by Roger Hayden
“You come with us now. We take you to your daughters,” said Bosra, who was standing near the door. Doug was surprised to hear a tone of friendliness from the normally emotionless men. Perhaps they felt as though they had inflicted enough damage on him—if such a thought was possible.
Nabil nodded in agreement as Doug slowly rose to his feet, wobbling in place. He stuck the paper into the pocket of his baggy orange jumpsuit and placed his arms at his sides as Omar brought the sack over his head, tightening it around his neck. The room went dark again as Doug’s warm breath blew back against his face from within the confines of the fabric.
Nabil grabbed his arm and yanked him away, turning and guiding him out of the room and keeping a hulking hand on his shoulder.
Bosra and Nabil led Doug along the hallway in his bare feet. His shoes, like his own clothes, had been confiscated. He tried his hardest to see beyond the stitched hood but could only make out the faint glow of overhead lights. Halfway down the hall he heard whimpering from another room, off to his right. It was coming from a little girl. He broke free of Nibal’s grip and charged the door, his heart leaping.
“Chassity, is that you?” He pounded on the thick door, guided only by his instincts.
“Dad?” her voice cried from inside.
Doug felt around for a doorknob, a latch—something. He found a handle and pulled it with all his might, but the door wouldn’t budge. He heard the charging of bulls coming after him, slamming him against the door and yanking his hands behind his back.
“I told you we should have tied him up!” Bosra shouted.
Doug heaved and struggled, only to feel his wrists bound together by a hastily tied rope. From behind him, Nabil pushed Doug’s head against the door in warning.
“My daughters!” he cried out. “You bastards. You promised!”
“Daddy, what’s going on?” Chassity shouted.
They hauled him away from the door by both arms as he shouted back through the stifling mask. “You’re going to be okay. I promise! I love you, girls, and I’ll see you soon!”
Their cries faded as Doug hit a set of double doors and nearly tumbled over.
“Keep moving,” Bosra said without offering any assistance.
With his unintentional momentum, Doug hit another door and stopped moving. He could hear the men chuckling behind him, which made the ordeal all the more worse. Nabil opened the door and pushed him inside. “Your audience is at hand…” he added.
Doug attempted to move past the burly man breathing against his hood but found himself pushed roughly inside. He tripped and fell, hitting the hard surface of the concrete floor, banging his eye socket while chipping a tooth in the process. He lay there, dazed, with the taste of blood in his mouth.
“Get him up,” an unseen man ordered.
Hands came from behind him and jerked him to his knees.
“Now take that bag off his face.”
The bag lifted up, and Doug tried to take in as much in as he could, though his vision was blurry from hitting his head. There was a spotlight on him, with several men watching from the shadows. A short, stocky man with a skull cap and dressed all in black stood near a camera pointed at Doug.
They had brought him back to the video room where he had been unmasked last time and paraded around as some kind of discovered treasure. He turned his head to see a large black ISIS flag draping the wall and a boy—no older than a teenager—dressed in green camouflage garb pacing behind him, unmasked and looking down at him.
“You there,” the man at the camera said. He was the same “director” as before, and he seemed to care for nothing except getting his shot. “Move a little to your left. You’re off center.”
Doug did as told as Nabil and Bosra leaned against the wall watching, their arms crossed and as indifferent as always. They had left the rope on his wrists, which made him feel even more defenseless and afraid. There was a lot of side chatter going on in the room, and no one seemed to really be paying any attention to him.
The boy walked past Doug to say a few words to the director, and they both looked his way. After their brief conversation, Doug watched as the shaggy-haired youth pulled off his headband and placed a black ski mask over his face.
“You. American,” the director said.
Doug’s eyes moved over to his largely shadowed frame.
“You memorized your words, yes?”
Doug nodded. “I want to speak to Salah Asgar. We had a deal.”
The director waved him away, shushing him. “Yes, yes. We make video first, then you get to talk to Asgar.”
Doug noticed the masked youth as the boy passed him by and stood on the mark behind him. “How old is he?” Doug asked the director. “He doesn’t look a day over fifteen.”
The director looked at Doug strangely in return and then turned away, ignoring him.
“What’s wrong?” Doug continued. “Couldn’t find an adult to put in front of a camera?”
Again he was ignored.
In one last plea, Doug turned his head to see the boy. “Listen to me, son. This isn’t right. These men are not your friends. Help me, and I’ll make sure nothing happens to you.”
A smack landed suddenly and hard on face—not from Nabil or Bosra or even the director but from the young man himself.
“Shut up, you American pig!” he sneered.
Doug turned his head and stared ahead, shocked, as the director gave the signal that they were recording.
***
Assistant Director Thaxton and the other FBI agents stood up after their mysterious British caller hung up. Special Agent Sutherland turned urgently to Lynch and Hopper. “Look this man up. Peter Graves. Run a database check on him. I want to know all there is to know about him.” He then turned to Burke, who had already walked away from the phone, his attention now on Bravo Team, which had moved a safe distance away from the plastics factory and the carnage and biohazards inside. “Special Agent Burke. What does the CIA know about this man?”
