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Jarod Stevens uses his skills to Pretend he's a military officer of unspecified rank who has been assigned to the POW Training Center at Fort Blaine to investigate the death of Chief Scott Rion, who committed suicide while in isolation training. Neither Colonel Dance, who runs the camp, nor Captain Saunders, who was in charge of Rion's training unit, are happy to have Jarod there. Since his orders appear to have come from those higher up in rank, they can't do anything about it.
In a DSA of a simulation that Jarod performed relating to POWs and why they do or don't survive, the young Jarod tells Sydney that the biggest factor in surviving is the prisoners' minds. If the captor removes their hope or their ability to understand their fears and overcome them, the prisoners lose their grip on reality.
Captain Saunders maintains that Rion was unstable and that he had been covering for him over a period of time, in order to keep the training team together. However, Jarod learns that Captain Saunders was sexually harassing Lieutenant Kimbro, the pretty young woman assigned as Jarod's driver. The harassment became so severe that Rion had to physically pull Saunders off of her the night before his isolation training was to begin. Scott Rion said then that he was going to report the breach of conduct and Captain Saunders told Scott that he had forgotten the first rule-the unit always comes first-and that it wasn't over between them.
Jarod discovers that Captain Saunders kept Rion from reporting him by lacing the water Rion took into the isolation chamber with him with an experimental drug called "Abyss." After he drank the water and slowly began losing his mind, Rion realized what was happening and carved the word "Abyss" on his stomach in a last attempt to let whoever found him know what had happened. Then he went mad and hung himself.
To get Captain Saunders to confess, Jarod literally gives him a taste of his own medicine. Realizing what Jarod has done, Saunders tells Jarod that it is going to cost him his commission. Jarod tells him that it won't happen because he doesn't really have a commission and isn't even really in the Army! Convinced that he, too, has now been given the Abyss drug and is facing insanity if he does not receive help, the Captain tells Jarod that he drugged Scott Rion's water to keep him from reporting Saunders' breach of conduct.
After Jarod turns him in, Saunders faces a minimum of 20 years in Leavenworth. Scott Rion's family gets an apology, and, with full disclosure of the incident, young Rion gets the military burial he had been previously denied.
In Plano, Texas, Jarod traps Lyle and Miss Parker in a shipping container that ends up being sent back to Blue Cove, Del. While building a fire to keep warm, Miss Parker finds newspapers relating an incident involving Lyle and the death of two Asian exchange students at college. Lyle was exonerated but is uncertain of his innocence in the matter. Miss Parker also finds that Jarod has left her a watch that once belonged to her mother-one that Catherine Parker had won in a swim competition when she was little and that Mr. Parker had given to Miss Parker for her 12th birthday. Miss Parker had once used the watch to help keep herself alive after a boating mishap by treading water while listening to its ticking until her father arrived to rescue her.
The long trip allows Jarod to teach Miss Parker that the most important thing about survival is knowing who you can trust.
Upon their arrival at Blue Cove, Miss Parker and Lyle find that Jarod is at the POW Training Center at Fort Blaine, Texas-very close to where they became trapped in the container! They race back to Texas, but Jarod sees them arriving and goes out the back way. They come up empty handed again. |
