Sleeper Cell Super Boxset (67 page)

Their backpacks rested on the deck of the boat, filled with whatever they had been able to fit into them. She had no real concept of how long they would be staying at the cabin. Craig had told her a couple days, but with the port attacks, anything was possible.

Inside her pack was a week’s worth of clothes, an emergency radio, and most importantly, her .38 Smith & Wesson. When they had first married, Rachael had been adamantly opposed to firearms. In time, her views had changed, and as they coasted along the Hudson shoreline, having a weapon made all the difference to her.

The ride had been quiet, with little conversation between her and Nick. He hadn’t asked many questions, and she didn’t feel like providing many answers. A map rested near the steering column, but she hadn’t needed it. She had navigated on instinct. It was familiar trip with most of it a straight shot through the narrow channel of the river, past the riverside homes, and then into a sanctuary of undisturbed nature.

She steered the boat to a stream off the river. The GPS navigation screen had pinged the location of the cabin, not too far off. Nick looked around as they neared the cabin. Rachael guided the boat to the shore, apprehensive about what they would find once they got there.

The boat steadied against the bank. They had arrived. She shut off the engine and coasted to shore. As the boat slowed, she took off her life jacket and tossed it to the deck. Fear grew within her as she kept trying to convince herself that they were safe. It had been a month since they had seen the cabin. Craig had since stocked it with canned and preserved foods and installed a fresh-water pump. She just hoped that their supplies hadn’t been pillaged.

“Let’s go,” she said.

As he jumped on shore, Nick looked eager to get to the cabin, though Rachael didn’t fully understand why. She stood up and tossed him the rope. He tied the boat to a nearby tree, knotting it the way his father had taught him. Rachael climbed out with her pack, and they began the short walk to the cabin.

She still hadn’t told him everything. She almost felt ashamed knowing that the world he knew would no longer be the same. She wished there was something she could have done to change things, but she was helpless.

Under the cloudy sky, they walked into the forest with their packs on. The cabin was a half mile ahead, and surrounded by a natural concealment of trees and brush.

“How long do we gotta stay out here?” Nick asked.

She clutched the radio at her side, hoping to hear back from Craig at any minute.

              “Not long,” she replied.

              They strolled through the open forest under large, encompassing oak trees, the quiet broken only by the sound of foraging squirrels and birds. The cabin awaited them ahead: a small two-bedroom log structure sitting atop four piers that positioned it above ground. The water heater to the side of the cabin glistened in the sunlight. As they approached, it seemed as if no other soul was around. Exactly how Rachael wanted it. The place looked just as they had left it a month ago.

              “Mom,” Nick said.

              “Yes?”

              “When’s Dad getting here?”

              “He’ll be here soon,” she said.

              “I heard about the terrorist attacks,” he said.

              Rachael could feel her heart sinking.

              “You did?”

              “Yeah. We’re gonna get through this, right?”

              “Yes. Of course,” she said.

              “Why are they attacking us?”

              She stopped and turned to him, trying to think of the right answer. “Because there are evil people out there who don’t like us.”

              “Why?” he asked.

              “Because of who we are and how we live.”

              “Yeah, but what did we do to them?”

              Rachael sighed. “It’s complex. To some in the world we’ve done plenty of bad things.”

              “Like what?”

              “It doesn’t matter. Nothing justifies these terrorist attacks. Nothing.” 

              Nick seemed out of questions, or at least perplexed by his mother’s answers. They stopped at the steps leading to the front deck, and Rachael half anticipated that some sort of creature would jump out of the cabin and attack them. It was strange to be out in the wilderness alone.

The cabin was dark inside. Before they walked up the wooden steps, Rachael told Nick to stay back as she pulled her revolver from her backpack.

“Whoa!” Nick said. “Since when did you get a gun?”

“Just wait here,” she said, holding it in the air.

She went up the steps and looked through both windows. No movement inside. She went down the steps and then walked around to the back of the cabin. No recent footprints. No one there. The coast was clear. 

