Dead in Damascus: A Special Operations Group Short Story ([#0] Special Operations Group) (4 page)

“You can’t do this,” Gator said.

Chris moved in so close that he was toe-to-toe with Gator. “Saving Young is
deadly
important to me,” Chris said quietly. “How important is it to you?”

The veins in Gator’s neck bulged as if they were about to pop.

Chris prepared to flip his inner switch from chill to bone-burning conflagration.

“Your commanding officer will hear about this!”

Chris didn’t know whether Gator was smart for not fighting or cowardly for backing off. Maybe he was both. “I’m sure he will.”

Gator kicked a trash bucket across the room on his way out.

“Does anyone know where I can get a good bottle of wine ASAP?” Chris shouted out to the others in the gator pit.

A man in civilian clothes hesitantly raised his hand.

“I need it for the interrogation. How fast can you get it here?” Chris asked.

“Right away.” The man left his desk and rushed out of the room.

“If Mordet likes wine and my ear, I’ll give him what he wants.” Chris borrowed Hannah’s phone, called the surgeon, and asked for his ear in a small cooler.

He observed the monitor of the interrogation booth. Gator’s henchman cleared out the waterboarding equipment, handcuffed Mordet’s hands behind his back, chained his feet together, and sat him in a chair.

Minutes later, when the cooler and wine arrived, Chris left the gator pit. After the henchman stepped out of the booth, Chris stepped inside. He closed the door behind him and set his cooler down beside the door. Then he took a seat on the plastic chair in front of a table between himself and Mordet.

It’s time we have a little chat, my friend.

T
he booth, like other interrogation rooms, was kept cold to make the prisoner uncomfortable. Chris exhaled, purging any anger or anxiety from his system—neither would help him succeed in the interrogation.

Mordet gazed at the bandage on Chris’s ear. “I gather that we have already made each other’s acquaintance, but my doctorate is in philosophy, not medicine.”

Chris felt the same giant, dark hand pressing down on him that he’d experienced at Mordet’s estate. “You gather correctly, Professor.” Chris poured a glass of wine and gave him a sip.

After Mordet finished the sip, he licked his lips. “It seems that you know about me, but I do not know about you, other than the fact that you and your comrades were highly professional, and we left via the Euphrates River. No conventional military units would operate inside Syria. I can only guess that you are a Navy SEAL—probably from SEAL Team Six.” Mordet stared into Chris’s eyes as if he were probing Chris’s brain.

Chris showed no expression in his face or voice. “I can neither confirm nor deny—”

Mordet was equally cool. “No need—I have already confirmed it. Even so, I still do not know your name.”

Chris didn’t know how the interrogation would play out, but if he was patient, he might spot an opening and exploit it. “My name is Chris.”

Mordet’s eyes sparkled. “Do you have a last name, Chris?”

Chris continued without showing emotion. “Yes.”

Mordet took another drink. “Will you give it to me?”

“No.”

The sparkle in Mordet’s eyes faded. “That is not very sporting. You have come here to ask me where Young Park is, but you will not even tell me your last name.”

“Yes, I came here to ask where he is.” Chris gave him the rest of the drink.

He seemed pleased. “Why is he so important to you?”

Chris refilled Mordet’s glass. He had thought he was in control of the interrogation, but now he wasn’t sure. He gave Mordet a long drink.

“Is Park related to you?”

Chris said nothing.

“A friend?”

“Yes.”

Mordet stared at Chris’s eyes. “This rescue has more meaning to you than mere friendship. Maybe this is more about the rescue than about Young Park.”

The remarks caught Chris off guard, as if Mordet had a sixth sense for digging into his soul. Every rescue was deeply personal, but the purpose of the interrogation was Young, not Chris. He surveyed for a warm spot in Mordet’s cool veneer. “You bit off my ear and tried to eat it. Don’t you think that’s a bit strange?”

Mordet gazed at the ceiling. “Is it? During the Vietnam War, a CIA SOG officer killed enemy combatants and cut off their ears. And made necklaces out of them.” Mordet sniffed the air as if he smelled a meal, and then his eyes lowered to his interrogator.

Mordet had an aura about him that made Chris’s skin prickle, but he didn’t show it. “I’ve heard the stories. I’ve heard a lot of stories and seen a lot of things, but you weren’t making a necklace.”

Mordet frowned like a lecturer disappointed with a student. “What would be the point—a trophy? How droll. And wasteful.”

“I don’t know anyone who eats the body parts of humans.”

There was a shadowy stillness in Mordet’s eyes, and wine stained the corner of his lips like blood. “In western New Guinea, when the Korowai tribe finds that someone is a
khakhua
, a witch doctor, they eat that person’s brain while it is still warm.”

Chris saw the source of the giant, dark hand that pressed on him, and the more he saw, the less he wanted to see, but he didn’t show his aversion to the blackness emanating from Mordet. “I didn’t know that,” he said matter-of-factly.

Mordet smiled, but the corners of his smile were closer to a sneer. “In America, when the Donner Party became trapped in the snowy Sierra Nevada, the survivors ate the dead.”

“That remains unconfirmed.”

“In the 1972 Andes flight disaster, the survivors ate the dead bodies of their classmates and friends.”

Mordet disgusted Chris, and the conversation made him weary, much like the war did, but Mordet gave off an aura of evil unlike any Chris had ever encountered. In spite of his weariness and his need to end the conversation, his need to rescue Young was greater.

