by Harold Coyle
That was unlikely. As far as he knew the word mercy wasn't in their vocabulary. Somehow he would have to find a way to cat without using his hands.
As he was pondering how to go about eating, a mernoiy popped into his mind. As clearly as if it had just happened, Davis recalled sitting at the kitchen table as a child next to his baby
^Pv
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brother. The two were eating lunch when his brother dropped his spoon on the floor. Unable to reach over and retrieve the lost utensil, Davis watched as his brother smiled and barked like the family dog before lowering his head to the bowl on the tray before him. Making no effort to be neat or quiet, the child of three began to lap up the stew.
Wondering if this made any difference
in the enjoyment of the meal, Davis had laid his own spoon aside and copied his brother. Both boys were thoroughly enjoying this experiment when their mother appeared. As she so often did when they were violating one of her rules, she shrieked their full names in a high-pitched voice that only mothers can manage, bringing their animalistic feeding frenzy to an end and announcing to the world that a beating was about to begin.
For the first time in days Davis managed to smile as he thanked the Lord that his mother wasn't there to witness what he was about to do. "Mama," he said as he pulled himself to within easy reach of the bowl, "I do hope you forgive me for this, but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do." With that he leaned forward, lowered his head as far as he could, and stuck his tongue out until it made contact with the oily broth before him.
Sergeant First Class Kannen greeted each new display of "kindness"
by his captors with growing suspicion. He was quick to appreciate that these acts foreshadowed something more than a simple change in tactics. Having studied their culture and history, the American NCO knew that the Syrians would not abandon a line of attack without good reason. While there was the possibility that whatever they were trying to achieve by beating him had been accomplished by breaking another member of the team, Kannen discounted that notion. Information gleaned from a prisoner under duress is like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. With the eXception of their team commander and perhaps the XO, no one
tttan had all the pieces. Even when they managed to crack a key individual, professional interrogation teams used bits of informa 198
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tion gleaned from one person to extract additional information from others or to confirm the validity of data they already had.
The American NCO was also placing a great deal of faith in his teammates. As vicious and unnerving as his experience had been thus far, Kannen doubted that any member of the team had broken or given the bastards anything of value. Eventually someone would break, though. Perhaps they all would. So even while he was enjoying his newfound freedom from being constrained and savoring every morsel of food offered, Kannen began to prepare himself mentally for the next torment the Syrians were waiting to spring upon him.
The Syrians didn't give him long to ponder this question. Not long after they had deposited a bowl of watery soup in his cell, they were back. Having already been caught offguard twice during their previous visits, Kannen managed to pick himself up from the floor and shuffle over to one of the walls of his cell. From there he figured he would be able to see out into the corridor once the door was open.
Fortified by the skimpy meal he had wolfed down in minutes and buoyed by the resurgence of hope that it fostered, Kannen found that he was much calmer now as he watched the door swing open. His restored vision added an entirely new dimension to an experience that he had endured many times before. First there was the sound of the bolt being slid through its housing with a single, quick motion so that the slapping of metal on metal at the end of its run sounded like the bolt of a rifle being jerked back. Next, the door groaned as it was swung open. This opening was executed with a slow and measured pace to maximize the chilling effect that emanated from the grinding of its unlubricated metal hinges. There always was a slight pause between the time the door was fully open, and the rhythmic tromping of rubber soled boots as they hit the cold concrete floor of the cell.
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enough to permit him a good look at his captors, was amazement.
They were not the massive brutes that his imagination had pictured them to be when all it had to go on was the sounds they made while they pummeled him. Instead, the pair of Syrians who entered the cell and confronted Kannen were anything but intimidating.
Everything about them had an air of shabbiness, from the hint of fading in their unpressed uniforms to the dark stubble that indicated they did not bother to shave on a regular basis. Their boots, the age-old mark of how well disciplined a soldier is, betrayed a total lack of care. Even their mannerisms came as something of a shock to him. Their placid expressions and stooped frames reminded him of day laborers reluctantly shuffling off to work in the morning.
The effect of all of this on Kannen was quite unexpected. On one hand he felt disappointed that the people who had been tormenting him were not burly fiends decked out in crisp Nazi-style uniforms. Rather than being the best of the best, Rannen's first impression was that these people were nothing more than slugs, lowly miscreants who had been assigned this duty because they couldn't hack it in a line unit. This evaluation quickly led to anger. How in God's name, he wondered as he watched the Syrian guards file into the cell and approach him, did I allow myself to be frightened by these bozos'?
This question was answered almost immediately when a third guard bearing the flashings of an NCO upon his rumpled uniform entered'the cell, stepped up to Kannen, and began screaming. Kannen had no idea what the short sergeant was yelling about.
But the soldiers belonging to his detail did. In a flash, they leaped to either side of the American. In unison each grabbed an arm,
"tted Kannen off his feet, and slammed him against the wall.
