by D. J. Molles
One of the men peered out and up at the sky, as though to see if there would be a break in the rain anytime soon. But the clouds were a solid sheet of slate across the sky and the rain was steady. There was a brief conversation that Tomlin couldn’t hear and then the one man squirmed out of the machine gun nest and jogged to the edge of the road, braving the rain to take a quick piss.
Tomlin studied him for the moment as he was out in the open. The man wore ACUs, but didn’t appear to be wearing any body armor except for his helmet. He had an M4 slung to his side, but this was a longer-barreled version than the carbines that were issued to most soldiers, and it had a scope on it. From this distance, Tomlin could make out no patches on the man’s uniform, nor any other equipment he might have had on him.
Designated marksman, Tomlin guessed.
The other man inside the nest Tomlin really couldn’t see, aside from his helmet moving around every so often.
Tomlin waited for the marksman to return to the nest, shaking the rain off himself and cursing loud enough to hear even from Tomlin’s position. Then he waited some more, waited to make sure the other man wasn’t going to take a break as well. When it seemed both had resumed their distractions, Tomlin quietly rose and melted back into the woods.
It took him almost twenty minutes to get back within sight of Nate and Devon. Moving unseen toward an objective was always easier than moving away from it. When it was in front of you, it was easier to use the angles to your advantage, keeping concealment and cover between you and them and using the micro-terrain to your advantage. Moving away, you had to stop more frequently to look back and see if you were hidden.
Nate and Devon saw him coming back toward them and they both leaned out of their cover. Per his instructions, they had stayed separate from each other. Tomlin sidled into a position behind the root structure of a fallen tree and then waved the other two over. They slid with surprising grace from their places of concealment and crouched down in front of him, eyes still scanning the woods around them. He was glad he had chosen them to come along. They seemed fairly squared away.
“All right.” Tomlin spoke in low tones. Human voices carried farther than you might believe. “I got a gate across the road, closed and chained, it looked like. Machine gun nest on the other side. Well defended. They’ve got a medium machine gun in the nest, and two guards. One’s a marksman, I think. Couldn’t tell on the other one.”
“Military?” Nate asked.
One of the concerns they had spoken about on the way was whether or not the base would still be held at all, and if it was held, would it be held by US military or by bandits? A third, more difficult option to address, was the possibility that it could be people posing as US military. Which would be a great way to lure people in and then take them unawares.
Tomlin shrugged. “They’re wearing the uniforms.”
“But they could be fakes.”
“Could be,” Tomlin admitted.
“And there’s also the possibility that they are US military, but aren’t friendly.”
“Yeah.” Tomlin wiped rain out of his eyes. “Those are all possibilities.”
“But…” Nate prompted.
“But we came here to make contact.”
Devon spoke up. “Is there any way we can be sure?”
Tomlin considered it. “The only way I can think that we can be sure is if we camp here and watch and wait. If another party comes along, we’ll see how they handle it and get a better idea of the people we’re dealing with.”
Nate grimaced. “That could take days. Weeks even.”
“Right.” Tomlin nodded. “And we have no shelter. And only enough food and water for today and tomorrow. And we need to consider if things go bad somehow and it takes us more time to get back to Camp Ryder than we expected.”
“You seem very calm about this,” Nate observed.
“Well.” Tomlin leaned back against the root system, wiping the corners of his mouth. “The way I see it, Lee sent me to find help. Time and supplies are against us. And there’s no reasonable, efficient way to figure out whether the people inside that gate are friendly or no. Even if we did wait for another group to happen along, there’s no telling that what we see at the gate is indicative of what happens inside.”
Devon narrowed his eyes. “Meaning?”
“Meaning they could greet them nicely at the front gate, lead them into the heart of the base where we can’t see, and then rob and murder and rape. On the flip side of that, they could greet them by detaining them all, dragging them into the base, and then determining that they are not a threat and letting them go with food, water, and well-wishes.”
