by Gordon Ryan
Pug nodded and stepped through the hatch, passing Sean Macintosh in the main cabin.
“He’s out like a light, General. I’ll call you when he comes around.”
“Fine, Sean. Thanks,” Pug replied, heading forward to the double bunk space where he’d left his gear. Carlos was already lying on the port bunk. Pug lifted his sea bag, dropped it to the floor, and sat on the rack.
“How’d it go?” Pug asked.
“No problems. I put two down, then I sedated Wolff. Drilled him for about ten minutes and decided he might have more information, so I brought him back. Got some documents and a laptop.”
“Good, we’ll go over them in the morning. Do you think he’ll talk?”
“Probably not if he’s as much a professional as we’ve been led to believe, but they should have more luck at Thomson,” he said, referring to the Thomson Correctional Facility in Illinois, where all Guantanamo terrorists had been transferred. “If we still had Guantanamo, we’d have more options. With luck, the computer will tell us a lot. It never fails to amaze me how much these guys keep on their laptops, thinking they’re secure. But we’ll try to get him to open up in the morning. I’ll keep him lightly drugged once he wakes up. I spoke English with a thick Spanish accent. Probably should continue using that tomorrow, keep everyone else quiet, and Wolff blindfolded.”
“Agreed. Now let’s get a few hours’ rest.” Pug lay back on the bunk, fully clothed, instantly falling sound asleep.
The first sensation Pug felt was Cameron shaking him awake. He sat up on the bunk, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands.
“What time is it?”
“Just after seven,” Cameron replied, speaking in a whisper since the below decks cabin was so close to where they held their captive. “Wolff’s not awake, but he’s moving around a bit, so he should be up shortly. Carlos is with him. I brought you some coffee.”
Pug reached for the cup. “Thanks.”
“What’s the plan?” Cameron asked.
“Is he still blindfolded and cuffed?”
“Yeah. The lads taped his eyes shut. Carlos told us to remain quiet in his presence. He won’t even know for sure where he is, other than the pitching of the yacht. The particular drug Carlos used leaves people woozy and a bit off balance, not completely alert.”
“Fine. You got the video cam set up?”
“Carlos has everything all ready.”
“Good, let’s get him up and see what we can get out of him while he’s disoriented. Carlos will do the talking, just to confuse him with a Mexican accent.”
They stepped aft to the main cabin area, which contained a small kitchen and a couple of bunks on either side of the room. Macintosh was reading a paperback novel and sat on the bunk directly across from Wolff. Carlos sat at the small table used for meals. The prisoner lay on his bunk, mumbling incoherently and beginning to shift about.
Pug put his finger to his lips, reminding everyone to be quiet. He motioned to Macintosh to get Wolff up and put him on the small bench in front of the table across from Carlos. Sean lifted Wolff almost bodily, setting him down hard on the bench. Pug took a place on the bunk, just behind the camera, which had been set up to film Wolff over Carlos’s shoulder. Cameron sat on the bunk where Wolff had been restrained.
“ Senor Wolff!” Carlos shouted. “Wake up!”
The confused man mumbled incoherently.
“Shut up and listen, you stay alive. You on ship, near Algeria. I want information. You talk, you live.”
Tilting his head toward the sound of the voice, Wolff replied, his speech mumbled. “Algeria? No,… Timor.”
“I say Algeria,” Carlos shouted. You answer or stay here forever. Interpol want you too.”
“What do you want? Who are you?” Wolff asked, appearing a bit more rational as the questioning continued.
“I ask questions. You answer. What’s your name?”
Wolff paused for a moment, cocking his head to listen to the sounds, adjusting his shoulders to the tautness of his hands cuffed behind his back.
Carlos reached across and slapped Wolff hard across the left cheek, the blow stunning the blindfolded man. “What’s your name?”
Wolff struggled against his bonds and shouted an expletive.
Carlos glanced at Pug and shook his head, acknowledging that Wolff appeared as tough as they expected and likely unwilling to talk without more abusive persuasion. “Maybe we loosen your tongue, Wolff, with pliers. We don’t care you live or die, you piece of shit. Algerians pay good money for you. Maybe Israelis, Egyptians, but they, how you say, harsh with prisoners. Who we sell you to, Wolff? You talk first, you choose.”
