by Harold Coyle
If that was their intent, the Syrian jailers were succeeding.
Every loud sound they made was now so painfully familiar to Davis that he instinctively began to panic even before they were finished opening the door. He knew he needed to fight this fear and resist their efforts to break him. Though he was a prisoner,, Davis understood that he was still an American soldier. As such he was expected to resist by whatever means available. He was prepared to do his best to keep the faith.
He also understood there was only so much suffering, pain, and psychological intimidation he could endure, that sooner or later he would give in. Anticipating this he began preparing himself for what he'd do when he finally did break. Already he had decided that when they finally did reach that point he would tell the Syrians a story, a series of stories just like he used to tell his ttiama whenever she caught him doing something he wasn't sup Posed to be doing. He could pull this off, he told himself as he listened to the hinges groan under the weight of the steel door j! ,¦¦!¦
,ifl
;i'i !|il:
148
HAROLD COYLE
slowly swinging open. The only thing he needed to be careful about was that once he started spinning his little stories he would need to be consistent, keeping his lies in order while making sure that he left out all the details that he knew were classified or might be harmful to other members of the team.
Davis could now smell the men who would take him to his next beating. With all the grace of a pair of stevedores manhandling a sack of grain, two of the Syrians grabbed Davis by the arms, jerked him to his feet, and began dragging him toward the door. With his hands tightly bound behind his back and his legs manacled at the ankles there was very little he could do to make the process less painful to himself. Even before he was out of the cell the injuries that had been inflicted during previous beatings were aggravated by the brutality of the way he was being dragged, causing Davis to moan.
Annoyed by this sobbing, a Syrian behind Davis brought his AK assault rifle up and smashed the butt between Davis's exposed shoulder blades. The force of the blow caught the guards who were holding Davis by surprise, causing the one on Davis's left to lose his grip. Unable to stand on his own and supported only on one side, Davis swung about and slammed into the Syrian who had been supporting him on the other side. Amid a tirade of shouts and Arabic oaths the two of them tumbled onto the floor in a heap.
Even before the Syrian who had gone down with Davis could free himself from the tangle of arms and legs his companions were all over Davis, kicking him and yelling for all they were worth. A few of their blows missed their intended mark as Davis squirmed in an effort to escape them and hit the Syrian lying on the ground instead. Already embarrassed and angered by the incident and feeling the sting of his companions' blows, as soon as the Syrian guard untangled himself from the fray and scrambled to his feet he turned on Davis and joined the pounding his companions were heaping upon Davis with a vengeance. Screaming at the top jfw
MORE THAN COURAGE
149
of his lungs, the enraged guard pummeled Davis's head and shoulders with clenched fists. All he could do to protect himself was to curl up into a tight ball.
To Davis the beating seemed to go on forever. It wasn't until a Syrian officer, impatiently waiting for the guards to bring the American to the interrogation room, came down into the cellblock and brought the impromptu beating to an abrupt and merciful halt.
Making no effort to hide his anger at having been kept waiting, the Syrian officer barked a quick series of orders as he admonished the guards gathered around Davis's prostrate form.
One of the guards tried to justify their actions. For his trouble this bold Syrian guard drew a fresh volley of reprimands from the officer followed by a sharp slap across the face. The officer's actions only served to increase the guard's ire. When they picked Davis up again, they used every trick they knew to inflict as much additional pain on their charge as they could. Half carrying, half dragging their prisoner, who was now sobbing incoherently, the guards continued their trek to the interrogation room where Davis would be beaten in a more professional and deliberate manner.
At some point during this journey Davis became aware that his blindfold had slipped during his one-sided melee with the, guards. By leaning his head back and rolling his eyes clown as low as he could, the young specialist four found that he could catch fleeting glimpses of his surroundings. Nothing he saw was very impressive or unexpected. From what he could see of them the guards hauling him around the prison were wearing the olive green uniforms and black boots that all Syrian soldiers wore.
Looking down at the floor Davis noted a rut worn into the tiles.
This well-trodden path told Davis that he was but one of many who had endured this ordeal.
As they went the two guards detailed to drag Davis made no euort to coordinate their efforts. The resulting twists and jerks
150
HAROLDCOYLE
caused the manacles about his wrists, already excruciatingly tight, to dig deeper into his torn flesh. Worse than the pain, though, was the growing terror Davis felt as they drew closer to the interi, rogation
room. He suspected that the guards' slow pace and the roundabout route were part of their torment. The longer they took, the more time he had to think about what was coming.
'
When they reached the interrogation room the guards would plop him into a chair before leaving him to the mercies of professional thugs who would beat him for an hour or so.
Davis used the brief interlude that passed between the time when the guards relinquished control over him and the professional interrogators took over to make a cursory inspection of the room he so feared. Like the rest of the prison he had managed to see thus far, this room was as expected. There was nothing of note, only bare floors, scant furniture, and walls badly in need of
'"
patching and painting. Whenever he saw the toes of the boots worn by the Syrians in the room turn toward him, Davis froze.