Nate and Devon exchanged a glance.
“So we’re going to make contact.”
“I’m going to make contact,” Tomlin specified. “It’s a gamble, and it sucks, but I knew it was gonna be like this as soon as Lee asked me to do it. There’s just no way to know until I get in there.”
Nate seemed irritated. “Well, what the fuck are we here for?”
“You’re here to carry word back if they shoot me dead on the road. You’ll go back to Camp Ryder and tell Lee that Fort Bragg is a no-go.”
“And if they let you in?”
“Well, if they have half a brain, they’ll throw me on the ground, frisk me, blindfold me, and then take me into the base to question me and figure out who I am and whether I’m a threat. And then you guys will sit and wait and hopefully I will send someone to come get you guys before dark, if everything turns out well.”
“And what if that doesn’t happen?” Nate said, stress coming out in his voice. “What if we don’t hear from you?”
Tomlin shrugged. “Give it twenty-four hours. Then head back to Camp Ryder.”
“You could die,” Devon said, as though it was the first time he had considered it.
Tomlin nodded. “Trust me, I don’t like it any more than you do. And if you have a better way to handle it, then please, tell me now. But I think we’ve all considered the angles here, and given our time and resource constraints, this is pretty much the only way to find out.”
Nate leaned back on his haunches. “Fuck me.”
“You could have talked to us about this earlier,” Devon said, sounding slightly dejected.
“It would have been a pointless argument,” Tomlin said. “I figured we were gonna get here and the base was gonna be in ruins, to be honest. I figured if there was a military presence here, then we would have heard about them or made contact with them by now.”
The three men sat in silence for a moment. Tomlin looked at them, and they looked at the ground. He figured they were trying to come up with a reasonable alternative, but he didn’t think they would. Tomlin had already weighed the risks in his own mind. You could either be an island unto yourself and be safe, at least until you starved or got overthrown, or you could take a chance and try to make some allies. And allies were always a risk.
“We’re burnin’ daylight here, gents,” Tomlin said gently.
Nate and Devon looked at each other again. This time Nate nodded begrudgingly.
“Okay,” he said to Tomlin. “I guess we gotta do it.”
Tomlin backed up a few hundred yards and then curved over to the two-lane blacktop. He watched it and listened for a while to make sure there were no vehicles coming, and then he stepped out onto it and began to walk. He figured it would be best to stay on the road, where he would be spotted a longer ways off. He feared that if he popped out of the woods too close to the nest, the guards might give him a burst from the machine gun just out of surprise.
He walked at a brisk pace, his rifle slung onto his back and his hands visible. He was as unthreatening as he dared to be. He had considered leaving the rifle with Nate and Devon, but then figured that a weaponless man might raise more questions than an armed one.
Up ahead, as he came out of a slight curve, he could see the gate coming into view.
The similarities between this and anoth
er time he had offered himself up to the mercy of others was not lost on him. The day he had stepped out in front of Lee’s convoy with his hands up, he’d figured the reception would not be warm. What he hadn’t figured was how pissed Lee would be, or that Lee would blindfold him and lock him in a Conex container full of scrap metal.
Here again, Tomlin knew the reception would be rough, but what came after was a mystery.
And also, how rough the reception would be remained unknown.
Bullet in the chest rough? Or blindfold and flex cuffs rough?
His eyes were locked on the closed gate ahead of him, the hedge of looping razor wire surrounding it and piled atop the fence. He could barely see the machine gun nest beyond the silvery mess of wire and fencing. But they would be able to see him.
Anytime now.
A bird burst out of a bush just inside the woods to his right, making him jerk. It streaked overhead so low that he could hear the beating of its wings. And that was all it took to kick-start his heart into overdrive. Now he was walking on a road and up ahead there was a machine gun and two guys of questionable alliance and probably what amounted to very loose rules of engagement, if they had any at all.