Wolff remained quiet as Carlos let him think it through.
After a moment, Carlos leaned across the table and slapped him from the other side, nearly knocking him off his stool. “ What you doing in Timor?”
Wolff recovered from the blow and sat upright in his chair.
Carlos spun around and released a string of rapid-fire Spanish invective to no one in particular. Then he turned back to face the prisoner.
“Wolff, this is waste of time,” Carlos said, his voice now calm and soft. “I told them.”
Carlos stood, scraping his chair across the floor for Wolff to hear. He nodded to Pug who began to speak.
“Wolff, I’ve got a meeting ashore with the Algerians. They’ll be more cooperative than you, that’s for certain, and when they get their hands on you, they might change the interrogation tactics. You’ll wish you could be with me again.”
Wolff angled his head again, trying to place the new voice and accent.
Pug continued. “I’ll leave you with a couple of my friends and come back in the morning. In the meantime, you can think about what I’ve said. All we want are some answers and we’ll put you ashore. Of course, you have to make your way safely out of North Africa, but then, you grew up here. You know it well. And you’ve been in and out of here on arms deals to Hamas or Hezbollah for years, haven’t you? The choice is yours, Mr. Wolff.”
Pug stood, also making sounds of departure, moving about the cabin toward the hatchway. He motioned to Sergeant Macintosh, giving him a ‘two minutes with you’ signal.
Macintosh stood and stepped in front of Wolff, leaning down to breathe close to his face. “And a good day to yer, Mr. Wolff,” he said, rolling his R’s and thickening his Scottish brogue. “I’m so pleased we have this time together. Unlike my gentle friend, I don’t want any answers,” he said, reaching out and grabbing hold of the prisoner’s hair, jerking his head closer. “All I want is screams, Mr. Wolff. ‘Tis music to me ears.”
Wolff didn’t respond.
Macintosh tightened his grip on Wolff’s hair and twisted his head upward at a steep angle while placing his knee against Wolff’s chest, pulling the head against the pressure of his knee.
“I said I don’t want answers, or questions, either, Mr. Wolff. I want screams, you see. And we’ll get there, I can assure you.”
Wolff tilted his head slightly, trying to make sense of the ambient sounds that surrounded his location. Macintosh continued in a softer tone.
“Now that Hispanic lad, he’s in charge. Don’t know why, since I always get the better results, but still, we all get paid to do our job, ain’t that right, Mr. Wolff. He wants answers, I want screams. Funny thing is, Mr. Wolff, you can make the choice, if you know what I mean. Of course, I’m only guessing that you would prefer his way to mine, but still, when all’s done I’d like to have a go at my way,” he said, pulling even tighter on the blindfolded man’s hair.
Wolff grunted in response to the physical assault, but remained silent. Carlos nodded at Macintosh, who knocked Wolff back against his chair, then stepped away.
All was silent for several moments as Carlos once again scraped the stool on the deck and resumed his seat across the small table from Wolff. “You tough man, Senor Wolff. I am tougher. This is last chance, asshole. Talk or die.”
“Go to hel
l,” Wolff replied. Finally Pug motioned to Carlos and mimed injecting a syringe. Carlos nodded and stepped behind Wolff, retrieved a prepared syringe from the counter top, and jabbed it into Wolff’s neck.
By early afternoon, with some satellite phone help from Washington, Pug had entered restricted files on Wolff’s computer and performed a cursory review of data without much success in deciphering any of it. Late that afternoon, he downloaded the video of the interrogation onto his laptop computer, hooked up his sat com telephone, and connected with his DHS contact, transmitting his written report and the full video, plus the contents of Wolff’s laptop by secure encrypted satellite link to General Austin. Thirty minutes later, Pug, Carlos, and Cameron sat on deck as Rainbow Blue made for the next contact with the Australian submarine.
Just before dark, the rendezvous with HMAS Rankin was accomplished, and Wolff, still drugged and unconscious, was transferred for delivery to Australian authorities who had already made arrangements for his transfer to the Americans who would fly him out of Australia.
