Never Back Down

by William Casey Moreton

Coburn lowered the box to the floor and pushed it aside with the side of his foot. The second box was heavier. He worked his fingers under the bottom edge to get some leverage and heaved it off the dusty floor and onto the lid of the tub.

  Again, he stripped off the ribbon of tape and again Gabriella folded back the flaps and looked inside. She closed her eyes and sighed.

  “Why are you here?” she asked again.

  “I know this is hard,” Coburn said.

  “No, I don’t think you have any idea.”

  “If you’d rather wait downstairs or at the house, we’d understand.”

  “I could drive you to the house if you’d like,” Maggie offered.

  Gabriella focused on Coburn.

  “What are you looking for? I need to know.”

  “I’m not totally sure. Anything. Hopefully I’ll know it when I see it.”

  “But why after all these years? Why the sudden interest? You just show up here out of the blue. Why?”

  “I need to answer a question for myself. There’s really not time to explain. Please trust me,” he said.

  “Trust you? I don’t even know you.”

  “All I’m looking for is some clue as to what kind of man he became in those few short years before the avalanche.”

  Gabriella blinked the tears from her eyes and turned her face away. She started to protest again, but instead she held her palms up and took a step back. It was a gesture of resignation.

  “Help yourself,” she said barely above a whisper.

  Coburn and Sabrina huddled over the open box.

  Gabriella Goldman paced for a minute or two then strolled to the end of the attic. She used a solid cardboard box as a seat and she rested her hands in her lap.

  The box was filled with random personal belongings. Ripley obviously hadn’t owned much. There were a few more clothes. Some rock climbing gear. A pair of tattered ski gloves. Several trail maps from local ski resorts with pencil marks apparently indicating some of his favorite runs. There was a book with a spiral binding on the geology of the Rockies. Coburn lifted it out, fanned through the pages and then replaced it.

  Coburn stared down at the meager remnants of a short life. There was nothing extraordinary or shocking. He squatted at the third box still on the floor. He stripped the tape and did a quick inventory of the contents. It was filled with junk. Gabriella had indeed kept everything. He stood and went back to the open box on the Rubbermaid tub. Sabrina hadn’t moved. She wore the same disconnected expression.

  It was tempting to tell Gabriella about his encounter in New York with the man calling himself Smith. But this wasn’t the time or place. Clearly her wounds were still quite raw. Voicing the possibility that her deceased husband had been seen alive would only cause hurt. She would call him crazy and insist that they leave immediately.

  Coburn turned his attention to the contents of the box open before him. He removed a Planter’s peanut can full of loose change, peeled the plastic yellow lid and frowned at several dollars worth of nickels and pennies. He resealed the lid and set it on the lid of the tub. Next he hauled out the stack of books and read their spines and leafed through the pages of whatever title was on top. Then he placed the stack on the lip of the tub’s lid. The books teetered as he took his hand away and the top two slid from the pile and fell to the floor with a thump that echoed off the attic walls.

  Coburn went through everything. Twice. Then he put it all back.

  He returned the books to their place and squatted to collect the two that had fallen. A sheet of paper had slipped out from between the pages of one of them. It was folded in half and there was a color photograph tucked inside. Coburn held the photo between two fingers and gave it a cursory glance.

  The photo was of three men dressed in jungle combat gear. They were seated in camouflage with assault rifles over their shoulders, their faces were streaked with mud. They looked like killing machines. They were posed with deep, dark jungle in the background. Thick trees and tangled vines, vegetation with broad green leafy blooms. It could have been a jungle anywhere in the world. Coburn guessed Asia or Central America.

  He flipped to the reverse side. Two names were scrawled in black ink. Kyle Rooney. Dustin “Val” Valentine. A date was printed in the same script in the top left corner.

  Why only two names? Coburn wondered. Then a thought occurred to him and he flipped back to the image of the three soldiers. He squinted, looked closer and recognized the face of the man on the far right. It was Brian Ripley.

