Recovering Commando Box Set

by Finn Óg

  “We’re going to take you to our country.”

  “Ireland?”

  “Ireland,” he repeated, savouring the thought.

  “Why Ireland?”

  “Because, to be blunt, nobody else wants you, and I have a friend there who may be able to help, and because I don’t know what else to do.”

  Her face darkened. “Your friend will send us back.”

  “Maybe,” he said honestly, “but she will do her level best not to.”

  “Level best?”

  “This woman will do everything she can to help you.”

  His certainty on the matter made her thoughtful.

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s what she does. She helps people. People who have been, well … treated like you have been treated.”

  Alea smarted and stood more erect. “How you think I been treated?”

  Sam took a deep breath. It was plain that Alea was about to get contrary again and he didn’t feel comfortable with the way the conversation looked likely to head. He’d just shown her the Strait of Gibraltar on a haze-free day at sunrise and she was already preparing to bust his bollocks.

  “Eh?” she pressed. “Tell me how I been treated.”

  He hadn’t the energy. “I don’t know.”

  “You think you know,” she said dismissively, “but you refuse-ed to say.”

  Sam couldn’t help but rise to the bait. He was tired, irritable and the weather front ahead was making him anxious. “Well, I know how women are treated where you come from.”

  “You think you know,” she said again.

  Sam struggled with her hostility. Here he was trying to show some empathy and she was goading him.

  “I know how women are treated in some Islamic countries,” he conceded.

  “What Muslim countries have you been?” She shot him a look, piercing, probing, accusatory.

  “Afghan, Iraq, Palestine, Saudi, Yemen, Lebanon, Jordan,” he said, trailing off.

  “Libya,” she poked.

  “Libya,” he agreed, “I already told you that.”

  “For why you are really going there? Not for fighting for oppress-ed women.”

  Sarcasm had never impressed Sam.

  “No,” he said.

  “Then what?”

  “I told you. My job,” he said firmly, attempting to finish the conversation.

  “Is strange job if navy takes you to dry and dirty places far from sea.”

  “All of those countries have a coast,” he said.

  “Not Afghanistan.”

  “No,” he admitted. “But that was a different job.”

  “Is no need for imaginings what you doing there.”

  “How about we talk about what you were doing in the sea then? Or why you were running away from Libya?”

  She stared hard at him. Sam sulked a little, hurt by what he felt was her ingratitude. He loathed the childishness of his emotions and tried to bring himself round but failed. His exhaustion poured out of his mouth before he had time to think it through.

  “You know what I don’t get, Alea? Why you are so consumed with my old job. Like …” he paused searching for words in his sleep-deprived mind, “all I’ve done since we lifted you out of the tide is try to help you and all you’ve done is fire me flack.”

  “Fire me flack, I do not know.”

  “Give me grief. You’re hostile. You’re angry. You hate the British and the Americans. I get that. They blew up your home. But I didn’t. Isla didn’t. We saved you and your kid and you’re just giving me shit all the time. I don’t get it.”

  “You were army.”

  “I was not bloody army, but put it like this, if the roles were reversed – if you were Taliban, I’d still have rescued you.”

  Sam thought about this statement and wondered whether it was true.

  “Rescue me so you could change me – make-d me like Western women?” she said, still nipping at him.

  “Rescue you because life is the most important thing,” he said, thinking aloud. “Anything can happen if there is life. If you’re alive, you make up for your mistakes. If you’re dead, there’s nothing you can do about anything.”

  “You are speaking of you, not me, I think,” Alea said.

  Sam couldn’t disagree. But then she pressed too far.

  “What mistakes you are guilty? You save us to make-ing up for mistake, perhaps. To feel better?” Her lip curled in a snarl.

  Sam’s heartbeat rose with his voice. “I get that you’re grieving, Alea, I really do. Your husband is dead, but, seriously, I didn’t know he was in the sea beside us because you didn’t tell me. And, for what it’s worth, I know what grief is. I’ve probably seen just as much death and violence as you, and I live with it, I sleep with it, I eat it for fucking breakfast every day. Now why don’t you go below and leave me alone until you’re able to hold a civil conversation.”

  Alea stared up at Sam, the hardness draining from her. The admonishment had been unexpected. He realised she had wanted him to repent, to apologise for bombings he’d had no part in. He hadn’t tried to justify events in Libya – that would have made her fight back harder, seizing an advantage to keep him on the back foot. Instead, she’d been told to shape up. They were what they were – products of their respective places. That wasn’t going to change in the confines of a cockpit in the middle of an ocean. They just had to get on with it.

  Alea did as she was told without histrionics. She gently rose from her seat and backed down the ladder into the cabin. She glanced briefly at Sam before she turned, a soft look with her big brown eyes, the tiniest hint of an apology.

  “It was the Englishman,” said the first man – the foreman of the informers.

  The second man nodded his head in agreement at his back.

  “The Englishman,” repeated Habid, flat and without conviction, his tone designed to convey his scepticism.

  “It must have been.”

  “Why? Why would an Englishman turn you in to Gaddafi if he was getting information from you?”

