National Security

by Marc Cameron

  They had no idea what he had planned for the vise grips and duct tape.

  At the top of the fourth flight of stairs a dusty tangle of dead spiders and a stack of old newspapers lay piled on the concrete at either side of a gray metal door. Zafir smiled to himself. He went through the motions of knocking in the event anyone was watching. It seemed American informants were behind every tree and bush. If he killed ten random people, nine would be kafir—apostates of Islam, in bed with the Americans in one way or another.

  A muffled voice came from inside, followed by the shuffling hiss of slippers against a tile floor.

  “Who’s there?”

  Habit caused the Bedouin to stand to one side of the entry—out of the line of fire. Even meek little lambs sometimes carried weapons, and the more frightened they became, the more likely they were to shoot through a closed door at an unseen threat.

  “I am a messenger from the U.S. embassy,” Zafir mumbled in English. He didn’t particularly care if the boy understood him or not. “I have good news.”

  “Do you know the code word?”

  To his surprise, the door creaked open a fraction, waiting for the code. When the boy saw his caller was not an American, he threw his body against it, trying to shove it closed, but it was too late. Zafir slammed his fist against the startled boy’s nose as he shouldered his way in.

  Zafir shut the door behind him so no neighbors would interfere with his methods. Sadiq cowered on the floor, blood pouring from his shattered nose in pools on the chipped tile.

  “If you are from the embassy why do you do this to me?” he groaned, hand splayed across his bloody face.

  “I am not from the embassy, you idiot,” Zafir laughed. Methodically, he began to unbutton his shirt. “I am a messenger—from Allah. And you have been talking to the Americans.”

  “Everyone here talks to the Americans... .” Sadiq’s voice quavered. “What are you doing? I’m a student ... waiting to return to Baghdad and the university when it is safe.... Why are you taking off your clothes?”

  Zafir draped the shirt in the seat of a padded chair beside a cluttered table that occupied a quarter of the cramped apartment. “I wish to keep it free of blood—your blood—while I work.” He took the roll of tape from the pocket of his slacks and bound the boy’s wrists behind his back. As Zafir expected, Sadiq held out a pitiful hope that if he complied, he wouldn’t get hurt. Foolish boy. Zafir threw him on the shabby couch under a poster of an American actress wearing a swimsuit. The Bedouin spoke slowly, lips pulled back in disgust, showing yellow teeth. “Malik suspects you have been working with the Americans.”

  “Malik is a liar!” the boy shrieked, trying to disappear by sinking deeper into the threadbare cushions.

  “Malik is dead.” Zafir put a finger to his lips to shush the boy’s rising whimper. “Now—” He clapped his hands in front of him. “In your university studies do they teach you of the ancient Bedouin custom of Bisha’a?”

  “No ... I don’t think so... .” Sadiq leaned his head back, trying to staunch the flow of blood from his nose. He sounded like he had a bad cold. “I ... I don’t remember.. . .”

  “Very well, then.” Zafir nodded. “I will instruct you.” He rummaged through the small basin of dirty dishes until he found a metal spoon, still encrusted with the hardened remains of some past breakfast. He lit the burner on a gas hot plate and placed the bowl of the spoon in flame. Bits of food flared and popped as it burned off in a smoky yellow blaze. “Here’s how it works. I ask you a question ... then you will give me an answer.”

  The metal spoon glowed cherry red. The rag in Zafir’s hand began to smoke as the heat traveled up the handle and scorched the cloth. “After you have answered, you may prove your honesty by placing your tongue against the hot metal. If you are indeed telling me the truth, it will not burn you.”

  Sadiq gulped.

  Zafir leaned in with the glowing spoon, only inches from the boy’s face. “Of course, Bisha’a is voluntary. It would prove your innocence, but the choice is up to you.”

  “I can’t ... I don’t ...”

  “Very well,” Zafir said, half smiling. “I will take that to mean no.” He tapped the super-heated spoon to the tip of the boy’s nose, bringing a piercing shriek and a puff of acrid smoke as skin seared in a perfect circle.

