The Sleeper (12 page)

The night was over. The sun was rising. The air was still. The screaming men were silent now, all of them. Abu Zubayr, clutching his shattered knee, made no sound at all as Nureddin kicked him in the head, knocking him over on his face, and tied his hands behind his back with a piece of wire.

An engine coughed to life somewhere out of sight. The generator, I thought at first, but who would do that? A plane. We saw it rising quickly about half a mile away. Small. Single engine. A Cessna. It banked sharp, real sharp, like it was going to fall out of the sky, and it headed south. Abu Zubayr didn't even look up at the sound.

“Who the fuck is that?” I said.

He said nothing.

“Who the fuck is that, Salah?”

Nothing.

“Is that Al-Shami?”

Nothing.

“Nureddin,” I said. I pointed at my eye, then at Abu Zubayr, and saw that Nureddin understood he was to watch him. “I'm going to take a look around,” I said and pointed at the other buildings. Nureddin nodded.

It wasn't until then, just then, that I really saw what we'd done, how many men we'd killed. And I felt it for a second, felt the whole weight of death like a wave rushing up at me, tightening my throat, shortening my breath. Then I turned away. It was time to think about the living. About all the living. About Miriam. About Betsy. And about all of our American dead.

The extension cords from the half-destroyed generator led into the house and, sure enough, one wire connected to a sat phone, the other to a laptop. The screen lit up, the window-paned flag of Microsoft waved—and the security box appeared. I X'ed it out. Slowly, the programs kept loading. The files in “My Documents” were encrypted. But maybe these guys were lazy. There were some quick bits and pieces I could pick up in other folders. Temporary Internet Files and History showed whoever was on this laptop was doing a lot of Web surfing. I scrolled through the entries, ordered them by date, ordered them by name. There were a whole lot of pages from religious sites. But there were even more from cummslurpingslutts.com. “What would Osama say about that?” I wondered to the four walls.

There were travel agency sites, banking sites. But most of them showed nothing offline when I clicked them. There was a site for Lloyd's shipping registry. But again, the page came up blank.

What else looked interesting? MapQuest: those little computerized plans of states and cities that show you just how to get to any address in America. There were a lot of those in the temporary files. One of them was for Westfield, Kansas, 6970 Pecos Way. I folded the laptop shut and put it under my arm.

The Somali sun scorched everything beneath it, but none of those left alive outside had moved. Nureddin crouched in front of Abu Zubayr as if he could see the flames of Hell burning the Arab's sting-scarred skin, and he enjoyed what he saw.

“Where are they?” I asked Abu Zubayr. But he didn't say a word. “Where are my wife and child?” Abu Zubayr smiled, and his dry lips cracked red. I kicked him in his bloody knee. He let out a choked scream, but no words followed. “Who's got them?” I shouted. I laid into his ribs, kicking the wind out of him, then let him gasp back his breath. Still he didn't talk.

Nureddin touched my shoulder and I swung around. He had his long knife out of its scabbard. He motioned me to be still, then stood over Abu Zubayr for a minute, just looking at him.

“Don't,” I said. Nureddin looked at the Qaeda operative, and at me. Then he turned to the paralyzed sentry, and pulled him straight into Abu Zubayr's line of sight. Nureddin used his foot to turn the man's head until the open eyes, now dry, red, and burned, were looking straight at Abu Zubayr's face. Nureddin laced the fingers of his left hand into the sentry's right, pulling the arm upright and taut, then swung the heavy knife in a powerful forehand that cut the sentry's arm completely off at the elbow. Blood spurted from the arteries like red ink from a squirt gun as the stub fell to the ground again. Nureddin released his grip on the hand and put the severed forearm neatly to one side, then took a strip of cloth and tied a tourniquet around the gushing biceps. He was going to keep the sentry alive a while longer. The man's burned eyes were moving in his head, rolling in narrow, agonized circles.

What Abu Zubayr was thinking just then I couldn't tell you, but I sat down in the shade of the battered mosque, forcing back the dry heave that was rising in my throat. It was going to take me a minute to ask any questions. I opened the laptop. My fingers trembled a little as they touched the keyboard. I focused on the screen. On the address in Westfield. When I heard the sound of Nureddin's blade chopping through a joint, I didn't look up, but a small geyser of blood splashed across my hands and the computer. I wiped it off as best I could, but the screen, the keys, my fingers were smeared with it.

“Salah,” I said, “I don't know what he's got planned for you. And I'm not sure if I can stop him. But I can try if you give me a little help.”

“You are weak,” he whispered.

