The plasterboard walls came apart easily, but behind them was solid brick.
So I started studying the teams guarding me. They were professional. Always working in pairs, never giving me a chance to jump them and grab a weapon. I was tempted though, and devised intricate plans in my head, maybe faking an illness or an injury, but I didn’t think they’d fall for it.
I tried to get them to talk to me but that didn’t work either, so I tried to piss them off as much as possible, just being an awkward bastard to see if I could get a reaction.
I complained about the food all the time, about the coffee they gave me, about the water having a weird taste. I tore the sheets off the bed and told them they had bed bugs, but they just left them on the floor. I threw food at the walls, but that just meant I didn’t have anything to eat. I tried not washing, but they didn’t care if I stank and the only person who had to put up with it was me.
So far I’d been here three weeks and two days.
I wondered what they were waiting for.
I spent a lot of time thinking about Clay, wondering where he was, where Amira was and what was happening, torturing myself with ideas that they were already dead. But then I persuaded myself if that was the case, Smith would let me go—or kill me. Keeping me prisoner didn’t add up.
I went over and over the idea that Smith already knew Amira had every reason to hate the U.S. government, and yet they’d blithely brought me in to train her to make bombs. My instinct told me to trust her, but I was a long way from having all the pieces of the puzzle.
We’d been honest with each other, I thought, but if she hated Americans, why had she been recruited? Maybe she just hated the military, but she hadn’t been like that with Smith or with Clay. Not even with me that last night. I found myself thinking about her too much, even dreaming about her. She was the only woman that I’d felt a connection with in a long time. And now she was deep undercover, risking her life every day.
Out of sheer boredom and frustration, I spent several hours a day working out as best I could: sit-ups, push-ups, running on the spot, star jumps, anything and everything to keep busy, to keep fit.
I had no idea what was happening in the world outside and lived in a bubble of my captors’ creation.
The teams changed shift every eight hours, but I recognized the faces: the short one, Scarface, Mr. Armani, Lady Gaga, Lucifer, Smoky Joe. I didn’t know their real names, of course, but that was how I categorized them in my head. Know your enemy.
I calculated that there were five teams on shifting rotas. That was a lot of manpower to guard one pissed off AT.
And then, on my twenty-fifth evening in solitary confinement, the protocols changed. It was between shifts and not a mealtime, but I heard voices outside my room.
They’d made sure that there was nothing I could use for a weapon except myself, so I tensed, wondering what was coming next.
But when the door opened, it wasn’t any of the teams that I’d grown used to.
It was Smith.
Amira
FOR THE FIRST ten days, we were watched, expressionless eyes following our every move. We were given menial chores and only allowed to join the others for prayers or when Umar decided his followers all needed ‘some education’, as he put it. These were long-winded rants about Western immorality, Infidel governments, and how we were the chosen ones, all part of a great cause, a mighty Jihad, and would be celebrated throughout history.
Other than that, we learned little, but it soon became clear that there was a second camp somewhere nearby in the forest. Sometimes we could hear vehicles in the night, and strange men came and went, most of them were dressed in western clothes, unlike the rest of us.
At times like that, when I felt their cold eyes on me, I felt very grateful for the shapeless burqa that concealed me.
My entire existence was a performance, and I found that exhausting. I couldn’t understand how people did it for years at a time. How? And I also questioned why? I was so lost and scared, so sure I’d made a terrible mistake. But I was here and I had to stay.
As I was watched less than Clay, and because I was the only woman, I was allowed a little more freedom to go into the woods as there was no toilet facilities within the compound that I was permitted to use.
This meant that usually it was left to me to check in with Larson, but sometimes Clay was able to slip away, too. He wanted to find out where the second camp was located because it was clear that the bomb-making factory wasn’t here, so it must be at the second site. So far, he hadn’t been able to find it.
Our camp had eighteen people, although that number fluctuated depending on who was sent to collect supplies. It was usually a guy named Adam from Chicago who was chosen, and he’d change out of his Didashah into jeans and a t-shirt, then return with bags of groceries a few hours later.
We never saw Larson, but we saw evidence that he was around, evidence only we knew to look for, and we were able to relay information about the number of people we’d seen, the existence of the second camp, and the fact that every three days, trucks or vans could be heard in the forest at night. Twice, I’d been able to get close enough to see the licence plates. I was going to try again soon.
Larson had set up places in the woods around the camp where we could relay information, expertly hidden in the trees. He’d told us where there were remote mics, pre-planted bugs, (ones that could be switched on and off to defeat bug detectors), ways of capturing all the intel we could collect. I wondered who else was listening.
The terrorists covered their tracks well, and Smith had told us that they’d been discovered in the first place via air search, and planes equipped with infrared and thermal imaging sensors that pinpointed body heat. Whether that was through other intelligence or a lucky strike, neither Smith nor Larson had told us. Not that Larson had been talkative at the best of times, communicating only what he deemed us worthy to know. It was Clay who’d shared his theories with me. Clay trusted me.