He suspected that if he jerked one way or another as if looking away the Syrians would begin to suspect that he could somehow see them. If they did, his blindfold would be rebound even more tightly than it had been before, depriving Davis of sight and giving them another reason to beat him.
Davis desperately needed the freedom he had to explore his new world for as long as possible, if only to give him a faint sense of control over something and maybe even a small sliver of hope.
He needed all the hope that he could latch on to. The withholding of food and water and his constant beating would eventually break him. The only question Davis had was which would go first, his body or his mind. He suspected that his tormentors knew they could not push too much further lest they run the risk of losing him completely to death or madness. Once that happened he would be worthless to them in a propaganda war that he figured they were already waging. All he had to do, Davis kept telling himself, was to hold on. Hold on to hope. Hold on to his sanity Hold on to his life. Just hold on.
1
™»
MORE THAN COURAGE
151
Having no practical experience to rely on except for a few watered-down training exercises that addressed the fine art of torture, Davis didn't know what his limits were. All he knew was that as long as he remained conscious, they would beat him. So when the first blow fell upon his broken cheekbone, all Davis could think was, "Bring it on, motherfucker. Bring it on and put me down."
And bring it on they did. As they had in each of the previous sessions, the pair of Syrians assigned to brutalize Davis went about their labors in silence without making any effort to ques^
tion him. This continued to be a source of surprise to him. Like a couple of gandy dancers driving a railroad spike, the thugs simply took turns pounding him. Time had no meaning to Davis. All he could do was to respond as best he could to the rhythm that his tormentors fell into, first from the left, then
the right. A full bodied slap to the left side of his head by a hand in a lead-lined glove was followed by a jab from behind aimed right at his right kidney. A jarring whack delivered to the side of his face was preceded by a thrust to the side of his stomach that knocked the wind out of him. Left, right. Left, right. Blow after blow slammed into his body, sending him reeling this way, then that. In short order Davis was no longer able to separate one pain from another as the beating went on. Left, right. Left, right.
At some point during this pounding Davis lost his balance,, causing him to topple off the straight-back chair he had been sitting on. Already dazed by the well-disciplined pummeling, Davis couldn't brace himself tor the impact with the floor. He simply fell like a withered leaf falling from a tree. Hitting the ground as he did only increased the agony, if that were possible, and almost caused him to lose consciousness. At any other time he would nave welcomed a slide into mindless oblivion. But even in his Cental fog, he realized that lying on the floor as he was gave him 311 excellent opportunity to look about the room in an effort to See what his tormentors looked like. Knowing he had little time
Perore he was placed back on the chair, he gazed about the room swiftly as he dared.
152
HAROLD COYLE
Besides the Syrian thugs who had been administering the beating there were two other Syrians. From the cut of their uniform and age Davis guessed that they were senior ranking officers, though their reason for watching a routine beating during which no one asked the prisoner any questions was unclear. Slowly, ever so slowly he continued to scan the room until he caught sight of his own officers tucked away in a corner of the room, gagged and bound to chairs, but without blindfolds.
Startled, he stared at them even as the Syrian thugs were wrestling him off the floor and back onto the chair. He had no way of knowing for sure if Captain Burman and Lieutenant Aveno had been there during his previous beatings, but he suspected they had been. Their presence did much to explain why the senior Syrian officers were there. It was at this moment, as the Syrians got back into the rhythm of their beatings that it all began to make sense to him. He wasn't being asked questions because the Syrians weren't interested in what he knew or had to say. He was simply being used as an incentive. The real object of these
brutal sessions was to beat him in the presence of Burman and
«isj||
Aveno, beatings they could stop at any time if they gave in and talked. It wasn't his will they were trying to break, Davis concluded
. It was theirs. As they sat there watching, the two Special Forces officers would know that the longer they remained silent, the more their men would suffer. As best he could tell, they hadn't talked yet, giving rise to a new round of speculation. What would break first? His body or their conscience?
¦"¦¦
As silently as ever, the pair of Syrian tormentors went about plying their trade, delivering a blow against the left side of his skull, followed quickly by a thick stick swung across his chest.
Left, right. Left, right.
The senior Syrian officer, a colonel, waited until a pair of guards had dragged Davis's limp body out of the room. As soon as the door was closed he nodded to one of the sergeants who had been
^f
MORE
THAN COURAGE
153
beating Davis. It was time to remove the gag from the American officers. The colonel strolled over to the table where the club, lead-lined glove, truncheon, steel rod, and other assorted instruments used to torment the American enlisted men were arrayed.
He looked them over until he found one that was his personal favorite. Picking up a large metal hook similar to those used to lift and carry bales of hay, he took a moment to study it before looking over at Aveno. "Your men are disappointing me. I expected soldiers of your caliber to be more resilient and durable. I do not think they will last much longer."