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess I am.” A bee lit on the screen. I blew gently and it flew away. “And you know—you know what, Salah? I am tired of killing. I am so fucking tired of killing that I am going to do whatever it takes to stop it. And whatever it takes to protect my own. Whatever. Now let's start with the password to this encryption system.”

“America is weak,” he whispered.

“Whatever,” I said.

“America is—” He stopped short. I glanced up. Nureddin had just castrated the sentry. “You will not let him do anything to me,” said Abu Zubayr. “There is too much you want to know.”

“What I want to know is in here,” I said. “But there's not a whole lot of time. The battery is at—fifty-seven percent. It says that's over an hour. I don't know. My laptop always cuts off real quick when it drops under fifty percent. And when this one goes, I'm out of here. I'll be taking this back to—somewhere we can work on it. Nureddin will stay here with you.” Over the next few minutes, the old shifta continued to build his little human shrine beneath Abu Zubayr's good eye. The fountains of blood became a trickle, and by the time Nureddin hacked through the man's neck, there was no blood flowing at all.

“Strange poison,” I said. “Lets you live, but doesn't let you move. I wonder what that poor bastard was thinking while Nureddin took him apart?”

No answer.

“Salah, I'm going to ask you just one more question, then I'm out of here. Where is my family?”

“I don't know.”

“You know they lived at 6970 Pecos Way.”

“I don't know.”

“Who does?”

He shook his head.

“Bullshit,” I said.

“I don't know.”

The laptop's warning beeper started chiming like a digital alarm clock.

“I'm gone,” I said.

“
They're
gone, Kurtovic.”

“No.”

“But you can always find another little whore.”

I turned off the computer, put it gently on the ground, and pulled the knife out of my belt.

 

Nureddin saw the technicals a long way off, coming at us through the late afternoon, racing, bouncing, veering over muddy ruts, men in the back holding onto the .50-calibers like rodeo riders hanging onto their saddles. They didn't aim, they just shot. One round popped into the wall of the little mosque and pocked it a couple of inches deep just above my head. But I didn't have it in me to move. I thought—I thought—I could not think anymore, but there was the idea somewhere in my head that if we could just wait for night, we would be okay, we could get back out through the minefield. Something. Get away from this place and what happened here. Just an hour or so away. The sun was low. Another .50-caliber hit the wall of the mosque and went clean through it. They had to build these places of worship better, I decided. What would God think?

Nureddin was moving all over the compound. He was looking for—something. Nureddin would take care of us. He always took care of us. Nureddin, my friend. I wondered what Betsy would think of him. What would Betsy think? Where was Betsy? Funny name to be saying out here. Betsy. This wasn't really a Betsy kind of place. We were so far from Betsy and Miriam Land. So far. No, this sure doesn't look like Kansas, Toto.

An RPG is what Nureddin found. Good for you, Nureddin. You are one smart son of a bitch. Wish I could move. Wish I could help you. But I am just so tired, you know. You can see that, can't you? Forgive me, old buddy. It's been such a long day of work. Should have left when I said I would. Did I learn so much in the last eight hours? It was such a slow thing. Such an uncooperative bastard. But he was polite after a while. That was good. Good to be polite.

Where are you, Nureddin? The air went hollow for a second and the explosion left my ears ringing. Those rocket-propelled grenades always make so damn much noise. Big noise. One of the technicals is on its side. Good move, Nur. Wish I could help. Those other two bastards are going to be right on top of us in a couple of minutes. Guess—yep, guess I better try to do something. Let's see, prone position. That's good. That's good. Hands shaking? No. Weird they're not shaking now. They were shaking like Parkinson's just a few minutes ago. But the aim's steady now. The bullet goes right through the windshield of the first technical. Should have got the driver. Truck should crash. They always do in movies. But it just rolls to a stop. One of the men in the back gets out, pushes the dead driver aside, and takes the wheel himself.

What's that dragonfly shadow moving over the ground and up the walls of the buildings? Something is coming out of the sun. Hello, Predator. Taking a little look-see? Hello, Langley.

One of the technicals has stopped and the .50-caliber man is pumping a stream of bullets at the great metal gnat in the sky. That technical stops firing. It's in fiery pieces. Hellfiery pieces. But the other technical is just fine. Too bad. Going to have to fight, I guess. Maybe get shot. Maybe die. So many maybes.

The back of the head of the Somali manning the last .50 blows away like the Zapruder film. Nice shot, Nureddin. The technical turns and pulls behind a low dune. Another shooter gets up in the bed. A better shooter. The bullets are coming so close I can feel the heat under my skin.