  “The Englishman was different to the Americans. He was – he was silent, almost always.”

  The second man nodded. “He asked questions only when the Americans were finished. Very few questions – sometimes none at all. He just … he just watched.”

  “Yes,” said the foreman, “he never took notes. He just stood, back to the wall, in the dark sometimes. We could hear his voice sometimes, but mostly we could barely see him.”

  “I still don’t understand why you think he was the person that betrayed you to Gaddafi.”

  “It is complicated,” said the foreman.

  “You think I am incapable of understanding?” Habid bristled, leading to an appeal from the second man.

  “No, no, no, please do not think that.” He stood up in the cell.

  Habid felt the power coast through him – their liberty was within his gift.

  “My friend was just explaining that there was a lot happening back then.”

  “When?” Habid’s eyes moved to the foreman.

  “When Tunisia began to explode.”

  “The revolution? What has that got to do with your betrayal?”

  “I believe there was a plan. The British wanted to keep Gaddafi in power but the Americans wanted him gone.”

  “Why?”

  “The Englishman must have been from British Intelligence. The Americans must have been CIA—”

  “I had managed to work that much out by myself, thank you,” said Habid.

  “Yes, of course. The CIA wanted to know where the Gaddafi targets were – his home place in Sirte, his bunkers and compounds. They wanted to take him out.”

  “Is that not what the Englishman wanted?”

  “I don’t think so. I think he wanted information only about people in the regime. He wanted to know who liked who, what alliances there were. He did not care about locations. He wanted to know what would happen if Gaddafi was killed not when Gaddafi was
killed. I think he wanted Gaddafi to stay, to be alive. I think the Englishman was one of Gaddafi’s allies.”

  Habid thought for a while. “What do you mean, allies?”

  “Ever since UBL destroyed the Twin Towers, the attitude has changed. America and Britain saw Gaddafi as a friend in the fight against extremists.”

  “Gaddafi hates the Islamics.” Habid nodded.

  “They tried to overthrow him many times. He defeated them always, and they ran to all parts of the world, but the Americans became more afraid of them than Gaddafi, so they turned to the leader for information on the militants.”

  “I see,” said Habid, not sure that he saw at all.

  “So Britain, especially Britain, started to rub Gaddafi’s back. They asked him for help and he gave them it – they got their information. Then when they found the Islamics in different parts of the world, they sent them to Gaddafi for interrogation.”

  “Because they don’t torture people – the CIA?” scoffed Habid.

  “The British. They do not like to be seen to torture. They cannot be seen to torture, so Libya does it for them – they get the information.”

  “I still do not see why you think the Englishman told Gaddafi you were informers?”

  “I think he wanted to offer them a reward for the information they passed on about the Islamics. And it also meant we would be taken out of the way – that there would be no evidence.”

  “And then you were arrested?”

  “Yes.”

  “But Britain and America both still bombed Libya? They did that together. If Britain wanted Gaddafi to survive, why would they join the CIA and bomb our country?”

  The foreman shook his head in despair. The second man appeared behind him and spoke.

  “Just because a president and a prime minister want something does not mean that their intelligence chiefs want the same thing. Just look at us.”

  “You were Gaddafi’s intelligence chiefs,” sneered Habid, shaking his head. “Slim pickings.”

  The second man said nothing.

  The foreman took up the narrative. “The Spring was too well-advanced. They could see that Gaddafi might lose, so they took away evidence – they removed the risk. They threw us to the dogs to die so that we could not tell the world what they had done.”

  Habid was more confused than ever.

  “What exactly had you done?” he asked, trying to remember what he had read in the papers. “Given them a few coordinates for aerial bombings?”

  “Oh, no,” said the second man, “we gave them the information to bring Gaddafi in from the cold. We were the people who brokered the deal to pay-off the victims of Lockerbie, to end arms smuggling, to make the leader acceptable to the West again.”

  Habid nodded slowly. He could see why the Americans and British might have cast them adrift. Which got him thinking, nobody liked loose ends. Least of all him.

  “I thought you were a part,” said Alea.

  “Apart from what?” snapped Sam, eight hours later, cold and no less pissed off.

  “A part of route.” She pronounced route as rowt, as if she’d been watching American TV.

  The kids were in their cabin. Alea had cooked, or more correctly heated some unidentified carbohydrate with wet meat from a can. Sam had inhaled it.

  “Look, Alea, you’re going to have to spell this out for me. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sam was in no mood for another barney. The swell was building to the point that autopilot was a poor option, which meant that someone had to sail the boat through the heaving sea.

  “I thought you waiting for us. When we were in sea.”

  “When we rescued you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you are coming from nowhere,” her voice rose in justification. “Like man is waiting for you to arrive-ed.”

  “What man?”

  “Man we pay for journey. Trafficking man. Man who was on this boat.”

  “Why would you think that?” Sam couldn’t follow her logic.

  “Was long time we are in boat. Many days.”

  “I understand that bit.”

  “The man, he keep checking time,” she said, motioning to her wrist. “He is waiting.”

