Terror Rising: Book 0 – The Insurgence (15 page)

“
Don’t doubt yourself,” he said under
his breath. “These bastards are close. I can feel it.”

He hurried along, his breathing growing more
rapid with each step. The structure was suddenly in view and the
coordinates close to matching. He reached the clearing where he
could get a better look at the compound. There were no windows or
doors. A large tarp was spread over it, held aloft upon several
poles. Not a soul was visible outside.

“
Where you at, Salah?” Martinez asked.
He crouched and suddenly felt the ground beneath him give way. He
dropped down in an instant, and his body smacked against the
ground, deep in a pit surrounded by darkness. He lay on his side in
pain. The goggles had flown off his head, and he still had little
understanding of what had happened.

Sand poured into the hole from all sides
like an hourglass. Martinez tried to stand, but he had twisted an
ankle in the fall, maybe even broken something. He crawled around
on all fours, searching for his pistol and goggles.

“
What the hell?” he said to himself in
a panicked breath.

He looked up into an opening about twelve
feet above him as though he had fallen into a recently dug grave.
He could see movement. The silhouettes of several men, casting
shadows, moving around and looking into the hole. The shine of a
flashlight hit him in his eyes as he stood frozen against the wall.
A glimmer of hope that the recon team had found him entered his
mind. But when one of the men spoke, the prospect of any such luck
diminished as quickly as he had, falling into the hole.

“
Who do we have here?” the man holding
the flashlight said in a thick Arabic accent. Several others
started laughing in a threatening way.

***

Martinez awoke at the shock of a bucket of
cold water thrown in his face. He wasn’t sure where he was or who
was holding him. He gasped for air, trying to see, but everything
was blurry, and the room was very dark. The laughter that followed
was similar to what he had heard when trapped in the hole. If the
people holding him were indeed terrorists, as he suspected, he was
surprised that they hadn’t yet killed him.

They had him in a metal chair bolted to the
ground. An empty bucket was at his feet. He tried to move, but his
arms were bound with rope behind the railing of the seat. His
ankles were tied together as well. His leather jacket was gone, as
were his shoes. His T-shirt was soaked and his jeans dripping wet.
His bare feet touched the sandy concrete floor.

He blinked rapidly as water ran down his
swollen face. His body ached, particularly his sides. It hurt to
breathe. It hurt to move. It even hurt to think. He whipped his
head around, trying to shake the water off and see who he was
dealing with.

“
Why am I here? What do you want?” he
said, exhausted.

He could make out the figure of a man
standing five feet in front of him. The man held up a flashlight
and shined the light into Martinez’s face again, blinding him.

“
I ask the questions here,” the man
said, calmly. Martinez detected a Middle Eastern accent. They
certainly weren’t the border recon team he had hoped.

“
What is your name?” the man
began.

“
Get that light out of my eyes!”
Martinez shouted, squinting.

The man clicked it off. For a moment
Martinez could see. Then his captor flashed it back on and off
again repeatedly, while laughing to himself. “Your name,” the man
said.

Martinez could make out the man’s thin face
and dark sunken eyes. His trim beard seemed little more than a five
o’clock shadow, mixed with shades of gray that matched his short
hair. His beige pants matched a long-sleeved shirt with an open
collar, worn under a black open vest. Martinez could also see that
he was wearing sandals.

There were five or so men standing behind
him, but Martinez couldn’t make out their faces. He could, however,
see that each and every one of them was holding a rifle. He moved
his head around, scanning the small room. The walls were barren
concrete as was the ground. Behind him, he glimpsed at chain
hanging from the ceiling. To his side was a flat doctor’s exam
table with open leather straps lying out. Terror pricked at the
back of Martinez’s neck.

“
We don’t have all day,” the man said.
“Why don’t you make this easy on yourself?”

Martinez turned his head to face the man who
was speaking and the quiet, stonelike entourage behind him. As his
eyes further adjusted, he caught sight of perhaps the most
disturbing thing of all in the room: a table in the corner with a
row of knives, a power drill, and a branding iron.

