True Believer

by Carr, Jack

  It must be night, he thought, feeling the cool air against his skin. He could hear the distant hum of generators.

  The scrape of a metal door penetrated the darkness and he was carried, facedown, by what felt like four men into a building of some kind. The footfalls of boots sounded as if they were walking on a concrete floor and he heard various doors open and shut in front of and behind them. No voices. The movement stopped and he was dropped onto the hard floor, his chin splitting on impact. He heard a strange sound that he couldn’t identify until he realized it was a pair of EMT shears cutting the clothing from his body. The room was freezing cold, and he felt increasingly chilled as his skin was exposed to the air.

  His boots were pulled from his feet and he was left totally naked on the cold, hard floor. The door slammed shut and, hands still bound with zip ties and duct tape, he curled up in a ball, shivering and convulsing, on the verge of madness.

  CHAPTER 55

  Over the Mediterranean Sea

  September

  THEIR FLIGHT TOOK CLOSE to three hours and nearly maxed out the V-22’s fuel capacity. It was Reece’s first time riding in the tilt-rotor aircraft and, though part of him thought it was an incredible feat of engineering, the almost-forty-something part of his brain couldn’t help but remember how many times these aircraft had crashed during development. He and Freddy sat in the folding seats that lined the walls of the aircraft’s cargo bay, which, to Reece’s untrained eye, looked like a smaller version of the Chinook’s interior. The inside of the fuselage was covered in an endless tangle of wires, metal lines, and hoses like something out of some steampunk artist’s fantasy.

  Reece thought of one of Ox’s favorite sayings: “If you get in a helicopter and it’s not leaking, get ready to crash because that means it’s out of hydraulic fluid.”

  He looked up to see whether anything was dripping.

  The Marine pilots steered them over the open Mediterranean before going “feet dry” over Turkey and finally passing into the airspace of northern Iraq. Their landing at Erbil International Airport was conventional by Iraqi standards, unlike the dive-bomber-like landings they’d all endured during approaches into Baghdad International Airport. The surface-to-air threat must be pretty light here these days. Their headsets allowed them to hear the chatter on the bird’s intercom, which mainly consisted of the pilots conveying information to the crew chief riding with them in the cargo bay. It was all very routine.

  Reece was curious whether the Osprey would land vertically or horizontally but, due to the generous runway, it touched down like a traditional fixed-wing aircraft. Probably safer that way.

  After a short taxi, the twin turbine engines shut down and the rear ramp was lowered. Reece and Freddy went forward to thank the pilots and crew for the ride before unstacking their assorted gear strapped to a pallet on the aircraft’s metal floor. The crew chief helped them carry the kit bags and Pelican cases to the tarmac, where a white F-250 had pulled up behind the Osprey. A small group of Peshmerga troops armed with SCAR-17s and dressed in surplus U.S. desert camo and black body armor stayed by the truck while a tall, blond-haired American wearing jeans and a tan polo shirt approached, looking like he’d just walked off the Norwegian ski team.

  “Freddy, good to see you, buddy,” the man said in recognition of Reece’s partner.

  “Hey, Erik! Appreciate the pickup. Meet James Donovan.”

  “Donovan, huh? Okay. Well, welcome to Kurdistan, James. Pleasure to meet you. I’m Erik Spuhr. I’ve heard good things.”

  Reece shook the man’s extended hand. “Good to meet you as well.”

  “Let’s get you boys loaded up and out of here. Your guest is waiting.”

  Spuhr waved to the Kurdish troops, who moved quickly to help retrieve the men’s gear and load it into the truck. Reece and Freddy insisted on helping. They both noticed that Erik left the work to the Kurds.

  They loaded into the crew-cab pickup, Spuhr behind the wheel, and drove east through the city.

  “What’s that?” Reece asked, turning in his seat to take in the huge fortress that occupied the high ground to his right.

  “That’s the famous Citadel of Erbil. They say it’s been inhabited continuously since people first lived in this part of the world,” Erik informed them.