Unprepared for this sudden assault, Kannen's head hit the wall, scrambling his thoughts. Before he had an opportunity to sort nunself out, the Syrians spun Kannen about and pinned him up against the wall. Unable to do anything to protect himself or
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resist, Kannen remained motionless as their NCO pulled his arms behind his back, and slapped a pair of handcuffs on Kannerfs wrists.
In an instant, the pain of the manacles cutting into his raw skin shot through him. Blinded by this pain he hardly noticed that the pair holding him had spun him around yet again until they faced the door before moving though it with great alacrity and down the corridor.
All of this occurred with such stunning suddenness that Kannen found he was having difficulty keeping up. The bump on his head only added to his inability to concentrate on what was going on around him. As with a passenger on a fast-moving train, the blurred images of what lay to his left and right whizzed by. The only thought that he managed to put together was that he had misjudged his captors. Whatever they lacked by way of appearance, they more than made up for in enthusiasm and efficiency once they had been properly motivated. He also had a vague sense that he would soon have an answer to his question as to what sort of depredations they had in store for him next as they reached their destination.
The room the Syrians whisked Kannen into was both well lit and quite clean in comparison to what he had managed to see of the rest of the prison. His eyes were immediately drawn to the right where he saw a simple, straight-back chair set against a wall that looked as though it had been freshly whitewashed. A pair of floodlights stood several feet back and away from the white wall.
Both were angled so that their beams fell on the chair. Without pausing, the Syrians dragged Kannen over to the chair, twisted him aroud, and shoved him down onto it with more force than was necessary.
Though still somewhat
dazed, Kannen used the little time he had to look around as his escorts left the room and the interrogation team stepped forward to take over. Having only felt the tools that his interrogators had used, the American NCO was anxious MORE THAN COURAGE
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to see what the damned things looked like. To his surprise, rather than spying a table cluttered with medieval torture devices, he saw a Syrian soldier fussing with a modern video camera set upon a dolly. In an instant Kanncn's mind cleared as he realized what this was all about. The Syrians were going to use him to embarrass the United States employing the same techniques that the North Koreans and Vietnamese communists had pioneered decades before.
With the object of this little excursion now established, Kannen knew what he had to do. Regardless of the cost he would have to do whatever he could to demonstrate that though he was bloodied, he was not broken. An unmistakable display of defiance was what he would have to present to the camera. Even if all he could use was his expression or the look in his eyes, Kannen was hell-bent on making a statement that even the densest TV commentator back in the United States could not miss.
As if he had read the American's mind, a Syrian colonel who had been standing in the shadows behind the floodlights stepped forward until he stood before Kannen. Using the King's English, the colonel briefed Kannen on what he expected. "Sergeant First Class Allen Kannen, once all is ready you will look straight into the lens of the camera and give your name, your rank, the branch of service to which you belong, and your hometown. Nothing more. These are things which we already know so there will be no shame in presenting them to us here in this forum. I am not going to ask you to betray any military secrets or read any sort of statement. Is that clear?"
Kannen looked up at the Syrian colonel. The urge to tell him to piss off was all but overpowering. But Kannen managed to hold his tongue He figured he had but one chance to get it right.
It would be best if he saved that opportunity for a time when it Would be more meaningful. Though he had little doubt that Whatever he did or said would ultimately be edited out and never See the light of day, the American NCO was determined to com
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municatc as best he could his determination to stay true to his code of conduct and his comrades.
After waiting several seconds for some sort of response but receiving none, the Syrian colonel smiled. "I am not disappointed.
I rather expected this." Without breaking eye contact, the Syrian raised his right hand and snapped his fingers.
On cue a pair of guards who had been waiting in the corridor outside hauled a limp body into the room and across the Hour.
With a great deal of effort they maneuvered their burden until they could place it on another straight-backed chair sitting against the wall opposite Kannen. Squinting in an effort to see past the glare of the floodlights, he managed to focus on the figure in the chair.
Though the blindfold covered most of the face, and the head hung down until the chin almost rested on his chest, there was no mistaking that the bloodied and beaten person seated across from him was his commanding officer, Captain Burman. It was the first time Kannen had seen Burman since they'd been loaded on separate trucks to be brought to Damascus.
Their duty done, the pair who had hauled Burman into the room left. Once they were gone a junior officer next came up to Burman. With a great deal more precision than any of his subordinates had shown, the Syrian officer drew his pistol, jerked the slide back, and released it. With a round clearly chambered, the junior officer laid the muzzle of its barrel against Burman's head.
When he wras satisfied that all was set, the Syrian colonel looked back at Kannen. "I hope I do not have to explain to you.
what will happen if you elect not to cooperate with my simple demands and instead attempt to play the hero in front of the camera."