With Rainbow Blue secured against the hull of the submarine, Carlos scrambled aboard and Pug tossed his bag to the waiting Aussie seaman. The two SAS troopers also boarded Rankin. Pug then turned toward Cameron and reached to shake his hand. “Captain Rossiter, it’s been a pleasure. Maybe we’ll meet again some time. I figure I owe you a good dinner for this South Pacific cruise.”
“My pleasure, General. I just might pop over and take you up on that meal.”
“You’re on. Have a good trip home. It should be quiet out here for the next few days without us. I doubt it will be quiet where I’m going. And it won’t be comfortable for Wolff, either.”
“I like it quiet, Pug,” Cameron said, loosening the lines, “and I’ve got a few days left on my original plans. Won’t be surprised, however, to get another message from the colonel to report in. Vacation’s over, I’m afraid.”
Pug accepted a hand up from the chief of the boat, stepped back onto the steel deck grating of HMAS Rankin, and watched for a few moments as Rainbow Blue drifted away from the sub. He gave a quick salute toward Cameron and then slipped through the hatch and down the ladder.
Nine hours later, at dawn, a helicopter once again appeared on the horizon, and both Carlos and Pug were hoisted up and transported to USS Abraham Lincoln, now two hundred miles further west. They caught the COD again the following morning, headed for Jakarta, where they transferred to commercial aircraft, and returned to Washington D.C.
Chapter 11
Rumsey Valley
Yolo County California
March
Following the convocation of legislators in Las Vegas, Dan and Nicole Rawlings had spent another three days in the neon city, attending several shows and just enjoying time away from the pressures of Dan’s legislative duties in Sacramento. Although the trip had been to discuss the prospect of other states joining with California in forming a new nation, it had also served as a brief extension to the abbreviated honeymoon Dan and Nicole had taken to Mazatlan after their marriage in January.
Their wedding had certainly not been every girls’ dream. A New Year’s Day decision, a quick trip to Reno, a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in Mexico, and then they came home as Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Rawlings, with Dan returning to his state capitol office the following Tuesday, spending the next two months behind closed doors in California Assembly and Senate workshops on constitutional development.
Nicole’s retirement from the FBI, confirmed shortly before Christmas, had been a blow to the young woman, changing the course of her life even more dramatically than her decision to marry Dan Rawlings. They had moved into Dan’s condo in Davis, about twenty miles west of Sacramento. As he had promised, they contracted to build a new home slightly northwest of Davis, up Rumsey Canyon, where Dan’s family had settled shortly after the Civil War. It was to be the fourth Rumsey / Rawlings home in one hundred and forty-five years. Jack and Ellen Rumsey had been the last to build, in 1946.
On a bright Sunday morning, the last day of March, Dan suggested they drive up Highway 16 toward the new home site to view the work that had been accomplished in their absence. Fifteen miles from Woodland, just west of the tiny village of Esparto, Dan took a slight detour off the main road. Nicole knew immediately where he was going: the Esparto Cemetery to visit Jack Rumsey’s final resting ground.
Jack Rumsey had been the patriarch of the family through most of the second half of the twentieth century. He had died at age 89 of a heart attack the previous August. His death had occurred one day before the insertion of federal troops into Sacramento and the brief gun fight between the 82 ^nd Airborne Division and the California State Reserve that the press had dubbed The Battle of Capital Mall. Dan had commented several times that he was grateful that Jack had been spared the necessity of seeing his beloved California party to an armed conflict between California and military forces of the United States of America. Even Dan found it hard to believe.
As they pulled into the small, well-maintained cemetery, Dan parked on a side road and they exited the vehicle, slowly walking toward the Rumsey and Rawlings’ family plot. Dan’s older brother, Tom, who had died during birth, lay in a row with Ellen and Jack Rumsey and several earlier generations of Dan’s family. Now, with a new home, the prospect of a new state, and even the possible advent of a new nation, Dan found himself wondering if Jack Rumsey would lay buried on “foreign” soil.
