Captive Minds

By A L Roberts

Captured and held against his will in the Indonesian jungle, ex SASR soldier Josh Myers is subjected to mind numbing experiments at the hands of a cruel and powerful drug lord and a former KGB scientist intent on creating the world’s first successful super-soldier formula. Josh must fight to hold onto his sanity, not only to save himself, but to keep safe a secret that his captors must never discover.
After months of living with a powerfully heart wrenching grief, Kara Davenport’s life is suddenly thrown into further turmoil. Kara’s special empathic ability screams to life when her mind is assaulted by another’s crippling pain and despair and she discovers that the man she and her family thought to be dead is actually alive and suffering cruelly.
Expanding his operations from Central America into Indonesia to take advantage of the huge meth-amphetamine trade, Hector Rodriguez has put himself into the perfect position to access the base ingredient he needs to create his new super drug. While he dreams of a formula that will allow him to control the minds of others, he is forced to watch his daughter slowly lose control of hers
Anatoli Tsarsko, a former KGB scientist, has spent his entire life trying to unlock the powers of the human mind and how to control them. Now with unlimited funds and human guinea pigs at his disposal he is close to fulfilling his life’s work, if only he can force his prime subject to co-operate. He has also been tasked with curing Isabel Rodriguez of a rare brain disease, but it is not until he witnesses a beautiful woman perform a miracle in the Indonesian jungle that he realises who and what he needs to make the cure and his evil dream a reality.
Kara must use the power of her mind as she never has before to save Josh from his living hell and bring him home. With the help of her four brothers Nathan (an ex-Interpol agent), twins Hunter and Alex (ex-SASR) and Luke (formerly of ASIO) along with the specialist team from her brother’s business, Davenport Security, Kara travels to Indonesia to find Josh. What she doesn’t realise is that in doing so she will expose her secret to the enemy and set off a chain of events that could unleash a new evil into the world and cost Kara her very life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: A L Roberts
• Release date: Oct 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311859600

A L Roberts

Alison grew up in suburban Sydney, Australia, before moving to country New South Wales as a young teenager. Her early days were spent swimming in the river, camping all over the unique and beautiful country that is her home and of course reading mystery, suspense and action adventure novels at every available opportunity. She later went on to study a Bachelor of Visual Arts degree at university focusing on the areas of textiles, photography and art history. After eleven years of creatively working as an interior decorator, Alison now owns and operates a small business with her husband. She still lives in country New South Wales with her husband, two children and a small, energetic pooch. Captive Minds is Alison’s first novel and she is currently enjoying working on the second book in the "Captive Series'.

Book preview

The darkness was all consuming. It was constant and impenetrable, surrounding him with its blanket of false comfort, keeping him protected from the horror of what the light would bring next. All sense of time eluded him in this place. There was no way to keep track of the hours, the days that ebbed by. He had long since given up counting the time. It had been too long in the darkness, so long that he was ready to succumb to its silken arms, to welcome it and the rescue of oblivion.

There was no light here in this place. It only appeared when they came for him, signalling that his torture would begin again. The precious minutes of his life blended into long hours of constant pain and agony, but he refused to give them what they truly wanted. They could make his body suffer, but he would fight to keep his sanity, it was the one thing that could get him back to her.

He only wondered how long he would have the strength to continue. He was beginning to break and he could feel his mind starting to play tricks on him. He was hearing things that could not possibly be real, a voice that he thought he would never hear again. Maybe he was becoming delusional. Was his subconscious mind coping with the trauma of his imprisonment by creating a new reality?

In the recesses of his mind there was sometimes a peace and warmth that allowed him a small respite from the pain. Random images flashed through his mind at odd times. Pictures that did not make sense to him, but they had a calm quality about them that allowed him to relax and sleep. He truly was losing his mind and that more than anything else frightened him as that is when they would crush him and they would have what they wanted. With all of the strength left in him, he would fight to stay in control.

There was no hope of escape. Any chance of that had long since passed and if he did manage to get out of this cell, he doubted he would be able to make his way through the facility, past the guards and out in to the open on his own. He had no specific knowledge of where he was or what he might be walking in to once he got out. The injuries to his body were many and they drained his strength. How far could he get before he was recaptured and punished?