  “Good tactical position,” Freddy observed. “Probably a good strategic one as well if it’s been inhabited that long.”

  An hour east of Mosul, which had only recently been retaken from ISIS occupation, Erbil was the capital of Kurdistan, a relatively safe and quiet city of just under a million residents. It was an eclectic mix of modern and ancient structures and boasted beautiful green spaces, towering fountains, and winding, mosaic-tiled streets. Cars jammed the avenues, men sat and smoked outside coffee shops lining the sidewalks, families walked together in public, commerce was in full swing.

  Leaving the historic city, they hit a main road that took them north. In contrast to much of Iraq, it appeared to Reece that the north was a virtual paradise. It reminded him of the Napa Valley wine country where he had been married.

  “So, tell me about your crew,” Freddy said, bringing them back to the present.

  “All Yazidis,” Spuhr began. “They’re not Muslims and they’ve been heavily persecuted by Daesh—you know, ISIS. They hate the bad guys more than we do, so they’re extremely loyal.”

  “Aren’t all Peshmerga loyal to the U.S.?” Reece asked.

  “Yeah, that’s true for the most part. They have a chip on their shoulder, which is useful. They’ve been the ethnic and religious minority here forever; actually, they’re a minority within a minority. I have them on loan from Qasem Shesho, the Old Tiger of Mount Sinjar. He’s the commander of the Yazidi Pesh forces.”

  “What’s the mission up here?” asked Freddy, his eyes scanning the road ahead.

  “We’re running a strike force against what’s left of Daesh, ISIS, ISIL, whatever you want to call them this week. We have two commando squadrons of Yazidis trained up and we’re doing a lot of direct-action work. We use their HUMINT networks along with all of our SIGINT assets and are hitting the enemy hard.”

  “Sounds like Baghdad 2006,” Reece commented.

  “Yeah, but this time we’re not getting Americans killed. These people need to win back their own country.”

  Reece had seen plenty of Iraqi troops get killed or wounded fighting for their country, particularly from Mo’s team, but he didn’t press the point.

  As they traveled farther from the city, the flat terrain transformed into rolling hills. Their journey led them into a wide valley where a modern compound had been built into the remote landscape. The exterior perimeter of sand-filled Hesco barriers, the modern-day equivalent of the lodgepole forts of the American frontier, screamed “U.S. outpost.”

  The force protection detail was a mix of local forces and Western security contractors. Inside the perimeter was a complex of concrete and steel structures at odds with the natural world outside its walls. The CIA had built its own fiefdom in this autonomous zone, a place where even the Iraqi Army was prohibited from entering by law.

  “Freddy, does this remind you at all of Apocalypse Now?” Reece whispered, referencing the classic 1979 film by Francis Ford Coppola.

  “Yes, and I expect we’ve already met our Kurtz.”

  • • •

  Landry lay shivering on the floor, his body convulsing in its attempt to stay warm. With his hands bound behind his back, the best he could do was to draw his knees up to his chest. Without the stifling heat and claustrophobia of the rug, he’d begun to calm down and reenter the land of the sane. He’d tried scooting himself around the room to get his bearings and build up some body heat but the abrasive floors quickly rubbed his skin raw. He’d established that the room was roughly ten feet by ten feet and had a metal drain in the center of the floor. It was well built, almost clinical. The only ambient smell was that of the dried urine and feces that clung to his skin.

  He
was sure of one thing: his captors were state sponsored. Terrorist groups didn’t run detainment facilities with massive air conditioners and clean concrete floors. He had to be within one thousand or so miles of where he’d been snatched. It wouldn’t have made sense to take him deeper into Europe, which probably meant somewhere in the former Soviet Union, Syria, Iraq, or Iran. Pakistan, maybe? The Brits would want him desperately for the Christmas market attack in London, but, despite the effectiveness of their military, their government no longer had the stomach to operate in places like this; too many colonial memories. Could the French have picked him up? They didn’t play games when it came to terrorism. Instead of keeping their citizens from going to fight the infidel in foreign lands, France let them go. They let them go so that French special operations troops could hunt them down and kill them on foreign soil. But the French didn’t have a footprint in this part of the world. That left the United States, the Russians, or maybe the Israelis.