Burke turned to Sutherland with a blank stare. “I’ve never heard of him. Though I’m aware of the actor with the same name. He passed away years ago.”
Sutherland tilted his head in confusion, at a loss for words. “What? This some kind of joke to you?”
“Absolutely not,” Burke answered. “But it certainly seems that way to our enemies.”
“How about a trace on the call?” Lynch asked, excited. “The NSA should be able to get that in a matter of minutes, right? I mean, that call could be the best thing that’s happened here.”
“Good idea,” Sutherland said. He then leaned against the table, his red tie and ID badge swaying below him. “How about you get your NSA buddies on the line and get this thing figured out before these assholes upload another video?”
“I’d be happy to have them run a trace, but we can’t lose sight of the current operations. Not with so much on the line.”
Angela wanted to demand that her family be the center of their concerns. But she felt overwhelmed with everything that was happening on the screen and around her. She had a sick, dreadful feeling in her stomach, an ominous premonition of things to come.
Despite all the side conversations and distractions, Thaxton zeroed in on Angela and approached her with concern. “Are you okay?”
Angela turned to the unruffled assistant director, whose shiny brown hair always seemed to fall perfectly straight down to her shoulders. “Not really…” she said in a soft voice. “I’m scared to death, frankly.”
Thaxton nodded with a sympathetic frown, unusual for her normally stoic demeanor. “There’s still time. We’re closing in on them. I can feel it.”
“Thanks for your words,” Angela said, looking away.
She remained seated as Thaxton stood over her and placed a hand on her shoulder. Thaxton gave a reassuring smile, removed her hand, and rejoined the huddle of FBI agents on the other side of the table. Their words were just out of Angela’s range of hearing. She didn’t want
to be in the room any longer, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave either. Not without hearing something about her family.
Burke was preoccupied on his cell phone, trying to get NSA officials on the line, when suddenly his face dropped. “What are you talking about, it’s live?” He then raised an arm, snapping his fingers to get the FBI’s attention.
As they turned around, he pointed to their laptops. It didn’t take long for them to realize what was so important. “I need a trace on that number immediately. Yes, a name and address as fast as we can.”
While he was on the phone, Bravo Team began to buzz in through his headset, asking for an update.
Angela’s focus shifted to Sutherland’s laptop screen right next to her as he ran over in a frenzy. “Is it the same link as before?” Sutherland asked.
From the head of the table, Thaxton nodded. “I’ve got it.”
“Are they streaming live?” Lynch asked.
“Looks like it,” Hopper said as the light from his laptop screen reflected into his glasses. His startled expression from across the table didn’t give Angela any comfort. Sutherland had stopped typing but had nothing on his screen yet.
Burke managed to walk away from the projection screen to his own laptop. Angela watched as Sutherland went to largely blank website page with a black background and some tiny white Arabic writing in the top right corner. She didn’t know that the terrorists had a website or how they had managed to get one, but there it was.
“We need this URL passed through the NSA,” Sutherland said to Burke, who was too preoccupied at his own laptop to answer.
Angela watched as a spinning circle appeared in a video player in the center of the screen. Her body temperature was switching from hot to cold without rhyme or reason, and she could already feel a sense of shock creeping into her system.
Lynch looked up with tense anxiety. “Is this thing available live to the world, or is it a private URL like before?”
As if answering his question, the video player opened with a message superimposed over the black background that said A Message to America.
Burke spoke into his headset, telling Bravo Team to stand fast. He then glanced at Lynch with an answer. “Looks like this is going out everywhere.”
“And whoever doesn’t see it now is going to see at least part of it at some point,” Hopper added.
The room went silent. Angela gripped her armrests again. She’d thought she’d be ready, but she wasn’t ready at all when the image of Doug appeared on the screen, on his knees in an orange jumpsuit, his face badly bruised. His left eye was swollen shut, and he looked sickly pale.
Behind him stood a masked man in green camouflage fatigues, an ammo belt over his chest and an ISIS headband on top of his black ski mask. Angela gasped and covered her mouth. Sutherland looked at her with concern.
“You don’t have to be here if you don’t want.”
“Yes. I do,” she responded.
All eyes were on the screens as a kneeling Doug stared into nothing. Behind him, the masked man was silent. His piercing green eyes could be seen in the holes of his mask. Angela thought he had young eyes, and he wasn’t big. He had the physique of a teenager.
Doug’s eye blinked as he cleared his throat.
“What have they done to him?” Angela asked, terrified. She leaned forward, touching the screen around his face. She lifted her face, on the verge of tears. “Can’t you find him? Can’t any of you find him?” She slapped the table in desperation.
“Agent Gannon, please,” Burke said. “We’re working right now on finding the location.”
But it wasn’t good enough. The next time she saw Doug, he was supposed to be in her arms, not still in a room on his knees with some masked boy behind him. Angela was growing frantic. The world was closing in around her.
And then Doug spoke. But they weren’t his own words—that much she knew.
“For decades, our government has tried to conquer the Muslim world like tyrants. We have killed millions and tortured and raped in our battle against ‘terrorists.’ But our war is based on lies. The blood of innocents is on our hands, and we will pay this debt not just with the American soldiers we send to their doom to fight but with the lives of our own citizens far removed from combat in places we should not be.”