It's darker. The night curtain has dropped real quick. Or I'm real slow. The shooting has stopped. Good. Can't see so good to shoot.

Somebody is on my back, on my head. Arms pulled behind me. Strap around my wrists. Plastic cuffs. Where'd they get those?
We
use those. Standard government issue. Pulled to my feet, patted down. Thrown against the wall inside the mosque.

“Jesus,” someone shouts. “Get in here, Archangel. Take a look at this.”

Fluttery noise outside. Silenced gun cutting loose three-round bursts. I hear the loud report of the FAL. Then somebody coming in through the door. And somebody else. Can feel their movement better than I can see them.

“Out!” one of them shouts at the other. “Get out now! Cover from outside.”

“But—”

“Now!”

“Yessir.”

The op commander is close to my face. I smell the dryness of his mouth. Flashlight on. Cold light. Bright. Blinding. Sweeping room. Light focusing. Stopping on the naked, bloody thing lying almost next to me on the floor. “God Almighty.” Not my voice.

“Abu Zubayr,” I say. “Still alive. Can still talk.” I look at my chest in the white glow of the Maglite. At my legs. Everything caked with dust and blood. “I—I—can't do more.”

“It's me.”

“You?”

The man shines the light on his own face. “It's me: Griffin.”

“Griffin. Good Griffin. Griffin, my friend. Ahhhh.” I bang my head on the wall. Still isn't working. “Miriam,” I say. “Miriam and Betsy. Gone.”

“No,” says Griffin. “No. We've got them. They're okay. But I don't know what the hell we're going to do with you.”

The sandpaper feel of my eyes moving under the skin of the lids and the chill of the sweat seeping down my back told me I was alive. There was something pressing against my cheekbones like the rubber rims of goggles, but there was no light, only the smell of fuel and disinfectant in the air, and the engine vibrations I felt in my bones. An airplane. I was sitting on the steel floor of some kind of transport, tethered to it with canvas straps. My hands were cuffed, my ankles were shackled, and there was a chain around my waist. Earphones connected to nothing were clamped on my head like a padded vise. When I spoke I heard my voice inside the back of my skull. Nobody answered. When I listened, the sound closing in on me was the sound of the sea, like the sound you hear in a shell on the beach, the sound of blood rushing in my ears.

Panic hovered near. I tried to speak again and realized the voice was not making words but groans the way someone sick or wounded sounds. Was I sick? Was I wounded? My mind floated in blackness like one of those eight-ball toys where little sayings about the future surface through black ink. Acid surged in my throat and for a second I fought it. Then it came again in a second wave and I opened my mouth wide to let go whatever poison was in my gut. The burn rushed through my mouth and the back of my nose. I shook my head and screamed to clear my lungs. Suddenly water splashed over my head and drenched whatever clothes were on me. In seconds I could feel the cloth cold and clammy against my skin. I was conscious. How long had it been since I was conscious? I sat back. I listened to the sound of the sea in my ears, and waited for messages to float out of the ink.

I remembered the day of the knives. I remembered asking Abu Zubayr questions. I did not remember, completely, what they were. We talked about—about—weddings. About ships. About weddings. I remembered Griffin whispering in my face, and me repeating as much as I could about ships and weddings, names and places. And Betsy and Miriam—yes, both of them—safe, he said. That's what Griffin said. Safe. But where were they? And where was I?

I remembered a helicopter out of Somalia (I thought it was a helicopter), but the rest of the memory was lost in clouds of dust and the mist of dreams. There was a pill “to help you,” someone said. Help me what? And why did I take it? There were other pills. I took those, too, in different places, at different times, but I had no sense of place or time. The day of the knives could be yesterday or last week or last month.

And now I was a prisoner. And from the way I was shackled, I'd say I was a dangerous one.

The pressure changed inside my ears. The plane was going down, slowly settling toward a landing. The wheels smashed onto something solid and g-forces flung me to my left, then back to my right, like the “Octopus” ride at a county fair. Then we stopped dead. There was no sound but the blood-sea in my ears and the vibration in my bones from the plane's engines. Then another vibration, deeper and farther away, took its place, deep and low, rumbling from inside enormous machines. Hands grabbed each arm and jerked me up onto my feet, but my legs weren't working so good. “Where we going?” I heard my voice in my head again. No voice replied. The hands pulled me, lifted me, and my feet slid and shuffled forward, stop, forward, turn, stop, stand, turn, stop. The hands never left me. We walked down an incline and I felt a breath of hot wet air and the burn, for just a second, of what I thought must be the sun. Fuel smells filled my nose. Then the chill again. And the shuffling, the shuffling.