I’m running. If they fire a single shot, I’m fucking out of here, no ifs, ands, or buts. I don’t give a shit if it was a warning shot, I’m not sticking around to find out…
It was an amplified voice that shouted at him: “Stop where you are!”
He halted, raising his hands up, the fingers splayed wide to show they were empty.
Don’t fucking shoot me.
“I’m friendly…” he tried to call out, but was cut off.
“Face away from the gate!” The voice was coming through a megaphone, Tomlin realized. “Face away from the gate and keep your hands up high!”
Tomlin swore under his breath and complied immediately. He wasn’t going to stand there blank-faced and give them a reason to think he was infected. By complying, he was at least demonstrating that he was sane. Sure, they might gun him down anyway, but he wasn’t going to give them any extra incentives. He reached his hands up as high as they would go. A televangelist praising God. He was staring down the road he had just walked and he could feel the muzzle of the machine gun on his back like a tingling ghost presence. Just a few pounds of pressure from an itchy trigger finger and all of the sudden he would be looking at the remains of his spleen, scattered across the road in front of him.
Be cool. Stay calm.
His eyes jagged to the left, furtively, in the direction where he figured Nate and Devon would be watching. But if they were there, he could not see them. And then he got the unnerving feeling that perhaps they had decided to leave him. Maybe they figured this was a fool’s errand to begin with and wanted nothing more to do with it.
It wouldn’t matter anyway. They couldn’t do anything for me now.
“Put your hands on the top of your head. Interlace your fingers.”
He did it, baring his teeth. He knew this was going to happen, but it didn’t stop it from jangling his nerves. No one wanted to have guns pointed at their back, their life placed on the trust that the men pointing the guns had the self-restraint necessary not to gun him down for no other reason than they were bored.
“I see that rifle,” the amplified voice called. “Do not make a move for the rifle. If you try to reach for it, we will kill you. Give me a thumbs-up if you understand what I’m saying.”
Tomlin gave a thumbs-up and felt a little ray of hope shooting through the adrenaline dump. People didn’t go through all this bullshit just to gun somebody down, so there was a good chance they weren’t just going to arbitrarily murder him on the road. That was good. That was great. That was step number one.
After that? Hell, only God knew what they would do after that.
One thing at a time.
“Get down on your knees. Cross your ankles. Sit back on your ankles.”
Tomlin settled into the prescribed position. He searched the woods again, but again could see nothing of his two companions. They’re there, he assured himself. They’re just hidden. That’s a good thing. It’s good that they’re hidden.
“Do not move from that position. Do not attempt to turn around and look at us. Do not attempt to speak to us. If you move, we will open fire.”
As the amplified voice clicked off, Tomlin could hear the growing sound of an engine. Something was hauling very fast and for a brief moment, Tomlin couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Was it Nate and Devon? Please, dear God, don’t be Nate and Devon, roaring up in the little SUV trying to save him…
But no. This vehicle sounded much bigger than the little SUV they’d driven.
And it was coming from behind him.
The engine shifted out of overdrive for a moment and Tomlin thought he could hear the clatter and clank of the gate opening up. Then the cylinders started roaring again and now Tomlin was thinking about a big diesel truck, just running him down in the middle of the road. Slamming him flat and backing up over his head to make sure the job was done. Why waste valuable ammunition when you can just have a jackass sit down in the middle of the road and run him over?
He wanted to look behind him, but he sensed that the man that had spoken from the megaphone had been quite serious, and Tomlin believed him that if he tried to turn or to look at what was going on, he would get a full auto burst all the way up his spine.
He heard the squeal of brakes.
Doors opening and boots slamming concrete.
Tomlin gritted his teeth.
They hit him hard, plowing him into the concrete. His chin struck the asphalt and he could feel the burn of skin being stripped off as his teeth clacked together. His arms were seized and the rifle was ripped from his sling. Then his hands were yanked behind his back, zip-tied tight enough to cut off the circulation, and a black cloth bag pulled over his head. Another set of flex cuffs to secure his feet together. Rough hands frisking him, ripping through his pockets.
