Project StrikeForce (23 page)

Eric helped Martin survey the site. There were
tools, an air compressor, and the place smelled of paint. Parts to emergency
vehicles lay half-disassembled on the dirt floor. A pair of sawhorses held a
door, fashioned into a makeshift workbench, and a half-empty box of detonators
sat next to spools of wire.

John joined them. He picked up the spool of wire
and shook his head.

Nancy and Roger returned. “We found his military
ID,” she said. “His name was Terrill Johnson. There were suitcases with clothes
and cash in the trunk.”

“Looks like they were going to disappear,” Roger
said.

“Well, they’re gone now,” Martin said.

Eric nodded grimly. “Yes they are.”

* * *

Atlantic Ocean

The water stretched as far as John
could see. Far below, the occasional ship spread a long white arrow of foam in
its wake. Nancy was in the cockpit with Greg, and the rest of the team slumped
in the cabin seats.

He watched Taylor Martin’s chest rise and fall.
Martin’s eyes were partially shut and he appeared to be asleep, but John had
met soldiers who slept like that, never quite awake but not quite asleep. Roger
was at the front of the plane typing away on his laptop, writing up the
after-action report.

He turned and found Eric staring back at him. John
nodded and Eric dipped his in acknowledgment, then got up and walked down the
plane, taking the seat across from him.

John knew it was coming and wilted under Eric’s
gaze.

“What happened?” Eric finally asked.

John shrugged. “I froze.”

Eric’s eyes bored into his. “What really happened?”

John glanced down at the table between them. “It
was the hospital. Why would someone do that?”

“Some people are evil.”

John squirmed in his seat as he tried to explain
his lack of action. “He was clearly working with Abdullah and he was a traitor,
but I couldn’t kill him. I saw enough death at the hospital.”

“It hurts to take a life,” Eric said. “It steals
something from you. I think everyone who has a conscience and has killed knows
that feeling.”

That surprised him. “You feel this way, too?”

Eric smiled. “Of course. I’m not some inhuman
killing machine. Is that what you think Delta Operators are? Killing machines?
I joined Delta to serve my country, to keep war at bay, not to become a common
killer. It’s all about intent. If you kill to protect, you can find a way to
live with yourself. If you kill because you take pleasure in it? That’s what
makes you a monster. I told you in Denver. You’re not a monster.”

Relief washed over him. “You’ve been good to me,
Eric. I know it sounds dopey, but I want to make you proud.”

Eric patted him lightly on the shoulder. “Don’t
worry, kid. You’re doing fine.”

Mexico City, Mexico

he airplane dipped lower and
Abdullah glanced nervously through the window as the plane approached the
runway. In the distance, Mexico City stretched out through a cloud of smog, a
jumble of buildings and streets as far as he could see, sharp-toothed mountains
in the distance. The plane landed and taxied to the terminal where he
disembarked.

He half-expected jack-booted thugs to scream at
him and tackle him to the floor, but the flight from Homburg ended peacefully
and he was allowed through customs. He smiled and answered all the questions,
just a successful business man from India. They waved him through and he
offered a polite smile to the two masked Federal officers who guarded the
customs exit, then headed to the food court where he met the young man,
Emmanuel, who eyed him suspiciously.

He nodded at the young man and offered his hand. “Peace
be upon you.”

The young man rolled his eyes. “I’m Manny. My
cousin told me to get you over the border. I don’t wanna know your shit,
understand?.”

Abdullah nodded and leaned closer. “We need to
leave the airport as soon as possible,” he said quietly.

Manny shrugged and led him through the parking lot
to a beat up silver Nissan Sentra. The walk to the car was pleasant and
Abdullah was surprised at the climate. The thin air reminded him of the
mountains of Afghanistan. When they got in the car, he asked, “Would you mind
if we listened to the radio?”

Manny shrugged. “Whatever, man.”

He dug through the channels until he found an
English speaking newscaster. He listened intently as they drove through the
heavy traffic of Mexico City, the crisp air thick with pollution. “How long to
the border?”

“You kidding? A long time, man. Shit.”

Abdullah resisted the urge to smack the young man.
He may not be a Muslim, but he was a cousin of Mahbeer, and Mahbeer promised
that Manny would smuggle him over the border.

The man on the radio spoke about two American
soldiers tortured in Iraq, beheaded, their bodies desecrated. Abdullah
grimaced. Killing for Jihad was one thing but desecrating the dead? That was
unacceptable.

The newscaster was interrupted by a bulletin about
a bombing in Germany, devastation at the scene, many dead, and the manhunt to
find the culprits. Manny gave him a sidelong glance, then turned backed to the
packed streets of Mexico City.

* * *

Area 51

Eric sat with the rest of the team
in the briefing room. The flight back from Germany sapped their energy, leaving
them drained, but it was important to continue the investigation. He dreaded
the answer, but he asked anyway. “How many dead?”