  Turning his back on the sobbing boy, Zafir began to rummage around the cluttered room. He found it better to let people he questioned stew for a time, wondering what was about to become of them. Their fevered brains did much of his work for him. Amid piles of crumpled food wrappers, paper coffee cups, and old newspaper on the yellowed Formica table, Zafir found what he was after, a cell phone. He snatched it up with a sly grin and began to scroll through the numbers.

  “This one is interesting,” he muttered, peering up under his wild black eyebrows. He held the phone in front of the boy’s eyes. “It is the country code for America, is it not?”

  Sadiq’s eyes twitched, searching the room like a cornered animal. His chest heaved with fear. “A friend who helps me with my English studies.... Please, I do not know what you think I have done.... I am a poor student, merely waiting to return to my studies.”

  Zafir took the vise grips from his pocket and rolled them slowly in his disfigured hand. “So you have said.” He knelt beside the trembling boy. “It is very important that I know exactly what you have told the Americans. You will tell me all about your conversations ... and I will demonstrate the agony your friend Malik suffered before his death this very morning.”

  Zafir lifted Sadiq’s right ankle. Again for reasons of fear or hope or stupidity, the boy put up no struggle. Zafir bound him to the heavy wooden arm of the couch with four quick wraps of the tape. The boy’s sandal fell to the floor. Tears streamed from his eyes.

  “Yes, yes, yes! I have spoken to an American Air Force agent!” Sadiq blurted. Words began to flow like water from a broken vessel. “He ... he has killed many of our brothers ... a very dangerous man. He would have killed me as well if I had not told him something.... You must believe me. I did not wish to talk to him, but he forced me.”

  “This American’s name?”

  “Jericho.” The boy hardly paused at the question. It was far too easy. “His name is Jericho.”

  Zafir raised an eyebrow. “An Israeli?”

  “No,” the boy whimpered, chest heaving, eyes darting around the room. “He is American.”

  “His full name.”

  “I do not know.”

  Zafir struck Sadiq across the face with the vise grips. There was a satisfying crunch as his cheekbone cracked. Teeth shattered and gave way.

  Sadiq screamed, quivering, trying to make himself smaller. He’d wet his trousers. Pathetic.

  “I’m telling you the truth. I ... I’m not lying anymore.”

  Zafir struck him again. A piece of tooth flew across the room to land in a dirty soup bowl with a tiny clink. A torrent of fresh blood gushed from his already shattered nose.

  “I know you are not,” Zafir whispered, leaning in to rest his arm on the back of the couch, looming over the boy.

  “S ... s ... stop, stop, stop,” Sadiq pleaded, shoulders wracked with sobs, spittle covering his chin. “I’m telling you what you want to know... .”

  “It is much too late to save yourself from all pain... .” Zafir spoke slowly as he stooped to tape Sadiq’s free ankle to the center leg of the couch, leaving him spread eagle on the blood-soaked cushion. “But, if you continue your cooperation, perhaps you may enjoy a quicker death. Let me explain how these events will unfold.” He patted the boy gently on the knee. Anticipation of pain brought greater fruit than the pain itself. “First, I will pull the nails from your toes with my pliers. . . one by one. They come out more quickly than you might imagine so that part of it will not take overly long... .”

  “Please—”

  Zafir raised a hand to shush him. The boy cowered back in silence. “Do not disgrace yourself with begging at thi
s point. We are far beyond begging. Where was I? Ah, yes, after I am finished with your toes ...” He used the nose of the vise grips to trace a line up the inside of the boy’s thigh. “... I will move a little higher for a more lengthy procedure. If you were to survive, you would never be able to sire children. But do not worry; your survival is out of the question.”

  Sadiq bowed his head, sobbing. “I beg of you ...” His head suddenly snapped up, eyes wide, hoping. “Listen. Here is something—Jericho, he is in the United States, but I believe he is coming back to the Middle East.”

  Zafir cocked his head to one side. This was news. “When?”

  “Very soon,” Sadiq said, batting his eyes foolishly, believing he’d bought some time. “He did not say, but I know this man. He is deadly, a cold-blooded killer. If Jericho finds the sheikh he will surely murder him.”

  “What do you know of the sheikh?”

  Sadiq cringed again, preparing himself for another blow. When it didn’t come he spoke haltingly. “Everyone knows of the sheikh... .”