  Please don’t let it be the Russians.

  His thoughts were broken by a brief sound that was audible over the air conditioners, and seconds later his body was shocked by a blast of freezing-cold liquid. The water hit him like icy daggers, and he curled his body tighter into a more protective position. He tried worm-crawling away from the cold stream raining from above but it appeared as if the entire ceiling was equipped with shower nozzles; there was no escaping it. After an excruciating sixty seconds, the shower stopped as abruptly as it had started. A minute earlier, he hadn’t thought he could be any closer to hypothermia, but that now seemed like a warm summer day by comparison. He knew this playbook. They were going to keep him on the verge of hypothermia coupled with sleep deprivation. For someone raised on the hot, steamy bayous of the Gulf Coast, this was torture, yet he knew what was coming and could play this game as well.

  If it’s the Americans, I still have a chance.

  CHAPTER 56

  Yazidi Strike Force Compound

  Kurdistan

  September

  “WOULD YOU LIKE TO observe?” Erik asked Reece and Freddy with a tad too much enthusiasm, both men having stowed their gear in the dormitory-like rooms to which they’d been shown.

  “No, thanks,” Reece responded without hesitation, remembering his last experience with torture, extracting information from Saul Agnon in a Palm Springs hotel room for his role in the murders of Reece’s wife and daughter.

  “Me neither,” Freddy chimed in. “I’d prefer to maintain some plausible deniability if this thing hits the news cycle. Remember what the last president did to the guys who interrogated Abu Zubaydah?”

  Neither man had any moral objections to whatever interrogation techniques were being used on Landry; they simply weren’t interested in watching. Landry was a traitor, a sellout who had become a terrorist due to a currently unknown motivation. His actions had taken innocent lives and he’d joined forces with his nation’s number one enemy. On top of all that, he was a sadist who had tortured detainees under the guise of a CIA team leader. No, Jules Landry wasn’t going to get any empathy from either of them.

  “Suit yourselves. I’m going to go see how it’s going,” Spuhr said as he walked out.

  They had been lounging in the Team Room, a combination clubhouse, living room, and meeting space used by small units around the globe. This one was nicer than most, but lacked the photos, captured enemy weapons, and other mementos that usually lined the walls and infused the space with the character of the occupying unit. With no such decorations, this room looked more like something you’d see in a nursing home or college dorm. It occurred to Reece that he hadn’t watched television since he’d hastily departed the United States months ago, so he turned on the flat screen to see if he could catch the news. He found CNN International and, ironically, the segment was covering the killing of Nawaz by the now-famous Albanian Eagle commandos. He and Freddy exchanged eye rolls as a series of “counterterrorism experts” and retired military officers speculated wildly about how the mission had gone down. How these officers with high-level security clearances could spout off about ongoing military operations just days after they’d retired was beyond them both.

  • • •

  The freezing water soaked him at seemingly random intervals, leaving Landry constantly on edge in anticipation of the next icy blast, his body jerking uncontrollably. Then, just when his mind began to slip into delirium, the powerful air vents in the room started blowing warm air; the warmth was heavenly. As his body temperature began to rise, he was reminded of just how thirsty he was. He hadn’t had anything to drink since before his capture and he was losing track of how long ago that had been. Every part of his body was soaking wet, save the inside of his mouth. Had his lips not been covered by tape, he would have licked the floor.