Any chance of rescue was obviously long gone. Too much time had passed and his team had known he was still in the building when it had exploded. They must believe him to be dead, they never left a man behind, it was their code and they all lived by it. He knew in his heart that they would not have left him here if they could have found him. He only had himself, but he was too weak now. His body was bloodied and beaten and his mind was beginning to shatter. The drugs they injected him with, caused headaches of bright shooting pain and once again he succumbed to the darkness.

Chapter One

The morning was warm and the day ahead promised to be bright and sunny as it usually was this time of year in the tropical Queensland town of Orchid Bay. However, Kara did not feel the warmth of the sun on her face as she sat on her back veranda with an early morning cup of tea. She looked over the garden in the backyard. The Queensland maple tree and palms provided much needed shade for the rest of the garden and she often found respite on one of the timber benches she had placed beneath them.

One of her favourite places was in the back corner of the garden where it was cool and private. It was a small paved area that she had only completed recently. It was surrounded by golden cane palms and tropical orchids and she had placed a shaded day bed there complete with bright coloured cushions and hanging sheer curtains. It was the perfect place to relax and escape from the world when she needed it, but it held no allure for her this morning.

Even the flowering plants, which normally added cheerful spots of colour among the cordylines and ferns throughout the garden, did not seem as bright today. This yard would normally be her haven, her safe place. However, it didn’t have its usual calming effect on her this morning. The world had changed for her and had lost some of its warmth when Josh had not returned home from a mission with her brothers.

That was two months ago and she was still struggling to come to terms with the fact that he was not coming back to her. Josh had been a part of her family for so long that she barely remembered a time without him being around. Her twin brothers Alex and Hunter had brought him home one afternoon after school. He had been shy and quiet, the complete opposite of her two brothers who were loud and rambunctious, and always getting themselves in to some measure of trouble. He had followed the boys in to the front hall of the house just as she was coming down the stairs. Alex and Hunter had tossed their schoolbags onto the hall floor and raced each other into the kitchen for some much needed after school sustenance with a great amount of noisy conversation as per usual.

She had seen Josh watch them with a strange mix of confusion and envy on his face. He then moved to quietly close the front door and as he turned back he saw her. She was about half way down the staircase when he had looked up and for the briefest moment his eyes had met with hers and she’d seen a light shining so bright and strong in those jade green eyes that she thought her heart would break. His spirit and soul seemed to reach out and wrap itself around her heart and in that brief moment she knew that she would never be whole without him in her life.

Hunter’s voice then broke into the quiet moment as he yelled down the hallway from the kitchen, Come on Josh, if you don’t get in here there’ll be nothing left for you ‘cause Alex will have eaten it all as usual. Then his shutters had come down and the light had left his eyes as he’d looked away from her.

Hey! said Alex, Who’s the one with three cookies in his mouth at one time? This was followed by spluttering and laughter as the boys urged Josh to join them in the kitchen.

Josh had turned away from her and walked into the kitchen. He seemed nervous as if he didn’t know what to expect once he entered, but Alex and Hunter were undeterred by his quiet behaviour and immediately made room for him between them on a stool at the bench. They piled his plate high with her Mum’s homemade chocolate chip and macadamia nut cookies and poured him a glass of milk and from that moment Josh Myers became a part of the Davenport family and Kara’s heart.

After that particular afternoon, Josh always seemed to be at her house. Her parents, Thomas and Margaret, welcomed him into the family as if he had always been one of their own children. Kara had four brothers and one sister, so with such a big family already, another addition was no chore for her parents who seemed to take great delight in having Josh under their roof.

All the members of her family had a soft spot for Josh. Kara’s eldest brother Nathan was three years older than the twins Alex and Hunter and being the eldest was protective of his younger brothers and sisters and he extended that protection to Josh with ease. If there was ever any trouble at school, Nathan was always the first to jump in and defend his fellow family members with his words and if necessary his fists. He was extremely intelligent and that combined with his other numerable skills had landed him at Interpol, where he had become a very successful field agent.

Alex and Hunter were identical twins and so shared a special bond with each other. They were near inseparable and did everything together and once they befriended Josh, the three of them were rarely seen without one another’s company. The three of them together were definite trouble with a capital T. Kara’s other brother Luke was eighteen months younger than the twins and was the quietest of all the boys. He was also very intelligent and often busy in front of a computer or something electronic.