  “What does he look like ... this Jericho?” Zafir cradled the ball of the boy’s right foot, caressing it gently between the rough, clawlike fingers of his disfigured hand. He ran the tip of the vise grips up the tendon on top of the tremulous foot, trailing a white line against olive flesh.

  “He is tall ... very dark hair ... and a beard. His Arabic is flawless... .” The words gushed from his mouth like spilling grain. Sadiq looked on in horror as Zafir examined his toes, pulling them gently apart, one at a time, as one might pluck a grape from the bunch. “He could easily pass for one of us... . Ohhhhh ... I beg of you... .”

  Zafir showed his teeth again. “All right, then. Beg if you must. I suppose I do enjoy it after all. Please continue. While you beg, I will begin with the nail of your big toe... .” He covered the boy’s mouth with a strip of tape. “I will not linger on the first one—as a favor to you for this new information. We will speak again in a moment... .”

  Sadiq broke into a frenzied gyration of vain struggles and muffled screams, but it did him no good. Taped as he was he could move nothing but his shoulders and neck. No one could hear his cries.

  Zafir adjusted the screw on the end of the vise grips and snapped the metal teeth shut on the cracked tip of the flailing boy’s toenail. This would indeed be enjoyable, but what he really wanted was a face-to-face meeting with this American named Jericho.

  CHAPTER 22

  USAMRIID

  Fort Detrick

  “Justin ... sweetie ...” Mahoney whispered. She’d unhooked her breathing hose and a puff of condensation formed with each breath on the bubble of her clammy rubber hood. Beads of sweat inched down the small of her back. “I need you to get the Dist.” The Dist-Inject was a long-barreled pistol capable of firing plumed syringes or preloaded metal darts of medication. “And draw me some ketamine. Hurry.”

  “Okay ... all right,” Justin stammered. Cake’s “Stick-shifts and Safetybelts” blared away on the intercom, the runaway beat only adding to the tension in the air. “How much?”

  C-45 squatted on the gleaming tile floor ten feet away, baring yellow teeth. Mahoney’s breath caught like a jagged stone in her chest. The big macaque twitched in agitation. She didn’t want to do anything to add to it. A small dose of ketamine would have little effect on him at all. Not quite enough might throw him into wild hallucinations and make him even more difficult to control.

  “I’d be happy with two hundred milligrams,” Mahoney whispered, hoping that would be enough to mean a permanent lights-out. She kept the heaving animal in her peripheral vision, fearing direct eye contact would be perceived as a threat.

  Justin came across the intercom, interrupting a wild guitar riff. He was flustered and stuttering. “B ... biggest one ... I mean, the only darts we have hold forty cc’s.”

  “Then fill up three, but be quick about it.” Mahoney edged toward a plastic broom leaning near the cages.

  C-06, the other macaque, bounced and screeched in his enclosure, using his gnawing stick like a club to pound the metal door. He was egging his friend into fight.

  “Okay,” Justine said after what felt like an eternity. “Got ’em.”

  Mahoney turned slowly, grabbed the broom, and stepped backward toward the wall. She was surprised to hear the sound of the heavy airlock whoosh open behind her. Justin had defied her order and come in the room.

  Now, she had to worry about an enraged monkey and a dumb-ass with a runaway libido.

  C-45 went berserk at the new arrival. He’d never responded well to men and the sight of Justin threw him into a fit of shrieking leaps around the room. Needle-sharp claws, capable of shredding the rubber suits, clicked as the thirty-pound bundle of muscle and teeth slid across the bright tile.

  “I told you to stay out!” Mahoney snapped.

  “This ... this is all my fault,” Justin stammered. “You have to let me help.”

  “It is your fault,” Mahoney said, fear keeping her anger at bay for the moment. “Now that you’re here, how do you feel about shooting the Dist?”

  C-45 had climbed up on top of the cage stacks and now paced back and forth, two feet above their heads—in the perfect position for a flying attack.

  “I’m a deadeye,” Justin said.

  He was showing off again. That was good. It might help to calm his nerves. Megan didn’t think it was wise to explain the dire consequences if he missed. This was not the time to mention the fact that no matter how this little adventure turned out, Justin’s tenure as her assistant was finished.