We’d become closer since we’d been here, sharing what we’d learned each day. And of course we slept together at night. I felt ridiculously safe in our shed with his warm body close to mine.
During the day, we went about our chores, and at night we spoke in whispers. He told me about his family, not that he was close to them, and I told him about Karam and Zada and my parents.
We also planned our getaway, when the time became apparent, and getting word to Larson. Clay discussed the ‘extraction’, but that always made me think of dentists. Clay had laughed about that.
I trained myself to remember all the licence plates that I saw—until the day one of the men saw me spying on him.
He pointed his gun at me and I turned and ran, cringing as the sharp crack of a bullet rang out in the trees. I ran as fast as I could, the burqa hampering my movements. I could hear him shouting, his feet thundering behind me.
If I could just get to the main camp!
It was within sight when he caught me.
He grabbed a fistful of the burqa and I was jerked backwards, falling with a shriek.
My veil had been twisted around, so I couldn’t see anything either, but I heard voices in the distance and I screamed for Clay and kicked as hard as I could.
A boot thudded into my stomach and all the air whooshed out of my lungs. I scrabbled on the dirt floor, nauseous and gasping for breath
“What’s going on, brother?”
It was Umar who’d spoken, but not to me.
“I caught this bitch spying on us! She was watching the trucks—I saw her!”
Someone touched my shoulder and I cringed.
“It’s okay, it’s okay. Stop fighting, ya amar.”
Clay’s voice was tight with concern as he tried to reassure me.
“Actually,” said Umar, “I’d be very interested to hear why your wife wandered so far from camp.”
Clay helped me to sit up and I clung to him.
“I … I just went to the bathroom. And �
�� I went for a walk. I heard trucks and I wondered what they were. I’m sorry!”
“Hmm,” said Umar, stroking his beard thoughtfully, his eyes hiding his true emotions. “Tell your wife that it’s not safe for her to go wandering into the woods. Accidents can happen all too easily. She could have been shot today. Next time,” and he lowered his voice, “she might not be so lucky.”
Clay thanked him and promised to keep better control of me. Then he helped me up and we retreated to our hut.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice soft and concerned.
“I think so,” I said, trying to stop my voice from shaking.
“What did you see?”
“More trucks,” I whispered. “I got the licence plates of two of them, but then that man saw me.”
I shuddered, the tremors running through me as adrenaline leaked from my body.
Clay nodded.
“They’re moving large quantities of something—my guess is TATP. Sometimes I’ve smelled chemicals in the air.”
I sat up, wiping my eyes.
“Me, too! Only a couple of times and faintly, but I thought it was odd.”
“I have to get the intel to Larson tonight. Tell me about the licence plates you saw.”
Once he’d memorized the numbers, Clay told me to stay in the hut and not to leave it again today.
Later that night as we lay on our makeshift bed, he held me against the fear and the dark, and feeling that everything was spiralling out of control.
That wasn’t the first time that he’d held me in the night, stroking my hair and telling me it would be okay.
I’d drifted asleep when Clay touched my arm.
“I’m going out now. Don’t leave the hut, okay?”
I nodded, wishing he wouldn’t leave.
“Be safe!”
He gave me a wide grin and slipped out of the hut.
I couldn’t sleep after that, jumping at every noise, freezing at every voice, every step as the sentries patrolled.
Clay returned at dawn, saying that he’d managed to get to one of the listening stations, but his face was grim.
“What else?”
“Amira, I don’t think you should go into the woods again. Stay near me or in the main camp.”
“Why? What’s happened?”
I couldn’t see his face in the gloom of the hut, but I felt him reach for my hand.
“I heard one of the guards talking. He said that Munassar has been bragging about following you into the woods and … hurting you.”
I stopped breathing.
I’d seen the way some of the men looked at me, studying my body as if the burqa didn’t hide me. But now, being the only woman in the camp was beginning to be even more dangerous.
“Amira?”
“Yes, okay. I’ll be careful,” I said, trying to sound tough.
But inside, I was terrified.
So every day, I washed the men’s clothes, and at mealtimes, I ate alone in the hut. I was careful when I had to make a bathroom visit, and Clay always came with me. And every night I slept next to Clay. It was strange, but comforting, too.
“He cares about you, you know that, right?”
Clay’s voice was thoughtful in the darkness, and I remembered what I’d said so many nights ago to another man, to another voice in the dark, about the truth being easier when the daylight had fled.
“Who?” I asked stiffly.
Clay laughed quietly.
“As if you don’t know who I’m talking about!”
I shrugged in the dark.
“It doesn’t make any difference now. Besides I told you—it was just convenience, nothing more.”
Clay was silent, and James was never mentioned again.
I slipped into a twilight world where I felt expendable by both sides: Umar stared at me but never spoke, and Larson’s visits seemed less frequent. Even Clay seemed rattled, and I knew he was wondering how long we’d be here.
Umar still sermonized enthusiastically about Jihad—the great struggle against the oppression of Western governments.
I listened, but I didn’t react.
He lectured, and I took it all in.