“I don’t have anything,” Tomlin said, his voice straining.
“Shut the fuck up. Do not speak to us.”
Then he was lifted off the ground. He could feel his body being lifted up into something—the vehicle, he assumed—and then someone was standing over him. They planted a knee into his lower back, and a hand on the back of his head, keeping his face pressed against what felt like the metal floor of a truck bed. Then the engine was roaring again, making a wide circle, and then accelerating back into Fort Bragg.
Yes, this all feels very familiar.
Nate watched from where he was lying prone, peering underneath some low-growing shrub. Devon was beside him, swearing quietly. They watched the men in uniforms—all tans and greens, some of the patterns mismatched—and they watched them slam Captain Tomlin on the ground and bind his wrists and his ankles and pull a black bag over his head. Then they threw him in the bed of a big black pickup truck and then they were gone in a cloud of diesel fumes.
The two guards slammed the gate closed again as soon as the pickup truck was through, and then they were back into their machine gun nest, watching the road, probably more alert now than they’d been in days. The sound of the truck faded behind them, obscured by the tail of mist the tires were kicking up from the wet road.
Then the truck was gone, and all was silent again, save for the falling rain.
Nate took two, long, slow breaths, then looked at his partner.
Devon stared back at him, wide-eyed. His pale skin was flushed around the nose and cheeks from the cold. He looked miserable, but now he looked scared as well. His voice was a thready whisper, straining to get out of the tightness of his throat: “What the fuck do we do now?”
Nate shook his head. “Ain’t shit we can do but wait.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
HALF-TRUTHS
ABE DARABIE HAD TALKED, but not all the way. Talking was inevitable. And Carl seemed an effective interrogator. He’d allowed Abe to come very close to drowning to death, twi
ce having to stop so that they could roll Abe on his side and purge out the little bit of water that had gotten into his lungs. In the moment, it was terrifying, and Abe just kept thinking, He did it, he fucking drowned me, I’m dying…
Afterward, sitting in the cold darkness of his cell, shivering and as miserable as was possible, he kept wondering if the water slipping into his lungs had been intentional, or accidental. Frankly, Abe was more frightened that it had been accidental. Waterboarding had to be done carefully so you didn’t drown your prisoner to death, and if the man that called himself Carl didn’t know what the fuck he was doing, Abe was likely to be killed by overzealousness.
Or maybe Carl just didn’t care.
In his cell, misery made him furious and frustrated, with no way out, and no end in sight. He was in the hands of a man whose intentions and loyalties remained a mystery. Telling lies carried the promise of more pain and terror. Telling the truth carried the strong possibility of death.
Still, bits and pieces came out.
You couldn’t help yourself. When you were strapped to a chair for the third time, shivering with cold, when you couldn’t feel your fingers because they were numb. Until they began to hurt, of course. Everyone talks. It’s not a matter of IF, but a matter of WHEN. And all the training that he’d received, where SERE instructors had made him miserable and scared, it was all just to help him hold out a little longer. But no one held illusions that it was going to make you torture-proof.
And Carl Gilliard was smart. He never overused one method of interrogation. It wasn’t just waterboarding 24/7. It was standing outside in the cold. It was having electrodes strapped to your testicles. It was getting hit all over the body with a knotted rope. And between them all, plenty of downtime, to sit in the cold, cold dark, and to think about how fucking miserable you were.
Very, very effective.
Abe had lost all track of time. When he was in the blackness of his cell, it was difficult to even tell when he was asleep and when he was awake. His thoughts were muddled and dreamlike either way, and filled with regrets. He kept thinking about Eddie Ramirez, and the way the man’s head had snapped back when the bullet had hit it. And he had begun to tell himself, That was badly done, Abe.