“Green Giant,” I yelled to Bunny. “Talk to me.”
“Last one.”
“Chatterbox, watch the door.”
John Smith nodded and crouched down by the shattered rear doorway. There were people on the street, poking their heads out of doors and second floor windows to see what the fuss was about.
“Drawing a crowd,” he said.
“Out front, too,” called Lydia. “ Truchas! Neighbors are coming!”
The three hikers were in the cells. They looked terrible. Haunted faces, emaciated bodies, fresh bruises, and healed-over scars. However, I noticed that the jailers had provided each of the young prisoners with a big plate of fresh food and plenty of clean water. It was a small courtesy, but it said a lot about the men we’d just roughed up. Human beings. They couldn’t do anything about what had been done to the hikers, and they had no say in what was planned for them-a bullshit trial and either execution or life in a much more terrible state prison-but here, on the street level, these were frightened, starving young people and the cops did what they could to take care of them. They’d even rigged blankets on the bars to give the girl, Rachel, a measure of privacy and dignity. Top saw me looking at that and when I noticed him looking, he flicked an eye to the front room and nodded. I nodded back. There was nothing else to say or do.
The college kids, however, were jabbering and screaming and yelling. The panic was such a huge thing for them that they’d lost all control. Bunny kept trying to calm them down, but his voice was lost beneath the barrage of theirs.
From the doorway, Top yelled, “ Shut the fuck up!” with all the volume that his leather-throated drill instructor’s voice could manage.
The hikers shut up at once and stared at him, goggle-eyed.
I said, “We are United States Special Forces. We’re here to take you home.”
They started yammering again, rushing the cell doors before we could even open them.
“Stop!” I snapped, and they did. Scared as they were, they paid attention, which I knew was going to help make this work. Hysteria would get everyone killed. I was also reassured by seeing them all on their feet. I’ve heard horror stories about prisoner rescues where the people the SpecOps forces liberated were broken and catatonic wrecks who had to be carried out.
One of them, the only woman among them, stepped forward. She wore a scowl that was half anger and half hope. “They tricked us once with something like this. How do we know-?”
“Smart question. When you were ten your mom gave you a guinea pig for your birthday. You named it Olivia.”
Her eyes stayed hard, but they grew wet as well. She nodded.
“God, thank you-” she began, but I cut her off.
“Listen to me. We will get you out of here but you need to do exactly as you’re told. No questions, no talk.”
Khalid produced a PDA and called up photographs, matching them against the faces of the prisoners. “Three for three,” he confirmed and handed the device to me.
I unlocked one cell and handed Top the keys.
“Each of you will go with one of my team. You’ll get into separate cars and you’ll be taken out of the country. You’re going home. This is for your own safety,” I said. “If any one car gets stopped, the others will get away. Now, no more talk… let’s move.”
When I said the word “separate,” they looked terrified and suspicious, but they did not panic. I found myself liking them. I’d had reservations at first-like a lot of people, I guess-because they had put themselves in harm’s way by going on a science field trip in a war zone. But now I understood. These were very tough young people. Resourceful and capable. If they had a fault, maybe it was that they had too much faith in people. I’m not about to slam anyone for thinking that other people will aspire to their higher values. It’s just too bad they got caught in a moment when the Iranian soldiers were not listening to their better angels.
Khalid stepped into the cell with the senator’s son. “Jason McHale?”
The young man saw Khalid’s Arab face and hesitated, but I stepped close.
“He’s an American soldier. Go with him or stay here. Decide fast, kid, ’cause your dad’s waiting for you in Kuwait City. He wants to see ‘Ranger.’”
That did it. “Ranger” was Jason’s nickname as a little boy. Tears welled in his eyes and he tried to hug me. I pushed him gruffly back. I felt for him, but this wasn’t the time.
“Sorry,” he said.
“No need to be sorry, brother,” I said. “When we get out of this I’ll buy the first round.”
He smiled. It was a good smile, conflicted in the moment but that was a veneer over a clear and evident openness. “The next one’s on me.” He allowed Khalid to guide him out of the cell.
Top entered Rachel’s cell and held out a hand toward her, palm up. An invitation rather than a command. “Come on, darlin’” he said in the fatherly way he has. He’s the only Echo Team member with kids. “You can tell me everything I need to know about rare tigers on the way to Kuwait.”
Rachel stared blankly at him for a moment. He had warmth, and you knew on an instinctive level that it was genuine. Then she smiled-maybe her first real and unguarded smile in months.
“Asiatic cheetah,” she corrected as she took his hand. He grinned back at her.
The kid in the last cell, Bryan, was the youngest of the three. His twentieth birthday had happened behind bars. He was also the most clearly damaged, and he stared through the open cell with sunken eyes. It was pretty obvious that the experience had fractured something inside him. Maybe-with luck and the right doctors-he’d find his way out of the dark. Top put a hand on his shoulder.
Top started to say something, but Rachel stepped past him.
“It’s okay, Bryan,” she said. “Nobody’s going to hurt you anymore. We made it. We survived. We’re free. ”
He took a small step forward but that was all. Then Jason stood next to Rachel and said, “You beat them, Bry. Remember what we said after they took us? We’re innocent and no matter what they did to us we were going to stick to the truth. You said that, and Rachel and I went along with you. Well, check it out, brah, you saved our asses with that. You held the line for all of us. Now they’re here to take us home.”
Bryan’s empty eyes gradually filled with something. Hard to put a name on it, because there was a lot of wreckage in the way. Maybe he had gone inside his head to hide from what they were doing to him, but here, in this moment, I think he looked through the shadows and saw the faint light from the door he’d left open.
“Tick-tock, Jefe,” said Lydia quietly, and I nodded.
Bryan took a ragged breath and then took a step forward, reaching through his personal darkness. Taking Rachel’s hand, taking Jason’s. Top helped guide him out of the cell, and I could see the broken boy becoming the man who had walked through hell and survived.
As he passed one of the cops who lay trussed on the floor, Bryan suddenly knelt beside him. At first I thought he was going to lash out at him, but he didn’t. Instead he rolled the man onto his side so that the restraints didn’t cut as deeply into his wrists and ankles. Either kindness to local cops who had been relatively kind to the prisoners, or a statement that compassion should be a factor whenever one person has power over another. It was a small thing, a minor kindness in the middle of a dreadful experience; but it might be the defining moment in the entire experience for the young man.
I was proud of him and I saw the looks in the eyes of Top, Khalid, and Bunny. This was why we do what we do. Not to punish the bad guys, but to make sure the good ones have a real chance.
The silence in the cells was cracked apart by the sound of sirens approaching.
The prisoners looked toward the rear door, new fear blossoming in their eyes.
“Okay, everybody out of the pool,” said Bunny, dialing up the wattage on his Southern California smile. Bunny has a great blend of impressive size, movie-star looks, and surfer-boy charm; but at the same time you know you’re safe with him. It takes a lot of guys to outnumber someone like him.