“
My name is Jorge Martinez,” he said,
looking the man directly in the eye.

“
Jorge Martinez?” the man said. He
took two steps closer and then continued. “And just what were you
doing around here, Jorge Martinez?”

“
Nothing,” Martinez said. “I was lost.
Truck broke down a mile off the freeway.” His mind raced with
possible answers to the questions that were sure to follow. “I was
looking for some help.”

“
You really shouldn’t be walking
around here, Jorge Martinez,” the man continued.

“
Where is here?” Martinez
asked.

The man turned his head slightly to one of
the men behind and to his left. They spoke in Arabic as the headman
was handed a long wooden cane. He turned to face Martinez,
brandishing the cane, and looked at him with a stern, serious
face.

Before Martinez could react, the cane came
down with full force and wracked his legs with such intensity he
thought the bones might be fractured. He felt hot, scorching pain
and couldn’t help screaming, which only garnered hoots and laughter
from the amused group.

“
What did I tell you about questions
?” the man shouted.

Martinez gritted his teeth, waiting for the
searing pain to leave his legs. The man took a few more steps
toward him, extended the cane, and playfully tapped him on the head
with it. “Should we start at the beginning?”

“
I’m Jorge Martinez,” he said through
rapid breaths.

“
You said that already.”

“
I got lost. Wandered too far from the
road. That’s all. I’m nobody. I live in El Paso. Work for a
construction company.”

The cane struck his legs again with even
more force, landing in the very same place where he was hit before.
Martinez screamed again as he thrashed about, trying to get loose.
But it did no good. The chair wasn’t going anywhere and neither was
he.

The man placed a hand over his chest. “My
name is Kareem.”

Martinez lifted his head. His eyes watered
with tears. Kareem held both arms out and continued. “Now that we
are no longer strangers, it’s time we got to know each other
better.”

Kareem snapped his fingers, and one of the
men leaned forward holding a backpack. Martinez could see that the
man’s face was concealed by a black mask with an opening in the
middle for his eyes. His dress was reminiscent of an ISIS
fighter.

Kneeling, Kareem took the
backpack and set it at his feet. He unzipped the bag and pulled out
a pair of night-vision goggles—
his
pair of goggles. Kareem looked up, smiling,
exposing slightly crooked and yellow teeth.

“
You always walk around with
these?”

He released the goggles and dropped them on
the floor. Martinez stared ahead, not saying a word. Kareem reached
into the bag again and this time pulled out a 9mm covered in dust
with an attached silencer. “How about this? This belong to
you?”

Martinez lowered his head again, feeling
some relief that he had left his wallet back in his truck. Though
Kareem was well on his way to assuming that Martinez didn’t just
happen to be out looking for help in the desert. He reached into
the bag one last time and pulled out the long knife that had been
strapped at Martinez’s ankle.

“
Bet this would come in handy right
now, eh?” Kareem laughed and stood up, leaving the cane, pistol,
and goggles at his feet. He approached Martinez, holding the blade
out, taunting.

“
You have a wife? Family?”

“
Yes,” Martinez said, looking away. He
felt control fading away—if he’d had any to begin with.

“
And who do you work for in the
government?”

Martinez looked down, hesitating. The sharp
point of the blade was inches from his left eye.

Kareem told him softly, “If there were ever
a time to tell the truth, now would be the time.”

As the blade got closer, Martinez flinched.
“I’m a Border Patrol Officer! Del Rio sector.”

Intrigued, Kareem lowered the blade. “I see…
I knew it was something. I thought FBI.” He then brought the blade
back up and pressed the tip against Martinez’s cheek, drawing
blood. “Are you sure you’re not FBI?”

Martinez clenched his eyes shut. “Yes!”

Kareem released his pressure and lowered the
blade once again. “Great. Now let us make you a little more
comfortable.”