“What you have to understand,” he said, in his hypnotic, educated voice that reminded me of a British royal, “is that the West have no morality, no conscience. The American government is ruled by the Republican Party—the Grand Old Party—but their foreign policy is decided for them by Israel. The Israelites want to attack Iran, but then you had your General Petraeus—the grand old philanderer…” and he laughed at his own joke, “who has stated that the presence of Iran in Iraq is the greater danger. It’s a complete mess.” His eyes darkened. “And while these so-called world powers squabble amongst themselves, we will rise triumphant.”
He talked endlessly as he described the iniquities of the Middle East, the children he’d seen gassed by the Syrian government, bombed by the Russians, killed by the Americans; and his eyes glittered with fury as he detailed the rotting bodies he’d seen in the collapsed hospitals, the devastated communities.
He played on our emotions, and isolated as we were from the rest of the world, from any other perspective, it would have been easy for someone angry and dispossessed to fall under his spell.
Smith had tried to warn me that in the early days the terrorists would show me their most human face. Their sorrow and outrage when I told them about Karam was genuine—and all of them had similar stories to share.
“My father was a detainee in Guantanamo Bay for twelve years,” Umar said bitterly. “My childhood ended the day they took him. He’d been a teacher, but they broke his mind with ritual torture and humiliation. He was shackled with heavy irons, blindfolded, made to stand for hours at a time, stripped naked, denied water and deprived of sleep. He was forced to drink seawater until he was sick, then beaten again and again. That,” he said, jabbing his finger into the air, “is American justice. Twelve years! Twelve! An innocent man! Broken on the yoke of Western brutality! I say, no more! We will rise up! We will teach them the meaning of fear—and the streets will run with the blood of the Infidel!”
As he spoke, I saw it all in my mind, but I also saw images from CBS and Fox News of the graves in Syria of men, women and children who had been murdered in their thousands by ISIS, the torture, the rape, the beheadings on YouTube.
No one dared question Umar, and we all listened to his lectures as he taught us how to think.
Umar’s right hand man was the scary guy that Clay heard wanted to hurt me. Munassar was a Yemeni from Aden, heavily pockmarked and rather short, but he reminded me of Larson with his silence and hard eyes. He was also the only person at the camp, other than me or Umar, who hadn’t been born in America.
And when I thought about it later, it was an odd mix of people. Apart from Munassar who unnerved me, they were just people who genuinely believed that the government didn’t speak or act for them and therefore they weren’t bound by laws of the land.
Adam, the former teacher from the Windy City, explained to me.
“What you have to understand, sister,” he said, his brown eyes filled with passion, “is that our mission is the source of pride and dignity for this nation. Now it is time to act, and I’m prepared to die for my country, to make America a better place.”
I listened and nodded, but I was itching to ask him why he thought that such sacrifice was a better way than staying and being a teacher and training young minds.
I was stunned to hear that he’d spent the last two years fighting in Syria and now wished to share his ‘expertise’.
I didn’t dare ask what sort of expertise that might be.
I didn’t speak much, but I listened. And that’s when I began to see the common thread amongst them: the decision that the only strategic way to make the U.S. government listen, as a way of achieving their political and religious aims, was through terror.
Umar smiled benignly, as if he was sharing a great joke:
“Kil
l one, terrify ten thousand,” he said, laughing loudly. “I didn’t even invent that—it’s a Chinese saying,” and everyone laughed with him.
Clay squatted beside me, perhaps recognizing how disturbed I felt, or maybe just realizing how those words would affect me.
But it was Umar who spoke to me.
“Your husband is very proud of you,” he began, nodding at Clay.
I bowed my head and stayed silent, wondering where this was going.
“I knew your brother,” Umar said. “In Syria.”
My head jerked up as I stared and doubted.
Umar’s lips twisted as if he knew what I was thinking.
“He was at the National Hospital, yes?”
I nodded wordlessly.
“Your brother was a great soldier—you should be happy that he is in Paradise now.”
I swallowed, afraid to disagree with our great leader.
“My brother wasn’t a soldier. He was a volunteer in the hospital. He was at med school, he…”
Umar smiled coldly.
“I’m sure that’s what he would tell his sister,” he said, a slight emphasis on ‘sister’ that sounded contemptuous. “But I knew his commander. They say he fought with great honour—a true warrior.”
Rage roared up inside me. Pure rage that he’d sully my brother’s name like this.
“Of course,” said Umar. “I didn’t know him as Karam Kousa—he was called Karam Soliman then.” His smile was glacial, his dark eyes glittering. “But so many people used false names in our great defence of Raqqa.”
Panic flashed through me. How did he know Karam’s real name? Did he suspect me? Did he suspect Clay? Had Clay told him? And oh, Allah, please no—he must have been lying about my brother! He must have.
Umar’s eyes grew dull and distant.
“Our days began with air raids piercing the dawn. At first, like a wind, but then comes the crash of bombs dropping. And after, when the world is still, the stench of death hangs in the air and the streets are full of the dead, rotting under rubble in the summer heat.” He turned to me.
TICK TOCK (EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) Book 1) Page 13