. “Otzuki is over there; what’s he doing still here, man? He was supposed to take off this morning with the first part of the battalion.”

“I think we are about to find out,” Jean said.

Jean turned to me and patted me on the chest as he said, “Remember this: Nikola and I are the only friends you have here now. You can trust your life to us; we will take care of you. Don’t speak to anyone else or you’ll be in trouble. Saying the truth will be useless: no one will ever believe you.”

I managed to make a muffled sound through the tape over my mouth.

I hoped it sounded something like, “Screw you!”

We stopped somewhere a minute later and I heard several voices at once; all were male voices, speaking French with different accents.

I saw a few faces outside the car windows; soldiers of some sort struggled to take a look at me. They all laughed and made fun of me; however, they didn’t seem hostile at all. The whole thing felt more like making fun of a good friend or a comrade. I looked at all of them, almost in horror; if there were more men out there like Jean and Nikola, I didn’t want to meet them.

Both doors in the back of the car were opened at the same time; I tried to hear what Nikola and Jean told the crowd, but I couldn’t. Several hands took me by the arms and ankles and pulled at the same time, from both ends, while men—mostly young—laughed at the prank. They were playing with me and somehow expected me to share the joke.

I struggled to set myself free and they all went, “Ahhh.… Ohhhh….”

They laughed more; one of them leaned over my face as he said, “He must be very pissed off for getting caught; you are in so much trouble, Sanders!”

They all laughed harder; after a while they all finally stopped fooling around with me and pulled me out of the car by my arms. One of them told me, “Did you think you could desert us? Don’t you know that no one lives La Légion Étrangère! No one! Ever! At least not alive!”