  “What is that?” Sabrina asked.

  Coburn stood and held up the photo for her.

  Sabrina took it in her hand, studied it a moment and then asked, “Yeah? So?”

  “The dude on the right. Maybe I’m crazy, but he looks a hell of a lot like Brian Ripley.”

  Her dark eyes scoured the image. “This looks like Army stuff.”

  Coburn nodded. “I’d say Marines.”

  “You never said anything about Army stuff.”

  “Exactly.”

  He plucked the photo from her fingers and walked over to Gabriella. Pale light from the window fell on her shoulders.

  “Tell me about this.” Coburn held the photo at arm’s length.

  Her eyes were glassy.

  “I’ve never seen that before.”

  She held the photo close to her face. Blinked twice, three times.

  “Do you see what I saw?” Coburn said.

  “Is that Brian?” she asked in a quiet voice.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Who are those men with him and why is he carrying a gun?”

  “That’s a photo of three soldiers, Mrs. Goldman.”

  “Not possible. Brian was never in the military.”

  “Those aren’t paint guns and that’s not someone’s backyard. I’d say that photo was taken in Southeast Asia, or maybe the Philippines. And that’s some serious firepower they are carrying.”

  She stared at the glossy photo without blinking.

  “Do you concur that it is Brian in the picture?”

  She didn’t breathe for a long moment. Then she gave a small nod. “Yes, that’s Brian. I’d know that beautiful face anywhere, even under all that mud.”

  “Why was he in the jungle?” Coburn asked.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Look at the date on the back.”

  Gabriella turned the photo over.

  “That’s six months before he died. Almost to the day.” Then her eyes lifted. She stared at Coburn. Then her gaze drifted off into space.

  “Six months before the avalanche, he was in Nepal. I remember clearly.”

  “Right continent. Wrong country.”

  “He was climbing Annapurna.”

  “He lied.”

  She shook her head. “Brian had photos.”

  “Where are those photos now?”

  “I don’t have them. He didn’t keep them around.”

  “Did they show him climbing Annapurna?”

  “Those climbers all look the same under all that gear and their oxygen masks.”

  “So those photos could have been any climber on any mountain in the Himalayas?”

  “Why would he lie?”

  “There are a million reasons men lie,” Sabrina said.

  Maggie’s mouth shifted to a crooked grin and she nodded.

  “I was his wife,” Gabriella said. “ He told me everything.”

  “Not everything,” Coburn said. “Apparently, Brian was a soldier, at least for a time. And it seems that he felt it necessary to keep that fact a secret, even from his wife.”

  Gabriella Goldman stood, moved around them and walked to the box filled with Brian Ripley’s belongings.

  “Where did you find it?” she asked.

  “It fell from between the pages of one of his books. My guess is he stuck it there and forgot about it. It was just luck that it slipped out when I dropped the book.”

  She placed her hands on the sides of the box and shoo
k her head.

  “Impossible. I’d have known. He could not hide anything from me.”

  “Did he have long hair?” Coburn asked.

  “No. Very short. He kept it very close to the scalp.”

  “Interesting. When I knew him he was a total hippy with long hair past his shoulders the last time I saw him. Brian was a stubborn bastard, so it would have taken a very good reason to convince him to shave it off. Uncle Sam would have sheared it off the day they shipped him off to basic training which is the same thing they did to me.”

  “You were military?”

  He nodded. “Air Force.”

  “Do you think the photo is real?” she asked him.

  “Yes.”

  Gabriella flipped the glossy and studied the handwriting.

  “That’s Brian’s handwriting. For sure,” she said. “Rooney and Valentine. Those are the two other men.”

  Coburn agreed.

  “Do you know them?” She looked at him hopefully.

  “Never heard of them,” Coburn answered.

  “My head is spinning,” she said.

  “You never had any idea?”

  “Shocked is not a big enough word to describe what I feel at this moment.”