              “Everything is going to be okay,” she said as she returned. “I just want to check the place out first.”

              Nick nodded in agreement as Rachael pulled out her keychain and unlocked the front door. She walked in and scanned the small living room and adjacent kitchen, looking for any signs of intrusion, only to see a small, stuffy living space covered in dust. Their amenities were limited: a sofa, a table, mini-fridge, sink, underground septic system, portable water heater, and generator—all the luxuries of an RV. 

Nick entered the cabin and ran off to claim one of the two small bedrooms. His footsteps clomped across the planks of the hardwood floor.

Rachael yelled out after him. “Don’t get too comfortable. We have a lot of cleaning to do.”

From the first bedroom, Nick groaned.

Rachael sat on the stiff armrest of a nearby couch and tried to not worry herself about Craig. The situation was bad enough without him. But Craig was protected. He was FBI. That was what she thought, anyway. The government wouldn’t let anything bad happen to him. With that comfort, she picked up her backpack and went to claim the other room.

***

Craig awoke lying on his side with his hands tied behind his back. There was a burlap sack over his head, blinding him except for some spots of light that came through the bag’s tiny holes. He gasped, choking on the dry air. The hard ground beneath him was slightly cool, like a basement or underground cellar. His face was sore all over. One eye was swollen shut. He tasted blood on his chapped lips. He tried to get up, but it was hard with his hands tied the way they were.

He believed he was alone, hearing no one and nothing else in the room, and he rolled onto his back. Every muscle ached, and the bag was tied tightly around his neck, making it hard to breathe. Moving his head from side to side did nothing to shake the bag off. His first thought was to escape. He pulled at the nylon rope binding his hands together, but couldn’t get it loose. He grunted and struggled while trying to find a way to regain his feet. The claustrophobia-inducing bag disoriented him, and he tried to control his breathing and not panic. With one big push, he rolled again onto his side and sat up, hunched over his lap.

“Okay,” he said under his breath. “You’re almost there.”

The stitching of the bag was all he could see. If there had been someone else in the room, he believed they would have spoken by then. A painful knot on the back of his head throbbed as things started to come back to him. At first it felt as if he had just woken up from a bad dream, but he quickly knew that everything was very real. He had been captured. And he knew far too well how ISIS handled prisoners.

His first instinct was to escape. Naturally he had been disarmed and, to the best of his foggy memory, he was the only one to survive the shootout. The blurry image of Malaka’s head being cut off and ripped from her body came rushing back. Ma’mun had held it high as blood dripped down and veins dangled from the bottom. For some reason, they had taken him alive, but he knew he had an expiration date. The horrors he was certain they had planned filled him with dread.

Craig readjusted and got to his knees. Footsteps suddenly sounded from overhead. Craig froze, convinced he was in some kind of basement. Through the bag, the room was dark, but he could see the light of a single bulb from above. There was no indication of any outside light or windows. In the little time he figured he had left before someone came down the stairs, Craig rose carefully, using only his legs, and trying to maintain his balance. Once he got to his feet, he felt less vulnerable and more in control. He listened for more footsteps but didn’t hear anything.

With careful steps, he walked forward to investigate. There were no obstacles in his path or anything blocking him until he came to a cement wall. He turned and moved along the wall to the corner of the room. There was still nothing in his way. The hope of coming across something that could help him free his hands burned inside. Doing that came first, and then he could rip the bag off his face and prepare to fight for his life.

He moved along the other side of the wall and tripped over an empty urine-smelling bucket, causing it to roll across the floor with a sound that made his heart leap. Footsteps from upstairs resumed, filling him with panic. All the captive training he had taken rushed back to him. They had taught him to resist divulging any sensitive information and to simply wait for hostage negotiations to play out. He wasn’t supposed to try to escape. He wasn’t supposed to fight back against his captors. All these steps seemed ludicrous when dealing with a group like ISIS.