“The roses are starting to bloom,” Nicole said, pointing toward the row of bushes that surrounded the family plot. Dan looked in their direction, taking Nicole’s hand and strolling past several headstones. Jack and Ellen’s ornate marker had an asymmetrical appearance, with Jack’s engraving fresh and bold, compared to Ellen’s inscription, which had tarnished a bit in the decade since her death. It gave the marble edifice a visual, compelling, and heartfelt story without the need for explanation. In most respects, it was a traditional family plot, with headstones reflecting that some members had spent merely hours on their earthly sojourn, others nearly a century.
“My mother told me that her mother, Grandma Ellen, planted those roses almost fifty years ago. Mom’s been caring for them ever since she was a teenager, when Grandma would bring her here to tell her about our early pioneer family.”
“They’re lovely,” Nicole replied. “We never had flowers so early in Connecticut. That’s one reason I love California. Did you have much to do with your grandmother?” she asked. “I know you and your grandfather were very close, but how old were you when Ellen died?”
“Late teens. Yeah, Grandma and I often just strolled through the orchard in the evenings.” Dan chuckled a bit as they walked, a quick memory flashing through his mind.
“What?” Nicole said.
“I was just remembering. When I was younger, I’d often spend the weekend here in the valley with Jack and Grandma. I’d go out in the orchard with Jack before twilight. We couldn’t pass two almond trees before Jack would say, ‘pick up that bit of brush, would you, and toss it on the pile over there.’ We could never just ‘take a walk.’ There was always something that needed to be done in the orchard. But with Grandma, we would walk, talk, often sing a song together, and she’d teach me about the squirrels and various birds that fluttered through the grove. As the sun would begin to set, we’d often see a few deer come down from the hills to forage through the trees, looking for immature almonds or tender, low-hanging branches. I really loved Grandma.”
As they walked, Nicole stepped a bit closer to Dan, slipping her arm in the crook of his elbow. “And Jack,” she said.
Dan stopped walking, considered her comment, then turned and kissed her on the cheek. “Yes, and Jack.” He looked up at the massive oak trees that bordered the cemetery, the afternoon wind rustling through their leaves. “This is where the voices in my blood live,” he said softly. The previous year, Dan had achieved publication of his first novel, a fictional family saga of his ancestors who lived in America for twelve generations an
d settled this part of California five generations earlier. He had named the novel “ Voices in My Blood ” after the feelings he had for those ancestors.
They walked a bit further and Dan stopped to pick a few weeds from his Uncle James’ plot, bending down and brushing dirt off the engraving. “I never really knew Uncle James. He was my mother’s younger brother, but he died early. As you can see from the dates, he was barely thirty.”
Dan rose, brushed some dirt and grass off his knees, and headed for the car. “Let’s get moving up the valley. I suppose you’re anxious to see the progress on our new home,” he said.
As they walked toward the vehicle, they were silent until Dan exited the cemetery and headed northwest toward Highway 16 a few miles up the side road. This time Nicole started to laugh softly.
“Okay, share the humor,” Dan said.
“I was just thinking about this new house we’re building. Is our address going to be 224 Pioneer Drive, Rumsey, California? Or 224 Pioneer Drive, Rumsey, North California? Or maybe 224 Pioneer Drive, Rumsey, North California, Republic of Western America? Or just, 224 Pioneer Drive, Anytown, Anywhere?”
Dan looked at her as he pulled on to the main highway, a broad grin crossing his face.
“How about Mr. and Mrs. Rawlings, Pioneer Lane, Tent City, West Coast? There wasn’t much more than that when my great-great-grandfather first drove up this canyon in his Conestoga.”
Nicole shook her head. “Nope, I want running water. Hot running water. And besides, anyone who hopes to be the governor of a new state shouldn’t live in a tent. A log cabin, maybe, but not a tent.”
Rancho Murieta Country Club
Southeast of Sacramento march
California Governor Walter Dewhirst won the honors on the first hole with a flip of his tee. As he addressed the ball, Lieutenant General Robert Del Valle stood quietly off to one side, waiting his turn. Their wives, who were playing as partners in the Sunday morning match play against the men, sat in their golf cart, waiting to drive forward to the ladies’ tees.