  “If he was a Marine it would explain his penchant for travel. Did he ever invite you along?”

  “No.”

  “That makes sense. The details are starting to add up. How long would he be gone?”

  “Weeks at a time.” Gabriella said thoughtfully. “Often as long as a month.”

  “Did that bother you?”

  “Of course, but I refused to be the kind of wife who would smother her man. I loved that he was adventurous. I didn’t want to drive him away by appearing needy or clingy.”

  “Look how they are dressed,” Coburn said. “That’s not infantry. They were Special Ops - highly trained, lethal men. Their work would have been top secret. That required keeping friends and family in the dark. Look at their eyes. Intense. Focused. Prepared to kill without hesitation.”

  Below them they could hear the sounds of a ranch hand doing chores. A truck door opened then slammed shut. A stall door clattered open and they heard one of the horses being led outside. The outside light was moving across the window and shadows shifted across the boxes.

  “You came here for a reason,” Gabriella Goldman said, directing the question at him without moving her eyes.

  He nodded.

  “Tell me the truth now,” she demanded.

  Coburn leaned over and retrieved the second fallen book from the plywood floor. He packed it back inside the box and folded one of the cardboard flaps back over into position. He measured his words before speaking.

  “Simply put, something happened to cause me to doubt that things are really as they seem. I believe Brian lied to you and that photo appears to support my suspicions.”

  “So my husband had a secret. He was a soldier. What does it matter? Why do you care? Apparently he was a patriot.”

  “Apparently.”

  “Why do you care?” she asked again.

  “May I borrow that?”

  Gabriella hesitated.

  “I’ll take good care of it,” Coburn assured her.

  “Keep it,” she said, and turned away.

  59

  They didn’t take Caspian back to his apartment. Instead, they had shoved him into the black Tahoe and pressed him down onto the floor and driven south. The Tahoe bumped down a ramp into an underground garage. Caspian had a plastic garbage bag over his head and a zip tie binding his hands behind his back. Miller held the barrel of a Glock to his head and made sure he could feel it. Caspian hadn’t moved a muscle. The bullet wound to his leg was only superficial but hurt like hell.

  Smith sprang from his front row seat and pulled the garage door down and set the lock. They had prepared for this day for months. The headlights were bright on the colorless wall. Jones killed the motor and they dragged Caspian down a narrow corridor to the place they had prepared. The man who had leased them the building had called it an apartment, but qualifying it as an apartment was being generous. It more resembled a bomb shelter.

  It was a windowless concrete box located underground near the East River. There was no electricity and no plumbing. They had Coleman lanterns fueled by kerosene and a portable generator to provide a light source. The room was sealed by a thick steel door.

  There was a metal folding chair in the center of the room and they fastened his legs to the chair legs and strapped a nylon cord around his neck, anchoring it to the back of the chair. If he leaned forward more than six inches for more than a few seconds he would choke to death. Smith wanted Caspian to know they meant business.

  They slammed the door and the only light was the weak pulsing glow of a Coleman lantern hissing in one corner. The room was all of five hundred square feet.

  Smith stood behind the chair and put his mouth next to the green garbage bag to speak into Caspian’s ear. “We know everything about you. Your name. Who you work for. Everything. There is no way out of here and no way for anyone to find you. You are in an underground bunker and no one knows you are here. You are in serious trouble.”

  They had searched him during the drive for his cell phone but had found nothing. The cell phone was important. They wanted to pull the numbers off of it. If they could pull Mohammad Al-Islam’s cell number off Caspian’s phone, they would have taken one giant leap toward locating him.

  “What did you do with your cell phone?” Smith demanded.

  Caspian remained frozen. He did not utter a word. He had of course ditched the cell during the chase on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He could not afford to have it recovered. He had thrown it down a sewer grate at random.

  “Tell me where you hid the cell.”

  Again, nothing.