His only chance of getting out alive would be to escape, or so he believed. He finally reached the handrail of a staircase. He turned around and felt along the wooden steps and handrail for any kind of sharp object sticking out: a screw or nail. His hands moved wildly as he walked back and forth against the midsection of the steps, as high up as he could reach. He struck the tip of a nail sticking out from one of the risers. Some careless carpenter would never know what his oversight meant. Carefully, he moved his arms to position the knot of the rope against the nail.

With painful awkwardness, he dug the nail into the rope and was forced to shift his arms to the point where he thought he might dislocate his shoulder. The knot job was sloppy, and he could feel the tightness loosening around his wrist. Getting the bag off his face was his primary motivating force, making him work the rope more frantically. Just as he dug the nail tip into the knot further, he heard the door swing open and footsteps clomping down the stairs. He moved his arms, desperately trying to loosen the knot. The rope was slipping. He could move his wrists. As the footsteps got closer, he could hear Husein’s voice calling out.

“I don’t know anything. Let me go!”

Then came a cry, followed by what sounded like a scuffle and a push, and he heard Husein tumble down the stairs and hit the ground moaning.

“Shut your mouth!” a man yelled. His voice seemed to come from the top of the stairs.

The rope on his wrists finally came loose. He went right for the bag, and then he heard a second voice. Two men were talking, as Husein continued to sob. He then heard two sets of footsteps coming down the steps.

“Where’s the other one? The American?” one of them said.

Craig crouched under the stairs, grateful for the darkness, and yanked at the thin rope of the bag. Once it was loosened, he tore it off completely from his sweat-drenched head and took a deep breath. His vision was blurry on account of his swollen eye, but he could see the figures of two men searching through the darkened room. There were a bookshelf and some boxes in the other corner where he hadn’t ventured. The bucket he’d tripped over rested upside down in the middle of the room and, most chillingly, a black ISIS flag hung on the otherwise bare walls.

“There he is!” one of the men said, pointing at the stairs.

They immediately rushed over as Craig balled his fists, ready to fight. He punched the first one, a short, portly man with a thick, messy beard, in the face. The man fell back, holding his nose in agony. Craig leaped out and went for the second man, a slender and muscular tattoo-covered thug who looked as if he had just gotten out of prison. Craig swung at him but missed. The man jumped back, hopping around on his heels, smiling as he pulled a pair of brass knuckles from his jeans.

“I’m gonna have some fun with you,” he said.

“That’s enough!” a voice called from the staircase.

It wasn’t the portly man. He was still on his knees holding his nose. Craig heard the clicking of a weapon and knew it was time to quit. He slowly held his hands up as the footsteps came nimbly down the stairs, approaching him. The tattooed man smiled again, exposing a missing tooth on the top row.

“Why is he up? Who untied him?” the voice behind Craig asked. 

Tattoo Man shrugged. “I don’t know. We came down here and he got free somehow. Must think he’s some kind of superstar.”

“Tie him back up. Now!”

Tattoo man took a step toward Craig. “No problem.” He swung his arm back and punched Craig in the face with his brass knuckles. The force sent Craig tumbling back, near Husein. Tattoo Man’s laughter was the last thing he heard before hitting the ground.

When Craig came to, he was sitting against the wall with his hands tied behind his back, much tighter than before. Whoever had done it this time, had done it right. His legs were out in front and bound at the ankles. His only relief was that they hadn’t put the bag back on his head. His face throbbed with pain. It hurt to move his jaw. He feared that something might have been broken; however, broken bones were currently the least of his problems.

He was in the same basement, but things had changed. At least ten feet away in the corner, a set of tripod lights illuminated the ISIS flag from either side. In between the lights was a digital camcorder atop its own tripod. It was no secret to Craig what the setup was all about. ISIS was notorious for their snuff-film propaganda. He couldn’t believe that, for him, it had come to this.

Sitting on the other side of the room, across from him, was Husein, bound at his hands and feet as well. He was awake and looked diminished in size and spirit.