Kara also had a sister, her fraternal twin Serena and they were the youngest in the family. Together they shared a very special bond, one that only the family knew about and protected with great care. Kara and her sister could speak to each other telepathically. This was not unheard of. In fact it was believed to be quite common. However, Kara and Serena were different in that they were capable of other abilities as well.

Kara was empathic and could feel other people’s feelings and emotions. These feelings affected Kara directly and often left her weak and exhausted which in turn reduced the connection she had with her twin Serena. Kara was also able to connect with a person and reduce their feeling or emotion, somehow taking it within herself, but this could be dangerous and she experienced their emotion directly as she siphoned it away from them. Kara could block against some of this empathic and telepathic energy, but it was sometimes difficult to block it all.

Serena also had the ability of telepathic communication, but unlike Kara, she could communicate with whomever she chose. Serena was also unique in her ability to touch someone and heal their physical hurts. Just like Kara’s ability to take on emotional pain, so Serena’s gift worked. As Serena removed the wound she took it upon her own body and suffered as that person was suffering. Serena’s wound would fade more quickly than a normal wound but it left her weak and vulnerable and there was no way to know how far she could go before that ability killed her.

In an effort to increase their resistance Kara and her sister had taken up yoga and gained black belts in karate and these disciplines helped them to control to some degree what they were exposed to. It also allowed them to kick their brother’s butts on the practice mats when they were deserving of it. Her family though seemed to work as some sort of natural blocker against the onslaught of emotion that often entered her mind and reached out to Serena’s. This was especially true when in the company of their brothers, Alex and Hunter. Maybe because they themselves were twins, but Kara had always felt that same calm protectiveness when she was in Josh’s company. She missed it now more than anything.

As Kara replayed her early memories of Josh in her mind she failed to hear her mobile phone ring at first. She picked it up and looked at the caller ID. It was her Dad calling, he was always up early too, a remnant of the time spent during his Army ranger days. She pressed the answer button, eager to hear his calming voice. Good morning Dad.

Good morning sweets, how are you feeling today? her dad asked. You seemed a bit down last night at dinner.

I’m okay, she replied. Just feeling a little drained that’s all, it’s been a busy week. Am I still meeting you at the Logan job? It should be a great day for getting all those plants in!

Kara would be working with her father for a few weeks, helping him in his landscape business. Her last case at work had been emotionally exhausting and she needed a break to recuperate. Gardening was her outlet where she didn’t have to deal with other people or the emotions they unintentionally imposed on her.

If you’re still up to it, I would definitely appreciate the help. I’m not as young as I used to be you know. I swear my knees creak every time I take a step which alerts your mother to my every movement. There’s no sneaking up on her anymore! her father chuckled.

You’ll always be young at heart Dad, and I think that Mum still may like the sneaking, even if she can hear you coming, Kara laughed along.

Thanks sweets! I’ll see you there in an hour. Bye now. Her Dad disconnected and Kara smiled as she thought about her parents. Her father was originally from Virginia in the United States. He had joined the army out of high school and was sent off to fight in Vietnam. He had spent some time on R&R in Australia and that’s when he’d met her mother.

To hear her parents tell it, they had fallen in love at first sight and when her father’s tour of duty was over, her mother had gone back to the US with Thomas and they had married. He had served his country for several years after that and Nathan and the twins had been born in America. An opportunity had then arisen that offered her father a position as a military advisor on loan from the US Army to the Australian military and her parents had happily moved the family to Queensland. Then Luke, Serena and herself had been born in Australia and this is where they’d stayed after her father had retired from service.

He now owned and operated a small landscape gardening business, as he had only wanted to retire from the military, not from life. She was lucky to be part of a family who loved her unconditionally and embraced everything about who she was. Her parents were the strongest people she had ever known. They loved and supported every one of their children in all their endeavours, always striving to provide a positive and stable environment and even more so since Josh had not come home.

Kara’s parents were grieving for him too. They missed his shy smile and serious eyes as much as she and the rest of her siblings did, yet they were still the rock that they all needed to help them cope with this loss to their family.