Clark turned to him with weary eyes. “Two hundred
and thirty six.”

“Why?” John asked. “Why target a hospital?”

“Who knows,” Deion said. “Could be a target of
opportunity. Could be to spread fear.”

Eric nodded. It felt right. First the attack on
FOB Wildcat. Then the Landstuhl Medical Regional Center. “Does it occur to
anyone else that he’s targeting primarily military installations? What do we
know about the collaborators?”

Karen displayed their bios on the screen at the
front of the room. “Terrill Johnson, 26, by all accounts a mediocre Airman,
converted to Islam three years ago. Hector Guardado, 25, converted to Islam
about the same time. Their service records were undistinguished. Guardado’s the
most probable source for the C4, they’ve found discrepancies in the inventory
going back years. Greg Johansen, 25. He was a quiet one, no known Islamic ties,
recovered footage shows that he drove the ambulance. He was vaporized in the
blast. We’ve tracked their movements as best we could. There were no red flags,
no reason to think they would do something like this.”

“But they did,” Nancy said, her face a stony mask.
“What about Abdullah?”

“No sign of him. DNA samples taken from the
wastebasket in the bathroom of the apartment shows two other men were there.
Best guess, they left before you arrived. I’ve flagged all flights from Europe
to the US, but I don’t have to tell you how many people were in the air. We’ve
got agents tracking down those loose ends, but I doubt we’ll find anything.”

“What about other destinations?” Eric asked.

Clark shrugged. “Working on it. Canada had quite a
few flights that day. Mexico’s not helpful. The narco-gangsters have too much
influence and you can’t get good intel. It goes downhill after that. We get
nothing from Venezuela, of course.”

 Eric nodded. “Focus on Canada.”

“What if he’s headed back to Afghanistan?” Martin
asked.

“There’s always a chance,” Eric said, turning to
Karen. “What else?”

“I’ve got an intelligent agent watching the
militant websites, it’ll flag any new posts.”

“Keep at it,” Eric said. “We’ve got to find this
guy.”

* * *

John sat on his neatly made bed,
moaning softly. He was on the edge of remembering something important, but had
no idea what. He remembered the IED in Iraq as if it just happened, but
everything after was a blur.

There was a hole where certain things should be.
He remembered his parent’s funeral, bits and pieces, but the service itself was
hazy.

He remembered a man holding him down, beating him,
drowning him. He remembered other men, their hot breath in his face, asking
about bombs. No,
a
bomb.
The
bomb.

What bomb?

He shrugged off his clothes and lay on top of the
covers. It was the hospital in Germany that haunted him. He could still smell
it, burning rubber, dust, and everywhere the smell of death. Then, the two
Airmen, the machine gun fire.

Every dead body was tearing away at him.

He wanted out.

The more he thought about the bodies the more
nauseous he became until he ran to the bathroom, retching, emptying his stomach
into the toilet. He spat and swished water from the sink in his mouth to remove
the taste.

The bombing.

There was more than just PTSD or a concussion,
like the Docs claimed.

Something about Eric and Deion. The recruitment.
It was so fuzzy. His body was stronger than ever, but his mind was a blur of
fuzzy images, and none made sense.

I
’m going crazy. Do they still lock
crazy people away?

He stretched out on the bed, hoping for sleep, but
repeatedly jerked awake to check the clock until a fitful sleep claimed him.

His sleep was disturbed by the dream. He watched
as the building and school bus were consumed in an explosion, so sudden, not like
TV or a movie, just a bone shaking whump. The shockwave knocked him down into
the loose rock on the rooftop. He remembered being surprised. He struggled
upright, looking down upon the devastation.

The Red Cross. The children. The dead.

He came awake as his memories returned, like a
puzzle coming together.

The Red Cross.

It was me! Oh god, it was me!

He remembered the anger and hate, to tear flesh
from bone with his teeth. He wanted to lash out, to make them suffer!

And Deion. Deion was
not
his friend. Deion
had tortured him.

He’d made it home, just as planned. It was all
over the news, but he was too excited to watch. He spent the night in bed,
listening to his police scanner, as the emergency crews responded to the
bombing. He was leaving his apartment the next day and opening his truck door
when he heard the noise behind him. He turned but strong hands smashed his face
into his truck door, then slipped a bag over his head. They threw him into a
vehicle—a van, maybe. He hit the floor so hard he thought his ribs cracked.

He struggled up and the men punched him in the
stomach, then bent him over and hog-tied him. He cursed and kicked his legs,
but there was a sharp pinprick in his neck and that was all he remembered until
he woke, hot and sweaty, the air chokingly humid. He was tied to a chair in a
concrete room, men glaring at him.

Americans.