He snapped his fingers, and two masked men
from the shadows stepped forward and walked over to the chair.
Kareem handed the knife to a tall masked man who then stood behind
Martinez. The man sawed at the rope around his ankles until he cut
it loose.

Martinez’s eyes darted around the room. He
wasn’t sure what they had planned for him or why. He didn’t know if
he was ready for it. Would it even matter if he told them anything?
Would they simply kill him then? The man cut the rope at his
wrists, and Martinez’s hands slumped to the side. For a moment, he
was free. And it was an opportunity that he wasn’t going to let
pass.

Martinez leapt from the chair, punching the
masked man in front of him square in the nose. Following a pop, the
man jerked back with his hands to his face. Martinez knew one thing
and one thing only: his pistol was only a few feet away from
him.

He pushed Kareem and charged forward. The
taller man ran, the one who’d been behind the chair, ran after him
as the remaining men swarmed him like moths to the light.

Martinez leapt to the ground toward his
pistol. His chest hit the concrete, knocking the wind out of him. A
dozen feet were moving toward him in unison. Kareem shouted from
the sidelines to stop him. The muffled cries of the masked man
continued in the background.

As Martinez reached for his pistol, inches
from his grasp, a large weight fell on top of him, pinning him
down. The tall man dug his knee into Martinez’s back and yanked
both arms behind him, dislocating one of his shoulders.

Martinez screamed just as a boot from one of
the other men kicked him right across the face. An intense white
flash left his head rattling and his ear throbbing with a
high-pitched ringing. Within moments, he was hoisted up by multiple
masked men and carried across the room in a frenzy. His vision was
blurry again and his senses disoriented. They tossed him flat on
the doctor’s table—hard. Blood spurted from his mouth like a
sprinkler.

Some of the men backed away as hands grabbed
both his arms and legs, holding him down and fastening the leather
straps at each end. He screamed out in anger, trying to move, but
they had him fastened, arms at his sides and legs bound at each
ankle. They tightened straps over his chest and stomach, and he
could hardly breathe. Movement was impossible. They had been
rendering him defenseless and at their mercy.

The hard metal surface of the table seemed
to dig into his back, as if he were lying on spikes. The men
dispersed, leaving only Kareem standing over him, staring down,
curious. The ceiling light cast a shadow on Kareem’s face, and for
a moment, he just examined Martinez as if he were a science
project.

“
That’s one way to speed up the
process,” Kareem said with a smile. “We weren’t going to jump right
to this, but you seem to be in one big hurry. So let’s begin…” He
paused and then held up Martinez’s knife, taunting him. “It’s
always the hardest at the beginning, but then the body does this
thing. It tries to suppress the pain and numb the body by releasing
endorphins.”

“
Listen to me!” Martinez said, cutting
in. The side of his face was badly swollen from the kick, and he
could hardly speak. “I don’t care about this place or you. I was
looking for drug traffickers.”

He had already determined that they weren’t
cartel. They were, in fact, the very terror cell he was looking
for. But he had screwed up. They weren’t supposed to catch him. He
had been so careful, or had he?

“
Whatever reason you have for being
here, we are going to get to,” Kareem began.

Martinez jerked his body, testing the straps
and trying to gauge whether it might be possible to loosen them and
break free.

Out of the corner of his good eye, he saw
two men from the corner of the room begin to push the wheel table
in his direction, displaying instruments of pain and torture.

Kareem leaned in. “Let me tell you a little
about myself. I went to school in Jordan to become a surgeon.” He
turned to the table as the two masked men parked it and walked
away.

Kareem set Martinez’s knife on the cart and
picked up an X-Acto knife about the size of a writing pen. “I had a
promising career ahead of me. But then war broke out back home.
Civil war, they called it. And I had to return from school at the
behest of my family.”

He ran the knife down
Martinez’s chest. “Your government got involved. They backed the
rebels.
My people.
We hated Assad and wanted him gone. But what the U.S. didn’t
understand—or maybe they did—was that Assad was at war with the
Islamic State.
That’s
why we wanted him gone.”