The hands pushed me up against a wall, but the wall was soft. My forehead was pressed against it. I started to stand back but a hand pushed my head hard into the wall. I stayed there. Someone pulled the earphones off my head.

“You understand English?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I'm—American.” I wanted to sound friendly, but my tongue was thick and my voice drunk.

The hand pushed my head against the wall again. “If you understand, then do what I say. We're going to take off the chains now, but I don't want you turning. I don't want you moving. Do you understand?”

“Yeah, buddy. Where—where're you boys from? I've got to talk—somebody.”

“Do you understand? Yes or no.” He'd memorized a script.

“Yes,” I said.

“Stay in that position until you hear the door close,” said the voice, and finally a hand I didn't see took off the goggles. The door closed. The room was completely dark.

 

You don't think when you don't have senses. The mind doesn't work like that. It navigates by dead reckoning, and it needs reference points: images, sounds, smells, tastes, textures. Take them away and the thoughts that come and go have nothing to hang on to. After a while, they stop being thoughts at all, just rushes of fear and excitement. We learned something about this during the survival-evasion-resistance-escape courses when I was a Ranger. The goal of the interrogator is to turn you into a child again, make you dependent and obedient, and make you want to please Daddy. But, hell, that was just book-learning. And the book said nothing about a padded cell with no light, no cot, no nothing.

I wanted the faces of Miriam and Betsy in front of me. I wanted to see them through the dark. But when they came to me, the feel of missing them and the fear of losing them was so terrible that it tore away at whatever organization was left inside my head. It was Griffin's face that kept me together, at least at first. “Won't be long,” he said in one of the last moments I remembered in real time. “Won't be long.” And those were the words I hung on to so hard and so tight that they were like a hymn in my head for a while. And long after I didn't know how long “long” was, his words were there.

But what had
I
said to
Griffin?
Did I warn him? Did I tell him what Abu Zubayr told me? Did I know myself? There was something about ships. When the horror of what was happening to him was too much for Abu Zubayr to stand, he talked about ships. Or did I dream that? There were so many dreams. Constant dreams. And in one of them Abu Zubayr and I were floating down a long, narrow river that ran in and out of buildings like a flood. We sank and surfaced, and Abu Zubayr became Griffin and I kept shouting at him “The ships! The ships!” but he just rolled over in the water like he was rolling over in a bed and pulling the covers, the water, with him. Whatever I knew about the ships from the day of the knives, I hoped I told Griffin, because it was real important. But here in the dark I couldn't separate memory from dream.

I waited for the interrogation. I wanted the interrogators. Wanted them so bad that I had to try to stop myself, because wanting is what this is all about. They make you want. They give you a little. You want more. They make you pay with whatever you got, which is whatever you know, and maybe what you don't know.

One thing I knew they wanted, but I knew they didn't know they wanted it: back in Westfield in the Jump Start freezer, back there with the forgotten gray-green pork chops, all sealed up in a red thermos canister that looked like a fire extinguisher wedged behind a bag of ice, the magic elixir that could become the Sword of the Angel of the Lord. Mine eyes had seen that glory. And if the interrogators knew, they'd take it from me. And if they knew, they'd take me and keep me and this would be my life forever here in the hole in the dark with my brain eating itself the way starving flesh eats its own fat. Must tell them. Cannot tell them. We'll put that knowledge away, won't we? We'll migrate it out of the mind like a maggot burrowing through meat, and push it into a place they won't find it.

And sleep came.

But the interrogators never did.

 

My world exploded with white light. The first thing I saw was my own hand covering my eyes, trying to shield them, but the light burned through the fingers blood red. “Get up. Face the wall,” said a man's voice. The light was flaming through my lids now. “Shower time,” said the voice. “Strip.”

I fumbled open the Velcro fastenings of the jumpsuit, stepped out and kicked it away from me. Every stinking bodily fluid I had was in there somewhere. I kept blinking, trying to handle the rush of light. I looked down at myself and I had this weird feeling that the body parts didn't belong to me, like they weren't hooked up somehow. I looked at my hands in the white light. The nails were black and the creases between the fingers were stained dark brown with Abu Zubayr's blood. I looked up at the two guards. Both were wearing body armor, with helmets and visors that kept me from seeing their faces. All padded out like that, they looked like a cross between Darth Vader and the Pillsbury Doughboy. Neither carried any weapons that I could see.

