Haroun smirked, recognizing Gil’s face from the dossier he and his brother had received from the AQAP network. “You are going to die soon.”
Gil frowned. “Kashkin is dead.”
Haroun didn’t seem surprised to hear the news. “Do you think Kashkin will be the last? Do you think you can fight all of Islam?” He shook his head. “Sooner or later, you will be killed — and your wife will be killed too.”
Gil glanced at Crosswhite. “I reckon that covers the formalities.”
Crosswhite put out his hand for the bag. “May I?”
Gil gave him the garbage bag, and Crosswhite slipped it over al-Rashid’s head, smoothing the plastic over his face to dispel most of the air. Haroun tried to bite his finger through the bag, and Gil delivered him a straight punch to the face, breaking his nose. Crosswhite sealed the bag at al-Rashid’s neck with a strip of duct tape.
“Catch you on the flip side, dick head.” Crosswhite smacked him across the back of the head.
Haroun did not panic the way most prisoners did when the air quickly began to run out. He drew shallow breaths, keeping calm as he rationed the tiny bit of air remaining in the bag.
“Looks like somebody’s had some training,” Crosswhite observed.
Gil gave Haroun a stiff jab to the solar plexus. Haroun gasped and then began to struggle against the restraints, sucking the plastic in and out of his mouth.
“That got things rolling,” Crosswhite said happily.
“Where is the bomb?” Gil asked in a calm voice. “Tell us the truth, Haroun, and this stops.”
Haroun began to thrash his head around, trying to locate an air pocket within the bag that did not exist. His breathing became increasingly rapid, the plastic sucking in and out of his mouth. A short time later, his head slumped to his chest, and he was out.
Crosswhite tore the bag open and pulled it down over his head. Blood ran from al-Rashid’s busted nose over his lips and chin.
Haroun’s sister-in-law moaned aloud at the sight, knowing she was next.
After sixty minutes without results, Gil and Crosswhite stepped off the plane for a smoke break, leaving a few other SEALs to watch the prisoners.
“What do you think?” Gil asked.
Crosswhite shrugged, lighting a cigarette. “I go until you say quit.”
“That’s not what I asked you.”
Crosswhite exhaled. “I don’t think he knows a thing about that damn bomb. We just put the fucker through an hour of hell, and he didn’t say a single word. But what the fuck do I know, Gil?”
“What about Akram’s wife?” Gil said, the idea of torturing a woman beyond repugnant to him.
“She only speaks Greek.” Pope had told them Akram found her living on the streets of Athens, converting her to Islam before he married her.
“I’ll see what Pope thinks.”
A half hour later, they marched Melonie al-Rashid into an office there in the hangar and sat her down at a desk, freeing her hands and giving her a bottle of water. A few minutes later, the phone on the desk rang, and Gil picked up the receiver, handing it to Melonie.
She looked at him suspiciously, taking the receiver and putting it to her ear. “Hello?” she said in her own language.
“Is this Melonie al-Rashid?” asked Iosif Hoxha in slightly accented Greek.
“Yes,” she answered. “Who is this?”
“My name Iosif Hoxha. I’m Albanian, but I grew up in Kakavija on the border with your country.”
“I recognize the accent,” she said.
“Have you been harmed?”
“They hit me once, but I haven’t been seriously harmed — not yet.”
“That is good,” he said, keeping his voice friendly. “The Americans do not want to harm you, but you must tell me everything you know about the atomic bomb that your husband and his friends have brought into the United States. That is the only way I can guarantee your safety.”
“What atomic bomb?”
“Melonie, you must not play stupid. They will hurt you like they did Haroun.”
“I do not doubt that,” she said shakily, “but there is no bomb. Akram goes to kill the American assassin — the sniper.”
“Where is Akram now?”
“Somewhere in America. Please, will you tell these people I know nothing about a bomb! If I did, I would tell them. I want to return to Athens. Will you help me get home?”
They went round like this for another three minutes before Hoxha was satisfied that Akram had kept her in the dark about most of his business. “Okay, Melonie. I will call the American commander and explain what you have told me. Good luck to you.”
“Thank you,” she said. Hoxha broke the connection, and she put the phone down in the cradle, finally opening the bottle of water and drinking it all gone.
“I’m guessing she didn’t tell him a damn thing we can use,” Gil said to Crosswhite.
“She told him something,” Crosswhite said, seeing it in the young woman’s eyes. “I don’t know how useful it’ll be, but she told him something.”
51
As it began to grow dark, Marie Shannon stood on the house’s back porch, looking up at the ridge where Buck Ferguson’s two youngest sons, Roger and Glen, had pitched camp to keep watch over the ranch. A storm was coming in from the west, and she was growing concerned about the distant rumbling of thunder.
Buck came out the back door and stood beside her, a Colt .45 on his hip.
“It’s fixin’ to blow,” she said. “You should probably call the boys down for the night. I don’t want ’em struck by lightning.”
“They’ll be fine. They’ve been camping in these mountains all their lives. If Iraq and Afghanistan didn’t kill ’em, these mountains sure as hell won’t.”
She smiled. “Thank you again for coming, Buck.”
“Gil would do the same for us if it was the other way around. We take care of our own out here, always have. You’re too young to remember, but when I was over in Vietnam, your daddy used to look in on Liddy and the boys for me. He was a good man, your daddy.”
“And Liddy was a good woman. I remember she used to bring me warm chocolate chip cookies.”
“Yeah, she was a dandy,” he said with a chuckle. “It’s a shame they’re both long gone. But then again, ain’t nothin’ meant to last, is it?”
“No, I reckon not,” she said sadly.
They sat on the porch talking until the wind began to blow and the rain began to drive.
“I’d really feel better if you called ’em down, Buck.”
He smiled at her in the porch light. “Honey, they’re grown men. You don’t think they know enough to come down on their own if they start gettin’ wet?”
“At least call ’em for me?”
Buck took the cell phone from his pocket and looked at the screen. “As usual,” he said. “No signal. That tower they put on my land ain’t worth a holey shirt.”
“Maybe it’s the storm.”
“That ain’t helping, but service around here is always spotty, even in good weather.”
Up on the ridge, Roger and Glen were nice and dry in their tent, both of them lying on the same sleeping bags they’d used during the war. Each of them had an AR-15 carbine, and they’d brought Kashkin’s scoped Mauser along as well. They lay in the dark listening to the thunder, the wind buffeting the tent. There was sporadic lightning, but it didn’t seem dangerously close.
Roger, the youngest at twenty-two, had killed three Taliban during his first tour in Iraq, but Glen, twenty-five, was not yet blooded, at least not that he knew of. He’d fired a few thousand rounds in combat but never knew if he’d hit anyone. He kind of hoped not.