  “The pain you will experience in the coming hours will be beyond anything in your imagination,” Smith explained calmly and matter-of-factly. “You will answer our questions. You will tell us everything we wish to know. I know this because you are human. You will try to be brave. You will attempt to stay strong, and you will make an effort to convince yourself that it is in your best interest to not betray your friends and associates. But believe me, it is not. We will make you feel pain, and we will make you bleed, and we will make you weep and beg for mercy. Keep that in mind now as I again ask this first simple question. Where did you hide your cell phone?”

  They could hear his respiration and see his chest rise and fall. He made no sound other than his breathing inside the bag.

  “Bring the tool box,” Smith said.

  They erected a folding card table against one wall and placed a rugged gray carpenter’s toolbox on it. Miller flipped the latches and opened the lid. Then he stood aside and waited.

  Smith made a slow circle around the chair.

  “Take off his shoes,” he ordered. “Socks too.”

  One of the men squatted at the front of the chair and removed Caspian’s footwear.

  Smith stood at the folding table.

  The room was slowly filling with the light sweet scent of burning kerosene from the lantern. Smith sifted patiently through the assorted hardware inside the toolbox. He settled on a pair of bolt cutters. “Let’s begin with the toes,” he said. “That’s almost a cliché, I know, but it’s so very effective.”

  60

  The photo was taken with a camera phone and immediately emailed to Mr. Armstrong. Smith made the call and said the magic words, “We have Caspian.”

  The dogs followed Mr. Armstrong into the war room and closed the door. He stood at his PC and logged into a secure email account. The JPEG file was waiting for him in the inbox. It was five megabytes.

  Mr. Armstrong moved the mouse and pointed and clicked. The file opened, filling his twenty-seven-inch display with a vivid high-definition color image. Armstrong took his hand off the mouse and stared at the screen.

  The photo was of a handsome middle-aged man. His blue
eyes were filled with horror. He was on his back and it looked as if he were being held down in the floorboard of a car.

  Armstrong and the other group members had spent months imagining what the man might look like, this friend and ally of terrorists. Now they had a name and a face, but they needed more. Caspian was the key to everything. All the answers were contained inside his head and now they had him. All they had to do was keep him alive and make him talk. Eventually he would crack. Some people had a higher threshold for pain than others, but everyone had a breaking point.

  • • •

  The concrete walls of the room were thick enough that Smith was confident no sound could escape, including the sounds of a man screaming. Caspian was stripped nude. The pain pulsing through his left leg was immense. He hadn’t seen the damage and didn’t want to. He knew that a toe was missing. The bleeding was limited and that was good. They had techniques for controlling the bleeding. The blades of the bolt cutters were soaking in a bowl of sterilizing alcohol to prevent infection.

  Caspian had barely flinched when Smith severed the toe. Not a word of protest, not a single scream. It had been an impressive display. Smith had taken his time. Torture was most effective when it was slow and patient. The pain had to be drawn out. The blades of the bolt cutters had a dull edge. The flesh tore and the bone crunched, making a sound like cracking a walnut. Smith had stopped midway through the cut to chat with Caspian.

  “Your real name is not Caspian,” Smith said. “I’m certain of that. So tell me, who are you?”

  Caspian had closed his eyes and focused somewhere past the pain.

  Smith remained calm when his question went unanswered. He squatted next to the chair with the bowl of alcohol and sprinkled it into the flayed toe.

  “You cannot win,” Smith told him. “Don’t be a fool. Mohammad Al-Islam doesn’t give a flip about you. He will let you die, and then he will find someone else in a suit and tie to manage his money. People with your particular skills are a dime a dozen. He’ll have you replaced by noon tomorrow. There is no such thing as loyalty to a terrorist. You are disposable. You are a tool. You are a pawn in his game. Al-Islam is only concerned with himself. And sooner or later, as his paranoia and psychosis grows, he will look upon you with suspicious eyes and have you dispatched. It’s only a matter of time. He is not your friend. Don’t sacrifice yourself on his behalf. Do yourself a favor and tell me what I want to know.”