As the Syrian spoke Ken Aveno glanced at his commanding officer. Burman's condition had not changed since he had first seen him in the truck. Were it not for Burman's coloration, poor though it was, and a stream of drool that ran from his gaping mouth, down his chin and onto his lap, it would have been easy to mistake him for dead. But he was alive, alive and like Aveno untouched while RT Kilo's surviving soldiers were beaten before their eyes. Given the severity of those injuries that he could see and Burman's continued unconsciousness, Aveno concluded that his commanding officer was suffering from permanent brain damage.
And while it was true that he wasn't in a position to exercise any authority while in Syrian captivity, Aveno slowly came to appreciate that he would remain RT Kilo's acting CO throughout this ordeal.
As the hours dragged by and his men were brought before him, blindfolded and bound to be beaten to within an inch of their lives, Aveno began to envy Burman's obliviousness to the suffering occurring in front of him. As the acting CO and the only conscious team officer, he had to endure the horrors Unfolding before him alone and live with the knowledge that Only he had the power to decide when the beating of his men should stop.
Unable to bear the sight of the pitiful wreckage that his commanding officer had been reduced to, Aveno looked at the Syrian
.Colonel who was still staring at him. Aveno maintained his silence, 154
HAROLD COYLE
as he had thus far. He knew that whatever happened, his last duty to his men and to his nation was to keep the faith, no matter what the cost, no matter how high the price rose. And if the time came when the Syrians lost patience and turned on him the hook that the colonel before him was holding, then he'd have to suffer as they had.
Slowly the colonel walked over to Aveno and looked down at him. "So, are you ready to talk to my superiors? Or must your men continue to pay for your pride and recalcitrance?"
Exhausted by his lack of sleep, food, and water it took a real effort on Aveno's part to raise his head and face the Syrian towering over him. When the two locked eyes, Aveno glared at his tormentor with the most spiteful expression he could muster in an effort to convey all the anger and hatred that he dared not verbalize.
When it was obvious that the American officer was not yet ready to move on to the next stage, the Syrian colonel turned and barked a series of orders. As the gag was stuffed back into Aveno's mouth, the other Syrian officer walked out of the room and headed for the cellblock to fetch the next American slated for torture.
Arlington, Virginia
18:15 LOCAL (22:15 ZULU)
Only a live broadcast of the Super Bowl beat being in the Army War Room during the execution of a real world operation. All that was missing were the nachos and beer. Anyone who could find an excuse to be in there wiggled his or her way though the throng of spectators until they found a spot that offered them a view of the screens and a place where they cotild hear the running narrative.
Straphangers, that gaggle of attentive minions commonly found in the wake of every general officer, were fortunate. Unlike the peons who had no real reason to be there and thus had to resort to subterfuge or begging in order to gain access to the crowded operations center, aides de camp and selected special project officers favored by their generals simply followed the star bearers that they had hitched their professional wagon to. This was how Lieutenant Colonel Robert Delmont managed to gain entry to the plusher, less crowded regions of the Army War Room. -His ticket came in the form of Brigadier General Palmer, the senior Army staff officer who had responsibility within the Department of the Army for Operation Razorback. It did not Wake any difference that Palmer had no part in planning or overseeing
the efforts currently under way aimed at extracting two survivors of RT Kilo. This operation belonged to Central Com.
m*nd, or CENTCOM, the unified headquarters at MacDill Air ¦Base in Florida responsible for Southwest Asia. Success or failure
i °r this day's effort rested upon the shoulders of the commanders 156
HAROLD COYLE
and staff officers assi
gned to that command and not the august gathering of high-speed generals and colonels assembled in the Army War Room. Their efforts would determine whether two very young and very lost specialist fours would be rescued or fall into the hands of the Syrians at the last minute.
The race between the pursuing Syrians and American search and-rescue teams created the air of excitement that filled the War Room. Since contact with O'Hara and Laporta had been established, every asset capable of gathering information on the comings and goings of Syrian military units in that part of the world had been focused on the area through which the stranded American Green Berets were moving. What O'Hara and Laporta did not know was that a sizable Syrian force was shadowing them.
Like the breadcrumbs dropped by Hansel and Gretel, the ruts left by the oversized tires of Kilo Six provided their pursuers with a trail that a blind man could follow.
Initially the intelligence community couldn't understand why the Syrians had not simply picked up their pace a bit and grabbed the pair of wandering Americans. Only after this strange bit of information was passed off to the operations side of the CENT
COM staff did one of the more switched-on staff officers there provide a plausible explanation. O'Hara and Laporta, he speculated, were bait. According to his theory the Syrians were waiting for the American military to dispatch a search-and-rescue team to extract them. When that happened, the CENTCOM staff officer explained, the Syrians would commit everything they could in an effort to foil the rescue attempt and perhaps even increase their haul of American prisoners by scarfing up some of the would-be saviors along with O'Hara and Laporta. "It won't matter how much it costs them," he stated in the detached and antiseptic manner that staff officers use when trying to describe bloody encounters that occur when soldiers on the ground meet face-to face. "The prestige that a coup like that would garner will be worth the sacrifice. After all, everyone knows that a video showing the corpse of a dead American being dragged through the MORE THAN COURAGE