  So far, he’d been smart enough keep the air pistol hidden. Macaques had remarkable brain capacity to go along with their sharp teeth and angry dispositions. C-45 had been tranqed before. He was sure to attack at first sight of the Dist.

  “Okay, Deadeye ...” Mahoney kept her breath low to keep her face shield from fogging now that she was re-breathing the moist air already in her suit. She could taste the bitterness of her own fear. “As soon as you take the shot, he’s gonna go crazy. I’ll fend him off with the broom while you reload and hit him again... .”

  “I’m locked and loaded, Doc,” Justin said with far too much swagger to suit Mahoney. “Say when.”

  “Now!”

  Megan was vaguely aware of a soft whooft when the dart left the barrel. A nanosecond later, the macaque erupted into a screaming ball of rage. Though Justin had fired the pistol, C-45 locked in on her. The monkey launched from the top of the cage, lips pulled back in a screeching “Kraaaaa! ”—intent on ripping away Mahoney’s throat.

  She sidestepped, feeling the bump as the monkey brushed her left shoulder to crash into the stainless steel table behind her. A thousand-dollar centrifuge, full of test tubes, crashed to the floor, adding another danger with the broken shards of glass. She prayed her suit hadn’t been shredded as she spun to face the irate macaque. No time to check now. She could not allow this living buzz saw to get behind her.

  Claws clicked as C-45 scrambled on the smooth steel to gain its footing. Thankfully, the bright yellow plume of Justin’s first dart hung from the pink skin of its thigh.

  Mahoney didn’t wait for the animal to turn before she drew back the broomstick like a baseball bat and swung with all her might. The unwieldy suit made it difficult for her to get much power, but the swat sent C-45 reeling against the far wall.

  “Aren’t you ready yet?” she panted, holding the broom in front of her in both hands, pointed toward the ceiling like a broadsword. “This little bastard wants to kill me.”

  “Locked and loaded, Doc,” Justin said.

  The macaque spun on its heels, sliding sideways across the floor in midturn. Fangs bared, it sprang straight for Mahoney.

  “Shoot!”

  Justin was as good a shot as he said he was. The second dart hit C-45 center chest catching him in mid-jump with a pink plume. The macaque went limp and fell just inches from Mahoney’s face.

  The double dose of ketamine wasn’t quite enough t
o put the agitated beast to sleep, but it slowed him enough that Megan was able pin him to the floor with the broom.

  “Hit him with another one,” Mahoney panted. Lightheaded, she was breathing more CO2 than oxygen.

  “Another one will kill him.”

  “Damn you, Justin.” Mahoney clenched her teeth. “Quit arguing with me and put another dart in this little son of a bitch. I don’t know what kind of bug we gave him, but I’m not gonna go to the Slammer because you let him bite me.”

  Justin fired another dart. C-45 slowed, and then lay still.

  Mahoney held the broom in place another thirty seconds, then staggered back to reattach her suit to a coiled hose from the ceiling. Across the lab C-06 screamed and yipped, driven mad from watching the death of his friend. Mahoney drew three deep breaths of sweet air and then double-checked the door to the other macaque’s enclosure.

  “Dr. Mahoney ...” Justin’s voice was feeble in her earpiece—wobbly, like he was about to cry. “I think I have a little problem... .”

  Mahoney turned expecting to find C-45 alive, on the verge of attack. What she saw chilled her even worse.

  Justin stood dazed with the Dist-Inject pistol dangling loosely in his right hand. Sticking from the bicep of his blue protective suit was a yellow-plumed dart. It was the first dart he’d fired into the macaque—the dart with a large gauge needle that was certain to contain blood and fluid from C-45.

  Mahoney must have knocked the dart loose when she used the broom—and it had landed in Justin’s arm.

  “Did it break the skin?” she asked, immediately forgiving Justin all his stupid mistakes. She shooed him toward the door and the decontamination chamber, where they’d be able to remove his suit and get disinfectant on the wound.

  “Oh yeah,” Justin whispered. “Hurts like it went to the bone. What’s next, Meg ... amputation?”

  Justin was still half joking. She had to let him know how serious this was so he’d listen to her and follow her instructions to the letter. When she didn’t answer immediately, he looked up with terrified, childlike eyes.