Kara took one last look at her garden and walked into the kitchen from the deck. Her house was on a small rise overlooking the water with a gorgeous view out to the reef. It was just right for her and she had fallen in love with it the moment she saw it. There were two bedrooms with an ensuite each upstairs and one bedroom, separate bathroom and open plan kitchen, dining and living area downstairs. There was also a separate office with internal access to the double garage from the front entrance hallway. She had renovated and decorated the house herself, with help from her brothers when extra muscle was required. She was happy here. She needed her own space, needed the peace it provided so that her gift did not overwhelm her.

Kara rinsed her cup and placed it in the sink then went upstairs to change. There would be nothing pretty to wear today if she was just going to get dirt and plant material all over her. She dug a pair of faded cut-off jeans and one of her older comfy t-shirts out of the closet then went into the bathroom to put her hair in a ponytail and brush her teeth. After applying sunscreen to her face and arms she was ready to go.

Kara looked at herself in the mirror and saw a tired face looking back. There were circles under her eyes and they seemed to have lost the sparkle they once had. She was not an unattractive woman. She was neither tall nor short at around five foot seven inches in height with tanned skin, dark eyes and chocolate brown hair that reached halfway down her back in long waves. She just looked worn out. Hopefully this hiatus from her job would do her some good. She loved her work as a psychologist and consultant to the police department, and though it allowed her to use her gift to help people, doing it continually without regular breaks was very draining.

As she made her way downstairs, she grabbed her purse and keys, socks and boots and headed out to her car. It was such a lovely day outside she thought she would open the sun roof on her metallic grey SUV. After such a sad start to the day, Kara was feeling a little better as she made her way over to the Logan residence.

As she pulled up to the kerb, she saw that her father had already arrived and was setting out the small bushes and flowers in the beds where he had designated them to be planted. She took a moment to study her father as he moved about the yard and realised that if she hadn’t known he would be here she would have thought he was her brother Nathan, the two were so similar in looks. He was a large man at just over six feet tall and at fifty-eight years old he was still as fit as a man half his age. His dark hair was tinged slightly with grey, but it was still thick and curly and she often watched her mother sit by him and run her fingers through it. Kara hopped out of her car and walked over to receive a warm hug.

Ready to get to work sweets? he said with a smile for her. He had his cap pulled down low to shade his face and his grin was full of mischief.

You bet. Let’s get this done. Last one finished has to buy lunch, she answered.

I never back down from a challenge, he replied as he rubbed his hands together in anticipation of the competition.

Kara laughed and moved towards the garden beds. She happily worked the morning away next to her father, feeling better today than she had in weeks. This was just what she needed. As she worked putting in the plants and surrounding them with mulch, her natural emotive and telepathic defences relaxed and she really began to enjoy herself.

She put in the last pot of gardenias and smiled, breathing in their sweet fragrance before she stood to survey her work. She pulled off her gloves and began to walk over to her father to let him know she was finished and that he would be buying her lunch when she was assaulted suddenly with a sharp bolt of pain to her temples that had her gasping for breath and clutching her head in her hands. A ragged cry escaped her as she fell to her knees, unable to stop the sound falling past her lips, the pain was so intense.

She felt large, warm hands on her shoulders and knew that her father was there, but all she could see was a darkness that permeated evil and it was reaching out to her. There was a cry coming from out of that darkness and it called to her, a voice so familiar, so filled with torment and anguish that she was powerless to remain unaffected by it. It was a voice that she should never have heard again and then it was gone and the darkness swallowed her whole.

Chapter Two

They were coming for him again. Their low voices broke through the silent chasm of his mind and pierced his soul with terror as he knew what would come next. He fought the terror back, knowing that it was his worst enemy and concentrated instead on the heavy footsteps that echoed down the corridor. The lock rattled announcing their arrival at his cell. The door creaked open and the light invaded his senses, biting into the darkness and temporarily blinding him with its fierce brilliance.

Rough hands grabbed his arms and shoulders, dragging him up from his prone position on the floor. In the beginning he had fought them but he no longer had the strength, they had done their job well. The beatings and injections of drugs they had forced on him along with the lack of sustenance had robbed him of nearly all his energy. Now, he merely stood, accepting the inevitable, waiting for a death that seemed to elude him.

