“What about the one you dropped?”
“We left him,” Carl said. “He was dead. Murphy’s a good shot.” “Anyone follow you?”
“Please, Mr. Camm,” Carl said. “It was clean.”
Murphy was still pacing. “It’s okay,” Camm reassured him. “You did exactly right. Get your report to Miss Fisher.”
“Where’s the Jihad?” Camm asked her when the two agents had left.
“In primary, want to see him?” Camm nodded and followed her out of the office and down a well-lit hall that reminded one of a hospital corridor. She stopped in front of a steel door and buzzed. They both looked up at the TV camera above the door, waiting to be recognized. The door clicked open. Inside, two white-smocked technicians were sitting at desks watching a TV monitor. “What’s his status?” Fisher asked.
One of the technicians said, “He isn’t talking, yet.”
“Nothing at all?” Camm asked.
“Only what we already know. His name is Nasir Askari, twenty-eight. Born in Tripoli, Lebanon.” He glanced at the elapsed-time master-clock on the wall. “He should be spilling his guts within sixty-eight hours. I’ve never seen anyone last more than seventy-two before they go crazy.” He pointed at the TV screen.
Camm pulled a chair up and sat down, studying the screen. “Is the audio up?”
The technician nodded. “Got to be if we’re to pick up the clues in time. Once they break, we get ‘em out fast.”
The infrared image on the TV screen was amazingly sharp, letting them see the man clearly in the darkened cell. Nasir Askari was lying on the floor, naked. The padding on the floor partially enveloped him, yielding to his movements. His arms and legs were bound together with wide soft straps, holding him in a fetal position. The straps would stretch and contract with his movements, always holding him secure.
“Why the mouthpiece?” Fisher asked.
“It keeps him from chewing on his tongue or cheeks,” the technician told her. “We try to shut off all tactile, auditory and visual stimuli.” He smiled at her. “Sometime when you haven’t anything to do, come on down and we’ll put you in there for a few minutes. You can’t believe how quiet and dark it is in there. After a while they’ll do almost anything to create a tactile sensation. That’s why we restrain them.”
“How long has he been in there?”
The technician glanced at the master clock. “Three hours, sixteen minutes. We’ve had some telling everything they know by now.” “What if someone lies just to get out?”
“We always put them back in for a few minutes until the story is the same.” He paused, studying the screen. “This one is going to go for a while. We may have to increase his dosage. We heighten the effect of sensory deprivation by using a new drug, DicayocaineNeural-Propoxylase, DNP for short. It reduces the sensitivity of the — nerve endings in the skin.”
“What happens if they don’t break?”
“It happened once. Subject flipped out.”
“What did you do then?”
“What we had to do. Look, Miss Fisher, we’re not here to torture people. We’re after clean, accurate information. That’s our job and we do it.”
The brigadier general commanding the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigation headquartered at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington fidgeted in his chair. He found the waiting difficult and wondered why the shortish colonel with no right ear was taking so much of General Cunningham’s time. Still, when the Air Force’s chief of staff beckoned and called, he waited. He ran the colonel through his mental bank of pictures, trying to place a name with the face. Finally the general’s aide ushered him into the inner sanctum of Cunningham’s office.
“Sit down, Hoskins.” Cunningham pointed at a chair. “I’ve got a problem. Colonel Rupert Stansell here has got his ass in a crack. Apparently four terrorists tried to kidnap him this morning at Dulles International. It’s complicated because I’ve got him on a special mission.”
“I haven’t heard a thing about Dulles — yet,” Hoskins said. “Why would terrorists be after Colonel Stansell?” The stony look on Cunningham’s face warned him. The general obviously thought he should know who Stansell was.
“We think they were from the Islamic Jihad.” Cunningham was rolling an unlit cigar in his fingers and staring at Hoskins — two danger signals. Hoskins had not heard about the Islamic Jihad, and it was his job to know about threats against Air Force personnel and investigate them. He played for time. “I’ll have my people check it out—”
“Are you going to staff this one to death, Hoskins?”
The very newly appointed brigadier didn’t kid himself — he was in trouble. Cunningham wanted action. “Sir, I don’t know enough at this point—”
“At this point, Hoskins, I don’t know if you’re naturally stupid or have worked to get that way. The trouble is that one of the terrorists was shot. Colonel Stansell got away and hasn’t talked to the police.”
“No problem sitting on it then,” Hoskins said, trying to recover.
“Dammit, general, you’re my chief investigative officer and you’re telling me not to report the involvement of an Air Force officer in a shooting to the civilian authorities?”
“Excuse me, sir,” Hoskins said, determined to go down fighting, “you haven’t told me what Colonel Stansell’s special mission is. If it’s too important for me to know about it, I can only assume you want it protected at all costs.”
Cunningham sat back in his chair and reevaluated the man in front of him.
I just might survive this, Hoskins thought. “I was not suggesting we cover up Colonel Stansell’s involvement,” he continued, pressing his advantage, “but control it. I’ll use my contacts to explain what went down and that we are protecting him because of the terrorist threat. I’ll use up a lot of my markers with the law in Virginia, but I believe I can keep Colonel Stansell out of it that way.”
“Do it.”
Hoskins threw a salute at the general and disappeared out the door.
“He should be all right,” Cunningham said. “Only been on the job a week.” He paused, carefully picking his words, deciding how much he was going to have to tell Stansell.
But Stansell was ahead of him. He handed Cunningham the completed ops plan. “General Mado is out of town today. Sir, why didn’t you tell me that Task Force Alpha was a cover for the real mission? Didn’t you trust me? I wanted that mission, sure, but more than anything else I want those people out. General, I’ll do anything to make that happen.” A fire of disappointment was building in him but what he told Cunningham was still the truth. He badly wanted, though, at least to be part of the rescue, to finish what he had started when he had led a squadron of F-15s into Ras Assanya to fly Combat Air Patrol for the 45th, Muddy Waters’ wing. Waters had taught him what it meant to lead in combat, and now he felt he had to finish it — to bring the last of the wing out. Well, if it wasn’t going to be him he would still do everything he could to help.
Cunningham noted the passion in Stansell’s voice, rare around the Pentagon, where the officers were mostly chasing promotions and covering themselves with the protective coloration of the Air Force’s bureaucracy. The fire in Stansell had nothing to do with personal advancement — he was committed to a mission.
Cunningham put down his cigar in the large ashtray on his right, leaned across the desk, clasping his hands, his carefully cultivated.facade of command shredding in front of the colonel. Even his voice changed. “Rupe, I feel like you, those are my people and I’m the one that put them in harm’s way. Yes, as of now you’re a cover for the main effort. But there are serious flaws in that mission. It amounts to a major invasion and requires the cooperation of Kuwait and Iraq. Under the circumstances, not the best of plans, and to tell you the truth, I can’t buy into it.