  “What for?”

  “For you, I think.”

  “Why do you think that, Alea? I don’t understand.” Although it was beginning to dawn on him.

  “When is dark, he move women and children to front of boat.”

  “Ok,” said Sam, unsure.

  “He sit back of boat with men.”

  “How many men?”

  “Two men.”

  “So three men in total?”

  “Yes, three men. Seven women and children.”

  “Fuck,” said Sam, realising how many had perished.

  “Yes.”

  “But what has that got to do with me?”

  “Captain of boat is fisherman. He can use engine. He can use ...” She pointed at the compass on the binnacle.

  Sam nodded.

  “He see your light.”

  “Yes, our mast headlight,” said Sam, pointing upwards.

  “This captain he jumping. Very, very happy. The traffick man get very cross. He tell captain sit down! Captain is shouting at light and then traffick man … he stab-bed captain.”

  Sam was stunned. He stared at her but said nothing.

  “He push captain into sea. Then he stab-bed my husband here.” Alea pointed to the side of her neck and began to shake. “I screaming, Sadiqah screaming. We very afraid.” The woman’s eyes filled with tears but she didn’t break down. She had something to say and she steeled herself to say it.

  “What did he do then?” asked Sam, gently.

  “He tell me, get bank papers from husband body.”

  “Your husband had his bank statements on him?”

  “To pay man when we get to Europe. Was deal. But he make me give passport and papers.”

  Sam wasn’t interested in that. He was worried about what became of the other women.

  “Then he women take off cloth-es.”

  “You and Sadiqah?”

  “No, other women. They take off full veil then he stab them dead.”

  Alea was convulsing now. Sam thought she was about to be sick. He wanted to move towards her, but instinctively knew it would be the wrong thing to do. He let her continue as her sobs grew louder.

  “Sadiqah see everything. Everything.”

  She placed her hand over her face and began to cry hard. Sam left her for a few minutes until the shudder abated.

  “What did he do with the dead women?”

  “They have papers. He take all papers and keep them inside his clothes in bag here.” She gestured at her torso. “Then he push into sea.”

  Sam sat still for a long while waiting for her to recover.

  “Did he push you into the sea?”

  “No.”

  Sam just waited, unable to press her any further.

  Alea blew her nose and then looked at him. “He stab boat.” She began a sweeping motion as if she had a dagger.

  “He let the air out before we were close?” Sam asked, surprised at the level of risk the man had taken.

  “You were so close,” she said. “I could see you.”

  “The boat must have sunk fast.”

  “Air is all gone. The water so cold.” Alea began to cry again. “Sadiqah, she is panic, the sea in her mouth.”

  “The man was in the sea – could he swim?”

  “He has preserver,” she said, pointing to Isla’s buoyancy aid. “When in sea he says blow.” Her gesture was similar to that of an air hostess demonstrating how to use a whistle on a life jacket located under a seat.

  “A whistle,” Sam said.

  “Whistle,” she repeated. “Then you are in sea and Sadiqah is dying and you take us onto here.” She opened her hands.

  “And you thought I was there by appointment?”

  �
��Is what?”

  “You thought I had come to collect you – to pick you up.”

  “Of course.”

  Sam knew there was a flaw in her reasoning but it took a while to work out what it was.

  “Alea, why would the man let you live when he killed the others?”

  “This I do not know.” She slowly shook her head, at a loss.

  He realised she had thought about this but hadn’t worked it out. Sam tried to reason it out. “Well, what did he need most?”

  “Money?” she shrugged.

  “Money is no use if you are dead.”

  “Safety?” she suggested.

  “Rescued.”

  “Rescue.” She nodded in agreement.

  “So what’s the best way to get rescued when you’re not a migrant at all but actually a murderer and people trafficker?”

  “Aintihal,” she said, hunting for the correct phrase. “Tazahar.”

  Sam frowned.

  “Make lie,” she tried.

  “You pretend to be a woman,” Sam said.

  “Pretend!” She seized the word. “Yes, he pretend.”

  “But why? If it was for money, he had already taken your passports and bank statements.”

  Alea thought about that for a while. “He need to say he is owner. At bank. He need to …” She rubbed her fingers together.

  “Verify they are his?” Sam ventured. “Prove it?”

  “Prove it.” She nodded in satisfaction.

  “So he needed you to pretend that he is your husband.”

  “Yes,” she said, then frowned. “But he take veil and dress as woman.” She was at a loss.

  “Don’t you see?” Sam said.

  Alea just looked at him.

  “He didn’t know who was picking you out of the water. I reckon he just wanted to make sure he got to safety. Maybe he decided that a woman had a better chance of being rescued than a man.”

  Alea shrugged as if it were a possibility. “Perhaps is simple. He want to get to Europe, then when he get he run away.”

  “Maybe he realised that the veil would be lifted eventually – that someone would see he was a man, and then he would need a backup. Maybe the backup was that he was your husband. Maybe you were his passport to asylum. Single men are less likely to be granted asylum.”

  “Maybe he need us for money from bank,” she said dryly.