It was always the same two men that came for him. They were dressed in black military type fatigues. Cargo pants, black shirts, heavy boots and fully armed with shoulder holsters packing Sig Sauer P229 compact semi-automatic pistols.

He also knew from personal experience that they carried an assortment of knives. They both carried a knife in one of their boots and had a Ka-Bar each at their hips. After spending several hours with these guys every day he was quite certain these were the only weapons they had on them. But he also knew that their fists could inflict just as much painful damage as the knives, having formed a close acquaintance with the hands that currently gripped him tightly.

They moved past the regular interrogation room where they usually worked him over and dragged him around the corner to the lab. He hated this corridor and the horror that waited in the room at the end of it. In an attempt to keep the panic at bay he once again counted the doorways left and right, trying desperately to maintain control of his mind. There was a single door and a stairwell going up on the left and an elevator at the end of the corridor with a call button that also only went up.

There were three doors on the right and the two guards took him through the last one, closest to the elevator doors. He knew what would happen once he was in that room and he began to struggle against his jailers as his natural survival instinct took over. He fought with all his strength but was quickly overpowered and strapped down to the table in the centre of the room so that he was unable to move. The guards then moved the bed of the table so that he was placed in an upright position as if he were standing. The two guards stepped away and out into the corridor, their expressions blank, giving nothing away.

He looked around at the now familiar lab. There were benches against the wall covered in equipment, monitors and computers and an IV stand was set up next to him. He knew what they wanted from him and so far he had been able to resist all previous attempts. He hoped he was strong enough to fight and prevail again today.

* * *

Hector Rodriguez stepped through the french doors of his study and out onto the wide balcony. He truly enjoyed the view from here as it reminded him so much of home. He could see clear across the Arafura Sea on a day like today, the colour of the water so similar to the Caribbean where he had spent so much of his life. This was his home for the foreseeable future now and he would make this move half way across the world a success, both for his business and his family.

He had grown up on the streets of Tampico, Mexico, learning to take care of himself from a young age. He was quick to learn as well as quick on his feet, but he was quicker with his hands and had made a reasonable living from picking pockets until he came to the notice of a local gang who took him in and made him one of their own. He rose through the ranks quickly and eventually took control. By the time he was twenty-five years old he commanded a successful business, trafficking cocaine into the US.

As demand for product increased, so his business had expanded and he reaped the benefits of his wealth and power. He had been able to provide his family with a life that he never had as a child. His wife, son and daughter lived a life of luxury that he had never thought to witness when he had once begged for every scrap of food. They had lived in comfort and security in their beautiful home in Altamira, enjoying the life that he had worked so hard to create for them.

However, all this success, money and power had not allowed him to save his beloved wife, Madalena, from the cancer that had claimed her life. She was taken from him too soon and too cruelly and there was nothing he could do but watch her waste away day after agonizing day until she finally slept peacefully in the arms of her god. Her death had been devastating and he had thrown himself into his work, but the memories of his life in Altamira with his Madalena were too real and he had needed to get away.

The market in Indonesia had been wide open and it seemed as though it would be the perfect opportunity for someone with his ambition and power to take advantage of. The potential in the area was massive. His undertakings in South America would still remain operational and his assets there were secure. Competition for business had increased tenfold in the last five years alone in Mexico, and shifts of power were constant. All of these factors combined with the passing of his wife, had made the timing to make a change away from Mexico an easy one.

His new home here in the jungle on the southern coast Papua, Indonesia was the culmination of all that he had achieved in this lifetime. He had money, power and influence. For Hector these things were but tools to bend weak minded people to his will and he used them unscrupulously to expand his empire.

Breaking into the Indonesian market had been relatively simple. The product he provided here was different to what he was familiar with, but whether it was cocaine in Mexico or crystalline methamphetamines in Indonesia, the business formula did not change. Most of the established operators here were only small time and did not have the influence or resources that Hector commanded. He had tapped into some of the existing runs, taken over some and decimated a few others, firmly establishing himself as a power to be reckoned with. The business was running smoothly and there had been little to no entanglements with law enforcement to date. His customers were voracious. The request for orders of the high quality product he supplied was increasing and he was only too happy to accommodate the need for that supply. However, he was careful, he did not get this far and survive this long by making rushed decisions.

He had begun to relax into his new life and the despair he had felt at losing