Soldiers die in battle. Kannen understood that cruel yet simple premise. Death was a natural and inescapable part of a profession whose basic object has always been to destroy one's enemy as quickly and as efficiently as possible. This, however, was not battle,
at least not the sort of battle that he was prepared to engage 1
^m'[
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in. If Burman had died during the melee back at the village it would have been tragic but acceptable to Kannen. To have Burnian die as a direct result of something he did or failed to do was something else. Even if he could manage to rationalize his defiance by buying in to the premise that he, Burman, and all the Kilo members in the ccllblock were more than likely dead men, Kannen knew that he could not allow himself to be the agent of a teammate's death. RT Kilo had started out as a team and had, as best he could tell, remained one through it all. He was not about to change that now by becoming the agent of his CO's murder, even if this meant compromising his personal honor. At least, he told himself as he prepared to endure the unendurable, he'd take the responsibility of being the first cfae to cooperate. Perhaps the people back home would understand. Perhaps they would show him the sort of mercy that his captors were incapable of.
Unable to hold back his rage but still very much in control, Kannen looked away from Burman's pathetic figure and back at the Syrian colonel. "You flicking bastard."
The colonel smiled. "I will take that as your consent to my simple request. Good." Turning, the Syrian colonel looked over to where the cameraman stood ready. With a snap of his fingers the Syrian technician rolled the device into place and prepared to start filming as the colonel stepped out of the line of sight so that Kannen would have an unobstructed view of his captain throughout the entire session.
Fort Irwin, California
04:58 LOCAL (11:58 ZULU)
On the ground the distance from the airfield at Bicycle Lake to the mock-up of the Syrian airfield in the northern portion of Fort Irwin was a little over fifteen kilometers. It was where all major live-fire training was conducted. It Was also the least accessible portion of the training facility, connected to the outside world by roads that would have made a goat homesick. Since the series of training exercises being run by the Rangers would eventually culminate in full-scale live-fire rehearsals, this choice of location for the mock-up, officially designated Objective Kansas, was unpopular.
After seeing it for the first time following a truck ride that entailed an overland trek approaching biblical proportions, the Rangers charged with securing Kansas rechristened it Dust Bowl International, or DBI for short.
By air the journey took no time at all. In fact, the hop from Bicycle Lake to Kansas was so quick that Air Force transports sometimes passed over Objective Kansas during takeoff. When the training to seize Kansas reached the point where the airborne portion of the operation was included, most of the time spent aloft was needed to reach altitude, come about, and form up for the drop. During these exercises, the Rangers who were crowded into the cargo bays of the C-130s had very little time to mentally
gear themselves up for the jump. As exciting as that experience c^n be, it was only the prelude to a tactical exercise that every man
Ui the 3rd of the 75th suspected would be part of an effort to rescue their fellow soldiers in Syria.
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ing the brief interlude between the time he settled into their nylon jump seats and the order to stand up studying his commanding officer. Seated across from Lieutenant Colonel Harry Shaddock, Sergeant Major John Harris was struck by the tight, almost strained expression his colonel wore. The easygoing, almost jovial demeanor that Shack normally sported just prior to a jump was totally absent. Instead of leaning forward and kibitzing with every enlisted men who could hear him above the roar of the transport's engines, the colonel was slumped down low in his seat. Lost in his own thoughts, he remained silent throughout the entire flight with his arms folded tightly against his chest over the reserve parachute that regu
lations required but which their chosen altitude of exit rendered useless.
Now, Harris was no fool. He was well aware of what was at stake. He understood the pressure that his commanding officer, the staff, and all the company commanders within the battalion were under. When Shaddock was not out in the field overseeing a tactical training exercise he was in the office poring over estimates generated by his staff or locked away in highly classified briefings or on the phone with any number of higher-ranking officers from every major command and agency that had or thought they had a role in Fanfare, the name given to the operation that was supposed to free the Green Berets being held in Syria. That the battalion was being rushed to prepare itself for its role in Fanfare went without saying. This sort of thing was not at all unusual for the 3rd of the 75th. It was the nature of the beast for a unit like the 3rd of the 75th. They were expected to train flat out month after month in order to maintain peak combat readiness. Then, when something like Fanfare came their way, they were required to redouble their efforts. Those who could not maintain that sort of pace either never got on to the merry-go-round in the first place or were quickly thrown off either by the staggering tempo or by an uncompromising commanding officer like Harry Shaddock.
Having served with the colonel in this assignment and several others during the course of his long military career, Harris knew 1
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that Shaddock's behavior as of late was not due to the long hours he was putting in. Like most of the men he surrounded himself with, Shaddock thrived in this sort of atmosphere. Nor had Harris been able to detect even a hint that his commanding officer had any reservations about the role his battalion would play in Fanfare. While Shaddock would like to see some changes to the manner in which his battalion was being employed, he had stated on numerous occasions to both his superiors and the men in his command that once they were given the word, the 3rd of the 75th would be ready to execute their assigned tasks.