Deion was there, asking him questions. Why did he
bomb the Red Cross? Who helped? How did he do it?

How did they find me?
He asked and someone
beat his legs with a stick, and the questions started again. Why did he bomb
the Red Cross? Who helped?

Oh, how he wanted to kill them. He fantasized
about breaking free, tearing them apart with his bare hands.

They lifted him from the chair and left him
hanging from chains in the ceiling until his shoulders burned and he howled in
pain until his voice cracked.

They beat him, sometimes with sticks and sometimes
with boots. They slapped him across the face. They put him in a little box and
he felt like his heart would burst, his body crushed in the tiny space.

They removed him from the box and held him down,
covering his face with a cloth and pouring water over it. He choked, frantic,
and when he started to black out they pulled the wet cloth off his face and
rolled him to his side so he could retch out the water.

He broke. He told them about his request for
emergency leave. He told them about the Red Cross. He told them about how the
country was falling apart.

They beat him. Sometimes it was Deion, sometimes
another man.

He smelled shit and he knew it was his. He
screamed and cried and didn’t care. They were going to kill him. He prayed they
would do it and end the torture.

They stopped.

It was dark. Someone brought him water and a bowl
of rice. He tried to eat but found he couldn’t swallow. He choked on the water
and it came right back up.

His balls ached from their kicks. He gagged at his
own smell.

They came back the next day and took off his
clothes, smacking his head with their palms, then they chained him up again and
sprayed him with freezing cold water. He could not answer their questions
through chattering teeth.

The day continued as before, then the next, and
then the one after that. The questions, the beatings. Sometimes they would turn
on a siren, his head splitting from the noise.

Time slipped away. He forgot who he was and why he
was there. He thought the men were aliens come to eat him, to harvest his
organs. Then he thought they might be demons and screamed in fear when they
entered.

Why did you bomb the Red Cross? Who helped you?

Their questions made no sense. Something inside
him had broken.

He slept on the floor, the rough concrete cold
against his bare skin. The beatings had stopped. He was given water and broth.
He watched himself from a distance, an out-of-body experience, and knew he had
gone crazy.

Deion was there. “Nothing else to say? You got
nothing?”

He choked out a sob. “I don’t know.”

Deion left and the room went dark. Time passed but
he could not track the days. He tried to track the feedings but he lost count.

The food got better. Water and bread at first,
then water and a sandwich. Other men came but they all looked the same, all
wire rim glasses and big beefy necks.

They took the plywood from the window of his cell
and he could suddenly track the passage of the time. At first it was important
to him, then he realized how little it mattered.

He knew where he was. The heat. The humidity. The
bright light. There was only one place he
could
be.

Guantanamo.

They came and chained him to the floor and a new
man appeared. Eric. He tried to explain to the man why he blew up the Red
Cross, then braced for the torture to start.

Eric stuck him with a needle.

Blurring. He was somewhere else.

Oh God the pain!

His body was on fire, a million pinpricks moving
under his skin. He prayed to die, and then he heard voices, yelling and
shouting. He tried to scream.

He came awake from the dream, wide-eyed. He was in
his bunk at Area 51, the covers kicked on the floor.

He remembered his recruitment, his parent’s
funeral. How could he have made his parent’s funeral?

Because it was all a lie. He was not recruited
into a secret Delta operation. He was a guinea pig. They put things inside his
body. They altered his memory.

Eric was not his friend. Neither was Deion. They
were using him, testing him.

He remembered the Red Cross bombing and he loathed
himself for it. What kind of human being was he? How could he have done
something so heinous?

He was trapped inside the mountain. If he left, he
wouldn’t make it ten miles before they would find him and kill him.

He deserved it. If only he had died in Guantanamo.

Eric is wrong. I am monster.

* * *

Nogales, Mexico

Abdullah dreamed of his wife, the
way she smiled when she cooked. Oh, how he missed watching her cook. It made
her so happy. So content.

Manny nudged him awake.

He rubbed his eyes and looked out at the darkening
streets of Nogales, Mexico. No matter where in the world he went, he was always
surrounded by squalor. Nogales was no exception. They pulled up to the house on
Independencia Street, not far from the border, and Manny pulled binoculars from
the glove compartment, opened the door, and scanned the sky.

Abdullah was confused. “What are you looking for?”

“Drones,” Manny replied. “Cops are always watching
us. Got to be careful.”

“Have you ever seen a drone?” he asked.

“No,” Manny admitted, “but everybody knows about
them. Don’t you watch TV?” He put the binoculars back and led him inside where
five men greeted them. The biggest pulled a semiautomatic pistol from his
waistband and pointed it at them. “What shit you got us into, Manny?”

Manny held up his hands and took a step back,
almost bumping into Abdullah. “Whoa, chill. This is the guy.”