What makes you tick, Mordet?

“But I don’t guess you belong to a tribe in New Guinea nor were you in the Andes flight disaster.”

“Not the Andes flight disaster, but when I was a teenager, my mother, younger sister, and I flew to Turkey for a winter vacation. We crashed in the Taurus Mountains. Only my sister and I survived. After we ran out of food, I suggested we eat the bodies. My sister refused and insisted we try to climb off the mountain. I told her the weather was too severe and it would be easier for a search party to find a wrecked plane than two people wandering through the snow. So I did what was necessary to survive, but I will never forget the way she looked at me, like I was … such a monster. Two days later, I woke up and she was gone. One month after the crash, they rescued me and found my sister’s body. She’d frozen to death.” He finished his drink.

“You ate human flesh for nourishment.” Chris refilled his glass and gave him a drink.

“Yes, of course. When I returned home, news traveled about how I’d survived, and my classmates and their parents ostracized me. Sometimes I fantasized about eating them. I read about the Korowai tribe and was fascinated. Of course eating another human is part of their culture, but more important, eating another human gives them spiritual power to destroy forces greater than mortality.”

“But eating my ear didn’t give you the power to escape. You’re still imprisoned here.”

“Ah, but I did not finish the whole ear, you see.”

Chris wanted to put a bullet through him, but he exercised patience instead. “I’m not here to judge you. I just want to know where Young is.”

“Why should I help you?” Mordet looked at the cooler and bottle of wine near the doorway. “If you give me a bottle of wine and what is left of your ear in that cooler, you think I’ll tell you where Young is?”

Mordet’s weakness seemed to be his pride in his intellect and his eagerness to rationalize his cannibalism as some mystic gift. “You suggested that if you could finish the ear, your spiritual power would increase, enabling you to escape this situation.” Chris moved his chair closer to Mordet. “Jeffrey Dahmer ate people because his brain was a couple bullets short of a full magazine. I’m just trying to confirm how I should classify our conversation in the report I send to my superiors and our allies.”

Chris gave him the rest of the glass, but he didn’t pour a refill. “
Très bien
. I am not so strange. If you had walked in my shoes, you would have done the same.” Mordet whispered: “During my senior year of high school—”

“If you’re not interested, I understand.” Chris stood up, turned around, and walked to the door. He picked up his cooler. “I think I know how to write my report.”

“Wait,” Mordet said.

Chris stopped and turned to face him.

“Give me the wine and cooler, and I will tell you where Young is.”

“It doesn’t work that way. After we find Young, you get what’s left of the wine and my ear. I’ll write a report about your belief in your mystic power. Then it’s up to you to prove to everyone that your power is real. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.” Chris reached for the door.

“Patience, patience. I will tell you where he is.”

Chris anxiously fingered the lighter in his pocket. “You can tell the interrogator. If your information helps us rescue Young, you get the wine and my ear. And I’ll update my report. Until then, talk is cheap.”

“This rescue means more to you than Young himself. Why is the rescue so important to you?”

His own kidnapping flashed back to him. The feelings of despair, of terror. The darkness of the pit he’d been kept in. The aftermath.

“Good-bye, professor.”

“Will you leave me your email address in case I think of something more?”

Chris walked out the door without turning back. He wanted to run, putting as much distance between himself and Mordet as he could, but he denied Mordet his influence and walked at a normal pace. He wanted to teleport himself out of this hell—far from the despots and devils. Events after that were a spinning blur to him. He didn’t know if it was the exhaustion of the op, blood loss from his ear, or the soul-sucking interrogation that drained him, but somehow he found his way to his rack and lay down.

Just over an hour later, Little Doc came to Chris’s rack. “Come on! We’re going to get Young!”

They geared up with their teammates and rushed across the grey tarmac to where two Black Hawks and a smaller Little Bird MH-6 helicopter were already spinning up. His adrenaline beat with the
thwop-thwop
of the choppers’ blades. The helos were waiting for Chris, LT, and his seven men.

Hannah met Chris part-way and shouted above the noise. “The gator took the credit, but it was because of you that Mordet gave us Young’s location!” There was a twinkle in her eyes that he’d only seen when they’d first met, and it made his soul soar.

“No, we found Mordet because of you and your asset!” He wanted to hug her—and he wanted to be finished with the war on terror—but now he had to find Young. Everything else would just have to wait.

“We’ll play pool when you get back!” she said.

He nodded. Hannah was a talented colleague and a good friend, and in moments like this, he wanted to get to know her better. It seemed like the time to say something epic, but all that came out of his mouth were two words: “Thank you!” He turned and sprinted to the chopper without looking back.

The helos were painted a dark green, but in the night, they loomed black. Their blades beat the air with a
thwop, thwop, thwop
, making the earth quiver beneath Chris’s feet as he neared his Black Hawk. Their rhythm continued to pulse in his blood. He took a seat inside with Senior Chief and their squad. LT and his squad of seven SEALs boarded the other Black Hawk. Two snipers, one starboard and one port, sat on the Little Bird with their legs dangling outside the helo. Diesel fumes struck Chris’s sinuses like holy incense.

This time, instead of carrying the smaller sound-suppressed MP7 9mm submachine guns, Chris and his mates carried the more powerful HK416 5.56 assault rifles, wore bullet-resistant vests, and carried a deadly assortment of grenades. Every available pocket bulged with extra ammo. This was not a stealth mission.