  His head rose at the sound of the heavy metal door unlocking and quickly tucked it back against his chest, expecting a beating to begin at any moment. Footsteps sloshed across the wet floor. Whoever had entered the room smelled like cigarettes and was standing directly over him. The man pulled the wet cloth sack from his head, and the duct tape that had covered his mouth was torn swiftly away, the sharp pain only slightly diminished by the numbness of his face. His eyes were still taped over, so when something touched his lips he jerked away, causing water to spill on his chin. Water! His natural fear of physical pain was suppressed by his overwhelming thirst, and he extended his face toward the bottle. The cold liquid instantly brightened his mood as he gulped it down. The bottle was pulled away and something small was pressed into his mouth; it had a plastic taste to it. He tried to spit it out but the water returned and his thirst was too powerful; whatever it was, he’d just swallowed it. He pushed the thought aside and drank the water as fast as it was poured into his mouth by the plastic bottle.

  The pleasure was short-lived. As quickly and abruptly as the water had come, the man left the room. Still, his body was shivering less as the room warmed, and he was no longer quite as dehydrated as he’d been just moments earlier. He’d learned during the various schools he’d attended in the Marine Corps to relish the brief moments of rest and relief when they came without thinking too much about what might happen next. He exhaled a deep breath and tried to put himself in a different place mentally, a “happy place.” Just as he began to relax, his skin was blasted once again by the cold rain from above. It was like they were reading his mind.

  • • •

  A sensor in the interrogation room’s wall relayed the telemetry from the RFID device inside the detainee’s body to the desktop monitor in the observation area. Roman Evdal, a Yazidi physician’s assistant trained in the United States under an exchange program, watched the detainee’s core temperature rise to 37 degrees Celsius and his heart rate slow to 65 BPM. “Rome,” as he was called by the Americans at the facility, nodded to the man seated next to him, who touched his computer screen, activating the water pumps that fed the shower nozzles that covered the ceiling of the interrogation room. Rome couldn’t hear the detainee scream through the thick Plexiglas with the speakers muted, but he could tell by the man’s agonized facial expression that that was exactly what was happening. He looked over his shoulder toward the handsome Sunni whom he’d been instructed to address as “Major” and received an almost imperceptible nod in response. The “Major” didn’t look like he was part of the Iraqi Army, and Rome suspected that he was part of the more powerful and secretive Interior Ministry. Not that it mattered; whoever he was and whoever he worked for, he was clearly in charge of this interrogation.

  RFID-equipped body temperature monitors had been used for several years to monitor students’ core body temperatures in the U.S. Navy’s brutal Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training program. Breaking the will of would-be SEALs required keeping the men on the verge of hypothermia while going through Hell Week, the crucible of SEAL training that tied every generation of frogmen to the next. Men sometimes died as a result of this delicate dance, and the RFID monitors allowed instructors to in
stantly assess a trainee’s body temperature by pointing a digital “reader” device at his torso.

  Having experienced the debilitating effects of cold firsthand as a BUD/S student and later as an instructor, one of the Agency personnel involved in the construction of the interrogation facility had the bright idea of applying the technology in conjunction with “room temperature manipulations” as a method of breaking detainees without laying a hand on them. Not only could they keep them teetering on the edge of hypothermia, but they could prevent them from sleeping. Cold, exhaustion, and hunger are three of nature’s most powerful forces, and they could use all three simultaneously with almost no risk of long-term physical harm. A healthy, fit male of Landry’s age was unlikely to suffer a cardiac event under such stress, but a crash cart was available just in case. This was the first time this comprehensive system had been attempted on a real prisoner and, so far, it was working just as advertised.

  CHAPTER 57

  “HAS HE SEEN YOUR face yet, Mo?” Reece asked across the team room’s dinner table.

  The food here was exceptional, just like he remembered from his time attached to the Agency in Iraq. And they always had honey for his coffee.

  “Not yet. I think we’ll give it another day or so before I try to talk to him. The longer he goes without human interaction, the better. The cold and lack of sleep will break him. The isolation only helps exacerbate it.”

  “Mo, it always kills me that you have a better command of the English language than I do.” Reece smiled. “And that British accent of yours makes you sound like an Oxford professor.”

  “You love to play the surfer boy, Reece, but I know better. I remember the stack of books in your room in Baghdad. No one has brought that much reading material to war since Churchill,” Mo observed.