“Against the wall.” I did as I was told, and one of the guards locked shackles around my ankles and a belly chain with separated cuffs around my waist. Then the two of them grabbed my arms and half-carried me stumbling naked into a steel-walled hallway. I guessed before that we were in a carrier, and now I knew we were. But where we were on the sea, and where we were going, I had no idea.

The first stop for me was the toilet. The chains stayed on and the guards stood there and watched while I pissed and shit. Then we went to the shower room, which was empty except for us. I stood in chains under the steaming water. It scalded my face and shoulders and poured over my chest. But because of the cuffs and the belly chain I couldn't do anything to clean myself, couldn't even rub my hands together to get rid of the blood.

“When do we talk?” I asked.

“Not now,” said one of the guards, and I realized he was the only one who ever spoke.

“We shouldn't waste time,” I said.

“Not now.” He still had that script, the one that told him to “impart no information.” There was not going to be any pleading with these guys, or persuading them.

“What's the date?” I asked.

“Not now!”

Time is one of the first things they take away from you. They keep the lights out or the lights on so you lose any sense of day or night, and you're just tired all the time. After a while, even if you don't answer any of their questions, they can create a kind of special world for you where every new bit of information you have comes from them.
Everything.
Is the war on terror over? It is if they want you to think it is. Have the ships sailed? What ships?

But the fact was, nobody talked to me about anything. The only way I guessed how much time was passing was by the length of my beard and hair, but that wasn't really reliable. Every so often, in silence, they shaved my head and face. Just like, every now and then, they brought me food or led me to the toilet. But how often? There was no way to be sure. In the padded cell the light was on sometimes, and off sometimes. But only they knew when. They took on a power the Qur'an gives to God: “He merges Night into Day, and He merges Day into Night, and He has full knowledge of the secrets of all hearts.” But they didn't really give a damn what was in
my
heart. What I wanted. They didn't even ask.

Belonging. For too much of my life, that was all I wanted. I tried to belong to the army and to the Rangers. I tried to belong to the world of the first woman I loved. I tried to belong to the ranks of Allah's Holy Warriors. I learned their skills, I learned their ways, I learned their minds. But I never fit in with them. The only place I ever found where I could be who I was, and where that feeling of belonging wrapped around me with all its warmth and comfort, was at home with Betsy and with Miriam. And now they were farther away than I could imagine. Where was my sweet milk-
mustache baby? Where was my smart loving tough caring more-guts-than-a-burglar little tadpole of a crying laughing fighting kissing sleeping-with-her-head-on-
my-chest-and-her-breath-stirring-across-me wife? Ah,
Lord. I could go crazy wanting them and wanting home, and it was slipping away from me fast. I had to fight to pull the faces of Miriam and Betsy out of the shadows, but the shadows were too many, and then the faces of the people I loved were lost and all that lingered was the idea of them.

No one talked to me in the hold of that ship. They gave me nothing to read, nothing to distract me from their light and their dark. Nothing, from their point of view, not even the game of interrogation, to keep me from going insane. And after a while I thought all I had left was my anger and my discipline and my faith in the power of hate, a faith I had almost forgotten.

Hate is hard and bright; it has a clear edge like a spotlight, and when all else fails, you can use it to get your bearings, I thought. That was what guided Nureddin and me through the night. That was what would get me through this.

I began to remember and recite chants I learned as a Ranger and verses from the Qur'an and even from the Bible, all from a long time ago in my life, and all of them built on rhythms of hate. “I do well to be angry, even unto death.” Isn't that what Jonah said? And call it prayer or call it what you want, five times between waking and sleeping, I would try to clear my mind of everything but a dream of fire. The important thing was to remain my own man in my own mind, not theirs, not ever, not anywhere, no matter what they did. “They” who slaughtered in the name of God. “They” who slaughtered in the name of democracy. “They” who put me here for reasons of state or security or just because they couldn't think of anything else to do with me. They all wanted to keep me away from my home, my life, my peace. But I would have my own. I would look at them and they would be consumed by fire. That was the vision that kept me going for a while longer in the dark, a pure flame, blue and hot; a curtain of flame, and just beyond it, peace. When ants began to crawl under my skin in the blackness, the flame steadied me. When I heard my voice wailing inside my head, the flame guided me, until a kind of calm settled into my soul. Hate would keep me going, hate would give me the power to lie or to tell the truth, to fight or to fall back, to do whatever needed doing. That's what I tried to believe. Hate would free me, and then there would be time enough for love. “Won't be long,” I said out loud. “Won't be long.” Until hate failed me, too.