Doug paused with a sigh as though saying the words had pained him. Angela could see that he was close to crying, which made it even harder to hold back her own tears.
“My name is Doug Gannon. And I’m an American citizen… ashamed of my country. I’m an engineer at Hudson Optronics in Del Rio—a known military contractor. I have personally aided in the manufacturing of equipment used to kill innocent Muslims. My wife, Angela, is a Border Patrol agent who conducted an illegal raid that resulted in the death of over ten Muslims who hadn’t done anything wrong. Through all of this, my captors have shown mercy on me and will allow my release and that of my two young daughters for one hundred million dollars. Not a penny less.”
Suddenly the masked youth placed his hand on Doug’s shoulder. Doug reacted with surprise and stopped speaking as the man cut in. He pointed his long knife directly at the camera, his voice muffled by the fabric of his mask.
“Americans, your time is up, and it’s too late.”
Angela cupped her mouth in horror with both hands. “Oh God. What is he talking about?”
Sutherland took his eyes off the screen long enough to place a hand on her knee. “We don’t know. I really don’t think you should see this—”
“I’m not going anywhere!” she shouted, near hysterics.
Sutherland moved his hand and went back to viewing the hypnotically ominous spectacle.
“Our brothers are still at Guantanamo Bay, Israel still gets your money, and your government is still trying to kill us. We told you to leave us alone, but you won’t. Just an hour ago, more blood was shed. And we know this because one of our brothers got away.”
Burke slammed the desk and stood up, gaining everyone’s swift attention. “I knew it! We needed to find that man immediately. He’s the link between us and them.”
But the man on the screen wasn’t done yet. His knife went from pointing at the camera to swooping in an arc and stopping just inches from Doug’s neck.
“What the hell are you doing?” Doug said, panicked and confused.
The man looked up at the camera, eyes burning with fury, visible through the exposed slits in his mask. “We were looking to negotiate, but now you have brought this on yourselves. Now this man will mark the first casualty in our jihad against your country.”
Doug squirmed and shook, trying to keep his distance from the blade pressing against his throat, but the man had a tight hold on him. “Please! Please, no!” Doug shouted.
Angela stood up, knocking her chair over and shaking uncontrollably.
“Allahu Akbar!” the man shouted, raising his arm and with one powerful stroke of the great and shining knife slashed through Doug’s neck with one quick, brutal thrust.
Blood gushed out from the open slit, pouring down over his orange shirt. Doug’s garbled screams pierced Angela’s heart as she shrieked in horror. Sutherland slammed his laptop shut, ending the video, as the others backed away from their own screens, white as ghosts and stunned with disbelief.
“Oh my God!” Lynch shouted.
Before Sutherland could catch her, Angela threw herself on the table and pounded it with fury. If the video of Doug’s initial capture had sent her into a delirium, the incomprehensible sight of his murder was too much to bear. The video had faded to black on the laptop screens. Everyone was standing, in shock. Even Thaxton looked close to tears.
“No! Why, God? No!” Angela cried. Sutherland bravely approached her with his hand raised and about to give her a comforting touch. But she jumped up, pushing him away, and balled into her hands into fists, waving them wildly.
“Angela, please,” Chief Drake said, walking toward her. “I’m so sorry.”
“Get away from me!” she shouted—gaining the attention of everyone within earshot. She rushed past Drake and went straight to Burke, who stood at the end of the table, a sickly, ashamed look on his face. As she got closer, his eyes darted downward. But she wasn’t going anywhere.
“I trusted you…” she said, exposing a red, puffy face drenched with tears. “You said that you could find them. Now my husband’s dead. My daughters are still out there. My whole, entire life… it’s over.” She cried into her hands as Burke stood to the side, quiet and lost in his own thoughts.
“Could have been a mock execution,” Chief Drake blurted out. “For all we know, your husband could still be alive.”
Angela looked at him in disbelief and wiped her face. She had heard enough. She spoke in a slow, serious tone. Gone were any signs of hysterics, as though her emotions had been suddenly sealed off. “I have to make some phone calls. You will find my daughters. No more abandoned factories and janitor closets. Find them… and bring them home to me.” She spun around and stormed out of the room before anyone could say a word.
Despite her anger at Chief Drake, his words resonated with her. Maybe the execution was staged after all. Perhaps her husband was still alive. She couldn’t imagine her life without him. They were supposed to grow old together, purchase a ranch, and retire with a pack of grandkids running around. There was no way he was actually gone. She wouldn’t believe it. For a moment, she leaned against the heavy wooden door to the conference room and quietly sobbed.
Through the door she heard Burke say, “We need to get the president on the phone.”
“Oh no…” Chief Drake said.
“What is it?” Sutherland asked.
“They just uploaded pictures of his headless body.”
“Holy hell…” Lynch added.
“None of you are to let Agent Gannon hear about this. Got it?” Burke snapped.
“Unfortunately, she’s probably going to find out one way or the other,” Lynch said.